Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 270: Present Company Included

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

**audio gets better after a couple minutes** This week we talk about the most recent AppHarvest news, and then move on to an extremely cool article about Disney magic Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

oh right okay man okay well Jonathan Webb he fucking he fumbled the bag we're good this time have we seen the last seven well I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him but i think he finally fucked it up man i think he finally he finally done it done it he finally who could call this coming you know I've been asking myself that too. Like who could have seen this coming?

I mean, obviously we thought it would work. We obviously from the very beginning, we were some of his biggest boosters. And I really take issue with people that say they're over haters. You don't understand. We were trying to challenge him to be better you know you that's all it was every protagonist needs an antagonist yeah if michael jordan wouldn't have punched steve kerr when they were teammates he went on to be the best coach yeah no exactly you have to have someone

constantly challenging you to be a better you and anybody calling us haters or naysayers or doubters or wreckers or whatever other stupid term you have for this genre

of person just know that we're just trying to get the best performance out of you at the end of the day that's all we're trying to do that's all we're trying to do this is from November 22nd once called the future of farming app harvest discloses

substantial doubt about its future and they've got a picture of my man looking fucking sexy as fuck dog oh shit he always does he have the wet hair going on yeah yeah he does wet hair motherfuckers man it's yeah you're right guys wet hair motherfuckers are running the world it's fucked up it's a look it really is a look and it's november 7th filing of app harvest reported net losses of 83 million dollars for the first nine months of the year

sorry mistakes were made like can i juxtapose this with one thing oh yeah so i'm looking at so i was just looking it's funny because i've got this all pulled up now because i was looking for um this article that we're reading from right now and let me just read a couple of headlines from the other times the New York Times has covered this outfit. Please. From September 3rd, 2019. A greenhouse large enough to feed the eastern seaboard. What?

The entire U.S.? Eastern U.S.? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Here we go. What? The entire US? Eastern US? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Here we go. From July 6, 2021.

No soil, no growing seasons. App Harvest is just adding water and technology. That's not all. From this year, from this summer, June 21st, 2022. Indoor farming, a no brainer.

Yeah, they didn't. They meant that in the sense that no brains went into it. That's what they meant. And then finally from November 22nd, 2022, Kentucky-based App Harvest admits serious concerns about its future. And I'm leaving out when he was investigated for securities fraud. Right. This is from the Herald Leader article, groups of shareholders, including a public pension fund in Plymouth, Massachusetts,

have filed five federal lawsuits against App Harvest in the last 15 months. Did you know that? A public pension fund in Plymouth, Mass., had invested in App Harvest, and now their stock is trading below $5? I'm not laughing at them. I'm laughing at how bad this guy has done his job when you're getting into the vc vulture game the name of the game is just about right doing right

by your shareholders right okay like that's i mean these people do anything to do that this guy's not even good at being a Wall Street crook. I mean, I guess I need to go back to basics here. I don't understand this. We live in an extremely fertile state. Well, maybe not the men here. The men here are stricken with ED. We are the least virile of the eastern seaboard, probably.

Yet another thing we need to just transition about. But the soil, speaking in terms of soil, Kentucky's like an agriculture state. We have to return to first premises. Why did they fucking want to go with the greenhouse model in the first place was it is it big is it entirely because they conceptualize this to work on top of strip jobs but then once they realized that that wouldn't be profitable they tried to move it further west in the state but they they maintained the greenhouse thing like what i don't i'm missing something. Here's what I've always thought from people that are knowledgeable about this kind of thing,

is that the whole idea behind App Harvest was that it was never about tomatoes. Tomatoes was just their entree, right? It was always about having the infrastructure in place for when marijuana was legalized in kentucky which was is not likely to happen and was and to be quite honest i'm not sure if it'll happen anytime soon if that's true it's one of the stupidest fucking gambles i've ever heard what the fuck is it's well it's like like you're like how are you raising all this vc cash billions of vc cash on something that might happen you know what i mean yeah yeah a lot of ifs and buts it's a lot of ifs and buts you know what they say about ifs and buts if they were candies they say about ifs and buts. If they were candies and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas.

Yeah. In the lawsuits, shareholders say that App Harvest executives misled investors and regulators with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make it appear they were better prepared for the company's launch than they really were. Meanwhile, top executives were being awarded millions of dollars in compensations. While App Harvest made optimistic statements throughout the inaugural 2021 harvest season, behind the scenes, it struggled with hiring, training, production, and produce quality at its farm-growing tomatoes in Moorhead.

At times, the company had to bring in contract labor from outside the region, which again, like the whole thing. Imagine that, imagine that. Right, like the whole thing was premised on them revitalizing the Appalachian region. Yeah, with jobs and all this stuff. And really all I've heard was bringing outside labor in

and exploiting like cheap migrant farm labor. Dude, it is such a fascinating look at the state of, I don't know, working class formation. I mean, I'm reading this at the same time that they're making all these promises about this prison coming here and about all the people here

that are going to work at it. And they're just going to run into the same problem that like app harvest ran into which is that well a there's just not a lot of people here in general it's just a there's everybody's leaving everybody's getting the fuck out right yeah uh but also people don't want fucking eight dollar jobs picking tomatoes um yeah they frame this like this is like the like the cure to all that ails us but it's like man nobody could get excited about like tough work for no money you know what i mean no matter how much you like sort of couch it in like this

is the next big thing or you know this is going to solve x societal problem it's just like who in the world is going to be excited about that dude it truly is a fact i mean obviously like venture capitalism venture capital like the whole point is i think like most venture capital projects fail i think is what i've heard um but it is a fascinating look into how at this point none of this serves any real need or utility i mean when you're talking about like the market and and the market allocates resources and investment where it needs it like clearly they had to spin a narrative that was disconnected there was a disjunction a disconnection between reality on the ground and what they were telling investors

and then fucking people got swindled into it and i mean this is a fucking pension plan you know what i mean like a pension fund fucking was invested like real people are gonna be fucking hurt by that well dude it's it goes back to the thing this summer uh you know when a friend of ours had pointed out that jonathan webb had this insanely insensitive quote i think it may be in the richmond virginia paper but i'm not positive it was that but it was basically like talking about the upside of the monsoon season just weeks after people's lives have been completely wrecked in this flooding. Right.

And their PR team immediately sprung into action saying, no, this was taken totally out of context. And then you go back and it's like, it's a direct quote, though. Yeah. Like, where's the context? You know what I mean? It's not like the writer was paraphrasing or something like that. But it's like these people are so up their own ass with the vision and the conception of themselves as like these people that are going to be the saviors of a place that they are numb to like the real hurt and destruction that they do in pursuit of this it's

it's just it's it's just the same hubris you see in musk or any of these people but like they don't understand how like oh that could be insensitive to people that like are just days away from this like very jarring traumatic thing or these people who have like losing their retirement on the irresponsibility of these fuckwits you know what i mean right yeah like even if it was in context innocuous even if it was like in context made sense it's still the timing bro fucking read the room yeah you have nothing else my man just uh yeah maybe uh maybe sit this one out for a while. This is interesting. In one motion, App Harvest calls the litigation against them a textbook example of plaintiff's attorneys

alleging fraud by hindsight under a securities law because the company is losing money, not because there's actual evidence of fraud. No, I think there's actual evidence of fraud. No, I think there's actual evidence of fraud when uh yeah you rolled out your ipo like totally unaware of what you're doing and making all these insane uh sort of claims that were none of it bore out in reality you know dude this is also didn't they falsify some of their like like do you remember like they got in trouble early on with those aphids or whatever yeah and like they acted like this was not a like a big deal but like basically one of their first big i don't know what you'd call it a harvest crop whatever uh ended up just totally

getting fucked and so they had to like use these bad tomatoes to make like sauces and stuff so it didn't like wasn't complete waste so they like repackage their fucked tomatoes because they can't sell them in stores as like salsas and Bloody Mary mix and shit like that yeah yeah but dude they themselves admitted

this is interesting they themselves admitted they said App Harvest was a young company with an inexperienced management team undertaking a massive farming endeavor for the first time in a region where workers were transitioning from a different industry it would have been evident to the ordinary investor that our app harvest would encounter problems with labor and tomato quality and yield bitch you fucking you didn't say that like, like, that's crazy that they admit that, one.

But, like, two, all of their outward-facing appearance and statements and everything imbued, they imbued themselves with this, like, me and Aaron talked about this on the episode on Sunday, how that, like, capitalists now, as opposed to, like like a hundred years ago they talk about themselves and their uh sort of investments in and actions in this universe like savior um like this universe shattering like like deified self-deified manner in which like all

their actions are are specifically geared to the cost of doing business because the greater is that what you're getting at yeah yeah like okay so like let's just as an example and i could be wrong maybe this is hasty but just as an example like do you think when jp morgan or that's not a good example but like john rockefeller when he was like opening up a new like oil patch or something like that, that he was going in and saying like, we're going to save the region. This is going to turn the region around. Like we're going to save the workers here. We're going to save the people. Like there's this, there's this inherent logic of like saviorism and of rescue. And it's so bizarre that, I mean, again, I don don't i don't think that that was happening a

hundred years ago maybe in some isolated pockets here and there and that's also just because like of the nature of the frontier a hundred years ago and all this other stuff but it is just interesting that that's how they view themselves and that's how they view their investments as as they themselves like they've done this like self-delusion thing where they know it is an investment that they're getting money, that they're getting money returned on and that they are capitalists,

but they've deluded themselves into thinking that that is in and of itself this kind of like self-deifying measure that it's like it proves that they are in the pantheon of the gods and i don't i don't know man it's i can't i guess i'm not articulating it well but maybe you see what i'm saying no no no totally yeah and and it's just imagine that wet hair motherfucker just at the parthenon just sitting on a big fucking throne

beside Zeus and the boys. On PBS NewsHour the other day, they interviewed AOL founder Steve Case on the surprising entrepreneurs reimagining the economic landscape. And he wrote that book. remember when jd vance and them were doing that rise of the rest tour yeah yeah yeah that safari yes yes well he wrote a book called rise of the rest and it's all about like how all this investment is is concentrated in like silicon valley and they need to like

diversify it out and like save the hinterlands and this is from an interview on november 24th two days after that harold leader story ran saying that like yo we don't know about our long-term prospects they're tugging at their collar and that like comically large sweat bead is dropping down their face like like they get this article it says like he's like one of the great stories in the book is an entrepreneur named jonathan webb he started a company called app harvest in east kentucky coal country appalachia which has had a rough run for the last several decades but he decided to start a company no shit he decided to start a company. No shit. He decided to start a company there that's created 600 jobs

in the last couple of years in a place that has really been left behind. And he says, so this is part of the answer. We have to launch new companies. We have to create new jobs. Half of the Fortune 500, the biggest companies, turn over every 25 years. So you can't just rely on your big companies. You have to just be launching new companies.

I see my man didn't renew his Kentucky.com subscription before he did this interview. Fucking hell, man. Just like the levels of self-delusion. It's ideology, obviously, but... Oh, my God, dude. It is... It's truly a thing to behold. Who would have thought, man,

making shitty hydroponic tomatoes in, you know, these sort of high-toned, whatever you want to call them, apparatuses. Who could have seen that failing, you know? Oh, man, I love this. They've got a picture on the Herald-Leader story.

They have a bulldozer with a massive App Harvest display on it. It says, Governor Andy Beshear, no, they said Senator Hal Rogers, his congressman actually, and App Harvest CEO Jonathan Webb spoke during a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of App Harvest's new facility in Somerset. Man, they're really getting further and further away

from the Culf. Every move they make is like... Yeah, they're gonna be... You know, it's gonna it's gonna like lead guys like this to sort of like think there actually is like something like a curse you know what i mean like you're gonna see jonathan webb pop up at 20 years said the reason it didn't work was because like a some sort of appalachian curse or something like that. That like a curse was put on these hills. There's nothing they could have been done.

It was just like written in the stars that it's, you know, like, because, yeah, some sort of, I don't know, some sort of ancient curse or something. Because you just can't look in the eye that like, oh, maybe a guy whose only job before this was being in a shitty ska band that plays at the fucking, what's that place called over here on the corner? The fish tank. Dude, the thing that kills me is that

if it works, it works, it's fine. But the fucking thing that drives me crazy is the pandering to Eastern Kentucky. Because like, read this part right here. People in Eastern Kentucky are understandably skeptical about companies that come into the region is the pandering to eastern kentucky because like read this part right here people in eastern kentucky are understandably skeptical skeptical about companies that come into the region and make promises about jobs web said in just the last few years i hate that because that's not true like actually the opposite is true people beg for shit to come here like this whole prison deal

is coming you know maybe just because people are pining for it. That's not true. The exact opposite is true. I know, I know. I just got out of, you're right. I just got out of a meeting last week where I just saw the entire fucking town rally around a fucking prison when people need fucking houses. Yeah. Like, they clearly are asking for jobs.

fucking houses yeah like they clearly are asking for jobs and not just the like the boosters in like the civic leaders and stuff like actual workers are asking for jobs too like i'm not trying to get it twisted but like what kills me is that he says so people in eastern kentucky are understandably skeptical about companies that come under the region and make promises about jobs but app harvest actually has built farms he says hired people and started to deliver produce to the market bitch not in eastern kentucky you haven't somerset is not the fucking coalfields like it makes me feel like i'm fucking insane no well the thing these pulled the classic bait and switch right in the sense that yes like some places like moorhead and somerset might be considered eastern kentucky to some people even though i don't think you know i think somerset is kind of its own thing like that's kind of the point where things start

kind of changing up a little bit in the central kentucky a little bit like in terms of like you know you get more farming and less mining and stuff like that. Right. But it's like, but like to the VC investors that like want those Appalachia buzzwords and stuff like that, that's not really well articulated. So like if he says he's bringing all these jobs to Moorhead and stuff, to them all they see is like these former coal miners are are farming tomatoes right that's not that's not what's happening you know what i mean but he's still echoing and making people believe that that's what it is because that's what raises the money dude right it's like i'm not trying to like i'm not trying i'm literally not trying to do some gotcha like oh somers Somerset and Moorhead aren't eastern Kentucky.

Because I guess you could say technically they probably are. But what I take issue with is the sort of savior narrative directed towards the coalfields. Places like Somerset and Moorhead have a readily accessible and exploitable working class because in Moorhead's case, there's a college there and there's like a little bit more of an economic base. And in Somerset's case, you've got like Howe Rogers. It's right on the edge of the coalfields. You've got the Cumberland Lake. You've got, you know, right on the Howe Rogers Parkway. you've got you know right on the how rogers parkway there's all these other sort of inputs going in that um you know make a for like a larger working class pool to pull from and in this place where there was only one industry ever and as that and as you had the organized abandonment of that industry i mean it basically just fucking pulled the pillars of everything else with it and it's like yeah those are two qualitatively different sort of political economic experiences and if you want to grow tomatoes in a

fucking um greenhouse by all means fucking go for it but don't fucking say you're a savior or fucking of the coal fields like it's like that that is just the part that no you haven't crazy you you're a tomato salesman which is fine you're not a savior of anything you're yeah but tomato salesman doesn't get the vc dollars you know right Right. Yeah. Yeah. App Harvest has certainly turned heads. That's what Kentucky's Ag Commissioner said. That's,

yeah, that's one way to put it. Yeah. I do appreciate this on the story. They compiled like a fucking, like a mega mix of all of Jonathan Webb's dozens of interviews to promote the company, and he's wearing the same stupid fucking hat

in every single interview. It's like, dude, come on. Come on. Wet hair and stupid hat. It's a potent combo. It's just the damnedest thing. It's just narrative is really what it is. Yeah, it's just...

Yeah, I'm so sick of this guy. I don't know what to tell anybody that thought this was going to really yield anything other than what it yielded. I'm not taking a victory lap on anybody losing their retirement or anything like that but the reality is this was like just stupid from its conception and and that's probably being generous at at worst it may have even been designed to fail you know what i mean it may have been it may have been just a tax write-off for people you know what i mean and jonathan webb was just a loyal enough foot soldier of all these sort of cretins to to pull it off i don't know all right i'm sorry but i just i just yeah i just i think putting a multi-billion dollar tomato company in the hands of a former ska musician and a uk basketball player turned struggle rapper

was probably just not had a high ceiling in terms of outcomes right which also just proves how desperate i mean dude me and you tomorrow could say that we're going to do like an elizabeth holmes-esque fucking home medical scam and like if we had if we had the right people backing us we could fleece everybody in these small communities from fucking pipeful to paducah you know it wouldn't because people are struggling you know what i mean it's not that they're feckless or stupid or anything but they want to hope against hope that things are going to work out for them, which makes Webb's quote there stupid. I know that they're skeptical. It's like, no, they're skeptical of the big coal people.

They're not skeptical. People are ready to wholesale take whatever. Again, that's what we're seeing with the prison and other shit. I don't know. It's dis's what we're saying with the prison and other shit but right now it's it's disheartening to say the least this is a this is probably a question for the bleachers but uh uh what is the substantive difference between like an elizabeth holmes and a jonathan webb like why is she doing 11 years it's like do you i mean i'm not like an elizabeth holmes apologist but i do feel like that she was surrounded by people who enabled her rise and who funded her like henry kissinger and shit like why is she the one like that gets uh yeah like 11 years is it i mean i know it's for defrauding investors is it was it like the amount of money? How is this different?

How is this different, though? Yeah, you know what's crazy? It's crazy. I mean, you were talking the other day about their lawyer was like, hey, she's pregnant. Let's just give, if you do give her prison sentence, let's cap it at 18 months, but, like, you know, maybe she doesn't need to go to jail at all.

And that judge was like, nah, 11 years god damn i was like fuck yeah but like why yeah that's a good question why is yeah what is the substantive difference between her and somebody like jonathan webb you know yeah i mean i mean i'm sure it has to do with probably when you're dealing with a medical procedure company like that, medical provider company. You're also probably dealing with malpractice claims and stuff like that. Yeah, it's a higher degree of liability than just some fucking aphid-ridden tomatoes. Right, right. I don't know. But it is an interesting thing

because who are the people that fucking enabled Jonathan Webb in this case? Who are his Henry Kissingers and the like? Senator J.D. Vance. Steve Case from AOL. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a laundry list of people but martha stewart you know i mean yeah yeah the fun it just it just remains funny to me that they thought a ska guy was gonna feed the eastern seaboard

it's like no disrespect to my skull people include present company included it's it's like yeah dude it's like in ancient roman times like the general you pledged fealty and allegiance to like he would have your grain allotment and now it's like a guy who played in a third wave ska band Operation Ivy covers. Oh, dude. I mean, it's just like the Kanye shit. It's just like you couldn't have even scripted it out. It's so stupid.

Oh, fucking A. Well, yeah. You want to talk about Kanye, dude? Oh, well, we get people jump on us every time we do, but that's... What else can you say? One day you're married to the most famous starlet on the planet, and the next day you're eating shitty hibachi with your buddies with some questionable beliefs.

Well, I will say this, and I mentioned this to you last night. You know well i will say this and i mentioned this to you last night you know i will say this he's definitely had the most exceptional fall from grace the most exceptional um burning out fading away of a pop star in human history i think i'm gonna go ahead and say it. I believe that too, man. And we're talking about Michael Jackson's child molestation case. Yeah, we're talking about... Which really didn't even do him in,

which tells you how bad this is. Exactly. Like, it would be more honorable. He would have more dignity if he went out like Elvis, like OD'd on the toilet, like trying to take a shit. Like that would have more dignity if he went out like elvis like od'd on the toilet like trying to take a shit like that would have more like that would be a less sad story yeah being well you said it being

a nazi is not really something you come back from because like look even if he were to like you know following his sword and plead mental illness and you know anything else and i think i mean i think there's certainly probably something to that a little bit even though again this motherfucker's almost 50 not 21 you know what i mean right uh like you're still gonna be remember oh yeah kanye west was a nazi for a little bit you know what i mean it's like my man basically fumbled the bag so much he earned a new wikipedia tab that's always going to be on there you know what i mean and it's like what's it say it's just like it's just one of the few things that just doesn't

well you can't wash off you know what i mean yeah it doesn't wash off it it's it's worse than death it's a social death that's worse than kurt cobain putting a shotgun in his mouth like it is he literally would have been better off if he would have died man that is it is it's sad i, it really is sad in so many ways. Because, man, you know, for all of Kanye's warts to this point, you know, he kind of, I don't know, there was something about him that made you just, I don't know. I don't know. Something just uniquely special about his art and all that kind of stuff. And it's, yeah.

I will say this. I will say this. Everything finally, everything about him and my own kind of weird interest in him over the years finally clicked when I read that Rolling Stone expose about his time at the helm at Yeezy, at Adidas. time at the helm at yeezy at adidas it's like he it's like what i thought to have been over the years a art an artistic position that was a kind of critique of power was actually a like burgeoning nazism yes it was a fascination with power, which is a fascist idea.

Which is a fascist idea. And all the aesthetics and other kind of transgressive and subversive things that he was playing with, edgelord shit that he was playing with, was only ever going to lead in one direction. Putting the Confederate flag on his merch on that tour and that kind of thing. Exactly. And if you read that article, it's like, this guy genuinely thought it was a like, boundary pushing thing,

which it is. It's a boundary crossing thing, but he thought that this was a kind of like, profound artistic statement to like, show people porn when they did not want

or ask to see it and stuff like that. You know what I mean? It's a sexual harassment. Yeah, like bringing it up in like, corporate boardrooms and stuff. Exactly. It harassment it's like yeah no this guy was

just from the beginning like obsessed with uh he was obsessed with power and and kind of like drunk with it and it makes total sense why he is kind of the position that he's in now uh yeah but uh something just uniquely depressing about finding yourself at a fucking yeah just some shitty fucking restaurant with nick fuentes i don't know it's just you wonder how that happens what let me ask you this you think the right wingers are in like i because you know like kanye and nick fuentes went to mar-a-lago trump trump like had dinner with him trump's like trump has like kind of melted down about that in several different ways but one of the best was like he had a post on troops truth social that was like i met with kanye a black man by the way or something like that yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, he didn't espouse any anti-Semitism

at my dinner table. Yeah. Nick Fuentes didn't know him before this. Yeah. But, like, I just want to say that if this is, if this is true, if this is, like, indicative of a larger conflict going on on the right.

I just want to say that I think I called it and I think I called it based on the Russia Ukraine thing, which is that like for years pundits have been talking about the coming civil war. But what if they had the location of that war wrong? What if this whole time it was on the right? Because you look at Ukraine and Russia, it's like these are two right wing forces. Nice. Yeah. Fucking duking it out yeah yeah yeah that's true yeah they were right but the terms and uh and the locations were were off yeah yeah interesting um well anyways um oh man this is just depressing I don't know what to say about it yeah you know

one last thing I'll say about it too is style and being cool I guess are kind of immutable things you know and the weird thing about this is there's just nothing cool or even, like, interesting about running with losers like that. You know what I mean?

Like, I think, you know, a lot of people are like, you know, usually these post-left types have these, like, flirtations with the right. Because ultimately they can put that stuff back in the box right like they can just like you know interview alex jones or whatever and then just like the next day they just set that back down you know like oh that was just like one of those quirky things we just did and it is just something that I just think is so depressing about a guy that has prided himself on those immutable style and cool things for as long as he's been in the public eye

to find himself in such an uncool position. It's like uniquely depressing. I don't know. Yeah. Well, like I said, I think that it was probably always going to end up here. I don't know if there was any alternative, if there was any other way.

It was probably inevitable. Like I said, going back and reading that Rolling Stone thing, this guy has a deeply misguided sense of art and the role of the artist and a theory about, you know, a deeply misguided theory of art anyways. I mean, I... Which is like for somebody that's so prodigiously talented too, to like just totally miss the mark about what it's all about,

you know? Right. There's something sad about that too. Yeah, yeah. Right. There's something sad about that, too. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, nothing more to really say about that. I do want to cover one thing before we go.

It's an article in the New York Times that was sent to me by a friend, Ryan Hagerman, who I swear I probably would have found this article on myself ryan because i read the fucking new york times every day but uh but i i got and i was i was you know i was slacking and uh so thanks for not letting this one fall through the cracks. This is probably best understood. One of my favorite videos on the internet is one of my favorite videos on the internet that I'll laugh every time it comes up. I don't know if you've seen it. It's like this guy who's like a Star Wars fan.

And he's like, hey, everybody, everybody it's my birthday and you know what that means you get to meet my girlfriend it's like it's star wars day or whatever and it's like the the video keeps zooming out to like there's like it zooms out to reveal like a gun to her head and then it resumes out further and people are like come out people come out all of which is to say that this this letter is probably best understood as having been written by someone who has in their basement not a body but probably a kidnapped worker at from disney world who like that john fowles book the collector they like go down there and make me like um prime rib and like tell them about the soap operas they've watched recently and how they're like like you can never leave you're my special little boy you know what i mean it's like this is written by someone who has taken a hostage

and like we don't know it we'll find out in like 200 years when they find the skeleton in this guy's basement uh is in disney called the article is called bob chapik is that his name the the departing ceo of disney chip peck i think i think that's right yeah bob chap didn't believe in disney magic by lynn testa oh it's so creepy dude very very fucking creepy name i looked him up too on google i don't recommend doing that you'll get even more great this is in this is in the new york times man this is like what was the guy's name i gotta google it lynn testa t-e-s-t-a dude this is a grown man probably in his 40s he looks like he's probably 45 or so a grown man wrote this fucking article called bob jappik didn't understand disney magic

wait so wait this guy didn't believe in disney magic so this guy is like a disneyland tour guide he is he's a disneyland tour guide basically well not proper he's not employed by disney he like has his own little like he yeah he's done it taken upon himself yeah he's taken employed by disney he like has his own little right like he yeah he's done it taken upon himself yeah he's taking it upon himself so like oh man that's how obsessed he is with this he is horned up you know we've the phrase disney adults has entered the cultural lexicon and last little bit kind of used as an umbrella term to describe like even people like into marvel movies only. And, you know, stuff ostensibly made for children

that adults can sometimes enjoy, but maybe this group of people enjoy it perhaps more than they should. This is who this was made for. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, like, I could read... He is the Disney adult. He's the Disney adult. I could do it it's a fascinating glimpse into the psychology of a disney adult and i will say this i'm less

disturbed disturbed reading like the psychotic ramblings of charlie manson than i am well it's fun i just looked at this guy's Twitter, and he says, my babblings in the New York Times. Yeah, well, at least he's self-aware. Yeah. Okay. All right. Kick us off. Let's go into the mind of madness.

This is true John Carpenter shit, dude. The mind of madness. I am one of the many devoted Disney fans around the world. We spend hundreds of dollars on annual passes that let us go to theme parks as often as we want, and many of us proudly wear Disney-inspired clothes while visiting them. The hardcore among us debate whether a ride based on the Frozen movies is appropriate for Epcot, which was envisioned as a non-fiction theme park. My master's thesis in computer science created new efficient algorithms for one of math's fundamental optimization problems.

Why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why? That's like... This man says that Epcot's abandoned its founding purpose because it was conceived as a non-fiction part of the theme park, and they let a Frozen exhibit in. Yes. These are the kind of things that keeps this guy up at night. He's orthodox Disney, man.

He believes he's originalist. He's like the Scalia of Disney. Everything has to adhere to its originalist form and intention. I just want to connect these things really quick, but didn't the aforementioned Kanye West once say, I am Walt Disney. I am Steve Jobs. I am somebody else in the flesh.

Kanye's a Disney adult, to really tie this back to that. He is. So much so, he said he is the reincarnation of walt disney the the funny the the funniest thing about that is that he said like i am hitler or something like that like or that he admired hitler which is fucking hilarious because it literally like kanye's a dumb guy and so like that's just his way of saying that he's depressed right now like you know what i'm saying like he's not steve jobs anymore he's not optimistic about anything anymore he's like i'm hitler now like he might not be a nazi at all maybe he just like relates

to like the world and what he's experiencing his emotions through personalities and right now he's in his sad hitler face exactly um another interesting part about this though in addition to being an orthodox disney follower he says in for his master's thesis in computer science instead of like tackling some of the world's greatest mathematical problems and all this stuff, he created new efficient algorithms for one of math's fundamental optimization problems and applied it to minimizing weights in line at Disney World. God damn.

So he used his powers for good, huh? I just want to get back to the world, and by that I mean I wanted people to wait in line less at Disney World. He used his powers for good, yeah. On November 20th, I was relieved to hear the news that Disney's chief executive, Bob Chapik, had been fired and replaced with the former CEO, Robert Iger. The news was also met with near-unanimous celebration

among my community of superfans. While his ouster shocked investors in Hollywood, many in our community had been actively campaigning for Mr. Chapik's firing for the past two years. At Change.org... Oh, listen, I don't have any sympathy for ceos like super rich guys like that very weird well you know i guess i i'm being hypocritical here because i'm also a grown man that uh that tweets about uk needing to fire their offensive coordinator so i guess i

don't have much room to talk but it's still weird it's funny to imagine a group of middle-aged people that think that well what we need to now is to go back to the agar years yeah what it is it's like the weird thing about it is like, I hate CEOs and I can never, ever, ever sympathize with one. But this guy might be the first time that I've ever been like, yeah, maybe Bob Chapik had some points. Maybe he should have fucking executed you guys. Like, maybe he should have made the rides a little more unstable. Yeah.

Hey, you know what? You know what, Lynn Testa? I'll tell you what. You bring up some interesting points, and for your passion, we're going to let you be the first one to ride this new ride that's never been tested before. Bob Shappick should have cut some

more corners in the pursuit of profit. I just imagine this group of catty middle-aged people just nitpicking the shit out of Disney World, and it's hilarious. Yes. There were many factors that could have factored into Mr. Chapik's fall.

Okay, that's a bad sentence. Many factors that could have factored in. A $1.5 billion loss in its streaming service, poor handling of a pay dispute with the actress Scarlett Johansson, and his admittedly flubbed response to Florida's Parental Rights and Education Act. We also pushed to have Mr. Chappick fired

because he didn't believe in Disney magic. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, dear God. Wait, I gotta steal myself. That sentence snuck up on me. I didn't realize we were gonna hit it that, we were gonna hit pay dirt that soon. Dude.

Wow. We also pushed to have Mr. Chabot fired because he didn't lose in my mind i'm losing my mind like i know i say this a lot you keep going keep going oh dude i've got a do you want a fucking nuclear take bro i've got a fucking nuclear take for you right now i'm gonna say bob chapik was right i've got an even more nuclear takes than that bro the fucking people and i hate elon musk i if he ever gets put against the wall i want to be the fucking person to pull the trigger but the people that fucking spend all fucking day like oh elon like i can't what's your line i can't i don't have like i can't take this anymore i'm going to massadon blah blah blah elon's not holding the true vision of twitter it's the same shit bro you're a you're a disney adult yeah yeah you're a disney adult yeah like there's something with a with a worse heritage somehow

disney twitter they both need to end they both need to fucking end just stop stop complaining and just ride the fucking roller coaster until it falls off oh man uh we pushed we also pushed to have Mr. Chapik fired because he didn't believe in Disney magic. Disney is so much more than just another big business. Understanding that is crucial to his success. I would love to ask Len Testa what he thinks about Jim Crow. Not Jim Crow as in the system of segregation in the south but jim crow as in

the animated classic that's named for the system of segregation that existed in the south right what would he have to say what's the disney magic behind uh walt disney's magic behind Walt Disney's anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism? You're right. Ultimately, you're infatuated by a goddamn cartoon mouse, and hey, listen, I get it, bro. To some degree,

I guess, but this is very fucking bizarre. I'm telling you, dude. It's like, could you imagine if you're Bob Chapik and like you're just you're just getting ousted by like a self-appointed group of like the arbiters of disney magic like no you're not you gotta go you're not disney magic enough um yeah i mean you know you don't want to cross these people like these people are fucking

these people are dangerous man these are dangerous like i said read john fowles the collector this is like this is this is some like high level psycho shit like this is way beyond just your classic like john wayne gacyacy bodies under the floorboards. This is layered, and it's complex, and it's extremely dangerous. They would die for this shit. Are you prepared to die for what you believe in? They're prepared to die for this. Would you think Len Testa would go to his death for the mouse?

1000%. this would you think lynn testa would go to his death for for the mouse one thousand percent one thousand percent dude they believe they believe in liberation from the body from the prison of the body and of social reality through death and purification by fire, dying for the cause you love. That's true liberation. And honestly, we need to learn from it. So you think there's something the left could learn from this band of Disney vigilantes? Listen to this. When Walt Disney opened Disneyland, he referred to his theme park customers

as quote-unquote guests and understanding that it is implicitly reinforced in disney employee training to this day and by which disney's theme park community refers to itself that vision was shared by mr eiger in his first turn as CEO. It was apparent that he cared about our expectations, our level of satisfaction, and our interests. What customers thought mattered. In contrast, Mr. Chapik and his executives dehumanized Disney's most loyal customers. Dehumanized?

He's like, you fucking dogs. You vermin. Flee from my sight like you fucking dogs you vermin flee from my side you fucking dogs you stole this from us disney might be the site of one of the biggest contradictions of capitalism right now in the sense that like chapik was probably like a stone-cold corporate killer and like he didn't give a flying fuck about like the, the extreme hardcore Disney heads.

Um, he just wanted to make a buck, but like every fucking Disney CEO from here on out is going to have to basically like, you know, Don, like the purple cloak and like recite the ritual, like read from the book.

You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah. Ah, God. Instead of, like read from the book you know what i'm saying like yeah oh god instead of a news release okay in his august 22 earnings call mr chapik report reported that disney's theme park experiences and products division had generated 7.4 billion dollars in revenue the third quarter up 72 percent from the same time a year prior. He could have acknowledged Disney's theme park guests for the stunning results.

Ah, dude. Come on, man. Dude, that really is actually, this is... Thank God that Lynn Testa is obsessed with Disney and not say... Oh, I don't know, ISIS. Because this is a dangerous mentality.

But this is the type of mentality that can be leveraged to just destroy things. Like, with the swiftness. like with the swiftness well honestly like man what we need to do if we're truly serious about overthrowing this country in the government what we need to do is we need to convince the dims ah yes what we need to do is we need to convince the dims that this country would be best managed that this country would be best managed as a Disney part, like a Disney, as Disney, literally. Disney needs to merge with the government so that, so that like when the next round of January 6th insurrectionists storm the barricades, the people going out to meet them in the streets

will be guys like Lynn Testa, and they will all slaughter each other to death. It will be a massive, it will just be a huge mass, like a mutual massacre, you know what I mean, like fucking Braveheart level shit. And then it's just ours for the taking, you know what I'm saying? And then, yeah, and then once the dust settles then we'll have we'll have a just society yes god damn dude there's somebody in my mind this reminds me of i'm not gonna say it on the show but i'll tell you when we get off but it's the same type of person to the letter it's this it's just fascinating to me that like he does go on to talk about like bob chapik laying people off and i agree it is like his response to like the florida thing i

actually don't even know what the fuck i didn't even keep up with that when like the whole like florida ronda santa's groomer shit was going on with disney and like their whole tete-a-tete oh yeah they were selling those shirts that said groomer in the disney font right so like and i you know i didn't keep up with that but it is funny that like his biggest grievance like he throws in that other stuff but his biggest grievance and i know this because he literally spends three paragraphs talking about it which is more than he spent talking about the Florida, you know, don't say gay law and all the other stuff. His biggest grievance is that Capic did not pander to them enough.

He didn't thank them as Disney park guests for the stunning results in Disney's revenue boost. Like, he didn't cater to them enough. He said, instead, a news release suggested that earnings would have been greater, but for, quote, an unfavorable attendance mix at Disneyland. The company was essentially saying that too many annual pass holders were visiting from nearby

instead of out-of-towners who stay at Disney hotels and eat at Disney restaurants more often. Again, dude, there's a kind of, like, fascinating contradiction there, of out-of-towners who stay at disney hotels and eat at disney restaurants more often again dude there's a kind of like fascinating contradiction there because it does make more sense profitably it is they do ensure long-term profitability if they bring in more like out-of-town guests and stuff like that rather than these like annual pass holders who like live like they're like deadheads like live on the fucking right periphery of the camp and like go in every day uh i don't know man it's like and that and like

that gets the fact that it is a cult which means that it probably has like only a limited like an expiration date right like yeah yeah this is essentially this is in essence what democrats are now not democrats as in like our elected officials but just democrats in america are these type of people except like they can't point those criticisms at like where it needs to be pointed at you know what i mean like bob chapik is essentially bernie sanders you know what i mean in this in this sort of you know calculus and what they want is bob eiger or you know any one of these recycled clintonites or obama people to constantly stay in power because that is what like sort of scratches their little nostalgia itch for when they first

got involved in politics and felt like they mattered because they could vote. I would say Bob Chapik is not like Bernie Sanders. I'd say probably the best analog to him would be like Jim Webb. If Jim Webb momentarily had a hold on the democratic party bob traffic just said he killed a man like killed a man with his bare hands he ain't around to tell it he said he he writes some fans responded by creating t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase unfavorable attendance mix and wearing them in the parks as in jokes to other fans it's like i hate to break it that's better than groomer yeah it's like i hate to break it to you but like that's not profitable for disney

like yeah sure like i guess maybe in the short term like in the next 30 years it helps them to have those attendant like annual uh uh pass holders but like well i don't know yeah it's like what they what they what they have is an inflated sense of their importance to this thing they have sold their soul to that's that's exactly what it is like they they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of like a corporation and so like lid test ain't to break us to you but you're not making disney any money it's like the first time like new newlyweds first time having kids bringing their kids there and they're spending like an insane amount of money and then millions of those types are

doing that that's where they butter their bread that it is not people like you that like uh you know you know you you like buy the passes and then you like go there max extract from them every day because you sprung for the free meal every day from epcot's restaurant or whatever you know they're not making any money off you. You think you're the loyal customer because you love so, but they don't care about you. They don't give a flying fuck. And, like, for a brief second,

they got a glimpse of that with Bob Chapik. And they did not like it. They did not like it. And I will say that, like it they did not like it did not and i will say that like uh one time like my ex got asked to house sit for one of her co-workers and like like we went over there and there was all this disney shit and she was like yeah i don't know like they really fucking love disney it's you know i don't really understand and i was like well where are they right now she's like well actually they're at disney world like they went down there she was like they went down there to

conceive they like literally went down what see their child at disney like that's how fucking hardcore it is dog like dude no that's for real that is for real 1000 and you know what they were successful and so they'll take that as some sort of sign of you know just like imagine like you walk in and you like what's getting you fucking horned the fuck up man you you're fucking shaking hands with goofy you're fucking like either like this is what this is you know before we conceive oh my god that's like some sort of fucked oh my god dude goofy that disturbs me that disturbs me i'm just that shakes me to my core quite frankly i'm to be honest with you.

That's one of those things I hear, I'm not going to be the same. It is a cult. Got me acting goofy. Goofy got me acting goofy. Mr. Chapik used the phrase synergy machine to refer to the company. He came up with the phrase to encompass Disney's ability to share a story across platforms, but the jargony business speak left us cold. Fans mocked the term with, naturally, more t-shirts,

placing Mr. Chapik's face at the wheel of a Scooby-Doo-like van called the Synergy Machine. Oh, dear God. Where the aforementioned child was conceived. What Mr. Chaffick doesn't understand is the role we fans play in creating the Disney magic. It is our Instagram accounts, our blogs, and our websites that those out-of-towners refer to in order to prepare for that revenue-generating Disneyland trip. Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, these out-of-towners. Bro, you live in goddamn Orlando, Florida. A place LeBron James said if he was ever traded to, he would just retire. Yeah, he says, I get paid to do it, but many others do this work just because they love it. Mr. Chapik disregarded us. It's like, yeah, I can see how you could come up

with that justification in your mind but i guarantee you that's not probably the majority of what's driving people to go to disneyland like i it's not your fucking dumb ass little blog yeah lentesta let's see what's what's funny is for a man that claims to be this devout his like twitter handle has nothing to do with disney doesn't say anything in the his bio about disney wow false oh wait i take that back because he does in his header it is fucking epcot center so maybe i'm wrong about that dude i don't even know what the epcot center is honestly my brain has done like a corrective programming thing where like i hear the word epcot and i think epstein so like i must have like hypnotized or something to myself years ago where I just convinced myself

that the two words were synonymous. I'm gonna be honest, bro. Ever since that story about the old man that should have been retired falling into that vat of oil or whatever it was at Disney World and dying, I've not felt right about all this shit since. It's almost biblical

what happens to that goddamn place we're like right in the middle of the pandemic when all the millions of people just descended when they opened back up yeah i never there was just something about like you know i don't want to use the i mean some goofy shit i said during the pandemic was like feeding your kids to mollch, but it was kind of like that. I've never been, so I don't know what it's like. I've heard that there are some rides that are pretty tight,

but I have to imagine that if I was there, I would be extremely depressed. I have to imagine it would probably put me into would be extremely depressed i have to imagine it would probably put me into a deep fucked up depression oh man knowing that there's like knowing that there's like husbands walking around like trying to get it you know trying to get the fucking juices flowing like trying to fucking work up you know the libido the magic, like by shaking Tigger's hand and stuff. Just be like, you know, or like Ariel. Oh, God, dude.

Just your face, just the most disturbing, just like trip down the fucking... These places are fucking insane anyway. Not Disney, obviously, but relatedly. One of my friends from college, Tracy, played Wonder Woman at Six Flags. And she was traumatized by when a kid jumped the fence to get his hat and got decapitated by a fucking theme park ride. Can you just imagine that just like coming to you're like did i just fucking see that and you just looked down you're in a

wonder woman outfit it's just like it's just one of these american grotesqueries right right yeah yeah dude um that is really an amazing image honestly um he spent some time talking about how chapik was firing a bunch of people from the disneyland park um probably for covid because they were probably losing money and shit again like chapik he's a fucking ceo like he's probably um doing what ceos do which is treating the workers like shit and cutting costs left and right to maximize profit but like it just doesn't compute that way and lynn test like that in test is lynn test his mind like that's just uh not how disney, like Disney is magic, literal magic. You know? Yeah.

It's fucking crazy to think about. Is his name like an anagram involving Tesla or something like that? Yeah. In Tesla? In Tesla? Sin Tesla? I don't know. There's something, i don't know there's a weird musk

synergy with this name there is you're right he uh he writes mr eiger is not perfect he approved all he approved mr chapik as his successor after all but there's a reason a senior disney executive summarized mr eiger's return with the words daddy's back okay and this is where i hang myself with this microphone sorry i won't be honest with you guys it's been fun it's been real but i'm not sure i want to keep plugging on in a world where daddy's back about Bob Iger being a thing. Oh, man. Oh, shit. To further mend the relationship with our community, Mr. Iger should explain how Disney is going to use the revenue from upcharge programs to improve the

guest experience. If he wants to learn more, I sincerely suggest Mr. Iger try to plan, book, and take a Disney World vacation on a middle-class budget, relying only on Disney's website and app. When he's overwhelmed by the cost and complexity, I know many fans who'd be happy to talk him through it. No charge. Lynn Testa is a computer scientist who is also the co-author of the unofficial guide's theme park books and the owner of the theme park website touring plans.

Dude, I don't know why why but just reading that sentence like i had this momentary visual like image this visual image of walking into a crowded a crowd of people and my body exploding from like a suicide vest. It's like just like the sweet release of that. You know what I'm saying? Like having my body torn to shreds from C4. Like you're just sitting there like enjoying an ice cream cone while somewhere over the rainbow plays, then all of a sudden, boom. And you just have a smile on your face the whole time.

Yeah, I mean, I would never do that, obviously, especially not if there were innocents around. But if it was like 100 Lynn Testas, I don't know, man. It might be persuading. Oh, God. Wow. Well.

I thought, I will be honest with you, going into that one, I thought I was going to have some, I thought we were going to have some laughs at this expense i feel very perhaps more so than i mean i could have turned on the news and saw one of the worst tragedies and i would feel more hopeful about the world than after reading that i'm with you honestly it did not go down like I thought it would. I thought it would be funny and we would have some laughs, but it was...

I'm going to wake up at 2 a.m. with some indigestion. I know that much. God damn. Well, anyway. Anyways. Well, I'd say that about covers it. Patreon.com! Okay, well, please go check out the Patreon.

We need some Disney shooters in our fan base. Really. Yeah, gosh, yeah. Shooters in our fan base. Really. Yeah, gosh, yeah. Any of y'all looking to defect, feeling betrayed by the,

by Bob Schappach at all, come on over here. We could, we could use you. Yeah, truly. Please go, yeah, please go check out our Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash TrillBillyWorkersParty. I just want to say as

we're signing off um rest in peace christine mcvee uh yeah i saw that dude that's fucked up i fucking love goddamn fleetwood mac as is probably obvious i'm a basic bitch but uh there's nothing basic about that god damn man that's sad truly sad yeah i don't i don't know what happened but uh you know um uh go listen to uh tusk Tusk. That's the fucking shit right there. Oh, man. I was just telling somebody about that weird guy that used to weirdly stalk us. Yes. And I remember

when we showed you something he said, you said, you know what? Just write him back and tell him to never contact you again, but also go play Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album. It'll help you get through that. Through what you're going through.

Yeah, I mean, that's my recommendation for anybody, really. It's a great album. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening for anybody, really. It's a great album. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening this week, everybody. We'll catch you on the Patreon in a few days.

Until then, have a good one. See ya. Adios.