The Daily Zeitgeist - BarTrend Fink 3/19: Trump, Private Equity, Irish Wish, The Snowman

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

In this edition of BarTrend Fink, Jack and Miles discuss what happens if Trump can't pay, private equity buying up everything (this time your favorite musicartists catalogs), the new Lindsay Lohan film 'Irish Wish', the return of Harry Hole and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just

starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.

Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. sports and culture listen to naked sports on the black effect podcast network iheart radio apps or wherever you get your podcasts the black effect podcast network is sponsored by diet coke hello

the internet and welcome to this episode of bartrend fink bartrend fink uh my name is jack uh that one's courtesy of kev whatev on the dashboard um bartrand fink of course uh reference to the coen brothers movie which is also the subject of one of my favorite simpsons jokes where i think millhouse is like we snuck into an r-rated movie bartrand fink bartrand fink um think bartend think um anyways that's miles hey miles hi hey how's it going man hey great great um so uh these are some of the things that are trending on this tuesday afternoon we talked of course yesterday that uh trump's bond that he was supposedly getting from rich uh chubb ceo uh did not clear son of aig um i i forgot about that little detail aig was his dad ran aig wow so yeah they're on the up and up self-made man um but so uh it's looking like he might have to uh be fucked get get all his... So back in February, I just like this little...

Back in February, Trump's lawyer, Lena Habba, went on Newsmax and when asked, like, oh, so this is a lot of money, nervously laughed off suggestions that his properties could be seized, stating, there will be a bond and there will be no issues with that. Well, it turns out there are some issues with that. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of issues. I mean, we said no company in their right mind is like,

give some freak a half billion dollars with a track record of fucking just skating on his debt. So fuck that. Even if there was backed by assets or whatever. And yeah, now it's just going full screaming because the clock is ticking y'all it's a it's monday he has this monday march 25th everything is about to go on sale in trump world if you believe all the shit that he's saying on truth social this is what i look again we honestly we don't know who's going to bail him out or what's going to happen but But I love, we love to see when the true panic sets in and he does like 70 pages worth of screaming on truth social.

Because it's just, Judge Edgar actually wants me to put up hundreds of millions of dollars for the right to appeal his ridiculous decision. In other words, he's trying to make, take my appellate rights away. That's not true. Nobody has ever heard anything like this before. That's not true true i would be forced to mortgage or sell great assets i love that that's capitalized great assets perhaps at fire sale prices and if and when i win the appeal they would be gone does that make sense witch hunt election interference goes fucking on and on and on and on like a nearly

unbelievable amount for even Donald Trump which makes me believe man there's no takers for this one yeah it seems like he's kind of in a tough spot yeah and there's also like there's even talk now that he's like I gotta get I gotta get Paul Manafort

back in here to help me win again he's fucking talking about getting the whole gang back together. Yeah, that's not a good look, man. That isn't a good look. I wish you all the worst financially, sir.

And hope that no one swoops to your rescue. Although I'm sure on some level somebody will. As hard as it's going to be to see this guy elected president again uh at least it's good to see that some of the you know bullying and uh financial crimes that he's spent his life just having an unfair advantage uh him like getting the unfair advantage taken away like getting to watch him like come to terms with that is somewhat fun yeah so we we will see we will see yeah but again talking 40 wall street

um which but that one's only valued at 220 million dollars gotta make up which is less than half what he owes so Trump Tower that's kind of what that's known as that might be on the blocks could you imagine some petty other billionaire like George Soros buys it and he's like hey you got my fucking

rent full Steve Mnuchin comes in and he's like actually I'm good on TikTok I'm just gonna to own your ass, Donald. All right. So there's an article in the New York Times about how private equity is... It's basically the dynamic that we talked about

with private equity taking over everything from retail like Toys R Us and J.Crew and just putting them out of business to nursing homes. Well, that process is underway within the music industry. Basically, private equity companies are buying old catalogs. You might have seen all these headlines like Bob Dylan just sold his song catalog for $300 million. Right, right.

million dollars right right and basically their way of monetizing this is to try to like build media universes on the backs of like legacy artists and their old songs um without investing in anything new because that's obviously risky right um so we own the rights and then we'll tink with the fact that we are the rights holders, we will just find ways to iterate on it and make more money, like an NFT or something like that. But we own the rights. Yeah. All the money and energy is going to be going towards making money off of old music, essentially. Yeah. And you will have to discover new music on your own i'm sure you know

every couple years somebody will like naturally like organically get big and like there will be some new music but it's not gonna be a lot of it it's not gonna be showing up in the places that we're used to seeing music show up um so this person who is like kind of a industry expert wrote in the New York Times, historically record labels and music publishers could use the royalties from their older hits to underwrite risky bets on unproven talent. But why, quote, would you spend your time

trying to create something new at the expense of your catalog? Asked Merc Curiates, the expense of your catalog. Asked Merc, Mercurialities, the former manager of Beyonce and Elton John, who founded hypnosis. The gnosis there is spelled G N O S I S. Uh, like the,

you know, wisdom, the feminine wisdom of ancient Greece. Um, and so instead self-styled disruptors can strip mine old hits and turn them into new ones. Nearly four years ago, the publicly traded Hypnosis Song Fund bought a 50% stake in the funk star Rick James' catalog, which includes Super Freak. To monetize its prize, Hypnosis found a lightly modernized update of Super Freak had Nicki Minaj assemble a songwriting crew and voila in 2022

Miss Minaj's Super Freaky Girl essentially the pop rap superstar rapping over Super Freak became her first number one single that wasn't a joint release and Hypnosis trumpeted the win in its annual report so which

kind of, like, I remember at the time being like, this feels a little cynical, but it's just kind of like wrapping over an old, but that's because it was conceived in a boardroom to be something to brag about on a quarterly earnings call. That's what's so wild about that one, is it's sort of like,

no, yeah, like, we, it's not that like we're artists, we're like, yeah, hey, we own their this right we own the rights of this song make that relevant again so we can make money off of it go yeah thanks but it's it reminds me of like it's kind of the same values at work as with ai like the one thing they can't account for is creativity because creativity is like unpredictable and like, it's a thing that they can't do.

And so it like throws the power balance, uh, into an uncomfortable position for them. And like, you can't put it on a spreadsheet. So they're always looking for ways to like drum it out of creative industries. But I own the ideas of creative people. Yeah.

So if you're, if you're wondering like what this is going to look like, um, it's basically going to be like, we already got all this old shit. Let's make movies out of it. Like let's build the Arista cinematic universe. Right.

So I just want to, um, read some of the music biopics that are in the works because we already talked about the Beatles cinematic universe where there's going to be a different movie for each Beatle released within a couple years of each other. We've also got Michael, a Michael Jackson

biopic coming next year starring his nephew and directed by... Who's the guy who directed the professional and... Oh. Luc Besson? Maybe I have that wrong.

Directed by... Anyways, we got a Michael Jackson biopic coming next year starring his nephew. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse. Is it Antoine Fuqua? Okay, sorry. I got my French directors mixed up. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse biopic.

A Martin Scorsese, Jonah Hill biopic about Jerry Garcia, announced in 2021, is supposedly in the works. Piano Man, about a half-man, half-piano cyborg transform... Sorry, no, wait. It's a Billy Joel biopic? No, it's about a guy Who was bitten by a radioactive piano That's right I eagerly await the Caitlin Durante

Tweet Keith Moon Keith Moon biopic the Bee Gees biopic Boy George Bob Dylan Keith Moon John and Yoko not to be confused with The previously mentioned Beatle Cinematic Universe so this one is like Joker to the Batman movies With like joker to the batman

movies with like yoko as the joker the yoker um the it's just and the title of that article is 10 upcoming music biopics you need to be excited about whoa easy fuck you like just because you know now the online media outlets have all been hollowed out by private equity and neo-capitalism so they're just like passing along orders yeah from you need to be excited about this or you will not fit in you will be ostracized you need to be we need you to be excited we're kind of fucked here okay um but the like the dylan biopic is like starring timothy chalamet and it's you know people are excited i just saw there's like a picture from the set yeah the picture is going viral like young dylan in the in the village it's just there's not enough time to

do biopics are just they always fucking suck yeah they just suck i just don't know what i don't know how to say this like no like half the time the people are too cool in the in the viewer's mind for any actor to like encapsulate how cool they are or interesting um i don't know but hey go ahead i'm sure but again it's like again it's the least creative way to chum the waters to get people to buy tickets or it's like again it's the least creative way to chum the waters to get people to buy tickets or it's like well how many bob dylan fans are there well then make a movie so they must go see it how many how many bob marley fans they must make a movie so they must go see it right it's yeah and then people get excited about the music and they can stream that

so they're just it's always a finding to it's all of them finding ways to profit off of existing music that has been bought up by private equity. And it's just going to be... There was this phenomenon where people stopped going to see live music from anyone who was under the age of 50 a long time ago prior to Taylor Swift. And I think we're seeing that with like all music. Basically, we're just going to see a real doubling down on songs that are by the elderly and recently deceased. Yeah.

Yeah. Ah, well maybe there'll be something cool soon. Probably. Yeah. No, it'll probably be cool. Like that.

Michael Jackson. Also, Antoine Fuqua is not French. He's from Pittsburgh. soon probably yeah no it'll probably be cool like that michael jackson also antoine fuqua is not french he's from pittsburgh i was gonna say it's gonna add that part i was like fuqua is american that's amazing and tom all right but he's he's doing you say fu do you say Fuqua? How do you say Pittsburgh? How do you say Permanente Brothers? I don't know. My wife is French and so I just get... Oh wait, she's also from Pittsburgh?

What the fuck? What's going on with the French people in Pittsburgh, man? Alright, let's take a quick break and we will be right back i'm jess casaveto executive producer of the hit netflix documentary series dancing for the devil the 7m tiktok cult and i'm cleo gray former member of 7m films and shekinah church and we're the host of the new podcast forgive me Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper

into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interviewed dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine.

Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente.

And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions, like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes!

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Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.

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Available now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Hey, we're back. And have you watched Irish Wish yet? You gotta ask, bro. Have have you did you do it yes

motherfucker i watched irish wish did you really yes oh man i wish i'm so impressed by your commitment to these this level of film my baby can't read but i have seen irish wish your baby is one your baby shouldn't be able to read well someone was shaming me saying the baby should be reading by now who i don't know little man tate's mom yeah exactly timely reference oh yeah i still remember like he read like she's like why do you keep saying that word and then sees that it's written on the bottom of like her coffee cup yeah or something and then for macquarie got the idea for the end of usual suspects oh man holy shit wow yeah no your baby

doesn't need to be reading like i that's what i said city of los angeles backup kindergartens like they're still learning to read yeah yeah and i'm joking but i wouldn't maybe i wasn't joking that i was crying with tears in my eyes saying why won't you just read my script um but that's neither here nor there but yeah no i i watched it i watched it because yeah the guy's child was actually sick and let me tell you folks have my first bout with a baby with a fever uh it's not easy in terms of you can't be like hey dude just chill bro just lay down man just sleep it off like i would as an adult rather than being like they do not want to yeah no can't even hold them and shit like she's like all your body needs is rest and you refuse and you want a harlem shake yeah that's what you want to do you want to be fucking

crumping all day in pain anyway so i watched it it's fucking dis it's a disaster man really well it's just one of those it's a shitty like movie holiday-esque film right because it's like it's like sort of vaguely about saint patrick's day um it's patrick's day yeah also pretty sure no irish people in the movie but yeah i think there's like maybe one or two but like it takes place in ireland and like this dude is supposed to be irish his family's like english it's weird i mean maybe there's some like other geopolitical shit i'm not catching here they'll be like oh yeah man like they're still like oppressors so they still be like laughing it up in their little castles and shit i mean the one line that i did see that went viral uh was

when lindsey lohan says is on the cliffs of moore which is on the west coast of ireland is like very rustic you know a bunch of sheep farms and then these beautiful dramatic cliffs um and she says wow i feel like i stepped into a james joyce novel and oh yeah the guy's like wow i'm so impressed by that literary reference. James Joyce wrote about fucking Dublin. He writes like urban novels. Dubliners. It's like, could it be more about Dublin? But anyway.

She's like, yeah, James Joyce is my favorite. I read this piece in Vulture that I thought was interesting. It took a very sort of sarcastic tone, but the thrust of it was sort very it took a very sort of sarcastic tone but the thrust of it uh was sort of essentially saying like they're they're trying to prepare people for like the coming ai script writing boom where nothing is good and doesn't make sense but we'll be like oh yeah maybe this is fucking fine yeah just like once over from human eyes yeah yeah and it was said in jest but i thought

it was like an interesting take but anyway it's it's it's like so bad it doesn't make sense there's like this like irish lady who grants her a wish basically lindsey lohan is a ghost writer for this novelist paul kennedy of course she's very literary she loves james joyce dude obviously that's what that's what i feel like when I'm here on the Cliffs of Moher. But Dublin, not so much. I felt like I didn't know where I was when I was in Dublin. Somebody pointed out it would be like an Irish character wandering around Times Square and being like, Wow, I feel like I'm in the Grapes of Wrath. Right, exactly.

Oh, okay. This is what the Dust Bowl was like. Yeah, wonderful. But yeah, the movie is like she works with this like author that she's like secretly in love with. And then she wishes that she was actually married. She was getting married to him rather than her best friend. And then with a snap of the wind, she wakes up in like their new reality where she's going to marry this dude and then realizes she doesn't. It's not worth your time.

Right. So I wasted my own for you and that is my active service thank you for doing that yeah irish wish sounds like it should be insulting like it sounds like it should be i know yeah i feel like yeah it's like anytime you use like a nation as a modifier for a normal word it always feels like it's there's no way around it it's like yeah irish wish fucking canadian ceo you would be like i would like a raise and your ceo would be like uh that sounds like an irish wish to me aka it ain't happening pal yeah how about this how about i offer you instead some japanese ice cream and you're like huh I don't know is that an insult I fucking have no clue but the way he said it

if you know what I mean it looks just like ice cream yeah but it's from Japan it's like tasty or something I don't know whatever I don't fucking know man but yeah that's perfect the grapes of wrath being Times Square it's like it feels because that's again it has like this weird feeling of like, who wrote this?

And they also don't know anything about anything? Right. I mean, I don't expect a Hollywood screenwriter to know James Joyce. Like, I only pretend to have read James Joyce. I've read like a couple paragraphs of that shit. Oh, yes. Dude, I fucking spark notes the entirety of portrait of the artist you know i've like talked to enough people who have pretended to read it and like done the googling enough to you know know that you can't say cliffs of moore is james joyce yeah truly truly well at least netflix it seems like has got other got their head in the right place in other places for instance bringing the snowman's harry hole

back um the snowman's what so harry hole you don't remember did you remember the uh crime yeah the crime thriller the snowman yes yes yes mr as like mr hello mr police yeah hello mr police right i gave you all the clues um yeah anyways that that character is part of like a jack reacher like style series of novels um and people have like i remember when the snowman was bad people who like crime novels were like and this sucks because like the harry hole books are actually pretty good um so he's getting another shot uh joe nesbo uh who you know is harry hole came up with the name harry hole stuck with it um just a bunch of great we got joe nesbo and my my great character harry hole just couldn't be more it's 1970s porno mag type yeah um oh yeah no it's norwegian so it's j it's just joe j-o and

then the that that funky oh with the line through it okay i mean but like the hello mr policeman i gave you all the clues gave us so many great memes so maybe maybe that's what yeah i mean the books were popular right like that's the only reason they made they made the film so the novelist here will adapt his own novel for the show so we'll see see. And I feel like that's a 50-50 shot right there. It'll either go well because he actually understands the intent of what the book's supposed to be or he'll get way too caught up and be like, I'm a script writer now.

And they're like, no, you're fucking it up, Joe. That's not how people talk. Yeah. Or maybe it'll be Norwegian Bosch. Yeah. Nordic Bosch. I'm fine with that. Alright. Those are some of the things that are trending

on this Tuesday, March 19th. We are back tomorrow with a whole ass episode of the show. A banger with one Jamie Loftus. So tune in for that. A banger. Until then, be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. Get the vaccine.

Don't do nothing about white supremacy. And we will talk to y'all tomorrow. Bye. Bye. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed.

Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career.

That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball.

And on this new season, we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.