House Poor (EP.327)

25:12We've, people have done okay. People locked in rates, 38 % of people own their homes outright or not. So I think I would, if If I'm picking bubbles, the U.S. would be way down the line in terms of housing markets for seeing a huge price decline. And I would think it makes way more sense in places like Canada and Australia. And actually, at the end of the year, the last nine months of the year, on a real basis, Canadian housing prices fell 20 % last year. Oh, they did? Yeah. I mean, a lot of that's inflation, obviously, but they are falling a little bit. And so I think if there is a housing bubble, it's internationally.

25:47It's not in the U.S. Well, let me ask you this. If he is right and housing prices, because I think I said like, what do you think is going to happen to housing prices? Like down 30%. I think he said that's fair. Let's just assume that housing prices did fall by 20%, 30%. Would that lead to, would that like take the economy to its knees? I don't really think so because there's such a big margin of safety built up in home equity right now already. I think I looked at this before. If If housing prices fell 20%, it would bring us back to like October 2021, if I recall. And it's not as if there's, now I know houses are a levered product, but it's not like people are levered to the hilt.

26:29See what I did there? There you go. Nailed it. You know, with multiple houses and a debt to income that is even remotely resembling the pre-GFC days. It was also, we went on a building binge in the 2000s, and we didn't have that this time around. So I still think supply remaining constrained. I got to imagine if housing prices did start to fall, like the demand would pick up really quickly. Yeah. And if housing prices were falling, you'd think rates were falling too. And I think that there's a floor under housing prices. So I really do. So I wrote a blog post yesterday and I said that similar to the example that you gave with Microsoft and rising interest rates actually helping their net interest expense.

27:14I think that if interest rates were to even budge a little bit lower, you would see housing activity take off like a rocket ship. So Fortune wrote an article, House Poor is Back, where they said monthly mortgage payments are up 60 % year over year, which is obviously nuts. More than half of homebuyers face a monthly mortgage payment of at least$2 ,000, while one in four are paying $3 ,000 or more. Meanwhile, average US monthly earnings were just 4 ,600. According to economic data, that means that some homeowners could be spending more than 6 % of their paychecks on a mortgage. All right. Well, if it's two incomes, it's more like 30%, but still based on current mortgage rates, average income levels and home prices, more first-time home buyers are using a minimal down payment.

27:56They could be paying more than 40 % of their monthly income towards housing. Somebody was quoted, and this is what I was just alluding to. Any relief in mortgage rates is likely to get absorbed by even higher home prices. So there's, I mean, the housing market is absolutely broken. It is. But it's structural. Everyone is trapped in their house. Would-be movers are not moving because if you have a 3 % mortgage, you just, you're not moving, you're stuck. And then also, and I think this is probably like a minor, maybe not so minor thing. They said 40 % of people under 30 were getting help from their parents.

28:34So there's 84 million millennials. I don't know how many are in a home, but a lot of them need to go into a home. And so could this, could the great wealth transfer and that issue put a relatively high floor on their prices? I think it could. Right. Hey, mom and dad, don't wait to give me this money until you pass away and it's an inheritance. Give it to me now so I can actually buy a home. Right. And afford it. Right. Which unfortunately makes a wider gap between the haves and the have-nots. Yes. But I think that's what's been happening in the housing market for a while. The funny thing is, too, we talked about the Fed raising rates so aggressively.

29:10I tweeted this last week, and I showed rates going from everything 30 years and below at one point was under 1%. And now everything is 5 % or more, approaching 5%. And I said, it's kind of crazy. Nothing is broken. And a lot of people came back and said, well, the housing market is broken. But I think nothing broke like people thought it would break. When people would have assumed mortgage rates going from 3 % to 7.5%, you would have assumed, okay, housing prices fall 20%. Well, I think people thought that it would break and cause a panic. Yeah. So that's the thing. Nothing has broken like anyone thought it would in terms of breaking, like the Fed raising so aggressively.

29:44Sure, the economy is going to break and consumers are screwed and none of the stuff has broken like people thought. And obviously a lot of people come in and say, hasn't broken yet. Just wait. But it's true. I know. But this is my soft landing argument that But it's been going on for long enough where I think we can say everything everyone thought was going to happen just didn't happen this time around. And that, my friends, is what complacency looks like. From Redfin, a record 26 % of homebuyers are looking to move to a different part of the country, up from 24 % a year ago and roughly 19 % before the pandemic began.

30:21Where'd you go? Where did I go? Here I am. Yeah. No, I mean on the dock. Good to see you. Oh, we're in real estate. Sorry. So we skipped ahead because I was talking real estate. Yeah. All right. I'm trying to keep up here. Any thoughts on people moving, having to move? Midwest? I mean, the thing is people keep saying that like no one can afford to buy a house now, but people are, there's still activity happening. It's just not very much. I mean, a lot of people are completely frozen out. Yeah. So Michael McDonough, we've been talking about how the average mortgage payment is up 130 % since pre-pandemic.

30:55So then he inverted it. So, all right, the average monthly mortgage payment, assuming 20 % down current prices, is$2 ,300. So he flipped it. He said, how much home can you buy with a$2 ,300 monthly mortgage payment, assuming 20 % down for a 30-year? And at the peak in 2020, or I guess when rates were at the bottom, you could buy a$700 ,000 house. Now, with that same monthly mortgage,$400 ,000. I mean, the housing market is completely upside down. And what do you think people are going to do? Do you think they're going to change their expectations and go to a much lower end house or just eat it and pay 50 % of their income for housing?

31:32They're going to eat it. They're going to eat it. Right? Yeah. Which, yeah, eventually. Now, I mean, surely that should lead to less disposable income, right? And the consumer drives the economy. So isn't this one way in which housing can slow down the economy? Yeah, unless we all just take out a bunch of credit card debt. Now, the other thing is, like what I just mentioned, yeah, point taken. The other thing is how many people are buying new homes relative to the whole population? Yeah, it's a very small percentage. It's very small. Ben, you just mentioned credit cards. We haven't done a survey in a while.

32:06I know I'm jumping around the dock. A third of Americans earning$150 ,000 a year or more say they're living paycheck to paycheck, and many rely on credit cards to close the gap per money wise. Now, I think, and I don't know exactly how the question was - Paycheck to paycheck. I don't know how the question was worded. But Ben just did air quotes around that. Yeah, because once, you know, they're saving, they're contributing to their 401k. And then once you save and spend, you're out of money, right? Listen, after my 401k and after the 529 and after private school for the kids and after the Taylor Swift concert, I'm living paycheck to paycheck.

32:38Right. So I also think like the rely on credit cards could be doing a lot of work in that survey. Now, the headline is, oh my God, a third of Americans earning 150 grand live paycheck to paycheck. But the reality is people might just, I rely on a credit card. I think most people do. Now, if credit cards didn't exist, I wouldn't rely on it, but they do. Yes. I heard a good, probably an old wives tale, but that the Chargers are called that because of credit cards. Did you hear this? They're trash. What a terrible team. Fair. All right, let's go back to investor behavior. Okay. This is interesting.

33:16I was about to apologize to Chargers fans, but I realized that there are none. Zing. All right. Since the early 2000s, there's been a structural decline in bullish sentiment. This is interesting. So if you did like a moving average of this, it is funny. You know what? Are people just not allowing themselves to get fool me? Because these are boomers and they've seen some shit in the market. And we've said, oh, you've written a lot. Oh, the boomers have had it so great. Falling interest rates, rising stock prices. I mean, they also had two monster crashes. Yes. I can see, the first decade of this century, I think really screwed a lot of people.

33:52Like, I think like investors had a greater, boomers had a greater, there's a lot of hindsight working there because I don't think it felt too great as they're entering like their money-making years and they see a monster crash and then all the shit that transpired after. And then as they're starting to get back to even, oh great, we're at new highs. Finally, it's been, it's been seven years and the market has finally recovered. Oh yeah? Eat this 60 % decline. Yeah, that's true. So I think it's like, you know, you're not going to fool me a third time. I think investors aren't allowing themselves to get like euphoric.

34:21Now I know 21 was a different story, but. This is also another example of watch what they say, watch what they do and not what they say, because a lot of those boomers have increased their allocation to equities over time. Totally. So they're saying they're bearish, but they're investing like they're bullish. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, this is interesting. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal. Title was, you might be paying too much for that index fund. Okay. Uh, State Street last month slashed the fee on its cheapest S &P 500 ETF. The ticker is not SPY, it's SPLG to 0.02%, making it less than a quarter of the cost of its popular SPY fund that tracks the same stocks.

35:02Uh, all right. A thousand dollar investment in SPLG and that's just US, it's the S &P 500 is 20 cents a year on a thousand dollars. Jeez. Uh, so look at this, this next chart, we're looking at total assets under management. SPY has ballooned to 400 billion. SPLG is coming up the rear. It's at 19 billion, basically up from zero in like, I don't know, 2017 maybe. If you look at the change, like the total assets under management as a percentage over the last, since pre-pandemic, I think this was, SPLG is up 200%. SPY is up 42%. Now, again, this is not apples to apples because one is coming off a gigantic base.

35:46And I guess there's two things here. One is just marketing is very powerful. SPY has the brand. Brand, I should say. Not marketing. SPY is the brand, but also it's got the assets. And I'm sure a lot of the money that's going in here is being used by gigantic institutions for either hedging or short-term trading, and they don't necessarily care about the expense ratio. Yeah. But what a win for investors. What a win for investors. I've honestly never heard of, I guess, SPLG. But it makes sense that they have. It is kind of funny, though, they didn't just decide to make SPY have that same expense ratio.

36:20Like the SPLG. They don't have to. There's no reason for them to slash it. I know. Which is funny. Like, they have SPLG to cover themselves. But you'd think that why not just make SPY two basis points? Well, why would they? Someone sent me this. We talked last week about what is easier to lose in, gambling or trading options, day trading. Someone sent me this infographic here. Casino gambling versus day trading. 13 out of 100 gamblers leave the casino a winner. One out of 100 day traders reliably beat the market. I don't know. I've never really thought about what the winning percentage is for a casino, but that's way lower than I thought.

36:55I would have assumed 30 % maybe, 20%. I think I would have too. I would guess my winning in a casino, I don't know. I'd probably lose three times for every time I win. I'm a winner. I'm like 55 % to 60 % winning on blackjack. That's not possible. No one ever believes me. It's true. I've had some amazing blackjack streaks in my life. I don't even think that's true because I really only play blackjack. If I play craps to lose every single time, that's just what you do. At least that's what I do. But blackjack, the odds are not that high in the house's favor. So yeah, maybe I went for it at 10 times.

37:29Maybe I wouldn't anymore because I changed them. They don't pay as much on the blackjack. But yeah. Nobody cares, but we spoke about, God, I love betting on sports. What a rush. But what a kick to the pants. I had the Ravens as the fourth leg in a relatively big parlay, not to brag. And man, that was a brutal loss. Just brutal. But this is why people continue to gamble because - It's so much fun. The action is the juice. Yes. And you could put$10 ,000 on a stock and not get the same emotional boost that you get from betting$100 on a blackjack hand or something. Well, yeah, because it doesn't go to zero or double in 30 seconds.

38:08True. But obviously, this is why gambling will always have a place because those feelings, you can't recreate those. You can't replicate it. All right. This is a good chart. People are rightfully annoyed about rising gas prices. And this chart doesn't really do anything to calm people's emotions, but it just happens to be a fact. As a share of income, the price of a gallon of gas is barely half of its 2008 levels. I put this, I tweeted this the other day that if you go to the highs in 2008, retail gas prices are down 38%. But also, why should we anchor it to like, I mean, that is ultimately cherry picking.

38:46Yes. And I did say I cherry picked this data. I admitted it. But it is true that gas prices haven't kept up with inflation for well over a decade, which is kind of hard to believe. Yeah. But yes, cherry pick. All right. Right. This, I've never heard of this, the Dopp Gamble, maybe this is a website you've heard of, had this thing on NFTs that kind of went viral. Of the 73 ,000 and change NFT collections that we identified, an eye-watering 69 ,795 of them have a market cap of zero ETH, meaning they're worthless. So 95 % of people holding NFT collections are currently holding on to worthless investments.

39:26even if we look at the top nfts value is hard to find starting 18 of the top collections have a floor price of zero indicating that a significant portion of even the most prominent collections struggling to maintain demand uh furthermore 41 of the top nfts are priced between five and a hundred dollars wasn't this the easiest one to call out of anything just that you know who who walked away i am sure people made a lot of money on this and sold remember the people guy didn't he sell his collection for like$70 million. I'm sure that's completely worthless. It was one painting or image or whatever.

39:59So 1 % of them boasts a price tag of over$6 ,000. I mean, this was the easy one to think of. Just the jokes of hey, I just right clicked your picture and I stole it. I think that even people that were Super Bowls on NFTs, a lot of them were saying this at the time that 99 % of these collections are going to zero. I think that was like consensus, even among NFT bulls. The one I really remember the most is these ETH racks, ETH racks. And I remember Drew Dixon tweeted this and he just re-upped it. So I found it and he said, there's this ETH rack, which is literally a picture of a rack that looks like you could have drawn on Microsoft Paint was selling for$2.2 million.

40:40And he said, what would you rather have this, this picture of a rack or a$2.2 million house in Florida on the water with a sweet boat launch and a pool. And obviously this was just funny money at the time, but that's the one that always stuck with me to like how crazy. It was like, wait a minute. Honestly, why would you rather hold this stupid thing in your wallet unless you're laundering money for tax purposes or something? Also, so Zillow has this house, so I looked at it. So this was in 2021 and it was selling for almost$2.3 million. Okay, so you can look at the price history. In March of 2022, this thing sold for$2.1 million.

41:21And then in January 2023, it sold for$2.3 million. And then by February, it sold for$2 million. Housing prices don't always go up. Why is there so much turnover in this house? I don't know. Maybe the pending sale fell through. But it sold for less money than it was trading for at the time. Should have bought the Pet Rock or the ETH Rock. I think my take on NFTs at the time, I still, I still, I do think there's something interesting about digital ownership. Like one of the examples that I threw out was like, every time I go to a Knick game, like I don't have my, I don't have my tickets. I used to have like tickets in a box.

41:55I don't know where they went to be able to look back and have some sort of digital ownership, digital entrance. Like I think that, that part of it is interesting. It doesn't mean it had to be worth something. And also, I like, I like the idea of using it as a key to unlock. Like what we did with our Discord. Yeah, the community, like you use the NFT as the key to unlock it, but that doesn't mean the NFT has to go up and price all the time and be worth 20 times what it was. So my take at the time where these things were going nuts is like, how do you explain this? And I guess this was, I was trying to justify the insanity was these were people, for the most part, these were people that were ETH millionaires and it was all funny money.

42:32It was poker chips. It was credit card points, whatever you want to talk, whatever, however you want to label it. for the most part, it wasn't people depositing$200 ,000 of cash and buying these things. It was people that were all - It was monopoly money. It was monopoly money. But I'm just saying, how many of those people do you think are kicking themselves for not cashing some of that out and buying a$5 million house on the water? Now, being a cynic, and I guess a realistic cynic, because a lot of those people did cash out to people that were actually using real money. Yeah, true. Which is a shame.

43:04All right. So I created an AI image, uh, you know, do a blog post and you have to have some little thumbnail for the social media. So I created one or you created one. So look at under AI here. So I, I wrote a post the other day about 24 things I believe about investing and you need a little picture there for the blog and then for social media. And I didn't usually have a chart, I just include the chart in there, but it didn't have anything. I told a little story about Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett. And so I said, you know what? I couldn't find a picture of them together. I'm going to create one in AI.

43:31So one in AI and I had to type a bunch of different things in and And I wrote like Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett investing. And this is the image you came up with. Whatever free AI, a bunch of them came up. It's just like AI art generator, whatever. And this is the picture that came up. It looks pretty good, but it also looks kind of weird, doesn't it? Like there's something just like 3 % off about it. Bezos is dead on. Buffett looks a little bit, a little off. Yeah, but I tried like 10 different iterations. And I'm like, oh, you know, that's actually kind of, so I've been playing around with it a little bit.

44:04Some stuff it can't, it couldn't do yet, but for something like this, I thought it was kind of cool. Yeah, that's great. Ben, last week we spoke about nav lending. The FT did a follow-up piece. Goldman Sachs has raised more than$15 billion to buy investor stakes in private equity funds and invest in deals where buyout groups sell portfolio companies from one of their funds to another. And the latest sign of sustained support for the fast-growing, quote, secondary strategy. The opportunity set is as big as it's ever been. I don't know who they're quoting here, but the need for some investors to get liquidity in an asset class that typically locks money up for more than a decade has offered attractive investment opportunities.

44:42Money on top of money, huh? Yeah. Now, I guess I could see that from the point of view of new investors that are taking out old investors that want liquidity. But doesn't this just turn the concept of the illiquidity premium on its head? If you're bringing gallons of water to these markets, then what are we even doing here? If the whole idea is like you're locked up and therefore you're earn a premium for giving up liquidity, then... It used to be this... When I was back in my private equity days, it was the secondary markets, you'd buy them like 50 % discounts. Like to offload, that penalty for liquidity was a huge discount.

45:25Yeah, I bet you the discounts are not 50%. I'm sure they've fallen a lot, but that's what it was back in the day, which is kind of... And that's when you'd buy like a whole fund. But that's kind of hard to believe that, yeah, you wouldn't have to take something. Okay, here's a good one. Gen X today is significantly wealthier than boomers were at the same age. We talk about boomers having it easy. But this is adjusted for inflation, 600 ,000 for Gen X and 500 ,000 for boomers at the time. I think the median age is around age 50 when this happened. So and millennials today are equal in wealth to boomers at the same age, just over 100k, all inflation adjusted.

45:58Some people said, well, a lot of the inflation rate you use kind of has a lot of a lot to do with this. But I don't think many people would assume Gen X has had it easier than baby boomers. Although, I mean, no one ever talks about Gen X and their experience and what happened to them. I'm sorry, these comparisons are just dumb. Why? I don't know. Like, okay, so what's, so Gen X had it easier, they didn't, millennials had it harder. I mean, who cares? Class warfare. I know, I just, I don't like, I don't like this. And it's just, it's just a way to divide us. I'm all about bringing people together.

46:30I guess my point with all of this is it's hard to judge a whole group like this And the individual circumstances and luck and timing, all of it is it's like anyone's personal finance experience is going to be dictated more by luck and timing than most people would look to. Yeah. The reason why I don't like these sort of comparisons, even though like I understand, I understand what we're doing here. It just creates a system of like winners and losers and people that feel bad and anger and nothing, you know. But that, that is going to happen on steroids with the housing market going forward in the future.

47:02People are going to look back at 2020 and go, you bought a house before 2020. I hate your guts. I didn't get one. I got screwed. There's going to be so much more of that now, I feel like, with the housing market. It's going to get worse and worse and worse, unfortunately. All right, here's another. We've talked about this before. Sonu Vargasi wrote this from Carson Group, and it shows bottom 50%, 50th to 90%, 90th to 99, and top 1 % by wealth. And he shows the growth in wealth from 1992 to 2006, then 2007 to 2019. And those ones go in order. The lowest people on the rung grew the slowest. The people in the top 1 % grew the fastest, except for 2020 to the first quarter of 2023.

47:45By far, the largest relative increase in wealth comes from the bottom 50%. And they more than doubled up the increase as the top 1%, the top 10 % all of this stuff. Love to see it. But is this another reason why the consumers remained so much stronger? Is that even like the bottom 50 % and so their, their net worth just skyrocket like they haven't seen in decades, right? How many people actually would know this fact? If you just talk to people on the street, did family feud style survey, three people out of a hundred, maybe would say the bottom 50 % has seen the biggest increase. Maybe. What do you think is more important for sustained growth for the economy?

48:31Or said differently, what would be worse for the economy if the top 1 % came under financial pressure or the bottom 50 %? Which is better or which is worse? Which would be worse for the economy? I think the bottom 50%. Bottom 50%. Because they're spending everything. Spend a higher percentage of their income. Yeah, so if the top one half of 1 % is feeling the pinch, all right, they're not buying paintings. Yes, they have a much bigger margin of safety too from financial assets. So is this an underreported or under explained aspect of why the economy remains strong? It's the bottom 50 % is doing relatively okay?

49:10Yeah, didn't I just say that like two minutes ago? Yeah, I'm agreeing with you. Thank you. That's a good call, coach. Coming around. You really do look like a JV football coach. I think that's your calling in life. This is my Belichick outfit, and I'm feeling pretty good about my preseason bet of Patriots under seven and a half wins. Okay. Not feeling great about my Giants over seven and a half wins. How many bets do you have going on at one time? Because it sure seems like a lot. You know what FanDuel needs? You're right, Ben. I do have a bunch of bets going on at one time. The FanDuel needs to have...

49:41So when you're looking at your phone and you see active bets, I don't want to see my futures bets. I don't want to have to scroll through my futures bets. I want them in a separate column. Okay. Those are the only bets I make anymore. I bet like four teams to win the Super Bowl, the NBA finals every year. And that's it. You know, it's unbelievable. We're so different. You're a set it and forget it sort of investor. Yes, it is true. And you're doing these 18 parlays. And I just, I had a bad run. I had a really bad run in the NFL season a year or two ago. And I just, it soured me to the whole deal.

50:13I kept getting screwed. What about delusion? Hope doesn't spring a turtle? I just, I was getting screwed on all these picks and I'm just like, you know what? I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. I've had enough and kind of went away from it. All right. Derek Thompson tweeted, it's mostly cringe for middle-aged people to gawk at general changes in younger generations, but the anti-socialization of childhood in America is really a stunning thing to see all at once. So from 1976 through 2015 or so, we're looking at the number of people that have a driver's license, that have tried alcohol, that have ever dated, that work for pay.

50:45And these things, you might say this is social media. These things have all been in a downtrend since basically the mid nineties, I guess. Nineties, probably. No, it's accelerated and crashed. Ever dated, for example, is alarming. It's an alarming crash. There's another chart that shows the percentage of eighth, 10th and 12th graders who spent an hour or more leisure time alone nearly every day. And that is going the opposite direction, as you might imagine. That's skyrocketing. That's screens. That's screens though. Yeah. And I think there's nothing I could do about it. Honestly, with screens and social media, I think this is the new normal.

51:29And everyone is going to get married in the future from dating apps. Isn't that just where we're heading? Yeah. I was watching something on Instagram. It was nostalgia overload. It almost made me cry. I don't know why. I just got emotional watching it. It was the introductory songs from shows from the 80s. Full House, Family Matters, Who's the Boss. You know what the best one ever is, right? Growing Pains, Wonder Years. Growing Pains is the best one ever. Growing Pains is terrific. How weird was Charles in Charge? Was Scott Baio basically an au pair? That was kind of a bizarre. I mean, people just didn't.

52:06And Who's the Boss? How weird was that show, if you think about it? The 1980s is such a weird time. So I was thinking about this. One of my favorite, all-time favorite Tom Hanks movie, if you asked me under truth serum, I'd say Money Pit, even though it probably should be big. Yeah, I've never seen it. He has his 1980s, so it's on Netflix, and I looked at it. Oh, it's on Netflix? Tom Hanks, one of our greatest actors ever. And right when you start the movie, I've never noticed it before. It says, Steven Spielberg presents The Money Pit. So Steven Spielberg, executive produced, Tom Hanks starred, and it's a slapstick comedy.

52:38about a husband and a wife who are building a home together. And it's totally 80s. It just cracked me up that one of the greatest directors of all time, maybe the greatest, and one of the greatest actors of all time in the 80s collaborated on a slapstick comedy that would be like a straight-to-DVD movie today. I gotta see that. It's totally 80s. But anyway, just watching these songs, these intro songs from the 80s, like thinking about how different life is. And I'm not saying life was better necessarily in the 80s, but some things were better. Now I'm a 90s baby. I was born in 85, but. Okay. No, I do remember.

53:18I do remember growing up with a lot of boredom. I must say like there was definitely. Oh yeah. Just, just some sitting around looking out the window type stuff. Just like, oh, should I call? I guess I'm just going to call this person's house and see what they're doing. This is also why I've seen every movie from the 80s or 90s, like 12 times because USA, TNT, TBS, The Summers. That was my babysitter. I just watched movies all the time. All right. I saw this the other night and I thought I was taking crazy pills. What was I watching? I was flipping through. I think I was on ESPN. I've said before, I'm not a flipper, but I happen to be flipping.

53:53I came across Cornhole. Oh, yeah. I've seen that before. And it said it was on ESPN 8, The Ocho. Wasn't that from Dodgeball? Wasn't that a joke? Yes, I think. Did they turn this into a real thing? I think they made it kind of a joke and turned ESPN 2 into ESPN 8 to be. Like wink wink? Yes. Okay, Ben, I was in the supermarket yesterday with Logan. And my wife told me to pick up a piece of salmon for her. So I waited on the line, you know, where you get the tickets. And I was thinking, how fresh is this food? There's 4 ,000 pounds of prepared foods here. You know what I mean? Meatballs, chicken parm, this salad, that salad, whatever it is.

54:43How often does that turn over? And how would you even know if it's fresh or not? There's no way they do it every single day. There's just no way. They've got to have some sort of, I often think about that at the supermarket and liquor stores. Like with as much inventory as they're carrying, how do they ever make money? Yeah. Don't forget about the money-making aspect of it. How do you know how old your food is that you're buying? roll the dice. You're a gambler. You're rolling the dice. You play craps every time you buy salmon at the store. It's like a parlay. Are you a prepared food guy? We have a pretty good meat department at my local place.

55:16Yeah, it's not bad. That's not what I asked. Meat is not prepared food. You cook meat. I'm saying like, do you go to stores and get meals that are already made? Oh, occasionally like the Costco tacos are pretty good. They have like a kit, you know, That kind of thing? The chicken alfredo my kids like from there? You're not understanding. There's not a... I'm not talking about kits. I'm talking about you see the food that's already made, you go and buy it, and then you heat it up. Isn't that what this is? I feel like we're talking about the same thing. No, you're talking about a taco kit. Give me an example.

55:49I just did. A piece of salmon, teriyaki salmon. That's what I bought for my wife. Yeah, I'm saying at the meat department, it'll be like a chicken kebab ready for you to go, and you just got to cook it. Yeah. No, I'm saying not even. Now what you're describing, yeah, if you go to a butcher, they'll have raw meat. So you're saying the salmon's already cooked. Yes. All you have to do is heat it up. All you have to do is microwave it. That's what I'm saying. Prepared foods, not raw prepared. Okay. That sounds kind of gross. I'm saying. Okay. Yeah. Then no, I wouldn't do that probably. Okay. And not to judge my fellow Americans, but the people online, you know, a little on the heavy side.

56:29It's easier to eat bad than it is to eat good. That's a fact. All right. Recommendations. All right. I think I nailed this. Not to brag. This is from Barstool. Apparently Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is so bad that audience members walked out of test screenings. I said last week that was the absolute worst trailer I've ever seen in my life. Now I am a trailer guy. Whenever I see people say that trailer looks awful, I usually don't understand because I like all trailers for the most part. It's usually a bad sign though. If the trailer looks bad or if it's a comedy and doesn't make you laugh, that's a bad sign.

56:59Yeah. So if the trailer looks bad, you know, it's bad. Yeah. I was talking with, with my trainer the other day as I do now, my trainer, I hate working out. God, do I hate it. And I know that if I'm not paying this guy to watch me work out and say, yep, you're doing great. Like, you know, uh, uh, it sounds really creepy when you put it that way. I was thinking of, uh, Chubb and happy Gilmore. Okay. You know, when he's giving the lessons to the lady and he's just reading. Anyway, I really do hate working out. But so we, we, we, we, we schmooze about movies and whatnot. And this is where we're different.

57:35You get the emotional high from gambling and hate working out. I get the, whatever it's called, the endorphins or whatever you get from working out. I get that. And like, I, I need, my body needs that at a certain point. Like I, I feel better after I work out. Like I enjoy working out. Yeah. I hate every minute of it. We were talking about the recruit. I don't know how that came up. But we were both like, oh, what a great movie. Great movie. I love that movie. I've seen that movie 10 times. Great movie. I saw it in the theaters, factually. Not Field of Dreams, but I know I saw this in Florida with my dad, as a matter of fact.

58:05It got a 43 % from the critics and a 58 % from the audience. What the hell is going on? If you haven't, I mean, those are horrible numbers. If you haven't seen The Recruit, put that right at the top of your list. If that movie was released this year, it would be like a top 10 movie of the year. Totally. Colin Farrell goes to the, was it The Farm? Is that what they call it? The CIA, yeah. And Al Pacino is the trainer, for lack of a better word. Tom Brady's ex, Bridget Moynihan is in it. It's a good movie. Hell of a movie. All right, this blew my face off. With$633 million domestically, Barbie has now outgrossed this from Eric Davis.

58:41Barbie has now outgrossed the first two Avengers films in every Star Wars film except for The Force Awakens. Wow. Greta Gerwig's film has also outgrossed every single DC film to date. Watch The Flash. That sucked. I didn't like it. Isn't that crazy? Barbie did beat the first two Avengers in every Star Wars film? It's another brand kind of thing. I'm going to watch it. Are you going to watch it? I haven't watched it yet. No, I'll see it eventually. I didn't really care to go see it in the theater, but I'll watch it eventually. All right. So I watched this movie literally called Hashtag Chad Gets the Axe.

59:14Where do you find this stuff? I'll tell you exactly where I find this stuff. I scroll on Prime for new rentals. And I judged a book by its cover. And I went to Rotten Tomatoes, got 100 % from the critics. Now, only eight reviews, but still. And a 75 % from the audience. And then I read the description. Four social media influencers live streamed their trip to Devil's Manor, the former home of a satanic cult. But things start to go wrong. As the violence increases, so do the views. Wow. Okay. And I got to say, am I recommending this? not necessarily, but if this sounds good to you, it was good.

59:57It was actually good. It was scary. If this sounds good to you, punch yourself in the face, please. It was scary. It was, it was scary. It was effective. I don't know how after seeing hundreds of these movies, you still get scared. Not only do I get scared, but I'll tell you this. I even, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I get scared. I guess that's the point. I, sometimes I'll mute it because I get too scared. I don't know. I just, I watch these movies. I'm like, okay, I see what's happening here. That's interesting. It doesn't do anything for me. All right. So they had a Bronx Tale on Rewatchables last week.

1:00:26So I rewatched that. And then it got me thinking that I started Wise Guy by Nicholas Pelleggi. Wait, I want to hear your take on Bronx Tale. Oh, I hadn't seen it in 20 years, probably. I thought it aged great. It's like a Netflix movie in the sense that it's good, but in a better director's hands. Like De Niro directed it. It could have been great, and it wasn't. But it was definitely good. Yeah, it's a tier below like Casino and Goodfellas and all those, but I still like it. So it reminded me that I started Wiseguy, which was the book that Goodfellas is based on. I thought, I got to pick that.

1:01:00I read like 10 % of it on my Kindle and I just forgot about it. So I started reading it again. And it's just crazy to me. So the stuff, remember in the movie where they hijack the airplane or whatever? Yeah. But they made it sound like these guys would go to Newark Airport. And that was like, this was their income. They hijacked like two to three shipments a day. And they owned the union guys, so they couldn't get the truckers fired. And like, that's how these guys lived. They would just steal. They would just steal. You're looking at it. Yeah, they would just steal stuff all the time. And it was like, that was their job basically, just to steal stuff.

1:01:35And they talked about how the Jimmy character who De Niro plays in the movie, they said he had a really bad background. He was foster homes and sexually abused. And you can kind of almost understand how this guy became a serial murderer. but they said he loved stealing so much. He said, you could offer him a billion dollars to stop stealing. He would say no, but then he'd figure out a way to steal the billion dollars from you. That's how much he loves stealing. Anyway, it's, it's the, the book, uh, makes me feel like the author of the book does not get enough credit for how good the movie is. Cause he told, uh, two parenting things.

1:02:07I watched, welcome to Wrexham came back again. I think I've watched the first three episodes. It's just as good as the first season. I don't know. Could you bring me back up to speed? I don't know what that is. It's the one where Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhoney buy a team. Uh, The soccer team. Forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's so good. And it's not even just those two guys. Like the whole second episode is a parenting one about children with disabilities. And it was just so well done and like kind of heavy. It was, is it, it's not, it's not a show. It's not a, it's not, it's, it's, it's based on reality, right?

1:02:35It's a reality show. And they also, they, they highlight the fans of the show, the, of the team and the people in the town. And it's just really, really well done. And then Matthew McConaughey was on smartless last week and they did a really long thing about parenting and being a father. And I thought like their whole, they're all kind of just sharing how they think about parenting. And I love kind of hearing about that stuff and their kids are a little older than mine. Uh, I thought it was really well done. Good one. As good as hashtag Chad gets the ax. Not quite. Maybe McConaughey would have been in that before he got days and confused.

1:03:10You're, you're, I feel like your movie recommendations are just like, you just, I'm just telling you what I watched. I know, but the stuff that you're watching is just, it's, it's, there's so many horror movies these days. I feel like you've just, you've hit them all and, they're getting worse and worse. Uh, dude, talk to me was, was excellent. Excellent. The worst part about it is I know there's people who listen to our show who are on board with you with these movies. You guys are all sickos. You're all sickos. Uh, so here's, here's, here's the top box office movies this weekend. The Nun 2, Expendables 4, A Haunting in Venice, The Equalizer 3, Barbie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3.

1:03:49It Lives Inside, Dumb Money, Blue Beetle. I mean, this is not a great slate of movies. All right. AnimalSpiritsPod at gmail.com. See you next time. Chad gets the axe.

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