Ep. 154: when people are objects

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Okay, so a little departure this week. All right? [00:00:06] Speaker B: All right. [00:00:07] Speaker A: I know that normally we tend to kick off jack of all graves by talking about an event out there in the real world. Something horrible which has echoed through time, something eerie, something creepy, something strange. This week little departure, I'm going to speak of just an entirely different world. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about, well, performance art. Okay. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Oh, all right. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Performance art. Physical theater, a brand of theater which is removed from the traditional get your program. Sit down in your seat. Watch the fucking curtain go up. Watch a show. I want to talk a little bit about performance art and one piece in particular. See, I studied theater. Of course, I kind of dabbled most of the performance art that I was in was probably shit. I'm self aware enough to know when I'm in shit. [00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I mean, that's part of the process, right? [00:01:08] Speaker A: Yes. But at its best, right. Performance art, it can fucking just shine a light, hold a glass up, hold a mirror up. It can foster dialogue. It can fucking just fucking challenge it challenges your assumptions. It encourages you to fucking stare into your own humanity and really kind of weigh up what that means. Right, all right. [00:01:36] Speaker B: I'm very interested in this because you know how I tend to be kind of skeptical of stuff that is, like, self important and things like that, which makes a lot of performance art a little difficult for me. But I am very interested in hearing where you're going with this. [00:01:53] Speaker A: It isn't a medium which is often associated with a sense of humor. It can be it can be self important, or it can be fucking edgy and dangerous as shit. Let me just introduce you to a practitioner by the name of Marina Abramovich. Okay. [00:02:12] Speaker B: I am very familiar with Marina Abramovich. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Oh, you are? Talk to me. What do you know about Marina Abramovich? [00:02:17] Speaker B: Well, I mean, she's, like, probably the most famous performing artist of all. She yeah. Did things like the artist is she's got there's one that's celebrating her and Ule right now in I think it's in London that's doing the thing where to get into the exhibit, you have to move between two naked bodies. So you have to walk in between two naked people who are standing. [00:02:47] Speaker A: Marina Abramovich. All right. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah. But yeah, she was kind of this is probably, I imagine, what you're going to talk about, but basically did, like, one famous performing art piece, I think, also in tandem with Ule in which people were basically allowed to do whatever they wanted to her. Right. [00:03:05] Speaker A: That's the one. [00:03:05] Speaker B: That is Shia LaBeouf. Then later, Emulated. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Plenty of people have had a crack at this. Yeah. Yoko Ono had a crack at a similar concept. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but explain it better than I did, but go ahead. [00:03:19] Speaker A: The piece in question so just super briefly. Marinara Bramvich. She's a Serbian performance artist. She's still around. She's still practicing. She's still working into her 80s. She was born in 1946. And her work, it kind of involves her own body as the primary medium. Right. Her physicality is the stage. We are talking themes of vulnerability, the limits of the human body, what it means to be fucking pain. Vulnerability, passivity, endurance. All of these are kind of really key themes in her art. Right. I particularly want to talk about a series in the 70s that she produced known as the Rhythm Series. Right. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:07] Speaker A: Ten, I believe it was ten separate pieces. Rhythms. Ten down to zero. And in each of these, each of these really, really pushed it. Rhythm Two, for example, was her and good old Ulay repeatedly banging their heads together while chanting the numbers one to ten in their native languages. Okay? Headbutt theater. Fucking head butt theater. [00:04:28] Speaker B: What could be better than a couple of goats? [00:04:30] Speaker A: Exactly this. Exactly this. And look, I get how, you know, the classic Simpsons gag about for performance art, the plum in the fucking men's hat suspended in perfume? It can get that way. But when it's as visceral and as fucking confrontational and as angry as this, rhythm Five, for example, was all about just abramovich laying inside an effigy of a star cupboard in wood shavings soaked in gasoline, which he fucking lit and lay there in this fucking burning Pyre. But I want to talk specifically about Rhythm Zero. Okay. Which has been referred to as the most terrifying work of art in history. [00:05:15] Speaker B: Oh, shit. [00:05:16] Speaker A: Yep. It has ranked 9th in a list by Complex, which is kind of a multi fucking media kind of art symposium. They ranked it 9th in the greatest works of performance art of all time. [00:05:31] Speaker B: Wow. [00:05:31] Speaker A: Right? [00:05:31] Speaker B: Okay. [00:05:33] Speaker A: It's incredible. It was an experimental piece where she completely, as you said, exposed herself to the will of the audience, completely relinquishing all control over her body, all of her actions, just completely passive. The physicality of this performance was thus that she stood motionless in the gallery of a theater surrounded by 72 objects, 72 items on a table in front of her, right? Now, these items, half of them roughly half of them were gentle kind of objects, which could be things like a flower, a feather, some bread, some honey, some wine, some grapes. And the other half of the table contained things like a scalpel, some nails, a gun with a single bullet. [00:06:31] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. [00:06:32] Speaker A: Fuck, Corey. Scissors. And the table had a card featuring some instructions, right. And I quote directly, this is what the card said. Instructions. There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. Performance, I am the object during this period. I take full responsibility. Duration 6 hours 08:00 P.m till 02:00 A.m.. Right? [00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:02] Speaker A: So she stood there for six fucking hours. Quick math. Do you see me crunch the numbers there? [00:07:06] Speaker B: I know that's pretty good, and I can't verify it, but it sounds like that's right. [00:07:09] Speaker A: 6 hours giving that audience carte blanche that there's complete lack of consequence for them. And as dedicated and as fucking unhinged as this woman is, she said in plenty of interviews she was prepared to die. She was prepared to die. [00:07:26] Speaker B: Like, if you're going to have a gun in there with a single bullet, you are acknowledging that there's every chance someone could come in there and just be like, sweet and shoot her. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Yes. How would that be? Legally? [00:07:39] Speaker B: You would absolutely go to jail. There's no way. There's absolutely no way that it would be like, oh, because the artist said, It's okay. It's fine. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Okay. [00:07:49] Speaker B: Not possible. [00:07:51] Speaker A: So the performance begins. Okay. Marina is fully clothed, and it began quite tamely with people kind of posing her as you'd imagine lifting her arms in the air, touching her, placing a rose in her hand, placing other objects in her hand. Someone fed her bread. Someone fed her cake. She says of that early phase, the audience were very much playing with me. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Right? [00:08:18] Speaker A: But as the performance drew on, as night fell, the kind of the mood of the audience changed and the performance began to grow way more sinister. All right. Scissors were used to completely remove her clothes in the third hour, and things just got darker from there. One audience member used the knife on the table to cut her close to her neck and drunk some of her blood. Tried to drink her blood? Yeah. She was drawn on. She was written on. There were various kind of sexual assaults took place on her. Some members of the audience picked her up and carried her around the room and laid her on the table and stabbed the knife repeatedly into the table next to her in an attempt to get her to quit, in an attempt to get her to break the artificial kind of the artifice. She remained passive. She remained inert even as audience members loaded the bullet into the gun, placed the gun into her hand and pointed it at her head. [00:09:21] Speaker B: They were trying to find a caveat there, like, what if we what if she does it? [00:09:28] Speaker A: There were fights breaking out among the audience. Violence broke out among the audience. Some members of the crowd formed a kind of a protective ring around her, protecting her, wiping away her tears, fending off the increasingly fucking hostile actions of the audience. And as mad as it got right at 02:00 a.m. When the gallery announced that the performance was over, marina reverted back into a kind of an active participant in the room, an active participant in her surroundings. And she recalls the audience almost immediately leaving just to avoid confronting the reality of what they'd fucking done to an actual human being. [00:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, this is what is so insane. Even the part of this where the beginning part, right, where you said people were posing or putting flowers in her hands and things like that, immediately my body tensed up because I can't imagine using a stranger as an object. If you were standing in front of me and you were like, do what you want, I was like, oh, okay, I'm going to move your arms around, or whatever, that's one thing. But the idea of treating another human being as an object, even in a nice way out of the question to me. Yes, absolutely. 100% would not ever, ever do that. So the idea of everyone just kind of like fleeing afterwards, it's like, yeah, whether you did something nice or you attacked her or whatever the case may be, you just have to deal with the fact that that wasn't a Barbie. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Exactly. This and what I find so impactful about that is that each one of that audience who acted so fucking abhorrently in that way, even though that performance is over, even that performance has ended, even though it was just 6 hours long, they have something which they have to deal with for the rest of their fucking lives. [00:11:26] Speaker B: They've taken that with them. Yeah, I think that that is I mean, that's the brilliance of it, for sure. Because that is like yeah, for her, that was probably a horrific bunch of hours. And one of the things that I've read about these various performances of it is that every time a woman performs it, people sexually assault her. [00:11:45] Speaker A: 100%. [00:11:45] Speaker B: And I think Shia LaBeouf pointed that out, that it was like, people didn't sexually assault me. They sure inflicted violence on him and things like that. But it's like anytime they get a chance with women in that, they immediately every liberty offered. Exactly. And that's the thing, is it's like, yeah, this is the point. I think I can see people again. It's really hard for me to put myself in this position at all because I completely would not ever. But yeah, walking in there and thinking, she said it's okay, and then when you leave going like, the fuck did I just do? That's not what you do to people. And yeah, that's something that I would imagine people carry with them, which is. [00:12:36] Speaker A: A master stroke of that piece. Yeah. 100%. [00:12:39] Speaker B: She'll move on to one of many insane things she's done throughout her life, but she's not culpable as much as the artist, I'm responsible or whatever, but she did nothing. And all of those people had agency and chose to visit it upon her in ways that she invited, but not really. Exactly. [00:13:02] Speaker A: It feels to me something on the level of the Stanford Prison Experiment to really fucking get a real upfront, visceral, authentic view of just how shitty people will be if given fucking carp launch. [00:13:17] Speaker B: That one was like fake, though, right? Like Stanford Prison experience. [00:13:20] Speaker A: Yes. [00:13:21] Speaker B: Okay. I was like, just making sure I wasn't confusing it with something else. But yeah, I mean, it is it's a real version of that. And I think that's one of the things that gives me so much ick about it and is one of the reasons why it's so bold of her to do that is to knowing humans. And I don't want to say human nature because it's not my nature, knowing what humans do, given the chance. And that, like I said, even if you are the kind of person who is willing to touch a stranger like that in any way, you are capable of objectifying humans. I think that's it the number of people who, whether it's a nice, cute thing or a violent thing, you are capable of seeing another person as an object. And that is deeply terrifying to me to think of how many people are able to do that. [00:14:19] Speaker A: And then you mix in kind of hood mentality oh, fuck. Exactly. [00:14:24] Speaker B: They're doing. Yeah. I guess it's fine. I'll just escalate this, how it turns to bullying, trying to get her to quit this, but also then you get the element of it, of the people. [00:14:38] Speaker A: Who protect opens up straight away in the audience. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And certainly I would hope that those people certainly had reflected upon what their part was before things turned violent. They got into production. Like, what was I doing here? [00:14:55] Speaker A: What was I expecting? What was I going to get out of this? [00:14:58] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Why did I want to go and do this? And now I'm protecting someone from violence or whatever. But yeah, I think it's a really interesting just look at like there's so. [00:15:10] Speaker A: Many people do it has angles all over the place. The dangers of passivity, the danger of being a passive female let's be fucking real. Passivity as defiance. [00:15:24] Speaker B: Right. [00:15:26] Speaker A: But after the performance, to quote Marina Abramovich, what I learned was that if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you. Yeah. [00:15:36] Speaker B: Right. Like, imagine if the protective squad had not formed. [00:15:40] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:42] Speaker B: Someone probably would have killed her or. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Maimed her in some way, whether intentionally or not. I mean, if you're fucking about anything yeah. [00:15:50] Speaker B: With sharp objects, cutting someone's neck and drinking from it if you're not a doctor. Yeah, right. Any number of ways that could have gone horribly awry. And it's just horrifying. I can't imagine it. And it's just yeah, I think it just to me, I think what you take from that project probably says things about fear or what you worry about or whatever. And to me, I think that's it is that I think a thing I fear about people is that they are able to not see other people as humans. And that's what it evokes in me. It's not necessarily what everyone's going to take from that, but that is what squicks me out. The most of it is just like the idea that there are lots of people out there who, given the chance, will use your body. [00:16:45] Speaker A: It's made me deeply curious to know if there have been any other instances of this kind of opportunity given to an audience and it's gone the other way. I wonder if this always happens, that. [00:16:56] Speaker B: It always eventually gets yes. Yeah. That is interesting because I know that with Shia, when he did it, it did get you know, people did punch him and stuff. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Like Mean, when everybody's best mate David Blaine, came over to London and fucking sat in a Perspex box in the middle of London for God knows how long that went, really? All right. People were chucking stuff at. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Mean. That's a bizarre thing to think about, right. That for a lot of people. And the herd mentality thing is part of it. For so many people, bullying is such an instinct. And to do the worst thing instead of the nicest thing, why not go up to that thing and take a cute selfie or something like that, or do a little mime for him? Why not try to make David Blaine happy? Why instead do you throw things at him and heckle him or whatever? The fact that for I think a lot of our societies are sort of raised into bullying and you don't realize it, and then something like this. Really? [00:18:02] Speaker A: Yes. Reverting to type, reverting to when you strip away all of the social construct, when you're not in a kind of a situation that you have a plan for, when there's not a set way to act, do people just instinctively revert to the fucking to the awful? [00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And I like to think they don't. Right. [00:18:27] Speaker A: I'd like to think they don't. [00:18:28] Speaker B: Well, I will elaborate on this thought. I feel like if one person were alone in the room with Marina Abramovich, or one person is walking by David Blaine and there's no other spectators or things like that, I think it would be harder to objectify them. I think it would be very difficult to walk up to a vulnerable woman by herself, no one else around you, and cut her and things like that. I think you need people to egg you on. You need a sense that this is a part of something and that I like to think that people there are obviously people who are just, like, fucking sociopaths or whatever, but that the majority of people, left to their own devices, their first instinct isn't to hurt. The problem is that we come from societies that when we get together yes, our instinct is to hurt. Yeah. It's like how we joke about this all the time, about how terrifying British teenagers are, but it's like every British teenager I've met by themselves has been wonderful. You get them in a group and they're fucking awful. Why are they like this? And it's just like I think that is so powerful. And that's another thing that these experiments show these performance arts piece shows and whatnot is just kind of like, yeah, people in groups. [00:20:05] Speaker A: Look, what I'm left with is how many podcasts? 50 million podcasts every single week, right? I guarantee you, I guarantee you it's only Jo AG who started this week with a piece that contained a line. Why don't you try and make David Blaine happy? No one else is doing no one else is going where we're going, folks. No one else. [00:20:25] Speaker B: No one else is asking a tough question. [00:20:26] Speaker A: No one else dares fucking ask these questions. [00:20:30] Speaker B: And that's the Joad guarantee. [00:20:34] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:20:36] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:20:38] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, miselsen. [00:20:41] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said Misel sen in such a horny way before. [00:20:45] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex cannibal received. [00:20:48] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:20:51] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm going to leg it. [00:20:58] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:21:00] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. Hey, Corey, what's going on? [00:21:08] Speaker B: Hey, Mark. Good to see you. [00:21:10] Speaker A: What happened? [00:21:13] Speaker B: I got a wheel wet wagon. [00:21:15] Speaker A: I can't do my work. It will never not be funny. [00:21:22] Speaker B: It's enduring. It's beautiful. Rest in peace. Fred willard yes. Welcome to Jack of All Graves, dear friends, the podcast where we will talk about a woman being beaten for her art and then jump into mighty wind impressions. Yes, it's a great place to be. [00:21:43] Speaker A: I think it's a great place to be. And it's a great date to be recording a spooky podcast on, isn't it? 1 October. It's the 1 October I declare a spooky season. 2024. It's 2023. That's next year. [00:21:56] Speaker B: It is 2023. I didn't even question it. [00:21:59] Speaker A: I was like, Halloween season open. [00:22:03] Speaker B: Cut the ribbon. It's on. [00:22:05] Speaker A: Yes. [00:22:06] Speaker B: It's happening. It's a beautiful thing. I woke up this spooky season, October 1 in the home of our spookiest friend bookseller Ryan, American Girl. Ryan out in New Hampshire, drove out to see her this weekend and go to a talk and signing with horror authors Chuck Wendig and Clay McLeod Chapman. It was so much fun. And then yeah, spent two nights with Ryan and her family, who are delightful. Their house is in the middle of nowhere, but decorated completely nonetheless for Halloween. Looks absolutely gorgeous. She has the spookiest kids on earth. If you follow her on Instagram or anything like that, you've seen her children before. If you follow the Gibson's bookstore TikTok, you've seen them before and they're like, exactly as you'd imagine in real life. At one point, Cordelia became obsessed with my dog. And Gaucho has this effect on children. [00:23:10] Speaker A: To know goucho's to love him. [00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And he's like the size of a stuffed animal. And he's quiet and he has doll eyes. There's no white in his eyes. It's all brown. He just looks like a teddy bear, but one that moves and is warm. [00:23:26] Speaker A: Right. Can I tell you what Gouch brings to mind so fucking clearly every time I see it? Right? It's the last scene of Gremlins, right? Gizmo is in the Barbie car, right? And Stripe is climbing up the fountain and he hits the drapes, and the drapes go up and the light hits Stripe and he just starts boiling like a skeleton. [00:23:50] Speaker B: And he's all fucked up. [00:23:52] Speaker A: And that's what Gouch makes me think of. [00:23:55] Speaker B: He's like he's boiling gremlin. I always say he's like, in the transition between Maguire and Gremlin. He's like in between. [00:24:03] Speaker A: But he's one of the wacky ones from Gremlins too. [00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Yeah. He's more of a Gremlins too. Gremlin, for sure. So Cordelia was fixated on Gaucho, was trying to get us to let him sleep in her bed, which I totally he's slept in many children's beds over the course of his lifetime. But now that he's 16 years old, he will, like, wake freely child up. He doesn't freely piss, but he will wake you up to get you to take him to pee. I was like, Cordelia, you do not want that at 02:00 in the morning. But she's sitting with him, just cuddling with him on the couch, right? She's like, he's draped over my arm. She's like, all happy. She's like, his eyes are so cute. They look like bubbles. Because he's got, like, foggy eyes because he's blind. They look like bubbles. I want to pop them. [00:24:56] Speaker A: Fucking help. [00:24:58] Speaker B: Creepy Cordelia. Okay, so, yeah. Extremely spooky children. So much fun. Ryan's husband cooked for us, and he's like, an amazing cook. Made nice vegetarian meals on my account. And it was so it's. They're always a few weeks ahead of us on the seasons in New England, right? [00:25:23] Speaker A: Okay. [00:25:24] Speaker B: So it's like, fall there. The leaves are turning colors, and it's just, like, gorgeous. And all the orchards are open. And we went to a craft fair and just walked. [00:25:37] Speaker A: All the orchards? [00:25:39] Speaker B: Yes. What's the question? [00:25:46] Speaker A: Surely that's just apples. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's what I mean. The apples. [00:25:49] Speaker A: Right, okay. I was questioning, were there different types of orchard? [00:25:53] Speaker B: Can you get yeah, there's probably other kinds of orchards, but I just think of apples as apple orchards. Yeah, it was just gorgeous. Went to craft fair, we pet goats. All of it was just absolutely beautiful. It's always good every time I go back there, though, right? I didn't realize this growing up, but now whenever I go to New England, I realize I'm from the middle of fucking just there's nothing anywhere near things. There's no freeway. You're just like driving back roads, like highways everywhere that you're going. There's no chain restaurants anywhere unless you're in the cities and stuff like that. I'm like, Is it like pumpkinhead in BFE? Not quite pumpkinhead. [00:26:40] Speaker A: Kids in sacks. [00:26:42] Speaker B: This is north of America. But yeah, it's just like every time I drive back through there, I'm like, Jesus Christ. Like, middle of nowhere, nothing goes. My mom always said we were from the boonies, and I never understood that until now. Having lived in places that aren't the boonies, I'm like, Christ Almighty. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Do you know what? It was a similar well, not on that scale because not that I've ever experienced it, but I gather rural America is rural as shit. But it was a similar kind of journey that I went through after moving away from Wales. You know what? Because, you know, if what you want to do in Wales isn't happening in Cardiff or wherever, you can pretty much fucking forget about it. [00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Whereas now, living right in the middle of England, like fucking smack in the middle of England, just everything is a 20. [00:27:35] Speaker B: Every direction you go, you got something to go. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Now, for the past 20 years of my life or whatever, I've lived near cities and it's been very easy to get to stuff. But I think I mentioned last year, it was a year ago today, in fact, that Jordan got married. And when I went for their wedding, I was trying to find a hotel and realized there's only two hotels in the entire area around my hometown, and one is a deeply shitty red roof inn that is just like drug fueled arguments from people all night. And then one's a very expensive Best Western or something like that, like a cheap hotel, but that it's expensive because it's the only game in town. And I was just like, Fuck me. So I stayed in Connecticut and drove another hour to get to the wedding last time. So, yeah, very much from the middle of nowhere. [00:28:30] Speaker A: Can I just on Ryan briefly? Yes, please, love. In much the same way as remember when we did that con last year? That fucking yeah, it's like just one of the best times of my life, seeing Ryan with a mic in her hand, with authors next to her addressing. [00:28:49] Speaker B: A bookshelf, like, in her element. [00:28:51] Speaker A: It is so, so nice to see someone giving of their best. It was lovely. [00:28:56] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. It was so much fun to just get to see her doing what she's born to do and interfacing with these authors. It was wonderful to get to see that in action. I 100% agree. Yeah. It's just like really nice when you're like, yes, that is a person living their best life. [00:29:14] Speaker A: And it's lovely to see. Thrilling. [00:29:16] Speaker B: It was great. So lovely. Wonderful stuff. [00:29:19] Speaker A: While it's on my mind, I want to tell you one of the things I love about Gremlins Two. Right? [00:29:26] Speaker B: This is, by the way, Gremlins Two came up last night. [00:29:30] Speaker A: Really? [00:29:31] Speaker B: Apparently there was, for whatever reason, mike had talked Ryan into watching Gremlins Two last year, but it was on one of her nights of Halloween where she normally watches she has a schedule of movies she watches or whatever, right? And she was, like, a little annoyed about not getting to watch her movie, and she did not enjoy watching Gremlins Two. And I was like, no, you have to watch it again, like, in the right zone. Because I love it way more than the first one. [00:29:58] Speaker A: It's incredible. And I'm hoping this little tidbit would make you love it even more. Right. You know the bit in the middle where they break the fourth wall and the movie breaks down? Yeah. There are three fucking versions of that scene. Three separate versions of that scene. If you watched Gremlins Two at the cinema, the movie breaks down. Hulk Hogan comes out of the fucking crowd and threatens to go back into the projector room. He rips his T shirt and does the Hulkamania thing. Amazing, right? [00:30:30] Speaker B: Love it. [00:30:31] Speaker A: That's what happened. If you saw it at the cinema, if you see it on video, if you saw it on tape, the movie breaks down and the gremlins play loads of bits of old movies. And John Wayne threatens to fucking take the gremlins out, right? [00:30:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:45] Speaker A: In the Gremlins Two fucking movie tie in novelization. Right? That bit takes place from the author's perspective when the Gremlins break into his home as he's writing the book. [00:30:59] Speaker B: I love that so much. You did mention that one a couple weeks ago. But I didn't know that. There was, like two different movie endings. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Two different movie bits, and they put a bit in for the book. So good. [00:31:12] Speaker B: Ryan. Go watch it again. [00:31:14] Speaker A: It's great. [00:31:15] Speaker B: It's the best in the right zone because it's so beautiful. It was gremlins too. [00:31:19] Speaker A: Years and many, many years after I saw Gremlins Two initially, I figured out that the reason all of the Gremlins are weird as fuck in this one is because the water that gets squirted onto Gizmo from fucking Gomez is it? Gomez Adams? Is he the guy? [00:31:36] Speaker B: The janitor, is it? [00:31:39] Speaker A: I'm pretty sure it's Gomez Adams. Is it? Yes. [00:31:41] Speaker B: Okay. Have to check in on that. [00:31:44] Speaker A: The water mixes paint on the way to Gizmo, doesn't it? [00:31:48] Speaker B: I guess so. [00:31:49] Speaker A: It does. It runs down Billy Peltzer's drawing and gets mixed with paint. Hence all the Gremlins coming out. Weird. How good is that? [00:31:57] Speaker B: I love that Yemen. That's a Christmas time movie, though. Like, both gremlins I watch at Christmas. [00:32:03] Speaker A: Yes. I'm not there yet. The boys have never seen Gremlins two. And I can't wait. That fucking soundtrack. [00:32:10] Speaker B: What the fuck, man? I'm excited for them. You've got critters on. [00:32:14] Speaker A: The critters is on the plex. They're going to be enjoying critters soon. Gremlins Two. We still got the final destinations to go through. I'm really kind of antsy about three and four now. [00:32:23] Speaker B: Now that you know about the concept. [00:32:25] Speaker A: Now that I know about. [00:32:26] Speaker B: I don't think we mentioned this last week because I think it was after last week's episode that Ryan brought this up for the past few. Weeks. I keep explaining to Mark, like, just FYI your kid when you get to Final Destination Three, there's, like, a very long titty scene in this. And then Canadian boy Ryan pointed out on our Facebook group that there's, like, an insane sex scene in the fourth one. That pornographic sex in it. And it's just the thing is, I completely forgot. Four is so shitty that it's like, nothing stands out about four. Except that you're just like, wow, that's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I genuinely just forgot that happened. [00:33:08] Speaker A: I might even skip it. [00:33:09] Speaker B: You could skip a just skip it. It's, like, bad 3D, it's bad acting. It adds nothing to the story whatsoever. Like, you will lose nothing. He can someday, when he's older, be like, oh, yeah, I should watch that, and then laugh and be like, oh, I see why my dad skipped this one. [00:33:27] Speaker A: My dad's great. [00:33:28] Speaker B: Just pass it up and go straight into five. Which is great. I think that's the way to do it. [00:33:32] Speaker A: In other news yeah, I'm doing all right. [00:33:35] Speaker B: Good. [00:33:36] Speaker A: Listen, really, just to pause here and just because, like we said when I rejoined a couple of weeks back, I'll keep you updated into how I'm doing. Yes, I'm on a fucking roll at the minute. [00:33:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you seem great. [00:33:50] Speaker A: Yes. Sleeping really well. Love that. Work is shitty, but sure, yeah. Fucking put your hand in the air if work isn't shitty, you know what I mean? Work is shitty. That's what it is. But in terms of yes, that's why it's work. But in terms of me and my outlook and my fucking sleep, things are really doing good. [00:34:11] Speaker B: Have you continued running? Has that been helping? [00:34:14] Speaker A: I am running again. I went to the gym for the first time in a while earlier on this week. I'm up to kind of five K's again. Alan and I have signed up for the Cardiff Half Marathon next year. [00:34:27] Speaker B: I hate it, but I love it. [00:34:29] Speaker A: Yes. But long story short, I'm doing fucking peachy. Thank you. [00:34:32] Speaker B: That is so great. I'm really happy to hear about that, especially because yeah, I just feel like this is an earned journey. Yes. You have worked to be, at this point, things are looking good. [00:34:50] Speaker A: The way that I put this to Alan was that, man, it's been an eye opener. This year has been an eye opener because I've lived, like, 43 years as a proper kind of happy go lucky motherfucker, you know what I mean? Twirling my umbrella in my hand, walking along, jaw delete, maybe doing that thing where you jump up and kick your heels together. Oh, yeah, that was me for 40 odd years. And it's been interesting. It's been very interesting to see just if I can get the SADS man, anyone can. [00:35:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know. I feel like you are misrepresenting yourself here, but I'll allow it nonetheless. [00:35:35] Speaker A: Well, look, I've learned a lot. [00:35:39] Speaker B: Yes. Right. Maybe that like you couldn't roll past your SADS as in prior times. You have. [00:35:48] Speaker A: Yes. They got a grip on me there for a while. [00:35:52] Speaker B: Yeah. You had to reflect upon them this time and think it through and work through it. It's good. I'm really glad that things are going great. [00:36:01] Speaker A: Yeah, they are. I mean, sure. [00:36:02] Speaker B: Everyone else is really happy to hear that, too. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Well, I hope so. I hope so. But it feels good to be able to say that. Yes. [00:36:08] Speaker B: And we hope that you at home are able to say that as well. That things are going great. It's spooky season. It is our time to shine. Let's get into it. I'm just stoked. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling great right now, too. So this actually my watch told me that I have slept more this past week than I have in ages, averaging 7 hours a night, which is unheard of. [00:36:33] Speaker A: Yeah. That is fucking nuts for you. [00:36:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm like I'm like a four hour. [00:36:39] Speaker A: Because I'll still get the occasional text from you at like 08:00 a.m.. Yeah, you do. [00:36:43] Speaker B: You still I'm usually awake for still between 330 and six. I'm still awake, but then I sleep from six till nine, so I get some of that back. So yeah, you do. Most days still get texts from me very early in the morning with whatever random insight has popped into my head that's very important that I share and. [00:37:07] Speaker A: I kind of roll my eyes. [00:37:13] Speaker B: But anyways, have you been watching anything lately? [00:37:18] Speaker A: Let's shoot the shit for a bit longer first. My mood has increased and my well being has increased, even though the country that I live in is still a fucking absolute mess. [00:37:33] Speaker B: Well, yeah, that's for sure. Over here, too. [00:37:35] Speaker A: Yes, an absolute mess. Just wanted to say that. Really. I mean, the air quotes government are kind of front and center in the news over the past couple of weeks for the creative approach to getting to a kind of a net zero carbon target by opening up a new fucking oil field. Seems counterintuitive. [00:38:01] Speaker B: Wait, no. Did you not see that? [00:38:03] Speaker A: What? [00:38:05] Speaker B: A bunch of balloons just came up in front of shit. [00:38:07] Speaker A: Is it doing that right? I digress for some fucking reason, right? All of my Apple devices have updated, so if I do this. [00:38:19] Speaker B: Oh, there they are. [00:38:20] Speaker A: Here come the balloons. And they come from behind me. [00:38:23] Speaker B: Yeah. It was like, scared the shit out of me for a second. Especially if I do not react. Yeah. Oh, look at little thumbs up. [00:38:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:34] Speaker B: Okay. [00:38:34] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah, it's aiing me. And who knows what other fucking gestures I can break out which will cause some sort of effect. I don't know. [00:38:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't like that. I don't think it's really what you're doing either. It's like when Gmail suggests responses to you to stuff and you're like, Why? Do you know what appropriate responses are to my email. I don't like you doing that. [00:38:57] Speaker A: I caught a post on Blue Sky earlier. I'm not going to call it what you call it, and I don't know who it's attributed to, but it's a really succinct way of summing up an approach to AI written content. Why should I be bothered to read something that no one could be bothered to write? That's it, isn't it? That's it in a fucking nutshell. [00:39:25] Speaker B: Right, exactly. But anyways, you were saying something else. [00:39:30] Speaker A: Yes, that's it. That's it. Seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? [00:39:33] Speaker B: So what was counterintuitive? I got distracted by the balloons. [00:39:40] Speaker A: Yes, but they've given approval for a fucking brand new oil field. [00:39:44] Speaker B: This is what we do here, too. Just like, oh, man, we got to kill these fossil fuel emissions and whatnot. Anyways, let's go, like, frack somewhere or make a pipeline or something. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing? What's happening? It's like taking crazy pills. Is it upside down world? Do I just not get it? I don't understand what's happening. [00:40:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll get to a point where I'm giving up cigarettes by buying and smoking packs of cigaretes, right? [00:40:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. This just reminds me, like, this week, for Wisecrack, we're working on a video on health insurance which will be of interest to our British audiences, who are perpetually baffled by our health care system here. So I had written the outline for this and then Amanda was writing the script and she was like, can we hop on a call for 15 minutes just to like there's some questions I have about things in the outline. I'm like, yeah, sure. And so we're reading through this and I'm trying to explain to her some of these concepts of the business of health insurance and how it works and stuff like that. And essentially she's like, this doesn't make sense to me. How is that a good business model? I'm like, well, right, so it's not. Which is why we pay so much, right? Because the business model is meant to not be efficient and then we pay for it. And there had been, like, a quote from someone else who someone who I had looked up in this research who had basically said, the way to understand health insurance is as a cartel. [00:41:24] Speaker A: Right? [00:41:24] Speaker B: And that was where we eventually got to. I was like, Amanda, this is where we're losing it here, is that you are looking at us as a business. Look at it as a cartel. [00:41:38] Speaker A: Yes. [00:41:38] Speaker B: And this all makes so much more sense. And she was like, yeah, that is the problem. I'm just sitting here trying to make something make sense that doesn't. The point is that it doesn't in order to pass this stuff off, you. [00:41:55] Speaker A: Know, but my eye appointment being put back to February, every so often I'll catch myself, I'm about to kind of complain about the NHS and I'll stop think. If you were American, no, don't fuck. Nobody wants to hear that shit. [00:42:07] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Just let's put it into perspective. You would just deal with that. Even the way that you were joking about taking it. Well, I know you're not really joking, but the way you were talking about popping it yourself or whatever here, that's just what people, they would go on YouTube, they would look up how to do that. Because there is no fucking way you are going to go spend $6,000 to get someone to take a bump out of your eye. [00:42:32] Speaker A: Fuck no. [00:42:36] Speaker B: That's why those YouTube videos are so popular. Yeah. So waiting. Take your weight. [00:42:45] Speaker A: So long story short, the world is still a shithole. I guess it is. Oh though right? I can't fucking find I meant to post it but I forgot. There's a wonderful article that I read on BBC News this week that talks about a lot of astronomy heads, right? A lot of fucking NASA guys are now talking in terms of it isn't a case of if we find life elsewhere on Earth, it's when which gives me so much fucking joy. [00:43:22] Speaker B: Why not? Why does it bring you joy? I know it does. We've talked about that. Why are they suddenly and I'm kind. [00:43:31] Speaker A: Of piecing this together off the top of my head from this article that I read last night. But thanks to things like the James Webb telescope being able to analyze kind of the chemical signature of light from faraway worlds, they can pick up biosignatures of particular gases which at least as far as Earth is concerned are only possible through biological know. There are zones that I think there's a moon of Jupiter, like a really watery kind of icy moon of Jupiter that is a prime candidate for having microbial life on it. It's really starting to feel that it's something that's going to fucking happen soon. I will lose my shit. I will fucking lose it. [00:44:13] Speaker B: I wish I could be there if it is ever announced. I wish I could be there to see you experience it. [00:44:20] Speaker A: When it crosses that line over from probability or percentages to yep, it really does look as though there's yeah, I'll I'll go nuts. [00:44:31] Speaker B: That's exciting. [00:44:32] Speaker A: Oh, it's so exciting. [00:44:34] Speaker B: Not everything is shit. And you know what we talked about a few weeks ago, I don't remember what sort of brand but we were discussing kind of all the shit in the world and how dark and stormy it is in the world. But one of the things that we had said was we become useless if we can only wallow in that darkness and that it is important to you have to take care of yourself within it and find joy within it. Otherwise it is really hard to fight it. [00:45:03] Speaker A: And I will roll back so hard on what I said about 40 seconds ago but the word being a shit all it fucking isn't, man. It really isn't. If you can free yourself from the drudgery of routine and look at things with a fresh set of eyes, even the most mundane activity just walking through a fucking field. Holy shit. What a fucking glorious thing to be able to do. [00:45:27] Speaker B: So I was walking through I was walking back from somewhere yesterday, I think, just meeting up with everybody, and I walked through some nice leaves and I said out loud to myself, like, I love my life. And then I realized there was someone, like, walking towards me. [00:45:47] Speaker A: Hey, lady. [00:45:48] Speaker B: Probably seemed extremely weird. [00:45:51] Speaker A: Hey, lady. Okay, you can't be out here loving your life. [00:45:55] Speaker B: The fuck, right? All right, if you say so. Like a from inside reaction that I could not like I was just like, god, this is so beautiful. Like, holy shit, there's so much stuff like that that can just bring mean. [00:46:14] Speaker A: Today, Laura and Owen and I peter was off kayaking, right? [00:46:19] Speaker B: Oh, I love a kayak because he's. [00:46:21] Speaker A: A fucking Sea Scout or whatever. He had a trip with the rest of his scout dudes kayaking down some river, the Thames, I think it's called. [00:46:28] Speaker B: And you might have heard of it. [00:46:31] Speaker A: Me and Laura and Owen went on a little kind of a little family date, walking around Oxford. And it was just so nice. Everything's going autumnal, the leaves are turning know, just walking past the beautiful buildings of the university, through the university field. [00:46:44] Speaker B: Oxford's gorgeous. [00:46:46] Speaker A: It was beautiful. [00:46:48] Speaker B: I love that. So, yeah, like, those are the know, if you are overwhelmed by the yes and all of that kind of know, it's always nice to go just get a look at something that isn't shitty. Go pet an animal. [00:47:03] Speaker A: Find a pet every day. [00:47:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Go pet some animals that don't know that the climate is dying. Go pet a goat. Go pet a sheep. [00:47:16] Speaker A: Goat. Yeah. And there it is. There's the JOAX schism. You know what I mean? Earlier on, it was the horrific fucking base tendencies of pack mentality and would you cut a woman if you could get away with it, right? But leaves are crunchy and I've got an icy glass of Vimdo. And it's spooky season, right? [00:47:38] Speaker B: The amount of joy you've gotten from that glass. [00:47:42] Speaker A: Listen, I have no shame in repeating what I said to you earlier on. Is it wrong to want to fuck a drink? Because this glass of Vimdo really strong vimdo, a fuck ton of ice, and even just the color of it is the most glorious, really pretty, rich velvety burgundy. And it is sweet and artificial chemical tasting. And the ice is it. If I weren't recording this podcast right now, I would violate this. [00:48:08] Speaker B: Put your dick in it. [00:48:09] Speaker A: I would fucking fuck a glass of Vimto. What can I say? [00:48:14] Speaker B: And that's the kind of wonder we want you to bring to your daily experience, dear Joe AG listeners. [00:48:19] Speaker A: That is it. When the world's getting you, put your. [00:48:22] Speaker B: Penis in the vimto. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Why don't you want to make David Blaine happy? Why? [00:48:30] Speaker B: Isn't important. Tell him a fucking joke. This is also the second time David Blaine has come up this weekend really talking about his episode of Hot Ones the other day. At the end of his episode of Hot Ones, he eats a Carolina reaper and he just doesn't react. But me and Keo both think it's a sleight of hand and that he doesn't actually eat the reaper. Although Keo also thinks maybe he coated his mouth with something or any number of things because that's what he does. He's an illusionist. I don't buy that he ate it. [00:49:05] Speaker A: Or maybe he's just using shamanic techniques and retreating into his mind palace. [00:49:09] Speaker B: That's what he wants you to think. Yeah, we all think he has powers from all these things that he's studied and whatnot. But sometimes I think he just doesn't eat the reaper. [00:49:20] Speaker A: He's just dropping his pocket. [00:49:21] Speaker B: Delicious, right? Yummy. [00:49:26] Speaker A: As much of a fucking dickhead as David Blaine is, right? I've got to thank him. Because without David Blaine, there's no Chris Angel, mind freak. [00:49:35] Speaker B: Oh, God almighty. I heard someone, like, genuinely talking about how much they love Chris Angel recently, and I was like, in the year of our Lord 2023? [00:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Incredible. [00:49:52] Speaker B: I was watching I really love game shows, but like, ones that are celebrity. Name that tune is the one that I've been watching lately, and it's know name that tune It's just like they play part of something and you have to name it. [00:50:10] Speaker A: Hosted in the UK by Jimmy Tarbuck. [00:50:13] Speaker B: I don't think I know who that is. [00:50:14] Speaker A: And also, I think Tom O'Connor. We're going right back, late 70s, early 80s kind of variety comedians. Jimmy Tarbuck, is he still alive? [00:50:23] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:50:24] Speaker A: But yes, I know about no, it's. [00:50:27] Speaker B: Not so this one hosted by Jane Krakowski with a marionette looking uncanny valley, randy Jackson playing the piano and a live band doing the songs. And then these celebrities on there. Chris Jericho was on one of the episodes. [00:50:43] Speaker A: He does get around, doesn't he? [00:50:45] Speaker B: He is so extra like he is just theater kid to the max. When you get him away from I mean, he's like that with wrestling, too, but away from wrestling when he really is just kind of like let him be himself. He's super hyperactive. He's just way over the top. [00:51:01] Speaker A: He's a classic example of somebody I can just compartmentalize. No problem at all. I can shut away the shitty because he just seems super likable. [00:51:10] Speaker B: And he's confusing in that way, too. Right. His wife is clearly awful, but then he's also pro trans rights and things like that that you're like, I don't get. [00:51:21] Speaker A: I think it's an on balance affair with Chris, isn't it? You've got to balance everything out. [00:51:26] Speaker B: I'm like, you seem to be voting for people who are bad, but then publicly on the right, it's very weird. Anyway, regardless, my sister was like, man, I can imagine what kind of magician he would have been if he was not a wrestler, you know? Exactly. That was his career trajectory. [00:51:45] Speaker A: Otherwise, yeah, I'm done bent. We can talk about movies now. [00:51:49] Speaker B: We can talk about movies. Hey, you know, I love shooting the breeze. Last week. Normally, we get most of this out of our system before we start. Like, last week, I talked at you for half hour beforehand, just like so it was your turn to do that this time. [00:52:03] Speaker A: And it felt good. [00:52:05] Speaker B: Good. What have we watched? [00:52:06] Speaker A: Let me see. We both together watched Eden Lake. [00:52:11] Speaker B: We did watch Eden Lake. Eden Lake is one that there are various movies that the COVID turns up on, my recommendations on Letterboxd and things like that for years, and I just simply never watched them. It's like every time I turned on shudder, like, oh, that's kind of an interesting cover. Maybe I'll watch that. And I just didn't. [00:52:30] Speaker A: We arrived at Eden Lake. It was Corey's turn to pick the movie we watched. Easily two or three movies have been together, don't we? [00:52:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:36] Speaker A: Generally, it was your turn to choose. You asked me what the vibe was, and I simply replied, savagery. Yeah, that is what I was in the zone for. [00:52:45] Speaker B: And so what I did was I googled movies like Wolf Greek. [00:52:49] Speaker A: There you go. [00:52:50] Speaker B: I was like, if we want Savagery, that's the vibe. And we came upon Eden Lake. I think that fit. [00:53:00] Speaker A: Oh, it did. It was a deeply tense and just a proper kind of sense of impending dread throughout the entire thing. Even when the dread comes, it dials up to more dread. Yes, it's an ever escalating upward dread trajectory of this film. And I didn't pretty much till the credits roll. Yeah, exactly. [00:53:24] Speaker B: There's never a point where it drops off until literally credits. And the basic gist of Eden Lake is a couple, michael Fassbender and that other woman whose name I can never remember. [00:53:39] Speaker A: I can't remember. [00:53:40] Speaker B: She's very, like she's a weird pretty to me, like one of those things where I'm like mostly I think she's kind of weird looking, but it works. [00:53:48] Speaker A: Yes, that's exactly it. Very pretty redhead, which is yeah, redhead. [00:53:54] Speaker B: Very pale redheaded woman. But you would recognize her if you saw her. But anyways, they are going ostensibly, he's going to propose to her out on this little lake trip. And they go to this very secluded lake, and while there, encounter various sort of, I guess, northern English stereotypes of working class people who are hooligans hooligans. Yeah, like, the adults are bad, the kids are bad. Everybody around is bad. Everyone they meet is just deeply hostile to them. And from there, they and the kids that they meet have sort of an antagonistic relationship that leads to them being hunted by these kids. And yeah, it is absolutely brutal. It took me a while to get into it because I hated the couple at the center of it so badly. And I was like, whatever. I just want bad things to happen to them. But then when it started happening to them, it is bleak to the point of Australian. That's what I would say about this movie. If you like Australian movies and the bleakness of those, you're going to enjoy Eden Lake. [00:55:09] Speaker A: Yeah. A nice, easy three stars. [00:55:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It's not one that I want to revisit. Not planning to go back to it, but absolutely worth a watch. [00:55:24] Speaker A: I don't quite know why, but as is sometimes the case with me, I sometimes get seized by an urge to watch a particular type of film. And that urge visited me this week and had me sat down in front of The Exorcist. [00:55:42] Speaker B: Oh, nice. I watched it like a month ago. Yeah. Every now and again, that hits. [00:55:46] Speaker A: It's a piece of work, isn't it? [00:55:48] Speaker B: It is, yeah. [00:55:50] Speaker A: It's a movie which deserves every bit of its reputation as an absolute fucking real knife between the ribs kind of a movie. It's a fucking horrible piece of work. The Exorcist. Brilliant. And I mean that in the most complimentary way. How the fuck did Max von Siddha will only die recently? [00:56:12] Speaker B: Was it only recently? [00:56:13] Speaker A: I think it was in the past couple of years because he looks fucking 70 OD in The Exorcist. [00:56:17] Speaker B: Well, that's the thing. Yeah. There's some people who are just like old forever. It's like 50 years of them just being ancient. [00:56:25] Speaker A: Died in 2020. [00:56:27] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Yeah. I don't know. For whatever reason, I thought it was farther than that. But yeah, that's wild. [00:56:34] Speaker A: It was the Director's Cup, which I hadn't sat down in front of before. [00:56:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I watched that one as well. [00:56:41] Speaker A: Ellen Burston is fantastic. Ellen Burston is fantastic. [00:56:46] Speaker B: And she's in the new one, too. [00:56:48] Speaker A: She is. Now, I've seen this week that the review embargo of the new Exorcist only lifts, like 24 hours before it comes out. [00:56:58] Speaker B: It's always a little questionable. [00:57:00] Speaker A: Yeah. But hope springs eternal. Who knows? Maybe it'll be a banger. But the OG Exorcist remains engaging and fucking engrossing. [00:57:09] Speaker B: And the third one, as we found. [00:57:11] Speaker A: Out yeah, it does. The batting average for the Exorcist franchise is good. [00:57:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So I tried to do what everybody else does and kind of map out my October watches because I always find, like, there's a bunch of stuff that I love watching around Halloween, but then I'll forget. And then the Halloween season passes and I'm like, oh, I missed some of my favorites during this time. So I was like, I'm going to write down these and then I will switch them up as they come along if things like hit me or whatever. But Exorcist Three is on my rewatch list for this one because I've seen Exorcist many times. But I've only seen Exorcist Three the one time that we watched it and was just like so blown away by it. So I'm stoked to revisit that again, kind of knowing what I'm getting into with it and enjoy it that way. So, yeah, that's fun. Anything else that you watched? [00:58:01] Speaker A: What about you? What about you? You doing? [00:58:04] Speaker B: I think the only thing that I watched. So obviously I went away for the weekend. It was like a busy work week, all that kind of stuff, so I didn't have a ton of time to watch things. I thought I talked about The Aisle last week, but The Aisle is like I didn't put it in the blog, but I'm like, I thought I talked about it last week. That was like a lighthouse movie. I watched a couple of Lighthouse movies. One called the lighthouse. I didn't put that on here either. Maybe I didn't talk about it. Did I tell you about the Welsh movie The Lighthouse that I watched? [00:58:40] Speaker A: No. [00:58:42] Speaker B: It was kind of interesting. So, you know, my theory about all Welsh things is that there's like some form of law in Wales that they all have to have Mark Lewis Jones in them. Do you know who that guy is? [00:58:57] Speaker A: No. [00:58:58] Speaker B: You have practically don't know who he is. Look him up and you're going to be like, oh yeah, that guy's in every Welsh thing that I've ever seen in my life. He is always in everything and it is wild to me. He's in everything. So I was in the mood to watch a Lighthouse movie, and so at first I watched The Aisle, and it made very little mark on me. It's like kind of a ghost story, but it just was kind of boring. And then I watched The Lighthouse, which is based on a true story, but is like, obviously in the heads of these guys because it's about two lighthouse keepers who go crazy together and one of them ends up dying and the other one is like, basically going crazy with the corpse of the other one in there. [00:59:48] Speaker A: Nice. [00:59:48] Speaker B: And I guess what happened in real life with this, I was going to look up the story, maybe that'll be a cold open sometime. But like, the TLDR version of this is this guy ultimately went so crazy that he never came back from it after they managed to rescue the one lighthouse keeper and he was forever just. [01:00:06] Speaker A: Gone as a result of it. Yeah. Do please relate that tale. [01:00:10] Speaker B: I like that. Yeah. So the movie was like it was fine. It wasn't like the best movie I've ever seen, but it was like once it got kind of crazy and once the one guy died and you're watching the other guy's psychosis around it, it got very wild and kind of fun in that way. So the lighthouse, 2016, I believe. It's like you're going to think, even I think is the same font as The Lighthouse, like the Robert Eggers one but it's a completely different movie. I mean, not completely different. It's the same exact doesn't sound all that different. It doesn't sound that different. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Is it in color? [01:00:48] Speaker B: Two totally different guys based on a true story. [01:00:51] Speaker A: Fucking love. No. Mermaid House, man. The A 24 lighthouse. I fucking love it. [01:00:57] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I quite enjoy that one as well. And I was like, yeah, I was looking for that vibe because it was pouring all last week, so I was like, oh, I just want to sit in something like foggy. [01:01:07] Speaker A: And did your basement emerge on skays basement's? [01:01:11] Speaker B: Fine. Yes. Super happy about that drink. Some dim dot of that poured so badly. And I was like, stressed the entire drive to Ryan's place, which she lives about four and a half hours away. And it took us seven and a half hours to get there because of the rain. So it was like the whole way, I was just like, oh, God, I hope the basement is okay. I hope the basement is okay. And it did not flood. So good. [01:01:34] Speaker A: Delighted to hear it. [01:01:35] Speaker B: Beautiful. Most of New York City did, but. [01:01:40] Speaker A: Some of the posts have know, just subways running with water. [01:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. People in like, waist deep water in the subway. It was an insane storm. And I am shocked that we did not flood. [01:01:53] Speaker A: But very happy that we're delighted to hear it. Very pleased. [01:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, I watched the aisle and the lighthouse and the only other thing that I watched was Dead and Lovely this past week did The Cell one with Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn and just so many famous people. And it's a very weird feeling to watch something that came out when I was like either 8th grade or freshman in high school. This is 2000, so it was somewhere in that vicinity and all these people were like grown ups to me. And now I'm like, look at these babies. They're all like vince Vaughn is like 30. This is so crazy to me. Yeah. Seeing all these people really young in it. Have you seen the cell? [01:02:41] Speaker A: No, I haven't. He had one other big film, didn't he? [01:02:44] Speaker B: Tarzan Singh The Fall, which is a perfect film. [01:02:48] Speaker A: Oh, really? [01:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah. It's one of the greatest movies I have ever seen in my entire life. One of the only movies that when I look at Letterboxed, every single person I know is given perfect five stars. Not one, because four and a half, anything like that. [01:03:02] Speaker A: The Cell did not get that same reception, did it? [01:03:05] Speaker B: No. And the thing about The Cell is his style is there in spades and it's beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous movie. And there's like, nothing to complain about there. The story is kind of stupid is all. And it's basically like it's very basic. There's a serial killer who drowns women and they catch this serial killer or whatever, but he has got one more in a tank. That they have to find before she dies. And so they have some sort of thing that makes it so that Jennifer Lopez can like I can't remember if it was like something you take or whatever, but she can get into people's heads and get into their dream world or whatever. And she's trying to get in there and figure out where this girl is so that they can rescue her. And yeah, it doesn't totally work. It doesn't make sense. It's kind of dumb throughout. It feels like it just doesn't really care if it makes sense or whatever. [01:04:17] Speaker A: That's not the point because without the Jennifer Lopez mindcop angle, what you've just described there seems like it would slot nicely in that kind of post seven. [01:04:30] Speaker B: It'S obviously got like seven influences. [01:04:33] Speaker A: Along came a spider kind of vibes, right? [01:04:36] Speaker B: Like when they talked about undead and Lovely, they were saying you can see its influences easily. Silence of the Lambs, all kinds of stuff. Like very in this. What I will say is there was a part where you're first introduced to the killer, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, who is I mean, the acting in this is like it's just the story. That's bad. [01:04:57] Speaker A: But. [01:05:00] Speaker B: There was a part where you're introduced to him and he has, like, piercings in his back. [01:05:10] Speaker A: Okay. [01:05:10] Speaker B: Like Subden those pierces piercings, yeah. To hang himself from his ceiling and kind of pull himself up and get himself off while he's experiencing the pain. [01:05:22] Speaker A: Of that's a thing. [01:05:24] Speaker B: Well, I'm sure it is, but Mark, I screamed out loud, and I was very worried my mother was going to come running upstairs and be like, are you okay? Genuinely, I was so surprised and so grossed out, I legit screamed. I was like, oh, that doesn't happen too often when I watch movies. So I will definitely give it that. [01:05:45] Speaker A: You'Ve got me thinking about now. I think that's something we should talk about at a later juncture suspensions. So people who get, like, rings under their skin, rings in their back, and they get fucking hung from a hook for reasons no lonely to themselves. [01:05:59] Speaker B: As long as you don't show me pictures, we can talk about it. I don't want to see it. That's like one of those just like, oh, no, too much for me. I can't do it. [01:06:10] Speaker A: I even think it happens in, like maybe in a therapeutic setting after you're suspended for quite a while, you know what I mean? You experience, like a different kind of consciousness. I don't fucking know. [01:06:20] Speaker B: That's one of those things that I feel like I've heard, but I don't know if it was real urban legend or in a movie. So I'm not sure whether that's a real thing. But I certainly have heard that before. Yeah. So the sell I do this all the time, but it's like I'm not not recommending it. I'm not recommending it either. It's very beautiful to look at, but honestly, if you want to look at that, you could also just watch The. [01:06:47] Speaker A: Fall, which is you've recommended it in the least recommendy kind of way there. You've made certain I'm never going to watch it. [01:06:56] Speaker B: But Alan put The Fall on Plex for me ages ago and I watched it on there. It's almost impossible to find, but you have it, Mark. You can watch the fall and enjoy a really good Tarsum Singh movie with Lee Pace. I mean, you can't go wrong with Lee Pace. [01:07:10] Speaker A: No, that's true. He's good. [01:07:12] Speaker B: He's good. Anything else you want? [01:07:14] Speaker A: Let me see. Yeah, I got another couple. Hey, I went and watched a recommendation of yours. [01:07:22] Speaker B: What? [01:07:23] Speaker A: I watched. No one will save you. [01:07:26] Speaker B: Oh, hey. What did you think? [01:07:27] Speaker A: I thought it was great. [01:07:29] Speaker B: Did you? [01:07:31] Speaker A: Yes, I did. You know how I feel about movies without dialogue. You know how I feel about silence in movies and holy shit. Right? How do you fucking write a movie without dialogue? [01:07:44] Speaker B: I thought about that after I finished that movie. I was just sitting there like, what did that screenplay look like? I want to see it. So. [01:07:52] Speaker A: Know, to get the funding and to get picked up by fucking Fox of all studios. [01:07:56] Speaker B: Right. [01:08:00] Speaker A: How do you verbally outline a movie where I think there are six words of dialogue in the whole fucking right. [01:08:07] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. If you didn't listen last week, no One Will Save You is an alien invasion movie that is, like Mark just said, almost without dialogue entirely. That is basically following one woman as she is tormented by these alien invaders and trying to figure out what to do about it. And it spooked the shit out of me. I really enjoyed that. [01:08:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a home invasion movie, but it's not. Yeah, super brave. Lovely downer ending. Lovely downbeat fucking ending. Great monsters, great performances. Brave as fuck in that nobody speaks. Yeah, really nice surprise. Really good. [01:08:54] Speaker B: Good. Like I said, I was like, I feel like you'll like this, but the thing that threw me off was Anna not liking it and you guys having similar time. Yeah. I was like, this feels like a movie that you're going to be into. So I'm really glad that hit for you. [01:09:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it did. I think if it had been more traditional in terms of woods, I wouldn't have liked it anywhere near as much. [01:09:19] Speaker B: It absolutely wouldn't have hit. Yeah, agreed. Completely. Like I said, this might be a thing that I end up doing over Halloween over this month, but it would make a great pairing with the vast of night. I'd love to watch both of those together. [01:09:34] Speaker A: And the vast of night. I don't think I've heard you talk about that. [01:09:37] Speaker B: I've definitely talked about it on here. I thought you'd seen it, but maybe you hadn't. It's an alien movie. That kind of it's never really said when it takes place or anything like that, but you're coming in on? Like it looks like it's probably the 50s ish in sort of a rural area where this girl works as a phone operator and gets, like, a weird sound through the phones, which then she's kind of friends with the local radio host and tries to get him to help her investigate what this is. And then it gets very weird and yeah, I don't know. It's a very difficult to explain movie, but the tonally, I feel like it has a lot sort of in common with this one and is, like, very interesting. [01:10:24] Speaker A: I think you must have talked about that during my hiatus because I do not remember you. [01:10:28] Speaker B: No, I watched this like a year and a half ago. [01:10:30] Speaker A: Okay. [01:10:33] Speaker B: But yeah, I think they'd be a good pairing. I think you'd like that one too. It's just a really interesting alien movie. [01:10:40] Speaker A: Nice. Anything else? Yeah, one more. Because I am a craven, embarrassing, pathetic, chucky mark. I don't give a fuck. I sat down and watched Child's Play Three, all of it. And I enjoyed every single minute. [01:10:55] Speaker B: I don't know how that's possible. [01:10:56] Speaker A: I don't give a shit. Yes. Is it the weakest of the series? Yes. [01:11:00] Speaker B: Yes, by a long shot. [01:11:02] Speaker A: But hey, even bad Chucky is still a good time in my eyes. I love him. I think he's fantastic. He's a little bastard. And this is just Chucky doing chucky things, I guess. [01:11:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:17] Speaker A: And I enjoyed it. [01:11:18] Speaker B: It's the rest of the movie. That's. Not just Chucky doing Chucky things. That is nigh unwatchable. [01:11:23] Speaker A: I think Child's Play is the closest thing I've got outside of Elm Street to a Comfort franchise. [01:11:30] Speaker B: Totally. [01:11:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I can see that. [01:11:32] Speaker B: I mean, for the most part, aside from I really don't like that one. But overall you can put any other Child's Play movie on and I'm going to be a happy camper. [01:11:43] Speaker A: I just love him the way he says Andy fucking so good. [01:11:50] Speaker B: Andy Barkley. Yeah, those are great movies. I get it. [01:11:58] Speaker A: Good. Thank you. I knew you would. [01:12:01] Speaker B: And so that is all of the films for this week. [01:12:04] Speaker A: Hey, yeah, let's talk about them again. Eden Lake. No one will save you. The cell, the lighthouse. Exorcist. The exorcist, the lighthouse. Not that one. And child's play. Three. [01:12:19] Speaker B: Beautiful. [01:12:19] Speaker A: Corey's going to put them on the blog. Y'all, it's in the description. [01:12:23] Speaker B: It's in the blog. [01:12:25] Speaker A: Why not follow us on Letterboxed? Why not do that? [01:12:28] Speaker B: That's always a good idea, you know what I mean? [01:12:30] Speaker A: You're listening to Jack of All Grave, so you're clearly somebody with taste and know skills and you're obviously all over the kind of social internet, so why not follow us on Letterboxd? I am there as probably Dead Man 97. [01:12:45] Speaker B: And I'm there as Here Lies Corey. Follow us on our brands. So yeah, you can always find everything that we talked about by looking at that too. But it's in the description, it's in the blog. Find us on the letterboxed. [01:12:57] Speaker A: Yes, all of that. [01:12:58] Speaker B: Yemen marco, this week I pitched something to you and then I went away and left you to it on your own. But it is a topic I feel like you are passionate about. So let's get into this week's main chat. [01:13:16] Speaker A: How to begin? What? [01:13:20] Speaker B: I would just like to say that when I texted you about this, your giddiness was like, palpable through text, to which I then responded, you're going to have to temper some of that giddiness while we actually discuss it. But go on. [01:13:39] Speaker A: My interest and passion for this topic is clinical. Right. I'm not some kind of fucking gore pervert. I don't get a stonk on watching this kind of stuff. I approach this topic from a clinical and almost an anthropological kind of angle. Right, sure. I just, like, came across, I'm hoping, in the opening to this episode, I am deeply interested in the capacity, the extreme, the lowest or even. And we've got an episode coming up which is going to be the complete flip reverse of this topic, and I can't wait for that to come out. But what is the fucking nastiest and the basest people can be? And you suggested that we examine the extreme and the callous and the cold and the detached ways that murder has been done upon those in a kind of an organized crime a criminal kind of setting. Yes. What made you suggest that, Corey? Why was that on your mind? [01:14:52] Speaker B: That's a really good question. I was thinking I was like, what should we talk about this week? And normally I kind of scroll through my topics and stuff like that, so I was, like, scrolling through things and I was like, I don't really know what I want to talk about. And I think I had maybe had a note about a particular organized crime person in my notes. And then I thought about it and I was like, just on a broad sense, organized crime murders are insane. They're trying to send a message. I think you kind of in our text message back and forth, had said, there's this just like people who have zero value for human life. How you manage what you can do to another person. I mean, this goes perfectly along with your cold open, too. What you can do to other people when you simply do not have any sense that life is valuable. [01:15:49] Speaker A: When the situation that you're in when the life that you're living when the company that you keep, when the job that you do is so soaked in blood, is so completely devoid of any value placed on human life, that opens up almost a kind of a performative element to the act of murder. Right? [01:16:13] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:16:15] Speaker A: When the act of taking another's life isn't for defense or protection or done out of rage or done in the heat of the moment, when it is a calculated and detached exercise in creating as much fucking pain as humanly possible in order to broadcast a message to your rivals. All bets are off, right? [01:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Or even, like, not just your rivals, but people within your own organization as well. Can be that. [01:16:57] Speaker A: And that subject can only lead me to one place that can only lead me to and I should have seen. [01:17:05] Speaker B: This coming, but Mexico? [01:17:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the only place. [01:17:11] Speaker B: Mexico. [01:17:12] Speaker A: No, let's talk about the cartels. Hey, look, my sister in law and my brother in law went to Mexico on holiday this year. [01:17:30] Speaker B: Oh, where'd they go? [01:17:31] Speaker A: Oh, just some resort. You know what I mean? And they didn't, I realized. [01:17:35] Speaker B: I said, Where did you go? Because here, being living in Southern California for so long, it's like, oh. I'm like, oh, where'd they go? They go to Baja. They go to Rosarito. Did they go to City? [01:17:46] Speaker A: But I don't know where they went. And they didn't leave the walls of the resort they were staying at. And I had to talk to them. I had to tell them, you're going to get grab of the cartels, mate. That's what I fucking said. [01:18:08] Speaker B: Not true. [01:18:08] Speaker A: It isn't. But just as a little bit of context here, the situation, granted, I only consume the worst end of the story, right? Yeah. But the capacity of the Mexican fucking drug cartels to commit the most horrific murders the most horrific murders, and not just to commit them, but to fucking record them and to share them, it's fucking wild stuff that you would never in a million years see in a work of fiction, right? [01:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. The Australians wouldn't touch this. [01:18:57] Speaker A: Enough said. The Australians wouldn't go near this. I can say years back, because we've been running for fucking years, going back a while, I spoke about a air quotes snuff movie from Japan, the guinea pig series, Flowers of Flesh and Blood. [01:19:13] Speaker B: I'm sorry, but you said snuff movie and you did air quotes, and some balloons came up, as you said. [01:19:20] Speaker A: Snuff movie. Yeah. Maybe need to work on your algorithms. [01:19:25] Speaker B: For that one, tim Cook it was so surprising. I'm sorry. Go on. Yeah, snuff movie. [01:19:33] Speaker A: And I remember talking about how me and my good buddy at the time, Gareth gareth Hamer, where are you? I hope you're out there, buddy. I hope you're doing well, because I haven't seen that guy in ages. But we fucking frame by framed this film, asking ourselves, is this legit? Is this real? Is this fucking guy really dismembering this woman? The cartels are doing that on the real, right? They are doing questions without any fucking I don't know where to begin. I don't even know what kind of detail to go into here, because everything that I said earlier on, right, everything that we talked about walking through fields, the fucking crunch of leaves, a drink of dimto that you want to dip your balls in, right, that's all cool, but hey, this is Jack of all graves. And there is a fucking entirely in a civilized country, there is commonly and frequently and regularly happening violence, personal, horrible, fucking wet, red, screaming, kind of gasping violence, which it's very difficult to get a handle on. Very tough. And I don't know, I've watched plenty of it in kind of prep for today's discussion. But man, the idea that as we speak right now, we share a fucking world, we're of the same species, we're of the same fucking matter, the same flesh and blood, the same fucking, the same equipment as an entirely different breed of human, that is interesting shit to me. [01:21:24] Speaker B: I don't know if you intended this to come full circle so well, but let's say, yeah, totally on purpose planned this episode thematic. But I think that is one of the things that makes like, you say you're not out there like, oh, let me just get all turned on watching people get chopped to bits. But what makes these things so compelling to look at is partly just that sense of what I was saying before, of how are these people, how are we made of the same stuff? [01:22:00] Speaker A: Exactly? Do the perpetrators, do the killers then go home to their fucking wives? [01:22:06] Speaker B: Right, well, and they do, right? And that's the thing, is because one of the things about cartels is that they will freely go out after people's families too. And if you are a part of this kinds of violence, it's wild to bring any children into this world or marry anyone knowing that this could happen at any given time. And I know there was like I think it was in Jersey. It had to have been in Jersey because it was like local news that a few months ago there was an insane full family massacre that was from babies to grandparents, everybody in the house was killed of these Mexican immigrants who like, the guess is that this was cartel related. That basically someone pissed off a cartel and they went, oh, yeah, and went and killed their entire innocent family. That was just like getting by in this house. It was like baby teenager, like full range of ages who had nothing to do with any of this, but they just went in and slaughtered everybody. That's like, crazy. It is crazy. It's like you try to avoid using words like that, but how do you describe something as anything other than people's brains are broken who do this? And they're trained to be broken. They are brought into a space like this. They're not born like this. They're socialized into it. [01:23:45] Speaker A: Give you an idea of just what we're talking about here. Right? [01:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah, do it. [01:23:49] Speaker A: And this is pretty fucking Mengin, if I'm honest. So I'll completely understand the content. I just want to end the episode here. I'll be honest earlier on. I'm urging you not to do this. I'm urging you not to go looking for this stuff because it's fucking horrible. [01:24:06] Speaker B: I would not this is past me. [01:24:09] Speaker A: I'm not going to do it all shot on phone cameras. Imagine, if you will, a desert scene. It's nighttime. You've got a guy bound with his hands, bend his back on his knees, and for the first few minutes of this video, the guy is being held down while somebody flays the skin. [01:24:32] Speaker B: Afraid you were going to say that. [01:24:33] Speaker A: The skin from this guy's head, right? Chopping expertly beautifully with this knife, just flaying the entire flesh from this guy's head, right? So he is just a red mask, gurgling all the while wheezing all the while as just methodically, just like a butcher might skins this guy's head, okay? [01:24:53] Speaker B: Jesus. [01:24:56] Speaker A: After a few minutes of this, the guy is then stabbed and cut down the middle. And the attacker, just expertly, as though this is something he's done before, just takes out the guy's heart. [01:25:08] Speaker B: Sure it is. [01:25:09] Speaker A: Takes out the guy's heart and this is fucking mad. Holds it up to the camera. The heart is beating in his hands. You can see this fucking guy's heart beat as it's removed from his body and he holds it up to the phone. [01:25:23] Speaker B: Wow. [01:25:27] Speaker A: We share the earth with these people. We share the fucking we've all got ten fingers, ten toes, right? What the fuck, Corey? [01:25:35] Speaker B: What the fuck? It is really, like you said, it's hard to think of words to even say about stuff like this because this is the kind of stuff we're trying to grapple with, right? Ultimately, evils exist in this world. Not evil, but you know what I mean? Shit like this exists in the world. Evils is the word that comes to mind because it's beyond description. You know how I always like the self seriousness thing that I always harp on when it comes and stuff like that? I always also apply this to the military and things like that, right? People taking themselves too seriously is like instant comedy. Nothing is important. [01:26:21] Speaker A: They become a laughing sock, right? [01:26:23] Speaker B: And it's like nothing is important enough that we should accept our rights for people not to do this. Nothing is important enough that we should be going overseas and killing people for it and things like that, right? We should not be doing it for oil. We should not be doing it for anything. You should not be killing your neighbor because of their religion, none of this bullshit. Because of borders that we made up and then got really hoity toity about them and stuff like that. We created communities and then we decided they were so important that we had to cosplay some sort of serious whatever and go kill each other over them. And that's one of the things about the cartel thing to me, too, is it's like these people aren't necessarily committing heinous offenses, right? But it comes to a point where the violence is so expected and so intensified that if there's the smallest affront and this happens with gangs and stuff, even like, oh, someone insulted my girlfriend and now I have to go shoot them. You're LARPers. You're a bunch of dumb asses who now you've got yourself in a situation where you just have to murder for any little thing because that's your cool guy thing to do. And that makes it so much worse to me that it's all a LARP, a murderous LARP that people are portraying. It is silly. This is goofy shit that they're doing. And it is so devastating, the results of it. [01:27:56] Speaker A: Are you aware of the phenomenon of Traveler Fight videos? [01:28:02] Speaker B: Traveler fight, right? The balloons are back. This is ridiculous. [01:28:06] Speaker A: I got to find a way to turn that off because it is incongruous. [01:28:10] Speaker B: Every time you say something that's like especially harsh. [01:28:14] Speaker A: There are several kind of Romany. [01:28:18] Speaker B: I was wondering if that was the. [01:28:19] Speaker A: Kind of Traveller communities over here in the UK. Right. And I don't know if it's still a thing, but they would film themselves calling out other families and formally inviting them for fistfights. Right. [01:28:33] Speaker B: I do vaguely remember that this was a thing. Obviously, it was not a thing that I like. [01:28:36] Speaker A: Some of them are funny, I got to tell you. I've been a big fan of Traveler fucking call out videos in the past. And I know some of my friends are they're funny as shit. But these cartels sharing video murder videos is the same, but dialed right up. [01:28:54] Speaker B: To a fucking absurd without the humor of like those Traveler videos, they know what they're doing. There's a humor behind them beating the shit out of each other or whatever. Maybe. Or at least, I don't know. It feels like they would know. But yeah, dialed way the fuck up. [01:29:13] Speaker A: Yeah, to the point where the humanity is gone. There's no fucking humanity in any of this. And it feels like it's been a while since we've really chewed over just where is the fucking bottom? Where is the fucking bottom of our. [01:29:30] Speaker B: Capacity and how you get there? Because that's one of the things that you're seeing the videos and stuff like that. And you've always been fascinated by these cartel videos. It's come up many times. And as you see these things, I don't know how much context for stuff is given. But do you know anything about how do they get to this point? I know in gang culture, right. One of the things that you have to do is kind of try to get kids young into the culture so that you can kind of before their brain is developed enough to go like if someone asks you for initiation, that means you should be violent towards a stranger or shoot somebody or whatever. That's a bad idea. You want to get impressionable kids and raise them up into that sense that it is more important to defend your honor than lives. [01:30:22] Speaker A: In terms of the context behind some of these clips, all you've got is comment sections. [01:30:27] Speaker B: Sure, yeah. [01:30:28] Speaker A: All you've got is kind of links to news articles. But just Corey, I mean, picture for me, if you will, a man tied to a chair while fuel is poured over his head and satellite. Right? And for almost two minutes, the guys are kind of chatting with this man and shouting at him while his fucking head burns. Right? [01:30:54] Speaker B: Jesus. [01:30:54] Speaker A: While his face fucking burns like a red mask, his hair on fire. His fucking face. Now, reportedly, the victim was a rival cartel leader who went by the nickname Ghost Rider. [01:31:04] Speaker B: Okay. See, this is what that's a do. [01:31:06] Speaker A: You know what I'm saying? [01:31:07] Speaker B: That is a LARP. [01:31:09] Speaker A: Yes. [01:31:09] Speaker B: A deadly fucking LARP. [01:31:12] Speaker A: I can't because of that, he's been captured and had his fucking head set on fire. Make it make sense. [01:31:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Have you come across, in your sort of travels, like, what the process is, how they do this? How do you get people to see people as because you can't. Like, okay, no matter how mad I am someone or how much I'm trying to impress someone or things like that, if I'm in a group of people and they're like, we need to burn this person alive because of X thing they did, I'm going to be like, no, it's just not going to happen. Something has to be done to desensitize you, to get you to the point where you don't throw up when someone pulls a heart out of somebody else. [01:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly it. Surely does. It get easier after your first one, right? [01:32:10] Speaker B: Do you just get used to it? There's just so much violence. And was your neighborhood like this? [01:32:17] Speaker A: No, we can only speculate. I mean, it has to be to do with it has to be young recruitment, young initiation. I dare say there's a side to it, which is fucking glamorous. Huge wads of cash, gold plated fucking AKS. [01:32:30] Speaker B: Right. I just did for the Jo AG radio. I revisited the Candyman murder that I talked about. As you know, that was one of the things about that high rise that the woman had lived in, that everybody was poor and destitute except for the drug dealers, these violent drug dealers who lived in the cartels. And so for kids, you're like, I can either be just living in this slum, miserable for the rest of my life, or I can be like that. [01:33:04] Speaker A: That's the only way out of poverty. [01:33:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And it's amazing. It's hard to fault that logic from someone young. That's a powerful thing who wants to live in poverty forever. [01:33:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:33:24] Speaker B: I found, like, one article, a recent 1, September 21, 2023 in Science that's headlined reducing Cartel Recruitment is the Only Way to Lower Violence in Mexico. So it's sort of pointing to the fact that recruitment is the sort of issue. And interestingly, here it does say that cartels remain mysterious despite being a major employer. So it does feel like there is a degree to which it's like how this functions is still somewhat sort of obscured from even experts who are trying to talk about it. Which is like I mean that's wild to think about because it's such a huge problem. I think I've said on here before know, I used to go to Mexico fairly regularly and I remember the last time that I went to Mexico that it was like it just every time it seemed to just get darker and darker. These border towns specifically because cartels do prey on a lot of the most vulnerable people who are, people who are at borders, undocumented immigrants, people like that who they can snatch up and do whatever with. And I remember the last time that I was there that just like there just being so many guns at the border, and federale is trying to keep things in line. And they were conducting a raid running through the backyards of the houses in Tijuana, pressed up against the wall, and it was just know, each time we went, it was just like this is just getting so much more and more violent. And it's certainly not the case throughout. [01:34:56] Speaker A: All of no, of course I get that. [01:34:59] Speaker B: Of course, right. And for the most part unless there are places where it's more dangerous to be a tourist but most places that you're going to be a tourist, you're going to be fine. The worst thing that's probably going to happen to you is you might be parted from your wallet or something like that. If you leave the doors open to your rental, someone will come in and steal your stuff, things like that. But it is like an increasing problem and one that has made it so that it is harder to, especially in border towns, maintain tourism and things like that. But to think that despite how huge this has got it and the recruitment is still like we're not entirely sure how any of this works is kind of incredible. [01:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean one gets the distinct impression that law enforcement and border enforcement is mixed up in it too. Yeah, I mean obviously weapons and drugs on that scale, right? [01:35:59] Speaker B: I mean a lot of this is obviously America's fault, right. Our own war on drugs created cartel culture. Essentially. If we didn't have the war on drugs, the fertile ground would not have been there for an illegal drug trafficking organization to come in and make something so violent and horrific. If we legalized the shit that they're trafficking, you end cartels. [01:36:25] Speaker A: Yes. [01:36:25] Speaker B: Period. This is our fault. And the more restrictions we try to put in our borders, the worse it gets. In fact, this abstract points out that they put the difference being recruitment versus incapacitation. So recruitment is obviously new. Cartel members joining incapacitation is police incarcerating or arresting members and. They basically are arguing that their research shows that it's far more important to decrease recruitment than to incapacitate incapacitate negligible in terms of policy when it comes to this stuff. But keeping people from ever joining them in the first place seems to be what they are finding is the best way to reduce all of this violence. [01:37:13] Speaker A: It's wild to me that decisions made on a national level, law enforcement and prohibition decisions made at a national and at a government level through time trickles down into an environment which gives rise to that absolute most base and most fucking horrific human behavior that one could possibly imagine. [01:37:38] Speaker B: And we saw that with know I've said I should do like a prohibition open at one point. But that's one of the central reasons why prohibition failed so hugely in America is that it gave rise to organized crime here that would not have been able to thrive without it by making something that people could traffic, could bootleg could, all that kind of stuff. All of a sudden you've got like, oh, we can put together like a thing and we can run this. And it gave rise to the same kinds of intense, unnecessary, heightened violence for the smallest of offenses and betrayals because that's how people maintain their power, right? Like someone within our organization talked to someone, they shouldn't go make an example of them. We have a rival over here who did something. You're going to have to kill them or we're going to lose control of the block, things like that. And just like this comes out of the prohibition of the war on drugs, the prohibition of alcohol did the exact same thing. Every time we try to mass prohibit something, the result of that is an increase in crime. And most of the effects of that, unfortunately, are felt by the people in Mexico or people in Colombia or people in wherever and not doesn't. People are going to get their drugs here one way or another, and they are completely disconnected from the guy getting the flesh flayed off of his head. [01:39:19] Speaker A: Yes. Which is another super important point. I mean, however streamlined and user friendly and almost socially fucking becoming socially normal, it is buying a fucking ticket of coke or some fucking crystal or whatever, it's impossible knowing what seeing what you've seen about the fucking journey, the economics, and the blood that goes into producing and channeling that stuff. Even if you feel as though it's a victimless crime, buying a fucking bag of coke off someone, the geezer with his fucking heart in someone else's hands would disagree. [01:39:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's like such a it's interesting to think of using drugs as an ethical issue, but not the way you think. Yeah. The idea that people should be allowed to use things and be informed and all of that kind of stuff, that criminalizing. It doesn't help. But that how do you ethically take part in this kind of drug use knowing that this is what's happening in order to get it to you. I think that's a thing that people kind of have to grapple with as well. Creating a demand for something that inherently is causing violence to brown people across the world from you. That's kind of rough. And I'm not like an expert on the pipeline of drugs and things like that. I don't know. Maybe there's like a ton of other places they come from and it's totally clean to get it from wherever. But I think it's something people yeah, I don't think so. And I think that's kind of have to yeah, fair trade drugs. I don't know. [01:41:05] Speaker A: But again, with decriminalization, that becomes possible, right? [01:41:11] Speaker B: Like exactly that. That's what it comes down to is when people look at decriminalization, they're like, everything's going to go crazy. There's going to be violence in the street. No, there's violence in the street now because of criminalization. It's not to say that, oh, everything will be perfect and there will be no growing pains or issues or whatever from decriminalizing drugs. But you take just out the gate so many people out of awful situations. If you decriminalize it and make it so there's no incentive for cartels like this to run. It's like one of those things where it's like we're so self centered when we think about war on drugs and things like that, what does that mean for us? What does that mean for people on the other side of this border who are invisible to us? Unless you're sitting there on whatever dark web shit you're looking at or your reddit or things like that and actually watching it happen, we're not thinking about that when it comes to decriminalization. And I think that should be part of the conversation. [01:42:24] Speaker A: So much to consider and much to consider, folks. Again, this is one of the things that I'm so proud of when it comes to jack of all graves. Find me another fucking podcast that will veer from crisp autumn leaves crunching underfoot beautiful fruit drinks full of ice. The smiles of your kids as they go kayaking. And a Mexican guy with no skin in his head gurgling while somebody holds his still beating heart in their hands. That's the joak journey. That's the multitudes which we contain. And we hope we've given you pause for thought this week. [01:43:00] Speaker B: Yeah. After this, go and play some Luigi's Mansion or something. Watch some Gremlins, whatever get taste in your mouth. But do let us know also your thoughts on this if you know more about recruitment and stuff like that than we do. Obviously, that was just like a cursory search in a recent study that came out. But if this is a special interest of yours as well and you know more than we do about this, would love to hear about it or your thoughts on criminalization versus decriminalization. Are we wrong about that? Do you think this is a whole other mess? Do the cartels just morph into the Walmart cartel instead? What happens? Yeah, feel free to hit us up on all the socials we're jack of all graves on all the things blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, donate to our Ko. [01:43:49] Speaker A: Fi, buy a T shirt. Just yes, do what you can. [01:43:52] Speaker B: Give us a review on the podcast. Places. I always forget to mention this, and thus, every time I mention it, someone goes and writes one. But it'll be like, a year in between. I'm like, hey, go and write a review for us. So, hey, if you haven't written a review on whatever thing, apple podcasts, stuff like that, go and write us a little review or hit that little five star on the spotify or whatever to tell people, this is a place that I come for my highest of highs and my lowest of lows. [01:44:19] Speaker A: That's it, isn't it? And look, if that ain't life, I don't know what is. Dizzying highs, crushing lows, and us right there with you every step of the way. [01:44:29] Speaker B: Amen. So, dear friends, as we walk along this journey together, one thing you got. [01:44:35] Speaker A: To do gotta make David Blaine happy. [01:44:37] Speaker B: That's right.