Don't Blame Me! - Disappointment

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

But Am I Wrong: Mermaids Are Real But Are You Wrong: Boyfriend making demands during sex Coworker pressuring you to join their biking club But Are They Wrong Melisa: In-N-Out Burger Meghan: Bob Iger Write In: [e-mail] Weigh In: vote in the weekly poll on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/by.meghan.and.melisa/ Buy Our Merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Join Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Follow Us: https://www.instagram.com/by.meghan.and.melisa/ https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdYV7J5p/ Follow Meghan: https://www.instagram.com/meghanrienks/ https://twitter.com/meghanrienks https://www.youtube.com/c/meghanrienks Follow Melisa: https://www.instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa/ https://www.instagram.com/diamondmprintproductions https://twitter.com/SheIsNotMelissa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's Sliced Deli Meat products for always $3.75. And get Life Brand Pure Vita Shampoo or Conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready with a whole world and more. hello there megan hello it's time for our show but am i wrong lovely lovely okay um that was enough of that uh but am i wrong welcome everyone welcome so welcome to the podcast this is but am i wrong where we two people who have not once ever been wrong in our whole lives in the entirety of the time we've been on this planet and in melissa's case other planets never once have we been wrong

so we thought start a fucking podcast about how right we are and we can tell everybody about how right we are and tell you when you're wrong great job megan for explaining this show thank you it was really good if you want to see our gorgeous wonderful stunning beautiful faces you can head on over to our patreon you can also support the show and all the shows that we make over there so um we have three different segments on this show we will explain each of them before we get into it but one of the best parts of the show is you can vote on who you think was wrong in each situation on the posts that i make what do you call them stories the slides on the instagram stories okay those are going up on the instagram these episodes come out thursday hopefully that

will be up friday at the latest saturday or sunday hopefully not monday and go over there and vote and if you have any insight to like why you voted that way you vote with the popular vote you voted with the not popular vote or you agree with us and you have thoughts and feelings shoot us a dm good job megan thank you i told you that for the second time today do you have a praise kink yeah but only when i'm actually doing a good job you're like i know you're just trying to you're keep trying to like keep me holding on like can you see in my eyes like where am i i know that's what i'm wondering though but like when you look at my like i don't know where i am in my eyes can you see that well considering that i don't know

where i am your glasses magnify your eyes so much so when you took your glasses off it was like i took my glasses off you're like where is she it made me blink but do you get what i mean like look into my eyes megan what's going on but you have to know that i'm not here either like can you tell that i that i because i'm so self-involved the only thing i can think about is like i'm not here you look here i need a reason and maybe a lot of reasons maybe there's an optometrist listening i've never heard of an optometrist being part of our community here i would love to know that but i want to know why megan's glasses reflect green light well they're very cheap ones like i got the cheapest lenses so maybe that okay but it's aspirational

that's great there we go there's the answer i've been looking for i don't care about the cheapness i'm talking about whatever the curve is that's creating a green light anyway uh should we get into the first segment of this show i think we should do you know what the first segment is yes of course i do because it's also the name of the show and that's when we pick something from our own lives me megan megan me you me me you justin timberlake song oh god all night have it your way or play before i feed your appetite ew he will never feed my appetite like i'm starving i'm thirsty and i'm starving and he has no ability to satiate or quench well he has the ability to satiate quench and clinch me from any direction that he would

like you're disgusting we have to move on i can't oh but am i wrong again we pick something from our lives. And it could be a rant. It could be us being mean, bad about something. It could be just anything from our lives or just from the world as it is that we have thoughts and feelings about. I have what some may consider a hot take. I think it's scientific, historical, etched in stone i'm sure the supreme court would agree with me i think to you melissa i think that at the end of the day we'd all be lying to ourselves if we said that mermaids weren't real okay and here's my reasoning there is no shot we all lied the exact same way and here's here's the other thing logically do I know that everything comes from one fable back in the day and then

passed on like folk songs we're we're we're whispering and we're a gabbing and we're telling people and then other people go other places and then suddenly we have these these fairy tales these folk tales that get spread across the world and it's like how would you know that how would I know that we all the same thing sure but that is not nearly as fun as the belief that there are mermaids i might have fallen for a blurry picture on tumblr of a mermaid and said that's definitely real there might have been other iterations of things like that which i've gone it's definitely there but i think for us to say something to us to say a fact about the ocean with a 100 certainty is a joke. We don't know jack shit about the ocean. So therefore, you cannot tell me that

you are 100% sure that mermaids don't exist. Might they look creepy crawly? Sure. Might they look very gilly? Might they look like a piranha, a deep sea kind of creature? They might not have long luscious locks and seashell titties but i choose to believe the same way that i believe that dinosaurs could be what set up for fairy tales about dragons but it's more fun to believe in both here's my hot take counter you don't fucking believe in mermaids it's not that i don't believe in mermaids i believe that mermaids were a hallucination by people that had like typhoid fevers their mirages and they were seeing manatees and they were going out don't go there and fucking the manatees and they came to and they're like i didn't fuck a manatee that was a

mermaid mermaid i also think that you know not all sirens are mermaids but not all mermaids are sirens and i think that sirens were the ones that were calling the people while they were hallucinating and so like they were just like manatee floating around but then there were some of them they're like that man it's hot and they're fucking those manatees and then they came to and they're like oh i just fucked a animal so now i gotta write this down as something else and then that's how we got a lot of stis as well that's also the first origin gaslighting here's what i think i think how i choose to believe do i believe that some of these semen fucked ocean mammals of the manatee variety yes but do i believe that that was orchestrated

by some funny goofy little mermaids and their orcas saying you'll be hella fucking funny if we got that and then the manatee goes that's hilarious i'm fucking in because of course mermaids can talk to other ocean animals because i just think that like for as much like darkness that goes on in the ocean there has to be a little bit of tomfoolery and so like having these like catty cunty funny mischievous ocean creatures who are facilitating a manatee boink a sail and smash i just think it's perfect and then mermaids then technically would invite it in invented gas lighting because they're like i totally saw you and then they're disappeared and they're gone and then you have a manatee who's just like looking at you right there going

what if manatees are actually mermaids but they can shapeshift shapeshift so you're saying that when ready hans christian anderson wrote the book the little mermaid then this was like the bible that he was creating for the mermaid shape-shifting is a part of mermaid core okay it is the foundation of the oath of the mer of the mer mermaid mer woman yeah the mer oath is we are shapeshifters we shift we shift shapes and then they all say here here throw some kelp on that and then they swim away it's a very short oath so where's the opening for mer people of the ocean or of their bodies of their bodies no no to have sex with no We did not give the satisfaction of these semen to have sex with these gorgeous, beautiful, sexy mermaids.

No, no. They shapeshifted into manatees and then they had sex with the manatees. They were not like having sex with these ugly semen. They were looking gorgeous and then they switched it and reversed it. So you're saying they sirened it. That's exactly what I'm saying. Okay. So the sirens.

like you said not all mermaids are sirens but all sirens are mermaids the trickster yeah there were some that were just boring like bland as fuck just like sitting in the kelp like playing with fishes and then the other ones were like let's have some shenanigans so it's a fucking fun on this tuesday let's fuck some shit up there's a boat those are the ones that orchestrated with the orcas and those are the ones that we came from the orcas bumped the ships around yep and then when the ships came around they were like okay now we're gonna shapeshift they're already confused they don't know what's going on we've already so now we're gonna shapeshift they've seen us as a mer person and now we're gonna shapeshift into a manatee and fuck them yep

and then leave yep and then they laugh and they go ha ha ha or they change do they change back into the mer people yeah so then really freaked they they totally fuck them up and then they go back and they tell everyone everyone's like those people do not exist and so then they make them look crazy. And then now orcas are having their time and mermaids were like, let us at him. And they're like, bitch, you had your moment. Now it's our turn. And so the mermaids are down at the ocean floor, clapping, applauding, letting the orcas fuck around. And then I don't know, in a hundred years or so, how long it's been along thousands of years from now, the mermaids are going to come back for their time. And they're really just it's a volleyball tournament between

them in the orcas yeah hans christian anderson wrote the book in 1837 really yeah okay so that's my hot take and again if anyone wants to dispute me you fucking can't we don't know shit about the ocean i already disputed you no but first of all don't pretend we did not find common ground here you bitch like no i'm just repeat i have my answer and then i was using my answer to help you that we don't have mermaids because i know how what do you know that mr stocky rush boy i went down in my submersible mr big time little time rush i know a lot because i'm still here uh i went down in my little submersible i did not have a uh a log tech a logitech controller and xbox looked around didn't see him yeah you fucked around and then you said i'm gonna leave

before i find out here's the thing i just there's so many things we don't we know a lot of things about some stuff do you think that because james cameron has gone down there a few times i want to meet that man do you think that he's fallen in love with the mer person no i think that the mer really respect james cameron and his aquatic endeavors and his advocacy for education and research about the deep sea and i think that he respects them more than he respects these bitches on land he would never rat them out i heard he's a terrible person though i rebuke that information in the name of the mer here's the thing if he's a terrible person a lot of people are terrible people but they still make significant input to the world and i don't want to go to the deep sea

so like go ahead oh i was gonna say we know so much about some things that there's no room for fables and lies and tales vaccines you know there's some people want to come up with shit that we've already figured that out we've already proven that might i implore you space the ocean that we don't know that much about you want to come up with some concepts all of these things first of all there is nothing up there and around all that that whatever you're thinking about down here is not going to have big effects on the rest of us same thing with down in the ocean if you need to explore either one of those things you can do so and not spread polio i'm trying to come up with some come and come sets from the top space come and come set the fuck is that mean now i

don't speak this language what are you saying and concepts come and yeah because i'm trying to get fucked by an alien oh you might concept but i'm using come as a fill-in word so i'm like getting jizzed on in the face like a comp set thank you so much i love it when you explain the jokes it makes it so much funnier because then i can understand it and everybody else gets to listen and go megan come on and then everybody else but i'm trying to say too come on i'm gonna tell you right now i'm gonna give some personal name shout outs to people who only understood it after the explanation along with me charity charity mary erica was with you from the beginning with me jenny was with me jenny was with you

brie sometimes breeze if i can toss up what time of day is brie listening eric was me yeah wow you have five i have three soraya was might have been with me i think sorry could have been with you but again what time is friday listening to the podcast that's true diane was with me oh my diane was before you agnes is with me yeah no i think agnes would be with me agnes might be asleep well i was gonna say time change yeah there's so many sarahs there's a lot of y'all so we'll just split you i'm telling you right now there's everyone else i think is on you i i i found my i i've got my people i think music sarah was with you without a doubt yeah that's it that's it though those are they're the rest the rest are i love i say the solidarity with

my my family um yeah we are we're a little slower and that's okay but that's why they're here because i speak for them and i want you to know that one of my favorite quotes that started my thought process the feeling of shape-shifting came from when i saw a clip of tiktok a clip on TikTok of the current season of Love Island and my favorite fucking character this season which Coco you're with me say it one two three Whitney yes she literally sits there says to herself just drinking her drink looking off into the distance men be shapeshifters and we cut we move to someone else I go shapeshifters they do and I learned they learned that from the sirens okay i think you'd really like her i would be shocked if she wasn't an aquarius okay and i want

i was gonna ask you for fun one day can i do your makeup sure do you hate when people touch your face yep what about if i just do i make the problem the problem is with touching my face is that my skin is so which i'm sure you know too my skin is so sensitive when anybody touches it it feels like it's burning off my face well what if i don't do foundation or anything like that but like i could do like blush highlight and then eyes blush is rubbing my face highlight is rubbing my face can i give it to you and then you do those parts can i do your eyes okay just for fun we don't have to go out anywhere okay we can put it up on the uh patreon that would be fun and you're gonna have to let me do the lip i want to do on you and then you

can take it right off please no do it on yourself no yeah it looks so bad i know it will you're so bad on me too because i don't have an upper lip that's the problem think about it fine all right well we're gonna take a break and when we get back we're gonna get into but are you wrong and we're back hi and now it's time for but are you wrong what's but are you wrong megan but are you wrong is when we read your submissions and you tell us about what is happening in your life what has had happened that you would like to know if you were right or wrong in the situation and that's our job we tell you if you were the hero or the villain you have to keep it under 300 words and you can submit it to but amirongpod at gmail.com we do ask that you include ages and

if you would like to include your pronouns or other people's pronouns please feel free to do so and it is all anonymous so give us some pseudonyms and if you're going to pick pseudonyms from like a reference for a tv show that is so not a prerequisite but some people like to do that but we can't anymore thank you so pick a book pick the music pick some music especially because like we might not pick up on it so we would change it but if we don't pick up on it like don't fuck it up for me we are for both of us we it's a this isn't like an opt-in opt-out thing this is like forever career job yep thing okay oh you're first i am hi eminem my boyfriend he him 25 and i she her started to have sex last night while i was lying on my back he said don't

just sit you can undress me i told him you could have said that nicer i wasn't upset it was more fyi keep that in mind for future reference i would have appreciated awareness for the moment we were in and more kindness as it was quite blunt he then got upset that i said that basically stopped talking and he just sat there i was quite annoyed in my mind that this upset him but he was but he has a pattern of getting upset over the smallest things i say the relationship is on its last legs for me at least you don't say we stopped there but said we would continue the next day put a pin in it your penis today i went to him and asked if he would like to continue and he said yes after playing video games a bit more and taking a shower he came to bed and just sat like a hurt puppy

apparently he was still upset about what happened last night and that it shook his confidence in the back of my mind i felt manipulated but i tried to be there for him and find out more about what he felt we ended up cuddling kissing and then i jerked him off after a while he wanted to have sex but i wasn't feeling it i didn't say anything as i knew he would be upset by this we had sex but i felt horrible after and started to tear up right after he left to play again i went to the bathroom and cried for a bit i felt shitty and manipulated am i wrong for saying that and feeling weird about the situation i'm a little lost a little bit i i when you said put a pin in it i we both thought you meant about sex but did you mean the conversation like we're gonna we stopped

there but we would continue the next day yeah like no we're gonna continue the conversation or you continue sex one you don't want to be in this relationship anyway as it is two you think do you believe that sexual acts will help solve it or are you just having sex to have sex because you kind of like schedule which i'm fine with people scheduling sex but neither one of you seem like you were into it like he was either sad or faking being sad and you didn't want to even do it and like he had to go it just felt so staged as in like he was playing video game video games he showered then we got in bed and he was looking like a sad puppy and you were just doing it to doing it you didn't actually want to have sex you just jerked him off because you

thought that's that's what he wanted and then also like i don't know just the whole thing is like don't just sit you can undress me bitch what if someone said that i'd be like that's that is rude like yeah that's not sexy that's rude like don't just sit you can undress me you can undress yourself right and if you can't undress yourself that's a different conversation it would be one thing if it was something where like people some people like to be talked to like in that type of way in the bedroom but that's something that's established first like if you he said i'm not gonna say because i don't want to freak megan out because she doesn't like it when i do things no but if he had said it in a way that was like show me show me them titties like

no bitch is not i i personally believe bitch has no fucking place i'm fine in cnn i'm fine with bitch in the bedroom you don't like slut i don't like slut but if a man calls mack knows that he i can't even if he quotes someone he will be like so i want to let you know i'm about to quote what someone said and they used the b word and because i go you know as a man i'm so glad you know that that is not your word yeah like i don't i don't like being called a slut or any word like that but like bitch i'm fine with and i'm fine with like i really like calling somebody calling the dude like a little bitch that's really hot to me very different very different but i also like to be called a bitch yeah but again depends on the

situation like i don't want to just be like the conversation ahead of time yes but it's also not hot if someone you haven't told you can call me a bitch calls you a bitch yes it goes that's a longer way to do it there's a way to do it and i believe that there is a way that he could have said this but i don't even think he's trying to be sexy he wasn't trying to be sexy he was more like you're laying there and not being the active participant in this activity you need to do something that's how you read it i don't know if that's how he meant it but that's how you understood it and so then you were like you could like i don't like that essentially is what you said i don't like that please don't do that and then he pouted hated it and fought back and then

was being manipulative so to answer your question are you wrong for saying that and feeling weird about it no i would feel the exact same way about all of this this to me is so manipulative that is not a nice thing to say and unless you have a pre-established relationship with specific kinds of like more domineering dirty talk then no like but you also if you are going to have incorporate anything into your sex life things conceptually you can like you can have liked them a previous time but like truly in the moment there is nothing that you you are always right to say I'm that no that's not working for me right now and have that not be a mood killer because the whole point of that is to please both parties so if you tell your partner oh this thing that

previously i was into i'm no longer into and they pout about that it was not about your pleasure it's about them getting off on that yep and that's not okay it should not be a halt in the in the plans of the evening unless you the person who is uncomfortable wants it to be a halt but he then got upset at you being upset at his actions and now you're feeling guilty for being upset when he made you upset right so peace the fuck out I you said the relationship it's on its last legs legs for you no legs run away like goodbye like this is so it's over yeah and like I'm sorry like don't just sit you can undress me it's like something my nephew would say if he was needing help getting his like pajamas on but I think there's a way to say it no but I'm saying

like in a way that like this this like not awareness of like please or like a help of thing or something like I think it would be hot if you took my clothes yes but like this to me is like what a kid says when they need help getting ready for a bath yeah and then he sat like a sad puppy so like to me this is like I would not be attracted to this man this is giving uh you're my mommy energy I'm gonna wah wah wah take care of me yuck ew all right next one you're okay i 26 work a few times a year with ralph 29 that is a great postmates door dash name we both ride bikes bike emoji and we were discussing that casually while waiting for a meeting he said that there's a local biking club thursdays and that i should come i said i'd

try and then i forgot about it i didn't go the next two weeks but he included me on the end of a work email by club tonight and i didn't respond to that part of the email then i saw him and his wife, Wendy, 28, who also works for our company. And he told her that I should come. I'd never met his wife before, but I always try to mention her in our conversations. I felt weird going, but decided to give it a chance since I thought maybe it was just social anxiety. I went and it was fun. I rode with his wife's pace group, even though I normally ride faster because I didn't want to be left alone on the road for my first time out. And I'm slower than her husband. She seemed to be trying to be nice, but she said things that made me think that she

didn't really want me to be around her and her husband. Like nice on the surface, but I felt like it could have been mean i'm not interested in ralph at all and i try to be friendly to and i try to be friendly to everyone i met in the smaller group of the really big group i decided it felt too often i didn't go the next thursday and i got an email from ralph three minutes after the group should have started writing that just said disappointment am i wrong to think he's pressuring me to go and thinking this is weird i don't see why he keeps asking me to go or is just the way people do invites now um i'm gonna say something but like i mean this with like so much love and respect you said that his wife was nice but you could tell she might be mean what is his

personality like is she the personality of the relationship and how long have they been together because this could just be she's the more social one he hasn't really made as many friends on his own and he's a little awkward and clunky making social interactions and he's been dating her i don't know if they've been dating forever so like he doesn't really know how to go about that i think there's a possibility of that but I think that his his email would have like like it would completely like turn me off in the situation um and you said you work a few times a year with Ralph so are you at the same company constantly with both of them or is this like a seasonal kind of thing the job yeah because I think like there are some people I meet through work you who like

become like best friends people I talk to like every single day and then there are people who are co-workers to me that like I'm not gonna fuck around with so if you're not like besties with him and like you've worked together for years or whatever it is like he might be in the category of like just a work person not like a a work friend that transcends into friendship friends but that doesn't mean he doesn't see you as like a potential friend friend but I think if you make the point to bring up his wife in conversations he doesn't make the point to that I think there's no issue with going with your gut feeling there or thinking that it might be a little odd even if that's not his intention but you don't like the friendship enough to have it come across that way

to his wife do what I mean yeah I'm the thing is he sent a lot of invitations whatever maybe he's trying to expand the group maybe he just wants to hang out i don't know but all that is erased by the fact that he sent an email after the group he looked around and saw you weren't there and said disappointed disappointment disappointment that's weird no it's very weird so like i think he's weird and i don't think you like it i think you think he's weird too yes so like this isn't everything else yeah whatever his intentions don't matter because now he's being weird he's weird do you know what i mean like you can be accidentally weird or on purpose weird you can be sexually weird or you can just be weird and if it's not he's doesn't

matter why he's just being weird yeah and if there's somebody i have to save face for because of work to say wasn't my vibe and leave it at that yeah thank you for inviting me but it wasn't my vibe or thank you for inviting me but i'm not coming back or thank you for inviting me not interested anymore i hate biking now i no longer bike i've switched to scootering i'm now a scoot scoot club member i just have to say as someone who grew up deep entrenched in a mountain biking culture not me personally clearly look at me but where I grew up like fucking biking is a I would like ask friends will hang out the weekend so sorry I can't we are biking from Marin across the Golden Gate Bridge I'm taking a 70,246 mile bike ride I will see you in seven

business days my old roommate was like a triathlon so she did biking swimming and running running but like biking was her main thing she was up at like five o'clock in the morning biking she was coming home and going biking like it was her whole life she had a she had a thing for her actual bike in case it rained where she could put her bike on this wheelie thing and so fucking loud yep i don't think she realized how loud it was so i told her but it would wake me up yep and then it would just spin her wheels and it was turned it into a stationary bike like biking was her life and i was like good for you but you make me exhausted just looking at you without a doubt again as someone who grew up dated biker like it is people had ponchos for themselves and for their

bikes like they would be riding on a little like and multiple bikes too uh-huh it is such a fucking cult thing and then they use it as decor and they go why would you need a piece of wall art when i have my schwins with all this dirt on the uh-huh and my skinny little wheels skinny as a nail tiny little wheels like this is such a fucking culture thing and like you you also ride bikes so you can find another say like you know how culty this can be and ralph is weird you find a different cult without ralph ralph and wendy love the name choices by the way very good so you know in like how we would talk about

how much we hate name icebreaker games and we'd have to be like marvelous Melissa like miraculous Megan this girl I know she was a swimmer she realized this

when we got older and all of us didn't realize it until we got older did she say wet Wendy yes Melissa and like when we were like

middle school it was kind of like okay yeah she swims and I think it was by the time we reached like 8th grade that like we started

the games again and we got oh no I hope she's not gonna say it and like definitely someone like she also realized there too

and it was like oh wow like it was to this day i'll always think of it and how that moment that that one summer that you're you hear your first dick joke and your innocence is gone did she find someone named william or bill or will so then they could be what willie and what wendy i'm gonna have to look her up i'll see what she's up to all right well uh now it's time to take another break and we're back from our break and we're gonna get into but are they wrong so but are they wrong is when we pick individuals or companies or groups that are just bad.

Boo. Tomato, tomato, tomato. And speaking of tomato. I'm sorry, that was the funniest thing in the fucking world. Patreon, roll that back. Because the way that we can communicate with just a single look, that I knew you wanted me to say something,

I say boo, there's still some silence, I look up and I see in your eyes one tomato two tomato and I go tomato tomato and then in my head I went I don't say it every time but no that was your segue yes and it was a great segue yes so speaking of tomatoes I would like to talk about a burger corporation In-N-Out Burger never heard of it well in case you've never heard of In-N-Out which is exactly what I'm right here so we are communicating what the fuck it's those oligomies they're like we're focusing from the same little brain in case you haven't heard of in and out burger it is a fast food chain that is popular here on the west coast and it started to make

its way east how far east i know there's in and out in texas and they said they were going to open one in new york soon i'm so sorry those are the two places i would open last they already have their burgers they do not know what a burger and shake shack shake shack yeah yeah they're good they still got lines but they're known to being good to their employees as in they pay above average than most fast food chains but they have some controversies do tell i have no idea they've had questionable history with the lgbtqia community since their founder has made donations to candidates that do not that do not support the community also during peak times of the pandemic they were not checking customers vaccine cards when it was required to in the

state of california do you remember when we went to chipotle and you had to wait outside because you couldn't find your vaccine card and we had to order your food and leave it wasn't your birthday weekend oh it sounds right yeah sound makes total sense to me yes i remember now it already took me a second it was the day we got there yep okay the day we got there so dr lucky tran who specializes in public health issues tweeted out a document from in and out that bans employees from wearing masks it was filed on july 14th through its media contact page and an internal document states We are introducing... When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different.

People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. new mask guidelines that emphasize the importance of customer service and the ability to show our associates smile and other facial features while considering the health and well-being of

all individuals we believe this policy will also help promote clear and effective communication both with our customers and among our associates so the policy bans employees from wearing masks unless the worker has a valid medical note employees who don't comply with face discipline which is what they're calling it come drop could be terminated and in and out documents it's addressed in arizona colorado nevada texas and utah california and oregon of course are left out of this but it will go into effect august 14th you know terrible so california just said california and oregon said no they didn't even try they said losing battle yeah we want to have we would rather have a higher success rate than even attempt yeah at these folks i went to

in and out like two weeks ago and they still had masks on i was like great and i had my mask on too yeah it's my favorite thing like when we go on the the occasions that we do there we have masks in the car the second we rolled in the windows we have our masks and they like have their masks and they wait to approach because they see us putting our masks on until we have our masks and it's a wonderful experience and i always thank them for wearing their masks and they thank me for wearing my mask like just built different over here yeah so they suck and that's that but i do want to share two good things that have helped that have happened in the health can i say one about the in and out and i do not mean this as a knock to all religions at all but the first when

I was a kid so in and out growing up in California in and out it's a fucking big ass thing and the I remember finding like looking at the bottom of the bags and they had like bible verses there and automatically I went uh-oh and I remember I asked someone I go is this like Chick-fil-a and they were like no I don't think so and I was like okay why do we have bible verses on the bottom of takeout bags here then i got older more things started happening more controversy started happening learned more about the found the people who continue to run it and it was like oh there that's a specific sect of christianity who would of course be the kinds of people to put verses on the bottom of bags for you to get for your takeout okay so that was my first introduction

to like the realizing of it and people can say that like you know the founders of them had like a lot of time we'll talk about any companies like well the founder but like you know it's totally restructured you will notice it is one of those places that they may restructure they may rehire it is within a same belief system yep that's all i will say all right but i do want to share two i love it good health things that happened this week the fda they've improved antibodies for infants from to protect them against rsv oh wow yeah and so in case you don't know rsv has been the leading cause of infant hospitalizations in the u.s so this is huge no that's huge we had a huge because of covid and people taking off their masks we had a huge uptick

of rsv in adults and children and for babies it can be deadly and it's for people older people can be deadly too but baby specifically that's crazy whoa go fda go fda and then also the second drug to treat alzheimer's is set to go on the market by the end of the year oh as someone with a family history that makes me pretty fucking excited yeah whoa i didn't even know there was one yeah they i think it got approved here it was recent like earlier this year or last year wow that's not to be dark or whatever but like usually the treatments of things we find there's more gung-ho and funding and stuff for things that happen to really young kids and then people in their like i would say like 40s once you get to like something that usually you don't

have an onset until 50s 60s 70s 80s there's a lot of just well some you're gonna something's gonna get you yeah so I'm pleasantly surprised that that has been some like some goals like working towards that that's crazy yeah I'm excited like I'm really excited because that's one of my biggest fears without 100% I had no idea that my grandma had Lou Gehrig's disease like I and that's like the most aggressive work that's what Robert Williams had and it's like the most aggressive like one of the worst forms of it alzheimer's is genetic lugerix has like it doesn't make you any more or less likely to specifically get that but finding out that it was lugerix that she had loki may be like oh okay so i if i get it's i'd rather have alzheimer's not that okay if this is

the worst of the worst i've already seen that if it happens i can fucking do but like knowing that that's crazy that that's progress of that because everyone I know who has it in their family like it is detrimental yeah and it's the worst thing ever because you think about it in it's a multi-generational thing so most of us who have it run in a family you see a grandparent with it then you worry about the younger people in your family who are still older than you and then you're so busy worrying about all of that that it goes okay well then if it happens to me then I have to worry about my peers and people, my kids or whatever,

them having to do with that. Like it's a very awful and horrific thing. So that's amazing. I wish I had something exciting to add on to the end of mine, but I don't. I would like to nominate Bob Iger. We've talked about it

and you've heard it on other podcasts of ours that we have released this week, most likely. Talking about the strike. We talked about the writer's strike. The star of the writer's strike, Melissa Ryder. And now SAG has stricken, struck also. And our union is going up against the major studios.

And Bob Iger is the head of Disney who recently just extended his contract. For how much money? $27 million. That's his annual salary. $27 million. dollars. And this man has the absolute audacity to call the requests of the SAG union, which for people to understand, 95 percent of SAG actors do not make a living being an actor. And we're not asking to make a living being an actor. Everybody has side gigs. Everyone has all of these hustles

like the industry is difficult and nobody is trying to change that but the studios who are trying to make it all harder it's already hard nobody's asking for a free walk in the park all of these sort of things people being like oh my god these multi-millionaire actors just can't get enough the actors who make millions of dollars there are so few of them they're all sitting at the table at uh hollywood round table no they're all sitting at jimmy kimmel's house in idaho with the dinner that kristin bell is hosting yeah that's all of them you know what i'm talking i know of course i know exactly what you're talking about there are only 160 000 actors in sag that's that's it so when you think of all of the famous people who make millions of dollars

you know all of them there is no actor who is making millions of dollars who you do not know of there's not there's also a lot of people that you think are making millions of dollars and they're not at all they're not even close to it unless you see that they have signed a deal and they have spoken about making millions of dollars they have bought a home that is a 30 million dollar home they are not making millions of dollars they're not even making a million no and like not per project not per year not maybe in their entire like not most actors not in their entire lifetime what people don't understand about sag just as like a quick background you have to pay dues three thousand dollars of dues yearly dues and what sag does

is it is a union that protects actors so something goes wrong on set safety thing you can call people they have all of these resources to help you out to make sure that you are safe and protected on a set. I've had to utilize them before for those reasons. It's something that I do not know an actor who has not run into something that they needed to report to SAG, even if they didn't or not. It's also how we get health insurance. It's also pension. SAG is not doing 401k matching. This is not a structure of a typical corporate company. It is a union for the arts. And we're not trying to make it not a union for the arts but with the start of streaming services streaming does not give residuals you can get a one-time payment when it is gone on to like an international

streaming service potentially and that might be 45 cents it might be a dollar there is no real set residuals calculation for streaming they don't have to give you anything i've never seen a dollar in residuals from things i've done streaming the things that i have gotten my residuals for is for producing and then my acting streaming ones for my movie are so tiny and also for people listening that don't understand is that the things that you're talking about that you haven't got residuals for are constantly playing yes and so people are making money from it but the people who are actually working on it are not it's the networks and then it's going towards these CEOs multi-million dollar a year contracts so and I have a a unique experience

with this because I have been in things that I've purely been cast in and I've also produced something so I see how much I'm getting as for a small indie like small budget movie how much that I get of my residual cut when it sells like rights to be played on an airline when it sells something to be on this, whatever that is. My acting cut of it is most of the time zero dollars and zero cents for the acting. The producing, sure, I get some there. But then the things that I have done that people tell me that they are watching on airplanes, they're watching in their doctor's office. They have seen a thousand times. They see it on TV. They go to Europe and they're seeing it on TV. All of these other places like, oh my God, I've watched all of this. This is great.

You're on this app on my TV. I got one lump sum payment, paid in two parts, never seen a dime again. So most actors back in the day, you could have residuals that wouldn't necessarily pay your bills forever. But the thing that most people are not understanding is in order to qualify for health insurance and cover health insurance, yes, you're having your co-pays and all of that kind stuff, you have to make a certain amount of money acting every single year. I have not made that money since the pandemic started. So I have to pay $800 a month to maintain the level of health insurance that I have, or I unenroll with the health insurance from my union. And then if I book another union job and I make enough money, I re-enroll in that. It's not a quick and easy

process i will then be lapsed health care cup all of these other things like it's and i'm a privilege that i could pay eight hundred dollars a month and maintain my coverage but unless you make twenty six thousand dollars a year from acting alone and you're not making that eight hundred dollars from acting i know that money that's what i'm saying most actors have to have multiple streams of revenue which you do yep and like the amount of money that these fucking networks and studios are making is insane. So here's the reason why, allegedly, they don't want to give residuals. There are two options from my perspective and from a lot of people's perspectives. One, the amount of payout that they would have to do in back pay for people

would bleed these companies dry. It would be so much money. It would cost so much because their shows do so well. Or B, they would actually have to disclose the real numbers of what these shows are pulling in, how many people are watching them, what the audience retention rate is, and they will have to admit that they've inflated it immensely and they will lose all of their funding from their venture capitalists and their venture funds because they have lied and they have not actually been that successful. I don't know if you've known, but like every time there is a new project on streaming service, like broke the record and it goes, what record? What proof? And it goes, well, I'm telling you right now what it is.

so that's why and i'm gonna tell you right now if the residuals would bleed you dry that doesn't make any sense because if you gave the real numbers to your investors you would have more than enough money to cover that so we couldn't bleed you dry because the the amount of money your company is valued at and all the money you have is is based on these real true numbers for how successful it is because it's not that's why you don't want to give that and that is not a ridiculous request again it's not the inflation bumps all of these different things now because things are on streaming residuals don't happen for things that are even on tv as much it devalues that so the cost of like the fraction of what you get as a residual has dropped immensely because

people aren't watching things on cable they're going to go watch the entire thing streaming and then we're not going to get getting the revenue and that has that's i'm talking about shows that are cable shows that then get sold to streaming not streaming shows that are built and started the streaming zero residuals there there's also whole networks that were networks and now have that have been sucked into the streaming as well i can't say specifically what they are because it goes against strike rules but i implore you to look them up but it's like a it's a mess but it's all it's so that they don't have to continue paying people that's the whole point and then the other big thing that we have requested aside from self-tapes having primarily

switching them to in-person which is so fucking important i cannot stress and i will say to the people who are being like explain what a self-tape is though so a self-tape there's a difference between an in-person audition and a self-tape. A self-tape is you are filming your audition yourself. You have the sides, you have someone reading with you off camera. And in order to do a self-tape, you have to have a mechanism of filming that,

whether that's a phone, an iPad, a camera. You also have to have a means of editing it because you can't just be like, oh, just send it from your phone. Sure, you have to download another app because you have to include like your name, the title of the project, the role that you're reading,

how many scenes there are. The amount of times we'll be like, Please export it in a slate on addition to each one. And a slate is you saying your age, name, height. No, never your age, your name, your height and your location and whether you are represented by a union and where you're currently based. And they might include something else or remove one of those things. And they have every fucking audition. Every project will be different about what they want your self tape to be like.

And then you have to buy an account on Vimeo because you can't have it on you. You can't do anything that could potentially be public. and you have to pay that monthly fee. And it goes up if you're in more gigabytes of video footage every single month. And then you have to send that out and then they read that. But in order to do that, you have to have the lights has to look nice and you have to have someone who has the time to read it with you. So a lot of people will go to casting studios, do that, pay a hundred dollars an hour. That's a hundred dollars per audition sunk, like not going to get that money back. or you have to somehow have someone

who can do this with you. A self-tape takes hours versus going in person for an audition. The only costs, the gas, parking, you get there, you do it in and out. The time that you are performing, five minutes max for a first time. That is a blip on the radar of the day.

It does not require so much. And forever and always, casting will always accept a self-tape. If you don't live where you are or you can't get to do it in person, they'll always accept a self-tape. But right now they're not doing any in-person auditions. It is all self-tapes.

And I'm going to tell you right now, the desire for casting to watch a lot of self, they're not discovering unseen talent there. They are going with names of people that they recognize. So you are not making any real connections with people. You're sending it off into the earth. And then the same people are getting cast over and over and over and over again.

Also talk about how many pages they are and the amount of time that you have to even do these. So tape, I'll get a tape between, the longest I'll ever have before is if I get a tape on Friday, do Monday. Most of the time you get a tape due on Tuesday. You get it sent at 4 p.m. and it might be due 8 a.m. the next day.

It might be due 10 a.m. the next day. It might be due two days later, something like that. And the longest I've ever had is 22 pages. 14 is pretty average. seven is a good day but when you get all of those same pages for an audition the second you walk into the audition they say we're just gonna do one scene pick the one that's two pages so much fucking easier and like you can get notes from them and like the time commitment to it i'm so lucky that i have a partner who lives with me who can help me i love him to death my tapes are not

as good as my in-person auditions because i am not acting with the there's a reason why a casting director is called a casting director because they are directing what is happening you can't have that at home no and i mean this with so much peace and love casting directors creative individuals they are a lot of directors not so much i've had directors who like i'm auditioning for something character has red hair and casting directors like we love her for this he goes well the character has red hair and they're like she'll dye her hair red that's just not how i picture it And then I've gotten a call. Can you grab a wig, throw that on, and I can show them.

And it's like, you do, the cast makers do everything in their power to get who they think is best for the role, cast in that role. So the reason that you see the same people doing this same kind of roles over and over and over again is because it is not enough to cast someone off of a tape. People don't necessarily, okay, well, maybe it was a fluke that they did a really good job with that. Let me see everything else that they've done. And then, oh, well, I've seen the Rolodex of all of their other projects and things

that they've done. they can definitely do this and then you just pigeonhole people into the exact same roles and it's the same fucking people playing the same fucking things all the time because that's all you that's all you have you can't say hey can you try this a different way hey can you do whatever and as someone who always fucking auditions for a bitch one of the best tips I had ever gotten was when you go in and you read for a bitch go in with a smile on your face be incredibly kind and you flip that switch on. You do not method act for a bitch.

And then afterwards, you're so kind, crack a couple of jokes. They go, okay, she was just acting because for some reason they don't realize that. Can't do that in a self-tape. I literally have like, I try and bring the personality into a slate and I'm like, I hate myself

because you're just trying so hard and that will take me, a self-tape will take me days and an audition will take me 20 minutes, an in-person one. So we, our union is asking for that. And then the final thing that we are asking for is protection against AI.

And here is the most creepy, apocalyptic version and way of AI that you think, oh no, AI, it has its place in Hollywood. I love CGI. I love special effects. Now, what they have already started to do without disclosing it to people is background actors, extras, and even some speaking roles will go in. Usually most of the times people are not represented by agencies because their agencies are like let me read this contract and they're telling they're giving you at the very last fucking second this is your in or you're out you got to do this and you don't have a lot of say as a background actor because in order to get into the union you have to work enough background or work enough union projects and projects that flip it's a whole fucking ordeal

so when you make background actors useless you remove any you remove 99 of new actors and agency too so they say we're gonna hire you for a day a good payday 100 bucks full day background actor 12 hours not including lunch not including hair and makeup they say okay we're gonna get you in your wardrobe and we're gonna take a quick little full body scan you know make see everything blah blah blah however they're saying it they're scanning their body and their face and then they are using that face in perpetuity forever. So they're not getting hired for three months to work background on a movie. They're getting hired for one day and using their face for the entire duration of said project and any other project that that

studio makes forever. So a hundred years from now, that face will be frozen at that age. maybe they'll age it up for something but that face will be there in everything you suddenly turn on tv you see yourself on a tv show that you didn't work on you see yourself in a movie that you didn't work on and you get paid nothing yep that's terrifying and that is the those three things are three of the big things that bob eiger said were the demands of sag that were disgusting and outlandish he said it's very disturbing to me and then he was as a follow-up he was asked i don't know if you watched the interview but as a follow-up he was asked what's specific about this is disturbing he couldn't answer like he was stuttering and just didn't

say anything yeah there's a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic and they're adding to the set of challenges that this business is already facing that is quite frankly very disruptive what we are asking for is not much it is protecting what we currently have and asking for pennies of what you've already taken so in his fear he is uh now discussing the possibility of essentially selling off all of the like every single offshoot entity what they produce and those different offshoots of all of that kind of stuff, essentially basically trying in my thing, coming for a specific fan base, saying two fan bases of two of the biggest fan bases across multimedia saying, well, we're just going to have to get rid of both because it's just

so much money. And this is not exactly what he said, but reading between the lines, basically inciting a rage in these, I would say the three largest fan bases across multimedia being like well we're just going to have to get rid of all these things and never make anything that falls into these categories ever again because they're just making it really hard for like what was us we are the victims here and i've already started to see so many fucking people being like shut up and do your job shut up and like what you're gonna ruin all of this for everyone else and that is what they want there's also been leaked things about all the studios was talking about they plan that writers will not be able to pay their mortgage by October they'll

be so broke that their goal is to just bleed everyone out and break them until then what we're coming for is less and they're going to offer even less than what they already was originally they want to break us and I have to say it is incredibly adorable and cute that they think that's what's going to happen because have they met actors have they met writers have you met someone who is have you met hot people have you met smart people have you met what happens when hot smart people smart hot people and then some people are just hot and some people just smart come together for a common cause watch your fucking backs like you're kidding me yeah so i'm just enraged by all of this and a lot of people have asked like what they can do to support a i

would say just like keep up to date like pay attention to like what people are saying and um the people who are running entities that you might be passively or actively supporting and hearing what they're saying, listening to that kind of stuff and hearing what they're saying from our side and the lens of that. And knowing that people are going to, people and bots are going to try to get you to turn against creatives and specifically marginalized creatives and vilify them and that's not what's happening that is that is a narrative that will try to be pushed and you can donate to funds for both of those things that help if you are in an area where they're striking you can bring water you can bring food like you don't have to be a part of the strike to go

physically support i would say go to either wga and or sag after website and there's a lot of frequently asked questions that are listed there and I would read those yeah we can't specifically say a lot of things yes so there's a lot of people who are also not a part of either like guilds or the unions who can tell you from who can speak about it from purely just an audience member side but there are things that we are limited to saying because we are members of it yeah and I influencers aspiring influencers and aspiring actors it's vital for you to go read this information and it's vital for you to get the information directly from if you want to be an actor sag if you want to be a writer from the wga you can cross-reference it with tiktoks but

people interpreting like understand that this if you fuck it up you will never be allowed in a union and you cannot act or be a writer to a hollywood level scale whether that's a reoccurring guest star on one show or blockbuster without being in the you can't you can't and also like it's important that people understand what's going on and you can reach out i had a as a producer i had a question about one of my projects, I reached out on Friday evening and I had an answer by Saturday morning. So if you have questions, they have people around the clock answering questions. If you have a question and you're unsure, reach out and ask. Don't ask other people because a lot of people don't know. There's a lot of guessing about things that are going on. I've seen a lot

of misinformation out there a lot of misinformation and it's important if you want to be part of one of these guilds that you have the firsthand information from the source yeah and they are very different unions and guilds than plumbers construction other things that you can be aware of entire projects are union projects you can't be on a union project and not be union you can't you can't opt out you can't say oh i'm not a part of the but i'll that's not a thing and it's an insurance aspect too so like if you have a desire at any point in life to get into it you might how would they know you they know they know and that's how unions remain strong is because strong in the convictions but also knowing what people sacrifice for this and and who benefits and profits off the

back of people who are actively sacrificing their time their money whatever it is so just read that stuff and specifically if you are an up-and-coming influencer understand the invites you might be getting to things because that is also an issue and it's scabbing yes but specifically influencers there is like sag has started a influence brand influencer branch i'm not familiar like i can't speak i i'm not a part of it like i don't know anything about it but they've literally started entire branch to protect influencers so if you scab doing things that fall under the tv theatrical that forbids you from being able to join as a influencer yeah and a union is for your protection your safety health care but also work like you cannot do it without it unless you want

community theater student films sure but you cannot not you cannot do anything professional for money no so it's a lot and we support all of the union striking yeah so we stand with ups we stand with teamsters we stand with like all like everyone's striking and that's another thing that people are trying to separate quote-unquote hollywood elite from like these are not like your other no no union support other union striking whether we're in the same industry or not so yeah it's just like a lot and it's tough and it's hard but there is a way to support people and it's also not monetary but we can't so just go and check out those things because they'll tell you what to do don't act without don't think that like oh i have to do all of

these things there are different guidelines for people who are members and people who aren't yep and i'm sure there's other podcasts of people who are not members who are maybe discussing that more freely but yeah that is it and i also just thought a little fun thing to end this on is that bob eiger was a registered democrat until 2016 when he registered as an independent interesting and to that i say disappointment bring it back around mortifying embarrassment oh my gosh and hillary clinton is sitting in her home eating a fruit salad going i knew i knew imagine she even had a warning about this too imagine a hissy fit over hillary a party switching hissy fit over hillary clinton hillary rodham clinton that bitch is so

goddamn fucking powerful and she knows it anyways well that is all for this week hope you enjoy it please leave us uh comments on instagram on spotify on can't see the last one yep that one too uh-huh fill in the blank mad libs yes well if we had a tally of the amount of time to cut out things from our recordings of all the podcasts this week because we accidentally said something we couldn't the limit does not exist yeah follow us on our socials if you want to personally support two people in unions you can also join our patreon and if you work for a company that does podcast ads we're still doing the podcast yeah and we're uh following all the union regulations that i read from eight o'clock a.m to like two o'clock p.m on saturday when i

tell you i had to read the podcast ones 9 000 times because i go are some of these new words these are new sentences i've never and then they updated it they and then they made a new frequently asked page for producers and then they made another one for influencers and i was just like i have so many more questions that are on there i was like frequently asked okay how about just every question that someone has asked because all the ass it's a lot so that all being said if you want us to talk about certain things please know that there are certain things we cannot talk about this podcast for the time being until our needs are are met um so when you're suggesting different things for us keep it in mind yeah so we can talk about people

we can't talk about the projects that those people are in anyways we hope you all enjoyed have a great day oh we'll circle back oh yeah i almost forgot goodbye but am i wrong is a production by me megan rinks and me melissa demonts plus diamond imprint productions post-production by coco lorenz and production assistance by melanie d watson Thank you.