Intro

Speaker 1
So that's talks about all the guys she's dated. As she says, she mostly dated really nice, like skinny, dorky, sweet, sensitive guys. Mostly guys named Paul. They all weighed 160 pounds soaking wet and she's like, maybe that's why we had no problem because I was always bigger than them and had more power over them. I could always beat them up if I needed to. She does
Speaker 2
two pretty insane hookup stories. One's about hooking up with a guy on spring break who they didn't even really hook up. He just fucked a mattress in front of her.
Speaker 1
She says he just got on her bed and she was at the window and he just took off his pants and underwear and his pubes covered his whole dick and they were matted and disgusting and musty. Then he just started thrusting even though she was nowhere near him to completion. This was a psychotic story and I understand why you would want to put it in a book for posterity. She's like, he made a sound I've yet to hear since. She's like, do you know how rare it is to hear a new sound? So that was crazy. Then the second story is about when she's in her early 20s live in New York. She meets a businessman who wears a suit and thinks they're going to get married. Then after four months of dating, he says, I want things to be casual and she has a breakdown starts crying and then has sex with him. Then at this point, when she's desperately having sex with him to try to get him to not be casual, he asks if they can do anal and she's like, of course not. You evil disgusting monster, but in actuality,
Speaker 3
she says yes. Okay. Then she goes,
Speaker 1
I turned to look at this Titan of industry. I want to stare straight into his eyes and say with conviction and the darkness of that tiny room I speak, nay, I roar. Yes, I say. Yes, you
Speaker 2
may. Then she gets into a little cool girl diatribe. She says that she is not cool. She babbles at parties. She doesn't really know what to say to people. She meets a lot of people who are overly cool and she talks about meeting a cool girl where she just like embarrasses herself because this girl has the power of not caring and Casey has the unpower of caring too much. And she says this girl says one of the dooshiest things I've ever heard. She says that she gets really anxious at parties and has a lot of social anxiety
Speaker 1
and she's like, oh, why? And she goes, because 99% of the people who talk make me feel embarrassed. Meeting people say makes me cringe. If you are somebody who's so fucking cool that you can even bear to listen to other people, then stay the fuck home. Fuck you. That's a you problem. Well,
Speaker 2
that's what I was going to say to this is reading this chapter. I was like, this is something that I want to like screaming Casey Wilson's face. I was like, there is no such thing as cool people and uncool people. There are wretched, concierge parties who make you feel bad about yourself. You often do have perfect bangs, but that's not really
Speaker 1
something that can get you to have a thing.
Speaker 2
But that doesn't make them cool. Like, it's not cool to be an asshole to people. It's actually cool to be kind.
Speaker 1
As my dad used to say to me, it's nice to be important, but it's important to be
Speaker 2
nice. And then she talks about Louis Anderson coming and sitting down next to her when she has no one to talk to at the party. And they just have a really lovely and quick exchange where they each proclaim themselves fans of the other one. And then they have a nice little sharing moment about both of their mothers who have passed. And then he gets up and walks away. And you know what? That is the coolest person at a party, the one who makes you feel like you're not a fucking loser. He like, it's such a fan of her and happy endings. When he goes, is your mom still with us?
Speaker 1
No, I said, I'm so sorry. And then he asked me something. I realized no one ever asks. What was her name? Kathy, I said, he looked up at the sky and with a quiver in his voice, he said, love you, Kathy. And then he got up off the sofa and walked away. What a cool
Speaker 2
guy. And here's the thing about coolness at parties. I genuinely do think that if someone makes you feel bad about yourself for something you say or oversharing or being too excitable or something like that, it's like hard to do because I have had a lot of party anxiety and regret and being like, did I make an ass of myself? Like, did I seem like a weirdo? And it does take time. But if someone makes you feel like you said something uncool or uninteresting or whatever, like that is a miserable person, you guys were both invited to the same thing. I always feel it's like an immediate power switch when you're like being nervous and talking and trying to connect to somebody and like unsure of how it's going over. And then they say something
Speaker 1
to specifically make you feel embarrassed or put down and immediately go, oh, you're a fucking loser. If you need to take this power on to me, if you see me trying to be a human being and be vulnerable and connect to you, which is a very normal thing because we're in a conversation, sorry, I'm like trying hard to participate in this conversation for your benefit and you're going to try to turn it on me. I actually immediately go, oh, there's something wrong with you. Like it's very uncool to turn people down that way. This next chapter I don't even want to talk about. So what happened is they did have these two like menace labs that ripped up everything. Finally, one of them, they had to give to a friend and the other one, Sabre was always running away and the whole town had to get involved. And apparently her parents were like pretty blazze and like neighbors would have to go after the dogs with like stakes and they would just see them taking off down the street. One time they got a call from the hotel and they're like, hey, I think your dogs are here. They're doing like jumps off the diving board. Everybody loves them, but she got to come get them. So these dogs were always running away. They would try to make the defense taller and then the dog just ended up crawling under the fence. One day the dog runs away and just never comes back. Three years later out of nowhere, the dog shows up again. Wearing the same bandana looks just the same, a little bit older, but it's a miracle. Everyone in town is so low in a way that they're on the cover of the local newspaper. And for a month, no one can believe the way that Sabre came back because the whole town was invested in Sabre and I didn't know where Sabre returned home because he missed his old pals. So the Sabre comes back and then a month later, missing dog signs start popping up for this dog, Moonshine. And people are like calling their parents and me like, listen, I'm a Godfearing woman. And this man said, have you seen a black lab with a red bandana? And I looked in the eyes and I said, no, I have not. But everybody was like, I have a bad feeling that our little miracle returned is bullshit and they had to give the dog back and it was humiliating.
Speaker 2
That is humiliating, but I just don't think it's funny for a dog to be running away this often. It's not an anecdote to me. It is a lifelong tragedy. If bug ran away and I lost her for like seven minutes, I don't know that I would survive the seven minutes. I can't say something. If she was constantly running away at some point when you go, maybe she doesn't want to be with you. I guess if bug was running away, it would break my heart and I'm so grateful to know that she is the clingiest bitch on earth.
Speaker 1
Like if she wanted to roam, would you let her roam?
Speaker 2
No, because New York is pretty dangerous roads. But you know, she doesn't want to roam. When I go into a coffee shop to get a coffee and leave bug outside with Claire, bug has like a meltdown.
Speaker 1
Bug is not a strong person.
Speaker 2
She and I get our constitution from each other.
Speaker 1
So then the sex chapters about her love of housewives, she discovered housewives when she was in like a grief coma after her mom passed away. Her mom died suddenly. She had a heart attack and just died at the age of 56, which is very rare for women to have like a random heart attack like that. That is fatal. And so she goes back to LA and just makes a bed in the closet in the living room with the mattress she found on the ground outside in LA, which I was like, Casey. That's disgusting. That's too depressed, dude. You had a mattress in your apartment already. Why not pull that one over? But she just watches TV for like months and she happens to watch the premiere of episode one season one of the Real Housewives of Orange County, the OG Real Housewives. And she falls in love. And then she just talks about she started a podcast called Bitch Slash with her friend Danielle Schneider, who also loved Real Housewives. They had a friendship. They were going to do like a limited dish thing, but she says like in a dish to talk about Real Housewives. And they talk about themselves and their troubles and their trilations. It's a little love letter to the Real Housewives franchise and what she loves about it.
Speaker 2
I don't feel so bad laughing when women dressed in flappers costumes argue full-throatedly about who ate the icing off a birthday cake before it had been served. And it really helps her kind of like find herself again. I think this book has a lot of really great essays on grief. Yeah. I mean, this book is about losing her mother. Yes. And I think the way that there isn't actually a chapter about the loss of her mother instead in almost every single chapter, she weaves in the way grief played a role in her life through this chapter of her life is very interesting because it really is like an ever evolving process.
Speaker 1
I think the greatest success of her life so far professionally has probably been bitch that she I know she's been in the happy endings. But I feel like she probably has gotten the most success financially and like critically from bitch sesh. The way that her love for housewives came out of her grief and then out of her love from housewives came this like passion project that's been so successful. She has a very not anti-hero but as I've keep saying like she is flawed, the things that are supposed to be things you're ashamed of or not like about yourselves end up being her strength like her weaknesses are her strengths. Yeah.
Speaker 2
She's a little less linear and she takes things that are viewed as weaknesses or viewed as less desirable qualities. It is about the fact that she has with her whole chest declared this a passion and that is good and okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1
And that's what people like about the podcast is that they take it so seriously. She's like, no, you don't understand me. You have to dissect every word. Yeah. I don't just watch. I'm obsessed.
Speaker 2
She gets into her anger issues in this next chapter. She has broken many a phone to violent anger. That's like kind of one of her go to outlets is to just chuck her phone across the room when she's very
Speaker 1
angry. She broke a phone in SNL. I mean, she's broken like so many phones. Yeah, that is insane. She says she like threw her phone into her mirror SNL in the green room and I was like, I don't know women were allowed to break stuff backstage out of fury. I guess they're not she got fired. Yeah.
Speaker 2
The problem is I wasn't exactly sure what I was so angry about. I have deeper got over the few times I've turned my acid tongue on my prized girlfriends. I think it was because I always felt like they can handle it, but they shouldn't have had to my ability to maintain close connections with women from all the chapters. My life is something I'm proud of stuff, but nothing will threaten a friendship like screaming at a girlfriend. Your husband is a little bitch at Buka to Beppo in Studio City. That is an intense thing to scream at someone at Buki to Beppo in Studio City. How could things take such a turn? Of course she loves the house lives. She's like, finally people who talk like I talk.
Speaker 1
And then she says growing up her mom had big feelings. My mom wants to throw a dining room chair at my dad's head and I barely looked up from Mr. Popper's Penguins. My dad was arrested for screaming at a matriod who wouldn't see it in elderly woman. Later the woman told my father that while she was grateful he had stuck up for her, a stranger, the reason she was standing by the doors that she was waiting for someone. The upside is this is that as he was being dragged out of the restaurant in handcuffs, he had the presence of mind to yell to the patrons seated on the patio. Apotiz me, meaning throw their appetizers at him to see if he could catch it in their mouth. I mean that's very funny. Her dad is very funny. Scream Apotiz me.
Speaker 2
And the fact that people knew, I'm sure that there was like a mouth motion that went with it. If I said Apotiz me and went, right, but I think that if I was eating at the patio of a restaurant and like a man being forced out said Apotiz me and opened his mouth, I don't know that I'd be fast enough with my hand and my thoughts. Not you, but that's why it takes all kinds actually.
Speaker 3
You
Speaker 1
make me quick with the word, but you're not quick with the popper.
Speaker 2
So she realizes that her anger is a funnel for sadness. The sadness of publicly failing at my dream job, the sadness of cheating on a loving college boyfriend because I didn't know how to extricate myself. The sadness of my mom dying so young, the sadness of how far we haven't come. And while I'm no less angry, knowing that it's not the end of the story makes me less reactive. Anger demands you do something and sadness requires you be. And that is very interesting. I never really thought of that. Like to be sad, you have to just decide to exist in a moment. But when you're angry, you can like scream at
Speaker 1
someone or throw a phone or throw a phone. I mean, listen, I understand that one's healthier, but if you were like, Claire, you could sit in your sadness or you could throw a fucking phone and be like, I'll throw a phone, please. Yeah.
Speaker 2
And she talks about working on her anger and how when she looks at her mom and then herself and then her children, progress is being made. She is obsessed with self help. She calls herself a seeker.
Speaker 1
If you go up to her and say, I know a woman and that woman was you with a different name and a mustache, she would pay you $5,000 to like look into her eyes and tell her something about herself.
Speaker 2
She will pay a lot of people for retreats, for breathing exercises to have her kitchen cleansed of bad energy around Tupperware. I mean, it is something that I think I would be hugely at risk of if I had a lot of money.
Speaker 1
Can I tell you? She's like, I will say my one astrologist has predicted a lot of things specifically and she is really good. And I was like, okay, I would see that astrologist next time I'm in LA. And then she has a psychic whose brain has been scanned by scientists. So I'm like, well, I would see her too. But she also hires the scullery whisperer who comes in and she hires her to help learn how to cook because she's these kids. And she's like, my grandmother was a great cook. My mom only ever made tacos, but now I know nothing about cooking. And so she brings this woman into teacher, like, make some chicken, you know? But the woman will not instead. The woman keeps talking about like the energy of the kitchen has to just throw everything out and she should probably redo her kitchen. And then she says your three meetings away from really knowing how to feed your family and you have to come to my house. And she just has her come over and walk around the garden barefoot and ground herself with the trees and stare out the window.
Speaker 2
And she talks about how much money she has given these random people who just like adjust the energy of spaces. And she admits she's like, I know it's not likable. I know it's an insane thing to do. I'm laughing at me, not with me.

10: Josh Wolfe - Illuminating Tomorrow

Dialectic

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