Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 1/24/23 – (Anti)Trust Issues

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

 With the big antitrust hearings going on, tonight we discuss one of Mark's favorite subjects: massive soulless corporations choking the very life out of us all. It'll be fun, though, so join us.Support the show

Hey everybody. Welcome back. Happy Skews Day to you. It is January 24th, 2023. I'm Trey Crowder. That there is Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? Just excited, Trey, because our long national nightmare is over. M&Ms have been defeated by Tucker Carlson. They are no longer neither not sexy enough for two seconds. or whatever. Eminem's announced they're going away from their spokesc candies they had since like for like 50 years because they were afraid of pap while was going to suicide bomb their headquarters or something.

Does that mean they're going to like even those the commercials with like red and yellow in them like those are over too because dude those have been going since I was like a kid. J.K. Simmons is yellow and I mean that's a that's kind of an end of an era thing if that's what they're doing all because they couldn't handle you know, grain and flats or whatever the hell was happening. Would you think about that move by them? Because Corey in our group chat tried to spin it as them like trolling conservatives

by replacing them with a woman of color and stuff. But it just seemed like a cop out to me. It just seemed like them bending over for the tuckers of the world. That's what I thought. Maya Rudolph has been an Eminem spokesman before. She was in commercials with the candies, I think. I don't know. She's great.

Yeah, yeah. She's hilarious. Also, I don't know if anybody knows this, before she got into comedy, she was a musician. She was in a band. There was a spinoff of Weezer called, I think The Rentals. But the great great band, Friends of P. They had his own Friends of Pee, which was a big fan of. But yet the syndicate me thinks they're just like trying to create buzz for a Super Bowl commercial, like when remember they killed off Mr. Pied.

Oh, okay. So they're going to bring them back in fiery fashion. passion on Super Bowl Sunday, you think, have them out there doing a strip tease, a pregnant M&M stripping. There's a Super Bowl commercial, something like that, yeah. Yeah, at a phone, dancing next to Rihonored and a halftime show. Yeah, that's my, that's my candy-coded chocolate conspiracy theory. But also an element of this that I found funny that I saw a little while ago today, the House Judiciary GOP account tweeted the left made Eminems and Splash Mountain woke.

and I was like, what the fuck are they talking about? Because, like, all this stuff feels like, it's like their grievances are, like, indecipherable if you're outside. So I did some Googling. What happened was Disney's rebranding Splash Mountain to go away from the song of the South because, you know, I never actually seen the movie.

I don't know what part. I understand that a lot of people think it's racist. I just don't know the specifics of why. But so they're still going to have, they're still going to have the big group water slide. You just do you just kind of have a different name, a different theme. So.

Yeah. Yeah, it's always been kind of weird because Disney's, like, super embarrassed of that movie and keeps it buried as much as possible. But yet, I guess, I've never been on Splash Mountain, but yeah, that's still the theme of that ride. So I'm kind of surprised they didn't do that years ago. Not that I give a shit either way, what they do with that ride. But, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, the House GOP, please hold hearings about Splash Mountain.

We could use the content. In other news, Mike Pence turns out has some top secret documents in his basement or whatever, too. And I just want to say, everybody, check your sock door because the plans for Bin Laden's house are probably in there. Just in an old shoebox underneath these guys' beds or something. It's like they're just lousy with these classified documents. Like, at a certain point, it almost feels like it's the, you know, the people who make and distribute the documents fault. You know what I mean? Like maybe tighten that up a little bit.

If everybody on Capitol Hill's got a fucking drawer of classified stuff. evidently, then, yeah, maybe rain that in, guys. Maybe it's a you problem. I don't know. I think like two million Americans have top secret clearance. Yeah, I had top secret clearance.

I didn't stay. I don't anymore. So maybe it's not, I don't fucking know. Who knows what's in these movies. But it's anyway, like, it was really funny because Fox News decided had to talk about it today.

And they talked about through the lens of, Mike, come on. What did you do this for, buddy? Now we can't, now we're going to talk about you and can't just go into Biden for that. They were openly saying how it

fucked up their programming schedule. And Lindsay Graham, in this deeply weird moment, if you have this video of Matt, play it, because he's just him trying to be relatable. If you come to my house, you'll find chick fillet bags all over the floor, but you're not going to find any classified information. Trey,

he said this on like three different Sunday shows. Married to. So he apparently thinks... I'm just a regular guy, deeply depressed, with a lot of problems. who refuses to clean up his fast food refuse from my home. You know, just like anybody would. Totally normal thing to do.

Have old chicken bags strewn around the house. Like all you regular peasants out there. I know you guys love your chicken bag. That's me. Oh, Lindsay. Yeah. It always cracks me up when they do that when like they've got a bit or something. Like they've got a line or a bit that you can tell they really like

or really think it's funny because they do it. it repeatedly like that like they show up multiple times and run the same bit that always kind of cracks me up because they're never great really yeah these guys are so out of touch that the ground's been in congress since like the 80s I think and like he's like oh what are regular people like well I know my supporters love chickfully because they they protested gay people by eating chicken so obviously they're obviously sloppy robs who love that shit so they'll have bags all over their house so I'll pretend to be like them and anyway every time you try to want these people's thinking process.

It gets really weird. There is also that kind of element to it because it's Chick-fil-A of that, like, adding on to the whole self-hating gay guy thing that, you know, Lindsay Graham has going on. That makes Chick-fil-A inappropriate. And I'm not saying, look, your guy and you like Chick-fil-A, that's fine. It's just a funny choice for him in this moment, I think. Yeah, yeah.

I know you sent me that tweet. There's a rumor that Matt Gates is having an affair with his. a spokesman who happens to be a dude. And it's like weird how it doesn't speak well of us that you can go viral on the left by accusing someone to be in having a gay affair. But I didn't see any other documentation for it. But anyway, just acknowledging that a rumor exists.

Also, if that dude is, you know, of adult age, then, hey, good change. No. Yeah, yeah, he's better than the alternative. Hey, he's, you know, he's cleaning his act up. Now he's just banging his 24-year-old dude employees or, you know, whatever may or may not be happening. Yeah. And he just got married like a few months ago.

And that woman knew what she was getting into. So she married a gunbag. So whatever. Buy her beware. So another weird story this week. This guy named George McGonigal, who was the director of counterintelligence for the New York FBI, was arrested for being on the payroll of a Russian oligarp. allegedly, I'll just say allegedly, even though they seem that I think they have him dead to rights. This is such a deeply weird story.

So he was essentially accused of taking a quarter million dollars from Oleg Deripaska, who, if you recognize his name, Deripaska's name, he was the guy who Paul Manafort was working for when he agreed to become Trump's campaign manager for free. And I guess what he was doing was trying to get Deripaska off the sanctions list. that's what they have him dead to rights for but I would doubt that's all he was doing and also reminder if counterintelligence means it's your job to look for spies so within your own department so pretty great position for a guy who's a spy yeah that's like we were recently on the group chat talking about that who's that CIA guy Robert something another he's like the most famous he was a spy for he spied for Russia in the CIA and they knew they had a mole and so they tapped him to lead the effort to find the mole and he was the mole the whole

time so yeah yeah i think i'm on record saying that i think trump uh is horribly corrupt and uh whatever it wasn't just russia or whatever i don't i don't believe there's any like high level tradecraft spy shit going on i think it's just you know financial fraud and tax evasion but uh uh it is deeply crazy because the article october 2016 October 2016 headline here, investigating Donald Trump, FBI, sees no clear link to Russia. Now, this guy would have been in charge of this investigation. I don't know if he was a New York Times source on it, but this is when, remember, there was supposed that server in Trump basement and Trump's organization's basement or

whatever, they only communicated with a Russian bank, and that that prompted a series of stories like this, but this one got framed. They wrote up this investigation, and the headline got changed to say that the investigation didn't find anything, which wasn't totally true. And I don't know what the fuck is going on there. But anyway, a lot of weird smoke here. Yeah, it's all very fucking weird. But yeah, this McGonnell guy seems screwed.

He retired. They caught you. He was getting on a plane back from Singapore when he got off and they grabbed him. And he's looking at it's in like 25 years. So pretty much a life sentence for that guy if he gets got. Yep. Yeah. What are you going to do?

Maybe don't, you know, take money in exchange for favors to, Russia if your job is, you know, dealing with people who spy for Russia and whatnot. Yeah. Kind of, you know, I can get why he would think he could have gotten away with it, but Yeah.

Remember, like, Manafort was in fear of his life from owing Deripaska money and favors, right? I mean, I would be too. He's basically the Russia's aluminum king. And when the Soviet Union collapsed

and the economy was getting sold off with parts, various industries got, you know, snatched up by people. And there was actually aluminum wars over the aluminum trade in Russia. And a lot of the guys trying to make it at the top of a hill got whacked and he ended up on top of it. So it's not a guy whose money I would take. That's how you end up shooting yourself in the back of the head and tying yourself up in a double bag and throwing yourself off a bridge. There you go.

That's where that ends up going. All right. Well, let's get into it with us. As always, his producer, Matt. This is Weekly Skews. I want to remind you all before we continue two quick things. Of course, number one, if you'd like to see me perform live, go to traycrowder.com, check out all the dates.

There's a bunch. We're adding more all the time. Hopefully I'm coming near you. If so, come and see me, get you a ticket. It'll be fun. Treycrowder.com. Number two, if you enjoy this program, I would like to show your support. You can do so by signing up on Patreon.

You can go to weekly skews.com slash more or just go on Patreon. Search for my name. You'll find us. sign up on there $5 a month get you access to full-length bonus episodes later this week we're going to do the second half of a two-part skewing a answering all y'all's burning questions

we're having a lot of fun with it we hope you'll consider it weekly skews.com slash more or go on Patreon and search for your boy sign up on there get some more skews in your life now as for the show tonight it seems there's at least one bipartisan issue on Capitol Hill that ticket master

sucks yes the fact that unites a nation but they're not the only ones Congress is taking aim at some of our biggest and most bloodless corporations in a series of antitrust hearings, which have already gotten a little spicy. Also, Taylor Swift comes up a lot, so that's fun. We'll talk about it a little later, but first, of course, we begin with the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., all those old Jewish actors and comedians who adopted Gentile stage names when they should have just leaned into it. At least, that's

according to one Mr. George, Anthony DeVolder Santos Mountain Dew Zabrofsky the third. Matt, play the clip. How long did you actually live together? We were only roommates for a few months. And I also knew him as Anthony Zabrofsky. So you knew him. Why did he say he had two names then? Well, he used Zabrofsky for his friends of Pets United, his, his, um, uh, his, uh, he used Zabrofsky for his, uh, he used Zabrofsky for his, uh, his, uh, is GoFund me. And he would say, oh, well, you know, the Jews will give more if you're a Jew. So that's the name he used for his GoFundMe. Right.

You've got it, man. This is the old roommate who's scarfy stroll. Yeah. To where to that stop the stale rally or whatever? Yeah. Yeah. So George Santos is the gift that keeps on giving. Absolutely.

Every time I think this can't get any stupid or funnier, it's just like, It's like I couldn't even Like a million monkeys With a million typewriters Couldn't write a story This dumb in a million years These other story came out this week The headline on the story is

George Santos appears to admit Drag Queen passed in WikiPost So this came after a series of stuff Like he denied the picture of the drag queen He was obviously him was him And one thing I learned from this Is you do not piss off Rio de Janeiro drag queens Because they will fucking go to the ends of the earth

To get you Because somebody dug up footage of him dancing and drag from 2003, which means they had to go through like VHS tapes and shit. So, oh, God.

So this wiki bio where he talks about being a drag performer, it was under the name of, he was under Anthony, he had a wiki bio under Anthony DeVolder and which is why nobody found it until now. And it hadn't been edited since 2011. So if it's a long con,

if it's a con, it's a very fucking long one. let me just read from this right real quick the wiki bio here obviously because he had no profile at all back then this is a wikipedia page for anthony devalder so clearly he made his own page and filled all this in right it's clearly what happened so with that in mind please read through some of the noted items included in this Wikipedia bio because there's some pretty good shit in here I think wiki bio was a I don't know maybe affiliate different thing I think it's more like like a LinkedIn but it isn't like anyway Yeah, it is, it doesn't matter. But still, he did it himself. Right, right. No else will have done this. The WikiBio for Anthony DeVolder, which is full of spelling and grammatical errors,

appears to contain fantastical descriptions of a supposed career in show business. It claims that he had a part in Disney's Hannah Montana. Now, this is fucking hilarious for a lot of reasons. If you're not familiar with the Uvra of Hannah Montana, the show was about a girl who has a secret life as a famous performer. Right. So think about Molly's, Cyrus, Hannah Montana, and Anthony DeVolder and George Santos, and the rubric begins to fall away.

So in the 2011 bio, he sprinkled show business credits that these are obviously fake. They're fake for a lot of reasons. But he claims his Hollywood career took off after he had a meeting with a producer of Independence Day. And he name drops the director, Stephen Spielberg, except he misspelled his last name as Spilberg. This guy claiming to be Jewish couldn't spell Stephen. Spielberg's name. He also claims to start a few TV shows and Disney Channel shows such as the sweet like of Zach and Cody and Hannah Montana. He spelled Hannah wrong the second time. It also concludes with him writing that two years prior, he had, quote, taped his very first movie

starting, Uma Terman, Chris O'Donnell. It's like Chris O'Donnell. Every one of these names is misspelled, y'all. Anyway, keep going. Melissa George, which made me laugh because I had to go look up who she is, and she has a successful actress. She's just not a name. I was like, oh, yeah, I've seen that lady and stuff. And Alicia Silverstone, he made Silverstone two different words. And he said he was in the movie The Invasion, which is a 2007 sci-fi thriller that stars Nicole Kiven and Daniel Craig. So he listed Melissa George, put her name wrong, but didn't mention that he also co-starred Nicole

Kimman and Daniel Craig. Why? Who's reading Wikibios anyway? Who the fuck you're trying to impress? going on his actual legal troubles. This is a story from today. George Santos admits $500,000 personal loan to campaign wasn't personal. Now, this made me laugh because he's been amending his campaign finance reports constantly.

Like, basically, like, every day he's updating them to change the different lies. And so he's now saying that a $500,000 loan he gave to his campaign didn't, in fact, come from his personal money. But he did not say where it came from. this guy's in deep, deep, uh, hot water with the feds. Um, so, but this previous defense for where that money came from was that he had taken out of, uh, the devolder organization in LLC, um, saying that it was his personal firm. So he's okay to take the money, but it's, he's not the firm's firm sole owner. So his previous legal defense was that he fucking embezzled. Right. Yeah. I don't even know it. The thing it's wild to me about that is just like,

that money evidently did exist. It came from some, you know, whatever, shady puppet master, benefactor or something because it's like, it's, you know, I would have assumed there was no half a million dollars, but obviously there was. They used it for something, but it's like, where in the hell did this dude get that? Because I know it couldn't have been from his company just killing it in the hedge fund game or whatever, the broker ship matchmaking shit, whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. Yeah, I don't know.

like my first thought was like you the money didn't exist and he just inflated his campaign's war chest to look impressive but they spent a bunch of it so at least some of that money did exist and i just i really don't know how he's right at this point the only way he can stay at a federal prison is to get a like president so good luck to him uh yeah like you said he's the gift that keeps on giving man like who like who knows where else this story is going to go because literally nothing would surprise me at this point uh it's pretty wild um yeah to say the least again just the sheer audacity of thing i mean the 2011 thing i could like back then when he wrote that he was just some dude trying to bullshit his way through whatever and impress people with lies those are some very egregious lies that he's telling very easily disproven but you know once he gets into running for office and just keeps making all this crazy shit up i mean that's a choice man my dad's cousin uh spent a couple years in la in the 80s came home and told everybody he had been doing cocaine with the guy from Airwolf. Right.

And we were like, yeah, that seems like, I can't disprove that lie. He might, the world's weird. Maybe he did fucking do coke with the guy from Airwolf. But, uh, yeah, or at least he did coke was some dude who told him for me for whatever, right, right, right. My mom told me she met the drummer for poison in some bar in fucking Jackson County, Tennessee once. I was like, no, you met some motherfucker who told you he used to drum for poison, uh,

in effort to impress you. So, you know. I mean, you know my story about how I think I met the brother of Larry Bird in a bar. Yes, I do know that story. I do believe that to be true. He showed me his driver's license and his last name was Bird. He looked exactly like him. But I don't know.

But anyway, on Friday, the Patreon episode, we spitball hypothetical lies he could come up. And nowhere did we get close to he would say he was in the cast of Hannah Montana. Right. It's just, yeah. Yeah, I don't know, dude. All right. Our first and actually only honorable mention for Daily Dumbass is whoever organized Diamond's funeral of Diamond and Silk fame for not being stricter with the eulogy sign-up sheet because somehow this lady got on there and it's something else. Matt, hit it whenever you're ready. Oh, J. Trump. That was her boyfriend. Okay? Did you know that? That was her boyfriend. And then her little side-pick, Silk said, I think y'all call it, sidekick, sidekick, side-piece, whatever, Mike Lindell.

Diamond sidepiece, Mike Lindale. What a wonderful mental image that is. Those two guys doing the Eiffel Tower or something, like something that's a fucking diamond. Yeah, I like favorite part where she goes, what do y'all call it, sidekick, sidepiece, what do you all call it? I was like help help me. So help me translate this to black, please. Yeah, exactly. This whole thing was a real fucking event.

Trump apparently was promised he was pissed off. He only got to speak for 20 minutes. Of course, he way over 20 minutes. He also didn't get to go on over three hours into the service. So this was a whole fucking thing. Trump used his eulogy for Diamond to talk about counties emptying out their prisons, mental institutions. He talked about gas prices, inflation, the federal budget, and the wall.

But also this moment was worth it for the whole event. You got this next video. This starts with silk talking and then Trump tall calling her a liar. President Trump, I just want to say thank you so much for believing in diamond and silk. He treated us just like Laura, treated us just like the other children, Eric, Don Jr., Tiffany. He treated us just like when we came around. When Diamond and Silk came around, it was like we was part of the family. You know, the world has lost one of its brightest stars, real star, but I see that we have another star who is equal to, but she stepped up and she is different.

I'm serious. I thought I knew them both. I didn't. I knew Diamond, but I didn't know Silk at all. I just learned. To be completely fair here, I don't know that anything says, to me more Donald Trump treated us like his own children than him forgetting her name or that she existed. Do you know what I mean? He's definitely done that with Eric and Tiffany and then across the, you know, across the years. So, I mean, I feel like she, you know, called it straight there.

It seems like he thinks of her his family to me. Yeah, I was about to make the same point. I went on the last one of the last one of the junior was. No, no, no, I was saying, yeah, you beat me to the point. You literally beat me to the punchline. But yeah, that was so fucking. fucking funny to me. He goes to this funeral, doesn't even talk about the dead woman and the woman, he spoke after her. He'd heard her say how well he treated her and he goes, actually,

I don't know who this bitch is. Yeah, man, he's something else. All right, speaking of something else, let's get into it, talking about antitrust, monopolies and not the board game. Mark, what's going on here? So we got some congressional hearings and whatnot. I know there's a huge your deal earlier this year when Taylor Swift's tour went on sale. A lot of people got really pissed off. And when you hit as hard as Taylor Swift, that can ultimately result in congressional hearings at same. Yeah. It's so deeply funny to me that Congressional lack of federal regulation and corporal monopolization has combined to radicalize Taylor Swift fans into one to tear down the oligarchy. Yeah.

So Taylor Swift, his parents worked at Goldman Sachs. So if you guys didn't follow the Taylor Swift thing, so Taylor had a first big tour in a long time, and they were doing this like coordinated ticket rollout where if you were a member of her fan club, you're supposed to get VIP access, but that didn't happen. And apparently nobody could get tickets

and a bunch of scopers were able to scoop them up and people were having to overpay. Like people were logging on to buy tickets, and they have got congestion pricing like airlines. And so like the first run of ticket sales were like $5,000 for like a nosebleed seat. They're like, what the fuck? So anyway, everybody got mad at Ticketmaster, rightfully so,

but people should have mad Ticketmaster for like the last 30 years, which is a point Pearl Jam tried to make in the 90s and it ruined their careers. But anyway. This type of thing is like a real problem now with a lot of shit. It's not just like Ticketmaster. The same type of thing happens with like PlayStation 5s, for example, or stuff like that.

Like they, you know, they announce a pre-release or a big release, you know, the limited amount of inventory. and every time a real person can't actually get in on it because of bots or whatever, scoop them all up and then resale them for jacked up prices. And it's been some bullshit for a minute. And this type of thing is exactly why we need, you know, government regulations or whatever, because they don't give it a fuck. Like, why do they care?

They're selling them either way. You know what I mean? Like, I don't give a shit. The ticket master exec tried to blame it on bots, which I don't fully buy because part of the thing about the congestion pricing is what they're trying to do is sell the first rent tickets at resale prices. And you're right, it's not just this stuff. It's also like sneaker drops and whatever.

But so this is probably the biggest day. This day presented probably maybe the most optimistic for any sort of antitrust crackdown in a while, not just because the Ticketmaster, because the DOJ also announced a second lawsuit aiming to break up Google for another reason. And also there's a weird stuff going with airlines, which I want to talk about because it made me the laugh at the end. So this made me optimistic for maybe the government can actually start getting off of the ass and doing stuff to make, you know, regular people's lives better.

but also it's Congress so it was deeply silly so I thought it would be fun to talk about so the hearings this hearing happened today where basically everybody everybody ripped ticket master a new asshole the end the CEO I think it was a CEO of ticket master there and then the live nation actually live nation entertainment is the umbrella name for when ticket master merged with live nation which is part of the problem um but uh the people there yeah listen for the record before we continue on just full disclosure very sure everybody will know this or not be surprised by it because of how prominent they are in the industry. But I, you know, my show and my tour sometimes, it's with either or both of these entities, like a ticket master sometimes,

but not always sells our tickets because, you know, it's literally unavoidable. I also, you know, I get complaints from people. It's not just the shit like with Taylor's people, you know,

I don't have a big resale market. All right. So that's not much of a problem for me. But like, you know, all their fees. and stuff that get tacked on you know what i mean people will you know message me or whatever about the cost of a ticket to a show and i'm like what that's not that's no nowhere close to right

and then i get on there and look and it is once all these fees and shit get added that i have nothing to do with you know and also can't control and it does you know it really sucks like a lot I think most artists are not happy. I would prefer it be different, but, you know. Right. Yeah, but like that's the thing about monopolies is you don't have any choice. It's just like they're just fucking over consumers. They're fucking over artists too because like they own the venues and they own the right to operate the venues.

And if you want to put on a show, there's nowhere else to go. Right. So it's like that's that's you're, you're not culpable here. That's the whole problem. So it was basically one guy against the world There was an artist there testifying against him The CEO of seat geek ripped him a new asshole Because other ones who handle the resale market

Then it was a bipartisan Ovaluan majority Fucking hate Ticketmaster And it was glorious They came under like extremely fierce criticism It was like I said it was bipartisan Ticket Master did apologize But largely blame extra problems

Like the overwhelming volume for Taylor Swift tickets and bots for it, but they're bullshitting. Yeah, but that's like, even that is, that's still on them. You know what I mean? Like, that's still on you to police that and have, you know, something in place to account for that because you know that's going to happen. Like, you know. Yeah.

I have to do this stupid I'm not a robot capture thing 10 times a day. So I know they have the technology. So the hearing was titled, that's the ticket, promoting competition and protecting consumers in live entertainment. So typical Congress, they gave a blown boring title Something that was actually interesting. This was prompted by the Taylor Swift thing. Oh, talking about the fees and stuff, I wanted to mention.

I saw somebody say earlier today that they recently bought four concert tickets for them and their three kids for $24 a piece. So if $24 a piece means it's not a big time act, right? And when they went to check out, the four. There's four $24 tickets cost them $190. Right. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, yeah, that's it like happened. of my shows and stuff too. And again, like, I don't, you know, I don't have a fucking clue

what all those, all that extra money is about or why that happens or how, you know, it's just, they just do that shit. Yeah. So, uh, the lawmakers discuss possibilities like making tickets non-transferable, which probably doesn't hit for anybody. Because a lot, like, you've seasoned tickets to an NBA, to a football or basketball team. Uh, you can't go to all of them. You want to be able to resell them, right? So that, that, that, that seems like No-go plus concerts. It's like, what do you buy tickets to a concert, then you get COVID. Now you can't sell them.

That sounds like it's not, you know, accurate. But they also requiring laws require more transparency, which, you know, that would mean you would know up front the cost of the ticket instead of the hidden fees. So when you go, instead going buy $4, $24 tickets and it cost you $190, you'd go up front. These are four $47 tickets or whatever, right? Yeah, but I'll tell you why I don't like that is because that makes it look like if that was my show, doing it. makes it look like I'm charging $47 for a ticket to my which I'm not you know so I'm not I'm not really

on board with that also for the record not all the shows are like that and still come and save me please by the way like I appreciate that this is a bit of a minefield for me but I would appreciate if y'all still come it means a lot to me uh ticket master's side anyway go ahead there's also a problem here where like ticket master won't say it right because they can't because part of their a lot of those fees probably are going to the artists who want the ticket price to look lower so there's sort of the designated villainy jack up prices and they split the difference with the artist right because nobody Taylor Swift is going to sell out right yeah I'm not saying that don't happen I'm but like I'm you know I ain't never been offered that deal

the fees just get put on there and then go you know go somewhere else uh in my experience. But yeah, with the big names and stuff, I mean, I'm sure you're probably right. Or it probably does happen. They didn't want to anger Taylor Swift fans anymore because they didn't blame that on Taylor, but they basically said that's what happens with Bruce pregnancy's to her, is that all the fees are partly Bruce's.

So this is, Amy Klobuchar as a chairman of this committee. And she, the numbers she threw out there, the ticket fees are now an average of 27% of the ticket cost and climb as high as 75% in some cases. Now, let me talk about, let's talk about why Ticketmaster slash Live Nation is a monopoly here, because these stats blew my mind, all right? Sorry. 87% of NBA teams have exclusive grievance of Ticketmaster.

87.5% of NHL teams, 93% of NFL teams, all right? We're not lose track of that. Oh, sorry, I lost track of that. Okay, sorry, I found it. The first page list, Billboard's top 40 tours in 2022. 87% of Billboard's top 40 tours in 2020 were ticketed by Ticketmaster. 87% of Billboard 2020 Top 40 tours were performed at venues that were ticketed by Ticketmaster in the U.S. 89% of all shows in Billboard's 22, top 25 stages are ticketed by.

So you cannot go to a live event or without serious planning ahead. You cannot go to a live concert or sports event in America without going through Ticketmaster. And another first thing is here is since they merged, Live Nation also owns the venues. Right. Well, that's what, yeah, like that high percentage of all those acts, you know, the shows took place. They worked with Ticketmaster, but like, that's probably because the venues they need to play in whatever cities they're going to, depending on the size of their act or whatever. it they're owned by live nation which owns ticket master so there's really no other viable option for them yeah it was it was a real like through the looking glass moment today because the ticket

master's CEO was like well a lot of the fees aren't put on us put on there by us they're put on there by the venue and the artist the guy named laurence was like but you own the venue right and everybody it was like everybody went to like the scooby-doo confuse always like it's like it's like it just Round it around, they go. So, a few, just some numbers about, these numbers from 2019, I couldn't find more recent ones, so I'm sure it's gotten worse than then. So here in Los Angeles, Live Nation owns the Staples Center and LA Live. They list more than 150 event venues in the world, including stadiums and theaters that

owns, managers, consultants, or is affiliated with. In 2018, they had exclusive booking rights and 237 venues globally. These are all the biggest venues. So if you want to see a big act, you're going to do a business. big venue. So basically they control all the high-end market. Unless you're going to see a band play at like your local bar, it's a Ticketmaster or Live Nation event properly. So Obama got dragged here too, kind of rightfully so, because Senator Mike Lee asked why the Obama administration allowed the Live Nation Ticketmaster a merger to happen. And this lady gave a

non-capelling answer that bulls down the DOJ was afraid to lose. So, You want to get nerdy here for a second, Tray? Sure. All right. So antitrust law in America is fucked, mostly because of one guy named Robert Bork. If you're familiar with the name, you're probably a known of the term Borking, which is to, like, take down a Supreme Court justice nomination because he was nominated to the court in the 80s. But the fact, he was a segregationist came up, and he lost like 88 to 12 or something. Yeah, he'll do it.

He literally wrote the book that's the basis for American antitrust law, and Bacey argued that... Antitrust law is bad for consumers because you're saying that consolidation can help companies keep prices down. And then unless mergers and acquisitions actually infect prices that price consumers, the government should ignore it. Now, one, prices don't go down. No. And two, cartels allow you to jack up prices, which is the whole point of having a fucking cartel, ask OPEC or the Sinaloa cartel. two there's other reasons that that huge monopolies are bad

like only having one supply chain which is ways we learn with the baby formula crisis so Robert Bork was full of shit burn in hell for a whole host of reasons so the guy from Seek went on and on by everyone's afraid of retaliation by Live Nation and how Live Nation locks down their venues with 10 year contracts

and exclusive dealing arrangements I brought up Pearl Jam earlier but everybody knows that like they refused to work for ticket master and basically had a very difficult time touring for close to a decade until the point they gave up and just went back to working with ticket master so the closest thing they had to it was a grunge band the closest thing we had to a punk rock moment in the 90s completely collapsed on them and they had to give up to make a living um anyway so that brings us to the fun part so let's watch his Amy Klobuchar video because it's

deeply hilarious to me for a lot of reasons. Endeavour, we have interest from both sides of the aisle, and I think you all know, as Senator Durbin mentioned, that competition policy is very important to me. I believe in capitalism and to have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition. You can't have too much consolidation, something that unfortunately for this

country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well. And over 75% of our industries. You got a Matt. So that's a Taylor Swift lyric, she's quoting, obviously. And I want to make fun of her for it. But because they're Congress, all of these cornballs had the exact same idea. Right.

Yeah. And if we're going to watch the other ones, we're going to watch the other ones, right? Or at least one of the other ones? actually it's more fun to read i think we can skip it yeah i'll just read the quotes i'm quoting here from this this this thing did you want to watch the video uh the one of mike lee doing his yeah okay we can watch it yeah yeah uh if you haven't might go ahead and pull it up because i was just going to say like i got if i'm going to rank uh the taylor swift references or quotes even though mike lee's a republican from utah i think i got to give him the nod uh based on you know

I have a Before Matt plays a video So the quotes I'm pulling over From a People magazine piece About this issue and hearing People magazine was covering An antitrust hearing

All right And I saw some polling data That's 68% of Americans Or 4 Breaking Up Live Nation Slash Ticketmaster This might be the most bipartisan issue in America Besides you know

Ice cream and orgasms are good Or something I don't know But it's But anyway, this watches Mike leaving you. We've had a lot of talk in the last few rounds about restrictions of the ability of consumer, a purchaser of a ticket, being able to sell it to someone else. A lot of people seem to think that's somehow a solution. I think it's a nightmare dressed like a daydream.

And I don't think we ought to go there. I have to throw out in deference to my daughter, Eliza, one more Taylor Swift quote. is a relaxing thought, aren't you envious that for you, it's not? That's all I've got to say. Thank you. All right. Yeah. Look, because he chose some of the more, like, you know, poetic lyrics, right?

And got them and got them in there. I felt like, Clobuchar, you know, that lyric was, we know all too well or whatever. It's like, that's kind of also just a thing that people say. Yeah. Taylor also said in a song. But, you know, Mike Lee, he really went for it. I don't know where I'm going or the show is going with all this, but I just want to to, yeah, give my feedback on the Taylor Swift quotes.

I know where I'm going with this. Ticketmaster, these people's kids not be able to get Taylor Swift tickets and watching their kids cry about it for a month. Has these people so upset that a Mormon from Utah is talking about karma. Right. Well, also, I mean, I was going to say, you were saying it's like it's a bipartisan issue, and I don't know this from experience, but I'm assuming that, like, you know, kid rock tickets are probably also a problem.

You know what I mean? Like it's probably an issue with kid rock tickets, too. It's not just Springsteen and Pearl Jam. You know what I mean? So like I can see it being a bipartisan thing. Nobody likes this shit. You got to know, Maga Rap Legend 4G Auto Blow is trying to sell out of a Staples Center.

Something going to happen. So it wasn't just those two quotes of Mike Lee. Mike Lee also used a quote, use You Belong with me in his opening statement. And before even got to his opening statement, he talked about how he, until the election, he thought he would have the gavel during this hearing. But she talked about,

he joked with Amy Klobuchar that she's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers. So he had a bunch of them. Yeah, I think he knows his stuff. I'm just saying. I'll be a closet of Swifty over here. There's also another one from Amy Klobuchar. There's two more of an Malyme Klobuchar. She opened her opening marks with an all too well reference.

And then, oh, the second one's from Richard Blumenthal. He asked live nation's president, Joe Birch, told to look in the mirror and say, quote, I'm the problem. It's me. So the highlight of this hearing for me was the guy who testified as an artist. His name was Clay, he was speaking for you, Trey. Clyde Lawrence, he is, this guy hit for me. He ripped into this dude at, you know, we talked about how they, how they retaliate. And the guy from Seatig brought up the fact that they've been operating under a consent decree that forbids the DOJ consent decree that forbids them from doing retaliatory stuff against their competition or artists that don't

cooperate with them. And they've repeatedly violated it. So this guy probably tagged his own career to speak up at this hearing, so more power to him. But he talked about how it affects artists. Basically, if you follow any sort of band, you might notice people are touring way less. And that's because there's no fucking money in it. There's not much money in being in a band anymore, which, you know, you might not care until there's no more music to listen to, you know. But it's just the entertainment industry like everything else has been torn to shreds by consolidation vertical integration uh his band is called lawrence the band and i was like i wonder if i heard anything about that and i have i recognized a song um uh we can't play it obviously

because we'll get um uh dinged for copyright because we should pay this dude to play as music um but it's called don't lose sight and you'll if you look at lawrence the band don't lose sight you'll recognize it um so they're a pretty popular band they have a monthly a million monthly Spotify listeners and 170,000 Instagram followers, if that's a metric for use for anything. They've also had songs in Disney and Hulu soundtracks. But he's been speaking up for a while

and even like has a song with it has the lyric Live Nations of Monopoly. And he wrote a piece in New York Times recently said whether it meets the legal definition of Monopoly or not. Live Nations control the live music ecosystem is staggering. And he closed his opening statement to the committee with.

I hope to see some of you at one of my band's concerts. If you'd like to come, let me notice. They can throw you on the guest list and help you avoid the ticket fees. So that was funny to me. But just to talk about what a shit company, Live Nation is, it's not just that they're abusing fucking their market control to fuck over artists and customers. They also have been dinged for OSHA violations. They have a bunch of lawsuits from artists, including Beyonce.

They fuck with Taylor Swift and Beyonce. These motherfuckers are going down. They had a stage collapse at one of their venues during the radio hot and hit concert that got a bunch of people hurt. They've been linked to at least 200 deaths and 750 injuries at events in seven countries since 2006 from having poor security and bad and bad facilities. They also like a rapper who I like named Jakeo the ruler here in Los Angeles,

he got murdered backstage to show. There was where Live Nation was ostensibly providing security and the people got away with no, they'd never been caught. Anyway, so fuck Live Nation. but there's a couple other developments. I want to talk about before we get to questions and comments. We talked about the DOG fond of lawsuit to break up Google. Merrick Garland did his press conference during the Ticketmaster hearing,

and I was like, wait, is Darth Brandon activating his powers? So we could have fucking crush corporate America? I don't think so because Biden announced his new chief of staff, and it's a private equity executive. Nice. Yeah, you'll have that. So, yeah, it's got to do with Google's ad business. I think it up coming after Google Google's also been I don't know if it's related

law and stuff like I don't know something's going on at Google evidently yeah the layoffs because I was watching I was reading a breakdown of it earlier the layoffs don't have anything to do with the tech bubble collapsing it's like they shifted their business models in pretty stupid ways during the pandemic sort of expecting the changes during the pandemic to be permanent and they weren't so because people went back to live in their lives after they at least feel like COVID's over yeah this has to do the ad business and I couldn't really get my hands the ends and outs of it but somebody compared it too because they control access to the customer and the

advertiser and they take a cut going in between so they compared it to like sort of like if a private company also own the new york stock exchange that they were listed on so that was a comparison they've also like there's also another dogg k dogg a lawsuit trying to break up google that i do understand that's going to trial september that is because of them rigging their search results based on who pays them to advertise, which if you use Google regularly, like I have to use a lot for work. You notice that Google's gotten significantly less reliable

because they force feed you the worst content because that's who's fucking paying them. So that seems like intentionally providing a worse service to make more money feels like a side effect of over monopolization, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the American way right there. Just squeeze every dollar out with no regard for the experience or the consumer whatsoever.

you know, especially like these companies like that are so huge because they have this element or this attitude of like, fuck you, what are you going to do? Where are you going to go? What are you going to not use our shit? You know damn well, you're not going to not use our shit. So why don't you just shut the fuck up and deal with it? Like, that's

their general attitude. I can complain about Delta Airlines all day, but I want to go to fucking Atlanta. Guess what? Yeah. There's no other way to get to Atlanta. That's the problem. That's what's what monopolization looks like. Delta can Like, well, we have a 50-50 chance of crashing. I'm like, well, fuck, I've got to go to Atlanta.

I don't know what I'm going to do. So talking about the bigger picture here. The FTC is also going after meta, which is, you know, Facebook's new stupid-ass name. And they also go after Microsoft, the proposed acquisition of Activision, the video game company. So it feels like there's some real momentum here to try to shift. I know, like, I don't know what industry, all of our listeners and our viewers are in, but like this shit deeply affects the business we're. where pay is rapidly falling, so are job opportunities because the whole entertainment

business is just owned by four companies and they'll probably merge soon. You know, like Disney now owns Fox and Hulu, you know, the two biggest, two of the biggest streamers right now are owned by Amazon and Apple. And it's like, I'm not sure how long there will be jobs as soon as AI learns to write TV shows, probably homeless. Yeah, so that'll be. I think that's going to be a minute, though. I mean, I'm kind of surprised Netflix hasn't already tried one written by an AI,

but I think it'll be funny for all the wrong reasons when they eventually do. I think, you know, even if they think they're ready, they're not really going to be ready for that because it ain't the way that shit's going to hit, Mark, right? Truly, no. I mean, I know of at least one. They put one out written by a robot, and we all just had to objectively be like, I mean, that's fucking, there's some rock-solid stuff.

there. It was a hugely disappointing. Yeah, the robot writes the show, and it's Robocop, but it's a family comedy this time. I do think, like, I do know at least one big production company, who I won't name, that is using AI to read first draft, to read scripts that are submitted for coverage. So, yeah, that's fine to have your life decided by a robot deciding what art's good. So, but this one really made me.

Jeremy Landry says Netflix uses AI to choose show pitches already. Yeah. I don't think I didn't know that they didn't happen. I've always heard that like a lot of decisions

are made there based on their algorithm or maybe it is AI or some whatever. Some computer shit numbers they run. It's highly analytical and not as subjective or whatever. It's what I've heard. They keep all that shit kind of behind the curtain.

But yeah. For sure. I thought the algorithms are talking about the ones that like where they can look at precise data for what demographics of people watch is showing for how long for they've turned it off and how much of a shot.

they give it. I thought it was that. Right. I mean, that's what I'm saying, too. But it's just like number crunch. Like they, you know, they just look at the, yeah, the number and the demo. Like, according to our algorithm, a show like this with this kind of lead about this subject matter or whatever could expect to do X percentage in the 18 to 49, like that type of shit, as opposed to being like, that sounds like a fun creative risk. Let's give it a shot, you know, like it's not like that. Yeah. A robot would have lit Breaking Bad go past three episodes because no one was watching it.

at that point. So there's one last example I want to talk about real quick because it really made me laugh. So this was from Friday. United Airlines had an investor's call. And the CEO of United Airlines is essentially begging for more government regulation because consolidation is he's snitched on other airlines because they're booking flights they know they can't run. They're selling tickets they can't fulfill in order to get free money.

and then slow walking the refunds. And he was saying that's part of the problem with Southwest and other airlines during the fucking holidays. And he says it's going to happen again because they're going to keep doing this. Now, to me, that's straight up fraud. If you know you're not going to have a plane or a crew to fly to a location, you sell tickets to it. Why aren't you guilty of a crime? But either way, the government should break up these fucking companies.

They actually have to fight for a dollar until just being able to steal them at will. Anyway, this guy's so blamed it on Buttigieg. This guy was saying Buttigieg has the power to crack down these companies, and he's not doing it. So, Brandon, activate your powers in the Department of Transportation, please. Yeah, I've heard for years that this is a similar thing. It's not as egregious as that, I don't think, but that they always oversell pretty much every flight that they have. Like, they sell more tickets for it than exist seats on the plane because, you know, people aren't going to be able to make it or change their plans or whatever. But when that doesn't happen, which sometimes it doesn't,

then, you know, people are just fucked and that's when they offer those travel vouchers for somebody else to take a different flight or whatever because turns out you don't have a seat even though you bought a ticket because, you know, just how they roll. I used to work at it when I had first day jobs and I moved to L.A.

was I work for an executive head of a firm running press releases and shit. And they're like traveling salesmen, right? The guerrilla of the country shaking hands. And what they'll do is they'll have their assistant book them a flight on every, book them a ticket on every flight out of town that day because they don't know which one they want to get on.

And they can, because they have their preferred business travelers, they just return the tickets for whatever flight they don't take. And they don't know if they, you don't know what flight you're going to be on because you don't know how long the meeting is going to take if you want to take a last minute meeting, right? So overselling some makes some sense.

But yeah, whenever it does show up for a flight, you get fucked. Right. Right. All right. Matt, start finding us some questions and comments some more. You already hit us with that one, which I appreciate. Also, while Matt's looking for them, you've got a note in here. So there's a

Texas state level Republican congressman who wants to ban food made from aborted fetuses or actually he just wants food made from aborted fetuses to be properly labeled, right? That's his proposed law. That's going to be a problem for my satin sausages, Mark. If I can't eat, you know, any baby made in my sausages anymore, I don't know how I'm supposed to praise the dark lord. I guess as long as they're just going to put it on the can, I can handle that.

That way I know exactly how much. much baby I'm getting with my breakfast. But, yeah, of course, that it's not food made out of fetuses, not as of yet a thing. Society hasn't reached that point quite yet. No, no, that's about. Infant Soilary Green. So yeah, the states that are named Bob Hall, who's an absolute fucking lunatic, propose a bill to, yeah, put warning labels on food made of fetuses,

which will be a very quick process because there are none. Right. but this part this line killed me and this kicker on the story was like food containing human fetal tissue which again does not exist could meet the definition of cannibalism which no federal law criminalizes in most states do not regulate and I was like wait what I've actually heard that before about like because there was some dude on the internet who like had to have his foot amputated and they gave it to him and then he like cooked it and served it to a friends with their consent they ate like foot tacos or something and that like that went viral or whatnot and people are like what the fuck you can just do that and it's like hits his own foot but also apparently yeah cannibalism not super regulated it's like the killing part is the the obtaining of the meat that's a problem i guess if you can get somebody to just cut off a little piece and give it to you they eat it if you want to i don't know uh Aaron barn says they need to do big ag and

meat industry next. Yeah, I don't know anything about that, but I'm sure it's a nightmare. As a person who grew up on a family farm that was basically part of the business by a big, big agriculture, I agree with you. And it's also like, uh, everybody knows about the egg shortage, right? Or like, you know, eggs are super expensive. There's a couple things happening there, but part of it said like the egg industry is so consolidated. There was a big bird flu outbreak. And they had to, because they're all, you know, I don't know the exact numbers, but let's say a third of the chickens in America in one coop or whatever they had to put all of them fucking down so yeah there's also they also just use that as an excuse to jack up prices

and gouge people but again that's another reason you break them up and crack down on because they shouldn't be price gouging off fake bullshit yeah scotty lewis says hard-boiled chicken abortions right that's a good point can we can we chicken abortions right it's just egg right or they're like chicken periods rather right right I don't know Yeah, thanks for chicken for a lot, ethnic. Yeah. Tasty. So there's a serious side of this bill because they're going to affect

in the pharma industry too because a lot of vaccines and medicines have developed with like stem cell lines that are based on like fetuses. Some of these lines they develop these drugs with go back to the 70s and no one knows whether they were an abortion or miscarriage or whatever because I guess the people that started working on them are like, you know, retired or dead by now and nobody rub down the orange. So like no one even knows. but like if somebody doesn't want to take a vaccine because it was developed with like stem cell lines,

okay, whatever, you know, you can't go to a public school or whatever, but like, okay. But if you want to ban, if you want to ban them still labeling them, then that's fucking awful. Yes. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. Like if they're, yeah, if they just want to label them, whatever, who gives a shit. But yeah, if you start talking about banning stuff, that's, I ain't with that. Chris Webster says, see in Orlando Sunday, Tray at the show and at the meet and greet. can't wait love you yeah that's going to be fun i believe that show is actually as of like

yesterday or today sold out so i'm glad you got in there chris it's going to be a good time i was going to say i know you're going to be in lando i could uh send my send my father-in-law to boo your liberal nonsense yeah i'd say oh yeah i don't think he'd be too into it uh or me for that matter amy nagel says treyer you plan on performing in illinois would love to see you in the chicago land area love you like chicken i've been in chicago before i definitely will be back again love Chicago. I was just there like normally I've tried to go to a place like every 18 months ish except for like some city like Nashville and some other southern cities, you know, maybe once a year. And I was in Chicago like right around exactly a year ago, like a year ago this week.

In fact, I think we were in Chicago. So I'll be back, but it may be a minute. Also I'd prefer to go in the summertime. But I do fucking love Chicago though. Huge fan. So yes, hopefully. that works out. They want to tell you to Chicago was the dead of winter and it did not hit. It is. Yeah, we, every other time I've been there was in the summertime and it's beautiful and I loved it. Me and Katie went there for anniversary one year and we took some boat rides out on the lake,

architectural tours and stuff. Chicago's got some great buildings and they got some wild stories behind the Chicago's fucking awesome. But last year we were there in January and yeah, it was, you know, it was decidedly less awesome. The Sphinx says Montana needs well-read. Montana is one of the few states we have not been to, and I would love to.

I just, you know, whatever, the logistics or maybe the demand ain't there. I'm glad you would come, but, yeah, I hope to get to Montana one of these days. I think Bozeman's a liberal tech hub now. All right. Well, yeah, I'd love to look into it. Shep says, come to Michigan. Yeah, I love Michigan too. Definitely been to Michigan a few times and we'll be back.

How about Seattle? Match is going through all the cities. Yeah, there's, listen, if you're in a, Seattle's, one of my favorite towns, too. We also were just in Seattle about a year ago. Producer Matt was at that show, in fact. So that's another one that, yeah, we'll be back, but it may be a few more months or something,

but it definitely will happen for sure. I love the Pacific Northwest. I know you're not bullshit because I like almost every town I've ever been into outside of Baton Rouge. Fuck Baton Rouge. But just catching Strait's Baton Rouge. I love you. But the, it's like a politician right now.

It's like, it's good to be back here. I know. Yeah, they call that cheap heat. But I really do, though. I like, I also, because it's either, and this is my sincere feelings on the subject, it's either an awesome kick-ass town or it's like a much maligned or shit upon town. And I have a lot of, I feel like a connection with those places, like places that people think it sucks to be from or that people like to make fun. of I've always felt like a kinship with those places.

So like your fucking Detroit's and Cleveland's and Pittsburghs and places like that, I think are rad, you know, because I feel like I get it. So pretty much everywhere falls into one of those two categories, in my opinion. So I do like, I suppose. Yeah, when I got to college, people found out. I was from a small town. They'd make fun and be like, what do you guys even do there? I'm like, hang out?

What do you do? What do you're going to? They're like, hang out? And go, okay. drive around drinking as a teenager on back roads yeah what about how about that some of that too yeah riding back roads yes an unfortunate pastime in rural America I hope the kids have moved beyond that at this point uh all right in wrapping up thank you guys for being here and I want to remind you again speaking of all those dates and cities go to traycrouter.com and check them out to come and see

me I do a full hour having a lot of fun with it it's going well so I hope you'll join me and yeah once again go to weekly skews.com slash more or go on patreon and look me up and for $5 a month you can get full length bonus episodes of the show and also show your support in doing so which we would appreciate either way what's important is that you keep coming back here every skews day for the main show as long as you do we will too we'll see you seven days Love you, bye. Thank you.