Nothing But Anarchy
"Nothing But Anarchy" hosted by Chad Sanders explores and subverts sports, media, Hollywood, and culture. Chad's vulnerable and raw commentary creates a fresh podcast experience you don't want to miss. Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET on Youtube Live.
Subscribe to the "Nothing But Anarchy" Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Game analysis, social commentary, and music.
Instagram: @chadsand
Executive Producer: Chad Sanders
Producer: Morgan Williams
Music: Marcus Williams
Nothing But Anarchy
Eps. #87 Kansas City Parade Tragedy, Super Bowl Ads & Religion, "Mr and Mrs Smith" Review, Donald Glover vs Lil Dicky, and the Intricacies of Social Media Relationship Launches
On this episode, Chad talks about the Kansas City Chiefs parade shooting, gun control, the religious Super Bowl ads, Donald Glover vs Lil Dicky, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", and hard launching a relationship on social media.
Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET to watch the show live on Youtube. Follow @chadsand on Instagram and subscribe to the Nothing But Anarchy Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Executive Produced by: Chad Sanders
Produced by: Morgan Williams
Today we are not in the studio. Today we are in a different studio, which is the studio in my house. Penny's here. She's wagging her tail and I can hear her knocking at something. All right, let's talk the Kansas City Super Bowl Parade yesterday. I'm sorry we're starting on a note like this, but it feels important and it feels relevant if we're going to have a conversation about sports and culture, which is what we do sometimes on this show. Somebody, somebody's shut up the Kansas City Chief Super Bowl Parade yesterday and mass shootings are the sort of event, they're the sort of news item, they're the sort of thing that happens in our society.
Speaker 1:Here in the United States especially. This was the 48th mass shooting in 2024. Guys, gals, it's February. There have been only about 50 something days so far in February and we've had 48 mass mass shootings. That's not. That is not to include I don't know what you call a non-mass shooting a shooting of a couple people, and more than 20 people were wounded. Someone was killed. I read last night that nine children were hit in this mass shooting. There was another mass shooting in Atlanta at a high school. I believe might have been a middle school, I think it was a high school yesterday.
Speaker 1:Mass shootings, man, they're the type of event that occur and in a moment, I think we as humans who are coping and who are trying, we have our macro concerns, we have our micro concerns right. So yesterday, when I find out about this mass shooting, I do so while I forgot exactly where it was probably at this exact same desk, while having a day with myself where I'm processing what it is for me to be single on Valentine's Day for the first time in a long time. And I did a really good job yesterday of like doing a ton of work to not have so. I didn't have to sit with those feelings throughout the entire day, but they're there nonetheless, like they are there there, and whether they're, whether or not I want to assign positive, negative or otherwise to those feelings, they were there and then something. So I got. So I'm taking care of myself that's my job yesterday. I'm taking care of myself and my dog that's my job yesterday. And then I see something like this has happened that is much bigger and much more important and much more tragic, certainly, than anything that's going on with me. And, as it happens, because Valentine's Day wasn't the only thing going on yesterday, it would be. Yesterday I was launching a substack. Yesterday I was out trying, you know, I was taking meetings trying to raise money for this company.
Speaker 1:Yesterday I was, you know, in a few different places, work wise, where I needed to be present, and then you see a headline like this. I saw it on ESPN. I also saw it on Reddit. Those are, like you know, we all have our muscle memory apps that we go to throughout the day. Those are two for me, even though they're not apps for me, because I'm a weirdo, I just I go to the, to the web browsers, or I go to like I literally punch in ESPNcom every single time, probably 100 times a day. I saw it and I'm going to be honest, man Boy, am I so detached at this point, so numb to the idea?
Speaker 1:The experience of the mass shooting in the United States? There was a point in time you know I've talked about and now have just released a project yearbook about an experience in my life where I lost a really close friend when I was young as the result of a tragedy, a car accident in my hometown, a couple blocks from our high school, and that event has stayed with me and has in some ways shaped me to find my point of view on life and on death and everything in between for 20 years. And so I it's. I can't pretend like I'm not, like I don't have a connection or an empathy for the people who lost somebody or somebody's yesterday or who are out there, who are now going to be traumatized from that event or who will be thinking about every time they're in a place, a public place, for the rest of their lives. That sound that they heard, that probably startled and scared them, or probably at first they thought it was some part of the parade or fireworks or something, and then they come to realize that it's a silence.
Speaker 1:It's not that I feel so divorced from those people, so separate from those people, that I can't connect to what they must be, have been feeling and what they will be feeling for the rest of their lives. It's just. It's just that some part of our country a large one, a defining one, I would say at this point in time has removed hope that we will ever get this under control for me, that this will ever. They have taken hope from me and from us, and from so many of us, I would say, aside from the purest of heart among us, the parents, the people who've lost someone like this, the brave people, the bold people, the people who are just so hardheaded that they just can't wrap their head around the idea that we're going to allow stupidity and ignorance and just like an absolute disregard for human life, for the rest of our country, for the rest of time. Aside from those people, I think most of us have been robbed of our hope that we'll ever get this under control.
Speaker 1:And so, when I saw the headline, I and I think people relate to this I had this split second decision which is like sorry, that's Penny, y'all she's. Today Penny is doing the job of producing Morgan and so she's going to chime in when she, when she feels moved. But I saw it and I had to make the split second decision that I think we're making all day, every day, in this universe of constant information influx, and most of that information being pain, anger, discomfort, inequality, disrespect, just bullshit. I had to like decide, like as a machine for myself how much myself am I going to give to this headline? How much of my day am I going to give to this headline? How much? And I and I don't know what did it. I think it might have been that it found me through sports, which is supposed to be where a lot of us go truly to hide from this kind of stuff, to get up, to get respite, to get a break, to get.
Speaker 1:When people ask me now, like why do I love football, to watch football and basketball to an extent, the answer is like it's meditation it is. It gets me out of my phone, it gets me out of my feelings, like it gives me out of my real feelings for a little while. It gets me out of my head. It's just like I'm watching a story play out. That means nothing. I can project myself on it if I want to. It's a dance. There's beauty in it, it's artistic. There are storylines that I can follow. I think this is how people feel about reality television. It loosely reflects society, but not in a way that it's going to actually cost me anything. It's not going to make me lose sleep. It's meditation. I get some of my best thinking done watching sports. But this time, this time, tragedy came through our meditative space and it found me in a way that I couldn't not look at it. I couldn't not think about my three nephews who go to school every day in this country In one of them goes to the same school I went to. I couldn't not think about the fact that those people at the come on y'all.
Speaker 1:Think about who goes to a Super Bowl parade man. Think about what the rest of like like for a second. Let's take out. Let's take out something that's sitting right there. If you want to right. This is Kansas City, missouri. Let's take out the fact that many of the people in that parade have probably put their mouths, their platforms, their voices and their money to undermine gun control. Remove that. Who cares? That doesn't matter for a second. What matters is think about who goes to a Super Bowl parade besides the team that just won the Super Bowl. Think about who cares so much about the Kansas City Chiefs and the meditation and the respite and the break that they give them from the pain, relief that that team offers them from the rest of what life is like for most people in this country that they would go to a Super Bowl parade to celebrate with the athletes that they will never get to meet, that will never love them the way that they love them, that will never even know they exist, except for this mass form, this mass voice of them yelling out how much they love them. Think about those people.
Speaker 1:So here's where I'm landing with Clay man, in a moment where it feels like of prime importance for people to be using their voices. As I'm watching other people to see how they're using their voices in support or not in support of Palestine, and thinking about how can I use my own voice to support in that way, I feel like there's something that needs to be said here around gun control that I haven't said personally, and I think every individual voice is important, and the thing that I wanna say is like to say that guns don't kill people. People kill people is like fucking shark saying sharks don't kill people, teeth kill people. Maybe it's the inverse of that. I'm confused. The point is, man, this is bad. It's getting worse. 48 mass shootings in less than two months is dire, and we are heading towards what? Is it going to be?
Speaker 1:An extremely fraught October and November with the upcoming election. If you take out all the other stuff that you care about, if you take out all the other stuff that you lean one way or another way about, I hope that you can get behind. Let's try to keep as many of us alive as we possibly can, keep alive those of us who are actually living, breathing human beings on the earth outside of other people's wombs. Come on, man. That's all I got All right. Moving on, let's go to something else. That's pretty weird.
Speaker 1:So I'm watching the Super Bowl with friends many and I noticed something that I think many of us noticed. It started off this way these commercials there will be. There are these commercials that are very tonally distinct that come on during the Super Bowl and they often feature images of people very normal looking, everyday people with intense emotion on their faces. There's some sort of copy or voiceover that's saying something like I'm gonna make it my own version Everybody felt lonely in the 1600s, or something like that. And then it's like but you know who never felt lonely because he was always with you. And then it's the answer is Jesus. The answer is Jesus, and it's like paid for. It's somehow paid for by Jesus. These commercials, these commercial spots, are extremely expensive. I believe that the Jesus company spent like probably like 20 to $30 million on their ad spots during the Super Bowl and I have wondered myself, like who is paying for these commercials? Now there are other commercials with similarly grave tonal shape that are then Scientology commercials. There are other commercials that are commercials for in support of Palestine. There are other commercials that are anti-Palestine or anti-Hamas.
Speaker 1:It's like you're watching and you get a Coke ad. It's okay. This is extremely disorienting and this is what it's like to live in America. You're walking around, you get a Coke ad, then the very next thing you get is someone trying to pull you into their religion. Then you get Kanye doing a selfie video on his iPhone, who is talking directly to camera, right after a Jesus commercial, and it's like I don't know how any of us are supposed to have one extended stream of thought that actually can evolve and turn into something that is useful to us when we are being street, when we're being like sort of pulled at or like dangled fishing hooks by so many different entities at once.
Speaker 1:The religion thing is the one that really sticks with me here. The religious bodies must know that we are all the time to advertise to people. Guys, I'm learning a lot about advertising. You wanna catch people when they are in extreme pain. You wanna catch people when their urgency is at its peak, and if it's not at its peak, you want to ratchet that urgency up for them. You want to make it seem as though it's at its peak. You want to, quite literally, you want to make them think that they're in more pain than they actually are and I am not, it is no. It's extremely concerning to me that this is the point in time where religious bodies that have enormous funding know that we are in extreme pain and are using this moment to make us feel like we're in more pain and then try to recruit us into their guiding bodies. Wow, this is spicy. I am a prayerful person. I ascribe to a religion. I am honestly, at this point in time, learning exactly what that means to me and how that actually, for most of my life, I just sort of this is how I was as a student.
Speaker 1:If you told me what it took to get an A or get a B and move on to the next thing and be eligible for basketball and make honor roll, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I would do almost the base, the most base level of what it took to just keep matriculating into the next class of what is sort of the elite. I was happy to be at the bottom of the top. I knew exactly what it would take to make the basketball team. I would go to tryouts. I'll bust my ass for one, for one tryout I would get an injury and I would sit out the next two tryouts because I knew I had already made the team. I would do just enough to make the honor roll. I would do just enough to test into the best classes when I was in a play. I would go to the rehearsals but I wouldn't actually exert myself until the dress rehearsal, right before the actual play. Damn Morgan probably noticed that when we did the live show and she probably already knew that this is what I would do I didn't really even look at what it was we were going to be doing and talking about at the live show until probably the 48 hours before the live show came.
Speaker 1:Some of that's just because I can't get myself motivated to do something unless it feels real like, unless it feels urgent. I used to approach religion with the same application. I basically was living my life trying to do the minimum required of me to get to heaven, literally Okay. My mom says I got to go to church this many times a year or whatever, or this many times a month, like I'll do it. Okay, I got to show everybody that I know I got a Bible next to my bed because I need y'all to know that I'll pray performatively so that everyone in my family goes. Hmm, when I say a prayer, I will show up to chapel. Once a semester when I go to college, I was like I want to get in. It's cool if I'm the last person in before they shut the door. I just want to make the team. That's how I looked at it and, frankly, I think that's how most people.
Speaker 1:When we say someone is a decent person, I think that's what we're talking about. At the very least, they will give someone aid if it doesn't cost them a lot, and they will not go out of their way to hurt somebody else. That's what we call I think that's what we call decent. I think that's what most people are in the world. Honestly, I think there's a silent majority of people who are just. They try to do good by others. They try not to hurt anybody. But when they get their neck twisted up in capitalism, in relationships, in getting bullied by somebody else, now all of a sudden they're not themselves anymore and they start doing some weirdo shit. And the best people. The bravest, the boldest people are the ones who continue to be decent, even when they're in the grips of something heinous.
Speaker 1:I'm saying all that to say it looks like the religions are aware that now is a time where they can capitalize on how afraid everybody is about what's going to happen to us here, and the news supports that. And I don't mean like what's happening in the news, I mean quite literally the news. The Superbowl is brought to you by ABC, the religious commercial is paid, the money is paid to the NFL and to ABC, and then ABC gives you the news and scares the fuck out of you. And I'm not saying that we are not living in a chaotic place. I mean, obviously I believe that this is called nothing but anarchy. But what I'm saying is like all of these entities are working in tandem to make us scared, to make us feel small, to make us feel like we urgently need their help, to fix something for us, to save us. And religion is here to do it if we pay our tithes and show up and give our money to the pastor. And Coca-Cola is also here to do it, because if you take a sip you will feel better for a moment.
Speaker 1:And so while I'm watching the Superbowl by the way, I was at a Superbowl party I showed up early to make sure I got one of the best seats. I showed up an hour and a half early and my butt might have left that seat three times. And every time I moved from that seat my cell phone went in my seat to make sure nobody else took it. Everybody else is taking it eating food, doing TikTok dances, dead ass, singing along, dancing to usher chatting, et cetera. Like I sat in that seat because I am here to see the American spectacle, I am here to voyeur, I am here to see One is I must see every single second of this football game because I need to know what's happening in that league. And I must see what is happening in those commercials because I need to know what wealthy people want us to want. And what I learned that they want us to want is religion.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to make a habit of doing this. I tell you all my point of view, but when my point of view is not yet formed, I'm trying to be honest about that. I'm sitting with religion right now. The people who I have watched ascend in religious bodies are not people I admire. So I'm figuring out what to do with that. The people who I thought who, when I was a kid I thought, oh, the deans, the pastor, those must be good people. Now I'm an adult and I know the pastor, I know the deans, I know the deacons I don't know, sorry, deacons, I'm saying deans and I mean deacons, but like, and I now can see the people who were the pastors and the deacons when I was a kid, with clear eyes. I'm not saying that they're bad people, but they're people.
Speaker 1:Not, as far as I can see, conduits to the real answers around what will get you into heaven and what makes you a good person, not conduits directly to whoever or whatever is the wider, the bigger thing here, but people who had the same urgencies and fears and needs and needs to be seen and needs to fill ego and needs to be paid and capitalistic wants and desires as you and I. And so let me put a fine point on it. I'm raising money right now for this. All of this, here's, this, this is black magic back there, this, the larger, this. I'm raising money for the whole machine, the whole operation. I want, I need marketing money, I need to be able to pay my team. I need to be able to pay myself. I need to be able to grow. I need to be able to find new markets, I need to be able to try new things, experiment all the things. I'm raising money for it.
Speaker 1:And before I have each conversation, I find myself going down this little rabbit hole of like, oh, I got to make sure I have every single you know answer sewn up so tightly and the math has to work and got to have every detail you know, every T crossed and every I dotted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then I pull myself out of that for a second and I'm like wait a second. Every Sunday, across this entire country, across every day, across this entire world, people are filling up buildings, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands filling up buildings and paying someone who is telling them I'm going to help you improve your life because I have a relationship with God. That's the message and that's what people will go and pay their money to. I'm sitting over here, sitting on top of you know fast company articles about the creator economy and how many billions of dollars and what percentage of creators are turning a profit, and yada, yada, yada. I'm like hold on hold, on hold, on hold, on hold on.
Speaker 1:I'm missing the point here. The point is, if someone believes it's not a math problem, it's not a homework assignment like belief is about do they feel the pain and do they think you can help? Now for what I do. A math problem is not going to tell you that I'm good at it. Like, a math problem is not going to tell you that what we have here is a value. We saw on last Thursday that what we have here is a value. We can create a room full of people that feel seen and have a good time and leave feeling better than they showed up. We can share information. We can lift the hood up on something that's it's lying about a lot. We can entertain. That's all valuable. I'm not saying what people get when they go and pay their time isn't valuable, but I don't think that the church spends a whole lot of time sitting over an Excel file trying to figure out making sure that those people are going to get a return on their investment. So why am I doing that? I really mean that shit.
Speaker 1:Okay, moving on, let's talk about let's talk about Donald Glover and Meyer Erskine. I don't know. I watched Mr and Mrs Smith. Have any of you all watched Mr and Mrs Smith? I can't see you, but I bet a couple of you have.
Speaker 1:Mr and Mrs Smith is an eight part mini series, I believe, on Amazon Prime. Maybe it's a series, maybe they'll be second season. It is a TV formatted series based on the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Mr and Mrs Smith of. I don't know. It probably came out 10, 15 years ago, more than 10, sorry, probably came out 20 years ago. It features Donald Glover as a spy, meyer Erskine as a spy, and the show is, on its face, I think, about two people who are mandated into marriage for this job opportunity as spies. And then it's. The show chronicles how their relationship changes shape over time because of their competing needs. Donald Glover's character wants to feel loved. He wants to feel seen. He's a mama's boy. He is not comfortable with breaking ties to his family, particularly his mom, for the sake of this job, which is a requirement of the job. He wants to be a father.
Speaker 1:Meyer Erskine's character or Erskine, I'm sorry, meyer Erskine. If it's Erskine, I'm going to say Erskine. Meyer Erskine's character and Meyer Erskine, who you might know as one of the two leads. She was the Asian of the two leads on the show Pin 15, which I watched and it was very funny. Her character is more alpha oriented. She wants to climb the ladder at the company that these two spies work for. She wants to challenge herself professionally. She wants to be thought of as great. She wants to be thought of as leader. She wants to be the leader and the alpha between the two of this couple. She does not have any hang-ups with being disconnected from her family. She doesn't want to be around her family.
Speaker 1:And what I like about the show is, as someone who was recently in a long term relationship. I think it deals well with the nuances of the fabric of a relationship and the ways that that fabric deteriorates over time. Because people can sacrifice for each other, they can change their accoutrements, they can change some of their habits, but they can't change who they are, and that's what's underneath this show. But I think what the show wants to say as its promise is that even if you can't change who you are, you can still do right by your partner, love your partner, care for your partner, despite the fact that you can't change yourself. Okay, the show does a good job of that. Artistically very beautiful. I think the show starts slow and I think it blows the ending. But what's in between? I would say probably the five episodes in the middle of this show to me are very strong, very enjoyable. There's a lot of left hooks that you don't see coming and the show's voice stays the same throughout. It's consistent in a way that feels good. I also like watching a New York show about people who look you know they are supposed to be like this sort of semi-bougie millennial organic food eating. They have a beautiful place in Fort Green. It's a black guy and an Asian woman. Like the advertisers, they think they are presenting us back to ourselves. That's what the show means to do.
Speaker 1:My hang up with the show if I'm being super real, which I'm going to be is I do not see a chemistry between these two characters. They do not feel connected to me. I don't see a spark between them. When they kiss I almost want to like. I'm almost like gross because it doesn't feel real. I know I'm watching two people force themselves to kiss each other and I know that that's part of acting, but that's not how it's supposed to happen in acting. It doesn't look real. The whole thing, the whole vibe between them.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I've had people try to make arguments to me why it's real. One of those arguments put I'm laying on its face what people have said to me is well, you guys do love Asian women and I'm like. I'm like, hold on, slow down, slow down. First of all, who is you guys? A couple of people have been so specific as to say black guys. I'm like, hold on Now. First of all, that is unnecessarily specific. Asian women are the most highly indexed click receivers on dating apps across dating apps. I think that has to do with fetishization and obsession with something that feels or seems exotic. Black guys are also extremely fetishized, but it all seems aside from the point.
Speaker 1:I just didn't see connection between these two people. Like I don't think that's what they were going for here. I think they cast two people that they knew could do the job. I think one of at least one of those people maybe both of them were executive producers on the project, so they cast themselves Formerly. They were supposed to be someone else in that role, playing up against Donald Glover, and she left because of creative differences. I can't remember what her name is, but she was the writer and star of Fleabag. I just think it didn't. I just think they didn't work for me on screen as a couple, like I didn't see it. I didn't. It didn't feel real. And if you want to make a show about a couple I feel like square one that you got to cover is they need to be believable as a couple, like they have to.
Speaker 1:I'm doing the Love Project Love Project this is a plug Substack. My substack's called Bonfire. You can find my project Love Project. It's the only project on my substack because I just launched it yesterday. You can find the link to it top link in my link here on my bio. I'm doing nonstop Q and A's. That is a big part of this project is a conversation with the audience about Love People are at.
Speaker 1:Some people have asked me in that, in that channel, in those Q and A's like what are you attracted to, what attracts you about a person? I think attraction for most people starts with something that is visual. That is not to say that. That's not to say attraction even is visual, because I really don't think it is. I think once you get around somebody, once you get close enough to actually see how two people vibrate and how they move around each other and how they, like you know where the sparks are. That's where the attraction is, but like it starts visually, I don't even think you'll let some I personally don't even let someone in close enough to me in that regard unless I first visually see something that is interesting to me about that person, that makes me want to see what's up there. And so when I watched the show, I didn't see that between these two actors, and so that killed the show for me. I'm not gonna lie to you all, I still liked it, I still thought it was smart, but like it's TV, it's a visual format. I care about how things look.
Speaker 1:And the two leads in a show that had Mr Guys the first two leads in the show were Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Okay, in the movie, like that's what the launching point is for this. Like, eurocentrism aside, two extremely beautiful people as far as I'm concerned. So if you wanna follow up to that, I know you're trying to do the every man thing and make it look like the rest of us, but like, come on Now, why is this coming up? Because the two of them did a conversation with Vanity Fair and a comparison was made between the show Atlanta, donald Glover's TV series and the show Dave, which is, as far as I'm concerned, sort of like a white boy copycat version of Atlanta. People tell me that the show is good.
Speaker 1:I was offered a conversation to write on the show Dave. I did not have an interest in that. I, on premise alone, did not feel excited about I don't. Okay, let me be precise here. I don't like a show. I watched the pilot of Dave and so if the show changes and becomes something different as it goes along, fine.
Speaker 1:I don't like a character or a show that is meant to make fun of the idea of rap or rappers as serious or unserious. That is to say, the first time I was introduced to Little Dicky, who goes by Little Dicky, which is already on its face, and a name that is meant to poke fun of the names of rappers. I saw him on, I believe, the Breakfast Club and he was being asked about why he wants to be a rapper and what rap means to him and his place in all of it, and the entire conversation around Little Dicky is so much not about music Like. What I liked about him and him was that he was here to rap. He wasn't here to say, oh look, how funny I'm a white guy doing rap. Sometimes he would incorporate that in the music because, like, he was self aware, but his whole it wasn't a shtick. He didn't come to rap. He didn't come to hip hop to like. He didn't come to hip hop to be a mirror to us, to say, like, oh look, how silly rap is, look how it looks when a white guy does it. Like, no, he came to rap and he rapped his ass off. There's a couple, there is a I shouldn't say a couple. There is a little Dicky song that I like. I just want to put that out there, but I cannot look at that guy's face for a whole series of this thing. I can't do it and I certainly wasn't gonna be able to sit in a chair and write for the set show.
Speaker 1:Donald Lover feels and he has made it clear multiple times he feels insulted when he is compared to little Dicky or when his show is compared to little Dicky's show. In an interview he did with Interview Magazine I believe it was called an interview that Donald Lover wrote with himself it's like Donald Lover interview with Donald Lover. It was promo for the last season of Atlanta he says, and I'm paraphrasing like don't compare my show to that show. You don't compare an artisanal, you know antique cheeseburger to something that you get at Burger King and McDonald's. That's what he said in Somingward. He wants us to know. Stop it. I don't like being compared to this guy. We are different and I can understand why he would feel that way.
Speaker 1:One is that the show's premise felt very much chasing the premise of Atlanta, and I say that as someone who wrote for Ratshit. So like I can see what I can see. But also I think Donald Lover and like I know many of you have a point of view on how Donald Lover sees himself, even within blackness, and whether or not he sees himself within blackness or aside from blackness, or a commentator or a spectator on blackness, whatever Like. However you guys feel about that, that's yours. But what I can understand is, as Donald Lover, who is a person with black skin who writes and makes TV series about the black experience in many ways, even Mr and Mrs Smith tries to drop in some little moments of Donald Lover saying something about what it is to be this black man running around town with this half Asian, half white woman, one you don't want your show, which is excellent, to be compared to another show that you might find to be less excellent, but two, you just don't want, I just don't want anybody bopping around playing on the fact that their thing is the white version of my thing. Because then how am I going to feel when their thing, as the quote, unquote white version of my thing, has a bigger audience just on the face of its lead character being a white guy? How am I going to feel when I watch the show? If he even has watched the show, which I kind of doubt but how am I going to feel?
Speaker 1:I know how I felt when I watched the pilot of that show and it felt like the voice of that show was just saying look at the juxtaposition between me, a goofy, harmless white guy, and these serious rap guys, these serious black rap guys with dreadlocks you know what I mean? Like look at me and their world. How goofy is that how it sets us up as props against us. It sets up our whole thing, our whole environment, as props against that. I don't like it. I don't think I think too often.
Speaker 1:I feel like when and I'm going to generalize when white people are giving commentary on the rap or hip hop environment and the blackness that's a part of it. What they're saying I felt this way about Macklemore. I felt this way about I'm going to pop some tags and I only got $20 in my pocket. You're making, you're pointing out something about this culture, which is that people spend crazy money they don't have on jewelry and clothes to make themselves feel better, but you don't. You're not saying anything about. Why are they not already feeling good? Why do they not already feel a high level of self worth? Why do they not? Why do they feel insecure in a way that they need to spend money? They don't have to fill up that hole. They're just saying look how high my confidence is that I can go buy this shit at a thrift store and throw it on, and I don't, I don't need to. I don't need a $20,000 chain. I feel good enough with my $20 chain on. It's like I just, I just don't like it. Get out, I don't like it, unless you don't get the joke, but, m, you can stay, and then you can stay, little Dickie. No, thank you. Okay, we got five more minutes here. I'm going to do one more thing. Okay, this is going to be plugged for my love project on sub stack. Go to my sub stack. My subscriptions are extremely inexpensive they're about as inexpensive as you will find on sub stack because I want as many of you all as possible to be a part of this love project.
Speaker 1:I think it can appeal to anyone who has questions or wants to see honesty around topics within love, like topics like what happens when you and your partner stop having sex. What happens when you and your partner want to see other people. What happens? Am I what? What does it mean about me if I never find love? Does that mean I'm not worthy as a person? Where does love go when it disappears? How does it come back? How do you get it back? Is romantic love the same as other types of love? Are love and friendship different, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's the stuff we're exploring, and we're exploring it through conversations with other people, q and A's with you all. The audience and current events, pop culture, headlines, stuff that's happening out there, all on my sub stack, bonfire, which you could find in the top link in my link tree on Instagram. So I'm going to take one of the questions that I got on Instagram and respond to it here. The question, the question, and it's just so crazy that we have this in our society, but it is what it is. We have it.
Speaker 1:Thoughts on hard launching a relationship on Instagram. Hard launching a relationship on Instagram? Now I take that to mean becoming Instagram official. Like thoughts on when do you show the world, announce to the world, show a photo of you and your person on Instagram. If you are the super secure person who is like man, I'll just put that photo up there and I don't care. I guess just stop listening.
Speaker 1:Let the rest of us talk for a second. Here are some of the things that come with posting your person online. Here's some of the things that come with it that can be unpleasant or that just requires some sort of you got to deal with them. One people that you did not realize also knew your person now think that they are in your relationship with the two of you. They will immediately then start telling you the things that they think will be nice things to hear about your person to you. They will probably also share with other people who you do not realize also know your person that the two of you are together.
Speaker 1:Instagram allows you to see how many people share a photo of you and your person, which is, guys, really weird. Come on, man, like, how weird can you say that it is when you yourself have shared said photo? I mean, what are you going to do? You're the one who put it out in the world. I want to be clear about something else. I'm 35 years old.
Speaker 1:If you date somebody who is younger than my age, let's say by three or more years, there is a likely chance and I'm kind of a unique case because I'm on the internet but, like, if you're my age and you date somebody who's in their early 30s, late 20s, mid 20s, there's a really good chance that that person has a different comfort and a different relationship with the internet and with internet visibility than you do, because they are native to it in a way that we are not. I've gotten comfortable with the idea of people looking at me and the idea of people knowing what I think about things, seeing photos of me all the time, et cetera. But there are a lot of people my age who are still trying to not have that veil 27 year olds, 30 year olds, 32 year olds, I would say. Even these people, a lot of them, have lived on Twitter. A lot of them have lived on Instagram. A lot of them were in college with Twitter and Instagram. A lot of them met their college boyfriend or girlfriend on Instagram. So just even there between age ranges, there's going to be this different level of comfort about how much of us do we put out there as open and public as I am, generally speaking, about my point of view, what's going on in my work life, my emotions, whatever.
Speaker 1:I am really private about a relationship. That's who I am In this love project. I'm going to open up a little bit, but mostly about what's currently going on around me, because I think a relationship belongs to two people, which is to say, neither person can decide for the other person. Let's think of the relationship like a baby. Neither parent can decide in autonomy how much that baby needs to be seen by the world. That's what I think. If you're lucky, the two of you are in the same place on that, but most people aren't. Let's be real about that. Most people. There's a tension between parents, between partners, spouses, boyfriend, girlfriend, boyfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend. There's a tension around how much and when are we going to share with people about where we're at together. Maybe we think we're in two different places. That's a tension. I talked to Morgan about this very briefly on the phone earlier today and I'm going to let Morgan speak her own piece on this.
Speaker 1:When you're in a new relationship, when you tell the world by way of images and captions that you're in a relationship, is quite a significant turning point emotionally for, I think, both people. I want to say one more thing about this and we're not really up against the real clock because I'm at home there's this feeling that I have, honest to God, gotten much more used to than I was, let's say, two years ago. There's this hangover. I don't really drink like that anymore. Drinking sucks. Drinking is, guys, you know what I'm about to do something so annoying people. Y'all are going to be annoyed by this.
Speaker 1:Some of you I am now the person who doesn't really drink, who is saying out loud the thing that we all know, which is that drinking sucks. Drinking is ass. It is the worst way. It is a bad drug. It is the worst way to speed yourself toward a fun time, in terms of the things that you do while drunk and also the ways you pay for it in the 48 hours that follow, or, if you're me, you get the flu for a week. Drinking is so ass. What I really want, I love, this is what I want. This is going to torment you, 25 to 30 year olds. Keep telling yourselves that drinking doesn't suck. Keep telling yourselves that you don't wake up feeling like shit the next day, you don't make bad decisions, you don't send texts you don't want to send. Keep telling yourselves that it's not holding you back in your career. Keep telling yourselves that it's not fucking up your relationships. Keep telling yourselves that, oh, it's just a couple glasses of wine, it's just a shot, it's whatever. Whatever, I'm young, I'm having a good time. Keep telling yourselves that, because you know drinking is ass, you know it's so ass, it's so ass. Anyway, you know I'm right.
Speaker 1:Why did I say all that? Where was I even going with that? I just wanted to say that to the late 20s crowd that's in this audience and the early 20s crowd. Y'all too, like you're not exempt. You know it. There's other ways to have a good time, man. There's other drugs that are legal that you could do if that's what you want to feel, if you want to take it easy a little bit, if you want to have a breather like there's other stuff that doesn't corrode your organs the same way and doesn't make you feel like shit. Oh, hangover. That's why I said it. I get this hangover sometimes when I post.
Speaker 1:I'm getting a real sense now of like what I knew walking into the studio yesterday that when we start the real from yesterday's episode, I know the words that need to come out of my mouth first are white people. Do you all like mixed people better? I knew that was a slam dunk. As a tagline, I meant to say it as soon as we cut the mics on, but when it got time to get to that part, I knew exactly where to start it. This is good, I need to catch them in the first three seconds and this is going to do it. I posted the real last night. Morgan did a great job editing and producing it. Posted the real last night wake up, morgan texts me. The real is going off. It's got like 14,000 plays. I'm going to boost it later today, see wherever we get it. But I just knew.
Speaker 1:But last night, after I posted it, I shut off Instagram and did not open it again and went to sleep because there's this feeling of ah, was I too honest? Did I too much say the thing? Is someone gonna accuse me of race baiting or being angry or being a hotep or whatever? The next way is that someone will dismiss what a black person with dreadlocks has to say. Are mixed people gonna be mad at me? Are white people gonna be mad at me? Somehow or other non-mixed black people gonna be mad at me.
Speaker 1:Like, and I wake up with that hangover and I roll over and I'm like I'm gonna give myself to 9 am to not know, just just not know. And the thing is I don't even read the comments like that to really even be knowing. But, like I said, instagram puts those comments that are the most crazy right in your face when you log on. It finds a way to get them to you. So there's this hangover that I feel every time I knew of when we posted the JZ reel, and those always end up being the best ones. Those always end up being the ones that have the crackle. That gets people having some people having an actually productive conversation where I think people are sharing their understanding of an issue and their point of view. Naturally, there's always gonna be dickheads on there who are just there to try to bully somebody to get off a bad feeling that they're dealing with themselves, but, like, what's really exciting is going. I went in those comments today, you know. I told myself I don't. I went in there because I wanted to respond to a view to just let people know I'm here, I'm part of this conversation. I'm not throwing a grenade and then running away Like, if this is something we're talking about, let's get in here together, like let's see what's really going on here. So all of that is to say, I guess.
Speaker 1:Circling back to the first point about the Casey shooting and what I want to be vocal about with gun control, I have been amazed. Tina Fey was trying to say this in the podcast clip that we're gonna have to now get to in the next episode, because I didn't get to it here. Tina Fey is making a point in this podcast clip that being honest can get you in trouble, and being honest and telling the truth are two different things to me. I've said this before. Honesty, I think, is something that only the speaker can really be clear on. It comes from, like it's clarity, it comes from what inside of you the truth is, like the truth is objective somewhere, like there are things that are so and things that are not so, but I can be honest about a point of view. I can be honest about an opinion in a way that the truth is not malleable in that way.
Speaker 1:But I guess what I want to say is like I'm amazed at how much lower the penalty is on the type of honesty that I'm finding in my voice lately. It's so much lower than what I thought it was. I had friends who thought three years ago I had gone off the deep end, speaking too honestly into microphones and on paper, and now I feel like I've quadrupled that. And there's new opportunities, like there's new people that want to know us. There's new people that want me to speak. There's new stuff. People actually know who I am. I don't mean like in a notoriety sense, I mean like they actually know if they're aware of me. They actually know who I am. I'm not just like spitting back at them whatever the talking points are from the current Twitter trends and that means something to me. That means something to me that I think there is more space for more honest voices out there and I would love to see more people jumping in that space. Not with bullshit, not with reflecting what's already being said, but just like what their thing is. Like what their thing is.
Speaker 1:Okay enough, this is nothing but anarchy. Thank you for being here. This was episode 87. We will see you guys on Tuesday, same time, same place next week, 12 o'clock. I'll be back in the studio. Goodbye, thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next week.
