wellRED podcast - Tiger By The Tale #1 - Not Your Average Joe!

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Wherein we begin at the beginning, and reacquaint ourselves with the wildest buncha trash this side of a juggalo festival.

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion, because you used to, you, like, had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

It's just like, you can just, it makes it easier to lose count of, well, your count, the count every month, how much you're spending. A lot of people don't even know how much they spend on a per month basis. I'm not going to lie. I can be one of those people. Like, let me ask you right now. Skewers out, whatnot, sorry, well-read people. People across the ske universe, I should say. Do you even know how many subscriptions that you actively pay for every month or every year?

Do you even know? Do you know how much you spend on takeout or delivery? Getting a paid chauffeur for your chicken low main? Because that's a thing that we do in this society. Do you know how much you spend on that? It's probably more than you think. But now there's an app designed to help you manage your money better. and it's called Rocket Money.

Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money shows all your expenses in one place, including subscriptions you already forgot about. If you see a subscription, you don't want anymore, Rocket Money will help you cancel it.

Their dashboard lays out your whole financial picture, including the due dates for all your bills and the pay days. In a way that's easier for you to digest, you can even automatically create, custom budgets based on your past spending. Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscription with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the apps. Premium features.

I used Rocket Money and realized that I had apparently been paying for two different language learning services that I just wasn't using. So I was like, I should know Spanish. I'll learn Spanish. and I've just been paying to learn Spanish without practicing any Spanish for, you know, pertinent two years now or something like that. Also, a fun one, I'd said it before,

but I got an app, lovely little app where you could, you know, put your friend's faces onto funny reaction gifts and stuff like that. So obviously I got it so I could put Corey's face on those two, those two like twins from the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movies. You know, those weren't a little like the Q-ball-looking twin fellas. Yeah, so that was money.

What was that in response to? What was that a reply gift for? Just when I did something stupid. Something fat, I think, and stupid. Something both fat and stupid. But anyway, that was money well spent at first, but then I quit using it and was still paying for it and forgotten. If it wasn't for Rocket Money, I never would have even figured it out.

So shout out to them. They help. If you're money dumb like me, Rocket Money can help. So cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney. dot com slash well read today that's rocket money.com slash well r e d rocketmoney.com slash well read and we thank them for sponsoring this episode of the podcast they're the

well in wood Oklahoma's where we meet our tiger king he's got them monkey champs and tiger cubs the key thing he's seen he's got all his meth heads buddies and they're all working for free serving cheap to tautino's beach to cover and rock the Walmart meet. Then, of course, there's old Doc Gantle. The tigers made him rich. And don't forget about Carol Baskins. Man, we fucking hate that bitch.

We got a tiger by the tail, baby. Tiger by the tail, we got a tiger by the tail, baby. Tiger by the tail, we got a. Tiger by the tail, we got a. Tiger by the tail, baby. Tiger by the tail, we got a. Tiger by the tail. Well, hey, here we are.

We're back Tiger by the tail. the continuing staga from well-read where we go in on all things tigers and tiger people and specifically Tiger King on Netflix. We hit you a little preamble last week, but now we're going to dive into it in earnest. Can't believe there wasn't a guy named Ernest in this entire series, but there weirdly was not. But with that said, Joe, take it away, baby. So first off, we have one of the best cold opens in a documentary that I've ever seen in my entire life. We open with a character who we're not yet introduced to. It's just this chubby.

It's this chubby kind of like either wants to be a country club guy or used to be a country club guy and then he got a divorce and he can't be at the country club anymore. Fat shit wearing a polo, two sizes too small, long hair, shaved face. None of that matches. He looks like he could be a Van Zant but one of the cousins they don't fucking talk to anymore. We open with him saying something that I found to be true, but at first I was not, I didn't know anything about this, but it piqued my interest. He says, and I quote, monkey people are a bit different. They are kind of strange, but the big cat people are backstabbing pieces of shit.

Okay. So, all right. It's so funny because I know that we all kind of independently have the same thought about this, which means it was a very strong choice on the director's part. But I thought the same thing, by the time I watched this, I had heard so much. about how great this way how wild it was and i it was one of those deals for me honestly and i get this way or like when i hear some when i hear just everybody hyping the fuck out of one particular thing part of my brain just automatically goes like okay i bet it does hit but there's

there's no what there's no way that it can live up to the level of hype that i'm hearing for this and that's kind of how i felt about tiger king honestly but this one sense as like insignificant as it may seem kind of made that all entirely evaporate for me. Just the way he said it, because there's a pause in between him. He's like, the monkey people are wild. But the big cat people, they're backstabbing.

Pieces of shit. And he says it so matter of factly. Like, I mean, everybody fucking knows this. Big cat people are fucking huge pieces of shit. And so this guy, you're talking about how it looks like, dude, tell me right now. and I'm on make this, I don't know how well this going to work,

but we're going to see. Tell me right now, for those of y'all that are actually watching, this is the dude over here on the back that we're talking about, does he not look like he literally was drawn by Mike Judge in real life? He looks like a Mike Judge cartoon character in real life.

Like that's what he loves. Bobby went out for football, and that's his offensive line coach in middle school, and he takes it way too seriously. Yeah, yes, exactly. So that's how this documentary opens immediately. And I'm like, all right, I've seen the trailers, kind of. I've seen it's going to be about this Joe exactly, dude.

I'm at this point still thinking this is going to be some honey, booboo shit. But then we hear a call that has been placed inside of a prison and there has allegedly been a murder for hire. So immediately it's like, oh, shit, all right. it's monkeys it's zoos but there's a fucking murder or some shit like that they cut back to it they don't let you see exactly what's going on it's a little tease again we still haven't been introduced to all these people and then we're told a chilling fact in my opinion that there are more tigers held captive in the united states than there are in the wild throughout the rest of the world

did that fuck you up or had you known that i personally had uh heard some i knew it was something insane like that and more so that like that's how few tigers there are in a wild but no it's absolutely fucking crazy but I want to ask you this though about the murder for hire did any part of you when it first brought up that there was a murder for hire on the

horizon did any part of you think like that it was going to be a murder by animals like the murder for I was like I don't know how he hired a tiger to kill somebody but that's what I'm expecting like I literally was expecting but they was in a

alleged murder in this documentary later on down the line that might have been related to tigers. But to me it's like that's how insane this thing is off the bat is that like that's where my brain genuinely went to like immediately. As soon as this is all set up and I said that I was like oh he murdered somebody with animals. That's where this is going. I went to Tyke. I went to monkey not because I feel like you could like if you just set someone loose the tiger going to do its thing but like if you've, especially if you've had a monkey for a while, like depending on how long you've had the monkey and how y'all's relationship was,

you could probably like talk a monkey into doing it later. Like not just like stick a monkey loose on somebody like, you know, convince, like plot. I feel like you could plot with a monkey. So like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like so my brain kind of immediately went there. And another thing that's fucking insane about this is it like the documentary that we got was not even the

documentary that they were setting out to make in the first place. Like this all started that Richard Feller tells us it started with the investigation of a notorious reptile dealer in South Florida and they find there's a goddamn snow leopard in his van. And so they're like, wait a minute, what the fuck? How is there? Imagine being a documentarian and deciding you're going to make a documentary about a notorious reptile dealer in Florida. and then ultimately not even fucking with that dude at all because you just you just fall bass

backwards into fucking tiger mania like it's insane no that's the craziest part because like i totally forgotten all about that when i went to do the rewatch i was like oh yeah they was going fucking talk yeah they were supposed to talk to a no by their own admission notorious reptile dealer and we ended up uh not getting even remotely that, which at this point is when we're introduced to the man of the hour, the man of all the hours, Joe Exotic. We see Joe coming out the gate wearing leather tassels and a knee brace holding two tiger cubs and sporting the most glorious mullet I've ever seen, claiming that he himself has 187 big cats.

Is this when he, I know sometime early in his introduction, they show him sitting there and they're like, we think about taking the hat off? And he's like, no. He's like, no, he's like, ah, you don't want me to take the hat off. Because if I take the hat off, everybody's going to be like, wow, that guy's got a mullet. Is that not a weird thing for this particular character to say,

in y'all's opinion? Yeah. Does he seem to give a fuck about anything the entire rest of the time? And also, you got the mullet, dog. Also, yeah, right. So a couple things, and this is, you know, I feel like I'm definitely the one who can speak the most about not taking a hat off for something.

Agreed. But like God has done this to me. Like as you said, this motherfucker chose not only to have a moot, but to have a goddamn bleached blonde mullet. Also, furthermore, every single other decision that he has made, whether it be fashion or lifestyle in general, screams, hey, guess what kind of haircut I've got? I know. I know. And so, like, I don't. I, don't know, man. And plus it was like the hat he was wearing was a goddamn greasy-ass fucking fishing hat with a fish hook on it. Like, again, brother, we know you got a mullet. And like if you got a mullet, yeah, like you said though, too, it's like, why the fuck does he? It was, it was blonde

with the jet black roots. I wonder if maybe he just hadn't gotten his hair did recently. I mean, that's a whole thing. And then also, I will say it seemed like that was truly when he first sat down with him. And you can say what you want about Joe Exotic. He's nothing if not self-aware. Oh, very. He may have been a little self-conscious about, I'm sitting down with his documentary.

I'm a lot in my life because I'm an entertainer. He thinks he's a country music star. So there goes my self-awareness argument a little bit out the window. But he also knows that he is essentially a circus performer at his zoo. And so he might have been a little bit like, look, I got my stage persona on right now. You got me on this couch. I just met you.

And obviously, all that dissipated within 20 minutes. I mean, I like your first theory. I like that he just knew that it wasn't up to his mullet standard. It's not that he had the mullet. It's that like, my mullet ain't where I want it to be right now. And thus, I'm going to need the hat on for that reason. I mean, honest to God fucking has to be that. Because if he never takes the hat off,

why is he getting it cut into a goddamn mullet? It don't make sense. Yeah. Joe, at this point, this is one of my favorite things, which actually backs up what you were saying, Drew, about. He's definitely a circus performer, but he's super self-aware.

He says, does it feel good to stand on stage with 500-pound tigers and have everyone envy you? Absolutely. I'd be the biggest liar if I said, no. and it just cracked me that just cracked me the fuck up because like I mean I've seen tiger shows and shit like that but like never once

was I like God damn I wish I could be that guy I'm just like man the fucking tigers are cool I'm glad I don't have to be that guy yeah like there there seems to be this like underlying sense of all these tiger people that they are just like the fucking apple of everyone's eye

everyone's jealous everyone wants to fucking be them and it's like no dude it's just that tiger's a head well that's the thing this is this opportune time to bring us up as any because it comes up again it's one of these central themes of this whole thing the effect that these fucking animals these big cats in particular the effect they have on a certain type of person is fucking crazy man yeah you know he truly believes that and there's multiple points where people say some shit like look i know it seems like It didn't hit, but I'll tell you why it did hit, there was tigers there. And that's like what it all comes out is like, are y'all not hearing me?

I had tigers around. And they can't understand why other people would be like, yeah, that also don't hit, man. Like they could hit you, you know, like that don't hit to just have a tiger around. Like if a tiger, like you said, like, no, I don't, no, I don't envy that guy. Yes, tigers are rad as hell, but like, dude, if I see a guy standing on stage with two full-grown tigers beside him, the last place I want to be is next to that guy, you know, because like they're fucking, they eat you. They eat people. Like, it don't, like, you, it's just, you have to be some form of lunatic. You've got to be some type of crazy.

And on that note, like, I've never seen anybody with tigers on stage and not knew him. heart how much work, time, effort, money they had put into just being able to be a dude on stage with the tiger. And like, I don't envy that. As someone who put a lot of effort into being a clown, and that's the other thing. Like, we meet people up to shows. One out of ten people very much wants to be us. They try to pitch his jokes and they're fucking annoying. It's like, just go do it yourself if you want to do it. But I'm aware that most people are grateful that they don't need validation in the form of laughter every 30 seconds. And we don't need. We don't need. have nothing beside us that's going to eat us.

Right, right. I think that most people that envy, that are, like, are jealous of us on stage are jealous of these, you know, the stereotypical, all they sleep till five, they don't do shit, they just go up there and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The average person, I mean, I won't say the average person thinks that, but then there's the person who, no, I fucking couldn't do it. I've got fear of speaking in public, yada, yada, yada, but like, yeah, like you said, like, we just go up there and start, you know, and we do our, act like we don't have to fucking even if you weren't the one that fed the tiger and even if you weren't to i don't know man like there's just it's just so funny he's just sitting there like i'm the

fucking envy of man he 100 100% absolutely believes and feels that way too and he's not that's just narcissism right oh i don't know it's like to okay i don't want to go too deep into this but y'all know y'all heard about that thing that like that virus or like something that's in like cat coronavirus if they theorize gets inside like that cat like

cat ladyism is an actual disease it's a parasite I don't want to get too far to it either but yeah it's a parasite that supposedly convinces you it gets into your brain and convinces you to get more cats because that's where that's the only place it can raise its family right exactly and it comes from cat

poop and being around cat poop gets it in your brain you're like, I need more cats. I can't, what am I going to do if I ain't got more cats? I think about that. It's an actual like physical thing in your brain that's doing that. And I kind of think like tigers got that too, but just even wilder because they got bigger, wilder cats. Like, I don't know, man.

I didn't, I didn't mean to sit here with my fucking jaw on the floor the whole time you were saying that, but I've never heard that. And that sounds like the fucking outside. or shit. Like that's, that is terrifying. Like,

it's a real thing, man. Like, I know you said you don't want to dive too much into it. And honestly, I don't know what more you could say than what other than what you just said.

But like, I mean, kind of now that you've said that, like, why the fuck wouldn't that be this? Like that, of course that makes sense. Like,

they are the same as, I mean, they're cats. They just big ass motherfucking cats, but like, fucking, is there other shit that it does that with it? Is it just cats?

I doubt that they have the same parasite. There's other shit that does that does that but not with humans. Like there's plenty of parasite examples in nature of them brain control in another animal to get what they need. This is the only one I know that does it to us.

Is the theory that's like it's the cats that's doing this? It's a parasite that lives in cat shit. Yeah, yeah. Can get into the brain of a human being and wire their brain.

such that they physically need the presence of cats. And then you get more cats and they have more cat shit and more parasites. And the theory that that's like that that's what cat ladies are, it's that. It's a parasite in their brain. I don't, I don't know how like well-founded this is, but I do know that it's a real, like, thing that you can look up and read about that, you know, it's pretty wild. and I, Drew, I mean, you probably write that probably ain't how poop diseases work. I don't know a lot about them.

But I just know that like big cat, tigers are just big ass cats. Like, why is it just big ass parasites in your brain? Yeah, their parasites even bigger because they poop bigger. These motherfuckers are crazy for tigers. That's all I know. Not one person on this show got just one tiger. I don't think no one ever just got just one tigers. No.

You get one tiger. Next thing you know, you got 108, seven tigers. far as I can tell. I agree with that. No, I agree with that. Tigers is like that old saying about driving a Rolls-Royce, whereas like if you drive your own Rolls-Royce, then you can't afford to actually have a Rolls-Royce.

It's like that with Tigers. If you can only, if you only got one tiger, you don't get to have tigers. Like you've got to have tigers, like a bunch of fucking tigers, which a lot of the characters on this show learned started learning to love tigers just straight up through this joe exotic motherfucker one of which is probably my favorite character and in my opinion uh when this is well we'll get into it but like he's

he's a pretty redeemable dude in my opinion there ends up not being a lot of this but we see eric cowie if you don't remember eric eric is the joe dirt looking motherfucker that shows up at the beginning he is joe's headkeeper has been for a while he shows up to let us know that before he started working for joe he was at the end of his rope. Before he met Joe Exotic, he didn't know what the fuck else he was going to do. And he found this job on, and bro, and bro, he found this goddamn job on Craigslist.

Like the amount of vetting that goes into being the headkeeper at the GW Exotic Zoo. So I don't know. Didn't he say to? I thought, well, I don't. never done that before. Yes, right. That's what I was about to say. I don't know if Corey has this in his no- No, I do. You are introduced to the head zookeeper, and he says something to the effect of- He says, I'll tell exactly what he says. He said, he said, he goes, I've seen this job. I've seen

his job on Craigslist, and I was like, man, I ain't ever done this shit before. What the fuck? Let's go. And now look at me. I'm doing Tiger shows. Tiger shows. What? And he fucking like, he like turns to the cowlick, look at me. I'm doing tiger shows. And again, he says that with the confidence of someone who is like, y'all know that doing tiger shows is the fucking peak of human existence.

If you're doing tiger shows, you're the shit. All girls want to fuck you and all dudes want to be you. And like, again, like they just, it just exudes from them. These are the most confident motherfuckers. Oh, it's got. Man, it's fucking crazy. Well, Joe told him that. I mean, that's a very cult, like, move.

Yeah. You know, when you... I don't know. I think the tigers tell them that. That's fair. That's fair. But I'm saying that's like a very... That's a very common move when you want your group to have real strong group, you know, pride or whatever.

As you tell them, we're the shit and they ain't shit. I mean, that's what rappers do. Joe Exotic ain't nothing, if not someone who reminds me of a no-limit soldier. Right. Okay. But here's the thing, like, and I know I just said, I don't envy the guy on stage with the tigers because tigers will eat you. And that's true. I don't envy them. But like, and yes, I'm trash. I got a lot of white trash blood. All of it. All of it is white trash, all my blood. But I, like, I mean, it is pretty rad. Like, I don't want to be the guy who's up there with this like apex predator who could eat your face off in a heartbeat. if it wanted to because I'm not a lunatic. But, like, I mean, I got to give it up to the motherfucker

that's standing up there with the tigers. Do you know what I mean? Because, like, I mean, that's pretty hard, dog. It's super. I get that. You right. And also, did he work his way up, or did he just come out the gate, the head zookeeper?

Man, all I know is they introduce him as the headkeeper, and his whole thing was like, you know, fucking, we're going to do yolo. It was like, and that was how, I mean, the way, another way I look at it is like, if, if that dude is, is advertising his jobs on Craigslist, why wouldn't he just, you know, bump this dude immediately up? I don't know, man. His whole process, like, we'll get into a- I was just asking because I could see, I could see Cowie working his way up, because like you said, without getting, without getting ahead of ourselves or spoiling anything, Cali's a redivable motherfucker, man. He's got, like, you know, I could see Cowie just getting on board there and ended up. working his way up to head keeper because I think Cowley gives a shit, man. I do. I also think Cowie gives a shit.

And, like, Cowley has one of my favorite qualities in a human being, which is, like, when presented with a challenge, is just like, well, shit. I mean, fuck. And, well, Angie, work his way up. That's literally his philosophy. Well, shit. I mean, fuck. I think.

If he worked his way up, it would also, I think, though, explain his pride a little bit more was sort of my theory that I was working. on there. If he worked his way up, that sort of explains why he's like, look at me now, because I was a fucking dipshit and now I'm a boss, you know. I'm doing tiger shows. So we see Eric and like, I would say at this point, I haven't timestamped it or nothing, but I would say at this point, we are probably like seven minutes in to this goddamn documentary, maybe. And I'm, and I'm already going like, wow, this is way more. and way more insane than I thought it was going to be,

and I'm only seven minutes in. And now we see that Joe Exotic is a goddamn country music singer. Dude. It's one of those things that it's like, I don't even know what to say about it, because it's almost like, because part of your brain is like, of course he does this. Right, right.

And then the other part of your brain is like, there's no way he really, it's one of those things where it's like that cliche about, like, if you tried to write it, no one would let you because they would be like, that is too much, man. Like you can't. Yeah, yeah, that's.

Yeah, that's what I was, I mean, I'll name drop for a second. Me and Frank Meir, two-time UFC, World Heavyweight champ still holds the record for most wins by submission. Me and Frank were talking about this other day, which Frank, you know, born and raised in Vegas, knows a good bit about tigers.

Frank said that. We were talking about it. Well, another thing Frank said, because I said, man, I said with you, I said, man, it seems to be that like these do, like if you got a tiger, like women are just like very attracted to the whole having a tiger thing. And Frank was like, Frank sitting there smoking a cigar out by his pool in Vegas. It was like, no, the girls are attracted to people who can afford a fucking tiger.

And I was like, oh, right, that's a good cause. Yeah, he's like, they'd rather him not be there. So anyways, we were discussing it. And he said that, he goes, he goes, man, you just. he's like, you just can't write this shit. And I told Frank, I was like, man, I'll be honest with you. Usually I'm offended by that, not completely offended by that phrase, but anytime someone says that phrase,

I immediately think of like, Lord of the Rings and fucking, you know, eastbound and down. Eastbound and out. Or Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm like, all these crazy, insane things that people wrote. So like, yeah, you can write stuff. But with this, I told him, I was like, but Frank, I actually think you're right because there's so much stuff

in this that I've tried to write similar crazy things in my, you know, like in my line of work and it always gets passed back as like, no, this is too fucking crazy. And I'm like, but it's real. And we don't even, we've had that happen to us collectively as a group, had people tell us like that, this, that's too much. That's that, you know, whatever. And in our heads are like, you know, no, it's not. It's real. We talked about, we had that pilot in which like, a version of my sister mixed with Drew's wife was a character and we had gotten some notes to that effect about some of her lines and then we had shows in Nashville at Zanies and my sister hung out for multiple days and we were all like dude honestly if anything we have dialed her back a lot

back a lot we're like yeah and they still were like oh that's too much so there's definitely some truth to that whole you couldn't write it thing and it's not because of how an audience is going to respond it's because of people going to refusing to believe it or whatever. Right, because when you start looking at a dude like Joe Exotic, you're like, as if fucking, as if owning a bunch of tigers and lines didn't keep you busy enough for the day, you throw on, he's a country music star, and then you're like, God damn, he must have his hands full,

and then what's this? He also hosts a nightly internet show, a nightly internet. Go ahead, Drew. I hate to invoke Donald Trump and the reason I hate to invoke Donald Trump is everyone's sick of him and the reason everyone's sick of him a big part of it is there's no angle

to wrap your head around that guy I think Joe is a narcissist who also happens to have a flamboyant personality not all narcissists have flamboyant personalities but when you get that perfect fucking mix if this dude had some money and up to four tigers is very consumed with himself in his world I mean, he becomes obsessed with Carol Baskins on his nightly internet show

because she is not allowing him to be the master of his universe. And as far as, you know, can you write that? It's like, it's so divorced from the way a normal human being is that I think the feedback you're getting is like, well, this is not believable because this isn't how humans act. Right. Because we don't have the energy, money, time, effort, whatever it is to own tigers and go on the road and try to plot someone's murder via my internet

show and make country music records. But like this dude is fueled by like a fucking personality disorder and, you know, have some money. And, you know, here we are talking about him. So that's the other thing, you know, like if you try to tell a narcissist, that ain't the way to go. They want fame. My man got it. Well, well, since you've already brought up Carol,

basket and him talking shit about her on his nightly internet show, which it's reported, was only ever watched by maybe 80 people at a time, which just kind of totally checks out with this dude that, like, you know, most people would only ever, like most normal human beings. Like, it's not abnormal to do a radio show or an internet show from your house every night if it's like successful and people are watching it. and, you know, doing stuff with it. But like, you're doing it consistently and only for 80 people. That is a very specific type of goddamn lunatic, I think.

And mostly the content comes from bashing who Drew brought up. Carol Baskin. Carol Baskin is the founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue, which is the world's largest accredited sanctuary, which I think is an important note. There might be a larger sanctuary out there, but it's not accredited. and she has devoted her, she's devoted her life entirely to cats.

And I wanted to get to this point when you guys were talking, I didn't want to get ahead of ourselves. So you were talking about that cat shit thing. Dude, she's 100% got that. There is no doubt in my fucking mind. She's a cat lady. Because like she talks about how like she was born that way. She basically talks about loving cats the same way people talk about loving dicks.

Like she was like, I was born that way. The first ever picture of me was me with a cat. and I didn't have any friends when I was a kid. As soon as she says that, you're like, yeah, no shit. And she's like, I'm trying to imagine somebody saying, the first picture of me when I was born was with a dick. But she says that her imaginary friends when she was a kid was two cats, which is like, if you're imagining it, you could just have real friends,

but like, you know, that's whatever. Then she starts, she hates, she hates Joe. He hates her because she's this animal. rights lady which you kind of think i don't know it's it's it's bizarre but her whole thing is that big cats don't belong in cages she shows up wearing a flower child hat with her fucking gray teeth and shit talking about how she's been finger banging herself to felines her whole goddamn life and now she's talking about how cats don't belong in cages and then we get down and see her in her place in Tampa and if you can believe it her cats are in fucking cages yeah okay right and it so i'm

is one of the principal characters in this whole story. This is her introduction, but she is throughout, and it gets way crazier with her, and I don't want to, I don't want to jump ahead. But as far as this part goes, I very much thought, and I'm sure most people thought, but like from the moment it introduced her and set all this up that you just described, Corey,

like from the jump, I in my head was immediately like, why is, why are you different? Yeah, but I didn't understand from the get-go Why she was supposedly so much different From the rest of these motherfuckers, you know, like Is that what you? Oh, yeah, no, absolutely, like not off the jump. They only, like, especially because it's not like Joe didn't like,

he didn't love the fucking tigers and shit like that. But like, to me, it was like, I don't know, it just seemed the, and it gets even weirder, but like her whole thing with it seems like so, analogous to like fucking gun ownership and shit where she's just like well it's I'm responsible with my tigers and my life I'm a responsible tiger owner is that is that not how she fucking is like she she literally like because she like hers are in cages but she's like well I mean they have to be there because like they wouldn't be there if I didn't get them from people who shouldn't have had them in the fucking first place right but right it's but right it katie was saying and

Katie is not a fucking, my wife is not a Carol Baskin apologist. But in this first episode, we were talking about this. And she was saying like, yeah, but it's a sanctuary and it's different because they don't breed them. They get tigers some other places that they can't release into the wild. So they got to go somewhere or else you got to euthanize them. So they go in a sanctuary. And so that makes it a little bit different. And I do understand the basic logic of that.

But at the end of the day, it's like you still get to be the only one who has tigers. Do you know what I'm like? You still get to have your tigers and have people pay to come look at the motherfucking tigers. Like you, like, you just set up this like logic basis that allows you to be the only one. Well, also. You could lobby to make it to where they got to own tigers the way you want to own tigers. Right. You know what I mean?

You don't have to say and take their tigers. Like you can just be like, you know what I mean? Like it's the, well, again, go back to the gun thing. Instead of saying take their guns, just be like, make them register their guns, you know? Right, right. To me, she reminded me of like bullshit ass, like fake folk, white liberals, you know, who are like always trying to protect somebody. But like, then they cross the street if they see a black man.

Yeah. Right. Well, she goes on to say, she says people like Joe Exotic, what they are doing is breeding cats for, in cages. A tiger needs 400 square miles of territory in the wild, so there is no cage that's going to be sufficient. But the reason, because she pauses for a very pregnant pause, but the reason we have cats in cages is to provide them a safe place to live until they die. Well, yeah, her logic, the basis of her logic made sense, like Trey said. It was these other people invented cats in cages, they started it.

Rather than euthanize them, I give them a good home. But then, and I don't want to get too far ahead, when you find more out about the home and how she's making money off of it, you're like, oh, wait a minute. Like you're trying to quote unquote save cats, but like, well, again, I don't want to get too far out of episode one.

Well, I mean, though, but like if, like, first off, yeah, she's making money. She's also not paying her goddamn employees. anything. Like, she's got... That's what I was saying. That's what I didn't want to get too far ahead on. But now that it's out of the bag,

like, you are so full of shit if you're getting rich off your fucking quote-unquote life's mission to save cats. Well, and also, if she thinks that cats living in cages, like, there's no way that they can have a good life in a cage. And she's like, well, but I get them and I care about... Just then, honestly, by her logic, euthanizing them would be more fucking civil. That's how I feel. And also, like, we're talking about making the money,

and I'm not 100% on this part. I haven't researched if we should have, but I think there's a caveat to it either way. Isn't Big Cat Rescue, like, isn't it a nonprofit or whatever? But either way, the thing is, she is still very much benefiting from, she gets to be the hero amongst the big, she gets to be a big cat person while also, because she's independently wealthy,

for reasons we will get into later. So she's got money, and so she gets to have the other thing she gives a shit about tigers and fame and attention and reputation and all of that. So it's like even if it is a nonprofit and the organization itself isn't like making her more money, like it's still, the point still stands either way,

in my opinion, you know. She's still getting the shit she wants out of it. she also is allergic to cats which i thought was interesting is that true i saw somebody say something about that and i thought it was a joke well she says it she says it but i just feel like there's no goddamn way that it can be true just because like i don't see her sneezing ever she's around these motherfuckers all the time i don't know that seems like a very uncomfortable that's weird like i'm not saying that if i was allergic to something that means that i would hate it I just would choose to, I don't know, focus on dog rescue or some shit like that.

That just really didn't make any goddamn sense to me. Unless you had parasite brain. I will go ahead and say right now that I'm not going to in the end be like if we're doing a team Joe, team carol thing for the first time maybe in my life I'm going to go down the middle. But I'll go from the jump and this is how I felt watching it. From almost moment one, I was like, man, fuck her. Yeah. No, I agree.

And I don't think you have to be team one or the other. They both just don't hit in their own ways. But I also, yes, from the minute she came up, like I said, immediately I was like, well, wait, how is she different though? And then it only gets worse as far as she's concerned from there. Well, it's one of those American lessons. If you're going to be a total narcissistic megalomaniac dickhead, it helps to be cool and a man, to be fair.

But more than that, it helps to be fucking razzed. and Joe was rad at least. Well, that's what I was going to say. Like, just up until this point, like, if it all stopped here where we're talking about, the reason that I'm going to have to lean towards Team Joe is because right now they basically are guilty of both doing the exact same thing, except for she is also guilty of blatant and extreme hypocrisy. So, like, that tips the scales to me a little bit.

Like, at least he ain't on some fucking bullshit like she is, my opinion. I mean, he's certainly on some bullshit. but not like that. He's on, he's a lot of, Elfogic is very much own some bullshit. He's also better. He's also better at hiding his hypocrisy. There's things that are very hypocritic,

hypocritic about his life that he knows to hide that we don't find out. Yeah, but yeah, no, you're 100% correct. What he does, we get to, we go straight from Carols, and now we're back at Joe's exotic animal park where he's letting us into his gift shop, where he sells things such as hunting, barbecue sauce, steak sauce, face cream, sex jail.

His and hers, by the way, that's very important. But his number one seller, of course, is his tiger print underwear. Joe does not wear underwear. He's been on the cover of Hollywood magazine twice, and his first album is called I Saw a Tiger. So this is all the stuff that Joe does choose to share with us. We then introduced to one of the biggest breakout characters, I'd say, of the show. Joe Finlay, which was Joe Finlay, which was Joe.

Joe's, yeah, Joe's husband from 2003 to 2003. You're right, it is John Finlay. It's John Finlay from 2003 to 2013. He was married with Joe, and he claims that Joe taught him how big his heart was and how much to care. All right. And him and his fucked up, Tith do all the interview shirtless. What I wanted to say about that, and in the preamble,

I said they did a good job and I didn't feel like it was coached. But I guarantee you that they, I, told him to take his shirt off or he had his shirt off because he was doing something and then when the interview started he was like let me get my shirt and they were like well if you don't want to wear it we'd be fine with that as filmmakers well this has actually been said since the documentary he has come out and said that they told him to take his shirt off okay and I totally believe that and dude they almost had to have because like that's another running theme throughout this thing is how casually insane the settings of the interviews are.

Like, dude, almost all of them. Like even Joe at his most, like, basic interview that he has, he still is holding a baby tiger with a fucking, you know, with his mullet and looking like a lunatic and everything. And then you got, you know, you got characters literally in a junkyard doing an interview. like people just everybody

like not okay there's a detective at one point who's just presented as a detective yeah and in his

apparently his house where he's being interviewed he has a goddamn monkey butler end table and an orgasmic lion coffee table he's like

he's just a regular cop like everybody in it is it's like I say, it's so casually insane. Frankly, that's a testament to the filmmaker, in my opinion. No, I agree. He found the tone and he followed it throughout the whole thing.

I'm not disagreeing with it being a testament to how good he is, but I do think it goes against a little bit. It's like we were saying in the preamble that this is either stupidity or lunacy porn. It is porn. Like, it's just really, really well done. I mean, look at me right now. Far be it for me to claim that a redneck wouldn't be shirtless because a camera was on him.

But you know he set stuff up. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. For sure. Okay. Here's what I'll say about that. As far as like, especially this dude in particular, you're 100% right.

And apparently the guy has come out and verify that the director set it up. But like, dog, this motherfucker, he is shirtless, toothless motherfucker. You know what I mean? Absolutely. He's dated. Like, it's not, it's not, it's not unrepresentative of this man. I mean, he almost had a full shirt tattooed on his goddamn body.

You don't do that unless you want a motherfucker to see it. I realize that sounds like victim blaming. But still. I guarantee you that's how they talked him into it. They were just like, look, we want to be able to see all the tattoos. I bet they just said take your fucking shirt off. He's got a tired of. They didn't have to top him into that shit, not that bad heart.

anyway. He's got a tiger tattoo. He's like, yeah, we'll hit. He's like, oh, we'll hit. Then that was it. He's got a tiger tattoo and another tattoo over his dick with his property of Joe Exotic. At this point, yes, that is correct. He does. We find out a little bit more about Joe's

background. I mean, we already knew, this is when they tell us that Joe is gay, but like, you know, come on. I know it's like not right for, you know, people always say it's like when you come out, your friends shouldn't say like, yeah, we know. Like it's apparently a rude thing.

But like in this situation, it's like, yeah, we know. So Joe is gay, and he knew when he was 13 that he was gay. And when he told his father this, his father made him shake his hand in front of his mom and promise not to come to his funeral. Yeah. And then right after that, according to Joe, he drives his truck off a bridge. He drove his truck off a bridge. And spent five.

five years in braces. And that, like, dude, you know, I... That'll make you want to get some tigers. People are complicated, you know? Joe is fucking... He is what he is, but also, like, I'm inclined to believe at least a version of that happened, and it's like, you know, man, that's fucking, you know,

that's a goddamn shame. That don't hit. Well, again, I go back to this question of, like, how comfortable am I with this being what the most famous, you know, southern or southern adjacent thing going on right now. It was done well. I mean, he did tell at least part of the backstory. You know what I mean?

He didn't just present this guy and be like, yeah, that's how they end up here in Oklahoma. He, like, explained how that happened to live. Right. Yeah, here is why this dude the way is the way he is. He drives off, he drives his car off a bridge. He's in braces for five years. He did his physical therapy in Florida, I assume, because at that time, that's just where all the pills were.

And so does his physical therapy? I forgot. Everything I forgot about this story is wild. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He did his physical therapy in Florida where his neighbor was the manager of the lion country safari and would often bring baby lions and monkeys home to bottle feed, which is where Joe found his love for animals. Dude, I get that. You know what I mean? That part of that, I get that, dog.

You've been through this. You're a gay man in Oklahoma decades ago. You've been ostracized by your father. You went through some shit that led to culminate and you're driving off a goddamn bridge and, like, very terribly injuring yourself. And then during the rehab, you happen to cross pass with a guy who brings around baby lions and monkeys

that you bottle feed while you. you're recuperating from this incident. And it's like, the shit is coming together. And if you think about the two things Florida could give a man in his situation, nice rehab, pills and crazy-ass animals, my man brought the right one back to Oklahoma with it. Yeah, yeah, you're right. He went to the right place for sure.

I was about to say, like, this has never happened to me. So I guess I technically can't tell you how I'd feel about it. However, if I was on a bunch of pills and I got to bottle feed a monkey, I'd be different. Right. And I'd be different forever. Like, not just for a little bit. Like, that would be a life-changing experience for me. I can't believe you ain't ever done pills in bottle fed a monkey.

I know. What about how of yours? I can't believe I've not done one of the two at different. I mean, I've done pills, obviously, a lot. You ever let a tiny horse snort sugar while you snort in a perkinset? No, but like, I mean, I'm all about, I want to fucking bottle feed some baby animals now. Like, when they babies, they're cool. I mean, they're cool as adults, but like, I can do that shit.

I hand-fed a baby giraffe in South Africa one time and started crying and started thinking about moving there. Like, it'll get in your blood. And I just remembered that. I thought giraffs didn't hit for you. Drafts hit for me. Bulls as you're thinking though I thought giraffes also didn't hit for you

no yeah and that's that also it comes up more prominently later but yes when it comes to the envy thing the whole everybody envies me because I'm up here with these grown tigers we're like no we don't because they don't but the babies though I mean dude anybody

yes it's wrong it's fucked up to breed tigers to exploit their babies for that reason obviously. But any human being that tries to front, like they don't want to bottle feed a goddamn baby tiger is full of shit. Like, of course I want to do that.

That would do it so hard. No, I'm not. That don't make it right. No, I'm with you on that. So now we jump over to one of the, I mean, it's a staple in the redneck community. It's a, let's see, it's a red net. It's a staple of a redneck destination.

We are now in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a place that I am famously not welcome in anymore. And we meet Dr. I was calling him Baclavah earlier, but it's nice. Dr. Bagavan Antle, which there's just no way that's his Christian name, but we don't ever find out what his real one is. We meet Dr. Bagavan Antle, and we see him talking about his grandfather guru. and I'm really going to try to get this right. His grandfather guru, Swami Satchadonata. Yeah.

Father Donata. Who is a bearded Indian with a line that is painted on velvet in his living room. So here's a guy who is like, again, he's from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So like he's firmly, now for those of you listen, Mertl Beach, South Carolina is the south like Times Square is New York. It's fucking not. Like Myrtle Beach is a tourist destination. It's one of the reasons that I didn't like doing shows there is because you couldn't ever get, like there was no culture.

Like it's just everybody at the show. Like some people from Boston. Some people are from fucking Panama. So like it's, it kind of makes sense that even though this dude's from South Carolina, he's not really the southern type. He kind of has like this. I thought he just ended up in South Carolina anyway. Yeah, he did.

I think he stayed in Connecticut for a while. I don't think this part has come up quite. yet but like he's got this he looks a whole shit ton like um like dr field he does look like dr feel he also looks like uh the lead singer a newgrass revival uh from back in the day uh john cow and he's got a john cowen he looks like meatloaf stunt man too yeah he does he looks like i don't know man he's he's got he he definitely has big orgy vibes right off the jump like well and i didn't know that immediately but liked him immediately so I think you're right.

And by the way, anyone out of there listening, I have since scaled all of that back. I think he is the most talented narcissistic asshole. You know what I mean? He's better at what they all do than all of them. Well, I mean. Objectively. He beats Hollywood.

You know what I mean? He provided all those. He beat Carol. Yeah, no, he's later. Right. He's the best at the type of crazy that they all are. He's the best of debt. Yeah, dude, he comes out the gate riding a motherfucking elephant named Bubbles who he'd had. It's so hard not to like this for me, man.

No, I mean, I have to do. You find out all the sinister shit that built his world, but I loved his world, man. No, at the jump. I mean, I like this dude too because especially now, I'm like, all right, surely we're about to see the opposite side of this. Like I've seen the shitty ones and now we're going to get into like, this is the good dude. You know, we find out this dude like he runs the rare species fun. He comes in riding on a fucking elephant.

And then we jump into a little bit of his psyche and we start seeing that paranoid tenor that kind of just permeates through the tiger community in these people, which is a we hear, we hear him saying, I am so well known as a big cat. guy around the world. The people who are against having relationships with animals, period, want to destroy me because I'm out there in the forefront so known of being this guy that is in love with big cats and has them love him back. He screams that directly into the camera. Bagabon, thanks. First off, this is another, I'm so well known as a big cat guy around the world. the people who are against having a relationship with animals, period,

want to destroy me. Okay, but two things. You're right, completely, first of all. But, man, at that time, I was like, yeah, that's, everything he says sounds like the truth to me. Look at his ponytail. And also, Corey, let's say it this way. Who else was in the Britney Spears music video?

Who else works on Dr. Doolittle's one and two? Like, he is, other than Sigfried and Royal. I think he's the most famous guy. I think that that was all true in its own way. That's just what he said. Like he's not known by the general public as a big cat guy, but amongst the entire spectrum of people who know about big cat guys. And they're all on a spectrum.

He is not around the world as a big cat guy. And I think they do want to destroy him. Actually, you know what? But Corey, but you're really. right, Corey, because like that came not from a place of truth, that came from his own narcissism and we would say later insanity. Yeah, I guess he's obviously speaking of like when he says that he means in the big cat community. Well, it's the Kanye thing where sometimes delusional and same people make it, but it don't mean they're not delusional and insane. Right, right.

I mean again, I don't want to bring up Trump. Yeah. And for the record, as you said, like, Doc was definitely the best at what he did. Like, literally, the reason that we find out about this guy so quick is because Joe sent his crew to the Myrtle Beach place to, like, spy on him, like, go through his whole process because Joe himself wanted to, he wanted to emulate it because this dude was the creme de la creme. he's got his fucking compound. He's got like all these hos living with him. All these hos. We don't meet them by name yet,

but like you can definitely get a sense of like, man, it's a bunch of hos. Yeah, now we'll save the whole discussion until they dive into it. But yeah, all these hos. He also says, I could dedicate a whole manifesto to what's going on there. He says something that I wanted to specifically talk to Drew about

and get your take on this. And I don't even know that this is what was called until now, Dr. Annell's place in Myrtle Beach, the starting price is $339. That's your starting base. It ain't never going to be less than that. However, some days, it can be as much as $655 because they use dynamic pricing like they do in the fucking airlines. Like they price their shit exactly how Delta does their shit. Oh, for what?

Like, for what? Like you get to touch more stuff and you get to do more stuff. No, it's bait. No, their dynamic pricing is like, like, you know how sometimes a flight from Atlanta to L.A. is one thing one day. And it's, he says it, depending on how many people are coming in on a given day, his price is flexible that way. But it's like seasonal.

The ticket to get into his kingdom and check it out is what we're talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's essentially just seasonal and weekend prices is all he's saying. It's like it depends on who's trying to get. in that weekend. I mean, that's like shitty, you know, people trying to extract as much money as they can. But that's just how places like Myrtle Beach work. I mean, the hotels there are way cheaper in fucking November than they are when it's spring break. Yeah, I guess you right. How many capitalism works? You know what I mean? Like, I just didn't, I just didn't expect capitalism

from Dr. Baghevon Antel, I guess. Fuck. Oh, buddy. He had sales at it. No, I know. Now, I know. That's, again, that's why he's so good at what he does. He's playing all the angles. And then the other thing, I thought dynamic pricing had more to do with like, and you, and I'm curious, maybe he just upsold people. Wouldn't you have to pay more to pet a cub than to just be there? I mean, Joe said, Joe said he made, at one point, Joe said he made all his money from cub pettings. Yeah, he said that from the time they're two weeks old to the time they're 12 weeks old, you could profit $100,000 off of them just by fucking cub petting. And Dr. Bagavon Antel, as much of a cat,

he is. He definitely doesn't cut corners when it comes to feeding his tigers. He says, this is great, Doc says that it takes a minimum of $10,000 a year to feed one single tiger, whereas our buddy Joe Exotic says, fuck that shit, I can do it for $3,000. Not even half. Because he's getting that Walmart truck, man. You never had meat to fell off a truck. Uncle Mark used to always get us meat to fell off a truck. Exactly. Because at this point now, Joe has over 227 tigers, and he's getting food from feedlots who give him five to seven cows a day. He's got game wardens calling him with fucking roadkill and shit like that. He claims that he would need 30 cows a day if he only used cows, which I got my calculator out, that would be fucking 10,950 cows a year is the amount. of food that needs to go through the GW Exotic Zoo in order just to keep his motherfucking tigers up.

Now, on that note, in terms of the future, Carol Baskin and all this other stuff, and this is not beyond, I'm not going to do another episode. I'm just thinking outside of the documentary. We don't want tigers to be endangered in the wild, of course. But it does seem like there don't need to be overall that many of them. Right, right. You're talking about the impact. Yeah.

Like, dude, I couldn't, I couldn't believe that the documentary didn't make more of a, no pun intended meal out of that part of it. And I mean, the hell I get why they had plenty to work with. But, like, I know that, you know, I'm aware of the argument about eating meat as a human being and how bad it is for the environment because of just methane and all the other shit that fucks the environment up that comes from the, like, mainstream processing of beef and stuff like that. And for all that,

for those numbers like the Corey just said to be going to a goddamn tiger show in Oklahoma. Just in Oklahoma, that's just one fucking dude in Oklahoma. That's crazy. Like, I can't, it's wild to me that as soon as they even alluded to that, to the level of meat that they have to have to feed them,

I very much expected that to be. become a big, like, thread in the thing of like, look at their carbon footprint or whatever. Yeah. But it never really did. But again, I get it. They had plenty of shit to cover without that. Yeah, dude, they made a really good executive decision to be like, everybody knows enough about that queer shit.

Let's get back to it. Yeah, that don't hit. You know what does hit? I'll tell you what it does hit. This dude who has a tattoo of his dead brother on his arm who got. killed by a drunk semi-truck driver. So that is something that Joe explains to us. Joe has a, this was him and his brother's dream.

This was him and his brother's dream. That's who GW is in the GWZoo, right? This was him and his brother's dream. And once his brother got, he is so funny because he said, I mean, it's not funny. Like, nobody dying is funny. But like, he's like, you guys, my brother got, he got, killed in a drunk driving accident.

And then come and find out the drunk driver was driving a goddamn semi. truck, good Lord. So he gets, he gets smooched by a fucking, he gets smooched by a semi-truck. And Joe Exotic says, I will not have my brother's dream of petting baby monkeys dying vain. But there again, I get it. I do too.

The whole thing is coming together, you know. You've got this guy who, you know, grew up different in a place where that don't hit it it led to intense personal injury for him in the course of his rehabilitation from said injury he gets introduced to how hard a baby exotic animals hit and then after that his brother who shared his baby exotic animal dream tragically died at the hands of a drunk driver and it's like no wonder this all coalesced in this way for joe exotic you know like it all fucking tracks man The origin story is all there. I was about to say, man, this is honestly kind of like Magneto.

Yeah. So basically, at this point, Joe decides he's going to go around to schools and talk to them about the dangers of drug and alcohol. Damn, I forgot about this. I'm saying, while he was dressed up like a rodeo clown without the makeup. Now, he said at one point he's doing these shows and you see him do it. And like legit, man, like he looks like. He looks like Alan Jackson, he looks like Alan Jackson

cosplaying as Garth Brooks with stage four leukemia. Like I can't really explain to you. And like all that shit. He looks like a drag queen whose whole theme is 90s country. Yeah, yes, there you go. That's perfect. So he'd been doing his, he'd been doing his drug and alcohol show with all these animals. And I guess he just

thought in his mind, he's like, God damn, I just, I can't, get the message over him, how do I reach these kids? So he decided to add magic to his show. He learned magic from a 12-year-old boy named J.P. Wilson, who can be shown being interviewed also holding a goddamn tiger on a bed. Did you not think we was going to get more out of him? Yeah, I did. I genuinely did, especially because he's holding a tiger on the bed.

Like if it'd just been like, hey, I'm JP, and I was a 12-year-old boy, and this guy came to me and said, teach me some magic tricks. It'd be one thing, but like, I look down and I'm like, you also have a tiger? Yeah, no, I, yes, I also thought when this happens, like, oh, this is about to be a whole thing. And I'm very much. Yes. A 12-year-old boy in Oklahoma's parents let him hang out with a mulleted magician with a fringe leather purple jacket who went around, no doubt, on meth, trying to tell kids not to do drugs. Yeah, it should be. leave out all the tigers.

Yeah, right. They got a 12-year-old little, you know, magician boy, and then here's this guy with all these tigers. I mean, hell. They're also doing this show, and they're all packed in to a goddamn one semi-truck with 14 people crammed into the cab of the semi-truck. Lord, I bet it's stank.

Oh, you know it's stank. It should also be noted that this is where Joe Shrevegoel decided to change his name officially to Joe Exotic. It's a good change. It's a good change. Good change. Wasn't it J.P.'s idea to change his name? If it was, I didn't write that down.

So either that or he stole it from him. It's either he gave him the idea or Joe Exotic because the little boy had a name. He was like, oh, magicians got names. I'm certain it was because I'm certain he fucking stole it. So it also, they're reported to, they're making between 10 and 40 grand a show because at this point they're going they're not just doing schools they're at malls yeah right okay so on this note actually this goes back to a thing we talked about earlier on this series that we're doing here about the south and how this reflects on the south and all this type of stuff and i i could just be

totally off base because i had a very insulated experience up here in clay county tennessee but i was kind of shocked by this whole this tour he went on of all these malls and how, like, they were packed, like, people were coming out enough because, like, I didn't, were y'all aware of the, I don't ever remember that in my recollection of, we didn't have malls. We had donkey basketball, and buddy,

I don't know when they're going to do that documentary, but I guarantee you there's murder at foot. But I'm saying even at like Opry Mills and shit, do you know what I mean? Yeah, I don't remember, I don't remember that being a thing. But apparently, and they showed the map, and it was just going to put it out there, seemed to be mostly the Midwest to me.

Right. That they were touring around, but they had crowds and all these shows at malls and stuff, but it wasn't that a southern thing, right? Well, my thing with it was like, I remember at the mall when I was a kid, every now and then there would be, like you would see some people playing music or something,

but they were always just like, they were just there while you were at the mall. They were doing a thing. Like, nobody was selling fucking tickets. Like, nobody was like, man, we got to get to the mall because there's a show. Well, but okay, so I do recall being aware that they had shows at malls, but in my recollection, the shows at the mall were like long-forgotten 80s pop stars or whatever.

It's like, you know, it's like Tiffany is going to be at the mall. Right, right, right. What I'm saying is I don't recall ever it being a, tiger show. Right. No. No. I don't remember that being a thing, but apparently that was fucking very much a thing for a while. Yeah, and they were making a fuck to like literally, they said at some points they were making 40 grand a show, which is where enter Susan Bass. Susan Bass is a PR lady that Carol Baskins hired to shut down all of Joe's magic shows by getting people to email and

call the malls where he was performing at and complain, which worked. They had some sort of like big, big huge campaign going that at first would generate like 500 emails then they got like some sort of subscriber list and they're getting like 5,000 emails like all these malls are just getting flooded with these emails like hey don't let this dude put on the fucking tiger show don't hit and I guess they were just like all right fine don't hit so uh you know okay but on that note I'm saying and I'm in I'm sure you probably agree with me like that was all that was all originating from Carol Baskin right yes okay, like I get that it is different because like you said, they got them all shoved in these tractor trailers and all this stuff

and going around all these malls and shit. But I just can't get away from this notion of like the underlying subtext of all those emails. It's like it's immoral for you to go see these tigers at your mall in Nebraska. The only way to do it is to come to Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida. where it's completely fine. Yeah, yeah. I just felt like that was there the whole time

and their whole feud they had with each other. The only time I was like, who you think you is, bitch? Like I didn't understand. Not only that, but like, you know, at least fucking when Joe's doing it, he's paying his employees and letting him like he's giving them. Okay, I hear what you're about to say, Drew.

He wasn't paying them all that much. But the ones that he, you know, it was like, well, he's like $150 a, week or something like that he was letting them live there and like i know that the living conditions didn't seem that good but like that at some point was on on eric like his his trailer didn't have to have fucking fruity pebbles all over to god damn place it didn't come so much of a choice you know what i'm saying it wasn't like it was hiring anywhere that he could go but really what we're saying is going back to the doc anto comparison

Carol is better at what she does than Joe is because what they all do is to exploit people in an attempt to have their own kingdom. Yeah, that's right, because that's the thing. If all these emails were being generated from some just random animal rights group in some random city that it was just a collection of animal lovers who all had gotten together

to say, hey, this is wrong. That's very, very different. and them originating from the world's biggest big cat sanctuary that you can go and visit if you want to. It's like that just, it makes it completely different in my opinion. Yeah. It don't hit. It's also, you know, anybody could do one of my trying to say. Not anybody.

All right. There was a guy who wanted to be Tray's assistant for free. And it was like, I can't, you were like, I can't afford to. pay you dog I can't let you do it for free because like I feel weird about that and I you know my point like there's ways to build up your life by exploiting other people that she absolutely was better at than Joe Exotic but I'm not about to defend Joe Exotic because he did do that.

Yeah for sure but I mean math ain't free and neither is getting your butt fuck so you know at at least some stuff was having to know it. well, getting your butt fucked. I mean, you got to give some of my meth that, which, you know, when we get into that later on, we need E.J. Because he told me explicitly, buddy, I've had some good goddamn mess.

Not any would make me marry a man and let him fuck my butt for many years. Again, you're leaving out the tigers. So after Joe lost his, his means of making money by doing the shows at the mall, you know, not wanting to be out of money for long. He came up with the idea to charge people to take tiger selfies to use on their

dating profile, which became apparently a pretty big trend on Tinder, which is just fucking people with a goddamn tiger right beside their head. Also, side note, the GW Zoo apparently hits for Shaq. Because of course it does. Shaq, Shaq Shout out. He was in that episode.

Yeah, he wasn't a episode. episode. I think he bought a tiger from him. He did. Did I miss it? Like real quick or real so, this is where I got my tiger. Yes,

that is a thing that Shaq said. They showed a clip of Shaq like on inside the NBA giving Joe Exotic a shoutout because that's his tiger guy. So we got his tiger from. And since we're on this subject at this point, we talked earlier in our intro episode

to this mini series we're doing about how white trash this is. and about how, like, it reflecting on white people and all this stuff and whatever else. And look, all the people that are clearly, like, the insane ones at the center of the big cat world are clearly crazy-ass white people. But, like, there's a lot of rap and basketball history, I feel like, to point to where it comes to Tiger Ownership. One of me and Corey's favorite rap songs, because it really really, is a song called Liger by Young Thug. And remember when we first listened to it, I said to you in the chorus,

Young Thug is like, everybody getting tigers, so I'm going to go get a Liger, like to be different. Remember I told you I was like, man, everybody getting tigers, well? But apparently everybody getting tigers in the rap world. Mike Tyson had a tiger. Mike Tyson had multiple tigers. So it's like, you know, it's just tigers just, they just, They just hit for people, you know.

I do. There's something about these fucking tigers, but it was something about them. Everything about them. So maybe I'm coming full circle on the poop parasites. Well, we were talking earlier about how a lot of this was analogous to gun control and gun rights. And, you know, well, at least, you know, I take care of my tigers. I'm a responsible tiger owner.

And then I can't help. But now, as we're going forward in this documentary, this moment when this came up, I immediately thought of that Jim, the line in that Jim Jeffrey act about gun ownership where he goes, that's the thing about crazy people. They don't know they're crazy because now completely bringing this auto ahead and going to the other side of this, we have in Zanesville, Ohio in 2011.

What we see is a some bitch had had it with all his monkeys and tigers and lions and bears. And he just let a shitload of baboons and all these things out. And then it resulted in the police having to just what you can only describe as shoot the fuck out of all of them in a big ass pile. It was a tiger holocaust. Yeah, it was definitely 100%. Yeah, for sure. Or as they describe it, they're talking about how. So they start talking about this whole thing.

And you can't blame the cops in this situation. Like they had to do what they had to do. These fucking tigers get out. It's unprecedented. What it happened was this dude was legally illegal. allowed to have all these fucking animals. Then he was just like, fuck it. They show a picture of the dude and like,

think about who would do this. That's what that guy looks like. And luckily nobody got hurt, but they had to just, I mean, mow down all these animals. It's really weird because when they show the, when they show the picture of them, it's like the lines and the monkeys and the bears

and they're all in this one fucking like big pile together. And I'm like, did they like sweep them all over? Or did like, was they just all hanging out together? Like, fuck where do we go and then brr-r-r-h- Nah, they drug them over there to bury him a bit. Don't hit. So anyways, all that happens. And then, of course, Joe Exotic is going to get interviewed about it. So he's interviewed because some people have said that he is a ticking time bomb that could actually be 10 times worse than what happened in Zanesville. And he responds,

it is a tick and time bomb. If someone thinks they are going to walk in here and take my animals away, it's going to be Waco. So again, gun control from my cold dead hands, this type of shit is going on. It's at this point we have Sheriff Rhodes of Garvin County

who says that within a year of taking the job, Joe walked into his office and it's been nonstop ever since. As another thing I'd like to point out before we go forward, the documentary now cuts to Joe Exotic, standing next to a four-wheeler during a literal fucking tornado while he's just sitting there going, just talking about how this don't hit, we got to go inside, but he's just filming himself by a tornado.

And then Joe, then we cut to Joe screaming into a camera. If you're an animal rights activist and try to come in this facility, this is what you will be greeted with. And then they show Joe's then-husband John shooting a pond several times with a shotgun. Who among us hasn't shot a pond? Right. There's multiple shots from this show of people shooting a pond. Yeah, it comes up a lot.

Yeah, right, yeah. Well, you know. What that pond do? It did look like a black pond. I'm sure Joe hated that. Well, I think that the thing about the tornado, they showed that obviously to show, fuck, he's in tornado.

Valley, like, he might not even snap and let his animals go. Right. They might just get out. Yeah. He don't care. No. Because to him, it's I have a fucking right to own these goddamn animals. This is my ride as an American.

But it's not like if a tornado hits my dad's house and sprays his 40 guns all over the county, they're going to, you know, be going off in the middle of it. You know what I mean? Like, your analogy is good. Yeah, a kid might find one. Like, I get it. But also they're in a safe that probably would, you know, not rip apart. My point is your analogy is great, but like it's crazier than guns somehow.

Yeah. Yeah, no. No, it is. I'm just saying like it's making the same arguments. I'm not saying that. Yeah, no, no, no. I know. That's what I was saying is like your analogy is perfect.

But let's point out that this is crazier than guns, which is crazy. Like people who have multiple AK-47s and they're like, come get it from me, boy. That's a crazy person. This dude's that. What about Tigers? This is the first time I didn't forget about the Tigers. Yeah, now you're right. Dude, so not only that, like, I don't know if you remember that part where him and John Rankie,

who we actually haven't talked about, John Rankie is the, he's one of the head fellers over there that's got the fucking two, he's got the two prosthetic legs. And like, he'll let you know, like, oh, no, you know, this happened in a, what was it, zip lining accident. Yeah, I'll get a little ahead of ourselves, but yes, he says zip line and accident, and he shows a picture of it, and it's clearly. I forgot about that. Well, fuck all that.

Even if it was, like, man, just that's not who you want for the face of the company. But, like, his, so Joe, Joe and John have decided, like, once he makes all these Waco comments and like they find out that the sheriffs like take it serious. These motherfuckers made a vow. Do you remember this part when they make a vow with each other that if shit ever goes bad, they're just going to fucking shoot each other. And they got the bullets with their names. They wrote the bullets on their motherfucking names like they do in goddamn pinky blinders and

shit like that. Like motherfucker. I did like him though. I forgot that part. and that is insane. It's such an insane thing for people to do. I did like that guy though. Yeah, he is.

No, he was, dude, he was very much awesome. So after that, we got Joe who was just now standing outside, shooting his guns and waving them around at the cameraman, and then some shit explodes, and Joe yelled, fuck yeah. And that just hit for me. I just wanted to put it. And I can't believe.

it's taken this long, but we're finally here. Pita finally shows up. Peter's here with Brittany Pete, who is the captive animal law enforcement agent, which I'm certain is way too rad of a name for whatever queer bullshit she does. But it's funny, Peter made that up. That's what I'm saying, yeah. We got police. Yeah, dude, they're a bunch of fucking idiots.

And she's talking about how they've been targeting Joe for years. Joe has become increasingly paranoid. He's talking about how he has 24-hour online. armed guards and never isn't strapped himself. Back in Myrtle Beach, our man Doc Bagabon, Antle, talks about how he sleeps with a fucking loaded AK under his bed just in case some shit fucking pops off. Lunacy.

Apparently, dude, it's, again, they're like, these goddamn tigers, they're like, they're like guns and they're like drugs. And it's like, if you have one, you got to have all of them. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, if you've got tigers, you're going to need some meth, but also you're going to need.

some guns around because you got fucking tigers. Like, you can't have one without the other. It makes me think that with all the people I've known in my life, and it's not been a lot, but it's been five or six, who had a lot of guns and drugs, apparently I don't hit hard enough to know the people who get enough of those things where they require a tiger. Tiger, where they then go to Tiger. But they do. They do.

I just remembered a drug dealer in college who had a bunch of fucking wild frogs and lizards. He was on his way to being a tiger man. He OD. That's definitely. I would say that lizards are, I would say that lizards and frogs are like the weed to tigers. Yeah, the gatehouse. Yeah. But man, it's insane.

I'm going to have to apologize to fucking Bagavan Antel earlier when I was talking about how he was on some sort of like fucking ego trip. Talking about how like, they're all trying to get me, son. But like at this point, man, I mean, you know, PETA has come out and let it be known. That's what's up. We've had, we got Joe Exotic who's having to like literally, they're, they're, he's having to call the cops on PETA agents who were there just like trying to check shit out which I get it's amazing they didn't get fucking shot I guess this point Joe and Carol are both really really getting heated on social media Carol's actually putting up billboards and has

set up an animal abuse 911 website and Carol is on the radio Carol's on the radio talking about how there was a 20 week old tiger biting someone's leg at Joe's zoo and then I'll be goddamn They showed a footage, and there certainly is a 20-week-old tiger just biting the absolute fuck out of somebody's leg at Joe Zoo. Yeah, it turns out they do that. Yeah, yeah, tigers. That's what Chris Rock said. That tiger didn't go crazy.

That tiger went tigua. Carol at this point is asking the government to be a champion of the Big Cat Safety Act, which would end the ownership of Big Cats as pets and prohibit the public to have contact with, have contact with them. At this point we see Carol's husband for the first motherfucking time, this dick tuck piece of shit that you know

gets baby ointment rubbed in his fucking sore asshole every night. Fucking bitch McConnell over here. Dude, he does look like Mitch McConnell, but more of a bitch. He does. Dude, fuck that. He looks like Orville Redenbocker, too.

No. And before we get ahead of ourselves, I mean, we're about to, but I got to say it, don't he look like he know what she did? Like, I won't say what it is. Like, I won't say what it is in case everybody's doing this episode by episode, but like that motherfucker sit there with his goddamn shirt tucked into his cargo pants, like waiting on his turn to talk, waiting on his turn to talk.

Like, buddy. Well, we kind of- Barretta did that shit. Beretta did. We kind of, on that note, we kind of went on a backstory defense of Joe. I'll save it for when they get into Carol's backstory. But like, and not even a defense as much as just an explanation. Everything about her life in the past totally makes sense that like now,

she's like, no, I ain't having that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm not going to disagree. I'm not going to disagree with that. So we've got Carol going in front of the government trying to get them to champion this bill. we've got her husband sitting there.

Were we still in episode one? Yes, yes, yes. Like, I'm God. Damn. Carol's husband shows up literally just to show a clip of Joe Exotic saying this about Carol. He says, for Carol and all of her friends that are watching out there, before you bring me down, it is my belief that you will stop breathing. It's an exact quote from Joe Exotic.

And now this motherfucker in the same clip is talking about sending her snakes for her birthday. And then she goes to the mailbox one day and said to her mailbox, and I quote, exploded with snakes. Now, now I'd like to stop here for a second,

if I may. What I genuinely believe is that this woman, because I think Carol's a vindictive, smart person, like you couldn't do some of the things she's doing. I think, I don't think Joe Exotic put snakes in her mailbox. I think that Joe Exotic

threatened to put snakes, in her mailbox and she thought, oh, I have him on tape doing this. I'm going to go put snakes in my mailbox. You know what I'm saying? Or just say that there were snakes in my fucking mailbox. But it exploded. Joe then goes to the gun store to get 100 rounds of a 223 caliber, which naturally the owner says,

will that be it or do you need explosives today? Joe says he's fine. Now we cut to him shooting his pond again. And then he shoots a dummy that had dynamite attached to it. exploded he said fuck yeah that was tannerite which i just want to make that quick distinction between tannerite and dynamite because oh right jo's responsible as a gun owner guys yeah that's true that's true so now we cut to four years later it's 2019 we hear joe making a collect call from the grady county jail this is what he says he says i'm in a cage do you know why animals die in cages

it's because their soul dies. I'm not going to be accused and go to prison and lose everything I have for things that other people did. Before this is over, I'm going to shut everyone down. And that is the end of episode one in this insane fucking tiger saga. It's a strong end.

And I tell you, you had watched it before I did, and I was texting you when I was in episode one. And I hadn't said yet that I was in episode one, but I was just like, God damn, y'all wasn't kidding. This shit is crazy. And you were like, where are you at? And I said, I'm at the end of episode one. And you were like, you don't know shit.

Oh, you was right. I did not know shit. That's what's crazy. It's like we just spent what feels like two hours talking about all the insanity in this first episode. And like, we are just getting started. Like, it's, it ain't even, this is nothing. It's nothing. It's nothing.

No, it's absolutely nothing. but that's where we are ending thoughts Drew. Buddy, the thing about talking about it, you know, it almost feels like a tragedy that we've lived through because recapping it all has warned me out. Now I hear you. Like again, this feels like we've talked about a thing that should definitely be over.

Not even getting started. No, it's not even getting started. And if you like that, please share it with your friends and come back or actually just hell, keep going and check out Tiger by the Tale episode two. This has been a recap of episode one, not your average Joe. See you next time. Skew.

Esculators. Escalators. Well, in Wood, Oklahoma's where we meet our Tiger King. He's got them monkey champs and tiger cubs that keep his thing. He's seen he's got all his meth head buddies, and they're all. working for free serving cheap to Toteino's pizza covered in rock the Walmart meat. Then, of course, there's old Doc Anto. The tigers made him rich.

And don't forget about Carol Baskins, man, we fucking hate that bitch. We got a tiger by the tail, baby. Tiger by the tail, we got eight. Tiger by the tail, baby. Tiger by the tail, we got a, tiger by the tail, baby. Tiger by the tail, we got a. Tiger by the tail, baby. Tiger by the tail, we got a.

Tiger by the tail, baby. P.