If I Were You - 438: Protesting

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

In this episode we discuss another inspirational week and answer some questions about demonstrating and donating.Give any spare time, energy, money to the cause by clicking here!See omny.fm/listener for privacy information.

This is a headgum podcast. If I were you, if I do, I'd ask you to, if I got asked to, if I were you. Nice. Punk rock. Punk rock to match the mood a little bit. Her name is Misty Lakes and I'm the hostess with the mostest. And she has a podcast, Feral Friends. So she is a hostess.

Okay. So thank you Misty Lakes for writing that cool theme song because she says she's afraid of the unknown filled with trepidation, menstruation and mastication whilst awaiting eagerly and gingerly for my jaunty theme tune to be played. So we finally played it. Wow. Okay. So I said it matched the mood and now I, now I really feel like it does.

Because of all those adjectives. Yeah. That's the, that's the, that's the state of the world right now a little bit. State of the world on Sunday, June 7th, 10 a.m. Pacific time, 1 p.m. Eastern. How are you feeling this week versus last? Um, I guess as, as bad, but maybe with a little bit of, I feel like there was, there was maybe like a despondent air about the, the beginning of last week. And it feels a bit more like there's a groundswell and a movement that's positive to watch even

though there's like, I mean, it's in the face of horrible atrocity. But the, the community around doing something seems kind of, seems positive in its way. Yeah. I mean, how I'm also like a little more optimistic and encouraged by how huge this movement is. Like it's in every state and the cities that are protesting have marches in the tens of thousands now. It seems like it's only growing in fervor and. Yeah.

I would say so. Did you go to another protest I saw in Brooklyn? Yeah. I've been to, I went to a couple. I went to like the George Floyd Memorial. I think that was on Friday where his brother spoke. And then I went to, I went to the protest like through downtown Brooklyn and stuff yesterday. Part of what like gives me hope is the idea that maybe like COVID plus this giant Black

Live Matters movement is like teaming up in this giant communal intersection to get rid of our president and overthrow like whatever he's been doing for the last three and a half years. You know, it's interesting. I guess like how it's interesting how everybody has like kind of a different thing to focus on. Like, do you focus on national politics in times like this? I haven't really been thinking about Trump as much as I normally have.

No, because I still read his like statements and it still pisses me off. I mean, I hate the guy. Yeah. I know what you're saying. Like the protesting is so loud that you can't even like think or care about Corona right now, let alone Trump's response to all that stuff. Right. Like I think when I'm at the protest, I'm like specifically thinking, I don't know if this

is right or wrong, but I'm like specifically thinking about police brutality and like racist cops and stuff. Yeah. So like that's what I'm very angry about. But I mean like also I'm angry about the guy in charge sort of having, I don't know, having like this attitude where all of this seems like it's fair game. Yeah. That's been the state of politics for a while.

He seems to not only think it's fair game, but he encourages it. So he's like, yes, let's bring in more people. We're bringing in the National Guard. Let's fucking do this. We have to like be strong against these peaceful protesters. And then when they show up in droves, he's like, oh, it wasn't that big of a protest. Like he's like the Grinch on a hill like critiquing the size of the crowds. These are crowds that are protesting like racism and police brutality.

He's like, they're not that big. Is he like a pundit or like the actual president? I don't understand. I think the problem, at least with him, is that he's so like narcissistic and dumb that he thinks the protests are about him. Like if he could understand that it was about systemic racism, like you would think it wouldn't be that hard for him to be like, oh, like this is a good movement. We should defeat systemic racism.

But he can't separate the fact that like the people marching outside are, it's about something bigger than him. So he's just like, so he has to detract from the protesters. He has to say that they're bad, that they're small, that they're violent. But it's kind of, I feel like it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding. Like the women's march was specifically about him kind of. Yeah. That was like a direct response to him being elected.

Yeah. And while it is true that all the protesters do hate him, they're not currently protesting him. Yeah, exactly. Also, like he went to his panic room last week. He had to go to the panic room in the White House and then his excuse was that he was going in there to look at it, to check it out. Yeah, he was inspecting it as all. So even if you're going to lie, it's still not like, why did you have to inspect it?

You were a little bit afraid that you were going to have to use your panic room. Even if you were there to inspect it, you were like, why inspect it if you don't think you might have to use it soon? Yeah. It's hard not to latch onto these funny little sad moments with Trump in times where there are so much bigger, more important issues at hand. One other one I want to latch onto real quick, though, is the way he held the Bible. I mean, Jesus Christ.

Anybody who's just like, people are like, all right, I'm on board for the photo op. We'll gas the protesters. We'll beat them away with the stick. We'll march you to the church and you'll take a photo with the Bible. And then finally he gets there and he holds up the Bible in the dumbest way possible. Like a seven-year-old found the Afi comment like, hi, I got it. Shit, he's posing with it bad. Thoughts.

This isn't going to look right in retrospect. Yeah, everything he does is so incorrect. It's so funny. Like just go in there and look pensive. He's like, I got it. Don't worry. Go in there, grab a Bible, seemingly upside down and hold it over my head vertically. And then when somebody asks, is that your Bible?

He goes, it's A Bible. He's so dumb. Do you, when you think about national politics, are you like, we have to get Trump out? That's like number one. Yeah, or at the very least like thinking about this giant groundswell and being like, maybe this will get enveloped into the anti-Trump movement specifically. So it's like, yes, while everybody's out here protesting police brutality, let's register them all to vote and then like, let's keep marching and keep this like fervor up into

November so that like when it's time to actually put our anger into voting, we can get him out of there. Yeah, man, I cannot wait to vote. But that's a, yeah, it's June and the election is not for another five months. So I don't know if we'll be in the streets every day until then. Yeah. Yeah. Like the fact that Corona is happening means people are more available to protest.

So like in a weird, dark, sad way, the Corona shutdown of everything has only like helped the protesters. Even though it's kind of dangerous to protest right now, everyone's just like, you know, eager to get outside and do something. So it seems like... Yeah. And I mean... It's exploded with a positive energy.

Like and record unemployment and everything too. Like there's just, there's anger and people with a lot of available time and also a long history of being fed up with the way things are. I mean, I feel like the history, like history books are going to have a fucking heyday with 2020. What an insane... What an insane... We're not even halfway done.

What an insane like few months of this year. Like good Lord. And just because there is so much action happening between Corona and this Black Lives Matter movement, if Trump were to actually still win, I think I would be that much more disappointed because it's like, he was already bad, he's been doing worse, he's so awful. Then like he's now like helping this disease spread rampant throughout America, hundreds of thousands dead. And then also Black Lives Matter and his response to that, it's like, this is the worst

he could possibly be. So like if we still can't vote him out, like that's really fucked up. Because 2016 was like, the argument was just that like, oh, like this is all just your theory of how bad things could go, that he will be a bad president. Then like you have four years of proof. Like now he really is like, look guys, look, we have the evidence, we have the receipts now. And like the economy is in shambles, unemployment is record high, over 110,000 dead at this

point. So it's like, we got him, right? Like this is the proof, we all needed it like, but no, his approval rating, the Republican party is still at an all time high. So the question is like, did all those people who didn't vote or the ones who are on the fence, did any of them find the last four years not good? It's clearly not good, right? We're all hating it.

Yeah. This is also part of the thing that people are saying to do this week is just like try to reach out to friends and family that think differently than you, that like they're the ones that maybe think Trump isn't that bad or that think he's bad, but think that the other guys are worse. And you have to like just talk to people and try to convince them to have a sane point of view. Yeah.

It's the same point of view that he's like, when he was before he was elected, he was talking to like African American voters, like, what have you got to lose? Well, now we know what they had to lose, but that's what I have to say to people on the fence. We like, all right, now we know how bad it can get. Obviously this is awful. Like this is a low point in the not the recent American history. So what have we got to lose?

Let's switch it up and see what happens. I feel like there have been like so many years in the last four years that people have like, maybe it was 2016. Was it 2016 when we like, when like a ton of celebrities died or something and everyone was like, yeah, fuck 2016 or whatever year it was. Yeah. I can't wait till the next year where no celebrities will die and everything will be fine.

And I remember when 2019 was over, I'm like, 2020 is going to be a good year. But I think this is, this is the part that's been encouraging because like on Monday, I didn't think 2020 was a good year at all. And now I don't think that 2020 is a bad year because of the groundswell, the uprising, this like the reaction monument to change. Yeah, that people are banding together and marching and people that you never see being active are now for the first time. It feels, it's embarrassing that it took so long, but it feels different.

So you want to believe that it can be. And I think that's a positive thing for 2020 and 2020 might be the year that we fucking boot Trump from office. So that'll be great too. There's still hope for 2020 is all I would say. Corona sucks. I mean, obviously, obviously that one's bad. But every year can have one shitty thing.

Let's just make it. Let's just make Corona the only shitty thing of 2020. Did you see the videos of Las Vegas reopening too? No, I didn't. But you know, like I think with all of these protests, I've, I mean, I'm still wearing a mask and, you know, I feel like a lot of like Corona behavior is ingrained in me now to like wash my hands to not touch my face to give people space and to wear the mask and all that stuff.

But being out in the crowds, like I, I don't care that much about crowds anymore. Yeah. But this is indoors Las Vegas reopened this weekend and just thousands of people in casinos like hanging out, dealing with chips, money, cash, food, not wearing masks. So it's like the worst of the worst of the worst all coming together and exchanging germs and diseases. So it's going to be. It makes sense.

It makes sense to me. Like, because you're just like fed up of being indoors, there's, it's that. And then also like not everywhere, I feel like in New York and LA, we like felt Corona virus, you know, like it was happening all around. Like I know several people that got sick from it. Like I don't, I don't think Nevada had numbers like that. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, everything is still like growing. So people are sort of being like, you know what? Enough is enough. I'm just going to live my life. And if I get sick, so be it. The problem is like, I read a tweet that put it succinctly of like the amount of like capital we built in for like staying at home is like used up. So like, even if there is a second surge at this point, people will be like, no, I'm

not, I'm not staying at home anymore. Like we did that once. It didn't work. Numbers are really high this time. So if there's like a second peak, people are like not going to just go back indoors and quarantine for another four months. That's bad. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't want to say, I don't agree with like just like, fuck it. I'm going to go outside and do whatever, live my life, do whatever I want. But I do, at least personally, I'm going to like, I don't know, be like within my comfort zone. I'm comfortable. Maybe not. I'm not going to like go flying and stuff and I'm not going to go gambling.

But if a restaurant reopened, I would go get a drink there. Interesting. There's like completely not even outdoor style. I guess. I mean, yeah, yeah, I think I would. I'd like to sit by a window. I think at last week, LA restaurants quote unquote reopened, but yeah, that was supposed to happen.

Then, you know, there was all these demonstrations and people had to just sort of shutter them all up again. But I think restaurants are reopened probably in New York soon too. Yeah. I mean, I think that I've noticed that like New York just feels more like European, like there's just to go windows everywhere. People are like getting coffee and cocktails and food just like at the window of the restaurants and like eating outside on like tables and chairs at the restaurant.

Like the restaurants, I think they like either, either they're not ticketing it anymore or they like actually let restaurants just like all have these permits for outdoor seating. So there's just a lot more people doing stuff outside, which I think, I feel like that would feel nice if there weren't so many other shitty things happening. Right. Like I'm not worried. I guess I'm just not that worried about summer, summer virus time. That's good.

I'll be worried again in the fall. I'm putting up, I'm just looking at these hotel rates. We can get a $79 a night at Caesars, $59 at Aria, or if we want to go in for like a suite, like if we want to have like a Corona blowout, there's this suite with a bowling alley at the Palms for $4.99 a night. At the Cosmo. Yeah. At the Cosmo, it's somewhere in the, in the 200s, but they have an all you can eat buffet

and they're doing no shield guard anymore because everyone sort of has to wear a mask or hopefully so. So like the food's sort of out in the open in a trough. Yeah. Vegas is not. Vegas is not what I miss. I don't miss like clubbing. I miss my friends.

So like I'm not ready to fully open society, but like the idea of, you know, those like socially distant hangs in people's backyards with masks and stuff. Yeah. I'm ready to do that except like no masks. Really? I just, well, I mean, we're all wear the mask loosely. So like I'll come with the mask and then I'll like sort of drop it down under my nose a little bit and then finally over on my chin.

I'm not saying like I'm doing that right now. I'm saying I'm ready for that. Like emotionally what I miss is like being able to hang out at my friends' apartments and yards. Yeah. Yards I've been doing, yards like outside hangs I have been doing. Yeah. I'm, flights are going to be interesting.

I know, I think Jeffrey flew home this week. I want to ask him like, was the plane full where people were wearing masks? How dangerous is flying versus just sitting in a room with people? Real sister flew last week and she had a connecting flight on one of her flights. It was like kind of empty. They didn't have anyone in any of the middle seats, but the next flight that she took was like a regional flight from Texas to New York and it was packed. She had a middle seat.

I thought they got rid of middle seats. Evidently not. At least not on American Airlines. Maybe they just got rid of all the flights. That's crazy. That's no personal space at all. You're touching somebody when you're in the middle seat. Yeah.

And I think if you, I think they're getting rid of so many flights that like 10 flights worth of like sparsely populated planes are all cramming onto one flight a day. That's why like the planes are still overcrowded, but there's not that many people at the airport. Yeah. So like flying, you sort of imagine that flying is like better because the less people are doing it, but it also just means less planes are doing it. So it's harder to get a flight more stressful and then it's super crowded. And then like going through airport security is awful because they have to like take your

temperature and do all that shit I've got. Ah, 2020. Time to relax. All right. This is, if I were you, an advice podcast, I guess, shall we take a break and try to answer some questions? I suppose so. Why not?

All right. Let's take a break. And we'll be back with some Q's and A's after these messages. Oh, yeah. Thank you to Aura Frames for sponsoring this headgum podcast. You know, Aura Frames is sponsoring not just this episode, but the entire headgum network, Jake. Wow.

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We plugged it in. Jill's grandma was pregnant. Really nice asshole. This was actually a really sweet moment for me and my wife and you're trying to make a joke of it. I was just being goofy a little bit like, this is how I told my grandma she was pregnant. Yeah. Yeah.

Kind of like she misheard it or something like that or the way you said it was kind of like could go either way. By the way, Jill's grandma is pregnant. Oh my God. Jill's grandma is 90 and pregnant. It's pretty cool. And you told me with a digital photo frame. Holy smokes.

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Go get your parents something, all right. And use the code HEADGUM for $30 off plus free shipping. Thank you Aura. And now back to the HEADGUM podcast you were listening to. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Thank you, BetterHelp. If you're finding yourself in a difficult, anxious, stressful situation talking to a professional licensed therapist is the best way to navigate yourself out of that difficult place.

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that you have to drive to and wait in a waiting room. This is done entirely online, but you're still getting professional licensed help and it's extra affordable. That's betterhelp.com slash if I were you. Check them out. BetterHelp. And we are back, I suppose, for unsolicited advice. It feels weird to promote anything other than donating as much of your spare change as

you can to the cause. There's so many places that could use donations between. I've seen legal services, bailout funds, elections. I just donated yesterday, I guess Trump and Biden are close in Texas and they're trying to get as many undecided voters leaning left. I think I retweeted it. You can check that out, but there's got to be something to donate that's up your alley. So go online, see what you can do.

If you haven't found anything that you're passionate about donating to or contributing to that you just haven't tried hard enough. I understand that it can feel overwhelming, but as soon as you start to dig in, I feel like you find something that you feel like calls to you, it speaks to you, and then you can devote some time and money or effort or whatever you want to it and it helps you feel a little bit better. There's something I forgot to talk about in the first half. When we were talking about Trump holding the Bible, it was a similar dark, sad, comedic

moment when they were interviewing the Attorney General about whether he used pepper spray on peaceful protesters or another type of irritant because the White House is saying the media lied. We never pepper sprayed the protesters that specific day. We actually used something else, so the reporter was like, you used pepper spray? He's like, yeah, pepper spray is not a chemical irritant. And she's like, yesterday, he's like, no, it's not because it's not a chemical, it's a pepper ball, it's a pepper ball.

So he's trying to make the case that everybody lied, that they weren't tear gas the protesters, they were sprayed with something called a pepper ball, which is technically not a chemical because it's made out of a pepper. So that's the type of shit that I'm finding online as well. It's so fucking dumb. Did it hurt people's eyes really bad? Yes. Yes.

And did it make them tear up? Yes. But is it technically a tear gas? I don't think so. It caused an excruciating pain and they had to run away and they weren't doing anything. Also the president could take a dumb photo with a Bible in front of a burned down church from a riot that he kind of helped start. Hold on, I found a really funny tweet that's just up this alley.

I'm trying to find it so I can, I don't steal the joke. Oh yeah, it's from this guy named Julian Hyde. It's not tear gas unless it's from the Thierre region of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling white supremacy. That's good. Ah, see there's moments of sunshine through the cracks of sadness. Yeah. Let's see, questions that we got.

They're starting to pertain to the current mood of not just America, the whole world, everybody. I'm seeing cities like in Australia and Germany, France and Italy protest. I mean, I think I saw, it was like a New York Times article that just had like overhead shots of all of the protests all around the world and like London, and then there was like three in Australia, I think it was Adelaide, Brisbane and, no, Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne? Maybe. Yeah.

But I fucking love my Aussies marching in solidarity. And I guess it is good that Trump thinks it's about him because it kind of is and then he sees all these millions of people worldwide that are marching against him. I mean, he does represent racism and a racist. So it makes sense. Like, I guess it's not specifically about him, but it absolutely applies to him because he's a racist guy, so it makes sense that he feels bad and threatened. He would be a police that was using police brutality, but he's not like strong enough.

So he wants to be a cop, but he can't even get there. No. We actually got a question from Brazil talking about international affairs. All right. We'll call this guy Ronaldinho, famous Brazilian soccer player. I'm from Brazil and we recently elected the dumbest president ever. Seriously, if you haven't heard, this guy's a racist, misogynistic homophobe, sounds familiar. I would venture to say he's worse than Trump.

I'll go even further. It's like Trump took a plump, crump dump on a stump in a sump and out of his plump rump with a bump and a wump, dare I say, thump jumps out this one pumped front lump of a chump that gives me the grumps and the mumps. Can you imagine such a grump, a grump, slump? Having said that, I just found out a close, I just found out a close friend voted for him. Did something like this happen to either of you?

And if so, what did you do? What should I do? Your help would be very much appreciated. Love, Ronaldinho. So imagine one of your friends voted for Trump or this guy who says, he's worse than Trump. I got to look into this. Balanaro? Yeah.

I think it's Balanaro. I've heard about him, but I don't know much. All I know is that he's supposedly worse than Trump. I guess all I know is exactly what this guy said in his email. So do you have any friends in your life that voted for the Donald? I don't. We had one friend that was a Republican that I think was like on the fence and everyone convinced him to do the right thing.

But I don't think I know anyone. Oh wait, does he have a cousin that voted for him? Call him up. Let's talk to them. Well, she totally regrets it now, so she's been convinced. All right. That's one. Yeah.

One down 62 million to go. I feel like this came up when Trump was first elected and we had Billy on the podcast. My inclination really had been to, if somebody I know voted for Trump, I'm done. I will never talk or care about them again and I'm just like, fuck off, fuck you. And that's like, it's hard for me to not do that, but I also, as I mentioned, I understand that now there's like one of the things you can do to help that will maybe even have like a bit of a difference is to like connect with people that you disagree with on this type of level and try to convince them to come to the right side of history.

So I guess that's my advice. Isn't it crazy? Like we were so anti-Trump and we had only really known about him for like six to eight months of campaigning. Like granted, we were right, but what the hell are we so mad about? Like he hadn't done a lot of the crazy, terrible, idiotic stuff that he's done in the last four years. I mean, he like came his first, I feel like one of the first things he said was that Mexicans

were rapists. So like. Yeah. That was before the election. Then he also said that Obama wasn't born in America. That was years before the election. And then he. He's been like a bad racist man for a long time.

All right. I guess he urged a Muslim ban before he was elected as well. So yeah. I mean, he was, but everything before he was elected was just like, you remember that like a lot of people who were talking about voting for him were like, Oh no, he's just saying this to get people riled up when he's president. He can be presidential. He'll pivot.

He's a unifier. Right. That like, he clearly not, clearly not, like you see, uh, did you see the rocks video? Yeah. You see the rocks video against him? I did. But he didn't name him. He said, where are you?

Right. Yeah. He's like, we need a leader. Where are you? You're supposed to unite, but you're not. So like, that's, that's pretty close for him where he tries to remain as apolitical as possible to call out the president. That's true.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to critique anybody's activism. That's not my place. So I think that's great. I think that more people should be calling Trump out because he sucks a lot. Yeah. It was fun to see him do that and all his, all his fans were like, what are you talking about? He's doing great.

The Dems won't let him lead. You just lost a fan, Dwayne. Well, I think that that's, I guess that's indicative of what we have to do is like, that there's a lot of people that feel like it's the Democrats fault, the, what, the moment that we're in. Yes. If your friend voted for, I think his name is Bolonaro, right? Yeah.

I can look it up. If your friend voted for this guy, then I think all you can do is connect with your friend and try to figure out why and try to convince them to vote better in the next election. Yeah. Uh, I guess it also depends on how big of a friend, Bolsonaro, Bolonaro, it depends on how big of a friend. Like if this is your best friend from childhood, then yeah, like you have a history with this person.

You don't want to just throw it all away when you can do some convincing and change his mind from the inside. If this is like an acquaintance or a co-worker from like two years ago, that's probably less important slash doable. But it's, I'm sure it's a lot of kids with their parents too. Like a one generation behind you usually votes much more conservatively than you. Man, I wonder if that'll happen if we have children. Yeah.

Well, we'll be the conservative ones. I don't know. You have pretty liberal parents. They just, you don't just magically become conservative. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Would you say you're more or less liberal than your liberal ass parents?

I would, I mean, I think I'm like as equally, I don't know. I think I'm equally as liberal. They're very liberal. Yeah. Um, yeah. No, they're, I don't think, I don't think I'm any more or less. Like my mom voted for Bernie. Damn, that's cool.

Have you ever drank her liberal tears? I actually think I owned my Lib dad once. Oh really? You owned the Lib dad? I dunked on him on Twitter. I saw that. It was just a bad picture of him that you posted, but you totally fucking dunked him and then drank his cock ass tears.

I made a meme in MS paint. It's a funny headline right now. I dunked on my dad and here's what happened and you wouldn't believe what happened next. Or why? Here's another person writing us in from Los Angeles, a lot closer to home. We'll call this guy Kobe Jones, famous Los Angelino soccer player. For full upfront honesty, I don't, I don't have any questions for the show as you guys self reflected in your most recent Black Lives Matter podcast.

So did many of your listeners and I've always appreciated you both for knowing when to pause the show and use your platform to share your feelings. Some friends of mine just launched an e newsletter with bite sized news events and actions to inspire change around injustices in our society. So if you guys ever receive a question from the audience about how they can better be allies to the Black community or feel the need to share something like this as your unsolicited advice tidbits, I'd be forever appreciative. The website to sign up is let'snotforget.org.

Thanks for keeping a smile on my face during the toughest times. I guess we can say his name. It's Jonathan Lopez. Okay. All right. I'll sign it. Let's, let's not forget.org. Ongoing commitment needed to fight injustice.

Yeah. I guess that is the fear is the like protest and protest and protest. And then eventually it'll just go away and nothing will really change. But we already are starting to see like micro movements even on the policy level. Yeah. I think, I know like when this started also like people were saying to follow these follow different Instagram accounts and sign up for different newsletters. And like part of me was like, that's not very active, just like following different accounts.

Like I want to do something more. But now I've realized like, cause my feeds are those accounts and stuff, it actually, it does like keep it on the forefront. So like aside from this guy's newsletter, find whatever resource speaks to you and, and subscribe or like do monthly donation. So you like stay in touch and keep hearing about the fight and how you can help. I think that is, I think it is good. All right.

One last question. Hi guys, longtime fan, third time emailer. I wanted to get your thoughts on the absolutely necessary protest in the middle of the pandemic. I am an avid supporter of Black Lives Matter movement, but much like Amir, I'm still terrified of the coronavirus and catching and then giving it to my loved ones at risk. The reason I am writing in for this is because I want to know specifically what Amir thinks of not protesting due to fear of COVID-19. Take a back seat, Jake.

I feel like I should be out there in this moment in time that I absolutely want to be a part of, but I'm still so freaked out about catching the virus and those large groups seem to be a perfect spot for it to spread. I know Jake's been protesting and that's awesome and I'm so happy about it, but I haven't seen Amir post anything of that nature. He's calling me up. Is donating and spreading the word on social media enough or do I need to just suck it up and risk that rona for the movement?

I need advice. Nothing to plug except a shout out for my wife, Olivia. Yeah. You usually don't plug something at the end of a question, but shout out to Olivia. All right. Shout out to Olivia. Nothing to plug except for my question and my wife. Well, how do you feel?

Yeah, it's true. I am terrified because I am surrounded by immuno-compromised people and I don't want to get this illness and pass it on to a family member. But I saw something on, I forget at this point, whether it's Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Maybe it was a TikTok or Vine back in the day. All I know is that it wasn't a news. It wasn't the news. It was a buzzfeed listicle.

Just that there's different ways like everybody is protesting in a different way, whether you're marching or donating or spreading awareness or talking to a loved one. Like that's all considered protesting, not like you have to physically show up though. Everything is helpful in a very specific way. Yeah. So and have you found that like what you've been doing has been like helpful for you? I guess it's not really about us. But yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, posting and talking to you about it and donating and sharing

my donations and getting others to donate. So I do feel like I'm doing as much as possible while staying at home like a coward and urging my friends to protest as much as possible. Yeah, I mean, I think but I know that thing that you're talking about, too, is something about like everyone has a lane or whatever. Yeah, like that post that was circulating. I think it makes sense. And I think it's like partially about bandwidth and it's partially about passion.

Like you have to do something that's authentic. Like I for me, the protests have been incredibly helpful because I feel like I'm seeing beautiful, powerful things there. And if you're getting that from donating or sharing and like communicating with people on social media, that's good. Like that's what I'm getting out of the protest. Right. And even within the protest, there's like different levels of like how much you can get involved.

You can be on the front lines shouting at the police. You can like stay past curfew and like show that like you're not going to be constrained by the government telling you you have to go home or you can like arrive early in March in the back and hold up your sign six feet away from people and then leave before it gets dark out. You can a lot of people who don't want to be like right up in the crowds like bringing supplies and have them like on the outsides. So like every time you're like walking away from the protest, there's people just like

passing out water, snacks, hand sanitizer, masks. So if you wanted to like go to the protest, but not be right up in the thick of it, you can be on the outskirts and keep in the distance and stay pretty safe. Yeah. And at the same time, you like don't know specifically what's going on in like individual people's lives, like some people can't afford to donate and some people can't afford to just spend the days in the crowds with people. So everyone is hopefully doing as much as they possibly can. But ours is not the place to judge how people how people push back and support the cause.

Right. As long as you've looked into your own soul and have decided what you can do. Yeah, that's good. And you can, you know, help protesters without necessarily showing up like you can donate to bail funds so you can help people who do get arrested, who are like battling in the front lines. I mean, I see some of these Mike Carnell posts and I'm like, Holy shit, this guy is like in the thick of it. Yeah, dude at war. Yeah, he's he's been arrested, right?

I think like three times now. I want to talk to him about what in the world that means like you get arrested, they throw you where and what do you have to do to get out? And do you go to jail? Do you have to appear in court or is it like a ticket? He you should definitely talk to him. I talked to him, I mean, he has no voice. His voice is gone, horse dry, completely spent.

I think they they hold them at the police station. I don't know if it's like in a cell or what they give you they process you and give you a ticket. He I think he called it like a desk ticket. But you basically you have a court date. You have to go back and plead guilty and pay a fine. Wow, for every single time, it's not like one size fits all. Yeah, and I mean, well, and now it's always changing too. Because the I think like a judge just ruled now they'll they can hold people for 24 hours.

So it's like even scarier if you get arrested, you just spend an entire day and night in jail. And then but then also the curfew was just lifted today. So, I mean, the best thing you can do in addition to like whatever you're you're you're going to do with like your time, your cash or whatever is just like staying informed. Because then I mean, that helps you decide how to help. All right. That was our comedy podcast in the face of a spiraling hurricane of pain. That is right.

You know, maybe we should do come November, we should do some like some live shows if they're if they're allowed at all, just like in polling places. Well, that'd be nice. You mean if we can travel to places? Yeah, maybe we can drive around the country. It could be a comedy activist. We drive around the country. The shows are outdoors.

Everyone is six feet apart. No laughing, because that's where the aerosol particles sort of come out. So like that won't be a problem. Yeah, because we'll we'll be talking about serious issues that don't have very much comedy behind them. All right. The opening theme song was written by who? God, I forget her name already. She had a mysterious name that already escapes me.

It was it was a punk rock. It was like Miley, Minnie. Oh, Misty Lakes. Yeah, Misty Lakes. And this closing one is where is my mind parody? Let me search. Who wrote this? Who wrote that song?

Where's my mind? The Pixies, right? Yeah, where's my mind by Tony Spalding? This is that was Mugeal's wedding song. Oh, damn. There you have it. That was our first dance, dude. I'd just like to give a shout out to the band I play in with my brother and cousins,

Andy and the Chinese Ferrari, Sexfire, Death, Crash. Awesome. Oh, so thanks, Andy and the Chinese Ferrari, Sexfire, Death, Crash and to you guys for writing in and to you guys for listening and to everybody for donating. We'll be tweeting more donation links and ways to get involved. Follow us on social media and do as much as you possibly can. Thanks so much for listening and fighting.

Indeed. And we'll be back next week, as always, and more videos and stuff on our Patreon and more head gum comedy on the head gum podcast. So if you always if you ever want more, there's always more for you. And shout out to that guy's wife, Olivia, just in case you hold that. Yeah, the one who wrote the question earlier. Yeah, I just want to make sure. Shout out to Olivia.

Well, of course, shout out to Olivia. All right, as always, as always. Call chicken in the air when you're feeling down. When you find yourself need an advice. Yeah. If your girlfriend's mean, or your job just sucks, or you ask these dudes, if I were you. If I were you, if I were you.

That was a headgum podcast.