100% Humboldt
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing Northcoast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
100% Humboldt
#55. Matthew Owen's Journey: From Eureka's Roots to LA's Hustle and Back, Navigating Real Estate, Volunteerism, and Travel Tales
Ever wondered how a small-town boy from Eureka, California, conquers the bustling streets of Los Angeles and returns to his roots with a wealth of experiences? Join us as we uncover Matthew Owen's fascinating journey, exploring his rich family history, dynamic college days at Chico State, and his professional escapades in LA's real estate and mortgage sectors. Back in Eureka, Matthew reveals the complexities of California's fire insurance landscape and its impact on first-time homebuyers in rural areas, offering a unique perspective on the housing market.
Relive the magic of iconic college football games and the unforgettable USC-Texas 2005 matchup, while we tackle the challenge of inspiring younger generations to volunteer. Through deeply personal stories, Matthew shares his Rotary Club experiences and the profound impact of COVID-19 on volunteerism. Hear about friendships forged in unexpected places, the rollercoaster of standby travel, and the staggering cost of city living, with a heartwarming tale of meeting a life partner at a wake.
Discover strategies to boost voter turnout and navigate the intricacies of travel hacking. From early voting logistics to memorable NFL moments and culinary escapades in Las Vegas, this episode is brimming with passion and nostalgia. We'll also touch on the healthcare hurdles in Humboldt County, the political landscape with insights from a seasoned columnist, and some savvy travel tips. Wrapping up with gratitude and well-wishes, this episode promises a rich tapestry of stories and insights you won't want to miss.
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Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, it's Scott Hammond with the 100% Humboldt Podcast, with my new best friend, matthew Owen. Hi, matthew, hi Scott, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Good to see you, man, nice to see you again. I usually see you at mixers and wave across the street in different places, and this isn't that. I have to look at you now. Yeah, I get to Tell me about the Matthew's story. Where were you born? How'd you get here?
Speaker 2:My family's been here about 117 years. Wow. My mother graduated Eureka High School, I graduated Eureka High School and my daughter graduated Eureka High School.
Speaker 1:Wow, you were so born and raised what you would call 100% humble For a while there. Yeah, pretty close.
Speaker 2:Did you leave for a while After college? Yeah, we're down to LA for 23 years.
Speaker 1:Oh, sorry to hear that you know.
Speaker 2:LA is great. It's great Except for the traffic and the amount of people. And the weather is great. You're not going to see a Rams game here in Eureka and you're not going to see a U2 concert here in Eureka. You're not going to see the who at the Hollywood Bowl. The Bowl Been there many times, the Bowl's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, la's cool, like you said, except for getting around.
Speaker 2:It's just traffic and they have way too many people.
Speaker 1:You know there's people pretty much everywhere I turn. You know it's like, oh my gosh, and you can't wait to get on the plane and get back up here. Yeah, I go down there often, so where did you go to school?
Speaker 2:Eureka High School then Chico State.
Speaker 1:Oh, you went to Chico. Oh, you went to Chico. Oh, the Wildcats. Oh, the party school, allegedly. Yes, let's see, you're probably my age, so you're 39 or 40. Let me do the math on that. Let me see Chico State. I was at.
Speaker 2:Chico State when they had Pioneer Days. Pioneer Days is the red flag for you. What you were a full-on party guy, just saying that. The whole campus was so, so you weren't alone. Okay, for a one week period you basically rolled out of bed and started drinking in the morning, through the afternoon until the night, and then did it again and rinse and repeat, for it's basically a long weekend, because you couldn't, your body couldn't do that for a week.
Speaker 1:Well, most people's bodies yeah, there's some guys that could rally a little. They're more stalwart than ever.
Speaker 2:Our favorite game at Chico State is they had the sororities and the various sororities and fraternities that have to come and drink a pony cake. So it was only seven and a half gallons, but you had to drink a cup and then the next person in line would have to drink a cup. And the next person will have to drink a cup until someone couldn't drink anymore and they either threw up or passed out or they said I'm done, now you're down one less person. And you have to keep drinking a cup until the next person throws up, passes out or says I'm done. And now you're down to one less person. And whoever drained the pony keg first won.
Speaker 1:Wow, you ever done that one? No, thank God. Yeah, thank goodness. So is that a pony keg per team? Yes, that's a lot of beer. That's a lot of beer.
Speaker 2:Wow, you may start off with 10 people, but just.
Speaker 1:It is a process of elimination.
Speaker 2:That was probably the worst Chico State drinking game. I witnessed.
Speaker 1:That's a tough one. I was going to say my brother-in-law, scott Hanson, who's a remarkable individual investment guy. When he gets up to introduce himself all the other guys are from Cal or Stanford. And Scott Hanson, where'd you go? Chico State, yeah, love it. And it's like everybody just goes oh, chico, oh, hey, and he wears that as a little badge, I think, of some sort Anyway. So what brought you to Chico? Oh, hey, and he wears that as a little badge, I think, of some sort, anyway. So what brought you to Chico? Where'd you study? At Chico Business, business, yeah. And then came home, came home, yeah, what'd you?
Speaker 2:do in LA, Worked primarily in real estate mortgage lending, whether it was PMI, private mortgage insurance or actual mortgage banking.
Speaker 1:Gotcha Was that with Wells?
Speaker 2:No, Wells wasn't until Eureka.
Speaker 1:Gotcha How'd you like it. How'd I like Wells or your profession? Profession I hated the traffic and I hated the people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't say I hate the people. I said there's too many people. There's too many people. I love working with people, especially helping a first-time buyer get another home, and I love helping people reach their financial goals, because for most people, your mortgage payment is your largest piece coming out of your financial family's budget each month. Oh yeah, unless you own your house free and clear.
Speaker 1:So, as a good neighbor, I'm just going to go right to the insurance discussion fire insurance in California. One of the stories that I tell myself and tell customers is that because of the craziness of the California Fair Plan, you know fire insurance is triple, that it does bump first-time buyers the people that you love and I love out of the market. Does that kick people out of escrows often, or is it just making time Rarely.
Speaker 2:More so if you're in a rural area Okay, escrows often. Or is it just rarely more so if you're in a rural area? Okay, if you're down in medicino county in the hills or south humboldt county in the hills, it can get what typically used to be. We used to quote out 1200 a year or less for homeowners insurance. That was pretty easy, sure. Nowadays, depending upon where you live, we say expect three or four thousand a year.
Speaker 1:Wow, easy, yeah just depends on where you live, you know, know, I'll confess I get the AARP newsletter but it's cool, it's in big print and there's big pictures and bullet points and I can look at graphics and the striking homeowners insurance they have a name for ads like these. Anyway, it's not an ad. The average price for homeowners in Florida is $5,500 a year. Florida is worse than California, Correct, they're the top. But the average in America is about $3,600. And you and I are paying $1,200 or whatever.
Speaker 1:Then we've been lucky for all these years. It's called rate repression. Okay, your friends and mine, prop 103, I think, was the number they created the watchdog agency that sits at a table in Sacramento and they're just obstructionist dudes and dudettes that said, hey, we're not going to let you do capitalism. And everybody now is wondering what happened? Because we had rate repression for two decades. We're not paying what the nation pays. Your home and mine is worth what double in Mississippi or Michigan, but they pay double what we pay in insurance. They're used to it and we're not. So, anyway, enough of insurance.
Speaker 2:I like to see State Farm's annual income statement and balance sheet. Did they actually lose money last year?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't understand that last question.
Speaker 2:We're going to go beyond that question my headset's messing up. I don't know what he did. My corporate master maybe made billions, but they said we're not making any money. We're going broke in California, bro, it's terrible. It's like a local nonprofit hospital that you can look up the numbers. That makes $20, $25 million a year, but they claim they're nonprofit.
Speaker 1:Correct. Yeah, and so. And the corporate says, when you're an agent, say I don't know anything, I don't know anything, act dominant. It's not a very big act, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:We need to pay our CEO more tens of millions of dollars a year, a jillion dollars. He can't get by at 30 million a year.
Speaker 1:I don't know what ours. That's a good question. Why don't you find out? I'd say it's probably 30 million a year. Let me Google that right now. Yeah, so you went to LA and worked for 23 years. Where'd you live down there?
Speaker 2:Probably in the Pasadena area. Okay, so when you hit a certain age in Pasadena, you get the tap on your shoulder saying you need to join a Rotary Club of Pasadena and you need to join Tournament of Roses. That's the nonprofit organization that puts on the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game.
Speaker 1:That's right, we were talking before the show. You're actually on one of the committees.
Speaker 2:I'm at my 23rd parade coming up and I've probably attended 20 Rose Bowls over the years. That's cool. Huh, who's your team? I don't have a college team per se. I say I'm in for a good game. Sure, I could tell you, I was there at the USC-Texas game in January 2005, which I'd argue is one of the greatest college games ever played.
Speaker 1:What was the score on that one Top?
Speaker 2:of my head. 38-35 Texas.
Speaker 1:I remember that it was a good game it was a close game.
Speaker 2:Vince Young scored with like 30 seconds to go.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And I was sitting there in that end zone section going. We just saw the whole play break out and go.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's awesome. My friend's going to the Texas-Georgia game here in October. They're number one and two in the nation Back in Austin. He's a big Orange fan, so do you actually go down and work on the parade and do stuff Usually day after Christmas? Yep, wow, that's cool.
Speaker 2:I found there's another woman just joined our Rotary Club. She actually volunteers to go. Well, she doesn't volunteer, she's now a paid person. She gets paid to manage a float down there from Eureka. So someone else does the crazy thing I do.
Speaker 1:Do you have a name? Yeah, can't say your name. I have a name, but you won't hear it. So that's kind of cool. So which Rotary are you on Wednesday?
Speaker 2:No Monday. Rotary Club Eureka. Oh, you're with Lucky the big one Lucky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, formerly big one. Yeah, the old guy's club. Hey, the old guy's club. How old's Lucky? Lucky's like 29. I don't know.
Speaker 2:He's 40.
Speaker 1:35, 40,. Yeah, so you were part of it. So there's five Rotary. Well, there be Eureka Inn back in the day. Yeah, ron Pelleggi, my good friend, did the newsletter and I remember he said like a quarter or a third of them all died one year, it's like within a year or two, like a whole bunch of the club was like wiped out Because they're just old dudes.
Speaker 2:You need to bring in new, young blood. The problem is, in my opinion, not enough of the younger people are volunteering Right, it's a big issue, from everything from giving blood to whatever charity.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, covid didn't help any of that. I was part of Friday Club, pardon me.
Speaker 2:And I just quit going. Ask your millennial children where do they volunteer? Of course you can't talk to them. You have to text them because they don't take your calls. You can't ask them anything.
Speaker 1:Unless they need money, of course, you can't talk to them. You have to text them because they don't take your calls, can't?
Speaker 2:ask them anything, Unless they need money.
Speaker 1:they're not taking your calls yeah right or do you volunteer? A lot of them grind hard at work because they have to have three jobs to have a mortgage.
Speaker 2:My daughter- pays $4,200 a month for rent. Oh shit, and a two-bedroom, two-bath. It's a beautiful apartment when I believe that, but $4,200 a month rent Are you kidding? Rent, you want a nice place in LA? That's what it costs.
Speaker 1:I did visit your Rotary Club several months ago and enjoyed it. It was a lot smaller than I thought. Monday at the Eagle House, yeah, and Lucky was there and Brian and that was a guest of Phil Nicholas. Okay, yeah, that's a good club. You guys do a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:I think it's the individual president. Each year, if he comes up with goals, ideas and objectives, he can explain to the club and say this is what we're going to do. We're going to get out in the community and do some good.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, the Friday club was very good about that. It's fun to be part of a Rotary.
Speaker 2:So what'd worked? In LA, I came back to Eureka. One of my best friends from Eureka high school and my roommate in college died of a suicide and at his wake, well, we first had the funeral, which was how do I say this? Politically correct.
Speaker 2:He was gay and his family never dealt with that and didn't talk about it at all and, as the family standing up, the only allowed family to talk, we're all looking at each other going who the hell are they talking about? That's not the guy we've known for 10 years, wow. So then we had a post-wake-up-at-Huckins bar.
Speaker 1:Right, and he was a terrific guy, as I understand. Yeah, great guy, lovely guy, just some people are old school.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, old school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's true. So you came back here, and is that before or after you married Virginia?
Speaker 2:Met her there at our post-wake. Oh, how about that? We're classmates in high school.
Speaker 1:There's a connection there, yeah. And then you guys decided to be married one day. Yeah, got to there after a little while. But yeah, yeah, she's terrific. She's been on the show, as you know. She told me she did a great job. I hope you saw that. I hope you looked at it. I did, don't admit that you didn't. I forwarded it to her. Yeah, no, she's terrific. And then it was funny seeing her at the airport schlepping luggage. Yeah, no-transcript, she likes to travel Parity, so she'll travel free, right? Is that correct? Or something close to that? Oh, you travel standby.
Speaker 1:Okay, if there's a seat available, you can fly anywhere in the world for free, and you can pretty much find that out with the phone, yeah, but the downside is that the last sometimes hour people buy tickets Right, and if they're a revenue passenger, guess what happens to the non-revenue passenger?
Speaker 1:Oh, bye, you're going to Houston. Yeah, I have a funny story. It reminds me of this story. This is a speaker story. So there's a guy going off and railing at the attendant at the gate, at the ticket gate, just freaking out and, sir, you know, calm down, and he got together and finally, very disrespectful, and he took off to his gate and she goes, they go, and the guy behind him comes up. How did that go? She goes well, he's going to Houston, but his bags are going to Taipei.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't recommend messing with them.
Speaker 1:Be nice to people out there. Folks, it's not an easy job.
Speaker 2:When you're in the air, the flight attendant is the law and they can call the FBI and say we've got an unruly passenger, Be waiting for us at the gate.
Speaker 1:First time I've ever asked this what are the three big things that have happened in your life that changed you or gave you cause for pause or were transitional, transformative?
Speaker 2:A couple different. Well, first off, I'll start off at a young age. Uh, boy scouts, oh I. One of my true regrets in life is I didn't finish my eagle scout. That's a big thing. I hit 15 years old, started playing football, started working out, figured out what beer was used to hang out with my buddies and all of a sudden, um, eagle scout, figured out what beer was and in hindsight, yeah, I didn't want to say the other female thing, but yeah, in hindsight I wish I would have said hey, you're 16 now let's finish up this Eagle Scout, just to put it on your resume. Yeah, and truly, I was like one project away from finishing it up. It's a really big deal it is. And when you're 16, you just got to. You need to keep focused.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I played on the bong team early on. I never even got to go to scouting much, okay. So feral child, feral hippie child in San Diego we gave you a lot.
Speaker 2:We used to. You know, frank Frank Yeager, our former Eureka Marin city councilman, was my scout, master, big scout, and we used to do 50 milers up and tourney Alps, marble mountains, mountains, a hundred mile canoe trips.
Speaker 1:Second time Frank's come up today.
Speaker 2:That's funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's a great man, oh, he's a, he's a, he's memorable. I mean he really invested in scouting, right? Yeah, that's super cool. I'm going to say for like 50, 60 years. So three things Scouts has had an impact. My son-in-law is one of five Eagle Scouts in their family.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool Incredible, yeah, I would say. The second one was football. Oh, at a young age it gave you discipline. It gave you camaraderie, teammates and all that great stuff, but it really had you inner focused on what you wanted to do. I was not a big guy. I didn't have the DNA. Typically, the average guy I played against in high school was probably 6'2" 230 pounds Wow, and I'm at like 5'9" 175 doing my best. Yeah, hitting hard, just try to be quick. You learn how to be quick and you learn how to take the legs out. That's funny Because you were not going to push some guy who's got 60 pounds in a year round.
Speaker 1:Probably not. Yeah, did you guys good team that year.
Speaker 2:Years yeah.
Speaker 1:We came a few plays away from beating fortuna in 1979, but all right, yeah, that your senior year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so you were a little younger than me, well senior was. The football year was 79. Okay, gotcha graduated 80 your class of 80.
Speaker 1:So yeah, class of 78. Okay, um the other thing.
Speaker 2:The third thing I would say was Marine Corps. I went through Marine Corps officer candidate school during college. Okay, so during your summers they send you back to the East coast of Quantico Virginia. Wow, Shave your head and wake you up at four in the morning, start yelling at you and put you to bed at 10 at night.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:The yelling never stops. The yelling never stops. Morning was a garbage can being flown down the barracks bay on the cement floor. Bang, bang, bang, bang and the lights go on and the yelling starts screaming Wow, Get up you. And the whole idea was if you can't handle this stress. There's no way in hell you're going to handle the stress of bullets being fired at you or bombs going off next to you, or wartime in general.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so did you actually serve after that?
Speaker 2:No One of my other great regrets in life is I graduated in college in three and a half years, wow. And I was dirt poor and so I said to the Marine Corps I can't wait another six months, I need to get in now Interesting. So I wrote a hardship letter and they bumped me back another three months. I just didn't want to hang out for actually 10 months. I would have had to hang out for 10 months just tolling my thumbs doing some. What are you?
Speaker 1:going to do Great job.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You make a good point. I want to infer your point that a lot of successes have disappointments. I mean they're cousins. I mean they can be two different sizes of the same coin. I'm going to add a fourth thing too.
Speaker 2:Go for it. In college, I realized they use this line in the movie Good Will Hunting you can probably get a better education in a public library than you can at most universities, right? Unless you're really a specialist in a certain field, like medical or science or something. Great movie, by the way. Yeah, if you just start reading books and if you read a book a week, I would say you're probably more intelligent than 98% of the people out there. So, hey, three things that you're passionate about. Now there's another. You're like my guinea pig. You're getting all the new questions. What are you passionate about that?
Speaker 2:You'd like to a thing of the Humboldt County supervisors and I want to go back to, I want to say 2008, decided they're going to cut off building permits in TPZ timber productive zones or timber production zones and overnight people just stood in front of the corridor, people I knew who had said told me that I would never get involved in politics threw out there, yelling and screaming, holding a placard Flipped out, just lost their mind because they had land up in rural areas or their family had lands that they're planning to give back to them so they could build a house somewhere Not anymore and overnight supervisors said without any input, we're going to take away your building rights and I remember that People really but it started with home CPR. Huh, really lost people. But it started with home CPR. Huh, that's right, I'm a coalition for property rights.
Speaker 1:Was that a stealth, and Ellen?
Speaker 2:Uh, she was one of the executive directors, but they just got people together to say, hey, maybe we should have some input on our local electeds, because they did something without checking with anybody.
Speaker 1:Right and home. Cpr was a big big deal. Right, they were still around.
Speaker 2:No, they. They were effective, very effective for a while.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:They got a lot of people motivated and involved and that's half the battle you got to get someone off their couch. So next month at this time, literally the next month at this time, october 19th I'll be off to Clark County, nevada, where I'm planning on spending four to five days out knocking doors.
Speaker 1:Is that Burning man? No Wait, it's track homes.
Speaker 2:But it's just early. Voting starts on October 19th. When you go to a local library or fire station to vote, get it out of the way. Our goal is to get them off their couches and get them to vote Good, so that way your vote's banked and you don't have to chase them on election day. Where you know I had a headache. I slept in late, I had to work late on the job. So where you know I had a headache.
Speaker 1:I slept in late. I had to work late on the job, so I'm sorry I couldn't vote this year so they could vote earlier.
Speaker 2:In Nevada they have a window of voting. Yeah, it's literally like two weeks prior to the election. It opens up Okay, gotcha, and most states have something like that. In California, I'm going to get my ballot on October 6th. They're probably going to mail it on October 5th. I'll get it in my mail on October 6th. I'll fill it out in the first five minutes. Sign it, sign the envelope, and it's going to be back out in my mail in 10 minutes. Forget about it.
Speaker 1:Send it? Yeah, done. Hey, listen, we don't talk politics here, because the most important things are, you know, sex, politics and religion, and if we had to talk about God for a while, the whole thing is over.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I always say you don't talk politics, religion or sex to any people, because they've all got their own opinions and theirs are definitely wrong.
Speaker 1:And so is yours, for the record. So three things you're passionate about. We'll come back to politics because I want to hear about your column and stuff you write to, but religion and sex, we're not doing that today. I mean we have limits on the show. Yeah, I get that, and Nick's a little younger. Nick's a little younger than you know. I want to make sure we take. You know what I'm saying. I want to be cool with Nick.
Speaker 2:The other one I'm passionate about is NFL football and sometimes college football.
Speaker 1:Oh, politics to football.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love football, just, it's the most popular sport in America. Who's your team? Well, this year, once again, I don't have a team. Since Tom Brady retired, I loved the Patriots when he was there. I loved him because he had a bunch of scrubs. If you can name a wide receiver during the first three Super Bowls, I would be actually impressed. Most people can't Even the wide receivers they brought in in the last three Super Bowls.
Speaker 1:The one guy, the tall guy.
Speaker 2:They had Randy Moss for two years let's get a Moss but they didn't win a Super Bowl with Moss. They lost that one. Huh, but they yeah. If you can name a wide receiver during the first three Super Bowls or the next three Super Bowls, I would be truly amazed. That's pretty good. And then also when he went to Tampa Bay in one year the first year there they hadn't won the playoffs 13 years and Brady takes him to Super Bowls a wild card team Crazy and wins it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, um, but love football. A matter of fact, this year I bought a three pack down at uh, I keep calling the San Diego chargers. The Los Angeles chargers now play at SoFi stadium, my team. They share the stadium with the Rams. Right, they do a rotation. I just didn't went to the opening game of the season against the Raiders Nice.
Speaker 1:Heading off to see the chiefs at the end of the Monday night before Thanksgiving. Ravens have a good team, even though they lost already, well, their quarterback. What's his name? Lamar Jackson Jackson. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, I don't know if I like him, but he's great. I respect him.
Speaker 2:So football is something I'm very passionate about. The other thing is travel, travel. I love to travel. I'm a travel hack, so people always ask me how do you travel so much? Well, I typically get free airfare, free hotels. That makes it really affordable to travel. Yeah, I use that doing credit card signup bonuses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, We'll talk about that. That's a big deal, Do you? Where do you travel to next Um?
Speaker 2:I just got back from Vegas where I had three nights comped at Encore. Went Encore and $600 of food comped.
Speaker 1:How'd you do that?
Speaker 2:I have no idea. They send me saying would you like three nights? I say yes, with $600.
Speaker 1:What's it called?
Speaker 2:Encore, wynn Encore.
Speaker 1:Is that a new property?
Speaker 2:No, it's been around for a while. I want to say Wynn's been around for 20 years. I want to say Encore's been around for 13. Okay, but it's one of the, do you?
Speaker 1:fly United down to SFO and over Yep. Huh, do you think they'll have the? Was it a Velo that flew? Yeah, is that coming back anytime.
Speaker 2:No, because it was flying in late on a Friday night. No one would get in morning again at 10 o'clock on a Friday night. So by the time you get your luggage and get a cab, it's 11 o'clock or midnight. It's Saturday, yeah.
Speaker 1:And the day's gone. Yeah, no way. Maybe some of the Chico guys would Back in the pony keg days.
Speaker 2:Mainly, I love the food there. I read all the food blogs, the Las Vegas Journal Review, any website that talks about food in there, and it just goes for the food. It's, oh my God, really so you're a food guy there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, huh, it helps out when you get comp for a lot of food, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, huh, it helps out when you get calm. For a lot of food, though, yeah. So State Farm has their conference there every four years. So last time we were there we got to see I met Jake with State Farm. Okay, kevin, kevin's cool, he's a really nice man and you get 30 seconds of the photo booth. You hand your phone off and they shoot you and you get to talk, shake his hand and whatever. And next, so, yeah, so personal, I mean he was so personable to me. But so the rumor was he was in the conference center, so you just had to find him, and so that was cool, he's a nice guy. And then we got to go see Garth Brooks, and I love the shows there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the Allegiant Stadium is kind of cool. Earlier this year I was there at one encore and walked up to the concierge saying, uh, you got any concerts going on? And they go. Yeah, duran, duran, sweet. Like okay, tell me about this. And tickets are only $4.75. I'm not interested, but my daughter and her girlfriend and my best friend and his girlfriend don't get in until tomorrow, so it's just a single person. Do you have any? What do they call them? We'll call last minute tickets and they go. I have a ticket here for $121. I go sold.
Speaker 1:My price.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I was Were they good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're older, right, simon Le?
Speaker 2:Bon, the sexiest man alive in the early 80s. He's become a dad.
Speaker 1:He put on 30 pounds and has to dye his hair.
Speaker 2:No, no, he's still got his hair, he just dyes his hair and put on some weight and he's a dad.
Speaker 1:That's funny. We saw Keanu Reeves and Dogstar his band up in Oregon.
Speaker 2:And then earlier, a couple months before that, my buddy calls up and says hey, we had a friend of ours can't make it. Would you like to go see you two at the Sphere? Oh, dude, yeah, okay, I'll get there.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you just traveled on account of that and just traveled on account of that Not that hard to get to Vegas from here To go to the Sphere would be amazing. You find a way to make it work, was that?
Speaker 2:pretty cool the Sphere. It's literally a bucket list thing if you haven't been there.
Speaker 1:Okay, everybody says it's great. Yeah, and you too would be just great to see anywhere. Yeah, they do a good show. Oh, phenomenal, I mean Really.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm looking at the math going. These guys are approaching. Well, they're not, they're 60s, mid-60s, but still in great shape and they work it.
Speaker 1:Oh, they're good guys, you know, I just want to go back for a minute and I'm just so delighted that you mentioned the Raiders getting beat by the LA Chargers. There's just a little warm place in my heart when I heard that. I just wanted to. You're a Chargers fan, I just wanted to go back.
Speaker 2:I was a San Diego Chargers fan, okay, so in January 1981, I was at the Murph for the AFC championship game.
Speaker 1:With, was it Fouts. Yeah, Dan Fouts.
Speaker 2:John Jefferson, Charlie Joyner, Kellen Winslow, Chuck Muncy, Dude you're a whore.
Speaker 1:Ed White as your guard.
Speaker 2:Oh, junior Seau didn't come until later. Oh, junior was later, you're right, right, he didn't come. He wasn't there in 81. That would have been earlier than Junior. So my uncle lived down in Point Loma and he had a friend who was a Charger fan and says, listen, I need to get my nephew or not my nephew, yeah, my nephew a ticket for the game. So all week long in San Diego, if you live there, the village people wrote a song San Diego, superchargers, san Diego, it was a big deal, superchargers. For an entire week. You could not hit a radio station without hearing that stupid song for an entire week. I remember that Out of the 65,000 people that went to the Murph, 500 of us were wearing black jerseys.
Speaker 1:Got pelted with beer, popcorn, hot dogs, everything all game long.
Speaker 2:It would have been worse in Oakland, yeah, or it would have been LA at that time Were they the LA Raiders An incredible game and the Raiders won and San Diego just went and they saw one more championship game against Cincinnati in minus 14 degree weather. They beat them right? No, I thought they did, and they went and played the Niners. They lost to Cincinnati the next year and Cincinnati went on to play the Niners next year.
Speaker 1:Okay, what year did San Diego lose to the Niners? That was in the 90s, 94. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Then you finally got to a Super Bowl. Hey man and then you ran into the great 94 or 49ers team.
Speaker 1:Oh my, gosh, how do you beat those guys? Wasn't even much of a game. I was really bummed, actually, it was ugly.
Speaker 2:It was not a pretty game. I want to say 49-19 or something.
Speaker 1:Hey, they're 2-0 this year. Chargers actually have some and they got a new coach. He's the difference. Jim Harbaugh oh man, they tell me he's got some talent to work with and they're in development. I don what the hell that means.
Speaker 2:It means they got a lot of young guys, I mean. So we'll see right now the charger running backs, leading the league and rushing.
Speaker 1:Is that? Is he the rookie, or is that the?
Speaker 2:receiver. He's been around for a while. Dobkins, dobbins, he's good. Jk, dobbins, they've got. You got a guy there from Georgia, a rookie named lad.
Speaker 1:See the running back or the wide receiver he I'm thinking about. Let's talk about destinations for a minute. So we've talked about football. Where do you like to travel? Top five destinations, and why? Probably.
Speaker 2:Ko'olina, Hawaii is number one.
Speaker 1:That's on Oahu right.
Speaker 2:On Oahu, 20 miles northwest of Honolulu Airport, Right. It's an area they started developing about 25 years ago.
Speaker 1:Nfl would stay there during Pro Bowl, right the they started developing.
Speaker 2:About 25 years ago, nfl would stay there during Pro Bowl right, the Pro Bowl hotel was right down the beach from where we stay and then they'd play at the Aloha Stadium. Yeah, but took my dad one year. That was a Pro Bowl game. Yeah, and the old players used to be there for all that. Yeah, love going there just because it's quiet. I'm not a big fan of Waikiki. I call it San Francisco with a beach. Yeah, it was 500,000 people and a bunch of high-rise hotels and traffic. Some people like that.
Speaker 1:I go there to get away from that. Somebody said it's a combination of Vegas, tijuana and Hawaii. It's like a trifecta of all three.
Speaker 2:I like going to a beach where there's like 20, 30 people, not 2,000 or 3,000 people.
Speaker 1:Right, the NFL did the Pro Bowl pregames, the tug of war and all that fun stuff in Waikiki. My dad and I got to watch all those guys Flew home with Irving Fryer, the receiver from was he a receiver from Dolphins?
Speaker 2:No New.
Speaker 1:England? Was he New England? Okay, I think he did play for the Dolphins at one point. Look that up. Yeah, I think. So Nice guy. He has his whole family, whatever. Yeah, those guys are yoked and some of them are not. They're not seven foot, they're 6'2", but they're about that wide, they're just 6'2". 300 pounds, that's a big boy, that's a big guy man, and you're going to just take some people out.
Speaker 2:So so Colina probably number one.
Speaker 1:Number two is Las Vegas. Okay, just like go to Las.
Speaker 2:Vegas once a month. Really, I get rooms either free or for $12, $13 a night.
Speaker 1:We got to talk after the show about that, my new best friend. Part of the travel hack. I got some swag for you here.
Speaker 2:I actually wrote an article on that for one of my Matthew in the Middle articles in the Time Standard. Okay, of the time standard, it's not me, anybody can do it. You just have to know how to play the game, right, right. So Las Vegas number two, la number three. Okay, I love going to LA, to visit when do you stay.
Speaker 1:Where do you go down, do you?
Speaker 2:go down. I got my bro friend down there, who I'm with Tournament of the Roses with Okay, well, pasadena or Arcadia, right next to Pasadena, sure, this last weekend he dropped me off the Metro, took the Metro downtown LA and met my daughter and her girlfriend there and another friend of theirs. And I love going to the Grand Central Market. That's just my thing. I'll travel a half hour to go get a burrito. It's that good. I've heard they're great, just, oh my God. So we had burritos there. Then we go to the arts district and Arts District 6 where they got a lot of clubs and breweries, and we end up finding a brewery there and playing air hockey which I had not played in decades, oh that's cool and played Partners Pool. So I probably played pool for about an hour plus Nice.
Speaker 1:And that's all in the downtown area. Yeah, very cool. There's a big Disney theater down there too, right? Yeah, huge one, yeah. So they've done a lot of renovation, yeah, and is the market the same one I'm thinking about? It's like a giant farmer's market, that's Except it's all jobbers of food. Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, this one's doing Mexican, this one's doing Filipino, this one's doing Italian, this one's doing sandwiches and fish. You pick what you want.
Speaker 1:Is it me or does Mexican food taste better south of LA? I mean, I just got back from San Diego for my high school reunion, 25th reunion Okay, Just kidding. Anyway, the food sauce. We ate tacos every day. I mean we found the most low life Like. Does it look very nice, it's in Barrio Logan and dives right across the street for the great food Police and the food was outstanding, you know. And dollar tacos are now two and a quarter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say probably four dollars in Las Vegas, yeah, still delicious.
Speaker 1:So okay, so we have LA Vegas, colina and what else those are my big places I go to.
Speaker 2:That's close enough. That's the main reason I go there. Do you go to Europe ever have not been. That's one of my goals. Okay, one of my goals is to go to France, and I want to do the route from Patton to Berlin. Oh, that'd be cool.
Speaker 1:Wow, I like that one. General Patton, yes, so he Follow what the Third Army did. Where did?
Speaker 2:he come from Northern Italy. No, he broke out at Normandy.
Speaker 1:And then went all the way to Berlin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did some. If you read history he did something called Operation Cobra Sure, basically when the six weeks after Norm giant mulberry type trees that the roots go way down on the ground. They're big and thick and the Americans could not get beyond it because they'd finally get beyond one and the Germans would set up machine guns there. And then they'd get beyond that one and set up machine guns there and it was just. It was an ugly slaughter for a while. And two things happened. One some farm guys figured out you could put basically big metal spikes or big metal things at the bottom of a tank and it would scoop up the whole hedgerows. They had enough weight to them. They can move and rip up the roots as they drive. So now they've got these, they cleared out lanes. And the second thing they took about a thousand airplanes and carpet, bombed the area, just the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Just carpet, bombed the crap out, bomb the Nazis. And at that point they told Patton go, you've got the opening here. We've opened up these hedgerows. Go.
Speaker 1:That's cool.
Speaker 2:And once he did that, he didn't stop until he got to the edge of Berlin.
Speaker 1:George was a badass.
Speaker 2:He was.
Speaker 1:He was a great guy.
Speaker 2:And that's when we got into the whole world politics where they let the Russians go into Berlin, right, they stopped Americans outside and said let them do the dirty work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let them go in. My dad was a P-51 pilot in the Asian theater so he's a big fan. We just watched Dunkirk because I saw it on a map, because we were in Amsterdam a couple of months ago. We have a son there and there is a remembrance of the Americans how they freed the whole darn thing they did. And Dunkirk was a really interesting story, how the boats and the Englishmen came over and rescued. Thank you, Churchill. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The other members of Churchill's cabinet wanted to surrender.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 64,000 troops or something crazy.
Speaker 2:I was going to say 100,000 troops stranded there. There was a lot, but anything that floated it went across the channel and they went and got people. Good movie Life soldiers live to fight another day. Dead soldiers you bury.
Speaker 1:What do you see for Humboldt, humboldt County, what are your concerns? What do you think are the opportunities? And then we'll go into the column and we'll talk about that, and then I'll talk about what your legacy is.
Speaker 2:I'm involved in a government group with the Chamber of Commerce and the big thing they're trying to do is you know what are the issues facing Humboldt County and what can we do to help move these things forward? And I call it the three H's housing, healthcare and homeless. Seems to be the biggest three things in Humboldt County, but in a lot of towns, especially on the West Coast, they run into the same problem, same thing same issues.
Speaker 2:We don't have enough housing. The Fed just came out today and said, hey, we can lower rates more and more and more. That's not going to change the issue that housing prices are high because there's a huge demand for housing and not enough housing being built. They do an amazing thing and they find in certain cities, when you build a lot more housing, real estate prices stabilize. But if you don't build housing and you have a demand for it, it's just a supply and demand issue. I think they mentioned nationwide we're 4 million homes short that we need to build now. Wow. But we're running into the problem in California where lot costs are too damn high and the cost to build is approximately $300 a square foot Crazy. I just talked to one of the guys at Schaefer's who bids his stuff out for contracts and he looks at me and goes I quote him $300 a square foot to build a house out.
Speaker 1:That's kind of an average house, not fancy.
Speaker 2:No, he says that's a nice house, but cheap houses you could probably do for about 250 a square foot. But do the math. You want a 2,000 square foot house. Let's say you do it at 250 a square foot. That's $500,000, and the lot's going to cost you at least 150 minimum Minimum. Now you're into house, just an average house, and you want a nice lot. That's going to be 150 to 200,000. If you want a little acreage, a little privacy, and then your cost of building is 300 square foot and you start doing the math there and you're going well, that's $850,000 to build something custom.
Speaker 1:I need eight jobs to do that. Well, you can go out there and find a nice house out there, nice house.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of people moving up the Bay Area in LA and they sold their crappy 1942 bed and one bath home and got you know, $900,000 for it, for $2 billion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And now they come up here and they go well, I got, you know, $700,000, $600,000 in the bank for a down payment. I'll go buy Trinidad With the ocean view. A little more expensive there, but compared to Malibu, sure, yeah, way cheaper. You can buy something beautiful in Trinidad for a million, million and a half. That's up on the bluff overlooking the ocean On a scenic drive yeah, Ocean front, and you're paying a million and a half, yeah, but compared to Malibu, you're paying five, six million, crazy money.
Speaker 1:What committee are you on with the chamber? It's called the.
Speaker 2:Government Affairs Committee, uh-huh. So one of the other things talked about is healthcare is a big issue for a lot of people, especially as the age here Sure Now, with Fortuna shutting down the maternity one, and now Arcadia's Mad River is talking about shutting down their maternity hospital.
Speaker 1:They did it's scheduled.
Speaker 2:If you're a woman and you're in your eight months and three weeks of pregnancy and you're having some sort of issue where your body just doesn't feel right now, you've got to drive to get into St Joe's Hospital. You've got just doesn't feel right Now, you got to drive to get into St Joe's hospital. Go to Eureka. Yeah, so, depending on where you live, that's going to be. You know it used to be. If you lived in Garterville, you can go to Fortuna. If you lived in Oreck or McKinleyville you can go in Arcata. Now you got to go into Eureka, got to go all the way into town, these things like that's an enough specialists here and part of the problem there is the spouses. The spouses come up and go. Oh my God, this is beautiful. Did you see Trinidad and the state parks? It's beautiful. Where's the mall? Where's Nordstrom's and where are the 49ers playing? He goes six and a half hours south what?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Well, buy you a plane. There's some adjustments there. They're still making. You know, we try to tell them you're making great money, You're a physician, You're making great money and for your money you're living a good lifestyle and you don't have to deal with traffic and you don't have to deal with 20 people in each line at the Costco. On a Saturday morning you go to Costco in LA and there's a crowd of a hundred to 200 at 955 waiting to run in the store. Crazy, yeah. And during the day it gets worse.
Speaker 1:This Costco's getting worse. But whatever, it's nothing. Piece of cake, piece of cake. My traffic is the last light on the way to McKinleyville.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the lights.
Speaker 1:It's so nothing. And I go to the Joni calls it hi. Joni calls it the cheater lane. So and somebody goes, that's not cheating man. That and somebody goes, that's not cheating man. That lane is designed to go outside and create more room for everybody.
Speaker 2:So I try to honor my cheating.
Speaker 2:And the other problem we have with homeless up here is inclement weather. Yeah, that's the number one thing that gets us and people say well, you have drugs. We have drugs in every city in America. I'm sorry, but that's just a fact. The issue we have is we have inclement weather which makes people sick. No, you want to go to Palm Springs or Reading, where it's 150 and 120? I would see them in Vegas and they just sit there and sweat. They got to find shade in a little bottle of water and all they do is sweat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not fun yeah.
Speaker 2:But when we talk about our summers God, it hit 72 today. It was a scorcher. I I was really sweating out there. Yeah, their typical summer day in Eureka is what? 68? Maybe it's nice.
Speaker 1:Maybe yeah.
Speaker 2:And the other thing we have is we have woods. Yeah, we have woods everywhere in Humboldt County, so they can just kind of blend in there with their tent and that's that. Yeah, and I've seen that in McKinleyville a lot. We're not a cement city where it's harder to hide.
Speaker 1:Right, I've seen San Diego by Balboa Park and right downtown. There it's Tent City. They're everywhere Hardcore, and Portland's even worse. Yeah, portland's worse, seattle's worse. I wish we had answers for that one.
Speaker 2:That's a tough one, it's yeah, we're dealing with issues of alcohol and drugs, mental health issues and rising rental. It's not just real estate prices for people buying.
Speaker 1:It's rental prices. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Now that's come up a number of times, I'm on the board of Destination Humboldt, so we're trying to pay some doctors to come and we'll pay their medical bills, and I think one thing we need to do is think about more of what can we do to tell them about all the things Humboldt County has to offer. Set them up with a realtor and or someone a property manager, depending on that renter buys. Let's go look at these different places. Here's what your money buys you here in Eureka, humboldt County area. It's a pretty nice lifestyle and then show them. We do have restaurants. We do have some social things going on. We have a lot of music up here. We have one of the largest per capita of artists up here in Humboldt County the arts community is huge, great, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:I think it's great. It's got a lot of selling points in that sense it does. If somebody could concierge that correctly.
Speaker 2:Yes and that's a great word to say is concierge, just try to tell them hey, we've got a doctor coming, we want to show him around. We like to give them a little thing of what is available out, out and go show stuff Go look at them. Here's some places, let's look at Diamond Drive and Arcata. Yeah, it's a nice little area. Hey man, $800,000 buys you a monster house with a view. Are you a golfer? How about it?
Speaker 1:There's good golf courses. So let's talk about Matthew in the middle. Your day job is mortgage broker.
Speaker 2:Mortgage banker.
Speaker 1:Banker sorry, your Mortgage banker. Banker sorry, your night job is, or whatever other job is. You write, you're a writer. You've done this for how many years? I want to say about 12 years now, so you've got thousands of columns.
Speaker 2:Hundreds of columns. Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, you might be four figures, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I started off with the Lost Coast Outpost back in the day. I used to write letters to the editor and Hank Sims calls me up from the Lost Coast Outpost and says how would you like to write a column for us? And I go what column? He goes you tell me what do you want to call this? Hank says how about Matthew in the Middle? I go, okay, cool, couple years. And then I had we had to call it creative differences one of the people there didn't. He wanted to edit a lot of my stuff because and writers don't like to being edited a lot- like our words getting out.
Speaker 1:I mean, I could see for size, but edit for size or for content.
Speaker 2:Content, oh, that's not cool, yeah, so we went to the time standard and said, uh, there's right at the time where time standard had a police, have a guy writing a weekly column and he had some sort of plagiarism issue and they got rid of him and they had a hole.
Speaker 2:And they met with the former editor and he says yeah, I'd love to have you come on board here, nice, so Is that weekly Weekly every Sunday, and I have to turn the column in, otherwise the people get angry. Oh, if, for whatever reason, we were traveling and I don't make the deadline or something and they don't print me. It went in the bucket. They got a lot of people calling in angry, really yeah.
Speaker 1:Scott Q Marcus, our friend writes as well. So what are you proud of there? What have you written about that has hit a nerve or got you excited, or what are you? What's going on in the middle? There's a rumor we're doing a presidential election this year.
Speaker 2:Is that happening? That's happening, and one side was getting real cocky because it turns out the Democrats may have been hiding Joe Biden's mental acumen, and nothing against Joe. He did a great job in 2020. He's a good American, took out the orange monster, but he's getting old, he's having senior moments, which were apparent during the first debate. Well, it was just like every Democrat I talked to just went oh my God, yeah, and they do, what do we do? And I go reset and they go. What we need to reset, what do you mean? He goes. Joe needs to say I'm stepping down, not running for election. I want to say five, six presidents that have done that, yeah, during the day, did a first term. The last one was Johnson. Really Okay, lbj, just between Vietnam and the protest in this country 68 was a rough year in the country's history.
Speaker 1:What a grueling job anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, plus, he took over after the JFK assassination, right. So he basically got in there yearly, won a huge election and then just it took a toll on him, all the great thoughts he had that he was going to do with the great society, which I'll give Johnson credit for that. But it's hard when you're spending billions of dollars on great society to make poor people's lives better and spending billions of dollars on a war, trevor Burrus, and a war that was tough, john Pletka. Yeah, trevor Burrus. There's an old saying in economics guns are bullets. Yeah, excuse me, bullets are butter. Yeah, you can feed people or you can shoot a bullet, but once you shoot a bullet it's gone. That expense is done. Yeah, and that's that.
Speaker 1:Good one, yeah. So in your opinion, did he step down a On the late side Biden yeah?
Speaker 2:No, I thought it was perfect. Okay, I've never seen a party get behind a candidate like they did with Kamala Harris. Sure, they just you know, we all thought, okay, is this going to be an open convention? You know which one do you like? Are you going to go for Bernie? Are you going to go for Pete Buttigieg? Are you going for Kamala? Who's it going to be? And it would have been a free fall. I mean, it just would have been. Everyone said on the guy, right, right. But instead somehow the power brokers got together and said they rallied, we're getting behind Kamala and everyone is going to do it. And I loved her choice of vice president for Tim Walls. Turns out he's an everyday guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, johnny, my wife really likes him, says he's pretty solid, just an every, I mean a former coach.
Speaker 2:He's not a wealthy guy. By the way, the Republicans two people are from Ivy League schools. People don't know that Wharton and Yale and our two people are. I don't think Tim Walls got his well. He probably did get a master's in teaching, but Kamala graduated UCSF.
Speaker 1:Was he a teacher and a coach? Yes, walls Graduated.
Speaker 2:UCSF. Was he a teacher and a coach? Yes, high school assistant coach, assistant coach and a teacher for 20 plus years, but just a down to earth guy. And she's USC law school, ucsf, san Francisco, oh, san Francisco, hastings, okay, so Gotcha. But the main thing is now is I like to say we have a candidate that's done old as an OLD, mm-hmm is now is I like to say we have a candidate that's Don old as an old. It used to be that Biden was the old candidate. Guess who we're left with as the old candidate? Uh, barbara Boxer, wait. Uh, dianne Feinstein, yeah, she's died.
Speaker 1:She's dead. What about Pelosi? She's still in office.
Speaker 2:She's still strong as ever, feisty as ever, and she may be one of the main reasons that Biden stepped down. Huh, she came out and said I hope Biden does what's best for the country. Yeah, and then all of a sudden, the Democrats say we can speak out against the president.
Speaker 1:Well, she has. Yeah, so tell me about the columns. What do you write about?
Speaker 2:Typically someone asks me where do you get your inspiration? I say to them I wait till Friday morning and said what the heck?
Speaker 1:happened this week in this country or locally, that something happened here, so so are you going to write about some of the bomb things, the pagers.
Speaker 2:In the Middle.
Speaker 1:East. Yeah, do you touch that or do you stay?
Speaker 2:local. Try to stay off the Middle East. I did write about the Cal Poly incident, which I'll say to anyone who is protesting what has changed? Yeah right, you guys locked yourself in a building for how many days? What changed?
Speaker 1:And did $2 million of damage. Yeah, officer Packard retired UPD. He said everybody played it perfectly wrong. Everybody just did like let's do the opposite. And they did. And there we go. But at the end of the day, what did they accomplish?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, it's like the people who did Occupy Wall Street. Right, they had a leaderless group that didn't go out and lobby congress and they didn't talk about what's happening in the united states supreme court, and all they did was protest in a park. And, at the end of the day, what they accomplish? They brought up some points, but okay, I kind of already knew that, yeah, there's income inequality in this country. Yes, the billionaires run this country because they run the tax code and regulations from congress. Yeah, tough truth, most billionaires pay less taxes than you and I do. Super tough truth the more money you make, the less taxes they want to pay.
Speaker 1:Right, right Go figure.
Speaker 2:How am I going to get by on $4.2 million a year? I just don't know how I'm going to feed the family.
Speaker 1:You know the need rises with your budget. I think the need rises with your ego. With your income and your ego, yeah, so. So tell me more in terms of feedback on on the uh the column. What do you, what do you? Any death threats, anything super, super crazy? Um, I do get free. Do you get free things like Vegas?
Speaker 2:Uh, no, I I what I do get, depending on the people there, I get a lot of nasty emails.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I got to tell you after I wrote the thing about the Cal Poly protest over Israel and Hamas there in Palestine, I got just a flood of emails saying you know I read your comment every week. I don't always agree with you, but you kind of hit the nail on the head here.
Speaker 1:Oh nice, you get positive feedback yeah.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I get positive feedback. Yeah, usually I get feedback from the Trumpers who are just angry because I tell the truth, something their candidate never does, and they do not like to hear that. Yeah, that's verboten, Especially after his debate with Kamala Harris, when he talked about eating the pets. They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs and we're going what the hell?
Speaker 1:It's so hard to debate how that went.
Speaker 2:You. Just I saw it on the internet, so it's gotta be true. Yeah, yeah, If you believe half the things you see on Facebook.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wait, that's not true. Yeah, instagram TikTok. That's not real. What?
Speaker 2:Yeah, why don't you it's not real. What? Oh, it's real, but that's the main reason a lot of people on the far right push their propaganda Because other people don't fact check it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my wife has a supply of socks when Don comes on, don Don Trump.
Speaker 2:Don old, don Don old. I was going to say Don Jr, I was thinking Don, no, she actually throws.
Speaker 1:Don old. So we have a nice TV and she throws socks at it. You can't do this man, you can't. I was yelling a lot during the debate. It was interesting. No wonder you like football.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a sport, only it's different. During the Raiders game at the Chargers in SoFi, it was fourth quarter. The Chargers in SoFi, it was fourth quarter. The Raiders Wait, you wore black to that game. Yes, of course. And the Raiders go down to the Charger 43. They're down by six Fourth quarter, six minutes to go. It was that close Fourth and one. And they punt and I got out of my. I was yelling and screaming. They punted on the 43? On the 43, on fourth and one. You're in the opponent's territory. You got to go for it. Who made that? And I was standing up. My buddy actually had to grab my arm. You need to calm down. I'm like the coach is playing to lose, not to win.
Speaker 1:You're losing your mind. Yeah, Just you know.
Speaker 2:Fan is short for fanatic. You know, that's what you said. Do you some passion? That's some passion. That's one of the reasons NFL is the most popular sport out there. Is you go to a game or watch a game on TV. People are passionate. Go to a sports bar and watch your team have a bad day. Oh, they go nuts, they just go nuts, Especially in Vegas.
Speaker 1:It's very I've noticed it there.
Speaker 2:I was just at Vegas this last week at a sports bar where you cannot get a seat. It you cannot get a seat, yeah, it's just it's packed. And standing two, three deep at the bar, cause they have, you know, just 20, 30 TVs, white, giant widescreen TVs the size of your side of your house, type thing. Oh, they're crazy, and they got you know. In the morning, six games going on at once. The afternoon, three games going on once for hours and hours, and hours.
Speaker 1:On end. Yeah, no wonder there's beer. That makes sense now, yeah. So tell us, where do you want to? What do you want to be known for when you leave? Whatever that looks like when you check out your gravestone? That's easy. What are your top three things?
Speaker 2:you'd like to be remembered for, I would say one. I raised a great child, oh nice. When my daughter was growing up, I said I'm not here to be your best friend, I'm here to be your father, which means my job is to make sure you get through high school not pregnant, not a drug addict and not an alcoholic. And you're going to college Cool. And, by the way, after you graduate, you got a choice you can go to a convent, you can go to the barracks or you go to a dormitory, but you ain't hanging around my house sitting on the couch, smoking pot and playing video games like a lot of my friends' adult children do as they try to find themselves in the next six to 12 years. So she did a year abroad in Bangkok, thailand, as a Rotary Exchange student, came back, went to junior college two years and got accepted UCLA graduated there two years later. Wow, that's probably my, my most pride, proud of that girl, proud of the children, and she's doing great in life. Uh, married, no, kids, no, not yet.
Speaker 2:What'd you study, by the way? Uh, anthropology, perfect. But yeah, but you know who their speaker was? You know the actor Dex, who's married to Kristen Bell? Yeah, he graduated UCLA in anthropology and was their commencement speaker. Oh, that's cool. And he says you know what I've done with my degree since I graduated? Not a damn thing. But I got a piece of paper on the wall that says UCLA graduate. That's right, and he's probably made more money there of anyone who's graduated the anthropology school.
Speaker 2:All the skill sets, yeah, but he says All the skill sets yeah, but he says you bore down, you completed your assignments, you showed up every day and that's the number one thing employers want to see.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, you're not a flake. Yeah, hey, recreation, whoa recreation administration, major Humboldt State there you go. Not Cal Poly Not did a lot with that. Huh yeah, I really have excelled in that. My kids go, you majored in recess. What my kids go, you majored in recess. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:I would say the other thing I'd be proud of is on a tombstone. I could say he told the truth, nice. So there's just so much. Everyone has propaganda where they try to tilt the news one way or the other, but one side it's just a fire hose of lies and that really bothers me about our country. Lies, and that really bothers me about our country. I mean, most Republicans don't know that Fox News settled a lawsuit for $778,500,000 just because they didn't want it to go on, because it was looking so bad for them. They said yep, we screwed up, we lied to you. Here's the money Go away. Wow, what was that? The lawsuit against Smartmatic? No, the Dominion voting systems. Smartmatic's next. But Smartmatic was only in one county in the entire nation. That was LA County. So when Fox News was out there saying that Dominion changed votes overnight, they lied to you.
Speaker 2:Flat out lied to you, but they told the people what they wanted to hear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Funny how we're like that. I don't think that's only on the right, but okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got a problem with a lot of progressives too. Truth be known, they want free stuff, but they don't tell me how they're going to pay for it. Yeah, we'd like to get it paid for?
Speaker 1:Yeah no, that's interesting. It's fun going to Boise, idaho, because everybody's really great and friendly. It feels conservative yeah Great. And then you get them on the streets and they're fricking crazy drivers Like rude, doesn't cover it. Joni's on a walk and she almost gets hit like on the regular. It's like people.
Speaker 2:They're armed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's driving is. You know, the rules are just suggestions, I guess in some places, but maybe LA is like that too, so so you told the truth. I like that, I think more people need to. I, you know I'll go on a limb here. Miles Slattery sat here a few weeks ago and I don't know him from Adam. I don't know his politics, I haven't watched a lot of anything. He seemed like he's a pretty straight shooter. Yeah, he's a pretty honest guy. Would you concur with that?
Speaker 2:I would say Miles Slattery is driving the city. Okay, city managers have more influence because we don't have a strong mayor that can hire and fire people and control the budget. The city manager does it. The question is the city, your city council, is supposed to direct the city manager what you want him to do, or does Miles, the city manager, direct the city council what he wants done?
Speaker 1:There's a lot of Play in that, yeah, and you got Prop F coming up and a lot of people weren't happy about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Miles says state says we got to build things. This is where we own land. We can't go out and buy land Right and developers won't do it because it's too damn expensive. Especially with interest rates being at eight and a half for construction loans there, and it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:Before you go, let's get you started on cannabis again. So that's dying. In the last five years, right, that's kind of been tough in Sohum and elsewhere. I want to say-.
Speaker 2:You're in the middle and you tell the truth. Seven years ago I wrote an article beware of legalization. It's coming. But you know what that means Rules, regulations and taxes, lots of tax. So they kept screaming we want to be legal and I wish the industry Well.
Speaker 2:I'm not a cannabis guy, but if you look around Humboldt County, especially if you talk to people under 40, one for I said to one guy, I have your friends. How many, would you say, use cannabis? And he goes uh, 80%. No, that number's low. A lot of them just because they don't want to do the pills, because it can hurt your internal organs. A lot of them, they used to do alcohol, but it made you fuzzy, and a lot of younger people drank way too much and it goes. It didn't work for me. So a lot of them get into cannabis.
Speaker 2:And you know, whatever works for you, I'm a libertarian at heart. What are you doing in the privacy of your own home, your own business? Don't beat your co-inhabitant, don't beat your kids or animals. Outside of that, you know, there's a lot of people that sit around and watch TV all day. That's what you want to do for life. Okay, yeah, state of Jefferson, that's different, I think Rex Bone said it best A bunch of broke-ass counties want to form a new state. That's a good one, rex. But I talked to them when they came here and I said how are you going to pay for any social services? Guy looks at me and goes easy and I go what's that? We're not going to provide it Nice.
Speaker 1:So what do you do if you're?
Speaker 2:poor in the state of Jefferson. You're kind of screwed. Hopefully you move out. You think, well, you know right now, if you of it, yeah Gone.
Speaker 1:You know I'd be cheating you if I didn't give you this, the last minute quiz. Okay, you already gave us the legacy. Okay, you told the truth. What's your favorite restaurant? You get to take Virginia anywhere you want tonight. Where do you go? Sw Steakhouse in Las Vegas Okay, that's a favorite by far. How about somewhere in Humboldt Local? Yeah, larapens, larapens. Okay, that comes up a lot. Question two Best cup of coffee in town.
Speaker 2:Ramones.
Speaker 1:Ramones, good one. Yeah, they used to have a mochaccino. That was good. Question three Favorite you get the day off. What do you get to go do whatever you want. You get paid sick leave. Whatever. What do you? What do you what? What does your day look?
Speaker 2:like landscaping. I'm taking care of three to four different properties for family and friends now and that's therapy and fun, yeah it relaxes me, I put on my little uh, apple ipod not ipod, it's the apple shuffle the thing. That's a little bit bigger than your thumb. Yeah, you just clip it to your thing and go.
Speaker 1:It's pretty old school by the old school I love it, because otherwise you got to hold a big phone in your hand. I've got a little one that's a shuffle, that's about that big and so it's great. So, yeah, love it. Still had tons of songs from my son who put it all together in college, gave you a playlist. It's a. Okay, what's LimeWire? People ask, yeah, it's an old school. Anyway, hey, matthew, thanks for coming. Man, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Lots of fun and I wish you all the best, and we'll definitely have to get together on that travel stuff. I want to quiz you and find out.
Speaker 2:Call me up. We'll go have lunch one day and I'll walk you through how you can travel for free and get free hotels.
Speaker 1:You too can travel. And if we wanted to reach you, how do we reach Matthew in the middle? It's at the bottom of my column every week.
Speaker 2:My email's there. What's that? Mon707 at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Matt, thanks for coming. Thank you, scott, have a great day. All right, thank you.
