Chapo Trap House - Episode 246 - Best of New England Live, Part 2 (9/19/18)

Episode Date: September 20, 2018

Live from The Bell House in Brooklyn we shovel dirt on Brett Kavanaugh and his many defenders and then from The Met in Pawtucket, RI we discuss the life and times of Providence native son, H.P. Lovecraft, aka the Poster Out of Time MIDWEST WE'RE COMING FOR YOU http://chapotraphouse.com/tour/

Hi, it's producer Chris again, back with part two of our New England live shows. Folks, don't you just love it? So much live show content, such a great deal. We love our live shows, don't we folks? We love them. So again, if you're in Pittsburgh, Columbus, Detroit, Chicago, Madison, or Minneapolis, go on over to chapotraphouse.com slash tour to see us live there soon. Anyway, we're starting off today with a segment from just last night in Brooklyn, where we

discussed the endless waves of cool, normal stories and takes surrounding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. And look, I know we talked about some of this material on a previous show, but just keep your dives on because it leads to some tremendously powerful takes from some of our favorite friends of the show. Brooklyn, let's go. New York City, the Gale House, It's Choppo, let's fucking go. And finally, we're walking here again.

So let's jump right into this. Okay, so I promised a feast on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and we were just talking backstage, and I wasn't convinced until like today, but I think he's circling the drain. I think they might pull this guy because their story on the story on this guy is just getting weirder by the minute. And I think it would behoove us to do a little retrospective on this guy going back all the way to the beginning when his nomination was first announced.

Folks, don't you think it's a little weird that the preplanned media rollout for him that was designed by Judicial Crisis Network, Federalist Society, and all these right-wing judicial groups, this was their guy, he was one of them? Don't you think it's a little weird that their opening pitch for Brett Kavanaugh was all about how much of his free time he spends with teenage girls? Isn't that a little bit telling? They ran TV ads about it, we've seen them. He's a great dad, he's a carpool dad, he's a basketball coach, they brought his girl's

basketball team to sit behind him at his confirmation hearing, and it looked like the fucking Warren Jeffs trial. It was amazing! I think they had a bunch of really sporty sister wives. They were like, oh, we need to work against the idea that this guy might be a misogynist. Show him with his army of slave lives, like it's the fucking Manos the hands of fate cover. But you remember those articles that all came out about what a great guy, what a good person he is?

I mean, we did it once before on the show, but I think it bears repeating. The big one in the Washington Post was, I don't know Kavanaugh the judge, but Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy. Was that the Tiger Mom one? No, no, no. This is how the Tiger Mom one was, basically my daughter works for him and he's nice to her. Yeah, right.

So they just pulled the trigger and they had a dozen of these op-eds ready to go for gullible liberals. Well, yeah, and he was specific about stuff like he's amazing at mentoring young women. Awesome. It's what it says. Much has been written about Brett Kavanaugh as President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, but the discussion is focused on his record as a federal judge in his legal career. Yeah, for some dumb reason.

I'd also like to talk about him as Coach K. Like the one at Duke University, he is also an ego obsessed monster. No, wait, no, I'm sorry, that wasn't. This Coach K is also a mentor to student athletes who love basketball, but his players are sixth grade girls. What? Brett's older daughter and mine have been classmates at Blessed Sacrament School, a small Catholic school in the district for the past seven years.

On evenings and weekends, you'll likely find Brett at a local gym or athletic field encouraging his players or watching games with his daughters and their friends. He coaches not one, but two girls' basketball teams. Brett's friendship. Well, for a normal AF. He hangs out at middle schools just offering to coach the girls' basketball. He sleeps. That's how much he cares.

He sleeps in a pup tent on the basketball court. Brett's friendship and mentorship have touched my family in an especially personal way. A few years ago, my husband died. One of the many difficult aspects of that loss was that my daughter had no one to accompany her to the school's annual father-daughter dance. That year and every year since my husband's passing, Brett has stepped forward to take my daughter to the dance alongside his own. He pulls up to the curb in his windowless van.

That is terrifying. I said this on an episode of I'll Say It Again because I know Felix likes the image, but that's not weird as long as he takes the girl to the father-daughter dance while wearing his full judicial robes, wearing a gavel, and the whole night he just says things like motion for punch granted. I love that. I love that. I just ruin now though because it's like you know that he's just leering that dire night

and being like, you know, the Bible says that your mother has to marry her late husband's brother. Just a fucking absolute pervert, but you know, you wish it was like that. You wish it was the cute. I do. I believe in a better world. This is what the USA means when they say believe in a better world. You believe in the world of wholesome means.

Yeah. It reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons when Bart is in the Boy Scouts and the one kid doesn't have a father and they're going for the father-son canoe trip and he goes, we've got one for you prearranged. They go, well, my brother could do it and it's like, sorry, Ernest Fortnight has already been arranged for. So yeah. Sorry, it's this weird judge you don't know.

Oh man, that's, I mean, middle school, middle school is a hell of a time for anyone. Especially girls who feel insecure and shitty all the time and you're terrified and every interaction is awkward and it feels like it will never end. And then you just have this guy who thinks that women should always walk nine paces behind men who just swoops in after you've experienced the loss of a father figure. Yeah. Just this very nice man who brings his own cat of nine tails to self-flagellate with. Awesome.

Here's another thing that Matt brought up and I think it's worth mentioning. In all of this, nobody has mentioned the fact that like, these are the daughters of one of America's most elite prep schools of its ruling class. I don't think they need your mentorship, dude. Yeah. Like you can't even pitch it as charity, you know, you can't be like going to an inner city or some unprivileged community and giving people something they wouldn't otherwise have.

Definitely should not be doing that either. You shouldn't be doing that either, but at least you can argue that it has a philanthropic, you know, drive. This is just, I want to hang out with a bunch of sweaty teen girls. There's no other reason to do this. They'll be fine. Matt, as you said, in this community in Chevy Chase, Maryland, if you're born, the doctor slaps your ass and gives you an admissions letter to Duke.

Yeah. You're set for life. You don't need creepy fucking Uncle Judgy McHornball. Okay. Glowering at you and offering you back rubs. Yeah. Yeah. That was the opening gambit though.

And I think it's a little, it's, it's almost like they, they knew something. We did it with this big like plush press rollout, but check this out. Remember also that he apparently racked up a quarter million dollars in debt buying baseball tickets. Yep. You guys remember that? They were all mysterious and paid off by his friends. Yes.

About a minute before the conversation here. What the fuck? Dude. Hey. No cameras at the ballpark. Yeah. Was he, was he trying to do like house flipping but for sex dungeons? Like what the fuck?

Well, there's also, there's also speculation. He's a degenerate gambler and these, his gambling debts were paid off by some dark money. Like, okay. Pious religious person with like deeply repressed urges that manifest this vice like that. Okay. To the point, to the point about gambling debts and the other weird thing we were talking about. Let's read this email which came out as part of the confirmation hearing.

This is an email that Brett sent to his friends about arranging sort of a lads weekend together. This is a very normal email. Absolutely. This is a normal email that normal people send to their friends all the time. Again, this is from Brett Kavanaugh to his chums. Great work and thanks for hooking everything up for your weak crew. He's calling his crew a weak crew. That's not cool.

Check will be in the mail once I get your new address. Excellent time. Apologies to all for missing Friday. Good excuse. Arriving late Saturday. Weak excuse. And growing aggressive after blowing still another game of dice in parentheses. Don't recall.

Yeah, I blacked out drunk and lost thousands of dollars gambling again. You know how that is. Sorry guys. I'll pay you back later. Wink, wink. The Federalist Society will and whoever sponsors them. Here's where it gets really fucking normal. Reminders to everyone to be very, very vigilant with regards to confidentiality on all issues

and all fronts, including with spouses, folks, we've been on tour for a while now. We've been on tour for a while and the first thing I do when I get home is chuck my phone and hard drive into a vat of acid. Yeah, you know, it's like we have to do a fucking blood oath after we go to Denny's. Yeah, I mean, look, it's just guy stuff, like it's like some people have a man cave. I sort of have like a man ritual sacrifice temple. Cool lads holiday in Carcosa. Great job, everybody.

I love the tenor of the email like, oh, watch out when we're all together. By the way, let's, you know, do some crimes. More like the King and Fellowship. It sounds like degenerate gambling right until he gets to the point with the spouses. Then it sounds worse. Okay, here's the next thing. And like this is all before these allegations had come out, which are now very serious and in my opinion, extremely credible.

As soon as those allegations came out, even when they were anonymous, they produced a letter signed by 65 women who apparently knew him in high school, all testifying to his sterling character. And then they were released in their job. Not a hair harmed on their heads. Politico has followed up with all 65 of these women. Today, all but two of them now say I had no idea what that letter was about. I was just thought it was a vague assurance of his good character.

They had no idea it was in relation to this specific allegation. There's microscopic print at the bottom that covers everything from sexual assault to like dog fighting and killing vagrants. I just thought this was a letter of recommendation for Logan Paul. No, but like that recommendation thing, I think that does speak to the utterly weird and insulated and predatory nature of these prep schools and the communities around them, these boys and girls schools that are thick as thieves and they all want their fucking alumni to go on to be Supreme Court justices, which by the way, if Brett Kavanaugh does

get on the Supreme Court, 22% of the people deciding law for every single person in this country will have gone to Georgetown Preparatory Academy, to which I say, President Xi, you may fire when ready. Okay, just out of curiosity, does the Supreme Court have any like, you know, intramural sports thing they do? No, no reason. Something like baseball, but maybe a little bit easier than baseball. Okay.

All right. Oh, I know Elena Kagan plays softball. No, that's true, there were pictures during the confirmation hearing. Okay. I want to talk now about the conservative media's reaction to this, because honestly, for someone like me who is a connoisseur of this stuff, this has been like a fucking all star week because here's the thing, these people don't think like normal people and they can't help but tell on themselves, this is my favorite kind of conservative media

reaction where they think what they're saying to the audience is common sense, but it's actually morally depraved and horrifying. Let's begin with friend of the show and new favorite, Barry Weiss. Barry Weiss, aka Stav thinks he looks slick in that wig. It's true, folks. Barry Weiss said on television last night, other than this instance, Brett Kavanaugh has a reputation as being a prince of a man. Okay, but which prince?

Yeah, exactly. Some of them taxidermy. Yeah, Prince Vlad the Impaler. Yeah. Brett is a yellow king of a man. She went on to say, this is the real nut here. What about the deeper moral, cultural, like ethical question here? Should the fact that a 17-year-old, presumably very drunk kid, did this, should this be disqualifying?

Come on, Barry, yeah. Should this really be disqualifying? I mean, come on, it's not like he was a Palestinian 17-year-old walking towards a fence or waving a flag. Well, I mean, that, I mean, Barry just has a different opinion on our 17-year-olds versus theirs because theirs can't drink. And so it doesn't. How do you measure adulthood if it's not?

They're responsible for their actions, unlike American drunk teenagers. By the way, Barry, the New York Times has now shipped Barry's wife off to Australia, like a 19th-century British convict. And all I got to say is I really, really hope she's careful and doesn't get swarmed, stung by a swarm of box jellyfish. Barry, please be careful if you're on the beach. He's going to find a racist marsupial and induct it into the intellectual dark web. Call the Australians and that's rude, Felix.

I don't like it when you call them that. What's so infuriating about that is that she's saying, hey, he did it at 17. How does that reflect down as an adult? By the way, I'm just going to decide that 17-year-olds shouldn't have their lives determined by their income or their actions, which means abolishing all juvenile sentencing for anything or any court memory of your thing. Or by the way, the SAT meaning anything, because she says what you do at 17, you shouldn't decide whether you can be on the Supreme Court.

If you get a bad SAT score, you've been at 17, you can't be on the Supreme Court, literally. But she says, you can't judge someone, but what is he doing now? He's denying something he did. He's lying. He's saying that somebody who's making an actual cry of what they did is a liar and they're not admitting they did anything. There's no penance. There's no growth.

There's just continuing it on at 53 of continuing to fucking lie about it. I like how some people clearly didn't get the call, so they didn't coordinate. So half of the team are on, this is a lie, it never happened, and the other half are on, so what if it did? Because they weren't on the same email. Help me out here. Barry Weiss' sister wrote an op-ed where she was mad about a college application. Can you write that by me?

Okay, no. Barry Weiss' sister wrote an op-ed, anti-affirmative action op-ed about how she didn't get into her top choice school because she wasn't like Native American, or she didn't check all the right ethno-demographic boxes, and the entire op-ed was her fucking whining that she had to go to, I don't know, Brown or something. Barry Oh, God, no. Just deport me. Like, oh my God.

Barry Weiss' sister wrote an op-ed, anti-affirmative action op-ed about how she didn't get into her top choice school because she wasn't the one that was mad. But they were like, oh, look, we. We got it, on high school. Barry Going up next. on this hill, but he's more rolling off it. Is Eric Erickson a heart attack walking up the hill? Eric Erickson said the other day,

I urge the media to look into reports now being brought up by, quote, a swarm of blogs that Kavanaugh's accuser's family's house was foreclosed upon by Brett Kavanaugh's mother, who was a foreclosure judge at the time. Folks, would it surprise you to find out that just this morning, that story has been utterly discredited and is totally full of shit?

Hard to believe, but imagine if that was true, though. And he was just like, oh, no big deal. Just Brett Kavanaugh's family are monsters who foreclosed. He's like, they're like the bad guy from It's a Wonderful Life, basically. And not only that, they're also implying that this child upon her family's house being foreclosed upon would go onto an Alexander Dumas plot's

worth of multi-decade revenge plotting. Like, who do you think this child was, Lex Luthor? All conservatives do is like, they can't do anything out of leisure because the CEO of the laser tag place left Trump's economic advisory board or something. They have no more hobbies. They can't exercise or do anything.

So they only watch Hulu original series called, you know, Revenge Focus, about people who engage in multi-decade long revenge schemes and that's how they see the world now. Here's what I want to share about Eric Erickson, though. This is unrelated to the Kavanaugh thing. This is a tweet from him just today. It was so fucking funny.

I had to share it with you. Forgot I had a radio interview today. Oh, yes. Forgot I had a radio interview today. So I left my wife and kids at a restaurant because the waiter messed up my order and I wouldn't get it in time. Yeah, he fucked up.

Walks 0.75 miles home for the interview. Arrived just in time. They never called Psy, but I got a great blister. Did you walk less than a mile? 0.75? I had to walk 0.75 miles. I've been up for five hours. Wait a minute, these are the guys

that are gonna win the new American Civil War? If Felix thinks you're lazy. Yeah. But 0.75 miles, that is, like, and I've been up for five hours level complaint. That's amazing. I think God is actively trying to kill Eric Erickson, but in really small ways, really slowly.

I have a new blister to show for it. Like, it's like, it's a war wound. Yeah, you see this? This is the mistaken restaurant order of 2018. I will never forget. Okay. Next up, and what I thought was my favorite reaction until the last one, I'm gonna get to in a second.

Combs courtesy of show favorite, Megan McCartle. Oh! Stop! On your feet for Megan McCartle, everybody! You're set now! You don't listen to him! That won't deserve your even ironic applause. Yeah, Matt's about to go through his own 0.75 miles,

if you feel me. Folks, I would walk 0.75 miles. I would walk 0.75, yeah. Folks. Just going back to the Erickson thing, I like that. The radio show canceled on him. Like, what was the interview? Like, oh, it turns out Joey Chesnut beat your record.

We don't, we have no reason to talk to you at all. It just, there's so much going on in that tweet. It's just so good. God damn it. I'm sorry. Back to Megan, there's so many of these, you gotta keep it moving. Back to Megan, folks, Megan's brain

is expanding at an alarming rate. She's basically like Akira at the end of that movie now, just pulsating giant blob consuming everything around her. Listen to this. It's like you watered down a shrinky bank. Listen to this. This is how she opens this Twitter argument. Pretty standard.

She says, if the Senate letter involves a consensual man act violation, I can't think of any move better calculated to turn out disenchanted conservatives in November to support their party. This was like a couple days ago where the accusations were still a little bit less founded. Someone replied to her a day later

and said, and how about now? Megan replies, it's obviously a very serious accusation, but hard to judge its veracity when the woman in question refuses to be interviewed by anyone. Beyond that, I draw the line at judging anyone on things that happened when they were minors. She could have stopped at the first part,

but she had to cover both her bases. Yes. This is like, this entire thing, Megan and then Barry Weiss before that, it's like how the Trump Guides became prison abolitionists, but only for one guy before Paul Manafort flipped. It's like, they just instantly just are like, yeah, I'm actually an anarcho-communist now,

but just for this one person. Okay, here's the fascinating thing about Megan. This is where she ends up to win a Twitter argument. Like, her mind is evolving on the fly because she knows she's backed into a Twitter. What is the thought about this subject for a second of her life? She needs to come up with something.

So then someone says, I'm sorry, I think I misunderstood you. You wouldn't judge someone who raped a girl in high school because they were a minor? Megan replies, I wouldn't disqualify anyone from higher office because of anything they had done as a minor. Someone else replies to Megan,

you'd be cool with a teen rapist getting a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. This is where she ends up to win this. She's hit not 18. This is where she ends up. I would be cool with a teen murderer getting a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. No, no, no, no, no.

She is hitting on a 25. That woman's brain, it is like a sponge in that it is full of filthy water and covered in mold. This is a third act of a MacGyver episode. How is she gonna get out of this one? It's like, you just wake up, you go through your like 18 kitchen utensils to get one cup of coffee.

You log on to Twitter, you black out within 20 minutes. You're like, yeah, I actually think that Dylan and Eric would be great senators. She thinks if she keeps digging, she'll get to the other side. Like, how do you get off your computer after that? How do you do the rest of your day? In fact, that is real posting.

No thought involved. I'm just writing words, not thinking about the messy whole log. Again, I would love to have seen a Megan McCartle Twitter thread concerning allegations that Merrick Garland had an unpaid parking ticket. Too bad we'll never know. Thanks, Obama.

The last, and in my opinion, best reaction comes courtesy of another show favorite, another absolute all-star. Oh yeah. John Podhorre. Yes! Yes! Yes!

The Treat Man! Cheer him! Cheer this man! Cheer him! Bitch better have my motherfucking snippers. Someone at our Philadelphia show came out with a goody. He gave us a hat, a grub hub hat. I'd say, can you please give this to that fat treat man

you keep talking about? Ha ha ha! Ah, a shit golem is this man. I love the idea of like a Philadelphia pollution factory worker who doesn't know any of these New York media characters and is just like, I love that guy. You guys always shit on. The guy who was always complaining about his order.

He works in a magazine or something. Fuck that guy. Yeah, but I meet fans from other countries and they're like, I love your show. I have no idea what you're talking about, but I love it. They're great characters. They're just simply wonderful characters. You don't really need to know who they are.

But we're in New York, so you guys all know about John Podhoritz. He's probably berated every single one of you as a service job who's in this crowd right now. Check this out. Again, just incredible that you would share this thought publicly. John Podhoritz writes, if you want

to know how pop culture viewed this stuff in the 1980s, consider the treat. Let me just finish reading this one. If you want to know how pop culture viewed this stuff in the 80s, consider the treatment of the intimacy between Louis and Betty in Revenge of the Nerds. The movie was considered a sweet, raunchy delight then.

Now, OK, for those of you who haven't seen Revenge of the Nerds, he's describing a scene in which the lead nerd tricks the lead sorority girl into having sex with him in a bouncy castle by dressing in an exact same Halloween costume that her boyfriend was wearing, including a mask. So he has non-consensual sex with a woman. Uh-huh. A romp.

That was a sweet, romantic, romp. And raunchy delight, according to John Podhoritz. Sweet raunchy delight, which is the thing he yells at snippers for not delivering fast enough. Where's my sweet raunchy delight? Oh, imagine. Oh, my god. I've been waiting 20 minutes for a sweet raunchy delight.

Imagine a young Podhoritz just his pud pulsating in his shorts watching this movie. Oh, it's awful. Oh, god. But here's the thing. He was saying, like, this is how pop culture treated that in the 80s. And now?

So, like, he's saying it's a bad thing if we look at Revenge of the Nerds now and be like, that was kind of fucked up. Yeah. Yeah, in the Middle Ages, Prima Nacta was considered a respectful prerogative of the Lord. And now? Yeah, me and my friends used to think

Gilderay was a pimp. So to round this out, again, I cannot help but stress enough that these guys and gals cannot help but tell on themselves, which is why it's worth paying attention to them. They can't help but tell you what they really believe and think, but it's often when they don't expect it. As for Brett Kavanaugh, whether he gets on the court or not, I'm sure if they even pull him, they'll replace him

with someone equally vile and awful. I'm Janine Pirro. I'm sincerely hoping it's Janine Pirro. Judge Judy. And Robert Durst testifies on her behalf at the trial, at the hearing, and goes, yeah, she treated me very fairly. We love Robert Durst. We love him.

His song Breaks Stuff, Delightful. Judge Reinhold. Judge Reinhold. Judge Frickin' Tread, am I right? I would accept Judge Mattis. But again, so that's pretty dark that a guy like Brett Kavanaugh, a guy who is a sadist who has never once been punished or even called to account for any of the things

he's said or done or will do, should he get on the Supreme Court? Yeah, the Earth has told him that there is no sin. It's fucked up, but true. Draw what conclusions you will from it, but the conclusion I've drawn is all these motherfuckers are in Carcosa 24-7 and getting away with it. So I don't want to end the show on that dark of a note.

Yeah. Good luck, everyone. To quote, to quote, to quote my friend Andrew from episode 1, remembers that the world is run by pedophile billionaires. Oh, me, oh, ha, ha, ha. Now that we're done staring into the Carcosian darkness at the heart of Kavanaugh, we travel back to Providence, or I guess Pawtucket, whatever.

All of Rhode Island is basically the same place, to take a deep dive into the life of HP Lovecraft, the original incel poster nerd. Sadly, no treats to shout out from this leg of the trip, so Providence, do better. OK, here's Lovecraft. Pawtucket, Rhode Island, let's go. OK, so in the first act of the show,

we talked about some really dark and evil shit. I'm going to just keep continuing with that. As I mentioned earlier, we're here in Providence, and to me, Providence is about one thing. Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Let's give him. Isn't that adorable, folks? A healthy face.

You get to walk around all day knowing that you're in a town that is, for the rest of the world, completely identified with a agoraphobic, xenophobic weirdo incel psychopath. Yeah, it's cool how Maine gets Stephen King, who just now on Twitter is like, the real it is Donald Trump. And you get this freak. Yeah, because Stephen King is just

your chill, boomer uncle you can hang out with. Nice guy. And that's like, yeah, then there's HP Lovecraft, where if you met him at a family function, you would do anything to not make eye contact. But you can see how he thought he was the master race. He looks like a normal person looking at himself in the back of a spoon.

Everyone loves a nice long skull, just a normal, long skull. I wonder why he was so obsessed with fish people. Now, if you listen to the show, you might have noticed that HP Lovecraft does figure somewhat prominently in our own lore and mythos. Because for me, HP Lovecraft is one of my major problematic faves. So I think here, just outside of Providence,

I think it would be appropriate to pay tribute to the master. I've put together a little something for you guys and my co-hosts who may not know all the details of his life. Yeah, Felix and I, well, Felix only reads the Koran, and I only read the Financial Times. So we're jumping in this with just completely cold. I also read the Financial Times, but it has, you know, informed by my wisdom from the Koran.

Right, right. Cats won't walk on the Financial Times. People don't know that. They respect the pink. Felix only reads the Financial Times from Marmaduke. Well, Marmaduke made a great point about the Turkish lira float the other day. OK, so this is a segment I'd like to call Facts

Concerning the Life of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The most important thing to keep in mind as you learn about the life of HP Lovecraft and consider his uvra of work is that he really is the portrait of the proto incel. He really was what would become if he were born in a different era, an alt-right reddit guy. He was a poster.

He was a poster before his time. But writing spooky stories is what you had to do before the internet. Before you could post on forums, you had to write short stories. He was a reddit poll with creepypasta crossover. Can you imagine the horror of that instead of just going onto your computer and just to anyone

who clicks on the page, just giving them all of your wisdom about skull shapes and racial destinies. You had to sit down at some fucking underwood typewriter and clack out 500 pages of allegorical prose about squid monsters who are actually Italian. And then send it to like 500 incredibly shady fucking New York pulp magazine publishers. They may be one of them would give you a scent for it.

And if you wanted to punctuate your writer's block by jacking off, you had to send away to Siam for a drawing of a tit. Grim times. Grim times indeed. But if you consider his body of work, if you've read all of it, as I have, you're struck by the fact that even though I enjoy it very

much, his work featured basically all of the same themes that obsessed the alt-right today. His work is all about the unseen threats to Western civilization and the cultural and racial degeneration inherent in that. He was obsessed with the loss of Western culture and the invasion by otherworldly outside forces. And he was a fanatical racist and lunatic.

And often when we discuss writers from the 1920s or a different era, you can say, and not without cause, that maybe we shouldn't judge writers of a different era by the same standards as are today. But now, H.P. Lovecraft was fucking insanely racist, even by the standards of the fucking 1920s. Virgil, remember, we had an idea for a sketch. Remember?

Yes. It was like a fake documentary interviewing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the idea was that we would have to do what you call reenactments of this. But the idea was that all of Lovecraft's stories were just explicitly racist. And he just had one editor who changed Italians

to fish monster, to the deep ones, and changed all of the. He did Word, Find, and Replace. Yes, basically. And all of that stuff, like the Cthulhu, Phatagin, Vnog, the Log Thugoth, that weird, slurred speech that he does in that, those are all just explicit slurs before the editor got first pass on it. Maybe they were Italian meats.

He was originally. Sopracetha Prosciutto. It's probably how he heard Yiddish. The Dekronomicon was originally the Quran. It was written by the Mad Arab Abdul-Azrahad. Just a few notes on H.B. Lovecraft's completely hysterical racism. Reading here, it says, from the start,

Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard, but rather esteemed the English people and those of English descent. He praised non-Wasp groups, such as Hispanics and Jews. However, however, it's nice to be appreciated. However, his private writings on groups such as Irish Catholics, German immigrants, and African-Americans were consistently negative.

I mean, OK, the first one, yes. Obviously correct. They are the plague of this fucking, you know. You're fucking New England. You fucking know. Irish fucking Americans are basically like the worst people in the world. OK, so let's dive into the life of H.B. Lovecraft.

Like I said, keep in mind, proto-poster of the era that we all live in now. He really, a lot of the times, he's credited with giving birth to the entire genre of cosmic horror. But what he really did was give birth to the cosmic horror of internet posting culture and personalities. So he was born in 1890, right here in Providence, Rhode Island,

or right next door to here in Providence, Rhode Island. Wouldn't you know it? He had a sad and tragic childhood. Who didn't back then? Like literally, you were born, you had 17 siblings, and 15 of them didn't make it to age two. You somehow got syphilis off of a toilet seat. Your dad worked at a dirt factory

and got caught in the gears when you were nine. You're almost right, except for the fact that he was an only child. Let's get to the syphilis part. Well, yeah, by the end of it. Ha ha ha ha ha. And the little indies. So his father was a traveling salesman employed

by the Gorham Manufacturing Company that developed a type of mental disorder caused by untreated syphilis when he was around the age of three. His dad was syphilitic Jack Lemon. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm telling you, I need the leads. I need the lead. I need the leads.

I need them. There's bugs under my skin. I need the leads. Purple monkey dishwasher. I need the lead. First prize is a Cadillac. Second prize, treatment for your syphilis. Third prize is you're fired.

OK, so he developed a mental disorder due to untreated syphilis when Howard was around the age of three. In 1893, his father became a patient at the Butler Hospital in Providence and remained there until his death in 1898. I'm sure that was to the mental hospital for the 1990s. Yeah, we have fans of the Butler. That place is haunted as fuck, yo. Still haunted.

I'm sure that was a great hospital for his dad to be in. At that time in the world where just every doctor was mangola. Lovecraft's mother. Sarah Susan Phillips never exhibited any of the symptoms of the disease, leading to questions regarding the intimacy of their relationship. In 1969, Sonya Green.

Your dad got no pussy. That was the first thing that made him dark. Like, it blacked old him. He saw that his dad was cocked. In 1969, Sonya Green, HP Lovecraft's former wife, ventured that Susan was a, quote, touch me not wife. And that Winfield, his father, being a traveling salesman, took his sexual pleasures wherever he could find them.

Lovecraft himself. And sometimes he fucked a squid. And that didn't affect Lovecraft at all. Lovecraft himself called his mother at one point in a 1937 letter a touch me not. Noting that after his early childhood, she avoided all physical contact with him. This is contrary to his mother's treatment

of a young Lovecraft soon after his father's breakdown. According to accounts of family friends, his mother doded over the young Lovecraft to a fault, pampering him and never letting him out of his sight. I'm sure that didn't warp him at all. Literally pampering, as in diapers. If we have any parents or soon to be parents in the crowd, if you have a kid and you're the mom,

make sure to literally never let him leave your side. He'll grow up to be a famous author like this. That's awesome. After his father's hospitalization, Lovecraft resided in the family home with his mother and his maternal aunts, Lillian and Annie, and his maternal grandparents, Whipple and Roby. Come on.

No. We are indeed on our way now, Ducky. Lovecraft later recollected that after his father's illness, his mother was quote, permanently stricken with grief. He also said, as a child, he was enamored with the Roman pantheon of gods, accepting them as genuine expressions of divinity and foregoing his Christian upbringing.

Oh my god, he's a Marvel bust Twitter avatar guy. Yes, this is where I'm going with this. This is proto alt-right shit. They like the traditions of Christianity upholding the West, but deep down inside, they hate it because essentially Christianity counsels us to love and help the weak, whereas the old pagan gods of Europe

told us to kill and enslave them. Yeah, it's the Edward Gibbon thesis, basically, yeah. And they love those guys. My favorite is when they have like Trajan as their fucking avatar, you know, the guy who was just fucked literally every man who he met, like literally every one of them. This is even more fucking Reddit.

Are you ready for this? He recalls at five years old, being told Santa Claus did not exist and retorting by asking why God is not equally a myth. Boom, owned, owned by your own logic. Good day, madam. I mean, you have been owned. To be fair, I think most kids actually arrive

at that conclusion. They just eventually stopped caring because they become adults. Some of them become Sam Harris fans, though. Right. No, I think that's true. It's like when you realize Santa isn't real, you do have that moment.

What else have I been lied to about? Who else isn't real? And then you're just like, I'm not gonna think about that. I'm just gonna, I was worried about it for a minute, but thankfully I hit puberty, so I'm just gonna be jacking off for the next five years. Yeah, you just stay busy.

You find a hobby. Exactly. And then you reach, you know, your mid-20s and you find out the only true thing is astrology and you're fine. So Cthulhu is his flying spaghetti monster. Oh my God. Wow.

Literally is. Holy shit. Oh my God, whoa. Ready for more epic reddit, bacon drama? Yeah, what was like the asshole nerd hat back then because everyone had to wear them? Was it like, oh, great. He's another propeller hat atheist.

He's another hat they think looks so cool. Get a load of this guy in his fucking colonial tri-corner. One of those trepined atheists. Yeah, the atheist back then just had a fucking divot out of their skull. That's what you had instead of gauges back then. That's how you were a scene kid in the 1800s.

Yeah, that was body modification. Okay, here's more epic reddit shit. At the age of eight, he took a keen interest in the sciences, particularly astronomy and chemistry. He also examined the anatomy books available to him in the family library, learning the specifics of human reproduction

that had yet to be explained to him. Yeah, all those pages were stuck together. And he found that it, quote, virtually killed my interest in the subject. No one would- Yeah, women, I thought women are cool, but did you know they're full of guts? Yeah.

I shan't be getting up in those guts, madam. To be one of those guys who lies about fucking porn stars back then, you had to be like, yeah, me and my cousin, we actually met the girl from the anatomy textbook. We fucked her. That was Lisa Ann. Again, would it surprise you to learn

he was a very sickly child who was plagued throughout his entire education by- Oh, but he seems so robust. He was plagued throughout his entire education by health crises of various kinds. In 1908, prior to his high school graduation, he had another episode, though this instance was seemingly more severe

than any prior. The exact circumstances and causes remain unknown. The only direct record are Lovecraft's own later correspondence, where he described it variously being as a nervous collapse and some sort of breakdown in one letter blaming it on the stress of high school, despite his enjoying it.

Look, I don't know what happened, but it made him real weird. Everyone seemed like their lives seemed to be broken down into episodes back then. I guess it was like the only way you could deal with the world was having a psychotic break every two years. I mean, maybe there's something to it. He got a lot done.

In another letter concerning the events of 1908, he notes, I was an M prey to intense headaches, insomnia, and general nervous weakness, which prevents my continuous application to anything. He has chronic Lyme. Oh my God, he was on the pain internet. An account from a high... He was a spoony.

Yes, he was a spoony. He had no fucking spoons left. An account from high school classmate described Lovecraft as exhibiting, quote, terrible tics, and that at times he'd be sitting in his seat and he'd suddenly up and jump. Think how fucking boring school was back then. You didn't even have a substitute teacher day

where they wheeled in a TV and just let you watch a fucking movie. Yeah, you couldn't play Fortnite. It was awful. They also didn't know anything. So your classes would be like, all right, so it's like you got the skin, then you got the veins under there.

All right, you're a doctor now. Here's your ether. Here's more internet bullshit. Lovecraft started out as a would-be journalist joining the United Amateur Press Association in 1914. The following year, he launched his self-published magazine, The Conservative. Oh my God!

Oh my God! They held journalists self-published. Read my medium post. It's all there. Oh my God, it's all there. I'm telling you. Uncanny, holy shit. This is the blueprint.

He was the old God that opened this door into our world and spawned a fucking zillion fucking awful children, awful unholy children. Bursting like spider eggs from his womb. Not only that, check this out. He was also a compulsive letter to the editor writer, which was the early 20th century version of posting. He was in the comments section constantly.

He was hectoring the New York Times to talk about Italian no-go neurone zones. Hahaha! Check this out. In 1911, Lovecraft's letters to the editor began appearing in Pulp and Weird Fiction Magazine, most magazines, most notably, Argosy. A 1913 letter critical of Fred Jackson,

a prominent writer for Argosy, started Lovecraft down a path that would greatly affect his life. Lovecraft described Jackson's stories as, quote, trivial, effeminate, and in places, coarse. Got him. Yeah. You know how that writing is coarse, but also kind of gay.

Continuing, Lovecraft said that Jackson's characters exhibit, quote, delicate passions and emotions proper to Negroes and anthropoid apes. In this time, Lovecraft was also kicked off his professional Jacks team for calling another player of Bavarian. He wrote letters to the editor criticizing the forced diversity of the film Man Bored's Train.

Look, they keep drawing Nancy with a bigger and bigger nose. You know what that means. So his posting sparked a nearly year-long feud in the letter section of Arguson between Lovecraft, along with his occasional supporters, and the majority of readers critical of his view of Jackson. Never stop posting. Never stop posting.

I will not log off. Even if everyone hates you. And it says his occasional supporters. So even back then, he had a click of fellow assholes co-signing his fucking screeds. Check this out, though. This is fucking hilarious. Lovecraft's biggest critic was John Russell, who often

replied in verse and to whom Lovecraft felt compelled to reply because he respected Russell's writing skills. This is the Chad writer who's just winding him up every fucking time by doing a limerick in response to his fucking impassioned pleas about anthropoid apes. Well, that was how you were like a white SoundCloud rapper back then. I'm lyrical.

OK. Not only that, but another great thing about posting is having friends on the internet, right? Of course. People you don't know. Your band of brothers. Yeah, people you don't know. And then one day you meet them and start

an incredibly successful podcast. Called Pod Save America. One of his posting buddies, with whom he carried out a lengthy correspondence using the posting service, the US Mail, was Robert E. Howard, who you might know as the author of the Conan the Barbarian stories. Robert E. Howard was also a guy obsessed with masculinity.

And in the Conan stories, they extoll this kind of hyperborean masculinity. And Conan would often fight these sort of degenerated ape species of people. The real Robert E. Howard was also a complete butterball and mama's boy from Texas who lived with his mother. Check this out.

He carried out a correspondence with Robert E. Howard up until the morning of June 11, 1936. Robert E. Howard had been caring for his mother the entire time who was suffering from tuberculosis. On that morning, he was nearing the end, Howard asked one of his mother's nurses, a Mrs. Green, if she would ever regain consciousness. When she told him no, he walked out

to his car in the driveway, took the pistol from the glove box, and shot himself in the head. Sorry. Sorry. I thought that would be a bigger laugh for me there. Look, it's been long enough. It's not too soon or anything. But I'm looking at a picture of this guy,

and you're right about being a little bit of a chubby butterball. He was also literally a fedora guy. Yes, he was. But everyone was back then. Yeah, that was the style. Going a bit like seeing a picture of your grandfather from the 30s, you fucking MRA, PUA, PCC.

No, no, no, no. You took off your hat for a portrait. You definitely took off your hat for a portrait. He was the guy who did not. Maybe he had a bad hairline. Here's what I'm getting at. Here's what I'm getting about with these two guys. They're intense internet friends.

They're intense internet friends. They're intense posting friends. Both obsessed. They're both fine ad-mortals. Nothing wrong with that. They're both obsessed with masculinity. Racial hygiene. Racial hygiene and the degeneration

of the species, despite being two absolute fucking dorks living with their mom, literally living in their tubercular mother's basement. I do want to say I have always loved the phrase from back then, racial hygiene. It implies the existence of a racial slob. Just got you have genotypes all over the table. It's like my apartment, but with haplogroups.

To be fair, yeah. They're everywhere. You're just piling up the haplogroups. I just kick them under the couch at this point. So the horror magazine Weird Tales bought some of Lovecraft's story in 1923, giving him his first taste of literary success. The following year, he married Sonia Green.

That was weird, Twitter. And he only had like three tweets. The following year. Also, by the way, with Shadow over Inzbeth, he invented other kin. The following year, he married Sonia Green, a childhood acquaintance from a wealthy Rhode Island family. Lovecraft's aunts disapproved of the relationship with Sonia,

but Lovecraft and Green were married on March 3, 1924. And he relocated to her Brooklyn apartment at 793 Flatbush Avenue. I looked this up on Google Maps today. That's in Prospect Lefferts Garden, right on the corner of Prospect Park. And the building I went to the street view is currently a Chinese food restaurant, a liquor store,

and a hair braiding salon. Three things that would have fucking horrified HP Lovecraft. Well, Lovecraft famously, a lot of his stories he wrote in the cornrows period of his authorship. Yeah, but here's the thing. So we've all been listening along to these tales and making fun of HP Lovecraft, but now we're getting to the part where he moves to New York

and fucking hates it. Felix, hold on a minute. Let's hear him out. Let's hear him out. Look, OK, some things like, look, they age poorly, but some ideas are timeless. That's all I'm going to say. Wouldn't you know it, his marriage broke up after two

years due to his wife's various illnesses. Again, everyone was fucking sick all the time back then. And financial difficulties. She relocated to Cincinnati and then later to Cleveland. She followed work, basically, adding to the daunting reality of failure in a city with a large immigrant population. Lovecraft's single room apartment later

at 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights. Yeah, Chris has walked by this theater. It's right by the Court Street Theater in Brooklyn, if you know where that is or ever want to see a movie in Brooklyn. Not far from the working class waterfront neighborhood of Red Hook, the apartment was burgled, leaving him with only the clothes he was wearing.

That's literally, that theater is the theater I go to to smoke weed during a matinee. It's justice. After he got burgled, Lovecraft famously wrote the article, How I Lost My White Guilt. Again, it's the same thing. You get victimized by petty crime in the city once, and you develop this fantastical cosmic mythology

of racial violation and horror. How I Lost My Non-Pentical Guilt. I love how back then, like part of being racist was being racist to Germans. Like that's what an insane hierarchy it was. They had a whole elaborate organization. Felix is exactly right. Lovecraft hated and feared anything and anyone

that was not of good old New England stock. And like Felix too, he also hated everything about New York City. Look, okay, you know how Hitler invented the autobahn? Like, okay, sometimes so bad people have good ideas. Will, was that Lovecraft's only wife or did he remarry? He never remarried. That was his only wife in relationship.

And by the way, Alan Moore, in doing his own research on the life of H.P. Lovecraft, claims that it was a celibate marriage and that H.P. Lovecraft only touched his wife one time, and it was on her hand. This is Alan Moore, okay? That was second base. One of my favorites- You'll get you a touch me not girl. This is Chad Pashtra, I don't know what you're talking about.

One of my favorite stories about that marriage is Lovecraft was, you know, at times anti-Semitic and he would go off on these, well, I mean, Will says at the beginning that oh, he actually liked Jews, but that sounds- I'm sure it was like he said, he liked them by saying, yeah, they're good with money or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. He would go off on these tirades about Jews while his wife is in the room and she would have to remind him, honey, I'm half Jewish, remember? And then- Oh, don't feel bad for her. She married a psychopath again, so. I mean- You made your bed, honey.

And then in his arguments, in the letters to the editor comments, he'd be like, by the way, I'm not anti-Semitic. The woman I'm married to is half Jewish. And I never touch her, and I never touch her. Dude, that literally happened to that alt-right podcast guy. Oh my God, you're right, you're right.

That was the right stuff podcast guy. Mike Pinovich. Mike Pinovich, it came out that his wife was like a quarter Jewish and he had to apologize to all of his listeners. I promise to do better. But no, Amber's right. You can't really have any sympathy for the wife

because at some point they went on a date and like he- Asked about her racial hygiene. And like, you know, took a scolding shower because he accidentally shook hands with a Cornishman. And like, if that's not a red flag, I don't know what it is. Oh yeah, I'm a racist loser. How about I tell that to my Jewish wife?

Whom I'm holding hands with right now. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Time to go stare at my hot wife, losers. So like, if that was Lovecraft, what was like an annoying performatively woke guy back then? He like, it was just like, oh yeah, I went to dinner with this guy and he just made

a big show about how he wouldn't shoot an Irishman on site. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Will Rogers. Oh yeah, yeah, Will Rogers, I guess, he was like, well who's the Matt guy, Matt, the woke guy from Oranges is the New Black? Oh, I don't know.

Oh, McGory. Yeah, Matt McGory, yeah. Yeah, Will Rogers is Matt McGory. I'd buy that, that's a good parallel. Okay, so he lived in New York and wrote several short stories about New York, which sort of captured his horror and disgust. Well, he had a lot of time indoors.

Yeah, this quote sums up his feelings about New York and honestly, this is for Felix, this is dedicated to Felix here. My coming to New York had been a mistake. For whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze and annihilate me.

Two, that's two things you got right. I love how for HB Lovecraft, that horror was created by this deep psychic revulsion of anyone who deviated from this very narrow wasp conception of humanity. For Felix, it's because his fucking Grubhub order was 10 minutes late. Well, yeah, yeah.

No, it's not bad, it's not bad. To be fair, Felix also hates the Bavarians. No, Lovecraft was mad because the ping on the telegraph lines sucked back then, couldn't play his tic-tac-toe games. People were weird, he was losing to children across the guy in the Orient, celestial children at tic-tac-toe and correspondence chess.

Dude, you are so lucky that the telegram service lagged my fucking shit. That's a thing, like Felix will tell you guys, he will launch into these baroque denunciations of New York, they can go on for 20 minutes. But honestly, if they had like soul South Korea level internet, he would never complain once. Yeah, no, I'm a simple man.

Like my, I hate like the high population density of New York, but it's like you can live through anything if you know that your shots are hitting. So after his marriage and career in New York failed, Lovecraft returned home to here, Providence, Rhode Island, and began work on all of his most well-known and well-liked stories, including the Call of Cthulhu at the Mountains of Madness, Whisper in the Dark.

I could go on and on. All of them are basically. Shadow over Innsmouth. Yeah, everyone, you could go like, or for the title, it could just be, or an Irishman. Lovecraft was never able to provide for even basic expenses by selling stories and doing paid literary work for others. He lived frugally, subsisting on an inheritance

that was nearly depleted, but that was not nearly depleted by the time he died. He sometimes went without food to be able to pay for the cost of mailing letters. Oh my god, he starved for posting. Dude, there are kids, there are uncountable numbers of weirdo kids in this country right now that are forgoing food to play video games and post

on the internet. Yes, it's like I don't need to eat the next week. I need that Fortnite skin. Yeah. OK, well, I need the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man Fortnite skin. OK, well, troops aren't the only people that sacrifice. Just rail thin, but blissfully happy,

because you finally unlocked the Logan Paul skin on Fortnite. I need the Zoot Suit skin for my diorama. Eventually, he was forced to move to meager lodgings with his surviving aunt. Oh, wow. I just need an older woman with him at all times. Plus, he's a weird in-cell fail son that needs to be doted on. He needs to bring him Mountain Dew Code Red at all times.

This shitty apartment is OK, but what it really needs is a weird looming, hectoring aunt. You know, I'm about to go beast mode on the Prussians. I need my aunt there, though. He was also deeply affected by the suicide of his friend and correspondent Robert E. Howard. In early 1937, he was diagnosed with cancer of the small intestine and suffered

from malnutrition as a result. He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937 in Providence. And according with his lifelong scientific curiosity, he kept a diary of illness until close to the moment of his death. He even posted about dying. It's like total biscuit. Who is that?

They get it. Oh, he was like, oh, I forgot he died. Don't explain it. It's a little treasure. It's a little gift for the people who got it. You and me, fam. You and me, fam. All right, now we have two don't-clip-its for tonight.

OK, but what was his cat's name? You're not going to trick me with this one, Amber. You are not going to know. When you're on the home, when you're on the way home and you're looking up the other thing that we alluded to. So Lovecraft had a black cat. It's fine. Look it up on the way home.

The cat is also featured in one of his best stories, Rats in the Walls. I'm not going to say it. Didn't you try to get somebody by making them name Bobby Schmurr's big song? No, Matt, that's what Matt did to me last night. Oh, Matt, how did you even know what that song was? You looked that up to try to get one.

No, no, I thought Matt was trying to get me, because I made a reference. No, I literally was asking. No, no, yeah, yeah, I shouldn't have. No, it's not a trick. He's just guileless and has never heard a rap song that was made after 1988. No, no, wait, hold on a minute.

Stone Cold Rhyman by Young M.C. came out in, I think, 1992. Yeah, when we're off stage, we're just trying constantly conspiring to deceive each other, trick each other into saying various cuss words and racial slurs. OK, gang, that was Facts Concerning the Life of One Howard Phillips Lovecraft. And I. RIP to a real one. Just top posting incel racist nerd.

Yep. Providence, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, The Met. You guys have been an awesome crowd tonight. Thank you so much for coming out. Indeed. Thanks, Kevin. We are Choppo Trap House. If you just give us, like, five, 10 minutes,

we're going to be signing books. So please stick around, hang out. Love to say what's up to you guys. Again, Rhode Island, good night. You've been awesome. Cheers. Thank you.