(upbeat music)
- I am certain there was not a ghost writer involved
and that's pretty cool.
I believe, I believe that Bob and Paul
wrote every word of this book.
- People being like, I picked this up
because it an awesome cover.
This just goes to so, never like choose
the book by its cover.
- I don't feel like this book deals with depression.
It deals with a made up version of Skits of Raining.
- The clothes are bad.
The writing is bad, the plot is bad.
- What you guys did to me might violate
the Geneva commission.
Like this is, this was terrible.
(upbeat music)
- Hello everyone and welcome back to Me Book Club.
This episode we read Supermarket by Bobby All,
aka Logic, he's a rapper, have you heard of him?
- No.
- I know him now though and he is my enemy.
- I certainly heard of him,
but I think because of his video gaming.
- Oh really, interesting.
All right, well we'll get into that,
but as always are your hosts of Me Book Club.
I'm Sarah Burton.
- Hello, I'm Clara Morris.
- Hello, Johnna, Scraybass.
And we read New York Times bestsellers
that our fans tell us really shouldn't be.
But Clara, do you wanna do the honors?
- Yes, we have a special guest with us tonight.
We have Joey Price, he taught and performed
at the UCB Theater for many years
and is currently the artistic director
of San Diego Junior Theater
and the host of the podcast Bean Ball.
I said his name at the top,
but please welcome to the podcast Joey Price.
- We have a good one.
- Yeah Joey.
Hey, thank you.
I came in earlier before you said who I was
by saying I didn't know logic
and so I apologize for that extra no.
- People thought that was Sabrina.
- People thought that was Sabrina first.
- Yeah, that's true.
It is, I apologize to the audience
most of all for scaring them.
- Also Joey, I should let you know
just because Sabrina is not here this episode,
typically in our group she fills the slot of the person
who really loves the book.
So I'm really excited to see you step up for that Joey.
- Spoiler alert, I'm not that good of an actor.
- Just do your best, do your best.
Fill the role that you've been asked to come do
and maybe some confidence.
I just wanna describe too.
Joey is a very old friend of ours, we love him.
He's an old old person is what I'm saying.
We love him.
Very much.
- And he is wearing a great green Hawaiian shirt.
He's kind of a Hawaiian shirt guy
and it's a really great one.
It pops.
- Thanks, yeah, on a screen especially, I think, yeah,
I think on camera this would look really good
for any casting agents right now.
If you wanna cast this shirt,
it would be a really good shirt to cast.
- I don't know, maybe too busy.
Anyway, Clara, how did we, why are we reading this book?
- This was recommended to us by listener named Jessica Lynn Webb,
from Ricky Evick, Iceland.
- Nailed it.
- Ricky Evick.
- I thought she was.
- That's what I said.
- Yeah, you did it.
- I said it.
- Fine.
All the way in Iceland, so cool.
I had to lay over there once, so been there.
And she said, supermarket biologic is truly the most
heinous, misjustice to storytelling.
I have ever had the pain of reading.
My friend and I downloaded it on audio book
during a long drive through the Rocky Mountains
with no service or radio.
And it was painful enough that we nearly drove in silence.
(laughing)
Please, please listen to the audio book.
I promise you'll find lots to talk about
with its borderline harmful takes on mental illness
and characters that play between stereotypical
and straight up offensive.
- Wow.
- So, well written, well summarized.
- Accurum.
- Yeah.
So we took her up.
- Yeah, I think this,
what you guys did to me might violate
the Geneva commission.
Like this is, this was terrible.
This was a terrible experience.
- Even by our standards, it was,
- Yeah, Jesus Christ.
- I have to say, I feel like I own apology
to every author and every book we've ever had
on the cast before this one.
Honestly, it's like, how could I hate a book as beautiful
as the house in the Cerulean Sea?
(laughing)
- Now that I know that this book exists,
everything else in comparison.
- Right.
- It's a work of destiny.
- It is.
- She's both,
- Johnna was super negative about it.
- She's already taking it back.
One of them might be a little later.
- It's a beautiful piece of art that someone actually
worked on and wrote and put it into the world.
- Joey, she gave this book, I think a one out of,
one out of five.
- I think it was a zero.
- Oh, zero.
- But I was pretty,
- Well good luck writing this one.
- It was a really elevated tool, 100 out of 100.
The scale is now forever changed.
(laughing)
I was violated.
- I've been really bad at reading lately
and this was like the first book I'd read in a long time
which is just terrible.
- I'm so sorry.
- Yeah.
- Well, but I quickly was like,
I just had to read something else.
So in some ways this did get me reading again
because I started a new book right away
to just kind of wash the taste.
- That makes sense.
How did everyone read this book?
I mean, I know it was recommended to be done via audio book
but now I wish I had a new audio book.
- Logic Reansy audio book.
- I did the audio book as well.
Well, not only does he read it,
but there's musical interstitials
that he wrote, I believe.
- I was listening on two times speeds
that did not sound good.
I'll just--
- Oh no, the music was bad, the music was bad.
But I think that this book was,
he put on an album at the same time as the book
or something like this and I think that that music comes from that.
- Yeah, sorry.
- I believe you're correct about the music
in the audio book coming from the album.
- Wow.
- But you read the book as you.
- John.
- I read the book, John.
- And I wanna say, it also has a very bad cover.
- Oh, interesting.
I do wanna talk about it too
because I think I kept reading over and over again
in the goodreads reviews people being like,
I picked this up because it an awesome cover.
This just goes to so, never like choose a book by its cover.
Like everyone was like so thought the cover was good.
- I'm confused.
- They've done--
- Can I just scribe the cover?
- Yeah, please do.
- We're all looking at it.
- Is segment they like to do, Julie,
but I don't like it because it's a podcast.
(laughs)
- Okay, but words can paint a thousand pictures
and the point is class, nothing's true.
- That, it is a generic red book with a bad feel.
There's no texture to it at all and what texture you do feel
feels like an airplane food tray.
So it's bad association for me.
It makes me wanna throw up.
It's red and then tiny kind of in the center of it,
in yellow, it's just a supermarket.
And people are following over themselves to get this book.
- Yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
- It's interesting.
- It's different.
- It looks smart.
I think it looks smarter than it is.
It's so simple that you're like, this must be smart.
- Yeah, I mean, that's the case for the whole book,
but we can get it.
- Yeah, yeah.
Luckily, this was another one that was in storage
in the library.
(laughs)
I should always love to see.
That's the final step before a book is burned.
- Yep.
- Oh, also I wanted to ask,
what's my responsibility here to return this to the library?
Is this one I do have to give back
or can something bad happen to this book?
They're not finding anymore, remember.
There's nothing they can do to hurt me.
- I don't think so.
- You're doing a public service
if you get this out of the library, circulate.
- I think you can put it back in the circulation,
but maybe leave some notes throughout.
I think this is a good book to deface.
- He's a right-in-note.
I do want to, I need to deface this book a little bit, I think.
- Yeah, I think that the,
- Won't find you,
but they might ask you to pay for a replacement book
or mess up with your lending privileges or something.
- But if I explain the circumstances?
- Oh, that might do the trick.
(laughing)
- Or just ask them to read the book themselves
and see what they.
- Okay, all right.
- I'm just okay.
Okay, I just, I just felt murderous,
like I want to hurt the book.
- Right, and also,
I will also say,
Johnna, I also, again, from reviews gathered
that like he's writing in fragments
and just, I think probably,
I'm gonna guess that reading it was more painful
than the audio book, just because like,
I didn't have to see all the weird grammar
and the weird sentence structure.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
(laughing)
All right, Clara, you want to take us to our Clara,
what is we calling you?
- What are we calling you?
- Clara is, um,
- Clara's class on the book.
- Joey, what did we call it?
- It was cool.
- Clattering around with Clara,
I think I'm adding that.
- Yeah.
- Clara, come on down.
- Maybe it was Clavers or something,
I feel like this.
- I said what it was.
- Oh, okay, so it's clattering around with Clara.
That means it's time to summarize the book.
If you three will scroll to the bottom of the outline
to a section called Summary,
this is just gonna be a one person
in sort of narration thing.
I didn't really do a script.
And Joey, would you like to do the honors reading our Summary?
- Oh, sure, you got it, okay.
Action starts with that.
- Action.
- Okay, this is the story of a cool dude slacker
who is also good at writing.
He used to skateboard PS,
anyway, his bitch of an X,
as he can't finish anything.
So he's getting a job at a grocery store
to finish his novel about a grocery store.
He already has a book deal, just has to finish it.
At the store, he finds his protagonist
and the guy who works at the store.
Frank, a weirdo, who all the girls love,
who steals from the store, has a gun in his locker
and runs his mouth.
Frank plans to rob the store.
Perfect, now Flynn can finish his novel
because he has the main character and the main action.
Anyway, guess what?
Flynn was working so hard on writing.
He had a mental break and became schizophrenic.
He and Frank are the same person.
And Flynn actually robbed the store.
And actually, this whole book has taken place
in a mental institution and is a delusion of Flynn.
So any bad writing was just because the narrator
is a crazy person, but he really did rob the store.
And in the end, he gets the girl.
She's a lawyer who helped him break out
of the mental institution, which did not get her
disbarred or in trouble or him in trouble, the end.
(laughing)
- That is the book.
- That's all right.
(laughing)
- I just, I felt weird that you added the word bitch
to that summary.
- No, no, no.
(laughing)
- Yeah, that's right.
I feel like that was subtext.
He never really called her a bitch,
but I feel like it was subtext.
- Did we know that?
'Cause we got the word, we got the C word,
a lot of fives could have, a lot of fives.
We got the N word.
- Multiple times, you hear the N word, yeah.
- Not even close to the most offensive racial care
in the station.
(laughing)
Just can't wait.
Well, that was an accurate, I think that was pretty accurate
summary, but I can't believe you did a summary
without mentioning Fight Club.
That was, yeah.
- Oh, I'm not that familiar with Fight Club.
- Oh, okay.
It was like Fight Club, but instead of a Fight Club,
there's a supermarket.
- Yeah.
- So stupid.
I also just wanna read up, just because you're gonna understand
why this is so infuriating once we get into it.
There's a blurb on the back of the book
from someone named Ernest Klein.
He's a number one New York Times bestselling author
of Ready Player One.
This is how he describes it.
- We've done that book.
- Oh, God.
Someone named Ernest Klein of something.
- Go the training plan.
- No wonder I hate him.
Bobby Hall has crafted a mind-bending first novel
with prose that is just as fierce
and moving as his lyrics.
Supermarket is the naked lunch meets one few
of the kukus nasser if they met at Fight Club.
- No, holy shit.
- God.
- How do you write something like that
and not cut out your own tongue and then
- So cool.
- So if you like, I can never use my words again.
I can't be trusted.
So you'll see why that is so infuriating
as we get into it more.
- Sort of embarrassing just to listen to.
- Yeah.
- Whoa, I think it's drink-bearing time.
- Oh.
- Mm.
- John is jugs. - Okay.
- John is jugs.
- Joey, you had a pretty funny joke earlier off the cuff.
Do you wanna say what you thought
the drink-bearing should be?
- Oh yeah, I think the drink-bearing for this book
should be cyanide.
(laughing)
- I kill yourself. - I agree.
(laughing)
- Some of seems unfair.
They get to read the book and die.
(laughing)
- I think take it. - I would have had a roofie.
- Oh, you're giving yourself-- - Oh, so you forget it?
- Yeah, that's good.
I would say it would pair well with bloat.
(laughing)
(singing)
It would pair well with a blow to the head
and then a big old glug of hebeke Japanese whiskey.
The only reason I say that is because it's the alcohol
that the main character proudly mentions having in the book
and you know it's because Bobby Hawley, a K-logic, is like,
it's actually a really good whiskey
that I've had a lot of times
and I'm just gonna show that I'm actually a really complex person.
(laughing)
Even though I wrote this kind of low-brow character,
I actually have a really interesting taste and interest
and I wanna let that shine through.
So I guess have it and have a lot of it.
You are drinking to forget in this situation.
- Absolutely. - Absolutely.
- Absolutely.
- They go, pour yourself a pint glass worth
and then dig in.
- All right, and we're gonna dig in.
Right after this, commercial break.
(upbeat music)
- And we're back.
Clara, I mean, give us the background, let's go.
- All right, let's start with the author, Bobby Hall,
also known by his stage name, is that what it's called?
Logic.
He was born in 1990, says young.
- Boo!
- It's okay.
- He's not like, it is 20, though.
- Yeah.
- I mean, I'm not doing the math, but I'll take your word for it.
(laughing)
He is a rapper known for albums under pressure
and an incredible true story,
both top five billboard albums.
He's had two Grammy nominations.
- And how many wins?
- I believe zero.
- Guess they would have said if they were--
- Yeah, they promised.
- They promised.
(laughing)
- He had a rough childhood, his father was addicted to cocaine,
or crack cocaine, his mother was an alcoholic.
He was kicked out of high school, he skipped too much school
and was failing every subject except English,
just like the character in our book.
- That does, you know, - He had a school in the book.
- Him being a high school dropout adds up
after you read this book.
- It really adds up.
- I don't really believe in failing English, but.
Did you guys see that his first name,
I don't know how else to describe it is Sir.
So his name is Sir Bobby Hall,
but he's not like knighted or anything,
that is like the name that is.
(laughing)
- This sounds familiar, but I forgot.
- I think I saw this on Wikipedia that he was named Sir--
That's not his fault, I don't wanna blame him for that,
but it's worth mentioning.
- I saw that his name was Sir Robert, whatever,
and I was like, is this motherfucker knighted?
I'm not looking into this.
- It's just what his parents named him.
- That's kind of cool.
- That's fun, I might do it, I might copy.
- Put an Esquire at the end too.
(laughing)
- That's not his fault, but I actually like that about him.
(laughing)
- Just to get the credit for it.
- It's the only thing so far for me that's humanized him
a little bit, but he had to deal with that
'cause I also have a hard name, you know,
it's like, okay, the struggle of that.
Well, what about this?
He has had some mental health troubles in his life.
He said anxiety and depression.
- Who has life.
- He had one anxiety attack in 2015
and quote, almost passed out.
- All right, suck the panic attack.
- Yeah, one.
- You had one?
- You had one and you didn't even pass out.
Is that even one?
- I felt like he didn't know what a panic attack was
in the book with the way he was,
but whatever, we'll go keep up.
- Yeah.
His mother was bipolar.
She took heavy medication to deal with it
and another quote, I grew up with friends
who were schizophrenic, so I experienced that firsthand.
- Maybe.
- That second hand, that second hand.
(laughing)
- That's not the definition of first.
That's something you get in the last years
of high school, Bobby.
That and complex words and sentence structure.
Plot essays, I believe you have to write essays
sometimes in high school.
It would have been cool if you had tried doing one of those
before you wrote a book about that.
- I can't believe he's saying he had friends plural.
Like he had many friends.
- Yeah.
- He had schizophrenic, sorry.
- I guess they're schizophrenic,
so they don't prefer.
- I'm sure they don't like the schizophrenic terminology.
I don't think anyone was comfortable with that.
(laughing)
He had several friends that were schizophrenic.
I just feel like,
- And you grew up with them.
I thought that that was a laid on set disease.
Maybe it's not.
- Right.
- Maybe it's not true.
- No, that's true.
- And from what I know, it does tend to onset in your 20s
and the only person I know that has schizophrenia,
that's what happened to that person.
But, sure, I'm sure he had dozens of friends
and that's why he was able to write this so realistically.
- Let me give you some background on the book.
- It was published in March of 2019.
- It spent seven weeks on the bestseller list.
- Insane.
- How?
- Insane.
- I think he's a very popular rapper.
- Yeah.
He did write, as Joey was telling us,
he wrote an accompanying album for the book,
also titled "Supermarket," which Pitchfork said of,
of which,
(laughing)
of which Pitchfork said,
from clumsy stadium rock to unacceptable scoth,
Audrey's overly ambitious album is a painful slog.
- And you know, so I'm not a music critic.
I'm not a big music critic, but I'll take their word for it.
- Pitchfork, Pitchfork.
- I'm not always with Pitchfork anymore,
I think they're, but they gave,
I saw that they gave this a 2.9 and I'm like,
they were, they're probably right about this one.
- Yeah, I would imagine.
- They're probably right.
- Yes, in line with the book too,
I would just replace like, from clumsy, plotting,
unacceptable racism and stereotypes,
logics, overly ambitious book is a painful slog.
(laughing)
- Yep.
- Yeah, Pitchfork here can be overly critical,
but I think universally this album is like,
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Let's see.
- Okay.
- He, he himself has said,
he actually put this in the knowledgements of his book
that he wrote. - Do you want me to read it
directly from the knowledgements?
- Yeah, I mean, I think I have it quoted, but.
- Oh, sure.
- What's your, no, no, no, it's good, it's good, it's good.
- Just in case I messed up.
- Transcript. - After a week.
Yeah, in case you messed up, I want to make sure I said it.
After a week of binge reading novels
for the first time in my life, in my mid-20s,
I sat up and said, I'm gonna write a book.
- Cool.
- And then his friend said, you can't do that.
And then that was all the motivation, logic needed.
So in the knowledgements, he's thinking his friends,
his friend for saying you can't do that.
So let's unpack this.
- Oh my God. - He's like, red, a book.
Or maybe two for the first time.
- For the first time.
Was it fight club?
Or how could it not be?
- It was catcher in the rye.
Or what's the one that seems to be?
- A clock or orange, maybe.
- Yeah, I mean, fight club is, it's, this, oh, so,
it just borrows so much from fight club that it must have.
- It must have been one of the books.
- Like, it just is crazy.
- Doesn't it remind you so much of high school English class?
Like something?
- Yeah, all right.
And they thought it was really good
and they're really proud of it.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And they tried something and they took some experiments
and they probably, you know, the teacher was probably kind of nice,
but maybe they got a C.
That's what this whole long book felt like.
- I don't know why.
I mean, I guess he's a famous enough person, but like,
it is crazy to me that like editors, nobody push back.
Nobody was like, well, maybe not this one, maybe, you know,
- Maybe they did.
- I mean, it spent seven weeks on the bestseller book.
- Yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe just as a fucking hat.
- It's the cover, it's a theme.
- And this is one I have to say, I'm certain
there was not a ghost writer involved and that's pretty cool.
- I believe, I'm sure.
- That's true.
- All wrote every word.
We did do another book this season with Dolly Parton and, you know,
and it also had an accompanying album, et cetera.
But James, we think probably James wrote most of it.
We feel her ghost writer, James Patterson,
- Ghost writer, James Patterson.
- James Patterson.
- It is, yeah, I think she knew when to set, like, step back.
And he, but this, he shit out every God damn board.
- Yeah.
- From his own small mind.
- God love them.
- I just wanna, just after we've said that God loves him,
he did write part one of this in a deep depression,
then two years passed and he wrote part two
and described that as overcoming my own loop.
- Two years passed and he still was like,
oh, still upon reflection, I think this is good.
- Wild to me.
That's wild.
- Yeah.
- Truly.
Okay, well, I'm sorry,
well, I mean, we'll be talking about mental health and stuff,
but I don't think just having that as a topic,
a good book makes, you know?
- Yeah, it's not enough for me to be like,
oh, you were depressed when you wrote this,
then it is our better mind.
- Well, and it, right, and it also just like, doesn't,
it doesn't feel like it's dealing with,
or it's like about mental health in any sort of healthy way.
- True, including depression.
I mean, I guess there's that thing
where after his girlfriend,
he's like, very depressed for a few weeks,
but it's not, I don't feel like this book deals with depression.
It deals with a made up version of schizophrenia.
- Right, yes, it's completely,
it's like, he's completely inaccurate, like mental health.
- Yeah.
- Issues.
And then also like, not, I mean, I guess in the end,
it's like literally the pills save him by--
- I guess that was the nicest part of it.
- Right, but it's like,
but they spend so much of the work,
of the book like rejecting that in a way
that feels like a bad message to give to people.
- And it feels, it still feels like,
it's like, the pills saved him,
but not in the way I think.
Like it's in, he's still not,
the end of the book is not like,
he learned a lesson he should have been taking his medicine.
(laughing)
- It's the bad guy slips on the pills.
He wasn't taking the lessons.
It was good that I saved these hundreds of pills
in my pocket instead of taking them
because I was able to throw them down like,
character in home alone.
(laughing)
- Can I also, I wanna get into characters and everything,
but I just wanna give the listeners a taste of what,
just like what a little bit of the actual writing was like.
- Yeah.
- If you guys don't mind me. - Yeah, please, please.
- I'm just gonna do two or three quotes from early in the book.
This is all within the first 15 pages,
I'm not exaggerating.
I just stop taking notes 'cause I was like,
well, we can't take a picture of every page.
(laughing)
Okay.
This is him describing a character.
Mid-20s on the tall side, maybe six-one slim.
He had a long bent nose and wrinkles in his forehead,
like Hugh Laurie, you know, the guy who plays house.
I don't mean like a grown man sitting in front of a plastic teeset,
talking to a lifeless teddy bear, pretending to be a husband,
joining onto his wife about the report
as boss demanded be on his desk by Monday,
even though the boss first mentioned it was the deadline for it.
On Tuesday, and now he would have to work through the weekend.
I mean, the actor who plays a doctor named House
on a television show.
No, you don't know what I'm talking about.
- This is so bad.
- It's a character description.
- I don't know what you're talking about
'cause that middle part where you said it was Dr. House,
and then-- - He was making,
he was trying to make it grow?
- The days don't, the days don't indicate
he would have to work on the weekend.
(laughing)
- And you say it's Dr. House again?
He was trying to make a joke about playing House,
like how little kids play House,
but then it was so like, why are we doing this?
It's not a good joke, and we're--
- It's not a little kid.
- Yeah, I think it was just literal word.
(laughing)
- There's so many unnecessary details in the whole thing.
And then like to Johnis Point earlier, so much,
there's like all this stuff that all the cool records he has
and stuff like that, and it's just logic trying to be like,
look how cool I am, I wrote this book.
- I have right now, I use a typewriter,
look at this alcohol, I think.
- Oh yeah, he writes with a typewriter, of course,
because of course he does.
Here's how he describes blood,
because of course there's blood on like page nine.
I actually think there's violence on page one.
This is like our third instance of violence.
It dripped onto the floor from my fingertips,
like a faucet when a child doesn't shut it off
after brushing their teeth.
It was thick like maple syrup, but not sticky,
more like red coffee creamer.
(laughing)
- Whoa, what a haunting description of blood.
- He also-- - I'm chill.
- At the very beginning he talks about
the look scene, his reflection in blood too,
which was kind of funny, that was like the first paragraph,
he looks down and sees his reflection in blood.
It's like, what?
- It's shiny.
- Oh, what is this blood?
- And then last little thing,
this is just how he writes dialogues.
So just like kind of like a snappy reparse hay
between characters you're gonna get in this book.
This is word for word verbatim, okay.
That means the same thing.
Hey Flynn, Rachel said, hey Rachel, what's up?
I responded as I opened my locker.
Nothing much, just another monotonous day
in the grocery store, she said, taking a sip of coffee.
Whoa!
- I know that some of this is for the benefit of the listeners,
but I hate that I have to listen to this.
(laughing)
- Yeah, it's hard to go back to the dark point.
- There's a good one right there.
- Wait, I did, I also got, I have a few, just a few more.
This is apparently a page 133.
What do you mean I ask?
Not quite sure what she meant.
(laughing)
- But that's a good joke, if that's a joke,
it's a funny joke I got.
- I don't think it was, but I think it was.
(laughing)
- I don't think it was.
He did think he was funny.
I don't know, the breaking, what did you guys think
of the breaking in the fourth wall?
Because I guess in terms of like, oh wow,
this is a cool distinct, you have a narrator
that's like turning and talking to you
as though he's writing the book,
but it's like confusing because he's acting like he's talking to you
and not, you're not reading a book.
- It felt, it was weird.
Sort of like the mentioning of the whiskey
and the mentioning of the records,
it felt like he was saying, I know what breaking
the fourth wall means.
It felt like he was just--
- It made no sense to me in the context of the book though.
- It also, it makes a little bit more sense
when you find out he's writing a book within the book,
but for the first, that doesn't happen
till for a while in.
And so you're like, what is the point of us?
- Right, yeah.
Yeah.
- It was kind of like, he starts talking to you.
- But then like, if he's writing the book
within the fourth wall. - Whoa, I broke the fourth wall.
- But it is the book, isn't it?
Like, that's where I was like, whatever.
It just bothered me.
- Yeah, no, it wasn't good.
(laughing)
- It was bad.
We didn't like it.
- We didn't like it.
- We'd break down our characters.
- Okay, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair.
- Okay, main character, Flynn, he's our narrator,
our unreliable narrator.
He, yeah, like we said in the summary.
- Works at grocery store to write.
I thought it was funny that he was like,
I have to finish my novel and then he like,
meet someone with the grocery store.
And he's like, there's my main character.
He's like, how much of the novel was written?
- Yeah, he didn't do main character yet.
- Yeah, then, yeah.
So, okay, Flynn, he's writing the book, blah, blah, blah.
Frank, that's the guy who's gonna be his main character.
He's at works at the grocery store.
Or, does he?
He's actually.
- Yeah, Frank?
- If he's a minimum,
doesn't interact with anyone else.
- Yeah, it does.
- No Frank, it's a delusion of Flynn, the same person.
So, when Flynn starts dating someone
and Frank starts dating someone else,
it's actually Flynn dating two people at the grocery store.
- So good.
- A lot of people work at the grocery store.
- Yeah.
- Also, dating is a generous way to this type of place.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- He doesn't have a lot of respect for what?
The narrator, the author,
is it the author?
(laughing)
Speaking of, we have Lola, his ex,
who put him on this path to write,
finish writing the book, basically.
- She was like really hot,
but she broke up with him because she was like,
"You're a loser, you know, finish anything."
- She was mad because he hadn't finished the book.
He was like 24, too.
I was, he was 24, he still lived with his mom,
but her problem was that he didn't finish his work.
So, sounds like, I don't know, sounds like kind of a loser.
Sounds like it's kind of a lot of reasons to break up with him.
Then there's Mia.
She works at the grocery store, but she's in law school
and she's so hot.
She's like a combination of Jessica Alba and Rashida Jones.
So, like just a hot woman, or--
- Yeah, oh, you're good.
- Can we also say an apology on behalf of the author
to Kat Dennings, who he just continued to compare people
to some of the two multiple times in this movie,
and it's like, she deserves better than this.
- Oh yes.
- I don't remember it.
- Was that the other--
- Oh yeah, a couple of times.
- I have the exact quote actually.
This is one woman.
She had one of those college girl vibes, you know?
I'm hot and cool and don't give a fuck,
but was probably molested at some point in my teenage years.
So, I'm always in defense mode
and attack others before they can attack me.
Kat Dennings typed that kind of trick.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Wow, there are so many reasons to be defensive.
- All right.
Someone ju--
- It was mean to you once.
And by mean to you, I mean like,
notice what shirt you were wearing.
Oh, no offense to you.
That's all I need to do.
It's also like, if you keep getting this reaction
from women, it might be more about you than it is a woman.
But all the women in your life are like uncomfortable,
anxious, defensive, a little bit snappy.
- Like, wait, this might be more about you.
- Can we talk about, I'm not gonna write, now okay,
now I don't remember, but another character,
his like, literary agent or the guy who buys the book.
- Ed Norton. - Ed Norton.
- Ed Norton. - It was something like,
very painfully fight club obvious.
It was like, why did it work?
- Yeah, that was the first to be like,
wait, why is it Ed Norton?
- About two, it was like one of the dumbest clues he left.
(laughing)
- Clue.
- Oh my God, it was so stupid.
I do wanna know when you guys figured out
that it was like, they were the same person or like.
- I mean, when did I figure out he was schizophrenic?
When he said, my dad is schizophrenic.
And I just adopted this dog from a dog shelter
and I put a red collar on him and I was taking him for a walk
and I asked a man to take a picture of us
and he looked at me really weird and kind of freaked out
and was like a picture of you and dog dog,
but that's supposed to be a big mystery.
- Yeah.
- He didn't really adopt a dog.
He's just pulling around a red collar on a red raven.
- Yeah, there's like three chapters before there's actually
the reveal, but where it's like extremely obvious
what the reveal is and you're like, just get to the reveal already.
- Yeah, and it felt like, are you giving us clues?
Or do you think we're stupid?
(laughing)
- No, like, to jump back to the,
this is maybe a little thing,
but the Ed Norton's letter that he wrote to Flynn
to say, I'm gonna publish your book.
It was like, it's been so hard to get in touch with you.
He like, don't have phone or email,
so I had to write you this letter and mail it the old fashioned way.
Anyway, we wanna meet.
I'll have my assistant get in touch with you.
- That's the letter, I really wanna have.
- Just an early, it didn't make any sense.
- Like how can the assistant possibly get in touch with him?
(laughing)
- He just said,
"Now the sudden he's flying in New York
and writing a book that he didn't know what he was writing."
He got like an advance.
I was just like, this is not true.
- It's going in and in.
- It also is like this really,
it feels like this really shady setup of like,
oh, like is this publishing company weird?
Like this whole thing seems odd,
but then it just isn't.
It's just a completely normal publishing deal.
- I'm proud of the airplane to New York City
to meet with the publisher.
He meets at television writer and they really hit it off.
And he's like, have you written anything that I would know of?
And he's like, rest development, Rick.
(laughing)
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Oh, just, oh yeah.
Yeah, this television writer was really excited
to meet someone who said that they were also a writer.
He was like, oh, that's amazing.
Let's talk more about writing.
That's really cool.
The exact opposite reaction you're ever gonna have
from someone who's a successful writer.
- Again, I'm like,
logic being like, isn't my taste in TV good?
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Absolutely.
- It also cracked me up that any time
a character was going to New York,
they would refer to it as NYC.
I got a job in NYC.
(laughing)
And it's like,
logic, you've probably been to New York.
(laughing)
I understand that people say New York, New York City,
Manhattan, New York City.
- I wasn't sure he had given his description.
Like the one thing who's accurate was like the trash bags
everywhere, but then he was like,
every cab you get in, they don't know where they're going
and they make you pull it up on your phone.
Or like,
- It wasn't just a description.
- It wasn't just a description of New York
from like sleepless in Seattle.
- I was like, what?
- Yeah.
- Someone who's just seen that movie
and they watch the movie and they were like,
wow, Hawking cabs, ladies and heels.
(laughing)
- Like, the, it's a bit claustrophobic,
but the energy, you know,
- Right here.
- Yeah, it was so stupid.
- Oh my God, this motherfucker.
I hated him.
He was a very unlikeable character to start with.
- There are a few other characters,
store manager who's just like a nice guy.
There's this, oh my God.
- Sort of, sorry, the nice guy.
Yeah, I just remembered that he starts,
he goes into interview or like apply for the job
and they're like, okay, we can interview you now
and then he punches the Ted Daniels guy, the manager
and then the guy still gives him the job.
- Oh, that was a daydream.
- That was a daydream, the punch.
- That was actually first.
- I don't know that it was a daydream.
- I don't know.
- Considering his diagnosis.
- Oh, right.
- Yeah, yeah.
It wasn't, it didn't actually happen.
- Okay, but yeah, it might have happened in one of the,
I thought it happened, but then we didn't find,
like, didn't happen later.
I don't know.
- No, that one was in his head.
- All right, which is a fun device that the author uses
is makes us think that some sort of horrific violence
has been inflicted on an older woman in an elevator
or he sort of truly,
a customer after the, like, I don't know,
I feel like he drops it after the first third of the book.
So it never does it again.
- Well, he probably, I mean, he wrote it two years ago, Claire.
He doesn't remember everything about the road.
- Right, yeah.
- Yeah, he definitely didn't read it.
- I sure he didn't go back and reread.
(laughs)
- He did.
- His mother is also a character.
- Supportive, almost too supportive.
And I mostly bring it up because like,
he read the audio book and the voice he does
for his mother is so insulting.
(laughs)
- It's like, idiot, dag, wine sort of.
- I wonder what, okay, I was wondering
where he put his mom in the, like, spectrum of women
that exists because you're either a beautiful, hot,
long-legged angel or you are a haggard old man.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- So I guess she's an old nag, unfortunately.
- Yeah.
- He read her like so stupid, just like,
"Oh, honey, that bad."
(laughs)
Oh my God.
But again, I don't have a direct quote.
So, that was good, we got it, we got it though.
Yeah, I get it.
- There's also the character of Red.
- Oh, right, man.
- Who he describes as like Morgan,
before we know his name, he describes him as
like Morgan Freeman from Shawshank Redemption
and then gives him the same name as...
(laughs)
- Which is, I thought...
- Back hair.
- I thought he was just making up a name for the guy
and refusing to actually find out his real name.
Like, that boy was like, "You just make me just...
"Yeah, that might be the case, though."
- But then it was like, I always didn't,
he was just another character that didn't...
- That didn't exist, but also, I feel like,
I feel like Red, we heard, there were scenes
where people refer, other people refer to Red.
- Do you imagine conversations with Red
or like imagine divergent of Red?
I'm not sure, actually.
It was fair to you to like find a logical,
I don't wanna say his name, but it's hard to be like,
this is a logical mistake in the book
because he has that undertow where he can just be like,
"Oh, well, that was a schizophrenia, so."
- Right.
- That's not writing, which is so unfair.
It's like, yeah, he might have had characters mistaken.
They refer to a Red who was supposed to be a complete delusion
or we don't know.
- We don't know.
- I think also part of the problem is that
because he doesn't consume, it seems like any kind of culture,
like a book, definitely no books,
and I wonder how many movies he's really seen.
I think that he thinks other people don't too.
So he's just like, I saw this incredible little no movie,
Shawshank Reduction.
I'm gonna just take a character from it,
'cause probably I'm the only one that saw this.
- Yeah, I just wanted to see it.
- This is a literary illusion, not that I'm just full
on stealing characters.
He does just full on stealing plot points,
full on stealing characters.
It's wild.
He was like, this is cool.
This is something I can do.
Like, I don't understand.
- It's not good.
- And it's, yeah, it's, it's bad.
- He's stealing characters.
- Things people like.
- And not elevating them.
You can't do that without, like, at all,
he like just, he did the opposite of elevate.
He put them in, he put them in the--
- Yeah, he took a good idea, found a way to make it work.
- It's way worse.
- He's about cut out the good parts of the good idea.
- Right, it was like, Fight Club is a lot of reflection
on like masculinity and it like, it's saying, it's tough.
This doesn't say shit.
- It's, I don't know.
- It's wild.
- It also seems like he was really excited to be racist,
like as racist as possible.
Stereotypical as possible.
Like, we have this character, Ronda.
We meet on page 10, just so you know.
She was, this is a direct quote,
she was kind of like the slightly overweight black woman
in every movie.
Sassy attitude, lowered eyelids and judgmental aura.
But, basing a first impression
on her physical appearance really wasn't fair.
You can't judge someone simply by,
you applying for a job just dressed in blue jeans
and a white shirt child.
When she said this, I was glad my gut was right.
I wasn't prejudiced.
Oh my God.
- Go ahead.
- John, if you had listened to the audio book,
you'd know that he's actually very respectful
about the voices.
(laughing)
- Amazing, very disturbing.
Like as though pointing out his own racism makes it okay,
it's like a weird thing he kept doing that.
Like, yes, he said at one point he goes either way,
Ronda was pretty dark.
Oh shit, wait, does that sound racist?
- Oh yeah, yeah.
- I didn't mean dark like her skin tone.
- That was supposed to be, because I think,
I actually can't even keep reading this,
'cause it is.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I think it is, I think it's, I think it's,
I think it's, yes, it's definitely him trying to be funny
in this kind of edge-already way,
it just is completely, yeah, it's so bad.
- It's not even the structure of a good joke,
it's like a sound alike.
- It's really good.
- Hey, I could probably do a little better than that.
I don't know, I'm gonna say.
- Yeah, you know what the book deeded?
Laugh track.
I think that would have elevated it.
- That would have elevated it.
- And I know what's a joke, I know when to laugh.
Why don't they do that in audiobooks sometimes?
Just like, good idea.
- This one needs it.
- That's a good idea, let's pitch it.
But, let's put a pin in it, we'll be right back
after this commercial break.
(upbeat music)
- And we're back.
Okay.
- We're just,
- Wow Sarah, you gave a really just kind of firm look
at us, like get in line, we're back.
- Okay.
- I hope you're ready.
- I didn't offer a bathroom break,
I just said we're going back.
- I don't have to pee, you don't have to pee either.
- This goddamn book, I just like,
I don't even know, we really explain how bad it was.
Like, the plot.
- The quotes have.
- The quotes have, yeah.
The quotes are bad.
The writing is bad, the plot is bad too.
- Yeah remember for every quote we read to you,
there's 265 more pages and they all have words like those words.
- Yeah.
- I think like one way to show how bad it is.
So like the first half of the book is like,
they're at the supermarket and then he like robs it at the end
but he realizes that he's had this complete,
like mental breakdown and that it's this other,
it's a different part of his personality, right?
That robbed it but it's still him.
And then the second part of the book is like,
two years later, him at a mental institution
and like he's,
he goes through these phases where he wakes up
and remembers what happened
and then he just goes back into being in like a completely
like non-lucid state I guess.
- And like, are you living?
- Yeah or like it feels like it just happened or something?
Like, right.
But it's like, that's not, that's not like,
I don't think that that's how like schizophrenia works, you know?
Or like any sort of thing that he is like trying to
to say that this character is dealing with,
it just feels completely inaccurate and just for the sake of like,
I don't know the story or whatever.
- I don't think the time thing, you're right.
I don't think that is a thing.
Like there's, you know, disorganized thinking,
which okay, yeah, that works, why he kept, you know,
interrupting himself and saying random shit.
Hallucinations, solutions, we get that.
But like being like losing sense of time
or like going dark for two years, I don't know.
- Yeah.
- Maybe he had something else too, but I don't.
- And then also that like the people in his life,
Mia especially like stick by his side
after he is like done all of this to him.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Mia confronts him to be like, you're cheating on me
'cause he was like, and he never admitted it.
- He was, and he never admitted it.
Then he's like, here, my, Frank's on the phone, he'll tell you
what happened and it's not even a phone that is working
so she knows he has a problem.
- Yeah.
- And that's it, that's the end of the relationship.
She sticks with him for two years supporting him
through complete mental lapses, where he's not in the real world.
- But no, what you're leaving out, what you're leaving out
is what you're leaving out also, Claire.
Is that the mom took the book that he had been typing
after he got, after he had his breakdown
and got it to a publisher.
- Oh, right.
- And then because there was news around for some reason,
robbing of a supermarket got, you know, national tension,
the book became a bestseller.
So, Mia saw, Mia saw him as her, as a ticket.
She was like, I'm gonna stick with this guy
because he's making some money off his crazy
and I like that about him.
- And then also the minute that he finally seems
to be coming out of it, she's like, I'm getting out of here.
Like, you were around for two years.
- Yeah.
- When he was like, not there essentially.
- Yeah, still at the grocery store, still working.
(laughing)
- Can we talk a bit about the book he wrote?
Because my understanding is, we basically meet the
Frank character, we learn about him, he fucks all these girls,
he goes on dates and he writes in detail
about the sexual exploits.
Then he describes Frank robbing the store,
gets the money, he drives away the end.
(laughing)
- That's my understanding of the book.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- Oh, but right after he robs the store,
he was gonna wipe the security tapes
because he's able to do that, it's no big deal.
But then he decides at the last minute,
he's gonna look up at the security camera, flip it off.
But by the time they view this tape the next day,
he's already gonna be in Canada, you guys.
- Yeah.
- This show is like Canada does like,
- This is like the production, there's not gonna be an issue.
- Yeah, Canada.
- I agree.
- Natoriously a great place to go and hide.
- I'm sorry, sorry.
- I guess this is what feels very like
bad writer's workshop in middle school, high school to me,
is like he even described the robbing the store,
is like I found what will be the climax of my book,
but it's the end, like he doesn't know what the climax it is.
He ends on, he gets all the girls successfully
robs the store, the book's over,
is like you don't even know what a book is,
but you can't, and that's the book.
- You can't write one.
- That's the book within this book
that makes him a best seller and they're turning into a movie.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it can't even imagine a book properly.
And like I feel like an English teacher would be like,
oh, here's the definition of climax.
So, now you have to say what's going on in the chapter.
- I can't tell you, I've never been more excited for us
to get to Goodreads Five Star Reviews,
because it's like hard for me to imagine there could be one.
Like who is this person?
Where did they come from?
What did they like about the book?
- Of course.
- I feel, I feel like scared to see something.
He has a cool voice, right?
Like, he sounds like a cool dude.
- I don't know.
- I'm so happy.
- I'm so confident.
- It's a confident voice.
- His picture is the dorkiest picture.
- I hate it him so much.
I can't say that the voice felt cool to me.
But I don't know if that was just swayed by the things
the voice was saying, you know?
- His picture though, he's doing one of those sideways smiles
that's like, oh me, I just don't smile straight a little bit.
And it's one thing that makes people wanna have sex with this.
- There is something like confident and kind of audacious
about the book.
And so I could see if somebody was drawn to that
why they would like it.
It's completely misplaced.
But I like, there is like a swag kind of to it.
- The sort of like, yeah, I think,
I didn't graduate high school,
but I wrote a book and feel to it.
They were all wrong about me kind of.
- I mean, you wrote words to,
did you write a book?
- I don't know.
I don't think structurally it is a book.
But you did write pages and they're glued
together with book glue.
- Should we do the answer as the author?
- I would love to.
- Yeah, I think I wanna just read a quick another--
- Okay, go ahead, go ahead.
- With those acknowledgments where you just to talk about,
just again, the swagger and the sort of arrogance
of the book.
This is just an example.
It's not a good, I'll just read it.
So he says, I'd like to thank Mia,
the fictional character I wrote and created from my mind.
The sweetest, coolest, nicest, most understanding
and completely unrealistic woman I've ever thought up
in my head.
And so, sexism aside, I think that he's like, I wrote her.
I thought of her from my mind, in my own head.
Like, he keeps being like, I came up with that cold character.
- Look, he's acknowledging himself.
- It's awesome.
- It's awesome to be honest.
- We have had an author who remember,
Felt's in so much in love with her main character
that she divorced her husband.
So it's actually not the craziest take.
(laughing)
- Wait, wait, wait, who was this?
- I can't remember to be honest.
- God, it was, wasn't it Colleen Hoover?
- No, I don't think it was Colleen Hoover.
- It was probably on "Epray Love."
I wanna say, 'cause he prayed love.
- Come on.
- Sorry, I don't wanna derail you.
That's so funny.
- I bet it was, I bet that,
there were other problems in the marriage.
(laughing)
- E-erites, yes.
(laughing)
- I really do think it was the "Epray Love" one.
Okay, but we can do the answer as the author.
- Okay.
- I think it's happened a couple times, by the way.
- Yeah, I think that's why I think that's why
I think the character.
- By the way, logic is married.
So he did find someone.
- Twice.
- Good for logic.
- He's been married for a couple times.
- Yeah.
- So I guess he found someone as cool as his own mind.
- His second wife was as cool as me.
- Yeah, that's true.
First wife.
- No, his wife was probably low love and me, yeah.
(laughing)
- Yeah, I think the next line after that
and the acknowledgments was like,
until I found a woman who was even better,
but he still like, doesn't think or name his wife.
Okay, so in this section, this segment,
I will ask the three of you a question,
the same question, that an interviewer really asked,
logic and you guys sort of respond in character
with what you think might be the answer.
So, logic, thank you so much for joining me.
- Oh yeah, Claire, it's so good to be here.
- What do you hope readers take away from this book?
- Well, I hope they take away that I'm so cool
and that when I use the N word,
it's because I am using it ironically
and it's because I'm making a message and a point.
And when I talk about mental illness
being solved by a really hard hit on the head,
it is because that is ironic, okay?
And I have not done any research,
so I actually don't even know about the history of things
like electro shock therapy.
I just wanna say that, I don't know about those things.
- Okay, great, thank you for so much.
- You're so beautiful.
- Thank you, I agree.
- In your case, give me.
- Okay.
Oh my God, you said it kids.
Yeah, we did just a great character for a moment
as the interviewer, we did forget to mention
that his schizophrenia was solved by a blow to the head.
(laughing)
All right, watch it.
- Thank you for joining us.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem.
- What do you hope readers take away from this book?
- Take away from the book.
- Well, I think there are a lot of things
that I wanna make sure people get
and one of, there is a bird just flew by.
It was like blue.
A robins blue or is that a different kind of bird?
Like, it made a cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap sound.
I don't know, I don't know what that is,
but it feels like a sign, right?
Anyway, what was I saying?
Oh yeah.
(laughing)
I hope they take away that schizophrenia is scary.
Dope and pills are the answer.
- Thanks.
- Bitch.
- Thank you.
- Okay.
(laughing)
That felt personal.
- I went out of paragraph.
Logic, thank you so much for joining me.
What do you hope readers take away from this book?
- Thank you for having me.
You know, I guess I hope I take away,
that readers take away from the book,
that buying books and buying music is good by my book
and buying music.
My music is a good thing to do.
(laughing)
And I think if people do that,
then everything's gonna be pretty good in the world.
- It's very direct.
That's good.
The real answer that Logic gave is,
he hopes people take away from the book,
as long as you deal with your problems head on
and face your demons, whatever they may be,
mental, physical, emotional.
If you truly deal with it, it gets better.
Head on for a character that does this problem
by falling backwards so hard that he cracked his skull.
(laughing)
- Incredible.
- He juxtaposition of when we reveal
that his problems were small.
(laughing)
- I didn't even understand what's happening at that point
in the book.
I was like, this is just,
I was like, it's fight club,
so he's gonna fight himself till he's practically dead.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- We should explain.
I mean, me up, go ahead, Joy.
- So I also don't understand how, yeah.
I mean, I guess this is what was alluded to.
It's just like, how does he kill,
how does he kill his alter ego without killing himself?
There's just like no logic to it.
- And there's also no logic to why Mia stands by him too.
She breaks him out of the institution.
They drive to the grocery store.
And here's where the series of criminal events begin.
He throws a brick through the window.
He burst into the store.
He climbs the ladder, holds a lighter under the smoke detector.
All of the sprinklers in the store turn on.
He gets a gun, grabs Mia and holds the gun to her head
and tells her that he's gonna kill her.
All the while in this fantasy that he's trying to kill--
- He's like, Frank's the one doing it
and I'm fighting Frank to not do it.
And like, he kills red, but red was never there.
- Pools 500 Lexapro out of his pocket.
Throw them into the air.
- Oh, it slips on his ass.
- Also that nobody at the mental institution knew
that he had all these pills just in his pocket.
(laughing)
- He'll put in tells like when you have like four pills
in your pocket.
- Yeah.
- He must have just been like,
like, clatter, clatter, clatter.
- His psychiatrist kept saying,
every time he was like, I just, she was like,
you know, the therapy, the pills,
it all seems like it's working.
It's like, you're not good at your job if you think it.
(laughing)
- Yeah, the man's pockets are literally bulging with pills.
As long as you deal with your problems head on.
- Head on.
- He gets me.
- You don't need the pills.
As long as you use the pills in some way,
it does not need to be.
- Orally.
(laughing)
- And then he kills Frank, I guess, snaps out of it
and within because we know that Mia said she was moving
to NYC within the month.
Within the month, they're both living together in NYC.
- Beautiful.
- He, I guess, his sentence is for robbing the store,
which was to be in the mental institution is,
no, since he's a better.
- It's served.
- It's canceled.
(laughing)
- And since he's so old, he's so old.
- He gets all his money now.
- He's gonna break out.
- He gets money from the book movie.
- From that really great book.
- The one we just tried.
- Who could come next at the end.
(laughing)
- It's just that simple.
- Wild.
- No.
- What is, the lesson seemed like the pills thing
was like, should have been on pills the whole time.
- It's like that is such an unfulfilling ending
or like, I--
- And I don't think that that's what he meant.
(laughing)
- I don't think so, I think.
- No, that wasn't the lesson I took away.
- That's what I thought he was going for, pretty hard.
So what did you guys think the tape was?
- I thought that it wasn't a metaphor
and it was just like, I fought hard and I beat up.
Nice, 'cause it's a fronate.
- Yeah.
- And it was--
- It was a--
- It was a real weapon.
- Mm-hmm.
- No weapon.
- But I needed to be mentally stronger
and once I was, then I was well.
And once I had that blow to the head.
Is the real key.
- Yeah, you could--
- That's the unsung hero here.
- The trippy.
- Yeah, I'm now I'm also, that is the,
and then in a fight club there's that
and then like, they're on the town blows up.
I feel like that's, like I feel like it's like the same--
- Yeah, the pixies play.
- Yeah, that's what I think it's funny to me, 'cause I'm like,
again, let me just do the same thing.
We're half the movie, you don't know,
or you're supposed to not know, I'm battling myself
and then you find it out and then I have to fight myself.
I don't know, it's just so funny, it was the exact same thing
and it is. - Yeah, it is.
- Is there a lesson here just coming from the author
that as long as you're confident,
you can literally do anything?
- Oh, interesting.
- I think if you have a little bit of celebrity,
like honestly, it's why we're gonna see so many like,
TikTok or people with TV shows or writing books
and it's like, just because you can do this one thing
doesn't mean you can do everything, but--
- Right.
- So, marked ability matters a lot more.
- Yeah, you can actually do it.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
If people know who you are--
- It's a pretty bleak.
- It's capitalism, I think.
- It's capitalism. - It's something about capitalism.
- Very depressing.
- It's making me mad, or--
- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just treating it.
- No, it's okay, it's not your fault.
- John asked.
- Such a bad book.
- Unbelievably.
Well, do we have anything else we wanna touch on
or should we take a break and come back
for our five star reviews, hate rates, et cetera, et cetera?
- Joey, final thoughts.
- Bad book wouldn't recommend.
- We'll need you to say that again during the break.
- And just like that.
- Okay, well.
(laughing)
- All right, we're gonna take one more commercial break.
We'll be right back.
(upbeat music)
- And we back.
So that's so great.
- All right, you guys ready for some good reads,
five star reviews?
- Yes.
- So my, all right, this comes from Laurie, she says,
upfront, I think it's important to say
until I saw Supermarket on the best solo list,
I'd never heard of Bobby Hall or Logic.
This, Bobby's first novel is remarkable.
Five stars and a standing ovation for the new novelist.
Some reviewers are saying it's a rip off a fight club.
No, it's not.
Bobby probably saw the movie and it inspired him,
but the book is far more complex than the movie.
Some reviewers are saying the writing is simplistic,
maybe in the beginning it seems so,
but end to end, it's complex.
This is not a story that needs nuance,
that doesn't mean it's not well written, it is.
That doesn't mean it doesn't have meaning, it does.
That doesn't mean people won't write these about it.
They could, it reads like a classic.
I was perversely thrilled when I read the,
in the acknowledgments that Bobby Hall didn't finish high school
and hasn't read many books.
Maybe some are jealous of his talent.
In this society where people with a few hundred dollars
can self-publish crappy novels and others
pay many thousand standard writing programs
that won't tell them they are gifted enough to stand a chance,
supermarket is offering a sheer unbridled talent,
the kind you can't teach, the kind you can't learn,
it is, it insists upon itself.
Bobby Hall, B. Well, stay well and please write more novels.
Five stars.
I do agree that no one should teach or try to learn anything
like this writing style.
(laughs)
Keep this out of our classroom.
(laughs)
It does seem like the didn't graduate high school is a,
I wonder how many five star reviews are gonna mention it.
Yeah, like they're really proud of that.
Yeah, are they just like, wow,
someone who didn't graduate high school wrote a book
and therefore, yeah.
I think it's more self-reflective,
like any teacher who ever doubted them.
Yeah.
I could have been great.
Oh, okay, so they're flipping it back on the shelf.
Right, right, it's kind of like the Rags to Rich's story of like,
I mean, he even graduated high school,
but he wrote a book.
Look at the words.
Yeah, see, mom, I don't have to do my homework.
Kind of, yeah.
Mm, okay.
He feels really good.
Yeah, you can just do it by sheer talent.
Okay, here's another run from Andrew H.
He says, "There might be a little bias in this review,
as Bobby Hall is my favorite artist.
Supermarket is a really fun read.
You as a reader are completely immersed
in the main character's thoughts, emotions,
and overall attitude towards work and life.
I guarantee the first paragraph will hook you right on
and it will be hard to put the book down.
The book is split into two parts
and both were written at different times in the author's life.
I won't carry on with part two as I may spiral the book.
Despite one or two plot holes, Supermarket is fun
and you just agreed.
And I would recommend it because looking for a short,
thrilling book, five stars.
I love how he describes me as a immersed
in the main character's thoughts and world.
It's like, you're just describing a book.
Yeah, yeah.
Problem.
That's just baseline what a book needs to do.
I like, say, you kind of chose a younger voice.
Sure thing.
(laughing)
Yeah, it just felt like somebody was trying to hit a word count.
It wasn't as funny as you know that.
Oh, it bobby.
Yeah, certainly.
And it wasn't a long book but it was painful.
It still felt painfully long.
It took a while.
Yeah, I was like, oh, this was short when that reviewer said it.
Yeah.
It was just I didn't want to keep reading it.
So that's why it was hard.
All right, let's do our hate rates now.
This is gonna be a hard one.
Those were the only two five star reviews.
(laughing)
Sally, there were more.
It was hard.
I will say that for, on like most of these good reads books,
we yet have like a four point blah, blah, blah,
like total review number actually I'm coming to look it up.
But this book has a 3.30, which is not good.
Which is very low.
That's a lot more in the good reads world.
So I'm like, I think a lot of people do read,
we're like, this fucking sucks.
(laughing)
So, there you go.
We're not, what are you talking about?
I said, no, I got you.
(laughing)
It's so good, that's so good.
All right, again, Joey, we do this in the world
of Mean Book Club Books.
So, you know, you're not comparing it to whatever you think
is the greatest novel all time.
So you can give a five out of five to Mean Book Club's book.
But I know, if you did for this book, I would lose my mind.
But does anybody, what?
So you're grading on a curve?
I'm grading on a curve.
You're grading on a curve is yes.
That's what I'm saying.
But I think, you know, there's good bad books
is what we kind of are, we'll talk about.
Yeah, I understand.
And sometimes a good book, I full on good book,
sneaks in because you didn't understand.
We didn't understand that somebody's just recommending it
for us to read, not for the point.
(laughing)
That's what happens.
So that'll happen from time to time.
We'll still find ways to blame about them.
Okay, sure.
Anybody want to go?
I mean, I guess, you know, sometimes I feel bad
making fun of books and I feel even more bad
making fun of the authors.
But I do feel like we're out there trying to do a service
for people.
We do this for you.
This is to our own detriment, to our own mental health,
to our own intelligence.
And while I don't want to be cruel to someone,
I just do really think this is an example of something
that should not exist.
(laughing)
There is nothing redeemable about it.
And I think calling it a book
besmirches the good name of books in general.
I don't even want to return this to the library,
but I will because the library is a public service.
And I respect it too much to deface one of its books.
Okay.
This is a zero.
This is a very hard, new low zero out of five.
Two zero out of five is an arrow from Johnna.
This is a first.
It's been a bad three books for me.
(laughing)
All right, I'll go.
I, yeah, I fucking hated this book.
Wasn't good, was painful,
unlikeable main character, says a bunch of racist stuff,
doesn't deal with mental health well.
But I'm gonna give it a one out of five
because in all honesty,
seeing this man write a book is inspiring.
And I really think I'm gonna try to write a book.
This is the book that has made me feel like,
you can do it Sarah.
You can write a book.
And so for that one out of five.
Okay, I like that.
I also think I'm gonna go one out of five.
Very bad, hated it.
I guess I like that he didn't, that his dog was fake.
He's like, yeah, you don't get to have a dog.
I don't know, something about that, kind of like.
And also I think this was a really funny cast
and we were really funny and some,
you guys picked really good quotes and stuff like that.
So that makes me feel good.
Okay.
So for those two reasons, he gets a one out of five.
Okay.
Joseph?
Yeah, podcast episode five out of five easily.
Yeah, I'm going to just have a short journey.
Yeah, like I said, bad book do not recommend.
I'm gonna give it like a point five out of five.
Okay.
And I don't want to take away anything from Sir experience.
Oh, we did forget about that back.
That does put it up ahead.
Yeah, easily, that actually does my bump it up to one.
I agree that it does not feel like the healthiest
portrayal of mental health and mental health issues
that one might have and or the most realistic portrayal of them.
And that aside, just the, yeah, the writings terrible.
There's nothing very redeemable about the book.
There's, there were like one or two moments where I kind of,
it did kind of get a chuckle out of me.
Weirdly enough.
Give me the chuckle, what did you say?
You know a moment?
There was one that we were just talking about.
I feel like the dog words, oh, sorry.
No, it was towards me and I'm not gonna think of it off top of my head,
but there was like, there were, there were one or two where I was like,
I guess that was like kind of clever.
And for that, I'll give it a point five.
And also like I said earlier, it got me to read another book.
You know what I mean?
I had, I always like, I need to read a book after I read this.
And I wouldn't have been reading this book
that I'm reading now which I'm enjoying if I hadn't.
So there's that.
I don't think I, you just don't mind me.
I don't think I mentioned this.
I know I said I listened to this book, I've had to force my partner
to listen to it because we were driving in the car.
But he eventually got so mad about it.
He said, please turn it off, listen to it on your AirPods.
[LAUGHTER]
He was like, I--
Yeah, my, I had to--
And I listened to a lot about--
I had a similar experience with my wife and she,
after I was like two minutes, it was not long.
And she was like, you have to turn this off.
This is abuse?
[LAUGHTER]
It really says a lot to me that Mike made you turn it off, Sarah,
because I know many of the books that Mike has--
Yes, I put them through a lot.
--to the list he has.
Yes.
And maybe he, maybe it's what gave him COVID.
We don't.
Sorry.
Yes.
You weakened him.
Everyone, did this book give Sarah's husband COVID?
[LAUGHTER]
We investigate it next week.
I'm afraid it's time to choose a little--
It is.
--fucker of the cast.
Joey, that's what it sounds like.
It must be called the asshole of the cast,
but now we choose a little fucker of the cast,
because we've heightened it.
Because of PC stuff.
Yeah, dude, you can't say anything these days.
You can't say anything anymore.
Yeah.
I'm blue-gull.
I guess my vote is for Sarah for being like that depressing
thing about how, like, if you have a little bit of celebrity,
get to do whatever you want.
I mean, it's not like you did anything wrong,
but you were the one who said it.
And we have to pick someone, and nobody really wronged
pissed me off this episode.
So unfortunately, I have to vote for Sarah.
I'm here for Joey.
And the reason is I felt like he was on my side.
He voted at second lowest.
The ones I was like, what are you guys talking about?
And then he comes in with a hot 0.5, and I'm like,
Joey gets it.
He gets it, or, you know, it were our same page.
But then he says the thing.
He ends his review by saying there are three moments
that I got cold, he said.
And I guess I just felt my stomach drop.
My blood went cold.
Because I was part of a comedy group with Joey.
Actually, we did a lot of comedy projects together.
And it's like, this is what gets a lot.
Wow.
Have any laughs I've ever gotten from Joey even been real?
It's maybe question my sense of self.
And that's a bad feeling, really bad feeling, right?
Because if he laughs at that, what does that mean for his--
Yeah.
What does it mean?
It's it's hard.
What is real?
Even in my house.
Am I even really a loop?
Yeah, maybe you're in a loop.
I feel like I'm in a loop now, and that scares me.
I don't like that feeling.
Well, for me, and I know this is going to feel retaliatory,
but really, it's just because Clara hasn't seen Fight Club,
and that kind of made me mad.
I've seen it.
I've just the long time ago.
I'm not super familiar with it.
That's what I said.
That's enough.
That's enough for me to be mad.
You got to watch yourself when Little Fucker comes around.
It's not worth it.
That's fine.
I'm going to vote for myself as well, because when you reached out,
asking me to be a guest, you said, send us two books
that you'd want to do.
And this was one of them.
And so I feel like I ultimately only have myself.
Yeah, that's true.
And so--
That's a good--
Yeah, appreciate your honesty.
Yeah.
OK, well, I also got a series of texts from Joey
during this reading process over the course of two or three weeks.
Finish the book, pretty furious at you guys.
Jack and her two minutes of it in the car
was like, what the fuck are you listening to?
I know.
The music sucks, but it's also kind of fun.
It adds terrible this whole experience.
I also heard from Joey that it was really bad,
but it was like, I knew I was going to read this book
until last minute.
So I was like, well, can't do anything about it now.
I also got texts from Joey about how it's bad.
But I tried not to super engage, because we'll save it for the cast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's why Joey, if none of us responded to you at all.
Perhaps we don't try to engage on the book.
Well, Joey's little fucker of the cast.
Congratulations.
Yeah.
All right.
All except my prize off there.
Oh, yeah.
You have to give us your--
Yeah, Joey, do you have any plugs?
Like, do you want to plug a social media handle?
I don't even know, because what is it?
It's X now.
It's not Twitter.
Are you on threads?
I don't-- I'm out of it now.
No.
If you're in Balboa Park, San Diego in late October,
early November, you can come watch children perform sound
of music.
That's great.
Oh, really?
We'll link to some tickets.
We'll link to Tickies.
Joey, do you know I had a play for "I'm Drick in the Sound of Music,"
because I was the only girl with short hair.
Oh, interesting.
We-- yeah, that's not surprising given the state of children's theater
for years now.
State of children's theater?
Yeah.
I decided to cut my hair even shorter
to make sure it really looked like I was a young Austrian boy
in Circo World War II.
And that's how I entered into your high school.
You didn't dye your hair blonde?
Yeah.
I didn't dye blonde.
Yeah, didn't dye blonde, but cut it real short
into a little Austrian boy's cut.
And that was it.
That's an awesome--
--or a big, gay and a tough period of time before.
That just shows you'll do anything for theater.
You'll do anything.
I'll do anything.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
We are a mean book club on all the socials.
Although, again, I don't know what they are.
I have deleted X formally known as Twitter off my phone,
so I don't know what's going on there.
I don't know what's going on in any of these things.
I guess I should know better what's going on at TikTok.
But--
Well, let you know what are so--
We'll figure it out.
We got it.
We'll do better this season.
We'll fix it.
What is our next book?
I believe it's our final book of the season.
And I believe it is Brooklyn by Irish, man.
Perfect.
Yeah, that's right.
That's his name.
He's really been to Sabrina's name.
That's his name.
Great, great, great.
Anybody-- oh, Patreon, as always, Patreon at the Get Arts.
Please appreciate it.
Bonus episode this time?
Yes, I know.
We're going to be a couple.
We'll be sending you everything you want.
We really give it to you if you give us those few bucks.
We just-- we're so thirsty for it, please.
Please give us a few dollars.
Come on, David.
Joey, who are you playing in Sound of Music?
I'm playing Mother Abyss.
Oh, cool.
That's really great.
Congratulations.
That's like possibly a good joke if you note the Sound of Music.
But--
Is she the one that sings?
I will see you next week.
She sings "climate."
She sings "climate" every now and then.
Yeah, that sounds good to say.
How do you--
How do I hold a high soprano?
A sun beam in my hand, that--
How do you solve a problem like--
Yeah, but she sings like that.
We're high one.
High part of--
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's time.
Thank you so much for listening.
It's time to say goodbye.
I'm going to see you next week.
Bye.
We're going to be in "Gratheon Getting Cast."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[clicks tongue]