Maybe It Was Always Trash? (Part 1)

In this episode of The Top Guys Podcast, Devon kicks things off by revisiting Friends and realizing the laugh track may have been doing a whole lot of community service. From there, he somehow pitches the gritty Phoebe prequel nobody asked for—but honestly, we kind of need now.

Chris then commits podcast crimes by questioning Eddie Murphy's "Boomerang." We don't know him.

Then Omar takes the conversation into wrestling, arguing that the TKO era of WWE may have revealed something ugly: the joy is being squeezed out of a family-friendly wrestling tradition in favor of corporate extraction, higher prices, and a product that feels less accessible than it used to.

It’s nostalgia, accountability, bad endings, corporate nonsense, and three friends asking whether some of the things we loved were actually good… or if we were just younger.

Maybe it was always trash?

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:10

This should be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Chris, I I sent Devon a uh I've got nostalgic for I'm this is the oddest thing, man. This it makes no sense at all. But I'm, you know, you will laugh at this. Sure. For whatever reason, you ever like hate something, but you don't hate all of it, and so you you kind of hate watch it, and then you you keep wanting to like it. Again, I'm talking about Batman versus Superman. Oh. There are. I saw it in the theater, hated it, but went back to make sure I hated it to watch it again. And hmm, I've seen that movie now probably five times.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

That's an unfortunate amount of your life that you have devoted to some objectively garbage shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

It's because of the Batman fight scene that I love. I think that's why I kind of give it grace.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

But baby, we got YouTube. You can just watch that.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

You can just watch that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Five-minute sequence.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

I have no idea what like so I got nostalgic for it. And I watched it again. And I hit Define up and I was like, hey man, this isn't as bad as I remember. He basically was like, he basically hung up on a text. He was like, he basically was like, hey man, F you was kind of what he said.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Yeah, it was like you lost it. What little bit of mind you had. He said, you lost what little bit of mind you have left.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I was like, no, man, it's this, but it's good. No.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

One of the only times I ever hung up on my mama. She called me on a Sunday, woke me up from a nap when I was in college to tell me to extol about the virtues of Blade Trinity.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

I forgot my sword.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

The way I confirmed what she was talking about. I was like, nigga, you woke me up on a Sunday. Bro, I go to school tomorrow. And I did not care about the consequences of such a thing because my college was essentially across the bridge.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

So So you can say that and get away with it. You weren't gonna die. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

No, no, uh, the opposite. She could have just operated and shown up at the door. Like she could have. Your mother just spawning at the door. Just like a like a Jojo stand. Just how dare you hang up on. But what's funny is this this becomes yet another connecting thread between me and the love of my life. Her dad called her the same way to tell her about Blade Trinity. And she was like, You're out of your goddamn mind.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Let me ask you this, man. Because is her dad still with us?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Okay. Yes. Based on their love of this, has that changed your opinion of it because of their love for it? No. Like, have you damn no?

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Just because you love people don't mean that you gotta agree with every goddamn dumbass thing they do. No. Play training is a piece of shit. It is awful. It is awful. The only reason it's not the subject of my it's always trash in the next or current episode is because everybody knows it's trash. This would not be revelatory content. It's terrible. You have a better chance finding you have more interesting content, I would wager, finding people who do not hate that damn movie.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

That's fair. You're not wrong.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

It's not a good movie. So back to Batman v Superman.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Listen, Devon hung up on the text.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Yeah. That's basically what I was like, as Devon, as you were away, I was telling you about the last time I hit you up and was like, Oh, hey man, it was good. And you were like, Yeah, F you.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

You know, um, I was just like, I that's what you said. It's not a good movie. It's not. It's just not a good movie. It's oh man.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

It's not a good movie, but it has the fight scene that I like.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

I mean, you two. Enjoy, you know what? Like you were saying before. Enjoy what you enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

That is that is the well man, hey man, if you like it, I love it. I know. If you like it, I love it. And again, if anybody black ever says that to you kids, they don't love it. We don't actually love it. No. No. That's that's what, yeah, we're just saying that to you.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Live and let to be. Let to be. Let go and let to be. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Oh man, let go and let to be.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Let go.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Oh my god. You know, before Tubi, I held on to bitterness and and anger.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

But now, because of Tubi, I'm able to go.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

So Tubi, thank you. Thank you, Tooby.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

You know, in another, in another Mother's Day related anecdote, I can give you the Cherie Scott review of Batman v Superman when we watch it on TNT. Uh oh, okay. Why is any of this happening? Why they beefing? Right. Data Superfriends. That's it. That's the movie. Boom!

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Invalidated completely.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

That's fair.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

And she was like half stoned, and it was like But like why they beefing? It's Superman and Batman. Why?

SPEAKER_02 7:41

That's a fair question. Yeah, no, that's fair. Man.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

They should have just made World's Finest.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

They should have. Yeah. But you know what?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I to this day, I don't know why we don't have it.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

But you know what? I think it couldn't have happened because DC itself as an as a publishing entity and Warner Brothers itself as a content creation factory, neither one was having the best time. So I don't think that there would have been enough synergy, even though they did have a Warner Brothers to DC liaison. I think her name was Diane Nelson. They did not have the synergy to actually do that type of thing because we tend to forget that when those movies were coming out, DC itself was knee deep into the new 52, which was a fair point time comics. Especially for DC comics. Like, dude, that could be a whole thing that I could just write about 30 minutes. Where me as a lifelong DC fan essentially gave up reading DC comics for like five or six years.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Dude, do it because the whole premise of the episode is it was always trash. Yeah. You could you could wax poetic on the new 52. I would love to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yeah, oh yeah, I'll I'll do that someday. But this one I've got I've got something. You got other ones? Okay. So y'all ready to go into the next one?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah, yeah. Are we gonna we're gonna do like a whole intro and stuff and then blah blah blah. Yeah. Whole intro. Okay, okay. Yeah, because I got I'm doing these little like stupid a podcast where things, if you don't mind. Please. Because they seem to be poppy. In a world. All right. Here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Hey y'all, it's Devon. Welcome to another Top Guys Podcast. A podcast where the person speaking, where if they said, huh, I thought they already died. Every time I heard someone died or a superpower, I'd be frickin' Galactus. That's it. Rest in peace, Sherman Helmsley. This week's episode. This week's episode is Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here the whole podcast. No, I just found out Sherman Helmsley died.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

That doesn't mean he recently died.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

This is how far behind and stuff I am. I'm just finding out. I've been doing stuff. You do know that Red Fox has left us, yes? I do. I do know that. Okay. Okay. All right. Elizabeth. But yeah, this episode is called It Was Never Good to Begin with. Nostalgia Lies. Essentially, we're going to be talking about things that we thought were once good, but now we're realizing eh, that was actually kind of trash. So who would like to start? I can start if you want.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Please, sir.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

All right. I'll go first. Recently I turned on the TV, and in syndication, I saw that an episode of Friends was running. And I used to maybe the first five seasons, I watched that show religiously. Because I'm gonna be honest, there were three cute women on it. So essentially, in that that that show really to me was nothing but me watching the adventures of three cute women in an apartment with three guys who just did not really even do anything for me. But the long story short on Friends is it was a sitcom where six white New Yorkers avoid black people and people of color for a 10-year uh run on NBC. And the thing that really struck me as I sat there and I watched maybe that one minute of Friends was the laugh track is really pushing this thing along. Because the jokes that they were throwing out there were not funny at all. The situations that they were in were not funny at all. Honestly, those six people that were on there, with the exception of Phoebe, were pretty freaking insufferable. Like they were just so insanely insufferable and self-centered. And my God, Chandler, I could not stand that MF. Like, Chandler was like that guy at work who would go up to a black guy in the office and go, hey, dude, I saw that there are you gonna go see that uh Kumo D concert? He would say this stuff in 1997. Like, it would just be like, dude, why are you talking to me? Go somewhere, go find your your real friends. And I just Kumo D concert in 1997? Punch him in the throat. Yeah, like throat strike, the Chandler. But yeah, the only person that I actually found interesting on that show was Phoebe, because there was a whole backstory with Phoebe that Phoebe did some damage like before she got to these other five people. Like Phoebe was a hustler and was like so bad that like even her twin sister was like, I don't really deal with you like that. And I'm it to me, Phoebe was the story, the like to her backstory was a thing that I was like, I could I would love to see a prequel series of Phoebe where she was just running stuff in New York. Like Phoebe was like out there with Alpo and all the big time like you know dealers out there in New York and decided that, you know, maybe she just needs to slow down a little bit and found these five other five weirdos, these five lanes, and decided that this was just gonna be her life. Like she put all that other stuff down. So yeah, to me, friends, I don't understand why I like that other than like it had three attractive women and there really wasn't much else. So yeah, friends. Or as I like to call it, the Phoebe show that I never got to write. White living single. Yeah, yeah. Also that they stole it! Pretty lame.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

I kind of feel like the prequel that you're thinking about could be Sex in the City.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, Tech City got other goddamn problems. No, no, no, okay. I'm talking Phoebe and Snowfall. Like that's what you're talking about. Yeah, that's the show I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Phoebe I'll be. Did you watch the totality of Friends? Did you watch all 10 seasons?

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Maybe like the first six six seasons. Okay. And then it just totally lost me.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Because once you start to realize that your friends in real life are not going to be in your apartment like that, nor do you want them in your apartment like that, it changes the dynamic of watching friends totally. You need to get the hell out of my house. Yeah. It's like, will y'all MF was go home? I don't want to have on clothes. I know. I want to take my pants off. Leave. I ain't saying I'm gonna be naked, I'm nude. Yeah, move. Get out. There's a difference. Yeah. It's like I want to feel some air on the back of my ball sack. Please leave. The eloquence. That's what we come to this podcast for. The wind against my bow. My Jane Eyre.

SPEAKER_04 17:01

Oh God. I'll be there for you. Fuck I will.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

That's when I want to take my pants off. Then it's time for you to leave. You ain't gotta go home, but you gotta get the hell out of here.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Oh God.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

That's fantastic. Friends was always trash.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

It was trash, bro. It was trash.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Jennifer Anderson couldn't save it.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

No, no, she really couldn't.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

She was my favorite out of the five.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Yeah, Jennifer Anderson was my favorite. She was super fine. Still is. Yes. Still is. Still is still as fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

That's according to Cock guy.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Listen, I ain't mad.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Dark hair.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

I'm not mad at it. I'm not mad at anything.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

I was a wee lad. Like when grandpa would put on Charlie's Angels, it was like Jacqueline Smith. All goddamn day.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

I respect that. You're not wrong. Yeah. Yeah, you're not wrong.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Three's Company, Janet.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah, Joyce the Witt.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah. Yeah. Strong. Shout out.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Yeah, shout out to Joyce DeWitt.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Yeah, but I'm still stuck on my my idea of like Phoebe. It's it's like Franklin Saint.

SPEAKER_03 18:17

This man do the rock for files, but with Phoebe.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, like power. But with Phoebe. And then meeting five lanes and calming the hell then. That's the show I want right there.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Okay, well, hold on. Like what what would you call this show? Phoebe. Showrun it. White Phoebe Power. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Phoebe power. No. What would I call it? The powder isn't dangerous. No.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah, I'm curious to know what you call it and what and how would you do the pilot? What would the pilot episode be? Like if you were pitching this.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Just Phoebe.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

And like I would just let the idea sell itself. Like Phoebe out here in this world running neuron kings. Like that. Shout out old Fred Williamson movie from Black Exploitation era. Boss Cracker. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Oh man. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I got it. I would call it powder. The Phoebe Buffet story. Yeah. Powder. Okay. All right. Would you tie in cocaine? That's why it's called powder.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

That's why it's called powder. I got you. Okay. I'm just making sure. I'm just making sure, man. You know, I'm just I'm connecting the dots here. Speedy was because you know you we talked about this. Like my you know, 70s drug lord Omar approves this. Okay. Oh, Chris, you don't know about 70s drug lord Omar. No, I don't.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

I was born in 85. Please tell me. Elucidate.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Devon, what was what was I watching where I was like, man, I should have been a drug ping pen in the 70s.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

Was it something?

SPEAKER_01 20:40

It was something. It was something that. No, no, man. What was the Sylvia? Oh, Grisel. She was shit. Yes. I was watching that. I think it was on Netflix. Yeah. And I'm randomly watching that. And I hit Devon up and I said, man, I should have been born old enough to have been in the 70s because I would have, I would have 100% been a drug kingpin. No, you wouldn't. I would have been in this world.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

No. You would have been dead.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

I would have been dead, but I would have been scar faced for like five minutes. You know. I want the world, Chico. And everything in it. You know.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

You mean scar? You mean knife head? You mean you be dead.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

And since then, I will randomly text Devon and say, 70s drug Kingpin Omar approves of whatever random thing it is. This is true. So powder is something that he would go and watch. Right. He might even bankroll. He might even fund your vision. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah, I would, I would pay for you to make the pilot. Yeah, seriously. With you know with my drug kingpin money.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

I got that thing you didn't know you needed. I mean, hey man, who's to say we can't get Lisa Coudreau on board now?

SPEAKER_04 22:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah. Surely like, you know. Surely we can we can, you know, do a gritty Daredevil born again ask with one last ride. With Phoebe. Yeah, with Phoebe. Let's do it. Holler at your boy.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

Too much time. Dedicated to Phoebe. I've never taught this long.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Oh God.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

All right. Who wants to go next? Listen, how you gonna follow that? Chris, I I listen, you're gonna have to go because I can't.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

So I'm gonna talk about Boomerang from 1992.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Oh now. Hey.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Now, now follow my logic here. Hey now. Follow it. Hey. Okay. Hey. Because you have a film. With Eddie Murphy at the moment. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Are you sure you want to do this? You want to do this? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. We don't know him. We don't know him. I'm saying, trust me. You don't understand my reasoning at the end. Because you have Eddie Murphy at arguably the height of his artistic.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

You got the Queen Halle Berry.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

You got you got pink Halle Berry. You got pink Robin Gibbons. You got Eartha Kitt. You have Grace Jones. You have John Witherspoon. Bang! Bang!

SPEAKER_03 24:00

It's just a mushroom belt.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah, got a mushroom belt on. You know your father got a mushroom belt on. So tell us why this was always trash, Chris.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Here's the whiskey. You gotta let you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Okay. All right. You got Eddie Murphy being like the coolest dude ever, combining coolness and hipness in a way that was not allowed to be with black men at that time. Like it just it was not, it was rare, if at all.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Yeah, very true.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

You had all of these different black artists who were arguably at the top of their powers. Grace Jones is doing a full-on parody of Grace Jones. Stron Jay, like that's hilarious. That's hilarious. And he's this womanizer, he's going through life just not caring about anybody else until he meets Robin Givens, who is essentially more or less doing the shit that he does to women, to him, and then he gets in his fi fees, and then he starts learning and understanding. And then what happens? The universe presents him with Halle Berry, beautiful, innocent, perfect Bob Halle Berry. And she starts to change him. He's on the right path. And then he falters. He he falters. He absolutely falters and falls back in with Robin Gibbons. And it's disgusting. And he's sad and he knows that he messed up. He know he fumbled. He played Thompson did. He fumbled. Generational fumble. And when he goes back, he tries to get back with her. Halleberry's absolutely not. You you go to hell. Go to hell. So time passes. Halliberry is doing her professional thing. She's where he used to be in terms of, you know, like professional success. And what happens? He comes back one more time to try and make up with him. You know, he pleads his case from a place of one can assume mostly humility. Like, is he is he sad that he no longer has Halliberry? Or does he miss what Halliberry did for him spiritually? That gave us the classic. It's a dichotomy. You were so in love. Love you brought your ass home last night. Exactly. She takes him back. If that movie had ended with him being rejected for the failings of his character, and then him having to come to grips with his spiritual bankruptcy and then falling into the comfortable bosom of his boys as they console him on the next leg of his life journey. That movie would have been a 10 out of 10. Everything about it is beautiful. It's wonderful. It's a celebration of black culture, black identity, black art. It's excellent. And then she takes his line ass back. Bullshit. It's I dude. I saw that movie the first time. We watched it like two months ago. Me and my wife. And we have because we never saw it. I'm fucking 40. Like, why would I have seen Boomerang when it came out? Shut up. It ain't the Golden Child. Shut up. I tell you what, every movie can use more Charles Dance. And that's that's a fact of life. Even Golden Child could have used more Charles Dance, but we get to that later. We have been angry about Halliberry taking him back for the past two months.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

It just comes up in conversation. So, yes, that is my offering for was always trash. Is Boomerang trash? Absolutely not. It's like a nine out of ten movie. It's a bunch of art.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

The ending is what you feel is trash.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Scripting, the the costuming, everything. Everything is on point in that movie. I hate that ending. I hate it. I want to shoot it into the fucking sun. I hate it. I hate it. Patouille. Patoey. Patoe.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

If you change that ending, it's it's not a 90s rom-com, though.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

It's not, though.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Because they all kind of ended that way.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Yeah. It's true.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Like I don't disagree with you though. I think if you do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Back then, men didn't have they didn't have to learn anything. There were no consequences. No, no. No, there's a common. I get away with it. I win. But the problem is that you're looking at it through a now lens when back then it was like this is just what you expected from men. We expect more than it's bad now from each other.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah, the bar was low.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Yeah. But I I I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you one single bit. You are 100%. You hate the ending. You don't hate the movie. Oh no. God no. It was so enjoyable. Every single piece of that movie. Can we give a shout out to that soundtrack? Absolutely. One loves.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

It might be the greatest soundtrack's hot specs. I'm still mad that that track does not appear in the movie.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Honey Gill, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Oh, let me know. Into the road.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Yeah, Mail of Rashawn Sunshine in that movie.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Man. Shoot, maybe that's another episode. Quintessential black films. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

We need to do that one.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

That would be in that.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

100%.

unknown 30:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

And that ain't a movie that you can watch if you're under a certain age, I don't think. I don't think I would have been able to understand what was going on that movie in 1992 at all. Like I wouldn't have been able to bang with that. Like, what the hell's going on? There are no demons. There's no cop chases. Boo. Boo this. Boo. Boo. No one's pulling out their boobies. Boo.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

The ending of boomerang was always trash. Yeah. And I can't disagree. 90s me was just too busy thinking about Annell sitting next to me in the kitchen. I didn't have deep thoughts about the film.

SPEAKER_03 31:53

Deep thoughts. Deep thoughts. Deep thoughts. There you go. Oh ho. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Damn, that's such a good song. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Hot sex should have been on in the film in the film. That's my only beef with the soundtrack. Is that that was it's on the soundtrack, but not in the movie.

unknown 32:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

But that was Tribe at there at the peak of their power.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

I think they just dropped the second album. Why am I blanking on it?

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Fun fact it came out after Boomerang. Oh. It came out Tribe's third album. Because their first album was People's Instinctive Travels that had Left My Wallet El Sedondo. Elsa Gondo. One of the greatest albums ever made was Low End Theory. Yeah, Low End Theory is their second album. It is a classic. It is, there are no notes. So this came out between what? Low End Theory came out between Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders because Midnight Marauders dropped the same day. Fun fact dropped the same day as 36 Chambers, Wu Tang's first album. Yes. Those two albums came out the exact same day, and it is a the great of the greatest days of ever in the history of anything.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

And actually, I I have another one for you. These three albums dropped on the same day. Tribe Call Quest, The Low End Theory, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and Nirvana's Nevermind.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

All dropped on the same. Wow. Did not know that. Yeah. I knew they came out the same. We were just, we didn't know how good we had it, man. We really didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

We really didn't.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Low end theory was the soundtrack of my life during it. Because I was at Maryland, I think I'm a sophomore at Maryland at the time. And that is, I listened to that and I listened to Black Sheep's album. Mm-hmm on loop. That was all I listened to.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Native tongues.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Like, and this was while Nirvana's and Red Eye Chili Peppers is out, and I just I'm so into tribe and black sheep that I'm not even I don't have the space to appreciate anything else at that at that time.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

The things I could choose. Yeah. Things I was bypassing to get to the things I liked, or better yet, new, just makes me shudder.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

It's like I there was sound guarding out there in that world.

SPEAKER_01 34:31

There was hell man, Radiohead, which I didn't discover until I was a grown, grown man. Right. Like I discovered Radiohead, what was it? The I can't even remember the first. Like, if they were on the at the end of their run, this would have been when did the last album come out, Devon? You could know this.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

10 years. Ten years.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Yeah, so about 2014. I forget the name, I didn't even remember the name of the album, but Tom Brook Publicist, Devon Sanders. Yeah. That was the first time. Now, mind you, when I say this, I had heard Radiohead, but I didn't know. I was listening to Radiohead. You can't live during their era and not have heard their music in the same way that people look at me and they go, You don't know any YouTube songs? And I'm like, not really. You know, and then they'll sing them and I'll go, Oh, I know that. And they go, Yeah, fool, you know YouTube. Yeah, shut up. You know, it's kind of where. So Radiohead for me was that, but I'm discovering and appreciating it now because it's licensed everywhere. You can't turn on an episode of Invincible and not hear a Radiohead song or anything that Disney Plus is doing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Daredevil Born Again.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Daredevil just had it on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

With one of the most heartwracking radiohead songs of all time, Pyramid Song, where it's like, if you're playing that song, call somebody.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Like call somebody. Yeah. Yeah, that's when they played that on that final episode. I was like, oh, you know what's hit the fan. It's not going to get any better from here, y'all.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

I got one.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Alright, what you got, Omar?

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

All right. So, in the same way, I'm a I'm a body surf off of what Chris just did in terms of the ending. I don't want to say that the totality of this thing was always trash. But the things that are trash like are starting to surface. And I think it'll make sense as I set it up, and it'll make sense as I get into it. I'm going to go ahead and say that the TKO era of WWE may have always been trash.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

It is trash.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

And I'm going to say that because if you now what's fueling this, if you Christoph, if I if I say to you, I want to have an agreement that we're going to do X, Y, and Z, and I'm going to pay you X amount of dollars to keep this agreement. And we will sign this agreement for five years. And then a year later I say, hey, you know what? I know we we have about four years left on this deal. But yeah, I'm not going to do that now. I want to renegotiate that deal for like five bucks. What do y'all think? And y'all say, nah, man, we negotiated millions of dollars. We can't do this for five dollars. And I go, I know, but I need a a sweeter deal for me so that I can get these bonuses.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

You know, and so what y'all think? And y'all are like, all right, well, we're going to bounce. And to me, if you can do that with people that have been working for your company for, I don't know, 16 years, have made you all kinds of money, you might be trash to me.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

See that's the thing. Yeah. It's not their company. They're the new, they're the new assholes here.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Mmm. I did not think I would miss Vince McMahon. I really didn't. And I hate myself for saying that.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

But you know what? I know what you're saying. I yeah, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Like Vince. Where he wanted families to be able to walk in and be able to afford to be there, buy the t-shirts, and walk out and watch the show and rent and repeat. TKO is this, it is a private equity company in charge of something that people are still remembering as an entertainment company, a thing that puts on a show. And we were Omar and I were talking about something, and we were talking about something where it it used to be about walking in with joy, and now it is about dividends. That is exactly what TKO is now. It is a company that is it cares nothing about the actual product. It just cares about what they can pull out of it now. Like there's absolutely no joy in anything. None.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah. And it kills me because you have there are bright spots. There are mushroom belts as there were. You know, right? It's like it's yeah, you got Oba Femi. It's like, wow, man, that's that's a heck of a mushroom belt right there. I I'm I I'd wear that belt. Right. I like that. Oba Femi's amazing. Yeah. You get those kind of stories coming out of it. You got that Bianca just came back, but we ain't gonna have her for a minute because again, you know, obviously the pregnancy.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

The true villain Montez Ford.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yes. I'm looking at Yeah, he's the true villain. You're absolutely right. Him and Jimmy Uso.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Uh Jimmy Uso, yeah. Yeah, Jimmy, Jimmy Uso.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah. I look at where at the opportunities that people of color are getting, and I get I get distracted by that. And what brings what snaps me back to life is the fact that the new day had to dip, that you would do that dirty like that. Like it's a I can't unsee that.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

It's a when I look at that, and it's funny, I was thinking about that. Netflix just released a Hulk Hogan documentary. Yeah. And it is I remain to this day angry at Hulk Hogan for the foolishness that makes me not be able to love him the way I did as a kid. That's that's really my beef with him. It's it's like, dude, man, your actions rob me of a hero of my my childhood. It would be like if I, you know, saw He-Man smoking crack. Like it's it's literally that. Like, He-Man, come on, man.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

You know Crack is whack. I was talking to a coworker, and he said it perfectly. He said, it hurt because I found out Hulk Hogan was Terry Bolea.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

I was like, damn, that's exactly it.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

That's 100%. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

He's not Hulk Hogan, he's Terry Boleya.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

And it's just like Terry.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

And I can't separate the two. I can't.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

And it's like, yeah, you know, it's like, it's you feel 100% grateful for the time where it was like, I really wanted to like say my prayers, and I was taking my vitamins. And, you know, you had me believing that I could be a real American, and you know, no matter what hit me, I could like hulk up and come and overcome it.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

And then you find out that the guy behind it was a trash human.

unknown 42:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Like whatever, like union busting.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

Like racist.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Just, you know, always like Undertaker had a great story where he was talking about where they wrestled a match. And for those who don't know, the Undertaker's signature move is a tombstone pile driver. It's this move where he basically flips a man upside down, puts him between his knees, and the Undertaker's almost seven feet tall. So he can position it properly so that he cannot hurt you. He'll basically take the impact of the thing on his own knees. Hulk Hogan is wrestling the Undertaker. Hogan at this point is like a 10-year veteran or something. Undertaker is new to the WWE and is an up-and-coming talent. Undertaker puts him in a signature move. The the Tombstone Pile driver hits Hogan with it. And Hogan is on the ground, and he could have put this man over cleanly. But he says to him, I think you broke my neck, brother. And the Undertaker is freaking out in the ring, but can't show it because his gimmick is undead zombie. Because he's like, I think I've just killed like the WWE's golden goose, the the greatest man in wrestling currently. And so there's a whole thing where Hogan is like, yeah, you know, he's leaning on like people as they're taking him out. And he's portraying himself as the big hero, and then he just stands up. In the locker room and is like, yeah, I think you broke my neck. Oh no, actually he really didn't. I feel great, brother. And it's like you find out that this is who he is. Like that's who Hogan was. He was Terry Belayer. Always trash.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Always trash. Always Hogan. Yeah, always trash.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

And yeah, it's just I think that we're starting to, at least with WWF and E, excuse me, and so many things, we're just really starting to see that everything is just one big clamor, man. That's all it is. It's wow. It really is. It's like, you know, it's hard to believe that there was a time not that long ago where we were propping up people like Jeff Bezos. We were propping up people like Elon Musk. Oh, they're gonna take us to the moon. Billionaires are gonna save us. And now we're in a place where it's like the billionaires are trying to kill us. Like they don't care about us. Like they'll move a data center into your thing, jack up your electrical rates, build on things that they should not be building, jacking up rents into places that you know, cutting cost on their coworkers, firing them outright, using AI in places so that they can save more money. And it's like, look, you're a billionaire.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

You how much you got all the money? How much money do you need?

SPEAKER_00 45:54

How many more people do you need to exploit? Like, I don't necessarily have a problem with capitalism. Okay, let me take that back. I have a problem with capital. Let me finish. Let me finish. I have a problem with capitalism. I don't have a problem with commerce. Where it's like if you have a product and you set a rate where it is accessible to the people who want it and the people who need it, I have no problem with that. But the problem that I have is when you begin to exploit others so that you can just get a little bit more than the next man, that's where I have a problem. Like they're ethically ethically, billionaires are they should not exist. No. And we're just kind of letting them just run things the way that they are. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Dude, if you have a billion dollars, you've missed the point.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

That that's really if it's a again, I don't to your point, just to underscore it, the I think about that sometimes, and it's like I I don't know if I've ever shared this with you all, but I I have a fear of winning the lottery.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

Same.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

I don't know if I ever talked to you about that. Yeah. It's a I have two weird things relative to the lottery. I've only played it a handful of times, and it's fear that keeps me from doing it. I have a fear, a recurring nightmare that I win the lottery and it destroys my family. That was one. Two, I also have a weird sense that every time I play it, I'm thinking I genuinely believe I'm gonna win it. Like Powerball, I'm gonna win this. You know, and I start thinking about what I'm gonna do with the billions. And man, it's a if I have like 300 extra dollars, I walk different. If you got $300 burning a hole in your pocket, you you walk into rooms like this. Can you imagine with like three billion?

SPEAKER_04 47:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

It's a it's there's a great line in the movie that you both hate, BVS, where Alfred says, or Ben Affleck's like, 20 years fighting crime in Gotham, how many good guys are left? How many stayed that way? You know, it's kind of in that same zone of you give me that much money, you give any person, you know, that much money, it it's a I think it's the best of us would would falter. You know, it's I I'm terrified of what that would look like. And to your point, like if I if I have access to wealth, I'm looking for opportunities to give it away because it terrifies me to have it. You know, it's so to my to that end, if you're a billionaire, you've missed a point of life because you should be giving that away because there's it's not like the need doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Look around. Right. There should be the fact that there are billionaires and we have hunger, don't make it make sense. Right. Right. So sorry, man. That that's my that's very much the hill I will die on.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

But to bring it back to your your point about TKO and WWE, these athletes, they have a finite window where they can earn the most money that they possibly can with their bodies. With their bodies. They are giving their bodies to this thing that they grew up loving because they want to continue the legacies of the Stone Colds, the Booker T's, the Kurt Angles, the Bruno San Martin's, and they're giving their bodies to do this thing. And these private equity firms who come in and they're looking at like stockholder like numbers and they're trying to appease stockholders and telling their employees that yes, we thank you for doing this, but would you mind taking a 50% pay cut so that this man who really doesn't do anything other than like buy up stock can make more money. It sucks.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

Wait, is that what the cut was that they proposed to do? Yeah, 50% are you kidding? I know it's that bad.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Yeah. And I think it was it was Mark Henry or somebody like that on one of those things that you posted on Instagram, Omar.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

Where he was like, You a year ago, you told these men that they were worth this, and you were saying, We're willing to honor this for the next five years. And then when you realize that you can make more money, you went to them and said, We're not going to honor the thing that we said we were going to honor, and now we want you to take a 50% pay cut in order just to keep your job. And at the end of the day, this stuff is a job. Imagine any job that would ask you to take a 50% pay cut, imagine that, and they expect you to stick around. I don't think I love anything that much. No, there's only been one job in my life where the people that were above me started fucking with my money, and it was one day, and then I told them exactly what the score was, and it never happened again. Now, Devon, you know what I'm talking about. You know who I'm talking about. Right. We don't need to talk about it on the on the on the feed. Omar, you will get this in the group chat. Grown men sometimes forget their consequences in the world for not being grown men, right, and they need to be reminded of it in a not gentle fashion. And that is what occurred. Now, when you extrapolate this to the upper echelons of millions and millions of dollars and stuff, my answer to this would not be valid because these are also people with private security firms at their back and call who can shoot my black ass. Real, real bad. TKO is extracting the joy out of anything.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Yeah, man. It's what kills me is that you don't even Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

No, I'm sorry. Where it's just to the point where I don't even consider thinking about a live show anymore.

SPEAKER_01 53:09

No, no, no, I can't, man. It's it kills me because there are elements, like I said, there are a lot of mushroom belts.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

There are a lot of things that I look at and I go, oh, that's amazing. But then it's hard to keep turning a blind eye to like all the ads in the ring and all the slim gym things on the table. Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

The slim gym ads on the table is is egregious.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

Yeah, it's now mind you, if you what's wild to me is how many passes we gave them. Because let's keep it a buck, man. When we saw it, we knew some of the lot of that stuff you knew was cruddy. You know, prom logo in the middle of the ring. I'm like, wow, they got a lot of ass. Now, mind you, it's a some of that you kind of give a pass to because you go, well, boxing, they do it. But it's a, this was to your point, like it's this, the WWE is the circus. Right. And it's a different animal, man, than it is, than boxing is. Boxing is boxing. Yeah, so you go in with an expectation. It's not like boxing's on TV every Monday and Friday, and that you're you got live boxing events every month with backlash and you know, WrestleMania and so forth. You would see Muhammad Ali maybe three times a year, you know, and big major prize fights at in Vegas or wherever it is in Manila, wherever it is he was fighting. The, you know, there were events, you know, to that end. Yeah, exactly. Like it's that. This is the circus, and we know it's entertainment. Right. And so it's for families. Exactly. And so what you're essentially saying is F these families. You know, and that that's like that's what you're telling them. Right. And so the fact that, man, my boy, we were supposed to go. And I couldn't go, you know, but we were planning on when I finished grad school, I was gonna celebrate. We were going out to, we wanted to go to WrestleMania. And I ended up not being able to do it, but he went. And we knew like the tickets, we were like, oh, we ain't gonna be able to get tickets, but we should be out in Vegas and maybe we can be just around and because they have events all week. Right. So I'm doing this thinking, all right, I finished grad school in March, I'm gonna go out in April. Yeah, this year. Literally, like we were gonna go. My boy went, I was gonna go, ended up not being able to go. And he was sending me stuff like, hey, I'm doing this, like, and he he had said to me right before I told him, like, hey man, I'm not gonna be able to make it. He was floating, like, he said, hey man, you can still get tickets. And I'm like, it's not sold out. And he was like, Yeah, man, it's not sold out. You know, and he's like, Man, maybe we get nosebleed. Maybe we can be we can be in the building. This Negro got seats on the floor. Wow. That's how available tickets were. He sent me pictures the day of the event, night two, from the floor.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

How much did he drop?

SPEAKER_01 56:07

That's what I need to ask him. Like, hey man, how much did you pay for those? But the fact that he could buy it through Stubhub or whatever it is that he got it from, very telling. I mean, I'm talking like day of. Yeah, let me get let me get a ticket.

SPEAKER_00 56:21

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

Yeah. Just decided to go.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

My man got the cash to spend, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

Yeah, apparently. Because like on the floor. He was like people can do that anymore.

SPEAKER_00 56:34

We should probably wrap up soon. But just the the essence, you you hit the nail right on the head, Omar, with this is a family thing. This was a thing like I'll have a quick story. I'll never forget the day that I went to a WWE house show at at the then MCI arena. And I was there with a couple of friends, and I looked over to my right about maybe a few rows over, and I see this like little hand waving at me, and I'm like, who is that? And it turns out two of my brothers were there with my stepfather, and we didn't know it. But I know that they my they did not have a lot of money, neither did I. But my stepfather, he was able to take two of his sons to that show. We were all sitting in the nosebleeds, but the fact of the matter was that we could walk through the door. And that was what WWE was before TKO. Where it was a thing of a father who worked a job that probably paid a little bit more than minimum wage, I would assume it did, could look at his two of his sons and go, all right, you know what? I'm gonna surprise you. I'm gonna I'm gonna take you to WWE tonight. And I was like, that's great. I because at the point, at that point, I was living in DC and my family had moved to Maryland. So it was like a little mini-family reunion inside of MCI Arena.

SPEAKER_02 58:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

Now that cannot happen because TKO is trying to apply the UFC fight model where a bunch of grown men with their own money are walking into a place by themselves, buying drinks, and making a weekend of being in wherever the show is, and you cannot apply that model to a weekly television show like WWE Raw or SmackDown. It just does not work. And I think that in the long run, I don't know if TKO if this does not work for them, they don't hold on to WWE, and I think we're gonna be in trouble in a few years if TKO keeps doing things the way that they have been doing. Like just two years ago, we were operating under subscription model with Peacock, where I think we were paying like four or five dollars to watch WWE. Before that, we were under subscription model with the WWE network where it was ten dollars for everything. Everything, everything the archives, the pay-per-views, everything. And it was a beautiful setup. And now we're under a system where it's like you can only watch these pay-per-views, which are called PLEs now, if you pony up $30 a month. How do you go with a system right where you're asking people to pay four to six times what they were paying before for a product that is not as good as it was even like three years ago? Just does not make any sense. Still free. I mean, I pay $20 for my antenna so that I can watch it, but yeah. That's it. That's what I watch, that's what I care about. Yeah, and I this other stuff, I keep keep up with it on YouTube by the clips because I'm not no. Yeah, and to give the devil their due, I did hear that TKO slash WWE, the NXC PLEs, they initially were on Peacock. They moved over to YouTube for free. Yeah. But now they're actually going to be broadcast on CW for free.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:23

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

What I understand. Good. So yeah, so that's one good thing they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

But, you know, that's like saying uh all the other stuff. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:35

We'll see how long that lasts. At this point, man, it's it's a I I don't know if I trust it. Right. So it's like if you're doing like it's it's it's sad, man, when you if you do something good and I go, yeah, but why are you what you set me up for? Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

You only doing that good thing to get me later. And it it's a I hate feeling that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

It's kind of like when people say, well, the serial killer was always nice to me. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:02

Man.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

Bruh. That. Chris, do you wanna you always bring us home? Would you like to bring us home?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:14

All right. Everybody, by their heads. We were brought together today to this wonderful house of worship for love and caring and remembering. And we leave with our stomachs empty because we are hungry. And we will now go and make our microwave TV dinner at one o'clock in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:50

Hallelujah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:53

Everyone say I'm in.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

And as we're recording this, again, happy Mother's Day. You take care. Tell your mama you love her, or send her an Astrogram. I don't know your relationship with your parents, and that's none of anyone else's business. God bless you. Pay your taxes. Well, actually, don't pay. I don't, hey, work that out with yourself. I don't know. Hey, it's it's weird right now. It's weird. It's weird. I'm gonna pay my tax. I I can't be messed around with that. I'm not there though. But like you, if you can afford to make a state, you do it. You do it. You stand on business.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

Oh god. All right, I'm gonna stop right there.