Hello, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Friday. How are you? Not to alarm anybody... but
Mad Max took place in 2021! More than three dozen children are now safe after being rescued during a sex trafficking bust that involved state and federal agents. The bust dubbed “Operation Not Forgotten” span in 20 counties around Metro Atlanta. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the U.S. Marshals Southeast Regional fugitive task force, and other Georgia state agents and local agencies looked around North and Middle Georgia to find missing and exploited children during the two-week operation. In total, 26 endangered children were recovered and another 13 endangered missing children were found.
U.S. Marshals Service Director Donald Washington stated that the authorities feared the children were all already of potential victims of child sex trafficking. According to authorities, “These missing children were considered to be some of the most at-risk and challenging recovery cases in the area, based on indications of high-risk factors such as victimization of child sex trafficking, child exploitation, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and medical or mental health conditions. Other children were located at the request of law enforcement to ensure their wellbeing.”
Investigators filed 26 arrest warrants and additional charges for allegations including parental kidnapping, sex trafficking, registered sex offender violation, custodial interference, and drugs, weapons violation, and weapons possession. The operation spanned across 20 Georgia counties. Several sources say that the children were found in Fulton, Clayton, Gwinnett, and Forsyth counting. A total of nine suspects were arrested. The suspects are now behind bars and state prosecutors are handling the cases and medical and social workers are focusing on helping the kids who are in a safe location.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr state authorities will measure their success on how many lives that they saved and “that will have a new and fresh start.” Authorities did state that other major cities across the United States have similar operations currently underway but most of them have yet to be completed. Through a statement on Twitter, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp thanked law enforcement officers for their work. In 2019, USMS helped locate a total of 295 missing children after requesters for assistance from several law enforcement agencies and helped recover 75 percent of cases received. Of the missing children recovered, 66 percent were recovered within seven days of USMS helping with the case.
Everyone knows the saying, “Never judge a book by its cover,” and in stories like this one, the truth of that statement has helped changed a man’s life after almost 20 years.
In Los Angeles, California, 33-year-old Randi Emmans was walking her dog outside of her apartment when she heard a man talking to himself. Pedro Reid was talking into the abyss of nothing, saying things like, “Everyone just stares at me. I’m an educated man, but all they see is a person who doesn’t have a home and doesn’t have anyone to call,” inferring that he was homeless. With her curiosity peaked, Emmans went and got her boyfriend, 34-year-old John Suazo. The couple struck up a conversation with Reid, who was more than happy to talk with them since no one had ever really asked before. They were impressed with the way he talked and the conversations they were having with him, leading them to learn more about his story and how he ended up on the streets.
Back in 1999, Reid had move to Los Angeles from Charleston, South Carolina to go live with his aunt. However, after a year of getting caught up with drug and alcohol addictions, he ended up homeless. Soon, almost 20 years went by, and Reid was really losing hope that his life would ever change.
He didn’t want to stay in shelters because “they were worse than the streets,” but while being in and out of jail, he would use that as opportunities to call home and send letters to his grandmother’s house. But his family had a difficult time trying to find him, since he didn’t have an ID and would use the name Franklin Mitchell after one altercation with police officers. Without an ID, he couldn’t get a job and the cycle of getting arrested for petty crimes such as theft to support himself was difficult to break.
However, whenever he would get a newspaper, he would make an effort to read it, “I read the newspaper every day if I could get my hands on it,” he had said, “Being an avid reader has enabled me to speak articulately.”
Getting to know Reid moved the couple to want to help him find his family. Reid gave them the only information he knew: a few names and his grandmother’s address, hoping she was still there and alive. The couple searched relentlessly for Reid’s family members, calling many wrong numbers until they reached Reid’s uncle’s ex-wife.
Reid’s uncle, 59-year-old Pierre Grant, called back after receiving a call from his ex-wife. Grant told the Washington Post, “John started telling me about what took place between them and Pedro, and I knew immediately he was talking about my nephew. For over 20 years, we had been praying and believing that one day we would find him, and the day finally came. This is a miracle.”
After testing negative for COVID-19, Grant flew from Charleston to Los Angeles. Before Emmans and Suazo had found Reid’s family, they had helped him clean up, giving him a backpack full of food, water, and other essentials that Emmans had brought from the charity, Project Backpacks, that she started to help provide for the homeless during the holidays. She also reached out to others in a public Facebook post, asking for donations, which led to the couple raising $6,500 to put him in a hotel for a week, get him a cellphone, and buy some new clothes.
The funds also covered Grant’s travel expenses, as well as Reid’s cousin, Mia Green’s, travel from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Thankfully, they all tested negative for the coronavirus.
Soon enough, on August 7th, they were all reunited. Reid was in tears as he and his cousin and uncle embraced each other for the first time in more almost two decades. They spent the night in Hollywood and had dinner with Emmans and Suazo, before returning back to Charleston where Reid will now live with in the family home. Unfortunately, he was devastated to learn that his grandmother died last year.
Reid has also made contact with his mother, 69-year-old Deborah Reid, who lives in Converse, Texas. She will be in Charleston soon, when things are safer for a bigger family reunion. “I prayed for him every night,” she said, “For years I was thinking he died, and no one knew.”
Reid is ready to start a new chapter. At 54-years-old, he hopes to use his story to bring awareness to the realities of the life of a homeless person. He wants to further his education, which ended just after high school, and find a job.
Authorities have announced that someone painted a ‘Baby Lives Matter’ mural at a Planned Parenthood location in Charlotte. According to WBTV, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department stated that CMPD officers went to South Warren Street in reference to a call for vandalism. The painting was reportedly done by anti-abortion activists in Charlottesville in front of the facility in the city’s historic Cherry neighborhood. The words are painted in baby blue and pink representing the gender of a baby. The incident is now under investigation and the Charlotte Department of Transportation has been notified.
This isn’t the first time the phrase has been painted outside of a Planned Parenthood facility. Just last month, several activists also painted the same phrase in front of a clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to Fox News, it was removed less than a day after it was completed. These acts appear to be inspired by ‘Black Lives Matter’ murals on streets across the country after protests began after the killing of George Floyd. Mayor Muriel Bowser, from Washington D.C. ordered the phrase be painted across two blocks of 16th ST NW in the Nationals Capitol leading up to the White House.
According to a local newspaper, Queen City Nerve, a similar message was also painted at a Preferred Women’s Health Center on Latrobe Drive in east Charlotte. As far as the creator of the sign, anti-abortion activists Tayler Hansen took credit for the mural and began posting about it on social media. Through a tweet, he stated, “close the doors to your murder mills forever and we can finish this!”
The ‘Baby Lives Matter’ mural was quickly vandalized by counter-protesters to read “your body, your choice” and BLM. A GoFund me in favor of the mural was created, stating that the page was created “to protect life” and all donated funds will be used to paint ‘Baby Lives Matter’ murals in front of other Planned Parenthood buildings.
According to the description, “the goal of the mural was “to draw attention to the tens of millions of innocent lives that have been ended by Planned Parenthood. This was a pure passion project for Tayler. He completed the mural by himself and spent a considerable portion of his life savings buying the material to get the job done.”
The pro-life activist is said to be traveling across the country, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, to pro-abortion organizations and Planned Parenthood clinics, and paint the words in front of the building. Its goal is to fund 10 street murals each costing around $7,000 including travel, supplies, logistics, lodging, and potential legal fees. The ‘Baby Lives Mural’ comes as the Trump administration asked the Supreme Cout to reinstate a rule which requires abortion seekers to visit health care providers in person to acquire pills for medication abortions. This after lower courts blocked the rule during the pandemic.
It also comes as the Republican National Convention is taking place, in which several Republicans are showcasing President Trump’s anti-abortion achievements, speaking about the horrors of the procedure. Abby Johnson, who quit her job running a Planned Parenthood clinic, became an anti-abortion activist and used her time to warn that Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would be “radical, anti-life activists.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says he won’t skip debates with President Donald Trump this fall, vowing he’ll use the opportunity to confront his rival and be a “fact checker on the floor.”
Biden said yesterday there’s no question the debates will take place, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters earlier in the day that she didn’t think Biden should debate the president at all. Pelosi said she knows she disagrees with Biden on this, but she doesn’t think he should “legitimize a conversation” with Trump. The Democratic nominee has repeatedly said he is eager to take on the president.
“Here’s the deal with bullies, I understand how they work,” Biden said on CNN. “And I’m going to play by the rules of the debate commission and we’re going to have a debate.”
In a separate interview on MSNBC, Biden said he’s going to be a “fact checker on the floor” during the debates and he thinks the media will fact-check Trump as well.
Biden said later Tuesday that he would be hitting the campaign trail... in person... after Labor Day.
He said during a fundraiser that he’ll start doing in-person events “a way that is totally consistent with being responsible.” Biden named Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Arizona as some of the states that are under consideration by his campaign for in-person events.
Biden said he’ll “meet people where it matters... not at irresponsible rallies, or staged for TV to boost egos. but real people’s communities, in real local businesses, in their lives.” He said he’ll hold events “consistent with the state rules” about crowd sizes and other regulations.
Biden has largely campaigned virtually from his Wilmington, Delaware, home, only venturing out for small, socially-distanced campaign events in Delaware or Pennsylvania counties just a few hours away.
While Biden and his aides say he’s trying to comply with recommendations from public health experts in dealing with the coronavirus, Trump and his allies have ridiculed Biden for “campaigning from his basement.”
Biden knocked Trump for delivering his own remarks to the Republican National Convention later last night on the South Lawn of the White House, calling him “totally irresponsible” for arranging an in-person audience for the event.
Regarding the debates, Pelosi said she believes Trump will “probably act in a way that is beneath the dignity of the presidency” and “belittle what the debates are supposed to be about.” She said a 2016 debate between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton was “disgraceful” as Trump stood close behind Clinton as she spoke, moving into her camera angle. Pelosi says Trump was “stalking” Clinton and should have been told to move away.
Instead, Pelosi suggests the two candidates have individual events where they take questions.
“Let that be a conversation with the American people,” she said. “Not an exercise in skullduggery.”
The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates recently rejected a request from the Trump campaign either to add a fourth debate or move up the three already scheduled. Trump’s campaign said 16 states will have started voting by the time of the first debate on September 29th.
A 17-year-old was arrested after two people were shot to death while protesting in Kenosha over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch, Illinois, was 15 miles from Kenosha County and was taken into custody on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide in the attack that occurred on Tuesday night. The incident was all captured on cellphone video. Authorities stated the shooting left a third person wounded.
According to the police chief Phillip L. Perlini, Rittenhouse was a former Public Safety Cadet. The program has been described online as offering youth the opportunity to explore careers in law enforcement. Because of the suspect’s age and state law, the chief stated that the police department could not comment any further on the situation. The teenager was arrested and charged after turning himself in at the Antioch Police headquarters. Rittenhouse is currently in the custody of the Lake County judicial system awaiting extradition to Wisconsin. The video shows the gunman, who was carrying a semi-automatic rifle, can be heard saying “I just killed someone” as he walks towards police vehicles. He’s seen in the video running down the street following the crowd, holding a long gun to his chest. The victims in the shooting on Wednesday night have been identified by friends and family, with one member of a being part of the Black Lives Matter faction called People’s Revolution. The man who died after being shot in the head during the confrontation has been identified as 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum.
According to several Facebook posts, the man had only moved to Wisconsin a year ago and is now leaving behind a fiancee and their young daughter. Friends are trying to raise $25,000 to pay for the funeral costs and hold the memorial for the dad down two friends and family as Jo Jo. The man shot in the chest identified as 26-year-old Anthony Huber. Huber tried to disarm the suspect shooter with a skateboard. The only shooting victim to survive has been identified as 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz. The man was blasted in the right arm and was seen on camera yelling in agony while still holding a handgun in his hand. He was a volunteer medic for Black Lives Matter protest in Milwaukee over the summer.
In the wake of the disturbing killings and night of unrest, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers authorized the deployment of 500 members of the National Guard to Kenosha and doubled the number of troops in the city of 100,000 midway between Chicago and Milwaukee. The governor’s office stated they are working with other states to bring in more National Guard members and law enforcement officers. The state also announced a 7 p.m. curfew, despite protesters ignoring it.
Several protesters marched past the intersection where the people were shot, stopping to gather around and pray and lay flowers. Evers, who is a Democrat, issued a lengthy statement asking those who want to “exercise their First Amendment rights” to do so safely and peacefully, urging others to “please stay home and let local first responders, law enforcement and members of the Wisconsin National Guard do their jobs.” In Washington, the Justice Department stated it is sending more than 200 federal agents from the U.S. Marshal Service, FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The White House announced up to 2,000 National Guards troops would be made available. Several users found that the man highly supports guns, the ‘Blue Lives Matter’ movement, and President Donald Trump. A video posted on the app Snapchat they sent at the scene of the protests showing a few seconds of a point of view of someone carrying a long rifle as police announcements can be heard on the speakers.
Rittenhouse also posted a short video from a Trump rally earlier this year in Des Moines, Iowa, on one of his TikTok accounts. In a post on December 22nd, 2018, the suspect said that for his birthday he wanted he was asking for donations for a non-profit called “Humanizing the Badge,” Along with the post saying the group sought to “forge stronger relationships between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve.”
In many places, masks are mandatory, so you as well make it your own. There's a mask for every fashion and fandom, and there can also be a mask for every face. People order custom-made masks with photos of their face on them to try and achieve a realistic look. Try being the most important word.
Here's another creative sign telling people to wear face masks....
Did you see that new ad for My Pillow? I will show it here...
Hahahaha. Did you see this poster from the RNC?
So, do your kids like Barbie? Have you seen the new one?
Go to the store and buy it now. Did you know some birds have arms? No? I'll prove it...
Told you! Okay, let's take a live look at Port Jefferson, shall we?
Once again it looks like a nice evening there. So, a friend of the Phile has something to say about 17-year-old arrested after killing two during the Kenosha protests. He's a singer, patriot and renaissance man. You know what time it is...
In regards to the shootings Tuesday night in Kenosha, Wisconsin:
Kyle Rittenhouse is shown on video shooting a rioter (who earlier was yelling at people to “shoot me nigga!”) as he was charging towards Kyle, about to attack as part of the violently unruly mob.
Then while fleeing the mob, others attacked Kyle, knocking him to the ground, one with skateboard and another man approaching him, armed with a pistol. The local prosecutors charged Kyle with first degree murder to appease the Black Lives Matter mob. However, the photos and videos are clear.
It was self defense in both situations. If the jury system works, he will be acquitted. None of this would have happened if the local and state government would have put an end to out the violent uprising in the streets as soon as it began.
#LegallySelfDefense.
Oh, boy. If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. Okay, now from the home office in Port Jefferson, New York, here is...
Top Phive Things Said By People Who Are Unemployed
5. I'm just going to sign up for unemployment at 3 in the morning when it's less busy and so they know how unemployed I am.
4. Being recently unemployed and asking your recently unemployed roommate “aren’t you late for work?” first thing every morning and laughing like doomed goblins.
3. Only took me two hours of being unemployed for my dad to suggest coding classes again.
2. Now that I'm unemployed and living at my mom's house, I don't want a relationship anymore. Suddenly I can empathize with all the guys I've ever dated.
And the number one thing said by someone who is unemployed is...
1. Balding, unemployed, living with my parents; corona has completed my Costanza transformation.
When I was a younger person I had to use the Oxford dictionary to understand adult words and now that I’m an adult I have to use urban dictionary to understand younger people words.
While hiking in the woods, Nate and Sam found this huge rock which had an old iron lever attached to it. Etched into the rock was the following inscription: "If this lever is pulled, the world will come to an end!"
Nate wanted to pull the lever and see what would happen, but Sam, being a paranoid pessimist, greatly feared this. He said to Nate that if he tried to pull the lever, he'd shoot him!
In a daring attempt, Nate lunged for the lever, and sure enough, Sam shot him.
What is the moral of this story? Better Nate than lever.
This is sooooooo cool! Today's guest is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, writer, producer, author, and artist. His first novel his first novel Memoirs and Misinformation which was co-authored by my other guest is the 134th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club. Please welcome to the Phile... Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon!
Me: Hey, guys, welcome to the Phile. I cannot believe you are on the Phile, Jim. How are you?
Jim: It's happening! Good to be here on the Peverett Phile!
Me: Yes. It Is. Your novel Memoirs and Misinformation is the 134th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club. You wrote the novel, right, Jim?
Jim: Yes, with this guy Dana Vachon.
Me: Jim, you had a very unique path up to this point, right?
Jim: Yes, sir. I started out in Canadian comedy clubs to going to things like Dumb and Dumber to really profound films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Me: So, what is the book about, Jim?
Jim: Similarly is a mix of real moments, absurd moments, serious moments of my life tangled up with a lot of imaginary ones. None of this is real and all of it is true.
Me: Dana, what was it like when you first met Jim?
Dana: My earliest encounter of Jim was watching him on "In Living Color" then as a kid seeing him years later on Man on the Moon and marveling at the artistic transformation. What I saw was another beginning of another amazing transformation like that. I could sense it. So, we chatted and some time went by, we both realized we were both insomniacs who would download loads of early human history and Aprocrypha on streaming services at 3 a.m. and that sort of led us to the first chapter of the book and this wonderful long conversation.
Jim: It really began in an art studio in New York and he walked in and saw me amongst the vestiges of my life. The torrential pieces, deconstructed me of every version known to man. So immediately we connected.
Dana: There were images that I had to take resonate. There was a painting of Malibu in flames, there was a self portrait that was slashed. I thought this was someone who was diving deep.
Me: What the hell, Jim?
Jim: I was looking for the pieces that lies beyond personality.
Me: What made you decide to write this novel?
Jim: What do you mean?
Me: You could have written a traditional novel, or a work of fiction, you could have written a memoir.
Dana: This is something that is sort of in-between. It is obviously a work of fiction, there are moments where you could recognize Jim's actual life in there.
Me: But why did you write this kinda book?
Dale: I was always interested in the engineering of a medieval cathedral. It's not a natural space, right, it's a constructed space but it's constructed in the service of the truth because of these vaulted spaces where they could put early cinema, stained glass windows where they could tell the stories of the passion. I thought of the "fiction" being the construction but constructed of the service and illuminating these beautiful visions of a true past, much of which was in Canada. I thought that the line had already been blurred and we got tougher and realized not only had it been blurred but it had been it fouled, because most celebrity memoirs were messing with the truth anyway either through a mission or distortion.
Jim: Reordering of things to make it look glowing. I've always believed that persona is a fiction to begin with. Most of us are walking around as a fiction. We have our religion, that's an idea. We have our nationality and that's an idea. But when grilled down to it what's left? Everything. There's just everything left.
Dana: Jim had to do that because in this case to be an artist that is so well known to contend with fictions of Jim that is in a billion minds. So we are dealing with fiction if we are someone at his profile whether we like it or not.
Me: Okay, so, am I thinking too deep, but every role you do is pretty cool, but is definitely you. No one can do it?
Jim: There has to be truth. There's only one well to draw from. I could dress it up however I want to but if that core of truth isn't there the water doesn't quench my thirst. Even the biographical truth is a construct. So I wanted to get past that. What's beyond the invention and disguise? What's beyond the red "S" we have on our chest that makes the bullets bounce off? This book does that, it looks how persona becomes sarcophagical and at a certain point if you build a string enough one you have to claw your way out to get to the real you.
Me: What is it about the tension between the real and unreal you find so exhilarating?
Jim: I think real is an illusion. I really think it's as simple as that. I adhere to the yield of the Advaita Vedanta which means the knowledge there are no two things. That's the best thing Buddha has ever said.
Me: Okay, what's the "Advaita Vedanta"?
Jim: Advaita Vedanta is tree basic tenants of it is that there is the absolute and there is the relative. The relative is you and me relating to each other as separate things. All kinds of craziness could happen because the ego keeps reminding us that we're separate things and there's something that stake and there's something I could lose. The absolute is the knowledge that there isn't nothing that isn't you. So there is nothing to lose and no where to go. If you get a sense of that, of you get a real understanding of that you get glimpses. That was one of our main goals in this is to go through this absurd journey of definition and the madness of Hollywood. The burning down of old structures to get to a moment, at least a taste, of that infinite nothingness. Or eveythingness.
Me: Dana, this is a crazy path to go down. How did you even start on this book?
Dana: I think we both had similar references which is probably why the conversation was so rich starting out. We do see things differently but there were like key cardinal words Malick, like The Thin Red Line where we both could sit there and watch that and see the exact basically the same thing so we were able to come together and I learned a lot how Jim sees the world and Jim is the subject of the book so that was my job so there was no problem for me.
Jim: We both have out expertise as well. He's a much more educated fella than me so he knows in a classical sense how to come at these things and I have been a seeker my whole life. So I have done my own research so it was a wonderful combination.
Dana: And also I learned how to go into the unknown from him. Jim's a truly great artist and there's a fearlessness that comes with that and a capacity for discovery that was always exciting for me. It was an incredible thing to get to be around.
Me: So, what about the Jim Carrey who goes to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee or the Jim Carrey that goes to the store to buy a head of lettuce what's the difference between that...?
Jim: Is an infinite being that needs caffeine!
Me: What's the difference between the Jim Carrey at Starbucks and the Jim Carrey in this book?
Jim: Well, ultimately none. There's no difference. They are both ideas. And abstract constructions. I believe, and this is not an arrogant thing, I'm not being supercilious when I say we all have this. You are the space in which you're in which is all of this happening and if you really feel that for a second. I started out trying to understand the text and really being inspired by it and going okay. I sat back one day and I went "what of that coffee table was my foot?" and I tried to expand my consciousness that way. Actually just physically, the coffee table is my foot, now try to feel that as a part of my body. I actually try to experience it like I could experience my hands. You know you could feel a feeling inside your hands when you concentrate on them. So I started that and it started to expand itself until I become the walls around you. I come you and the air we breathe and we have everything in common, there's nothing we don't have in common, we are one thing. Try to breathe without the trees and you'll find out quickly.
Me: Isn't it a bit scary to let go of that sense of just yourself, of who you've been told you are and who you feel you are?
Jim: It's the most terrifying thing in the world.
Me: Why is that?
Jim: Because I'm being asked to die. This thing I've been protecting my whole life. But here's the great part, I don't have to stay there. And in fact I can't. There are moments where I've gotten to that place of understanding and tangible feeling of it and gone "My, God, I'm never going back. I feel so free, there's no me, I feel the ocean, the bottom of the of the ocean and the rings of Saturn and whatever else is one thing." It's an incredible feeling and then the illusion of our lives becomes so compelling that I get dragged back into the program.
Me: You must come back and get a cup of tea or something, right?
Jim: Another body in the brain, yeah. And I got to feed it with friendship and I got to feed it with love and this vessel, this thing requires a lot of love and care. And with some sort of relevance.
Me: Your life has been so examined so many times, Jim. Dana, what did you learn about Jim that we didn't know or that you didn't know?
Dana: Quite a lot. When I went into this one of my first projects was to "download" enough of his memories into my head so I could achieve some kind of virtuosity with another person's experience. So, that was a task I didn't know I was undertaking that was probably two years of talking on the phone at that point. I don't know think we were Skyping, that was in 2012. I was living on the 404 and I'd go walking. So the biography, the first books I read growing up were biographies... William Manchester, my father would have these books and I would crack them open. So I took that very seriously, the work of the biographer had to be done before I could begin to the experimental literary project of an auto fiction or an anti memoir.
Jim: And he had to download, I was downloading to him all the time and he would come out with these extraordinary ideas and I would say that's wonderful and here's actually something even more insane and it really happened.
Dana: There was magic, there was a moment where we were talking and he was in New York so we met and he'd read a chapter and Jim goes, well it was the Kelsey Grammar chapter, the seance, the cult, look this is great but what's missing here is nice and clearly I can see it, Kelsey wants to be the Guru and I thought, oh, that's Jim Carrey. He goes, "Ego hasn't entered the room yet."
Jim: Because I've had those gathering with actual spiritual teachers come over to dinner and friends who come and we're dying to ask these people who are very wise and discerning our most heartfelt questions and one guy won't shut up. He's going, "I think what it is," and they'll do this oration and look at the Guru and say, "Am I right?"
Me: You mention Kelsey Grammar in the book by name?
Jim: Yeah, these people are named! Kelsey Grammar, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Nick Cage, who is obsessed with fighting aliens and possessing Excalibur.
Me: Ha! Have you heard anything from them or their lawyers or anything?
Jim: Hahahahaha! I heard from my lawyers so I think I'm okay. No, it's very innocuous. It's not like we go for anybody's jugular. It's slightly less penetrating or upsetting than a Ricky Gervais Golden Globe speech. I poked fun at everybody, I poked fun at my family, I poked fun at my friends, and I think no human being should be above that. So I think it's all good and they've been renting spaces in our heads, right? For a very long time.
Me: Nick Cage liked it?
Jim: Nick Cage loves it. He's out if his mind over it, he's really happy and I gave him all the best lines.
Me: When you were on "Conan" back in February you talked about Rodney Dangerfield, we're you guys close?
Jim: Jason, he gave me one of my first big breaks in show business. He took me as an opening act.
Me: Is he in the book?
Jim: Yeah, as a form of a talking rhinoceros. It's one of my favorite parts of the book.
Me: Cool. Can you tell me something about you and Rodney Dangerfield?
Jim: Well, we go back and I was living in Canada when he hired me the first time and he saw me do my Amazing Kreskin impression and he literally fell on there ground laughing. He wasn't just laughing because it was one of the funniest I did he was laughing also because he knew that really people in America didn't know Kreskin. He goes, "That's the biggest thing you do and nobody knows it." He thought it was kind of absurd."
Me: Was he a nice guy?
Jim: Yeah, he was an incredible human being and a tremendous support. If he loved you, man, it was like under the wing and telling you what you needed to know, and you needed to make the tanks so strong that no bonehead could stop it. All of those things and supported me when I was experimenting and would stand backstage laughing and going, "Man, those people are looking at you like you're from another fuckin' planet, man." But supported me, kept hiring me and he was just lovely to me. First time he saw me he said, "Hey, kid, ever been in love?" I was so green coming from Canada. We had beautiful times together and Joan Dangerfield has gotten in touch with me since she read the book. She read it in two days, she said she couldn't put it down. Many of the phrases were stuck in her head, especially the chicken fucker. She's just over the moon about it as well. She's very happy about it, so I look forward to everybody coming forward. It wasn't an opportunity for me to tell the world that to me there was a very special divine spark that was handed between us. He loved my father, Percy Carrey, who was the funniest man I've ever known in the world.
Me: You told a story about when your dad first met Rodney when you were on "Conan" which was funny. Can you tell that story you told?
Jim: The first time dad ever came down to Vegas he came backstage to me and Rodney and Rodney was smoking a joint and he looked up at my father and I said, "Rodney, this is my dad." He looked up from the joint at me and I said, "This is my dad Percy." And he said, "Oh, sorry, Percy, I have to have this stuff, man. It makes me creative. I'm a fucking pothead, man. You want to hit this, Percy?" He offered my dad a joint and my dad without thinking, without a moment's pause said, "Oh, no, if I start that I'll be up to two packs a day in no time." Rodney went, "Who the hell is this guy?" Then from then on they were best friends, they were fast friends, man. My dad and I would spar with Rodney and when I ran out stuff to say I would tap him and he'd tap in and come in with his stuff. And it was just so much fun. He loved him so much, I wanted to put that stuff across, I wanted people to know.
Me: So, I have to ask you about the cover of the book, Jim. Can you explain what it is?
Jim: My assistant, Linda, FaceTimed me, interrupted Dan and I are on a Skype own we were working already, it was 8 in the morning or something like that. She was crying and she said there are missiles coming and I I only have ten minutes and I said what do you mean and she said, "There are missiles coming, and they're going to land in 10 minutes. This is real." The alarms were going off and stuff and as she told me she was strenuously clutching her iPhone, she accidentally took a screenshot of my face. So the book's cover is an actual shot of my face after being told that I have 10 minutes to live.
Me: Fuck. So, what goes through your head when you honestly believe you have only ten minutes to live?
Jim: Well, if you look at that cover you'll see a man who is not freaking out. Not hysterical, more of a wave of calm coming over me and a sense of "Oh, that's strange. Huh, what a funny way for this all to end." And that's the feeling I got. Then there was the situation of so I hide under the stairs? Do I get in the car? What do I do? I don't want to die in my car. I tried to get off the island on the phone to my daughter and I couldn't get through and finally I just said, "You know what? I've had a wonderful life. And I decided to sit there and watch the ocean and go through all the ways in my head that I could be grateful for what I had and I started this list of gratitudes that could have gone on forever. I mean just how lucky I've been.
Me: If anybody doesn't remember or know what happened in January 2018 can you remind us?
Jim: Yeah, an alert, which warned of a ballistic missile headed for Hawaii, sent the islands into a panic, with people abandoning cars on a highway and preparing to flee their homes.
Me: Are you forever changed by that?
Jim: Yeah, that's a part of me. It's a part of this book. When all is lost then all is found.
Me: What happened when you found out it was a false alarm?
Jim: There was just two minutes left when Dana called back and said it was a false alarm. The mainland knew before we did.
Dana: It's also is that we know is a tribute to the power the blurring of the line between fact and fiction. This is a man who believes he's got two minutes to live because of a piece of misinformation.
Jim: The cover itself is a perfect example of misinformation. I had to go through my own death for eight minutes.
Me: Dana, are there moments that took you aback when you peered inside the bubble of fame? Does that make sense?
Dana: We were separated by a continent so that was probably a good thing. I always knew Jim as a conversation partner for many years before we really were in the same room a lot woking. So by that point I had a little niece who poked her head into one of our Skype and said, "Are you the Grinch?"
Jim: And I said, "Some say I am."
Dana: I was able to see through her eyes that she's seen Jim through this amazing perennial favorite. But the conversation with Tallulah says conversation is life and I think that is through conversation I was able to understand Jim as a very special human being. And I had probably do that in order to do my job so the fame thing was something I didn't know, we had to get past that in order to do our work together.
Me: So, I read somewhere that this pandemic is getting rid of "celebrity." What do you think, Jim?
Jim: It's humanizing everybody. And it's just going to do that. I think there always will be people with special talents and even if it's like my brother John who can tear a car apart and put it back together in 20 below zero with bare hands. There's always going to be that but as far as exceptionalism where there's a star or whatever it is I think that that jig is up.
Me: When I first started to interview people for this blog in 2008 I interviewed smaller unknown people, in indie bands and such, and now and then someone more known. All these years later the names have been getting bigger and bigger. I mean, in the last few years I interviewed both living members of the Beatles for fucking out loud. I used to get nervous interviewing bigger celebrities but not so much anymore. So, this is cool that you were on the Phile. I have to say my dad was Lonesome Dave in Foghat and loved it when you were on the MTV Awards, dressed as a bearded hippy and said, "Would it kill you guys to play some Foghat?" I wanted to tell you that.
Jim: Foghat was a cool band, I'm sorry about your loss. I lost both of my parents but they are not gone. I don't think as my father is gone, I don't think my mother is gone. They never go.
Me: Where are they?
Jim: They're in me. Your dad is in you.
Me: That's sweet. My mom passed away in 2000 as well as my dad, so I guess she's in me too, right?
Jim: Yeah. Foghat was a great band. By the way, have you interviewed Gordon Lightfoot?
Me: No, not yet.
Jim: He must be getting up there, right? You know you need to interview him, man.
Me: Yeah, he's 143. Hahaha. Jim and Dana, thanks so much for being on the Phile. Please come back again sometime, this was a huge thrill.
Dana: Thank you.
Jim: Great talking to you, Jason. Now take a slow ride and take it easy, man.
That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to Jim and Dana for a deep but great interview. The Phile will be back on Monday with music legend Robert Planet. Spread the word, not the turd... or virus. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye. Kiss your brain.
I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon
