Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media book Club. But club uh uh is
Speaker 1: the cools of Media.
Speaker 2: Club.
Speaker 1: Welcome to cools On Media book Club, your weekly book
Speaker 1: club where you don't have to do the reading because
Speaker 1: I do the reading.
Speaker 2: That's right. You can finally illiterate Max by forgetting how
Speaker 2: to read. You know, go ahead wherever you're listening right
Speaker 2: now and just hit yourself in the head as hard
Speaker 2: as you can, you know, knock some of that knowledge loose,
Speaker 2: because we're going to take care of the reading for you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: with a book, with a book, whatever, drain cleaner. It's
Speaker 2: all good. You know, you don't need to think anymore.
Speaker 2: We'll do that for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can trust us because we don't have political opinions.
Speaker 2: That's right. I've never known politics, never.
Speaker 1: Even heard of it. The episode I just finished recording
Speaker 1: kind of about the fact that in the eighties everyone
Speaker 1: pretended like they didn't have politics, and so therefore, yeah,
Speaker 1: had politics. So that's real on my mind. But I
Speaker 1: much prefer where we're at now, where instead people try
Speaker 1: to be upfront again about what they believe, so that
Speaker 1: you can go into it. Yeah, having a sense of
Speaker 1: how people are. Yeah, and Cory Doctoro makes it pretty
Speaker 1: clear that his work is political. I don't know if
Speaker 1: y'all caught onto that by now.
Speaker 2: No no, no political communism, I wouldn't guess no never.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do love the like taking the piss level
Speaker 1: of joke of the Communist Party, just meaning like when
Speaker 1: communism is a thing you do you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like that. Yeah, we go take the factory
Speaker 2: and make some shit of our own for a little while.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've been thinking a lot about this in some of
Speaker 2: my own work too. Like, one of the interesting things
Speaker 2: about writing stuff that's supposed to have happened post a
Speaker 2: revolution is you're like a generation passed when all of
Speaker 2: the politics that the people reading the book like. Theoretically,
Speaker 2: your characters should not be political in the same way
Speaker 2: as the reader, right, because totally the thing that everyone
Speaker 2: reading this is thinking about all of our problems and
Speaker 2: why a revolutionism or isn't needed, and everyone you know,
Speaker 2: living a generation after that, your politics are just like
Speaker 2: watching an old TV show, right, It's like trying to
Speaker 2: get into family matters or something. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, is
Speaker 2: that what you added an accordionist? That's why I added
Speaker 2: in an accordion was that in family matters?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Wait, that's Oracle right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're good.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: I made my living plane accordion on the street for
Speaker 1: a while, so I was very aware of the accordionists
Speaker 1: in pop culture because there weren't a lot of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what I was aware of was awkward transitions into
Speaker 1: resuming the story.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: We are on part four, the rousing conclusion. I say
Speaker 1: that as if I'm joking. It is like a conclusion
Speaker 1: of party discipline, a novella by Corey Doctro, novella shorter
Speaker 1: than a novel and longer than a novelette. Where we
Speaker 1: last left our heroes, they had just left their communist
Speaker 1: party and they were ready to distribute shopping carts, all
Speaker 1: very criminally. I love the idea that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of tension in this right because they're like, oh, they
Speaker 1: can actually get in an awful lot of trouble for
Speaker 1: printing out shopping carts and giving them the people, Like
Speaker 1: it's a successful bit of tension. How they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're high school kids having a laugh, but they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this could destroy their future.
Speaker 2: You had that experience, if you had any kind of
Speaker 2: a childhood of like suddenly you realize the drugs are
Speaker 2: a little bit harder, and like, oh my gosh, there
Speaker 2: could be consequences to this, Like this started out as
Speaker 2: just me going out with my friends, and something could
Speaker 2: really happen badly here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like someone in your friend scene dies from the
Speaker 1: terrible decisions that you all keep making, or yeah, goes
Speaker 1: to jail or right wrecks their brain.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: We rode back to Burbank with Charell on my lap
Speaker 1: and one of my butt cheeks squeezed which between the
Speaker 1: edge of the passenger seat and the door. The truck
Speaker 1: squeaked on its suspension as we went over the potholes,
Speaker 1: riding low with a huge load of shopping carts under
Speaker 1: tarps in its bed. The carts were pretty amazing, strong
Speaker 1: as hell, but light enough for me to lift over
Speaker 1: my head using crazy math to create a ten segrety
Speaker 1: structure that would hold up to serious abuse. They were rustproof,
Speaker 1: super steerable, and could be reconfigured into different compartment sizes
Speaker 1: or shelves with grills that clipped on to the sides
Speaker 1: and light as they were. You put enough of them
Speaker 1: into a truck and they'd weigh a ton a literal
Speaker 1: ton in Jose. Our driver's truck was only rated for
Speaker 1: a half ton. It was a rough ride. Our plan
Speaker 1: was to pull up on skid row and start handing
Speaker 1: out carts to anyone around, giving people two or three
Speaker 1: to share with their friends. Each truck had a different
Speaker 1: stretch we were going to hit. But just soon as
Speaker 1: we got close to our spot, two things became very apparent. One,
Speaker 1: there were no homeless people around because two the place
Speaker 1: was crawling with five to zero. The Burbank cops had
Speaker 1: their dumb old tanks out, big armored m wraps that
Speaker 1: they used for riot control and whenever they wanted to
Speaker 1: put on a show of force, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of crime scene tape and blinking lights on hobby horses.
Speaker 1: The thicker it got, the more scared we got. This
Speaker 1: kind of thing wasn't unusual for downtown Burbank. A couple
Speaker 1: times a month you could expect to see BPD flexing
Speaker 1: shutting down some street. There was no reason to suspect
Speaker 1: they were out there for us, but it was asshole
Speaker 1: tightly scary to be coming from a crime scene with
Speaker 1: a truck full of evidence and too many people in
Speaker 1: the front seat of the truck and looking at all
Speaker 1: this law turn it around. The whites of Cherrell's eyes
Speaker 1: were showing, but her voice was steady. Jose, the driver
Speaker 1: didn't need to be told twice with robotic motions. He
Speaker 1: signaled a turn, pulled into an empty parking lot, put
Speaker 1: the truck into reverse, backed it out, and headed back
Speaker 1: the way we came. He wasn't the only one. While
Speaker 1: some of the drivers were pulling up to the roadblock
Speaker 1: and asking the cop which weighed a detour, others were
Speaker 1: turning around and finding their own way. Shit, shit, shit.
Speaker 1: His voice was a low monotone. I got an idea.
Speaker 1: Cherrell's smile was funny and tight and not exactly good natured.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, she punched me on the shoulder. Shut up,
Speaker 1: I got an idea. We pulled up two blocks from
Speaker 1: Alai's house, a dead end street that backed into the
Speaker 1: railroad fence. Jose got the ramp in place without clanging it,
Speaker 1: and the casters on the carts rolled with the silence
Speaker 1: of elegant walk away engineering until we had them all
Speaker 1: arranged into two long snakes of shopping carts on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: Jose looked uncomfortable as he stood by the driver's door.
Speaker 1: You sure about this?
Speaker 2: We got this.
Speaker 1: Charel is a lot more confident than me, and there's
Speaker 1: no point in arguing with Cherrell when she's feeling confident. Still,
Speaker 1: Jose looked at me. I gave him a thumbs up
Speaker 1: and a smile, and Cherrell made the same gesture in
Speaker 1: a way that made sure that I knew that she
Speaker 1: was making fun of me. I know for a fact
Speaker 1: that one of the secret superpowers that we get as
Speaker 1: teen girls is that grown ass men can't stand it
Speaker 1: when we might be making fun of them, and Jose
Speaker 1: was no exception. He gave us a shake of his
Speaker 1: head and drove off. Now what but I knew Charrell
Speaker 1: grabbed the handle at the back of one's snake. Now
Speaker 1: we push. She set off and left me to follow her. Look,
Speaker 1: it must have been three in the morning at this point,
Speaker 1: and if anyone saw us, they must have been left
Speaker 1: scratching their heads. But I don't think anyone saw us
Speaker 1: residential burbank streets three am. Nah. The lights were all
Speaker 1: off at Ali's house when we pushed our carts onto
Speaker 1: his lawn, but we could still hear corny candy billy
Speaker 1: music coming through the door, which wasn't locked. Charrell let
Speaker 1: herself in without knocking. The living room was dimly lit
Speaker 1: by a few candles, and it smelled like unwashed people
Speaker 1: getting it on, which they had been doing until pretty recently.
Speaker 1: There were candy necklaces and cowboy hats everywhere along with
Speaker 1: the bodies. One of the bodies rolled over and squinted
Speaker 1: at us. Ola Aleeh. Charrell said he was pretty if
Speaker 1: he liked him pretty, and when he wasn't being stupid,
Speaker 1: he was pretty smart, which was more than you could
Speaker 1: say of most of the boys I'd known. It wasn't
Speaker 1: crazy for Cherrell to like him, even if he was
Speaker 1: one hundred percent destined to crash land in the Land
Speaker 1: of Lost Losers forever, Charrelle. He scrambled to his feet,
Speaker 1: using a pillow to cover himself. Jesus, give me a seck.
Speaker 1: He gave us a view of his ass as he
Speaker 1: made his way to his bedroom, and then came back
Speaker 1: out wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. You
Speaker 1: guys are a little late. Party ended a couple hours ago,
Speaker 1: Charrell sucked her teeth. We didn't come here for your party, Alejandro.
Speaker 1: We're on a mission. He shook his head. I don't
Speaker 1: like the sound of that. You're gonna love it, fool,
Speaker 1: Shut up and listen. Charell didn't bother him with the
Speaker 1: little incriminating details. Just hit the high points. There were
Speaker 1: fifty shopping carts parked on his lawn, the greatest shopping
Speaker 1: carts ever made. They were a gift to Burbank's homeless people.
Speaker 1: Don't need to know where they came from. We got
Speaker 1: to give them out on the down low. And that's
Speaker 1: where you and You're no good friends come into the picture.
Speaker 1: We need a street crew. I count ten of you.
Speaker 1: That's five shopping carts each. Call it an hour's work.
Speaker 1: You all have incurred quite a debt to society tonight
Speaker 1: with your debauchery and illegal dope fiending, and I'm here
Speaker 1: to offer you a way to make it up. One
Speaker 1: of the cuttle puddlers groaned and told us to keep
Speaker 1: it down, and Ali shook his head. Sorry. I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell if he was apologizing to her, or to Cherrelle
Speaker 1: or all of us. Charelle switched from her stern glare
Speaker 1: to her million dollars smile. Come on, alih, these parties
Speaker 1: are getting old. But you can't even tell them apart anymore.
Speaker 1: How long before you get so tired you give up
Speaker 1: on it. On the other hand, you throw in with
Speaker 1: us and have the experience of a lifetime. I heard
Speaker 1: her put something extra into that, and I looked back
Speaker 1: and forth between them without making it obvious, and she
Speaker 1: already hooked up with him. I didn't think so, but
Speaker 1: watching the two of them, I could see it was
Speaker 1: a close thing. Ali, What the fuck that was another
Speaker 1: of the sleepers? I looked more closely. I knew him,
Speaker 1: Dwayne Marshall graduated the year before. What the actual was
Speaker 1: everyone except me spending their weekends at Orgi's d Get up? Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you something. Ali was grinning now too,
Speaker 1: reflecting back to Cherrell's million Dollar Million wants smile. That
Speaker 1: girl is unstoppable, and that's why we all love her,
Speaker 1: much like we love ads that come into the middle
Speaker 1: of stories.
Speaker 2: They're also unstoppable. You couldn't stop this if you wanted,
Speaker 2: unless you take out your phone and press the skip
Speaker 2: ahead button, which is easily within your willpower. Except for them,
Speaker 2: I'm going to say twenty eight percent of the audience
Speaker 2: who were engaged in some sort of task so precarious
Speaker 2: that they have to listen to the ensuing ads and
Speaker 2: to you, we say sorry.
Speaker 1: That's so often me because I listened to podcasts while
Speaker 1: I like do a lot of physical crafting. And I'll
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, holding a shelf over my head with
Speaker 1: a drill, being like, ah, dang it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'll see people be like I run some sort of
Speaker 2: heavy machinery and I can't skip ahead of the ads.
Speaker 2: Damn you people. And I just want you to know,
Speaker 2: as frustrating as it is, your occasional half attention is
Speaker 2: what funds our entire live. Yes, so thank you, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, thank you and no one.
Speaker 1: Else and we're back.
Speaker 2: We're back. I hope that guy on the forklift is
Speaker 2: doing good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, proud of you.
Speaker 2: Proud of you, buddy.
Speaker 1: Sleeping on the streets in Burbank is against the law,
Speaker 1: and if you can't pay the fine, you go to jail.
Speaker 1: The city's homeless aren't easy to find after dark, but
Speaker 1: there are a few places that are reliable. The food bank,
Speaker 1: the soup kitchen, the library parking lot. It's been years
Speaker 1: since the library opened its doors, but they kept the
Speaker 1: free internet. We split into four groups of two. I
Speaker 1: figured that Cherrell would go with Alai, but she's surprised
Speaker 1: by linking arms with me. Library. I covered my surprise
Speaker 1: and shrugged. I guess I looked at her. How come
Speaker 1: you're not with Ali? He's with Serena. That was the
Speaker 1: girl we'd woken up at the start when we got Ali.
Speaker 1: They a thing. She shook her head. Not a thing,
Speaker 1: but you know, a thing tonight. Not my place to
Speaker 1: get it between them, schro what's going on with you,
Speaker 1: that fool? She pinched my arm. Nothing you need to
Speaker 1: worry about, she shook her head. Look, he's pretty, and
Speaker 1: when he's not high, he's pretty smart too. But Ali
Speaker 1: Martinez isn't any kind of boyfriend material. He's okay for
Speaker 1: relieving tension, you know, having a little fun, but I'm
Speaker 1: not about to tie myself up to him. Look at him,
Speaker 1: those clothes, I stiffled at laugh. He'd even put on
Speaker 1: the miniature cowboy hat. That's why I only ever see
Speaker 1: him at his house. He's not much good on the outside,
Speaker 1: but in private, I shook my head. Chelle and I
Speaker 1: told each other everything, except it seemed like we didn't
Speaker 1: not always. Graduation was weeks away, days really, and I'd
Speaker 1: assumed that whatever happened with the rest of the fools,
Speaker 1: I'd been locked up since I was five. I was
Speaker 1: going to be tight with Charrell forever. But she knew
Speaker 1: I thought Ali was a half wit, and so she
Speaker 1: hadn't told me about him. And Ali was a half wit.
Speaker 1: Plus he was hoking up with other girls right in
Speaker 1: front of her. She deserved better than that. A day before,
Speaker 1: I'd have had the impulse to tell Cherrell that she
Speaker 1: was being more stupid than she had any excuse to be. Today,
Speaker 1: I felt like I just noticed a huge gap between us,
Speaker 1: but maybe it'd been there all along. We were besties,
Speaker 1: but we were also about to be graduates. Did grads
Speaker 1: have besties? We pushed our snake of carts to the library,
Speaker 1: the Buena Vista branch, where there were a handful of
Speaker 1: permanentish homeless tents and a larger population of rotating homeless
Speaker 1: leeching off the Wi Fi and the power outlet. Set
Speaker 1: into the concrete benches. Someone had used cold chisels to
Speaker 1: smash out the dividers that were supposed to stop you
Speaker 1: from sleeping on them. There were a lot of spaces
Speaker 1: in b Bank where you could get busted for sleeping out,
Speaker 1: but everyone knew that the homeless ruled the Buoynevista branch
Speaker 1: in its park The wheels whispered as we steered them
Speaker 1: carefully up the driveway, passed the old night deposit box
Speaker 1: for books, dentened and fire blackened in the harsh yellow
Speaker 1: street lights. I guess it pays to be a light
Speaker 1: sleeper when you're homeless. By the time we reached the
Speaker 1: middle of the parking lot, the wheels whisper had woken
Speaker 1: up at least a dozen people, silhouetted and sitting up
Speaker 1: on benches or in the grass, draped in blankets or
Speaker 1: wrapped in sleeping bags. We stopped. They looked at us,
Speaker 1: and we looked back. I felt like we were expected
Speaker 1: to give a speech or something. We come in peace.
Speaker 1: These are for you. A person stood. She was a
Speaker 1: white lady, not much older than me. She came closer.
Speaker 1: I realized I recognized her. She'd been a senior my
Speaker 1: freshman year. She didn't look good, no obvious bruises or
Speaker 1: track marks, and she wasn't that dirty, but still she
Speaker 1: didn't look good. She smiled at me and nodded her head,
Speaker 1: like and I help you Uh, Hi, I wish Chrel
Speaker 1: would say something. I snuck her a look. She had
Speaker 1: checked out, looking glazed and tired and like someone who
Speaker 1: danced her ass off and scared herself to death and
Speaker 1: also was struggling with a shitty boyfriend. Hello. She had
Speaker 1: a great voice. I couldn't remember her name, but a
Speaker 1: clear picture came to me her singing in front of
Speaker 1: the school jazz band at an assembly. Uh, I just
Speaker 1: heard of the shopping carts between us. We'd pushed forty.
Speaker 1: What if there were a lot more people than carts?
Speaker 1: Would we trigger a riot? Would we have to decide? Uh?
Speaker 1: Good work line that AP Forensics really did the trick
Speaker 1: we made these. They're really good, lightweight, strong, durable. I
Speaker 1: waved my hands over them like I was on home
Speaker 1: shopping video. Neat. Her voice was lovely, her hair was
Speaker 1: limp and stringy, and there was something wrong with the
Speaker 1: way she looked at me, squinting. Hadn't she warn't glasses
Speaker 1: in high school? I wondered what had happened to them?
Speaker 1: Thought about how little difference a better shopping cart would
Speaker 1: make to someone who could barely see. She squinted harder
Speaker 1: at me. You go to burbank. Hi, don't you I nodded, yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1: They made her smile, pretty smile. Is this like a
Speaker 1: shop project or something? I shook my head. Nothing like that.
Speaker 1: I looked around. It was well a factory Encino was
Speaker 1: shutting down, so we had a communist party there made these.
Speaker 1: You had a communist party. She really did have a
Speaker 1: pretty smile. That's epic. And you made these kids today.
Speaker 1: You're so ingenious. Give me hope for the future. Charrelle
Speaker 1: giggled a little at that. Welcome back, Cherrell. We made
Speaker 1: them for you, all of you. The white lady nodded.
Speaker 1: When do you graduate this month? She nodded again. What
Speaker 1: are you doing after? I'm going to Glendale Community College
Speaker 1: for an associates and business administration. Then I was going
Speaker 1: to try for financial aid at Northridge. I'd said this
Speaker 1: so many times to so many people. It just tumbled out.
Speaker 1: I want to stay close to home, save money.
Speaker 2: She nodded.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I did. Straight a's all the way.
Speaker 1: Watch out for Calculus for finance, my jors. It's brutal.
Speaker 1: I felt like I had been punched in the gut.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how she'd ended up sleeping on a
Speaker 1: park bench. But I hadn't thought that maybe it involved
Speaker 1: getting the same kinds of grades I was hoping to get. Well. Uh,
Speaker 1: I swallowed hard because my eyes were threatening to overflow
Speaker 1: with tears, deep breath. I don't know if you all
Speaker 1: can use these, but we hope maybe you could. They're
Speaker 1: really good, light strong, they look really good. She was
Speaker 1: being polite, she had good manners. Thank you. Can we
Speaker 1: I mean, can we leave them with you to give out?
Speaker 1: She smiled and looked understanding, condescending, even like, oh honey,
Speaker 1: you have no idea, but also but you will. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I can figure something out. We walked away in silence,
Speaker 1: but once we were out of earshot, Charrell said, you
Speaker 1: think she's going to try and sell them, I mean
Speaker 1: to the other people. I scowled at her. I was
Speaker 1: so unaccountably pissed at her, but she was just being Charrelle,
Speaker 1: No dummy, She's going to give them away to her friends.
Speaker 1: It was dawned now, pretty and pink, and the birds
Speaker 1: were waking up and saying hello to each other at
Speaker 1: the tops of their voices. Chelle, what are you doing
Speaker 1: after graduation? Girl? I'm going to sleep in every morning
Speaker 1: for a month. But after that, you mean college, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we turned left on Magnolia, the fancy stores to their
Speaker 1: twenty four hour security guards. Some of those guys had
Speaker 1: familiar faces a couple years before they had been seen.
Speaker 1: They were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were barely visible,
Speaker 1: wrapped in blankets and curled up real small behind signboards
Speaker 1: and trash cans. Some of them would have familiar faces,
Speaker 1: but only because they didn't take advantage of these deals.
Speaker 2: That's right, if you want to stay off the streets
Speaker 2: or on the streets, but in a way that's like
Speaker 2: a nice street, you know, Like what's a good streets
Speaker 2: Sunset Boulevard, Yeah, Sunset Boulevard. That one's from the songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sister's a mercy song about it.
Speaker 2: I like, sure, that's probably a happy song.
Speaker 1: I'd imagine, Yeah, this was a mercy famously happy band.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, I'm gonna just assume that and go
Speaker 2: ahead with my life scheduling music to play during this
Speaker 2: birthday party.
Speaker 1: Because my birthday party to play Sisters a Mercy, But
Speaker 1: instead you're gonna play these ads.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope. Eight year old Kindle from Duluth enjoys
Speaker 2: the birthday party soundtrack I put together, featuring that Sisters
Speaker 2: of Mercy's song, and also a minute and a half
Speaker 2: of me explaining to you that I'm going to put
Speaker 2: music in the little boy's birthday After that, it's pure
Speaker 2: sca baby.
Speaker 1: Do you ever find yourself like in regular conversations and
Speaker 1: wanting to pivot to ads? Like it just gets to you.
Speaker 2: It's like, how I imagine a great baseball player, Nolan Ryance.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he just throws a ball as hard as he
Speaker 2: fucking can. Yeah, like it probably comes out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Unless you know him, then you're just like, oh, that's Nolan.
Speaker 2: He's just he throws a speedball every now and again.
Speaker 2: He can't stop himself too good at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, now that we're back from those ads college,
Speaker 1: she blew air out. My mom has been asking me
Speaker 1: about that too. But you got into Glendale CC, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got in linked her arm with mine. In the
Speaker 1: old days a year ago, two years ago, we'd come
Speaker 1: down to Magnolia on a Saturday and shop or window
Speaker 1: shop with the throngs of nice people like an outdoor mall.
Speaker 1: We loved the high class vintage places that had survived
Speaker 1: the transition to Coteur brands because it was the owners
Speaker 1: behind the counter, not shop clerks whose fear of losing
Speaker 1: their jobs made them mean, and the owners would let
Speaker 1: people like us in, let us try on clothes we
Speaker 1: could never afford. Hadn't done that since junior year. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't the same at six am with the stores
Speaker 1: all closed, but still it felt so good to be
Speaker 1: with my bestie on this street, arm in arm, like
Speaker 1: we were kids without a care in the world. I
Speaker 1: got in like it was a death sentence. But I'm
Speaker 1: not going charrelle. Why that's side. Come on, I knew
Speaker 1: you could get a loan, she snorted. How you think
Speaker 1: that white lady in the park living out of a
Speaker 1: shopping cart. Girl, you borrow a dollar for college, you
Speaker 1: pay back, and you miss a payment, you pay back
Speaker 1: one hundred. I want to spend my life on the
Speaker 1: run from a loan shark. I'll borrow money from an
Speaker 1: honest criminal on the corner. Not some university. We had
Speaker 1: mandatory classes on debt management and student borrowing, and I
Speaker 1: had to admit that this is what they added up to.
Speaker 1: When you looked at them carefully. This was pretty much
Speaker 1: what they were saying, but Charrell, I didn't have anything
Speaker 1: else to say. When you're right, you're right. Charrell was right,
Speaker 1: So what was I going to do? I want to
Speaker 1: get some breakfast.
Speaker 2: Bibi's.
Speaker 1: They had the biggest portions in Burbank, pancakes the size
Speaker 1: of manhole covers, coffee, and buckets. We used to go
Speaker 1: there for breakfast after morning swim team at the y
Speaker 1: hadn't been in a year at least. Hell yeah, Cherrell
Speaker 1: linked arms with me. We didn't talk about school, or
Speaker 1: borrowing money or communist parties for the rest of the morning.
Speaker 1: The shopping carts were everywhere, pushed by homeless people all
Speaker 1: around Burbank. You could spot them a mile away every
Speaker 1: time I saw one. In the weeks afterward, I felt
Speaker 1: a little warm tingle I made that I was eighteen
Speaker 1: years old and I had finally had something to show
Speaker 1: for the years i'd been walking around on the earth.
Speaker 1: The Communist party at Steelbridge didn't make the news, but
Speaker 1: the kids who'd been there gossiped about it, and I
Speaker 1: was the coolest girl in school the last month. A
Speaker 1: couple times I got to deny having anything to do
Speaker 1: with it. When impressionable freshmen came up to me and asked,
Speaker 1: it feels true. I'd organized the whole thing. I coasted
Speaker 1: along towards graduation on autopilot. My finals were all done.
Speaker 1: My acceptance letter from Glendale CC was stuck to the fridge,
Speaker 1: and with it the letter pre approving my student loan.
Speaker 1: Every time I looked at it, I got the opposite
Speaker 1: feeling to the one I got when I saw one
Speaker 1: of those shopping carts. Mama paid for the gown and
Speaker 1: mortar board rental for my graduation, and Tisha made fun
Speaker 1: of me as I tried it on in the mirror.
Speaker 1: When my phone twipped at me that night at three
Speaker 1: a m. And I answered it, Tisha mouthed, I'm telling
Speaker 1: like she always did, and I rolled my eyes like
Speaker 1: I always did. Sharrell, You're gonna get me killed, Mama,
Speaker 1: isn't joking? LINEE been along? Silence You okay? That walk
Speaker 1: away you met at the party with the hair, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a light feeling in my head, a light
Speaker 1: feeling in my guts. You still know how to get
Speaker 1: in touch with her?
Speaker 2: Not a question?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tisha stared at me hard. She could tell from
Speaker 1: that one word something was up. Charrell you're not gonna
Speaker 1: you could come too, Like I hadn't thought that thought
Speaker 1: at least once a day for weeks and weeks, every
Speaker 1: time I thought about graduation, every time I looked at
Speaker 1: that letter on the fridge, Charrelle, it be an adventure,
Speaker 1: the adventure, what do you have to lose? I looked
Speaker 1: at Tisha. She had always been my mini me, and
Speaker 1: tag along had turned into a truly good person. While
Speaker 1: I watched funny and sweet and trustworthy and sassy so sassy,
Speaker 1: I thought about Mama. I thought about Charrelle in those
Speaker 1: times we'd gone shopping together, or hung out or gone
Speaker 1: out for sports. I don't know Cherrelle, Honestly, I don't know.
Speaker 1: She drew in a breath, but I'd hate to lose it,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Oh, Titia was staring at me like
Speaker 1: I might explode. I got that info though from that
Speaker 1: lady with the hair. I felt like the words were
Speaker 1: coming out of someone else's mouth. Okay, don't think I
Speaker 1: should say over the phone, though, I'll bring it to
Speaker 1: school tomorrow. Put it under your door, mat, I'll get
Speaker 1: it tonight. Oh, I closed my eyes. You can knock
Speaker 1: on the window when you get here. Don't want to
Speaker 1: wake you up, get you in trouble. Maybe okay, okay bye.
Speaker 1: Then she wasn't at graduation. I thought of her every
Speaker 1: day that summer, working gig jobs, rating search results, saving
Speaker 1: money for school. I kept the address of the walk
Speaker 1: away Lady with the hair, but I lost it somehow.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think I see her dressed like a homeless
Speaker 1: but it always turns out to be someone else. All
Speaker 1: I tracked me down one day to ask if I
Speaker 1: knew where she was. I shrugged and didn't even laugh
Speaker 1: at the stupid little hat. Jrelle's mother called my mama
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, but by the end of summer
Speaker 1: that had stopped. The Semisadas through some good parties that summer,
Speaker 1: and I got invited to some of them. None of
Speaker 1: them were as epic as my Communist party. The first
Speaker 1: day of Glendale CC, as I milled around with thousands
Speaker 1: of other confused freshmen, I got a buzz. It was
Speaker 1: an error message telling me that a message I'd never
Speaker 1: sent had bounced. The address wasn't when I recognized, but
Speaker 1: I knew who it was from. Rice Pudding Dash called me,
Speaker 1: Maybe who else could it be? I started to write
Speaker 1: it down carefully on a piece of paper, decided to
Speaker 1: commit it to memory. I've never sent it a message,
Speaker 1: but I think of it every day as I watch
Speaker 1: my grades and my student loans roll in the.
Speaker 2: End, ah lummer, I don't know, bummer, and also sounds
Speaker 2: very familiar to like, I don't know. I've been thinking
Speaker 2: a lot about the transition from being young to no
Speaker 2: longer being young, and the fact that we will all
Speaker 2: be continually processing Yeah, I guess because of the way
Speaker 2: that the Internet prizes certain kinds of discourse. I feel
Speaker 2: like the rest of our lives is going to be
Speaker 2: watching our generations process getting old, which is exhausting to
Speaker 2: think about. You should age out of being able to
Speaker 2: be listened to public sphere. I remember hearing people in
Speaker 2: the nineties and stuff complain about how old people didn't
Speaker 2: have as much of a voice in media, and it
Speaker 2: was like these perpetually young, good looking people and all
Speaker 2: of your TV shows and movies, and I would like
Speaker 2: to go back to that. It turns out it sucks
Speaker 2: to watch everybody processed getting altered.
Speaker 1: You're thinking because like Corey Doctor is writing this thinking
Speaker 1: about you, so you're just thinking about, like what it
Speaker 1: means to be graduating high school and often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that transition and that feeling I remember having
Speaker 2: when I was young, of like feeling like I could
Speaker 2: really do something different with my life than anybody had
Speaker 2: done before. Yeah, and watching everyone that you kind of
Speaker 2: had those dreams with all make the decision to get
Speaker 2: student loans.
Speaker 1: Yeah totally. I Mean what's interesting is I made the
Speaker 1: other decision. I went walk away, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I dropped out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I dropped out of college as soon as I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I mean I can ride freight trains
Speaker 1: and like live in abandoned buildings. That sounds amazing, you know.
Speaker 2: I lived in the back of a car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I'm glad I did that, and I
Speaker 1: think it set me up as a creative professional very well.
Speaker 1: It like fucked me over in a lot of ways. Right.
Speaker 1: But the thing I'm watching is a lot of people
Speaker 1: in my periphery who maybe made it to their mid thirties,
Speaker 1: like sometimes hanging out with people who'd sort of gone
Speaker 1: walk away yeah, but then didn't themselves, are starting to
Speaker 1: have this like third life crisis, you know, instead of
Speaker 1: mid life crisis. Yeah, where they're like, oh, like maybe
Speaker 1: fuck these student loans and maybe like fuck this endless
Speaker 1: series of dead end jobs.
Speaker 2: And you know, yeah, I hear a lot of people
Speaker 2: complain about like the stuff they didn't do when they
Speaker 2: were younger, and I do think a lot of people
Speaker 2: have that experience. If you have that one really good
Speaker 2: kind of I could have pivoted from this to doing
Speaker 2: something very different with my life experience. You know it's
Speaker 2: the Communist party, Yeah, printing those shopping carts, like feeling
Speaker 2: that moment of potential and possibility and risk get further
Speaker 2: and further into your rear view mirror as you head
Speaker 2: on in a path that now could have been predicted.
Speaker 2: I guess as a yeahs a vibe.
Speaker 1: And it's hard because it's like I'll do talks at colleges,
Speaker 1: right and people will be like, hey, what do you
Speaker 1: think about? Like people have straight up asked me at talks,
Speaker 1: being like should I drop out of college? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I've been like, look, I have no regrets about the
Speaker 1: fact that I dropped out of college. I cannot recommend
Speaker 1: in good conscience one way or the other what people
Speaker 1: do with their lives around that kind of stuff, because
Speaker 1: I one, it's like this like feeling of weight where
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know what you're dealing with. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're just screwed with a bunch of debt, maybe
Speaker 1: you should finish and get the degree at this you know,
Speaker 1: who knows, right, it's gonna be different for everyone. I'm
Speaker 1: still grateful for the decisions I made, but also like,
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of dead friends. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go off and live this adventurous, risky life,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of the people around me died in
Speaker 1: their twenties.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I think all the time about the
Speaker 2: line from a Rainy Night and Soho when of Shane
Speaker 2: McGowan's great songs. We watched our friends grow up together,
Speaker 2: and we saw them as they fell. Some of them
Speaker 2: fell into heaven, some of them fell into hell. And
Speaker 2: it's one of those flights that a few times a
Speaker 2: year I'll get news about somebody and that will just
Speaker 2: ring like a bell in my heart. God.
Speaker 1: He was a real one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, man, he lived it.
Speaker 1: You know. He died a little bit young, but he
Speaker 1: died a lot later than I think he thought he
Speaker 1: was gonna.
Speaker 2: For Shane McGowan, he died ancient. I'll say that I'll say, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not saying I don't wish he had a healthier life,
Speaker 2: but he did pretty good living the life Shane McGough
Speaker 2: at Lift.
Speaker 1: One of the things I really like about this story
Speaker 1: is the two characters balancing that right. Both of them
Speaker 1: are going to do the Communist Party, and one of
Speaker 1: them is going to go to community college on loans
Speaker 1: that she knows are dangerous, and one of them is
Speaker 1: going to go off and join a revolution that's dangerous,
Speaker 1: and for anyone who wants to know more about how
Speaker 1: that goes, I really highly recommend walk Away by Cory
Speaker 1: Doctor great book.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite sci fi books of a long time.
Speaker 2: It feels like ye, I liked it a lot. I
Speaker 2: like that depiction of revolution. We talk a lot about
Speaker 2: what I think is going to happen in the process
Speaker 2: of happening, which is not the full scale collapse of
Speaker 2: the United States or kind of any other massive nation state,
Speaker 2: because the apparatus of physical control is so good, but
Speaker 2: the apparatus of physical control is also extremely expensive. And
Speaker 2: one of the things I like about walk Away is
Speaker 2: it depicts the revolution being a thing that builds in
Speaker 2: areas where the direct ability of the state to exert
Speaker 2: control has crumbled because it's not profitable for the state
Speaker 2: to control that, and the state is effectively so corporatized
Speaker 2: that you actually get, in some ways a preferable situation
Speaker 2: to like a traditional authoritarian state where there's some sort
Speaker 2: of like ego thing behind the people running it, of
Speaker 2: like maintaining a certain level of geographical control, as opposed
Speaker 2: to we're going to hold on to what makes a profit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and in the areas that are no longer profitable for us,
Speaker 2: I think, is where you're going to see new ways
Speaker 2: of life explored and people will figure out what survival
Speaker 2: looks like. Yeah, you know in the world that is
Speaker 2: being created by climate change in those areas, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Part of why I liked walk Away so much and
Speaker 2: what I felt was so believable about Walkaways because when
Speaker 2: I was in North East Syria in twenty nineteen, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's what Rojava essentially is totally. It's an area where,
Speaker 2: because of a variety of reasons, and it was not
Speaker 2: profitable or feasible for the state to continue exerted control,
Speaker 2: and so people got to try something new and walk
Speaker 2: Away kind of reimagines that. But as like a social
Speaker 2: movement as like a trend.
Speaker 1: Almost a subculture in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, subculture based around dropping out and building something
Speaker 2: new at the margins that you know grows and the
Speaker 2: way that I think we all hope something will one
Speaker 2: day in Like the cracks, it does well enough that
Speaker 2: it pushes them wide or open until the whole thing
Speaker 2: falls apart, which is I think a more realistic version
Speaker 2: of a good future. Then we'll finally figure out how
Speaker 2: to do a nineteen seventeen again, but this time it'll
Speaker 2: work better totally. It'll work forever it instead of falling
Speaker 2: apart like eighty years later in a really embarrassing way.
Speaker 1: This wheel is so much rounder, like it is one
Speaker 1: hundred percent rounder than the previous wheel.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I know that most of the people who
Speaker 2: are prominent in the movement right now are some kind
Speaker 2: of grifter or con man, but that will magically not
Speaker 2: happen when we get it together well enough to do
Speaker 2: a revolution. Prove me wrong, kids, prove me wrong, no, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I please, no, Like I'm desperate to be proved wrong.
Speaker 1: I will eat my words. I will print them out
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper.
Speaker 2: And oh man, if you guys want me to get
Speaker 2: up in front of the Revolutionary Committee every day and
Speaker 2: be like, wow, I fucked up. Yeah, Like yeah, do
Speaker 2: it and make a really good future for everybody. I
Speaker 2: would love that.
Speaker 1: Well that's it for this week's cool Zone Media book Club,
Speaker 1: and you can check us out next week when we'll
Speaker 1: have more fiction. And I can't tell you what it
Speaker 1: is because I don't know what it is yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Until next time, folks stock up on
Speaker 2: shopping carts. Yeah, it could Happen here as a production
Speaker 2: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.