#God i really am a filthy consumerist

[arctic-hands]

Someone remind me I have very little money and enough art paper

[lit--bitch]

Jeremy Dixon’s ‘In Retail’ (2019)

(Disclosure: I don’t know Jeremy very well, but I met/saw him a couple months back when we performed at an online festival, Stay at Home Fest. Butcher’s Dog Magazine had an open mic where they invited writers from previous issues of the mag to come and perform stuff they’d had published with them, and outside of that. Since then, I’ve been reading and offering reviews to people from that evening, so I’m kicking off with In Retail. In Retail is published by Arachne Press, I don’t personally know anyone from there, it’s the first time I’ve heard of them. They’re dedicated to publishing titles from LGBTQIA+ writers, Jeremy Dixon himself identifies as queer, and they’re an environmentally conscious publisher, which I think is admirable. I don’t know many publishers who have an eco statement, as Arachne Press does here.) 

In Retail is an incredibly observant collection, and I feel it’s for that reason, it is so moving and relevant, really. The collection is written from Jeremy’s experiences working in a well-known chain of chemists, spending life on the other side of the till. And I think when you get into a job within hospitality, there is a perceived monotony which comes from the client’s point of view, that on we go and the cashier remains stood, serving the next person and waving goodbye. In Retail disproves these gross suppositions. From the moment it begins, there is a deep looking, there is humour, there is trauma. Our interactions are held and studied amidst transaction. The reality could not be more crippling, nor more awkward, or ecstatic in some places. Consumer culture is embedded into the very form of the writing itself. Every page of this collection, quite appropriately, reads like a shop receipt, and small events, repeated phrases and nods become products of each day that the ‘I’ here, takes home with them. We scan our way down each poem, every one of which are headed ‘IN RETAIL’ and footed by different, often repeated, end-notes. These parts are greyed out which gives them a carbon-copy feel, and it’s quite intentional, as Jeremy originally wrote these poems on the back of till-roll paper. Even the typography, the titles themselves are consistent with the font you might find on till receipts, and are numbered like so “00/01″. Transaction of the day. 

I think this collection is for anyone who calls themselves a people-watcher. I think it is for anyone who observes other people as part of a living. I am reminded of that line from Nessa in Gavin & Stacey: ‘I see every thread of life’s rich tapestry in between these three walls. The whole spectrum of human emotion.’ In Retail is a gallery of these experiences, the human vernacular, familiar and terrifying, the assortment of mannerisms and quips stood between Jamie Oliver and Lipsy. More pertinently, it’s an education in how to hold back the things you want to say.

The first poem immediately sets a precedent, ‘00/01′: 

Already there’s a feeling of intimidation, a tentative look into the night-shift. But the speaker seems so used to it, the poem merely invites the potentially problematic sequence of difficulties, in ‘Come methadone paper / wavers, talking backwards [...] Come red raw builders buying aerosol plasters’. It seems fearless actually, and I think this preface of ‘With the night come’ ascertains that there is nothing irregular about this, that it’s a case of dealing with the last of the rabble before shutting doors. Inconvenient yes, tiresome yes, but completely usual. Until: 

We are on the countdown to finish, for some people, this is the longest and sometimes most excruciating part of the shift. It is quickly clipped by a sinister threat: ‘She leans close / to whisper: I can get you cut. And it’s quite paralysing, as if I too inhabit this space between them as a reader, surveying the threat. There’s no further description, except we are left with the tail end of the receipt, speaking backwards: ‘THANK YOU FOR YOUR CUSTOM’. You have to wonder, how many times do we express gratitude for abuse, in the name of professionalism? How many times do we fear on our way out of work, someone will avenge us for doing our job? And there’s something about how, besides imitating the aesthetic of a receipt, how these greyed-out end-notes feel like cloudy afterthoughts from the muddied product of experience here.

‘00/03′ is driven by repeated utterances, as the stanzas are dragged out further, tragedy thickens. Humour is softly churned into despair. The day begins with the echo of the cashier’s mantra: 

Good morning.  Do you have an Advantage Card?  And would you like a bag?  Please enter your PIN. 

An address all too well recognised. Polite, measured, sedate. It continues: 

Good morning.  Thank you for waiting.  Do you have an Advantage Card?  And would you like a bag?  Please enter your PIN.  Good morning.  Thank you for waiting.  No one’s answering the bell.  Do you have an Advantage Card?  And would you like a bag?  Please enter your PIN.  [...]  Morning.  Thank you for waiting.  No one’s answering the bell.  They’re all at a party without me.  Seems I’m the only one left in the ship.  I could find myself with a riot on my hands.  Yes, you’re right it isn’t good enough is it.  Did you have an Advantage Card?  And would you like a bag?  Please enter your PIN.  Mourning.  Thank you for belling.  No one’s answering the weight.  And there’s another party without me.  Seems I’m the only one left in the world. I could find myself with blood on my hands.  Yes you’re right it isn’t God enough is it.  Mother says contactless is Satan’s kiss.  Have you taken the advantage?  And do you need a nosebag?  Please enter your PAIN.

That line in the final stanza is incredible. ‘Mother says contactless is Satan’s kiss’. Payment is a glide of the hand, quick, dismissive, a kiss that never touches the glass. Thoughtlessness cushions temptation. As the stanzas stretch with each additional line, the regular address hailed to customers is muddled with the internal thought processes and feelings of the ‘I’. The transaction is deflected away from the customer, and instead, the receipt becomes a kind of monologue for the ways in which the shop is in debt to the cashier’s slog. Plays on words reinforce the ‘I’s’ unfound respite, a “good morning” turned ‘Morning’ before being reduced to a state of ‘Mourning’. Something particularly painful in this poem is that the customer is never failed to be greeted, as the ‘I’ staggers under the weight of other miseries, and gestures of kindness often go ignored. It seems that, unlike the flurry of clients, the feelings of the cashier are hardly ever addressed. 

Jeremy quite often sheds light on the inequities the colleagues face within the workplace throughout the collection, also the changeability of management’s welfare towards staff. This is evident in ‘00/07′:

Seems we all get headaches.  There used to be a staff  stash of paracetamol  kept behind Pharmacy  but now you have to buy  your own. 

We hear it a lot, don’t we? “Once upon a time you used to get that for free”, “Once upon a time you could bring in your mate for that and nobody would bat an eyelid”, “I’d lose my job now if I did that”. It’s symptomatic of how kindness now, comes at a price. As business progresses, profit turns a profit on its staff. Why vouch for their welfare when you can turn them into a customer? 

And in ‘00/14′: 

As the collection continues, it becomes clear colleagues are encouraged to fend for interests which do not secure them, where management is distinguished as a separate entity, and the question of a company’s morals are measured based on how much stock is left rather than quizzing how a staff of people really feel. It seems that they are aligned very much in the same ways in which perfume giftsets and creams are humped across shelves gathering dust, as it is in ‘00/08′: 

the Late team is working extra duty  sales-planning Christmas in mid-September obeyed lasered maps of where to stack Lipsy and Jamie Oliver  the shelves are filthy far too low for packs to stand 

I find that phrase ‘extra duty’ so profound here. While ‘duty’ alone feels like a commendation of a word, ‘extra’ has consumerist connotations which commodify and capitalise on what it means to take ‘duty’. And it’s as though the tendrils of capitalist vernacular are constantly squeezing out the moral value of its workers, “far too low” to really “stand”. I also remark on this poem for the internal segregation between colleagues, the awkwardness of age difference separates their sense of humour: 

Upside down plays on the radio  and I attempt an electric slide but they’re too young to appreciate an 80s move

There’s a clear distinction between management and the shop floor but Jeremy does not attack it per se, rather it’s the observational quality to the writing which leaves us to make our own assumptions based around what is being seen and heard. I think of how staff are set together like the stock, together, regimental, before being dispersed by the chaos of Christmas shopping prep. Jeremy reinforces these distinctions between team members by sectioning the collection into three, the first being {STAFFED}, the second {MANAGED} and the third, {CONSUMED}. The final section seems to embrace the two as incubators of consumerism, that together they oversee it. 

In Retail is grounded in more broader political contexts which compounds the politics of the high-street chemist. In ‘00/26′: 

today the queue is strung with angry people  angry that we are leaving  angry that people are angry that are leaving  angry that people are still talking about leaving [...] angry at Labour  angry at Plaid  angry at their parents  angry at the Papers angry at the Pound  angry that all the Star Gifts sold out before they arrived 

Anger here compounds the atmosphere of the shop floor. It also feels like a currency in a way, in which people have been mis-sold an idea. In this case, I assume it to be Brexit. Plaid (Plaid Cymru, a Welsh political party), parents, products of a misleading mess funnel down into papers and Star Gifts, and anger reduces in its worth as it is dismissively directed into all things. Serious issues don’t matter if you can’t buy what you want. I note that Jeremy again, never openly takes a side per se, but rather the writing here becomes a neutral ground on which things happen to the voice, and it is left to us as readers to make assertions.

And part of the frustration and the humour in a collection like In Retail is that voice becomes a collective of common phrases and repeated mannerisms, bits of eavesdropping and stacked quotes from customers which saddle the experience of working the tills. I think of ‘00/29′: ‘A man buys a pint of milk / And I’m not buying anything else, / because I’ve been so bad lately. / Really bad.’ and in ‘00/34′, I initially hear a consistent whinging of a child asking for stuff (though that’s not ascertained exactly who is speaking here), ‘please can I have an iphone X / please can I have an Xbox ONe / please can I have Hexbugs / please can I have Hot Wheels’ before the voice turns stranger: ‘[...] / please can I have a black wollit / please can I have how / please can I have Portmeirion’ and the requests become duller, more abstract, more absurd because this collective of voices consistently gabbing for things they want, soon becomes a collective voice of not really knowing what it wants, at all. 

In Retail is as much funny as it is sinister. It’s an objective look at people, and I sometimes think that its observant nature is sustained by a certain professionalism, that holding back, that inability to pass judgement as an employee, that ‘customer is always right’ mentality, where the subject’s inner turmoil seldomly slips, because it isn’t really allowed to. And when it does, it’s within a cacophony of maddening queries, the tannoy blaring customer announcements, the baskets of unnoticed returns which will still be there tomorrow. In Retail leaves a lot to reflect on, because it is so relevant to us, still, and given the time in which some of the poems were composed back in 2017, it’s clear that not much has changed. Its wit and composition is to be admired, particularly for its literal-ness, the act of turning a book into a series of a receipts is of course, a wonderful irony for anyone purchasing it from a different shop. It is cheeky and mournful, but perhaps more pertinently, it encapsulates all the dimensions of the human condition within a public space at a distance so well-executed that it feels alien to read. 

Of course, if this review’s won you over, you can purchase In Retail right here. You can also follow Jeremy over on Twitter too and find out a little bit more about him over on Arachne Press’s site. 

[sirnighteye]

sO i might be going to Japan in October (Tokyo area) and I was wondering if you had any go-to places I should visit? :o Akihabara and Shinjuku and Odaiba are on my list (whereImayormaynotbecosplayingMimiTachikawatoRIPmyweebass) but I was wondering if you had any others or specifics? :0

man oh MAN i hope you are ready for me to ramble a lotso about food + toy stores. please forgive me if you have any food sensitivities i am not remembering :’(

I have pretty large gaps in the galleries/fine art/spiritual side of things, unfortunately, as THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH TIME TO DO WHAT I WANT. My experience is void, and I hope to grow it in the future SO FOR NOW I HAVE MANY SUGGESTIONS IN THE VIDEO GAME AND ANIME PLASTIC CONSUMERIST/FOOD-GUY GENRE OF THINGS (e: a friend might amend with good galleries and stuff, so keeep yr eyes peeled!)

Ima keep this public as my general DONUT’S TOKYO TOP PICKS list lmao

Shinjuku is my home base usually, as I like Hotel Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku- the location can’t be beat! Shinuku is really fun to walk around and sort of get an early feel for things but I don’t have a ton of ~musts~ there. My favourite katsu place is there, across from the aforementioned hotel I usually stay at.

A bit out of the way, but Artnia is fun if you care about having chocobos printed on pancakes. It’s kind of quiet and low-key, but all the merch there is pretty much what you can already find on the Square Enix website.

YOU MUST GO TO SEKAIDO. Three floors of art supplies! It’s interesting to see the differences between the Japanese and North American art markets- brands that are popular stateside are present in Japan but in very different packing, and everyone seems to manufacture an acrylic gouache. Acrylic gouache is the shit in Japan. The bottom floor has too many fun stamps and branded-pencils and washi tape. It’s so lovely.

A lot of people recommend the Golden Gai as an ~experience~ but I don’t drink, so I’ve never gone.

Honestly, I’ve spent a lot of time just failing horribly in the arcades around Shinjuku station 😅😅😅

Akihabara is overwhelming. There’s so much going on and it’s hard to feel like you’ve even scratched the surface. After spending a whole day there I realized I had visited four, maybe five shops and lost myself in a sinkhole of One Piece resale merch (gotta get ‘em Kakus).

It’s so big it feels impossible to find the more niche things when every storefront you pass is just a sea of thousands of itty bitty little bags of One Piece resale, haha.

I found some gems in Akiba Cultureszone, though. The ground floor Animate is kind of shit, and the second floor Lashinbang immediately drove me away with moe hell, but the third floor is a sweet spot of resale shops where you can find some really cool shit- I bought most of a set of cryptid capsule toys there, and gnawed on my own hand over the want to buy some exclusive Ghostbusters merch?

The Cospa Gee store is a smallll space, but Cospa makes some pretty cool stuff, so it’s worth a look. It’s also on top of a retail space that is entirely capsule machines and it is so good, so good.

Super Potato is pretty highly acclaimed vintage game store, buttttttt your mileage may vary: they straight up ignored my sister when she tried to buy a game, and I found the shelves pretty dusty and barren.

It’s worth it to head to Sunshine City in Ikebukuro and spend some time at the Pokemon Center. Sunshine City also has an aquarium that is fun to look at but maybe a little suspect on the animal welfare front :x

Directly across the street from the Starbucks-side of Sunshine City is the Ikebukuro Mandarake, which is just an overall good decision to visit: this one is alllll doujin, and it’s not all filthy but it is all cheap. I love buying doujin, it’s so neat to be in a space full of tangible artifacts of pure fan-enthusiasm.

Due to my dad’s illness our last trip I missed Odaiba so I can’t speak for anything there sadly :x

Harajuku is my favourite place to visit. Get off at Harajuku station, meander down Takeshita and enjoy the loud poppy fashion hell, and then keep going a little further and just… meander. There are so many amazing little shops down there in the sweet little side streets.  Stop by B-Side Label. Amazing stickers! I spent like $100 on them.

Off the side streets, Kiddyland is fun, and not too far from there is Dominique Ansel Bakery, which is always packed but is also??? fucking magic???

Also in Harajuku is Good Town Doughnuts, which is possibly one of my favourite places in the world. Their Blood Orange donut is really all i want out of life.

Shibuya is a place you’ve really got to wander and find what you want- I visited a lot because the One Piece store is there (IF U CARE, it’s in the Marui dept. store- the place that says OIOI on it.)- but they’ve got an amazing Tower Records. And please say hi to Hachiko ❤️

The basement floor of a lot of department stores are AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL FOOD MARKETS- my favourite, right at Shibuya Station, is Tokyu Food Show. PLEASE GO HERE IT IS  SERIOUSLY SO GOOD. I bought croquettes from a shop in one far corner, scarfed them cold, and then cried.

Nakano Broadway is an aging trash mall that got eaten up by the hobby resale chain Mandarake- they have like twenty shops in this mall with varying hyperfocuses. It’s a good place to find some older treasures, and just gawk. I found some Final Fantasy VI keychains in a shop here- that’s shit’s from 1994!

Also, it is the main setting of Digimon Cybersleuth, which is kind of fucking amazing.

A few blocks up from Ebisu station is Blacows, the best burger I have ever eaten. They never disappoint. (Get a side of the fried chicken- best karaage I’ve ever had!!)

Chains you will see everywhere and might want to visit: Animate, Tokyu Hands, Taito Station Arcade.

Please eat and drink everything that even slightly interests you in convenience stores, you WILL not be disappointed. also mcdonalds has soft serve floats in coke and ANTIFREEZE GREEN “MELON” SODA. they are amazing

That’s aaaalllll I can think of right now off the top of my head, but I’ll reblog + update with any new remembers :’))) PLEASE HAVE A VERY GOOD TIME, OH MY GOD, I AM EXCITE FOR U!!!

[mykatesingh-blog]

      I have posted many blogs about this house because I am unashamedly proud.  Those of you who follow my blog are probably about to start spamming my write ups, however, I’m always writing for the new person that comes on the scene looking for a more frugal life, a less expensive way to live, a way to survive and thrive on one income.

Welcome! You have come to the right place.  I love nothing more than to drink coffee and talk about doing life and homemaking, raising a family, following a dream…and all of that in the easiest and most affordable way.

Don’t get me mixed up with cheap skates and thrifty queens from the land of penny-pinching and beyond though.  I do love to shop now and then and I love my stuff.  I’m also into decluttering and simplifying.  A walking contradiction?  No, just finding that balance daily and working it to my advantage.

I feel as though, now that I have finally purchased our first home at age 47, that I can talk frugal shop with the veterans at last.  I have earned at least a few titles.  Why?  Because I found, bid on, and won this fixer upper for dirt cheap at the worst time in the market in California when all the housing is at an all time high.  I did this when there wasn’t much out there, it was all exorbitant, finance rates were going up, people were freaking out, as well as myself.

But I did it and I did it with only a $130,000 loan to work with in a market that mere shacks in bad neighborhoods were starting at $200,000.  And I found that one house that looked awful but was a true diamond in the rough.  This house had many of our friends pursing their lips and faking their happiness for us.  Later many of them would admit that they were wondering just what the heck we were thinking.  They didn’t want to tell me that the house was a filthy and run down mistake because they knew that I was pretty fragile at that point and this house was truly my last hope.

But all sorts of magic occurred.  God sent a handy man desperate for work and who, though slow as molasses and wound up leaving in the middle of the night for Mexico half way through the job, was skilled and knowledgeable and got us most of the way through the transformation.  Bali found skills he didn’t know he had.  I found brain power I had no idea I had access to all these years.

It literally took some mowing, fertilizer, major pruning, a few days of rain, planting of trees, both fruit and shade, and fences to make the outside look great.  As for the inside, it took a bit of plumbing, a tad of electric, lots of scrubbing, tons of paint, carpets were torn out, and windows washed to bring it back to its old glory.  But not much more than that.  The foundation was solid, the electric and plumbing are old but the good old stuff.  The house has solid bones.  It was built during a time when homes were built to last.

All in all the house renovation with the handy man (while he was around) cost a total of $15,000.  That was for everything; the worker, electrician, plumber, paint, all the garden supplies, trees, seeds, plants, all the fences, 6-foot cedar fence in back and white picket in front, the exterior paint (which we still have 10 gallons of), and dump runs.

The house was a total of $135K plus $4K closing cost and $15K renovation = $154K.  Wow!

We now enjoy a mortgage of $918.02.  That includes taxes, MIP, and insurance.

Now, I know for some of you in other states you may laugh at all this being that housing is much cheaper elsewhere.  Here in California, it is out of control.  An average house in the Sacramento-Sutter area is around $300K to start and that is for nothing special.

I desperately wanted our mortgage to be smaller than any rent we have ever paid.  Our rents have always been around $1300 give or take a hundred dollars.

This house is very small.  The house is 1120 square feet and the yard is 5,220 square feet.  It is a two bedroom and one bath.  There are 4 of us and now an elder that has joined us, so 5 people, 2 large dogs, a cat, and I’ve created the back yard into a mini urban farm.

  Although it’s small, I feel like we have all the room we need and we can create even more if we desire.  After fencing in all the yard it made it more vast.  We have a detached garage that can be later turned into a studio apartment if needs be and we have planted a mini food forest that will continue to expand and grow.  The house is stuffed with people but the way it’s set up with a hall and separate rooms, we have plenty of room for now.  Of course, our boys are also very small still and don’t take up much room.  I have most of their toys either packed up in the garage or outside to play with.

In the old days, a house like this was cherished and tended to.  Families our size inhabited this small home and it was considered more than enough.  With the trend of bigger homes, bigger cars,  and supersized everything…this home may seem small to the average family.  But we are into keeping things simple and easy.  I have decluttered down to what is absolutely necessary, quality, and cherished so our home isn’t packed with stuff.

I long ago learned that a simple can of paint and lush house plants can make all the difference.

We are really into this new movement (new to us that is) of urban farming and we have been practicing living simply and frugally for years.  Now with our own home, we get to practice all of the green and sustainable living.  Not much is wasted here, including space.  We love nothing more than being thrifty, down home, and reusing, composting, recycling, and re-inventing everything.

I also enjoy learning all I can about living well on very little as we have one small income that provides for all of us and I just don’t buy into this consumerist society.  I believe that we must all change our ways of living for families and individuals to thrive and for this planet to heal and thrive again.  We need to go back to simpler times and reincorporate that into today’s world, to find balance with modern times and our great grandmothers time.  If we mix the two we can find the life that connects us to Mother Earth, God (or Spirit), to ourselves and those we love, and slow down this crazy pace and dollar chasing lifestyle to something more real and pleasurable.

The start of that is living under our means and this house was my answered prayer to that.

Buying and creating a cute cottage for real cheap. Living simply. I have posted many blogs about this house because I am unashamedly proud.  Those of you who follow my blog are probably about to start spamming my write ups, however, I'm always writing for the new person that comes on the scene looking for a more frugal life, a less expensive way to live, a way to survive and thrive on one income.

[cinephiled-com]

New Post has been published on Cinephiled

New Post has been published on http://www.cinephiled.com/interview-nick-offerman-politics-donald-trump-founders-ray-kroc/

Interview: Nick Offerman on Politics, Donald Trump, and ‘The Founder’s’ Ray Kroc

John Lee Hancock’s The Founder tells the fascinating story of Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling milkshake-machine salesman from Illinois, who met two brothers in 1950s Southern California who had invented a new speedy system of making and serving hamburgers and fries. Kroc was so impressed by what the McDonald brothers, Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick (Nick Offerman), were doing in their burger shops that he saw franchise potential. The Founder, written by Robert Siegel (The Wrestler), details how Kroc eventually maneuvered himself into a position to be able to yank the company from the brothers and create his own billion-dollar empire. The film also stars Laura Dern, Linda Cardellini, B.J. Novak, and Patrick Wilson. I sat down with the immensely talented Nick Offerman to discuss similarities between Ray Kroc and Donald Trump as well as some of the darker sides of the American Dream.

Danny Miller: I read several reviews of this film that said Dick McDonald was your “first dramatic role.” I’m not sure I agree with that. Did you see Dick as a big departure for you?

Nick Offerman: No, not at all. I guess I can see what they’re getting at — a lot of what I’ve done in the last decade has some kind of comic bent to it. Even in films where I’m playing a straight guy there are usually a few laughs to be had and this didn’t really have any moments like that. If there are any laughs, they come straight out of the dramatic tension in the scene. I was going for a square, hardworking version of a guy in the 1950s so it felt similar to most of the acting that I do!

Your chemistry with John Carroll Lynch was so great I totally bought you two as brothers. Had you worked with him before?

No, but I’ve looked up to him for many years and was over the moon to be cast as brothers with him. He comes from live theater as well and we just kind of hit it off. Doing interviews with him for this film has only impressed me more. He’s so intelligent — he’ll respond to questions he’s asked with references to Andrew Carnegie or give a 10-minute treatise on the movie Michael Clayton. I’ll be sitting next to him thinking, “Oh God, I feel dumb!”

Did you have to work with him for a while to get to that “brotherly” place?

I have a brother that I love very much and there was a time when we lived together as adults. Before I started getting acting work in L.A., I was really hoping he’s become as obsessed with woodworking as I am. I had this idea that we’d turn my woodworking shop into the Offerman Brothers and I thought that would be the most wonderful life. That never happened and there are certainly things about each other that bother us, but I’m just crazy about my brother, he’s one of the greatest guys I can think of, so it was very easy to transfer that sensibility to John Carroll Lynch who is also very easy to admire and such a generous actor.

These are obviously all real people. Did you do a lot of your own research on them or was it all on the page?

We were very spoiled in this film because the producers, Don Handfield and Jeremy Renner, had this material for almost 12 years as they were trying to get this film made. So much of what we would normally do they had already done so when we came on board. They gave us these big packets of research and pictures and Dictaphone recordings. There are a few things on YouTube of Dick McDonald that I watched, but that was all frosting because Robert Siegel had so masterfully laced everything that we needed into the script. The script told us exactly who we were in this brotherhood.

It’s interesting to think of how they were treated by Ray Kroc. I mean, he definitely shafted them but I couldn’t help thinking, well, maybe they were better off. And it’s not like they didn’t get a lot of money even if it wasn’t the billions that Kroc ultimately made.

It’s true. Dick and Mac were actually quite prosperous. It’s interesting because there’s been so much talk about the American Dream but these guys really did achieve that dream: they created a business that did so well that this guy bought it for $2.7 million. I haven’t done the math but that’s probably something like $15 to $20 million in today’s dollars.

That’s what I was thinking. And at least they didn’t have to sell their souls down the river in terms of what McDonald’s became.

Yeah, I think that’s an interesting point.

I keep hearing people comparing Ray Kroc to Donald Trump which makes me defensive for Kroc!

(Laughs.) It’s true. “How DARE you say such a thing about Ray Kroc!”

I mean, he obviously had a ruthless side but I just don’t think the comparisons hold up.

I agree with you. I think Ray Kroc was a much more intelligent and relatable human being whose ambition got the best of him whereas Trump is sort of an inscrutable jackass, possibly even demented. He’s absolutely incomprehensible to me which is what is terrifying about him — he hardly ever behaves rationally.

And even if you don’t like what Ray Kroc did, you can certainly understand what he was doing and hoping to achieve.

Absolutely. They were both master salesman. But that’s another thing about Trump that I find baffling. There’s nothing about him that explains how he was able to accomplish what he’s been able to pull off. I understand that he represented a message that caused a lot of people to vote for him, that’s where the salesman part comes in, he convinced people to vote for a bunch of smoke and mirrors. “I’m going to give you what you want,” and they were like, “Finally!” and then he was like, “I have no idea what they want. Fuck them!” Trump and Kroc were also amazing at creating a slogan or a vision that you could sell and then let people fill in the quality they were looking for, whether it’s the golden arches or slapping the name Trump on a building. We’ve come to learn, sadly, that Trump is a terrible businessman and doesn’t own most of the things that say Trump on them, he’s just a great salesman, so that all the people who are too lazy to do any homework are like, “What are you talking about? He’s got his name all over the place, he must be terrific in business!” And you’re like, “No, he’s actually completely full of shit.”

And certainly both Trump and Ray Kroc had issues with their own narcissism and grabbing credit for things.

Yes, that’s true. For some insecure reason, it was very important for Kroc to be credited with the whole thing, he was not good at treating his collaborators fairly in that regard. But when I watch the film and see him doing bad things, I can at least understand what human reactions made him do it. And also, it’s worth mentioning that he couldn’t have known at the time how filthy and plastic and poisonous the fast food industry would become. He was instrumental in replacing nutritious ingredients with garbage, but at the time he had this vision that was almost like science fiction.

The film really makes you think twice about what success is, what the American Dream is founded on.

To me it’s fascinating in terms of not only what’s going on in our country but also globally. The lesson of the film, to me, is should there be a limit on how much success any entity should achieve? Because at a certain points, what detriments does it start having on people, on our natural resources, on the quality of the product that they’re selling? My beloved favorite writer, Wendell Berry, tells this great story about his friend who’s this Amish farmer who sets himself a limit. He decided that he’d only farm as much land as his horses could accomplish working from sunrise to sunset, he would never work a beast after sundown. So whatever income he could glean within that limit, that’s what his family subsisted on. I love that analogy of finding your happiness and satisfaction within a limit that you set — rather than our weird consumerist American dream that says you should never be happy, you can always get more.

Yes! The so-called American Dream has turned into the opposite of what that Amish farmer is doing. It’s all about volume and bigness. That’s why I left the film thinking the McDonald brothers were better off.

I agree. To my way of thinking it represents the forces that are running our country. They’re establishing legislation for health and safety and the environment and agriculture that’s based solely on money with no integrity. There’s a terrifying book called Lethal but Legal by Nicholas Freudenberg that details all of the lobbying that’s taken place in Washington over the past 20 or 30 years in terms of fast food, alcohol guns, vehicles — it’s insane. All this money is being spent to make sure that companies can keep poisoning us or selling their products to the widest possible audience.