Are You on Track For Retirement? (EP.323)

24:26It was one of my favorite, favorite movies as a child. Starship Troopers. Yes. I don't know if I ever, that's always one that I might have caught bits and pieces of on TBS here and there. I don't think I ever watched the whole thing start to finish. Isn't that Tim Allen? No, no, no. You're thinking of Mars Attacks. You're thinking of Galaxy Quest. Okay, that's it. Right? Yeah. Starship Troopers is Casper Van Dean or Dean? Dean. Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris, NPH as they call him. And the guy who looked like Rob Lowe, but not Rob Lowe, less handsome Rob Lowe, who was Kelly Kapaski's boyfriend at the max.

25:03I mean, it sounds like a TV movie to me. And Gary Busey's son. Okay. Jake. You're not selling it very much to me. Great movie. Well, I didn't even tell you what it's about. They kill big giant bugs or something, right? Phenomenal. I think that's where you're going with this. Yeah. Anyway. All right. Margin debt as a percent of S &P 500 market cap. This is a good chart because usually you just see the number. This is the denominator blindness thing. It's been going down for a while, actually. Because the market's so much bigger now, right? Yeah, I guess. But what's more interesting is money market funds.

25:46Five and a half trillion dollars in money market funds. All the way up. But again, thanks to Liz Zan Saunders, you got to adjust it. Money market funds has a percentage of S &P 500 market cap. I'm shocked at how low it is. That is pretty good. Are you? It's like, what is that? 14.5 % of market cap, give or take? I guess if you just assume that money was flowing out of money market funds for, what, 12 years probably as the S &P 500 was going up. But yeah, that is it. So is this future money on the sideline though if rates fall back down? I don't know. I feel like cash is cash. Maybe. You know what I mean?

26:27People that earmark their money for their checking, whatever, that's not money that's coming to the stock market. I know you're kidding with the money on the sidelines, but. No, but where did this money come from though? That's the thing we don't know. That's what I would love to see that you can't ever tell with flows. Like where, what was this money in? Was it in bonds and it's coming out of there? Was it in stocks? No, I don't think it's, I think it's more checking account. Yeah, it could be. Checking and savings. That's fair. The whole interest rate thing. I mean, this is like the most noncommittal thing you could say about the markets and trying to make a prediction.

26:57But I really can see really good arguments for like rates are going to go back down to 2 % or rates are going to stay at like settle in at three to four or rates are going to stay high for another two. Like I could make a pretty good argument at all those and not be surprised either way at this point. Here's what I think is going to happen. If I had to make a prediction on what's going to happen with the economy, I think it's possible we avoid a recession, but we're going to see rolling recessions for the next couple of years in specific industries. We already saw it in tech, right? We saw that in tech in 2022, a lot of layoffs.

27:35The housing market is kind of in a recession or it was? We saw it in startups. The housing market is certainly in a recession. retail stores, department stores are not doing great. I don't know what else is going to, what else is going to happen. Well, commercial real estate certainly, but I think it's possible you see a series of recessions that hit this industry, that sector, that sector without dragging the economy down or the economy just plunges. That's possible too. The weird thing is the economy plunging scenario is, is kind of predicated on the economy accelerating now first to have more, like more excess.

28:17Like that's, that's what most people don't realize is that most recessions come from excess. And we, we, we got excess in speculation and stuff, but it never was really excess in the economy. And that's what like a blow off top and growth would be like an excess. And that would actually lead to probably a bigger downturn in the economy. Was there excess spending? Yeah, but there was also excess savings. So it kind of, it kind of balances out like here, look at this inflation chart that I put in here. And so this is real average hourly earnings year over year. And so this is, again, a kind of income adjusted for inflation.

28:48And we had that period in 2021 and most of 2022, and it's finally gone positive, where it was below trend, meaning people were falling behind on their incomes. This is something people talk about. But look at, no one ever talks about the above average period of growth we had from 2020. And that first, like, look at that almost year-long period where we had way above trend and way above inflation. And so what we've seen in terms of the people falling behind is really just balancing out of that huge spike in income growth that we saw before. Right? Again, if kind of like 2022 returns in the market in 2023, if you mash them together, it kind of evens out and balances out.

29:28That's kind of the same thing we do with incomes. But no one talks about that period of way above average income growth. They only focus on the below average income growth. Fair? Like everyone is falling behind, but no one talked about everyone getting ahead first. So like, that's the excess savings stuff being run off with more spending. It's balancing it out. But obviously, the only thing that matters is what happens from here. Do we go back to trend or do we, I don't know, but that's the point here, right? We're balancing out a lot of things in terms of the pandemic surge. And some of it is going to look like the economy slowing, whereas most of it is just getting back on trend.

30:03Good point. All right. Never seen this one before. Let's move on to real estate. We've got a lot of real estate stuff. Bob Burgess, my former editor at Bloomberg. I used to write there once upon a time. Whatever the section was, it was some new section. We're going to have all these new writers on something, and then it got thrown into the wood chipper. And I was... Bloomberg. I can't remember. It was like Bloomberg View and then Bloomberg something else. And the something else did make it. So I... Anyway. I've never seen this before. He said, this is a mind-blowing graph showing the average rate on U.S.

30:35mortgages is outstanding. The effective rate that borrowers are paying on their home loans is 3.6%. I've never seen this. I mean, you probably could have backed into this answer somehow. But this is the collective mortgages, I guess, and their amounts. And then divide that by the number of people, the mortgages and the rates. And this gets you 3.6%, which is, I guess, about what I would expect it to be. Scroll your eyeballs down to the chart from Liz Ann Saunders. It's the same chart. It shows the US effective rate of interest, but it also contrasts it with the current 30-year. And look at that spread.

31:05Right. Wild. Yes. Yeah. But yeah, I've never seen this like the effective rate before, but it makes sense. And this explains a lot of going on in the housing market. You saw the Zillow thing, right? 1 % down payment program. Yes. I don't think this is as big of a deal as some people do. I know some people are saying this is ridiculous. This is like 2008 subprime stuff all over again. Uh-uh, uh-uh. Uh-uh. Set the record straight. Okay. Well, I just, first of all, I don't think that many people are probably going to apply. I think this is more good marketing PR by Zillow than anything else because I don't know how many people are even going to be eligible.

31:40Glad we got you a Gatorade. You need some electrolytes. Well, it's only for people that are trying to qualify. It's for first-time homebuyers. They're starting in Arizona to spread to other states. But it's for people that need the assistance, that are trying to qualify for the FHA loan, which I think you need to put down. I think it's state by state. minimum 3 % or 5 % in some states? Yeah, and it says Zillow is going to contribute an additional 2 % at closing, which I don't know how it all shakes out there with Zillow making a contribution too, but a lot of people are worried about this and like, okay, here we go.

32:08No, this is not like, oh, 99 % leverage for everyone. That's not what this is. Right, I don't see this. And the thing is, obviously down payments have gone up, but the mortgage payments themselves, the monthly payments have gone up way more on a percentage basis than the down payments. Like obviously it's way more, it's harder for people to come up with down payments with higher housing prices, but it's the monthly payments that's the problem for most people. So this is just increasing in monthly payment even more. True. So I don't think this is going to be left. My other question is how many jobs are even left in the mortgage financing departments right now?

32:38There can't be any, I mean, it has to be just tumbleweeds, right? Because no one's going to refinance. No one's refinancing right now. Speaking about rolling corrections or rolling recessions. Yeah. The mortgage industry decimated, right? Mortgage applications are down to the lowest level in over 20 years. Right. Yeah. There's no activity. There's no inventory. There's no refinancing going on. Yeah. If at getting to seven and a half percent mortgage loans and maybe get up to 8 % possibly, like I think this is going to finally start having an impact. I don't know what that's going to be, but I think people are just going to, it's just going to keep like slowing, like grinding the gears slower and slower.

33:13Wild chart from Mike Zuccardi showing high yield rates versus mortgage rates. Want to know why he looked at this chart? You asked him to? I asked him. Well, he said mortgages are almost close to high yield rates. And I said, has that ever happened before? And he pulled up the chart and it hasn't. Kind of wild. Yes. In fact, very wild. It's like, wait a minute. Mortgage rates are the same as rates on junk bond, on junk? So after we talked about this last week, I wrote a blog post about why are mortgage rates so high? And I looked at the spreads by decade, like the 30-year minus the 10-year. And the average is less than 2%.

33:55But even in this set, someone was saying, well, when there's more volatile times and the rates are rising and inflation is rising, it must mean that spreads are wider. But in the 1970s, that's the lowest average spread we've ever had because I only have mortgage data going back to the 70s. 1.3 % was the spread. So even if we went back to like the 2010 spread of 1.7%, we'd be talking more like 6 % mortgages right now. Big difference. I think the Fed really screwed up the mortgage market when they bought and sold all those mortgage bonds. I think like they're going to have to be the ones that come in and narrow this spread at some point.

34:29And maybe they're never going to want to. You know what? How about this? That's a good, let's plant that flag. The Fed will start buying mortgage bonds before they lower interest rates. true or false? If they really wanted to make things function better than the housing market, maybe they're not going to. Because I think the Fed is obviously trying to slow the economy, bring prices down. But are they trying to really crash the housing market? I doubt it. Well, I'm sure that they thought in their minds, raising rates so high would slow the housing market or would bring prices down. Don't you think?

35:06I wouldn't be surprised if they, I'm sure they wanted like a 10 or 20 % correction. They haven't gotten it. I just, I don't think they thought through the ramifications of going so fast from where they were to where they are. With the combination of them stopping the purchases. Yeah. All right. The rise of the four bedroom house. So this is from 1973 to today. Four bedroom household. This is percentage of new single family houses by bedroom number. It went from 20 some percent in 1973 to 48 % now. Three-bedroom houses went from 65 % to 43%. This is another reason that houses are more expensive these days.

35:42They're bigger. There's more amenities. I grew up in a three-bedroom house. Well, there was one bedroom downstairs, but I don't know if that really counts. I guess it's a four-bedroom. The first house we lived in was three bedrooms. My brother and I had to share a bunk bed. I guess when we moved in, it was four bedrooms. We all got our own bedroom. My parents are still in that same house. You know, the layout, we've spoken about old houses in the past. The layout of the house that I grew up in was terrible. It was, I guess, a split level. So you walk up the steps to the door and you open the door and there's like a little, is it a foyer?

36:17Yeah. That's my, my parents still have that. My parents are a split level. Yeah. So, so there's a downstairs with that one little bedroom and like a living room and a bathroom down there and then the laundry room. But then upstairs, you've got the living room to the left, dining room behind it, kitchen next to it. You're describing my parents' house right now. I grew up in the same house. One bathroom and then one bedroom, bedroom next to it, and then the master bedroom. So I slept like five feet from my mom. Yes. Which is right next, and 10 feet from the kitchen. Yes, that's true. Everything did feel right on top of each other.

36:51Not great. I sent you the TikTok of the 1990s HGTV thing. Did you watch that one? Uh-uh. Where'd you send it? Oh, I slacked it to our animal spirits. Oh, I missed it. Okay. It's pretty fun. But it's funny because they're talking about all these things in the 90s that houses were like. And when you think about it, the lady goes, oh, this is way too open. Close it off. Let's close it off. And it's pretty funny. So, yeah, I think the house that I just described is what a lot of people grew up in, right? Yes. Back to my point that back in the day, no one really thought about this stuff. And that's why I blame HGTV for...

37:29Wait, you're blaming them for a good thing? Well, no, I blame HGTV for jacking up the price of houses. It's a good thing and a bad thing. Houses would be way cheaper if it wasn't for HGTV. How about this? Here's a take. Home prices were way undervalued for like several decades because the quality wasn't great. Yeah, I think we - Now you're paying up for quality. That's part of it. I think, yeah, that's part of it. And the demographic thing obviously happened too. But yeah, you're right. People didn't pay. And the renovations people do now, and it wasn't like that back in the day. Well, Ben, look at the median sale price from Redfin.

38:08It's been rising since 2001. Granted, home prices took a bit of a haircut after the GFC. But median sales price pulled back a tiny bit, approaching new all-time highs, and active listings destroyed. So this is the thing that the Fed probably didn't anticipate, was that raising rates was going to kill demand. That part they probably understood. But I don't think they, they might not have realized that it was going to kill supply as well. I don't think they thought, no, I don't think they thought that at all. You would have thought that supply would have risen because it'd be harder to sell, but the demand still outweighed the supply.

38:43So it didn't really destroy demand. It more destroyed supply, unfortunately. They killed the wrong side of it. Yes. Right. Which, and again, and I don't know what they could have done because I do think that if rates, if mortgage rates go back down to, even from here, if they go back to six or even 5%, the demand is going to come back in. Well, that's the thing. If they did what I suggested and they step into tighten rates down to six, six and a half, whatever it is, and then you get like more, more all-time highs in home prices, well, it's hard to have a slowing economy, at least traditionally, if the housing market is on fire.

39:19This is like the 2010s. The Fed wanted to raise inflation and they couldn't. The Fed cannot fix the housing market. The only thing that can fix the housing market is if we build more houses. and that the Fed can't do that. Right. Unless the Fed starts giving out construction loans to builders, they're not going to be able to fix the housing market regardless of what they do. Lance Lambert tweeted, U.S. home prices as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index set a new all-time high in July, but when you dig deeper, you'll find there's still a lot of red. The home price correction has packed a bigger punch at the top end of the market.

39:52So San Francisco upper tier down 13.5%. Seattle upper tier down 10.5%. Austin down 11 at the upper tier. And at the lower price tier, it's basically almost all-time highs across the board. Middle, a little bit less, but still... I saw there's a house in my neighborhood that seemingly has been not abandoned because it's a big house in good condition, a decent condition. And I walked past it and I'm like, oh, let me check it on Zillow. And it's pending for sale. And I think it's being sold. It's a really big house. I think it's being sold for like$1.8 million,$1.9 million. The mortgage payment on that.

40:34I can't even imagine. $14 ,000 a month. What would have been a year ago at that price? Eight grand? Is it a fair analogy or am I stretching here? The upper end of the housing market was like series E private companies where they were closer to the public market and eventually filtered its way down to Series D &C. Is this going to eventually bleed into the middle market? I look at it the other way. I think that there's just always going to be more demand for the lower middle tier of housing prices. In the upper tier, there's just fewer buyers there. So it's going to be harder to ever have that same demand for multi-million dollar houses.

41:13Yeah, I'd buy that. It's just a smaller pool of buyers. I'd buy that. All right, this is interesting from the Wall Street Journal. I've never thought about this before, but they're talking about how Americans are bailing on their home insurance. I thought that home insurance was like car insurance, like you had to have it. They say 12 % of all homeowners don't purchase homeowners insurance. I didn't know. I thought the banks wouldn't. Maybe this is people who own their houses outright. I don't think you could do that. I think at origination, I'm making this up. I think at origination you have to have insurance.

41:42Right, and then you just let it lap. You're allowed to cancel. That's crazy. I can't imagine not having insurance in my house. I can't either. Needless to say, it's like almost everybody's largest asset. And they're talking about how it's becoming really bad in places like Florida and California because of hurricanes and wildfires. They interview this guy, Larry Farenthold, hasn't had home insurance more than 25 years. He estimates he'd save more than$50 ,000 on his 1 ,100 square foot Los Angeles home. It would probably be financially devastating if I lost my house, but I have enough money and savings to move into a condo in that event.

42:15I just can't see the trade-off there. But the point is, in places like Florida, where it's becoming just ridiculously expensive to do this, a lot of people are almost having to. They can't afford it. So this is why my biggest climate hedge is living in the Midwest by the Great Lakes. In like 30 years, we're going to get a reverse migration of these people who all move south. People who have been moving south for like the last 20 years, and all you hear all summer is people in the south complaining it's 115 degrees or whatever. That's not going to get better. in the coming years. We're going to have a reverse migration and people are going to want to be by water and they're going to want more, uh, they want a better climate and come to the Midwest.

42:55The Midwest in like the 2040s and 2050s is going to be the biggest real estate market in the country. Timestamp. Until you get the dust, the dust thing for like from Interstellar and all the crops are killed. By the way, I mentioned that because I rewatched Interstellar first time in a long time. I don't know. When did that movie come out? 2010? I have no idea. I didn't love it on the first watch. It actually, I think it ages better on a rewatch. Rewatched it a couple of years ago too. 2014. So I think I liked the first. So that movie pulls at your heartstrings, right? Yes. With the kid stuff.

43:32I like the, I love the first third. I think it, you know, it's, it got, it got wacky. It was hard to land the plane. Yeah. Yeah, and so Robin jumped in halfway through with me. She's like, this is so dumb, but she wouldn't stop watching. And then at the end, like with the bookshelf, she's like, okay, all right, this is. But I'm not sure if I love that movie, but I definitely enjoyed the shit out of it. Like I said, the first time I watched it, I think because of the ending, I didn't like it that much, but then I watched it again and I liked it more the second watch. Yeah, good movie. McConaughey has a great crying scene in that movie.

44:08So good in that. He wrote about it in his book. how he gets himself psyched up. And he told, who's the director of that one? Is it a Fincher movie? No, it's Christopher Nolan. Or Nolan, sorry. Yeah, the kid stuff is tough, really tough. He said he got it for the crying scene. He said he got himself all psyched up and he didn't want to do more than one take. And he said, he walked into the room and he said, Nolan, let's go. Start filming now, I'm ready. He looked, whatever he does, like get himself ready to cry. It was a good one. All right, Amazon has talked with Disney on a new ESPN streaming service.

44:36Maybe more notable is that ESPN is considering charging between$20 and$35 for the new service. that seems high to me. So what is this for? This is for people that cut the cord but still want to watch sports? Yes, or people that want to cut the cord but aren't doing it because of sports. Yeah, but the problem is, all right, so you get ABC and you get ESPN. Although ABC is on basic cable, right? So on basic cable, you get ABC, you get NBC, you get CBS. So you've got all like the local games. But you need ESPN for, is that Sunday Night Football? Whatever it is. You need ESPN for that. You need ESPN for basketball.

45:11But what about TNT? Right. That's the thing. The sports are going to keep going wider. And maybe just the hope is that Amazon and Apple start buying them all up and you can get them all through there through a bundle. But I think their hope is like - It feels like that's the direction this is going, right? They're thinking like we used to have, I don't know what it is, 100 million people who subscribed to cable and they had ESPN. But if we can get, I think the number they said was like 12 million to sign up for this since it's going to be so expensive. It's going to be the same economics. That's their hope.

45:36That just seems really high to me. I'm sure there are so many diehard people who watch sports, but that's a tough ask. I mean, cutting the cord has become very expensive. So, I mean, I'm sure what Disney is going to do eventually is it's going to be, are you going to be able to pay for Prime plus Disney plus, plus Hulu, plus ESPN, whatever they're calling it, and get them all in one bundle. And that's kind of a bundle again. Well, Disney does it already. You get ESPN, Disney plus, and Hulu. Yeah. So maybe Amazon's part of that and ESPN is part of that too. I'm paying for cable and every, the only thing I don't pay for is Paramount.

46:08Okay, I'd pay for that. We're watching a new series on that one. I'll talk about recommendations. Yeah, I don't know. This is why I'm keeping the bundle for as long as I can, though. Yeah, but I'm saying now it's double the cost because I'm paying for the bundle and for everything else. Yes. You're screwed either way. Whatever you do, you're screwed. But that's one of the reasons that I like keeping the cable bundle is because I get all the sports channels. I love March Madness. It's on TruTV and TNT and TBS and CBS, right? It's on all four of those channels. I need to have cable to get that. Right?

46:41I think. All right. Survey of the... We haven't done one of these in a while. From yougov.com, six in 10 regard unemployment as a very or somewhat serious national problem. There's 24 % say the jobless rate dropped in the last month and only 34 % say job numbers increasing. Though that has been the case in the official government numbers every month since the economy began recovering from COVID-19. This is back to your point about how many people understand their actual financial picture, how many people understand the economy itself. Americans are nearly twice as likely to say the economy is shrinking than growing, 38 % versus 21%.

47:1444 % say it's currently in a recession, and 22 % of recession is likely in the next year. All right, so I have two thoughts on this. Number one, there's no information, there's no takeaway, there's no actionable information in these surveys. They're meaningless. They don't mean anything. As far as, if you're thinking about this through the investor lens, there's no actionable insights here. Yes, I don't think you can't engage sentiment through surveys anymore. No, you really can't. Unless it's completely extreme, fine. But the other thing is, so it doesn't matter at all. There's no actionable takeaway.

47:45However, I do think it matters how when you ask people how things are going, people are generally saying it's bad. And we've spoken about this a billion times. There's a million reasons why they're saying that, even though... What if people are always just going to say it's bad from now on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the camp I'm in. People just say things are bad. One of the luxuries we have today is we have time... Like I mentioned in that book I was reading about how in like the 1800s, no one had time to retire. People were working like 60-hour weeks in the farms. In the past, people didn't have time to worry about stuff.

48:13Like they didn't have time to watch cable news all the time. They didn't have time to scroll their phone anytime and look at all the bad news all the time because people were too busy working and then doing nothing else. And today we have the luxury of being comfortable and seeing all the bad news. And so I think people just are always going to be on the pessimistic side going forward because we have the ability to see it all now and hear about it. Yeah. Permanent. All right, so speaking of cutting the cord, every day about 25 ,000 Americans cancel their cable cord. You think those people are doing that after talking to the retention department about getting a better deal like I do?

48:51That's back to the same level as it was in 1992. That's kind of wild. Do you remember when we used to cancel the cord and you'd have to literally bring your cable box in, like your Comcast box back to Comcast? I bet you still do. No, you can send it through the mail now. They send you a box and you send it through the mail. That's a pain in the butt. You used to do that in college, right? Yeah, you'd have to like wait in line and give them your box back. There was a podcast on the town with Matt Bellany and Julie Alexander. They estimate that Apple Plus has 15 million subscribers in the United States.

49:23I heard that one. Which is very, very low. I'm surprised Apple just doesn't give it away with an iPhone these days just to get people on there. That's a good point. Why even charge? Right? Just give it away. How much is it a month? It's not that much. $9.99 maybe? So. I have it, so. So$15 ,000 ,120 a year. It's$1.8 billion in revenue. Certainly ain't nothing. Although to them, it's basically nothing. Yeah, give away. I mean, give away a three-month thing and then have to give your credit card information to do it on Apple Pay. I think they probably do. How many people would keep it? Yeah. All right, Ben, I've got a bone to pick, a major bone to pick.

50:01Okay. It's a big bone. Okay. I ordered - For the man who has no pet peeves. I ordered, this is not a pet peeve. Okay. I ordered two hex clad pans. You ever hear of the brand hex clad? No, but I guess your other pans didn't work out very well, huh? Well, I ordered the nonstick Amazon set for like 80 bucks and just terrible. So it's time to grow up and get grown up pans. So I got two. They were not cheap at all. And I'm like, hey, wait a minute, where are my pants? So I logged on and it says your order has been delivered. So I'm like, no, it hasn't. What? So I see the shipping address went to, I won't say his last name, but his first name is Brian.

50:45The last name is a name that I've never heard before. The address is an address that I've never seen before. It went to Torrance, California. What the hell is going on? Was my shipment hacked or something? So I emailed them and they said like, well, this is the address we have on file. You're welcome to take it up with UPS. And I'm like, no, you take it up with UPS. Wait, Amazon said this or you brought it to someone else? No, Hexclad said this. Okay. So I'm like, why should I, what? No, I got hacked or it got hacked on the back. And I didn't, I didn't enter the shipping address. I don't know where this is.

51:19Now, maybe from their point of view, like they're like, well, how do they know that I didn't, That I'm not just stealing, right? That I didn't send this to a friend. Yeah. But so what do I do? That's where you left it? Well, I emailed them again. I'm like, no, please do the right thing. I think I got hacked. I don't know how this happened. Do you have the tracking number? I would call UPS and say, hey, you dropped this off at the wrong place somehow. I could be a UPS problem. I'm going to call my, I think I'm going to call my credit card and see if they'll take this up. But isn't this nuts? How does this happen?

51:51I don't know. You with credit cards and deliveries? Although I did get scammed on Instagram. The downside of Instagram knows me too well. So I got another giant shirt on. This is Homage, I think it's called. There's a knockoff and they got me. So I see the advertising on my phone. I'm like, oh, wow, these are great prices. So I bought a bunch of gear. I'm like, wait a minute. This doesn't look like Homage. It was like an Homage knockoff. So I went to the website to compare and contrast it. It was a knockoff. So the quality is not as good. I don't know. I haven't received it. I haven't received it.

52:28I assume it's knockoffs. Okay. So now, yeah. So Instagram, you know, as listeners know, I'm, that's where I get most of my clothes these days. I've been targeted bad. I'm not sure how I feel about this. You know, like this has traditionally been for women is Spanx, the brand where you like, it's like a, it's like a form fitting. It holds your stuff in. So there's, so I saw an ad for something called shape slim. And I have to say, looks very good. For men? For men. Like Spanx for men? It takes the belly and it just like, I don't know what it does with it, but just like makes it totally flat. How uncomfortable would that be though?

53:05Well, you got two things going against you. Number one, it doesn't look, I'm sure it's not the most comfortable thing in the world. But then what happens? So people look at you like, oh, wow, he looks pretty good. And then you go to the beach and you're a slob. Got to wear a swimsuit, I guess. But. So I don't think I care enough. Okay. In fact, I don't care enough. I will never buy that. All right. One last thing. This really grinds my gears. I know we spoke about this in the past many times. DoorDash. So Robin went out with her friends. I have not used it in a long time. I kind of was over it.

53:42I'm not going to pay up for it anymore. Robin went out with her friends over the weekend. So I was left to eat dinner by myself. I had ramen. Love ramen. Spicy ramen. Very good. All right. So my ramen bowl was$17. The delivery fee was$249. The fees and taxes were$447. And the tip was$4. So I paid$28 for a ramen bowl. That cost$17. Should have gone and pick it up. Well, I mean, yeah, but I was with the kids and it was like, I didn't feel like it. You're paying up for convenience. That's on you now. You can't complain about DoorDash anymore. It's on you. It's just crazy. It is, but - So much money.

54:24So go get it. I'm not feeling sorry for you anymore for paying up for DoorDash. You've been complaining about this for three years. Kids are in jammies. No, but I don't use it. I don't use it that much, but I was reminded. Yeah, but that's why. For this business to work, you have to pay up for it, unfortunately. All right, recommendations. I got a couple. Small ears. Fly on the wall, the Dana Carvey, David Spade podcast had Steve Martin and Martin Short on. and I just love those guys. Why don't I listen to that podcast more? They're great. It's so good. I need to get it back in my rotation. And I just love the interaction that those guys have.

54:58And the thing is like, they rip on each other incessantly, but they're like, they're just very positive guys. They're not like, you know, a lot of comedians are like, it seems like they have a lot of like interior pain and like suffering and then they become comedians. These guys are the opposite. I love both of their books, Born Standing Up with Steve Martin's and I must say is Martin Shorts. And Steve Martin's almost eight years old. I think Martin Short's in his 70s. I still watch that show, Only Murders in the Building. It's on season three now. Paul Rudd's on and Meryl Streep is on. And it's kind of a cheesy show in some ways still.

55:29Kind of like Ted Lasso. There's a bit of cheesiness that you're willing to let go because they seem so positive. So I'm still watching that. I actually - But can I just say one thing? I'm pretty sure that Danny Carvey had a rough childhood. He did, yes. Yeah. He did. But yeah, those guys, I just love the fact that they're so positive. I've the older I get, the more I want just to have more positive people in my life and not people complaining all the time. Uh, speaking of comedy, did you see that? I don't know why this was going around on, on the interwebs this week. Did you see Will Ferrell's audition for SNL?

55:59I did pretty good. Yeah. I think I've seen that before. He pretends, he pretends to be a cat and he's, he's in his, he's in, he's in his work office and he's, he, he picks up the phone and says, uh, hold on, I'm eating lunch or whatever, whatever he says. And then he just pretends to be a cat like hitting the yarn ball or something it's very funny in college we had one of our friends owned the greatest snl will ferrell years and we we would watch it like probably once a month at least there was there was there was no bigger phenom in my lifetime than him on snl yeah the farley one is pretty close for me uh i actually watched the new adam sandler movie on netflix the bat mitzvah one and his his two daughters are in it i think you should watch it i i my wife and i were just looking for something to watch on sunday night and we put it on and And it was like a more toned down Sandler than I'm used to.

56:42One of the reasons his comedies haven't worked for me for the past 20 years is because they're just so over the top and not funny. But this one was more toned down. And it was about his daughters having a bat mitzvah, which I've been to one bat mitzvah in my life. I'm sure you've been to many. And it really did boggle my mind that it was kind of like a wedding for this 13-year-old girl, like my wife's cousin's daughter or something. And they really nailed that whole thing. But Sandler's two daughters were in it. I'm like, oh, boy, this could go wrong. and they're actually pretty good. And he, I looked at it, he is like the dad of these teen girls and I feel like I'm going to blink and my two daughters are going to be teenagers.

57:15And so I'm looking, I'm watching the movie from the dad perspective as Adam Sandler as the dad. And it was like a 6.0, but like it was, it way defied expectations. I thought it was going to be awful and it was actually pretty good. Is his wife in it? His wife's in it too, but she's not, she doesn't play his wife. She plays like a friend's wife. So it's a family affair, but it's actually pretty funny. I will watch it. I mentioned Paramount Plus. We're watching the Joe Pickett series. on Paramount Plus. Who's that? My all-time favorite novel about a Wyoming game warden. They turned it into a TV show.

57:47And there's no way they could top the books. The books, it's a CJ Box books of Joe Pickett. I read one every year. I'm on like the 23rd and 24th one. And it's about a Wyoming game warden who is investigating murders and the TV, it has a little bit of like a CBS show to it. Like the vibes of the acting. It's like the actors aren't like amazing but the story is so good and they picked the best book to do it on. from the series. So I'm watching it in three episodes in where we like it. It's good. Yeah, it's good. It's not like, it's not, again, the acting is not like, you have to look past the acting a little bit, but it's, the story is good.

58:19And you get to see Wyoming. I watched River Wild last night. Not the River Wild, but River Wild. The Netflix one. And I'm, I'm probably two thirds of the way through. I'm very surprised at the Rotten Tomatoes rating. So the audience gives it a 35. The critics give it a 77. It stinks. I mean, I'm going to finish it, but it's not good. That's what I felt. I watched half of it and I'm like, I got to finish it now, but it's not good. It's not good at all. I'm sure the ending is not better. Like it's just not great. Uh, if you haven't seen interstellar, I mean, it's, it's absolutely worth watching, even though it gets, goes a little bit off the rails, but, uh, all right.

58:55I, I watch, where did I find this? Maybe prime. I don't know how I missed this movie. I really, really don't. It's called Fanboys. Ben, have you ever heard of this? Is this like the Star Wars one? Yeah. They go to Star Wars convention? Yeah. I must have watched it a while ago. I cannot remember it though. So this is directly in my wheelhouse. It's like a silly stoner movie with all the people, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Baruchel, okay, Baruchel, Kristen Bell, Chris Marquette, and Sam Huntington are total, I mean, you know their faces if you don't know the name. And then a million cameos. Shooter McGavin, Carrie Fisher, Kevin Smith, Bill Shatner.

59:40Geez, Will Forte, Craig Robinson. Danny Trejo. I forgot about this one. And it's not great. There was a few really big laughs for me. I just, 2009, I don't know how I missed this one. Is this a Kevin Smith movie? No. He's just in it? He's just in it. Who directed it? I was looking at that. uh, Kyle Newman. What else did this guy do? Okay. I don't think anything. Yeah. I don't know. Uh, I don't know how this one escaped me. Anyway, it's not certainly not, certainly, certainly not a great movie, but if you're looking for like a dumb comedy with laughs from the, from the crew that you love, that you never saw, you could do worse.

1:00:21All right. You came on strong in the end. I think you, I mean, it was still like two thirds be one third of you, but you came on strong. thank you listen uh i've got this weird i don't know what it is just under the weather three weeks running keep drinking uh keep drinking gatorade animal spirits pod at gmail.com and we will see you next time