Transcript of Manifest This, As*holes

So are we supposed to start the podcast?

Ready? One, two, three.

Patriots, gay triets, they triets, black triets, brown triets. Sorry, I swear to God, you guys, I'm sober. All of the fascist, Nazi, MAGA, psychopaths can do what, Pumps? Fuck off. That's a good one. That's a good one.

A lot It's a long fuck off because I really want them to fuck all the way off.

How great would it be if there was a trend that started with people, like how they're watched legal observers to the ICE people. If they just started in a lot of Pumps style, just like doing their arms like an ego going, Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off. Yeah. And we could make it...

Yes.

I would love it. Pam, what have you had it with?

Kate, what I've had it with is when you are a subscribing paid member to a news service or a magazine, and you've paid the money, and then they pop up ads. You push down, you scroll up to read the rest of the article, and an ad pops up, and you have to hit the X mark, which I always invariably end up going on to the page of the advertisement. But my whole thing is, if I hadn't paid for a subscription, I completely get it. That's how they make money. That's how they stay afloat, I'm in. But I've paid for this subscription. And now, instead of just having the normal ads, you have the trick-suck ads, where you think you're pushing X to get out, but really, you're going to their site. So I've had it with that. I've fucking had it.

They're double-dipping.

It's a total double-dip.

I will say this. I agree with you. The pop-ups, the constant unsolicited advertisements. And when you're on a page, these things are popping up without your consent. It's ruining the scrolling experience. And so I oppose that. Now, when it comes to certain articles, there were these journalists, real journalists, have done incredible investigative journalism. In order for these journalists and these non-fascist media outlets to make money, they have to put stories behind a paywall. Totally on board with that. I get that. Even if there's an ad in the paywall, if they need to pay these journalists, keep the lights on, I get that. I think the rub are these unauthorized pop-ups. Yeah.

I agree. I do not mind paying it, but I do not like having to pay it and the pop-up. But you're right. I'm happy to pay for independent because the mainstream media is just absolutely collapsed in every area, most of them, not all, but quite a few.

All right, let me tell you what I've had it with. This has happened to me a couple of times at the airport. The airport, as we all know, is the epicenter of just world-class grievances and fuckery. This happened to me twice recently. I was ascending on an escalator, and the escalators were very crowded. The person in in front of me, when they get to the top of the escalator, simply steps off of the moving step that goes in and then holds and stays in place.

No walking.

Creating a domino effect of me walking backwards, having to take steps backwards. The person behind me thinks I'm an asshole. And I'm like, Hey, dude, you got to go. You got to move. And so it happened once. I'm like, You got to move out of the way. We're all coming Well, the second time it happened, I have my dogs with me, and they're very... They know when we get to the top, I say, Ready? One, two, three, jump. And they both jump over, and they're just incredible. Just really incredible canines. Okay, despite incredible personalities, Mr. And Mrs. Congeniality, Mr. And Mrs. Photogenic. Photogenic megawatt personality, the whole nine. They behave very well. So I'm gearing up the dogs, and I'm ready. And they're ready to go. I'm like, One, two, three, jump. And then they bang right into the heels of this woman who's just on her phone. Oh, I hate that. I was like, you've got to move. You have all of these people coming up. I'll tell you one thing I'm really digging about New York culture versus Oklahoma City culture is you can say very sincerely, What are you doing, man? You got to move out of the way.

That's It's not considered rude in New York. It is a reality-based statement that is appropriate to the situation. In Oklahoma, if somebody did that, it would be considered rude. If I were in Oklahoma, I have to go, Sorry, you need to... I'd have to tiptoe around. This person is the norm violator. This person is the one clogging the escalator. So whatever statement is ejected at them, is projected at them, is warranted because they're creating an obstacle, endangering the lives of other human beings at the airport, endangering the lives of people's pets, and all around just being narcissistic, selfish assholes. The lack of escalator etiquette is just something that I could go on and on about for quite some time.

Well, I'll tell you what, everything always boils down to the lack of self-awareness. When people are on escalators, there's a higher duty of care because you're going up and people are behind you. But your duty of care, you can't hurt everybody. If you just want to stop yourself If you're going to call yourself, that's fine. But the stopping on the phone, I see it all the time. I see it in airports, primarily, where you're walking and somebody stops to check their flight or a text or something, and it's like people are moving. And airport is not a stop and smell the roses type place. We're going from point A to point B. We don't need a lot of gocking and stopping and reading your fucking phone. And I will say, I have caught myself doing it before, and I immediately am like, Oh, my gosh, I got to stop. If a text comes in and I'm looking at it, I'm very... So I know that it's really easy to do, and so I really try to step out of it. But here's the thing. The older I get, the more New York I become, because I just don't have time to fluff people over stupid shit, especially if I don't know them.

I'm never going to see them again. I don't care if you think I'm nice. I don't care if you think I'm cunt. I just don't care. Just shut the fuck up. Move on. We're not doing this.

Yes. Airport hallways should be treated like a roadway, a highway. If you're on the highway, you don't stop in the middle of the road to check your phone, to check your Instagram notification to take a phone call. You don't do that. You pull over to the or you exit. The same thing needs to be with all walkways, staircaseways, the flat moving walkways in airport. They are active traffic zones. If you wish to see this movement, you need to pull over to the side much like you would in a car. If you don't pull over to the side, expect to be confronted with behavior that some may call cunty. That cunty Cuntiness is warranted. That is when you are a cunt for good, a cunt for order, a cunt for civility in the airport. Sometimes, cuntiness needs to be weaponized to whip people into shape. And these lollygaggers in the airport and the absolute morons, I mean, stupid morons that stop after they step off of an escalator and don't have the deduction skills to play the tape through. If I stepped off, somebody after me, considering this is a very busy airport, is probably going to step off as well.

You're not the only MF-er on the escalator.

Yeah.

People are just The longer I live, the more I think people are stupid, especially now in this 2000, 2026, I feel like.

I guess I just didn't know that such a large percentage of the US population is so done. I guess you just assume that everybody is average, intelligent, maybe a little below, maybe a little bit. You don't just think abject fucking dumb shits, and you're just seeing it more and more.

What year is it again?

2026. Would I say 2026?

No.

What'd I say?

I always say, but now I can't remember. People are just so stupid, especially in this year. 2000 and 2026. That's where I was thinking. Other day we were filming and I was doing like a... We were filming an iHip news, and you do it, and I always chuckle every time you do it because I have certain things that I say wrong, and I'm completely oblivious to it, but that's your hiccup. I have all of these in 2024, the stats of the government or polling was X, and I have to go through all these years. As I'm doing, I'm like, Don't do what pumps does. And it gets in my head, and then I start doing it, and you pick up that I start doing what you do, and then you start giggling. And so you know what? I think that it can be 2000, 2026 if you want it to be pumps.

Yeah, it's gone a long time. Okay, I have to tell you what happened to be yesterday. So I went to our little sandwich shop that we always go to.

Oh, yeah. I love that place.

Drove through, order my sandwich.

They have a drive-through?

Yeah, they have a drive-through. Ordered my sandwich sandwich, no tomatoes like I always do. I get my sandwich, I pull over and park so that I can unwrap it and make sure my lap doesn't get stuff on it. And I realized the only thing in it are cucumber and lettuce. So I whip back around, I go to drive through and said, Hey, I just ordered our number 11, but I just got a lettuce and cucumber. And it's like, Oh, yeah, we'll get that made for you. And then I just finished a book, so I was getting a new book. So the guy hands me the sandwich and he I asked you three times if you wanted a number three, and you said yes, so I think you need to listen better.

Good for him. So you ordered the cucumber sandwich?

He said I did, but I know I didn't. I always order the same thing. And I was not paying attention. And I looked at him and I go, What'd you say? And he was like, I asked you three times, and you said yes. So you need to listen better. And I just looked at him and I wish I would have said, Fuck off, but I just moved my car. But yeah, I got scoled.

Did you get the right sandwich?

Yeah, he gave me the right sandwich. But then, and I've been nauseous since then, I'm wondering if he spit in it or something. Not like full-grade vomiting, but just not quite right. And I'm thinking, what did he do?

The Karen backfire.

The Karen backfire.

He got scoled. I got scoled. See? Okay, here's the thing. I hate that you got scoled, but I have been with you multiple times when and... And, Kylie, jump in here really quick. Here's Kylie. Welcome to I've had him, Jennifer. It's head beaver in charge, Kylie. We're all here. We're all here. All right. Here's the thing. We have been having conversations before the three of us, where Kylie and I are completely on the same page, and you're in the year 2000 and 2026.

It's true. It always has been that way.

And so I have to say, to the sandwich shop owner, because they run it. I've been to that sandwich shop multiple times with you. They've never gotten my order wrong.

No, they haven't.

They are efficient. They are nice. I feel like it's a great work environment because every day you go in, if you eat inside, it's a different genre of music. Sometimes it's like metal, and then another day it's like disco, and then another day it's like hip hop. And all of these music genres, if you look at the people behind the sandwich counter, you can tell it matches each person. So I even said to Pumps one day, I feel like they let the employees play their music each day. And I really like the sandwich shop because Pumps and I both love sandwiches. So here's what I have to say. I do think that the notion that the customer is always right has been an enabling breeding grounds of Karenism. And I'm glad you got the correct sandwich, but being your friend for 25 years, I do think you probably ordered the cucumber sandwich because I've witnessed these types of things a multitude of times.

Yeah, I'm certainly not going to deny. I thought I did, but you never know. But yeah, sometimes I make no sense.

Pumps, you've totally fucked Seth and I up because of the 2000-2026. He texted me yesterday and was like, Hey, Pumps, Seth I said, 2000, 2026 in an ad, which I'm always listening for it, and I literally didn't catch it because it sounded right to me. And I went back and I was like, She said it right.

That's the thing to me. Now I'm there. I have clarity about how to say the years, and now I'm in the long COVID brain fog, perhaps 2000, 2026 million. I'm trying to be like, Fuck it. That's I think.

Fuck it.

I think you continue doing it. I don't think our listeners care, and I think they, quite frankly, find it endearing.

I find it quite charming. I do.

I think they do. All right, Kylie, what is going on on the World Wide Web regarding the World's Top DEI podcast.

I have some top reviews. This one is five stars. It says, If you don't like this podcast, you're a fat ass. And Disco Mattie writes, It doesn't matter if you are a size zero.

Yes, that's exactly right, Disco Mattie. That's exactly right. When I call you a fat ass, it has nothing to do with your ass. It's just that you're a fat ass because that's just a good- Satisfying. It's satisfying. Like when you go, Fuck it. I'm not doing it. It just doesn't feel as good to say, I think I'm going to stop. Fuck it feels profoundly Only. More satisfying.

I love Disco Matti for describing perfectly your ideology about fat ass. She nailed it in such a simple way.

Way better than I ever have.

Okay, this one has beef with you, Jen. It's titled Monsters, It's Five Stars, and Nick's writes, I was in the process of leaving a five-star review when I discovered Jen is in fact a psychopath because only a psychopath leaves their cell phone in their car and raw dogs a workout. I personally do not have the maturity or the constitution to directly confront the grunting and farting and sharding from fellow gym patrons, Sam's Sound Barrier. I hope you make lots of eye contact while you're raw dogging.

Okay. Nix9479. Nix9479. I just want to say, number one, thank you for calling me a psychopath. I appreciate that. And I mean that sincerely, because the last thing I want to be in this Nazi fascist country that we live in is a non-psychopathic fighter. Secondly, the whole gym thing, in the phones situation at the gym, are horrific. The grunters that you are talking about, I'm one of them. So I'm like, and here's the deal. I go to this gym in New York, you guys, and it is all these hot gay men everywhere. So of course, I'm on cloud nine because that is my happy place. Being surrounded by gay men takes me back to college. All of my best adult friends, gay men. And so I look around, and gay men are groomed. They have great outfits. They have great bodies. And this little trainer of mine, she's this little young whipper snapper, and she comes across as super friendly and super congenial, but she is a diabolical psychopath that She just rigorously trains me, and she'll stack on more weights, and I'm like, grunting. I'm like, Oh. Or I'm like, Fuck my life. I look around and I see everybody with the earbud in, and I support the earbud, but there is a nuance to my psychopathy.

If you have your phone with you so that you can hear something, no problem. Here's my fucking problem. You got some asshole, some hot gay guy, of course, doing, let's say, leg presses. And so he's on the machine, bogarding the machine, and then he's going to take a 30-second to 60-second break. Next thing you know, he's on Instagram. Next thing you know, he's like, Well, who is this bitch tagged here? Next thing you know, who follows. And then we're down a rabbit hole that is 10 minutes, which I relate to because I do the same fuckery Instagram all the time, which is why I don't get on social media in the gym. And if that means I am sanctimonious or I am on the moral high ground, or I am a Serena Williams style grunting hypocrite, I will own it. I will bask in it. I will bathe in it. But it is the trying to do two things that shouldn't be done at the same time. You cannot do leg presses and do reconnaissance on Instagram in between leg presses, because you never know once you start a reconnaissance mission on social media to figure out who this bitch is, who her friends are.

Do they follow anybody, any of the Trumps? And you're trying to get the deep, dark bottom of something. I relate to this. I enjoy this. It's a hobby of mine. I do not do Instagram reconnaissance missions in between leg presses or bicep curls.

Queens. I just want to say there's no one that does a reconnaissance like Ms. Welch. I mean, if you- I'm excellent at it. If you need a mission accomplished in the reconnaissance world, she's your gal, and she is focused. And I don't even think- Thank you, Pumps. I think you have too high of a standard that you would even start that at the gym because your standards are so strict.

Thank you, Pumps. And the cross-contamination of it would seem to cheapen the reconnaissance mission. Absolutely. It would be such a flippant thing to do in between bicep curls that I'm going to conduct this very important investigation in the middle of the gym when somebody's waiting on the leg press machine. I I wouldn't cheapen the toxic, absolutely none of my business reconnaissance mission that I'm on. I would keep it pure and dignified in its toxicity. Yes. I would keep it toxically pure.

That's right.

No cross-contamination. All right, Kylie, what else?

Okay, I've got a very interesting news story. It says, In Denmark, offices banned small for a week, burnout rates dropped to record lows.

Finally.

Mm-hmm. One, it began when this HR director, Sophie, noticed her team seemed exhausted by noon. She said they weren't overworked. They were over stimulated. Endless chatter, fake smile, Yada, yada, yada. The first two days that she set this up were uncomfortable. People didn't know what to do. They reached for words like caffeine. But by midweek, the office grew quiet, calm, even focused. Productivity rose 23 absenteeism dropped, and employees started taking breaks alone. It felt weirdly peaceful, one analyst said, like we remembered what concentration feels like.

Good for her. What a great idea. How innovative. I like it.

I like it, too. I think that if we didn't have a profession where the number one top thing that we have to do is small talk, I would institute the same policy, and I've had podcast and I have news. Unfortunately, said policy would cause us to go bankrupt and lose our loved, beloved, coveted listener.

Yeah, that's right. But here's the thing. Small talk is exhausting. And here's the funny thing is, I can have the exact same small talk conversation because I don't remember it. I don't remember what I said last time. So then I go to... If I see somebody again, like a week later, all my small I'll talk things have already been used because I just act like it's not happening. I just void it from my mind. Even though I know you're going to say, You say that, but you're the worst at it. I know I am.

I know. I know.

Okay, the last news story I got, I also thought was super interesting. It says, Women over 40 are having more babies than teen moms for the first time ever. And it writes, Women, 40 and older, are now giving birth at higher rates than teens. For the first time in recorded US history, the trend is linked to delayed marriage, career priorities, IVF advancements, and improved prenatal care.

I think this is fabulous. I think this is absolutely fabulous. The thing about breeding is, particularly on the right, they really think it's their business. The pressure that is put on young couples, are you going to get married? When I talk to my friends, not friends, but peers, acquaintances in Oklahoma. My oldest son has been with his girlfriend for several years, and they will say, Do you think they're going to get married? They're 22 years old. It's like the furthest thing from my mind and the furthest thing from their mind. But there's a regional component to this where if you get in the Bible Belt states, there's all this pressure on it. All of my New York friends, when I mentioned, Oh, yeah, my son's in law school. He lives with this girlfriend. They've been together for several years. Not one person has ever followed up with, Do you think they're going to get married? Then after that, in the south, it's followed up with, Are you going to have kids? Are you going to have another kid? There's all this pressure that I think comes from conservative spaces. This story, like women having it all, being able to have a career, and let's face it, when you...

Kylie, get your ass back, get your ass back up here. When they When you go through adulthood, your 20s, you think you're hot shit, you're an adult, but you're not. Your 30s, all of your inner child shit, all of the trauma comes out. Your 40s, you're starting to getting a little more. Honestly, I think 40 is a much better mental headspace to have a child than in your 20s. I think it's going to create better parenting. I think that it's the perfect time to have it. Now, for Conservatives, they're going to think, Oh, this is terrible, because actually, women are going to go out into workspaces and kick white men's ass with their efficiency. They're less hysterical, whining, grievance, titibaby. Oh, my God, the way all these mega men are. I bet Elon Musk is probably going to tweet something about this or JD Vans. They're probably going to have a heyday about women in their 40s having kids, which I think it's fabulous. I think it's so bullshit. People in Bible Belt state days to think of two 22-year-olds getting married. That's fucking crazy. It's nuts.

Well, it's not outside the norm in Oklahoma for an 18 and 19-year-old getting married. I mean, it's not I don't hear about it as much, but it definitely happens. I think that I would have been such a much better parent had I waited because I feel like I was far more competent in my 40s because I was a complete fucking disaster. In my 20s and 30s.

I agree with you. I think- Probably always, but- I think that Josh and I talk about it all the time, how difficult early parenting is, how hard it is. And the more life experience you have on the planet, the better set up you're going to be. I think delaying parenthood, quote unquote, planning parenthood, donate to planned parenthood, is incredibly important because there There's just a lot of generational fuckery that goes on with straight people and the breeding and we got to get married so we can have sex. And then they don't know anything about protection. And then they start popping out all these babies. What are they called? The Duggers? That's the biggest goddamn shit show you've ever seen in your life. One of the Duger guys is like some pedo sisters. I mean, it's just a goddamn nightmare. And I just think we need to really, really emphasize as a counterreaction to Elon Musk, who is the world's richest deadbeat dad on the planet. Jd Vance, who has three kids that he will not even stand up for mixed race people in the United States of America. Erica Kirk, who appears to not spend any time with her children on the moral high ground, lecturing everybody to breed immediately.

And women, give up your careers and breed, breed, breed. We need to be a huge resistance to that because it is inherently sexist, misogynistic, and will make women less safe, and it causes a lot of generational fuckery. I mean, if people are getting married for the sole reason to fuck, they really have no business getting married. Just go ahead and fuck, get that out of your system, mature, evolve, and then pick your spouse and decide to breed a decade or two later. You don't need to do that in your early 20s. It's crazy.

Yeah, it's crazy.

In my college experience, in my sorority in Oklahoma, a majority of the girls were simply looking for a husband. And all of the ones that married their college boyfriend. I have a few that are two times over-divorced already, and I'm 30.

Yeah.

It happens.

No, there's a whole infantilization of women that has taken on a new form where it's like, okay, you have been released enough to go to college, and that's not frowned upon. But then when you get to college, I think Charlie Kirk said this, you need to get your MRS degree. A lot of schools on the Coast, you have women that are going to school to get degrees that want to be boss bitches, that want to be badasses. Where all three of us went to school, it's It's not that. It is you're shopping for a husband, you're way more interested in who's going to marry who, and all of this old-school Iron Age bullshit. Just to remind everybody, the University of Oklahoma is the school that has the student, Samantha Flunkne, whatever her name is, that wrote a batshit essay like crazy sane, Bible thumper, psychosis, and turning point shakes down the University of Oklahoma, and she comes out the victor in that so that they could fire the very intelligent, very qualified professor who happened to be trans.

Yeah. University of Oklahoma has really fucked that situation up. Bad, bad, bad, bad. Because even all the things you said about the essay were true. It was horribly written, grammatically. It's just unbelievable that a college student would write that shit.

All right, Kyla, you may dismiss. We love you. I hate it when she goes out early, when she tries to slink out the podcast. That's why I'm like, get your ass back in here. All right, we have a guest that we're super excited about. His name is Cal Penn. He is an actor. He is a writer. He is a producer and a podcast host. Now, he's just making us look like assholes. Actor, writer, producer, and a podcast host, overachiever. The name of his podcast is Here We Go Again. Let's welcome to I've Had It, Cal Penn. A Christmas miracle has taken place. We decided to go do a live show in Atlanta on January 31st, and we were for sure the ticket sales are going to be lackluster. Nobody's going to become, I'll be damned if it didn't sell out in a couple of days. So the organizer was like, You should do another date. I'm like, That's a pretty big ask. Pretty big ask for two old broads like us. So we added an additional day. Ticket sales were getting about close to halfway, February first, center stage in Atlanta. It is also a matinée because we are going to normalize matinées.

We are going to normalize a reasonable start time. We're not going to start a show at 8: 00 or 9: 00 PM. No. It's past bedtime. You're going to wake up the next day feeling hungover, Why did I hang out with all of these radical leftists, antifascists? We're not going to do that because we're pro-matiné, we're pro-democracy, we're anti-Maga, and we're antifascists.

Come see us. It's going to be so fun. I love getting together at a live show with all of the people. It's such a community.

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How are you?

Well, I was great until I read your bio, actor, writer, producer, and podcast host. Then I feel like Pumps and I are just total slacker losers.

No, no. No, I'm kidding. You know what's funny about bios? It's like They take 20 years of your career, and it's five lines. So it looks like you've done it at the same time, consistently for that length of time. And nobody wants to talk about... I remember one of the first talk shows I went on, I think it was Craig Ferguson or something like that. And I started telling a story about all the jobs you have to work to save up your gas money to go on auditions. And he cuts me off and he's like, Nobody wants to talk about that. You're on a talk show. Nobody wants to hear that. Tell us the juice about making in the movie. I'm like, Okay, I understand.

All right, Cal Penn, what have you had it with?

Let me just pull up my list because I've made a list.

I love a grievance list.

I have a grievance list. I know it makes me sound more grievancy.

The pettier or the better.

That's how I felt about it. I'll give you the first one. It's this idea of manifesting something. And it's usually said with, I think, what we all call Instagram influencer voice. This year, I'm manifesting. I'm putting the energy out there. I'm like, Guys, I think that's called coming up with a plan. I think that's right. Or it's the opposite. It's I put the energy out there, and I manifested it, and nothing happened. Because you didn't put... It's the plan and then the action behind it. Anyway, so that's a big pet peeve of mine is either you're talking about planning or you're talking about luck. It's one of the two.

It's one of our long-time grievances. There's this woman. Oh, is it really?

Okay.

Yeah, there's this woman on Instagram. This was right when we first started the podcast. I'm looking Instagram, looking at influencers to come up with content. And this woman, she has a Birken bag and a Rolls-Royce, and she pulls up to the plane, and her husband has a matching Rolls-Royce. And it's this big, giant private plane. I mean, like big fucking golf stream, right? And she writes in the comment section, I manifested this life. Hashtag golf stream, hashtag Birken, hashtag Rolls Rolls-Royce. I just thought, Are you kidding me? And here's the problem. It's like, Okay, I get one narcissistic nut job. I get that. Right.

Yeah.

Is this aspirational for people? Because that's the problem. Are people doing that? And then all of a sudden, they've got a mood board with a golf stream in a Rolls-Royce and zero job?

This is the thing is you hit both of them at the same time. I'm I'm all for a board of goals and timelines and how I'm going to execute and all of that. But the mood board of energy is not that. And also the flashing it and saying, I manifested this, implicit in that is that anybody who does not have, if they want one, a private jet or a Birkin or whatever, just didn't do it hard enough.

Yeah.

They're the lazy ones. I'm like, Okay, I think we need a lesson on capitalism.

It's like, I feel that same way about when people say, We need to pray for the family after a horrific school shooting. They're like, We need to pray for the family. The prayers doesn't help. What you need to do is put action into... It's just like praying with... It's just not helping anything. If it were, we wouldn't have all these massive school shootings and this continue to go on. That's what drives me crazy, too, on the same line.

Maybe it's It's all just a coping mechanism.

Maybe. I think the Thoughts and prayers crowd all have a lot in common, which is what we say in Oklahoma, all hat, no cattle. It's a big performative. We're going to pray, and we're going to do all this shit, and we're for family values, and we're for life. We're for all that shit. And then they just do the perform. Like Ted Cruz, when he starts talking about praying, I'm like, There's never been a bigger walking, talking advertisement against prayer, against men, against Texans, against senators, against husbands, than you, Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz, I feel like doesn't get it. There are a lot of politicians who I've met who have walked me through this idea of they want to endorse another politician or actors. We get this all the time. Someone's like, Oh, can you help me out on a campaign? Or the opposite, Please don't help me on this campaign. Campaign because your presence would do more harm to this political campaign than good. I don't think Ted Cruz understands that calculus.

No, he runs around saying he's got an exploratory committee for the 2028 presidential election I always, every time I see that, I'm just like, why does he not know everyone hates him? Like, universally. It's unbelievable.

Yeah, it's wild.

All right, moving along. Let's go to what I think I have on your list of grievances. Something pertaining to tips.

Yes.

Tell us about this.

Here's what it's not going to be. I agree with this also, but it's not going to be like somebody poured you a glass of hot water, handed you a tea bag, swiveled the screen around and wants two extra dollars. That I understand the grievance. And also that's complicated because of the way our minimum wage works in the United States. That said, the grievance that I have is when you get your bill and tips are automatically calculated. It'll say 20% check here, 15 check here, 25 check here. But when you look at it, those numbers have been calculated after taxes. You don't calculate tips after taxes. It's on the net. It's on the service provided. And I generally, at least I'd like to think of myself as a generous tipper. I think it's important, having had service jobs in the past, I know how much you rely on that. But the pet peeve is that added thing. Don't tell me it's 25% if it's actually not 25% of what I ordered. If it's 25% of the... Because I'll tip 25%, but it shouldn't actually then be 32% that I'm tipping. Unless I want to tip 32%.

It's the hoodwink. Just let somebody tip what they want to tip.

It's the hoodwink.

Yes, but it feels icky saying it because, again, having had those jobs back in the day and having so many friends in the service industry, I know how many shitty tippers there are. I know how many people are just like, They didn't do much. Here's $2, or the food sucked, so I'm not going to tip. It's like, All right, things are a lot more complicated than that. But the little pet peeve is just be honest about how it's calculated.

I'm with you regarding tipping because I waited tables all through college, bartended, and it was a really good job for me. Not only was it good money, but when people did tip well, if I I didn't work Sunday morning with the thoughts and prayer crowd. Notoriously terrible tippers in the south. Just had to throw that in there because I didn't- I didn't realize that, by the way. I didn't realize that, by the way. They were terrible. Horrible. Nobody wanted to work Sunday church because you're not getting tipped.

Jeez, I would have thought the opposite.

It prepares you for life. It's so good. Oh, no, no, it's not the opposite. They're the worst, the worst tippers. But anyway, there is an abuse going on, tip abuse, and it's harming people in the service industry, these machines that are like, I forget what they're called, but it automatically sets up the tip screen. Here's an example. I go to the gym, I always like to get this bottle of lemon water. I go to a I'm in a self-service refrigerator. I open the door, I grab the bottle, I walk to the counter, I scan it, the bottle, and then a person has to push a button to populate where I can do my Apple Pay. Yeah. All they do is push the button, and there's a tip option. The employee has nothing to do with the way the computer system is set up, but it damages workers that are really, really hustling, where their minimum wage for waiters has been $2 for 40 years or something. It's crazy. It's crazy. Minimum wage has not increased in 20 years. It's damaging them. But I think that I'm hopeful that we can start targeting if we ever get our country back.

The corporate exploitation of this, the corporations are not only exploiting and giving their workers a bad name, but they're exploiting you, the customer, too, because they don't want to pay them a livable wage.

That's very well said and much more succinctly said than my little rant. A great example of that, I remember that, you know the restaurant Sugarfish? It's like a sushi chain.

Yeah, I love that place.

They're one of those no-tipping restaurants. And at first when I heard about this, I'm skeptical. Like, is that because what does this mean? And then you dive into it. It seems, at least from people who I've talked to who work there as well, that they're a living wage restaurant. The tips are built into the price of the food that you order. And that's generally a protection against shitty tippers, right? Because they want their staff and their members to be taken care of. So if that works well, and to your point, if that gets rid of the corporate greed, what a nice stop gap until we finally have a living minimum wage for people in these wonderful professions who service our food when we go in.

Wouldn't it be nice if these corporations or some billionaire opened up a Starbucks-style chain. At every register, it said, Please do not tip. We pay our workers a livable wage. Or is there a psychosis to once you become a billionaire, you just become a billionaire. You just become a horrible person? Can there be a benevolent billionaire that emerges and takes over, or is that not possible?

I've heard smaller scale examples of this, like a sugarfish chain or something like that. I love that. Where they do the livable wage thing. But also real small businesses. There's a family friend, a dentist that I knew when I was a kid, my parents' friends. They told me they pay full benefits, health coverage, everything to all of their employees. And it's just a small eight-person dental clinic at the time. I remember being in high school or college and realizing what that meant. I'm like, Aren't you guys losing a lot of money doing that? And they both were like, Well, first of all, we're immigrants who got to come here for a better life. Most of our employees are first-generation immigrants who went to trade school, and we just think it's a no-brainer. They are the reason we have this thriving business. We have to cover their health care and their benefits and all of that. And the way it was explained, I was like, Oh, yeah, wait, why isn't this just a thing? Where is the human decency aspect of it that cuts ahead of the greed there, to your point? Anyway.

All right. We're in agreement.

We're in agreement.

Is it true that you have been friends with Mayor, Mom Donnie, since you were 14 years old?

What I love about this question is it implies that he and I are the same age, and I'm way older so that makes me feel good.

Good on you.

It makes me feel very good. So thank you. I've known him since he was 14. Not you. Okay. Not me. I was in my, I guess, late 20s. His mom is a wonderful academy nominated film director named Mira Nier. And when I was a kid, one of the first movies of hers that I saw was called Mississippi Masala, which was, incidentally, one of Denzel Washington's first movies. And you know how when you're young, there's a couple of movies or actors or directors that make you go, oh, wait, maybe this is a thing that I can do, too. So she was one of those people for me when I was a kid. And then cut to this movie called The Namesake that she was directing, that I, for whatever could not get an audition for this movie. My agent couldn't get me in. So I wrote Mira a letter that basically said, you're one of the catalysts for why I became an actor. I love the book that this script is based on. You have to let me audition for the lead in your movie. And she called and said, Fly to New York. I was living in LA at the time.

Fly to New York and audition for me. And I walk into this audition. And the first thing she says is, I just want you to know, I read your letter and my 14-year-old son, Zoraan, is a huge fan of your stoner movie, Harold and Kamara, Go to White Castle. And for the last three months, he and his best friend Sam have been begging me to audition you for the lead in my independent drama. And they showed me clips from Harold and Kamara, and it just showed me that you're the wrong person for this job. But then I got your letter and I was like, All right, let's let him come in. It'll mean a lot to him. Why not? Then, thankfully, I did well in the audition. I ended up getting cast in the job. The day of the audition, actually, she says, Once you're done, my son would love to say hello if you have a few minutes. He'd stop by after school. I said, once I got the job, also, I half jokingly was like, Hey, man, if you ever need anything later on, I got your back. I'm just glad when he ran for office, he wasn't this crazy right winger who I would have owed a vote of favor, too.

Oh, my God.

That could have been really bad because you made the promise so long ago.

Yeah, exactly.

Do you live in New York or LA?

I do. I'm in New York. I was in LA for a long time, but I'm in New York now. How about you guys?

Did you I'm in New York. I'm still in Oklahoma City. Just recently, my youngest son graduated, and I decided to flee the Bible Belt. I'm a Bible Belt refugee. Yeah, awesome. But were you able to participate Did you campaign for him? Did you go to his inauguration? I went to his watch party, and it was just electric.

Oh, awesome. Yeah. I helped him from the time that he ran for state assembly. I was really honored to give him a hand with some fundraisers and a few events and things like that. And I was also really floored. Like, look, you're asking the most biased person in the world. I've known him since he was 14, and he's the reason I got one of my favorite jobs. So just clamp that little nugget as you will. But he texted me a few years ago when he was an assembly member and was on a hunger strike with the New York City taxi workers for debt forgiveness. And he was just like, Hey, man, will you come down and just say hi to the folks who are on the hunger strike with me? It would help with morale and we're hoping to put a lot more pressure, whatever. And I was like, oh, you're actually on a hunger strike. I read your Twitter that said you were doing it, but you're actually living there for this? Yes, of course. I'll come by. And I had texted a guy I knew in Mayor De Blasio's office at the time.

And just doing one of those things privately. It's like, Hey, I'm going to go see my friend who's on a hunger strike. Maybe somebody from the Mayor's office could come out, and that would help get this taken. Put a little pressure if you can, privately. The response I got was like, Yeah, we're aware of the hunger strike. Obviously, we're not doing anything about it. There's not going to be any debt forgiveness, but thanks for letting us know that you're going. I was like, Well, that's gross. And then I go. It was very inspiring to see Zora with all the taxi workers, and cut to a few weeks later, and they achieved this debt forgiveness plan against all these odds. I was just so proud of him and was following all of his, whether it's his human rights advocacy or this free bus pilot program and seeing how... I mean, you saw this with the Trump video in the oval office, but he definitely appreciates. So there are plenty of people who may disagree with him on policy or tactics or anything, but he's not afraid to actually have a conversation. A friendly is too trite of a word, but a human conversation with somebody about shared goals and things like that.

And I just feel like, who does that anymore? So it's been exciting. And yes, went to inauguration. It was still cold, but a really special, special morning.

Were you surprised how Trump just fawned all over him in the oval office after he'd been, he's a Communist. All this shit he has said. And then it was just like, he was like, I love you, Zoran.

I think a lot of people... I watched it live, and I was sitting this very seriously as it started. And by the end, I was just like, This is amazing. I think two things. One, the Zoran you see is really who he is and who he has always been, even since he was a kid. So it does not surprise me that he charmed the President in that sense, right? And wasn't... Because I feel like if you look at all these Democrats, whether it's Schumer, Hakeem Jeffrey, or any of these people, they're clearly really intimidated by Trump. If the only thing you can do is to either agree with him or continue to fund ICE or take a picture with a baseball bat and be like, We did it, then that's There's nothing real about that, right? And I think Zoran is not intimidated. Like I said, he's happy to have a conversation with anybody, and he does it in a very human way. The flip side to that also is, I feel like we're now in this place where There's this manufactured outrage about anything the President does as if he didn't promise he was going to do it.

Exactly. And he is an Emmy nominated reality TV star.

Totally.

You don't replicate that if you're a Democrat. Like the mistake that I think even Gavin Newsom is making is you're punching down, trying to get all this traction on social media. It feels good. It tracks because... But it's all a response to this Emmy nominated reality TV star. You have to craft your own path in a positive, progressive, forward thinking way that gets results if you actually want to drive the narrative. And there are no Democrats right now who are doing that. They're all only doing a response to what the President is. So it was refreshing to see Zara in the oval office having an actual conversation with the President in a real way. Like the stakes are really high, and he didn't hold back, obviously, in that meeting, but it was still a great meeting. And so it doesn't surprise me that they get along, and hopefully that lasts.

Yeah, I think that shows how much of what Trump does is performative. And there's no question he's a racist. However, this man has no conviction. Trump doesn't have conviction in anything except for him and his ego, and protecting his fragile ego. So when Zoraun walks in, a brown-skinned Muslim, is Trump Islamophobic? I'm like, Sure. Is he racist? Sure. All of those things, there's no question. But he's such a prostitute, Donald Trump, that when Zoraun walked in, he saw a good-looking winner, and that superseded even his racism. And that is the con. This man is the world's best con artist, because when Zora walked in, he didn't see brown-skinned, he didn't see Muslim. He saw, well, here's this good-looking winner took on all these asshole hedge fund guys that probably used to look down on Trump because they knew Trump was full of shit in Manhattan, et cetera. I thought it was a really fascinating... I was boarding a flight and I'm refreshing my Twitter, refreshing my Twitter, trying to inject this into my veins. My favorite part was when they're like, You called the President a fascist. Would you like to take that back? And Trump's like, Don't worry about It's okay.

You can say yes. Sure. I'll just add to what you said. And this is true, and my understanding is this is what the mayor shared with the President is that one of the ways that he won, obviously, was by expanding the electorate and registering new people to vote. But there were a lot of people who voted for Zaraun who were Trump voters. And so he reached out to them and said, what was it about the President's campaign that made you want to vote for him? And it was all affordability. And so I think they, I assume at least it seems from the readout of that meeting that they connected on that and that Zaraun presumably shared a lot of that with the president that, look, there are a lot of people in New York who were rooting for you and are rooting for me also. So maybe we can deliver the things that they voted for both of us for. And how refreshing would that be if we actually got results from that?

Let's not kid ourselves. Yeah, I was going to say-I'm not saying- Zora is smart. Zora is surrounded by a lot of very smart people, and they had the psychological profile. I'm sure that he went in and flattered him in a way that Trump responds to. You see anybody who wants to get something from Trump has this psychological profile. What's so crazy about this whole thing, Cal, is the President of the United States is the easiest motherfucker on the planet to manipulate. If I wanted to manipulate him, I could go, You know what? I think your hair looks great. And honestly, I don't care what Stormy Daniel says. I bet your dick is bigger than Obama's. Hookline thinker, he'd be in. You have the easiest motherfucker on the planet to manipulate. But I do think there is a very important component to what Zora did in taking on the billionaire class. And more than anything, he's able to walk into the White House in a way that Schumer and Hakeem are unable to do. He walks in with full-blown conviction. He has conviction. He stands up. If he sees an injustice, he stands up to it immediately.

If he sees or hears somebody do something that is racist, he stands up immediately. It doesn't sit on the side and percolate. No, exactly. All of these other Democrats are just there's no conviction. It's all for show.

It's either for show or it's somebody as awful as Kristen Gillibrand, who doesn't even show up or comment. Totally. She's like agreeing with Trump on all this. Yeah, let's continue to fund this nonsense. It's just so it is it is very I'm not foolish about how difficult the next four years will be for him, but I am It's helpful that the new leadership style with a lot of the coalitions that Zaron has built. It's exciting. It's hopeful. It's hopeful at a time where there's not a lot to be hopeful about.

If only he in the United States. Oh, I know.

Honestly, it's going to be refreshing to have somebody who can't be president in an office like this because so often people are like, Oh, I can't make this choice because I'm going to run for president one day. It's limiting.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

Although I would sure like it.

Yeah, no, for sure. It's the same. But I'm just finding... I'm just outlining the silver lining there in the fact that he can't be President.

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Com/hadit. That's ASPCA. Petinsurance. Com/hadit. Eligibility restrictions apply. Visit ASPCAPetinsurance. Com/amazonterms for more info. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company, and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. Okay, Cal, let's play Had It or Hit It. Oh my God. Welcome to Had It or Hit It. I would hit it. Had It. I hit it every day, sometimes twice a day. All right. Had it or hit it, faux food allergies.

Had it. Had it. Had It. Had It hard. Let me just... So I'm allergic to tree nuts. It is an anaphylactic allergy. I have to go to the hospital if there's cross-contamination, if there's a little bit of like somebody doesn't know there's cashe paste in something, all of that. When I'm out at dinner with a friend who has elected to be gluten free or something free. Now, again, I just want to be clear, I'm not talking about somebody who has a medical illness and can't have gluten. That's obviously in the same category as a medical allergy, which is what I have. I'm talking about the faux ones that I read an article in two weeks ago, I decided to start going gluten free. And so when I say something like, I'm deathly allergic to tree nuts, and they're like, and me too, with gluten. No, you're not dying. You You are not dying. You might have a little tiny tummy ache. That what you're doing is really awful because there are people who medically cannot have gluten, and you are now screwing it up for everybody else by pretending. Just say that it's a preference.

There's nothing wrong with a preference. I don't eat pork. It's a preference.

I'm not going to walk in and do- You know what I call this? What? I call this histrionic allergy disorder. You have people that have celiacs disease, and that is real, and that is a problem, and it's less than 1% of the population. Then you have the histrionic allergy disorder people who all day long, they talk about, I'm gluten free. I can't eat gluten. I can't eat gluten. Then they get fucking all liquered up, just snockered us all get out. Then it's 2: 00 AM and it's gluten galore, and there's absolutely zero fallout from it. It's those people, the lying liars, that are hijacked tracking other people's allergies for histrionic purposes that I have a huge problem with.

I feel like I and the tree nut allergy crowd should get together with the actual celiac crowd and do a really funny doc short about the people you described who just will get shit-faced at 2: 00 AM and then eat all the gluten. There's a funny documentary there.

I completely agree.

You can get producer credits, Jennifer. Remember?

Exactly. I can add to my bio the next time I'm on a podcast.

I have as many qualifications as Cal does now because I'm at- Yeah.

Pretty good. Like you, Cal.

Yeah, great. Hey, you do it. You don't need me. I'll do the voiceover.

Okay. All right. Had it or hit it. Smartphone charging plugs.

Oh, Lord. Just had it, man. I get that they are built to make us spend money every couple of years, and you got to get an adapter for the thing. And look, I've got... Is this a video pod also? Or is this just for us? Yeah. Okay. So you got this thing, but then you have to put this on it now. You have to buy that if you want to. But then that's not going to work either. So then you just have to buy a new... I get it. I understand that it's built for this, but man, that's just annoying.

Yeah. Like, Apple doesn't have enough money. They can just let us all keep the same chargers. Here's what irritates the shit out of me on it. Right when hotel rooms started using, just don't use the electrical outlet. We'll just make a place for your charging cord. It's like five minutes later, then we all went to the USB cord. So now they don't have plug-in available, and you can't charge your phone. That drives me fucking crazy.

Yes. So we're all in the same boat here.

I almost feel like everybody says, Well, no, it's better. I I'm like, At some point we have to call a racket a racket. Every time I go get a new phone, it's a new charger making my then earpods require a different charger. It's a never-ending road of rackets and fuckery from these corporations. I just think we need a universal cord across the board.

Yeah, I don't want my bundle of wires as if I'm an 80-year-old man next to my plug. No shade to all the uncles who I based that comment on, but they know what I'm talking about. Just bundles of wires and chargers, just clear electrical hazard. I don't want to be that guy.

Okay, hat it or hit it. You're going to have to help us with this. Fad drugs.

Fad drugs meaning, for example, ayahuasca or things that have had actual uses in native cultures or communities that are now like, Hey, $9,000 and go on an ayahuasca retreat somewhere in Mexico. They're like the fad, this is a cleanse. First of all, it's okay to say that you have $9,000 and you want to just get high with a bunch of other venture capitalists in the middle of Mexico disguised as a thing that's apparently based in native culture, even though a massive corporation is putting this tour together. Totally fine, if you want to. So to me, it's It's like, if that's what we mean by fat drugs, yeah, I don't... Look, also with all this stuff, something like that, what a personal choice. It's not for me. It's only irritating when you have to hear about it. It's like your friend who goes to Burning Man and calls Burning Man home and then says that the real world, I don't know, they have a term for this. The real world is not the actual real world. Their actual home is the two weeks at Burning Man. And they're so high for the next six weeks. And you just You have to interact.

To me, that's the category I'm saying. I'm not saying, Don't do it. If that's your thing, man, go for it. Who am I to judge? It's just that when it comes into your day to day, it's like, Oh, right. He just got back from burning, man. We need to keep our distance for six weeks and make sure he drinks a lot of water.

And exfoliates.

Yeah.

Make sure your feet are clean.

I've never been, so I shouldn't talk, but I'm just like, I don't think you can pay me enough money to go. It just sounds absolutely Absolutely horrible. All these people rolling around in a kettle pedal. I can't imagine anything grosser.

The art looks incredible. The experience doesn't seem like it's for me. I have plenty of friends who have gone and have loved it. I haven't met anybody who went and was like, It was okay. I feel like whatever you see on Instagram is probably pretty accurate in terms of, Should I go or should I not go? Not for me, but definitely right for the next door neighbor who went 10 times.

Okay.

Had it or hit it, I Oh, Had it. Had it. I mean, what more is there to say? Even the idea of what it was supposed to be of I mean, it's just so far beyond the pale of... They're going after innocent immigrants and American citizens, shooting them in the face. Both parties continue to fund ICE. I mean, it's completely ludicrous.

I think ICE needs to be abolished. But furthermore, let's talk about what is called the Kavanaugh Rule right now. And this is a Supreme Court ruling, where because of the way you look, and those of you that are listening, Cal is a brown-skinned man. And because of the Kavanaugh Rule, you can be stopped legally by ICE or looking the way you look in the United States of America.

Yeah, it's really clarifying because the Supreme Court for years and years, the precedent was you cannot racially profile. It was illegal. And now it's like, oh, well, if Trump and his administration want to do it, we're all for it. I mean, it's sickening.

It's sickening. And it also, imagine what this does, too, right? If you are a person with privilege, as I am, imagine there was some ICE agent who decides to detain me. A pretty cursory Google shows you that I was born and raised in the US and what I do for a living. Now, imagine you don't have that luxury or that privilege, whether you're a citizen or not. There's just completely no grounds for this. It's not just the racial component, but then the privilege aspect on top of it is that somebody like me doesn't have to worry because of what I do for a living. But somebody who looks exactly like me or the majority of New York has to worry because what do you do for a living? And is there a record of who you are? And do you have the right idea on you when you're just running to the grocery store? I agree with you. It should be abolished. And I think there were plenty of rational people who just thought, Oh, it can be fixed. Ice can be fixed. No, I think it's clear that it's past that point. And I keep going back to this because we have to remember who funded it.

I hope people on the left, lawmakers, are feeling that pressure.

I hope so, but I don't think that Chuckles or Hakeem are going to do a goddamn thing about it. You bring up a very important point, and it is that most of these Republican laws, whether they are abortion bans, the Kavanaugh Rule, which apparently Justice Kavanaugh, the whining, snot slinging, crying beer drinker during his confirmation hearings, men are not emotional, therefore fit for office. He doesn't like that this is being called the Kavanaugh Rule. I want to always bring it up and rub that in his face that he is the one that wrote the affirming opinion on such a racist piece of shit legislation, and his name should always be linked to that. But the poor are attacked first. From our home state, Oklahoma, there's an abortion ban. If Pumps has a daughter, if her daughter were pregnant for whatever the reason, it's nobody's business but her daughter's, they would have the money to fly to California, to Colorado, to a safe space. The poorest people get hit the worst by all of these Republican laws. At the same time, these are the family values, the Jesus people, the moral high ground, the Lord this, the thoughts and prayers.

To me, and I'm just going to say it, and I've been saying this on and on and on again, MAGA is a death cult. It is just all of their policies, all of their Their actions lead to death. The dismantling of the EPA, the dismantling of the FDA, the vaccine rescheduling, Mr. Brainworm, piece of shit, RFK Jr, The abortion bans, the ICE raids, the concentration camps, Allegator Alcatraz, Seacot, and others. It all leads to death.

None of this helps anybody. There's another budgetary fight that's coming up, like now in the next few weeks. So we saw the last time Schumer was like, The Affordable Care Act doesn't matter enough. Let's go ahead and open up the government. So now we've got that fight again, plus the ICE fight, tack on abortion, human rights, obviously, young people who happen to be LGBTQIA, on and on and on. My boyfriend Josh is from rural Mississippi. He talked to young white kids in rural Mississippi and the access points that they have for health care education that are being cut off as well. I hope that anybody who is, I don't know how many actual, aside from in AOC, Bernie, etc, there are. But I hope that in the coming weeks, the views of yours, which are pretty well reflected in everybody who's so pissed off right now, I hope they take that to heart and say, You got to give us some concessions here if you want. If you want things to be open.

You bring up something that I've been so passionate about all of my adult life, and it is young queer and gay people in really deeply red spaces. In the '90s, in the early '90s, when I was a student at the University of Oklahoma, I was an atheist in the Bible Belt. I didn't want to hang out with all the Bible study girls. I hung out with gay men, and they were the most welcoming. The same people that bullied me bullied them. We were able to have this relationship. What so many of these men went through as the AIDS epidemic was still very, very dangerous in the early '90s. They just started the cocktail of drugs, but I had some friends that were on it, and they were so sick from taking the drugs to treat their AIDS. But more than anything, their peers and their families and their churches and the isolation and the bullying that they were exposed to and the lack of love and emotional safety that they felt, that still very much exists. And this administration has exacerbated this homophobia. And in red states, this type of homophobia is institutionalized. It's taught to children.

It's embraced. It is nourished. It is watered. It is still so insidious. And it's one of the bigotries that white people get a pass for and even did in more liberal times in the country. It really is something that I have really fought hard for and continue to fight hard for my whole adult life. My mother told me when I was younger, and I asked probably six, Why would somebody be gay? She goes, Well, darling, all you need to know about that is nobody in their right goddamn mind would choose to be gay in the middle of the Bible Belt. Immediately taught me, this is not a choice. Our responsibility is love these people. To your boyfriend from Mississippi, these are very unheard voices that need our support because their governments bully them, their churches bully them, their friends' parents bully them. It's just awful.

Yeah, well said. There are so many great organizations that are doing that real work who don't trend as much as some of the larger great organizations that that do a lot of this work. I'm glad you brought that up. Hopefully, are you still in touch with all those friends?

Yeah, all of them.

That's awesome.

Yeah. All right, last one. How did or hit it, the United States of America?

Oh, hit it. We live here. This is our home. You can't abandon your home. I'll overuse the phrase that boring politicians overuse, like the experiment of the American democracy or whatever. But the true part of it is, look, I'll be super transparent and biased. Living in a place like New York City, which has a hard left turn as of the last two weeks, is for those of us who are on the left, a pretty hopeful place to be, especially when there's so much regression at the federal level and in a lot of other supposedly blue states. So I am not ready to abandon yet. If it continues down this path, I would like to explore Ireland. No, I'm just kidding. No, I think hit it. This is our home, and you have to continue to fight for what you believe in. I think one of the most insidious things that the right certainly does, but even frankly, Kamala and Biden did so well, is if you speak up in protest making you feel like you're anti-American or you're part of the problem. Kamala did this with a lot of the human rights protests sisters on the Gaza issue when she was running.

Biden obviously did. Trump and Vance do it now regularly for almost any issue, including ICE protests and abortion protests and all of the above. So the second we start believing that raising our voices means we're un-American, I think that feeds into the like, should we move somewhere else? It's like, no, don't believe. That's that thing is false that they're asking you to believe. They're asking you to believe that so that you feel disempowered and that you feel complacent. And then that's how they continue to win. I'm going to say hit because I'm still a believer that we have to keep showing up and doing the right thing.

I love it. And you know what I love about New York City and some other really brave cities in the United States? When they're called sanctuary cities. This, to me, is so important because so many people are marginalized or vulnerable. To feel like you have a politician like Zora or like Mayor Fray in Minneapolis right now who is really meeting human suffering and providing sanctuary in a time of mass abuse. I think about the Trump administration as being like life beaters. They're just beating everybody up. They're toxic, they're drunk, they're horrible. And you want sanctuary, and you want safety, and you want emotional safety and camaraderie. It's interesting coming from a space like Oklahoma, which claims the moral high ground. They're so religious, BFF with Jesus Christ and all this stuff, and the cruelty that is injected into Oklahoma politics, like they banned all trans care. Schools are allowed to fire a trans professor at the University of Oklahoma because her student is a dumb shit that wrote a dumb shit essay. Thinking about that trans professor at the University of Oklahoma, knowing that turning point probably has her identity is targeting her, I think about the idea of sanctuary cities and how much more, quote, unquote alpha that idea is and how much more manly it is, and I mean, mainly in the sense that women can be in this, too, to take care of people.

How much more courage it takes to stand up and look at a bully or look at a bigot or look at a homophobe in the face and say, no, little dick, you're not going to do that, and we're going to keep these people safe. And I'm so fucking sick of these alphas, like celebrating the biggest dorkiest villains in America. I'm with you. I hit it. I think we need to keep emphasizing our friends that are getting targeted by this administration, the poor, all of those beautiful blue dots and horrifically red spaces. We have to fight for sanctuary, not just in New York, not just in Minneapolis or Los Angeles, but everywhere.

The false self-defined alpha thing is clearly just massive insecurity. Totally. It's so obvious that it's massive insecurity. It makes me laugh, except then the stakes get real for really vulnerable people, and that's why we got to keep showing up.

Yeah, so true.

Cal Penn, you're cool. You're so cool.

You both are awesome. This was really fun.

You've been on I've had it.

Yeah, thank you. I get a lot of clout from it.

I'm going to work on my bio. Yeah.

I'm going to write that documentary so she can be a producer and then you can do an entry writer.

I should add a line of was hung over for nine years or something like that, just so it's clear that that all didn't happen in the same year.

We could do a tip for tat back and forth as we do podcast appearances. All right. It's so lovely to meet you. You, too. I hope to connect with you again. Oh, I want to plug your podcast podcast. It's called Listener. It's called Here We Go Again. It's distributed by iHeart, and it's available on the iHeart radio app or wherever you listen to your podcast.

Can I do a quick 30 seconds on what it is? Because I realized that I didn't do that yet.

Here we go again.

I wanted to explore the past, present, and future of specific topics in a way, mostly history and pop culture, in a way that makes you feel like you learned something from it. I didn't want to replicate. There's so many great political podcasts, but I didn't want to replicate the doom and gloom thing of like, here's how shitty something is, and here's why it'll continue to be shitty. So for example, our first episode was Bill Nye. Everybody loves Bill Nye. He joined me to outline the space race. So in the '80s, the space race in the '60s, even, how do we get to the moon, was all between the US and the Soviet Union in competition. And so much of the competition today is now privatized. It's between billionaires, right? So why did that happen? What's the direction of it? Are we still funding space exploration, and how does it help us on Earth? Those are some of the... It's a fun, light listen that hopefully makes you feel like you learned a little something at the end.

I like it. I'm going to check it out because that's interesting.

Yeah. If you're a little bit of a nerd, I hope you hit because it's been a... And also there are things like, so we had Pete Buttage on to talk about... Actually, we talked about infrastructure, which is a horrible word that you should never put in the title of what's the podcast about. But he He was the Transportation Secretary, so he was able to outline certain things. But I was like, You know what? This is my podcast, and I just have my grievance. Actually, you might like this. So my grievance was like, You're probably the only person in America who can answer this question for me. When your flight lands early somewhere, and you might even be like 30 minutes early, why does the captain get on and say something like, Ladies and gentlemen, we're 30 minutes early, and there's no gate ready for us because they didn't know that we were coming. What do you mean they didn't know we were coming. How is that possible? The technology is such that they knew we were coming. That's how you were able to land, right? So I was like, Pete- What did he say? So he said, I was hoping for some conspiracy answer, but he was like, Well, yes, they shouldn't lie to you about that.

The real reason is that certain types of planes have to occupy certain types of gates. So even if you see that there are 10 gates open, the gate may not have been assigned to that type of plane. To that airline. Right. And then the ramp operators also. It's a capitalism. They may not have enough ramp operators at that airport for all of the flights going in and out. So if you're early outside of whatever that slot that you were allocated, you just have to wait. I was like, Well, all right. Thanks for the real answer, Pete. But he was great. He was such a great guest.

Before we go, I just had to remind everybody, as Donald Trump is sitting around with like 95,000 ass kissers behind him, and somebody mentions Pete Bootage Edge, he just looks up and he goes, Pete Bootage Edge. Have you all seen this?

I've seen that clip where he just, he can't say it, but he's not even paying attention, but it's such a trigger.

Yeah, because somebody described to him how to say it. It's Pete Boot, like a boot on your foot, Edge Edge. Every time he always goes, Pete Boot, Edge, Edge. Pete Boot, our toddler fucking moron president. Cal Penn, you're cool. Cooler now that you've been with the IHIP ladies. No question about it. You can add that to your intro. Absolutely. Guest on I've Had It. Yeah. All right. Thank you both. You have a good one.

This was a lot of fun. Thank you for having me.

Let me tell you how I feel about him. First of all, I loved his designated survivor, and I loved him in it. I've been aware of him for a while, but he's one of those people that you're with and you just feel like... He's a very optimistic, sunny-side person, I feel like. I like that because you and I I probably won't get classified as that. So I just enjoyed him a lot.

Yeah, I love that. And as you say that, I agree with you about that's the feeling that I have after. And then I immediately start to empathize with how calm as feel right now. As he gets off of this podcast. And he's probably like, You know what? Those are the two biggest Debbie Downers, Dune and Claim.

All they do is bitch and moan and cry.

Bitch is on the planet. I feel like I need to go exfoliate right now.

Yeah. No, that would not surprise me. Like, he brought us up, we brought him down. Yes.

All right, listener, please buy your tickets for our live show in Atlanta. The first day sold out because we're high shit. Right. Nobody was more shocked than we were at the sales. No one. They might have been more shocked. And there are people left for Sunday, February first in Atlanta at Center Stage Pumps.

Tell them, we will see you next Tuesday and Thursday.

I'll tell you what I've had it with. Let's hear it. I've had it with that. Listen up, patriots, gaitriots, and natriots. We have a new podcast that has dropped. It's called iHip News. It's Monday through Friday, every day, 15 to 20 minutes hot takes on the political landscape of the United States of America, always served with a side of petty grievances.

We are on all the available platforms, Apple, Spotify, Google, whatever. You get your podcast and YouTube.

Please go rate, subscribe, and review so that we will chart upwards with America's greatest legal mind, pumps. Pumps, Pumps, What does an angel say? Caca. A little bit more enthusiasm. Caca. That's it. That's... Caca. That's the patriotism that this country means right there.