July 17, 2024 • 30 mins
Lessons and messages from the Other Side often channel through unexpected sources. After hearing of the loss of a beloved friend and visionary colleague, Julie rediscovers the meaning and impact of Karma via the early 2000's sitcom, My Name is Earl.
Join us today as your Elf flies solo and discusses the importance of reaching out to those you love, righting your wrongs, gratitude, and the unstoppable force of universal checks and balances. This episode will inspire you to take a step back and give thanks where it is needed and make a list of the things you'd like to make amends for.
Because Earth School is hard, without a fresh set of eyes to help you see where you've been, and where you're going.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Insider's Guide to the Other Side, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hi y'all, I'm Julie.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi there, I'm Brenda. Welcome to Insider's Guide to the
other Side.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Now, y'all need to know that we are obsessed with
everything on the other side.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes, we are, because once you learn to navigate the energetic,
or to some the invisible world, life is going to
be more fun and much more serene.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Uh heck, yes it can, because, let's be honest, br in,
earth school is hard. In fact, you taught me.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That let's crush earth school together.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Well, hello, everybody today is elf talk. It's elf talk
because my wishy poo has a lot going on, So
I hope you hang in with me. I think I
have some interesting things to talk to you all about
was actually, you know, wondering. Talked to Suzanne and some
(01:04):
friends like what should I talk about? I don't have Brenda,
I'm a little lost. What is the loss elf to do?
And you know, recently, I always, as you guys know,
like to I find a lot of lessons in my
own life. I find a lot of lessons from listening
(01:24):
to other people. And one of them actually arrived well
on the screen on my phone in the form of
a news alert. And the news alert was a former
colleague and friend he just jumped. And the man's name
(01:45):
is John Landau. And you guys may have never heard
of John. John. John was the film producer. And funny
thing about John is I'd actually started working at Fox
when he was twenty nine. He was head of production
and then he ended up working with Jim Cameron, and
so they did Titanic together. We worked with him on Avatar.
(02:12):
We also worked with him on a movie called Alita
Battle Angel. And I have to tell you when I
saw that, I was my heart sank and I was crushed.
He was I think sixty three sixty four. He also
lived kind of sort of ish around the corner from
us in Sherman Oaks, so he was also a neighbor
(02:36):
and a colleague and a friend. And I you know,
it set me to this place of really thinking about
the times with him and thinking about I mean, honestly,
his kindness and by the way, his Hawaiian shirts, and
he was so gifted in this field. He was also
(02:57):
so loyal to Jim and so loyal to the vision
that he had because with avatar. You know, Jim had
a vision thirteen years prior before even beginning to make it.
Technology had to keep up, had to come keep up
with his vision, had to meet him at his vision.
(03:17):
And John was a big part of that, a big
believer in that. And I was just, you know, twirling
in my own head and recalling memories. And so I
ended up just texting some friends of mine that I
worked with at Fox, and because I need to get
out of my head, I needed to talk to other people.
(03:39):
So there's this you know, text chain that was going on.
And one of my friends was so vulnerable when she said,
she goes, you know, I've been thinking about John for
the last year, and I wanted to reach out and
tell him grateful I was for what he taught me,
(04:04):
how grateful I was for how he treated me and frankly,
how he treated everyone, and that was one of his superpowers.
And she goes, but I didn't listen to myself. I
in some ways felt unworthy to go to him and
(04:24):
tell him this. And I said to her, I go,
I wish that I would have done the same. In fact,
I'm sure all of us wish we could have done
the same, And just shown him our gratefulness and our
compassion and caring for him, not just as a professional,
(04:46):
but as a human. And you know, this really ties
into and I know Brenda and I have talked about
this before. We've talked about some other instances in our
own life where we have reached out to people because
it was important for us to let them know how
we felt about them. I mean, I think I shared
(05:08):
probably within the last six eight months. It's hard to
keep track of time these days. Everybody. I reached out
to my dad's girlfriend's daughter, so strange, and I wrote
her letter, you know, and I said to her that
(05:29):
I was just so grateful a for her mother, and
her mother had passed, and I was so grateful to
her because she was so kind to me in a
very difficult situation because even when my father was living,
he liked to drink, and you know, it's a pretty
unstable environment for eleven twelve year old, you know, to
(05:52):
deal with that. But I just wanted to reach out
and thank her. And even at the end of it,
I had said to her, you know, no reply is request.
I just want you to know. And every once in
a while I get it right, I tell I tell
enough people you know, whether it is from you know,
recent or whether it's from what feels like a lifetime ago.
(06:15):
But sometimes I miss people, and honestly, John is one
of those I've missed, and I I of course, what
I had texted in this chain was I said, well,
he knows now, and my friend was like, ah, She's like, oh,
that's why you're a mind, that's why you're my friend. Yeah,
(06:37):
thank god you told me. Yes, of course he knows now,
and she's but I wish I could have done it,
and I said, I totally know, but he does know now,
and so it just it it got me thinking, and
I'll confess a little bit of spiraling. I like the spiral.
I like to ste I like to kind of go
live in that kind of emotion and that I'm feeling.
(07:03):
So what I did was I was thinking about, like,
what do I actually want to watch on TV? It's
a long weekend. What do I want to watch? And
I started rewatching a show that interestingly played into this,
and then after that I watched a movie. So I
promise you all of this is linked. I'm going to
be back in just a minute. I'm going to tell
(07:23):
you about a little binging that just happened. Okay, everybody,
I'm back. I'm going to talk about some binging and
luckily this go around, it's not about food, but it
is TV. You know, when I, you know, found out
about John, I was, you know, distraught, and the conversations
(07:47):
had me thinking about you know, that would have, could
have should a part of who we are. And funny enough,
I started watching rewatching a show from the early that
aired on NBC called My Name Is Earl. And if
(08:07):
you've watched it, raise your hand. I will look to
see if I can see you. So those that know
my Name is Earl is about the lead character is
named Earl. I think it's obvious by the title. Probably
didn't need to tell you that, but I am. Anyway,
Earl is our lead character. And Earl has a brother, Randy.
(08:29):
He has an ex wife, and well he has two kids,
but they weren't his kids. But that you got to
watch it to understand that whole part of the story.
But the thing about Earle is Earl was a bad
guy and he actually won a scratch off lotto and
(08:52):
it was one hundred grand and he's all excited going
out of the convenience store and then gets hit by
a car and he sees the lotto ticket fly away
from him, and then he watched something on television learned
about karma. And for the record, just so you guys know,
the creator of the show was called Greg Garcia, and
(09:13):
Greg got the idea of karma from watching something, and
so he wanted to create a series about it. So,
you know, sometimes understanding the show runner, the creator and
what their intention was this, you know, and how it
came to them and what they ended up creating is
also kind of fun. So just know, if you want
(09:34):
to dig around, his name is Greg Garcia. But back
to Earle. So Earle, who really I mean? Or it
was a dick? He really was. He was a jackass, Earl.
You know, he loved to steal, so he stole things
from people. He did them wrong, He lied to them,
he cheated, manipulated, you know, you name it. He would
(10:00):
destroy people's property. I mean, the list is long, in fact,
on Earl's list that he put together because he wanted
to go make it right with all those people that
he did wrong because he now believed in karma. And
the funny thing is, I was talking to a friend
of mine and I was telling her what I wanted
(10:21):
to talk about today and she said, she goes, well,
do me a favor. I go, what's that she's will
you explain, like why do people always say Karma is
a bitch? And I said, well, Karma's a bitch if
only if you're a bitch. And of course that should
be a T shirt. Go ahead, something, please feel free
to make it. And she said, because everybody thinks that
(10:44):
it's bad. Well, in the case of my name is Earl,
my name is Earl, it is actually he's done a
lot of bad things, and he wanted good things to
happen to his life. And some of the good things
that would happen, you know, sometimes it would be materialistic.
So when he started his list, he actually got the
LOTO to get back and wanted to use that money
to make everything right. But I'll also tell you the
(11:09):
other thing that I thought was even more valuable that
they addressed in this show was he would say he
would have this kind of funny feeling in his stomach
or in his chest when he would finally be able
to cross something off of his list. And that's the magic.
Because he had to go through a vulnerability of admitting
(11:31):
to people what he had done. He went through a
lot of tasks to right wrongs, and many times the
wrong wasn't what he actually thought he needed to go fix.
It was the kind of butterfly effect of it. It
was because he did one thing, it really ruined somebody's
(11:52):
life in another way, but he would feel better by
by writing his wrongs. And that's really what karma is.
It's not about, obviously, the monetary part of it. But
you know, as Brenda and I have talked about before,
karma just is, you know, is in a way of
you know, it can come back, and it does come back.
(12:15):
It can come back quickly and it can come back slowly.
But there is a universal balance. There's a neutrality that
we all end up having to get to with our actions,
our words, our intentions. And I'll give you a dramatic
example of something that Earle did in one of the
one of the episodes, but I really encourage you guys
(12:36):
to watch it if it is all interesting to you.
But he and his brother would they would go They
went to a country club and uh, actually the guy
Johnny Galecki who played in the show Roseanne, was in
the guest star in this particular episode, and he walked
into the bar and said, I got a hole in
(12:56):
one today. You know, A beers for everyone. And so
these guys they don't know anything. They're like, wait, we
can go back her all the time and get free beer. Right,
So they went back the next day and Johnny Gallecki
came back in and someone's like, did you get a
hole in one again? He's like no. So to these guys,
there was no free beer. So what they started to
(13:19):
do is they would go hide on the golf course.
Now remember, guys, this is a comedy. It's hilarious. I
mean you can like it's literally taking your medicine with
some sugar. It's fantastic. They would follow him around on
the golf course and you know, they would grab his
golf ball and they would either put it in the
hole or throw it into the fairway. So all of
(13:39):
a sudden, Johnny Glecki is getting more hole in ones.
He's the hole he's I think he's the golf champion
or he is I think he broke a course record
with the lowest score. And so he starts buying everybody
beer and wings and all of this and you know
these two losers, Earl and his brother are you know, Tom,
(14:00):
it was worth it because they were getting free beer
and free food at a country club. So fast forward
twenty years for Earl when he has his list, he
has this guy, this golfer on his list that he
needed to go make things right. So he goes and
he finds the guy. Actually, I'm going to take that back.
I don't think it was twenty years for this one.
(14:21):
It was probably more like five, so forgive me. But
he goes, he finds the guy. He finds Johnny Gileki,
and he's living in his car and he's and Earl
is like, tells him what he did. He's confessing and
so on and so forth, and he says to the guy,
He's like, he goes, why are you in your car?
(14:44):
And he said, well, I thought I really had it,
Like I like, golf was my thing, so I everything
in my world revolved around golf. I would show up
late for work because I was practicing or getting new equipment.
And I got fired from job. I would be home
and I would be hitting golf balls or practicing and
(15:04):
trying to get better to get my game back. Because
apparently when you guys left, I wasn't as good as
I thought I was and I lost my girlfriend. You know,
this is that butterfly effect, right, It's like the flap
of a wing can create that chain reaction. So with
Earle just trying to get free beer and wings again
comedy from this guy's golf game, his life ended up,
(15:30):
you know, going south because he was made to believe
he was really good at something, and when Earl and
his brother stopped with their Shenanigans, he wasn't as good
and you know, started losing faith and spending too much
time focusing on it and he got obsessed. But that
was that was the That was a chain reaction that happened.
(15:54):
So you would think, you know, he just went to
go tell a guy and wanted to make it up
to him, but what happened was the guy's life had
fallen apart. The same thing happened and another story about
his dad and with his dad, he stole his dad's
Mustang that he was working on. He came back told
his dad that he you know, drove it into a lake.
(16:14):
But really what he did is he lost it in
a drag race at eleven years old, and so his
dad was on his list, so he went to the
guy that won it from him again he's eleven. He
came and reached the dam pedals to get the car back,
so he had to do another drag race with the guy.
And Earl has an El Camino. You'll see when you
(16:35):
watch the show. I want a new guy with an
El Camino. They were cool in the day. So he
wins it back and he goes and he's all proud
to go show his dad. He's his dad got your
car back, and his dad was like, that car wasn't
for me. That car was for you. When you turned sixteen,
(16:56):
you lost your own car in a drag race. It
wasn't mine, it was for you. And so of course
Earl is like, Okay, now what do I do, which
is part of what we do when we go back
and try to make things right, you know again chain reaction.
It's not what we think it is, which is another
thing I absolutely love about this show and why it's
been so helpful just to be processing through you know
(17:20):
what I had expressed before about kind of living in
the loss of people and not saying things and doing
things that you would wish you would have done. But
what Earle does is he decides he's going to get
the car running again and restore the whole thing, and
he does it at his dad's and his dad comes
over there and starts to help him, and he realizes
(17:43):
all his dad really wanted to do was, you know,
refurbish this car with his son so they would spend
time together. So what he learned is that it really
wasn't about material things. It wasn't about the car about
the time. So I've been putting my own list together
(18:07):
things I need to go deal with because, like you,
I am perfectly imperfect. I am processing ways I'm going
to deal with it. I want to have that feeling
of vulnerability and have that feeling of oh, I just
took care of something, because you know, I'm human, and
(18:29):
and of the things I want to take care of,
they're normally people. By the way, I didn't never stole anything. Actually,
if I did, I probably stole some double bubble from
the Rexul drug store when I was a kid. I
don't know. I should probably send them twenty cents with
some interest. I'm not sure. But outside of that is
more about for me. It's probably treatment. I can be
(18:50):
a bit of an asshole if you guys you know,
can imagine. So I have some work to do there
because what I don't want to have happen is actually
the movie I watched after I started watching. My name
is Earl, And remember, y'all, I love TV and movies,
so you guys are getting the elf life weaved into
(19:18):
art and entertainment. So hold on for me. I'm gonna
close this one. I'm hopefully pretty good. Bear with me.
There was a plan. I'll be right back. Okay, y'all,
I'm back. So I didn't plan on this, meaning the
series of entertainment events that I watched. But I watched
(19:42):
a movie again my same friend who wanted me to
clear up the whole you know, Karme's a bitch? Well
se Linka's you're a bitch comment, same friend, and she said,
have you watched ghost Town? And I look it up
and I'm like, how could I have missed this? It
was two thousand and eight, I was in the industry.
(20:03):
What the hell is wrong with me? So? And funny enough,
by the way, my old boss actually made it, Stacy Snyder.
So there's all these weird little things that happened. And
of course I reached out to her and we had
a long text chain about it. But so she goes
watch this movie. She goes, I think it has a
little bit to do with karma, you know, but I don't.
(20:24):
I don't know. You put your own damn pieces together.
And so I watched this movie and it was pretty
crazy because it was a full circle every for this
conversation for elf talk today because it centered on a guy,
the actor's Great Cannar and he actually was hit by
(20:47):
a bus and his widow he left behind was a
woman played by Taylione. And if you're a fan of
Madame Secretary, that is our same beloved tayl aone And
if you haven't seen Madame Secretary, very highly encourage it, folks.
And then we also have a dentist in this story,
and it is played by Ricky Gervase. So Ricky also,
(21:11):
by the way, was the creator of the UK version
of the Office Just f yi, And an actress who
played in that is Katie Flanakin, who's a friend of
the Witchipoo. So I was gonna bring Wichipoo back, all right,
I'm going to go back to ghost Town and I'm
going to try to turn off my add but I
don't know how. So, uh, Greg Kanear is hit by
(21:35):
a bus and he actually finds this guy that can
see him and hear him. And I'm gonna not give
everything up to you, guys. I just want to get
to the heart and the core of what this is.
But so so. Greg Kinnear is seen by Ricky Gervase
(21:56):
and so are, by the way, a lot of other spirits.
In fact, all these spirits you could see them in
one scene shouting at him about all the things they
wanted him to do for them. You know, Tell so
and so I love them, Tell so and so, I'm sorry,
Tell so. You see where I'm going here is if
we don't take care of our business while we're here
(22:18):
in our body, we got to try to take care
of it another way. And it is super hard to
find people that can see. And here goes to get
that across for you. But in this.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Movie you actually see that Greg was not Greg King's character,
not a great guy, a little douche, and he was
really struggling to figure out why he had not crossed over,
like truly crossed over, like the Bright Light crossovers.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
How they portrayed it in the movie, So we kept
trying to come up with different schemes, different ways, and
part of it was, you know, he was trying to
cover up his bad behavior, and really what it came
down to wash it was the truth and it was
(23:10):
his attempt, you know, to rectify that because he didn't
deal with it again when he was alive. So I
think the overarching message today starts with well, started with
death and ends with death, because you know, death is
my genre, y'all. But it is really thinking through, you know,
(23:31):
the full circle of how we are on the planet
and when we are perfectly imperfect, how do we deal
with our imperfections? How do we deal with who we
are and what we've done, what we've thought, you know,
listen even our thoughts, you guys. It's so interesting because
I'm working with some people that I worked with twenty
(23:54):
years ago, and I've loved it. And it's so funny
because when I was in Can, I saw people I
had not seen, literally for twenty five years, and they're like, oh,
you're back, Jillie, big hug, and here's what's really fucked up.
I'm thinking to myself, was I really that nice to
you for you to treat me this way. And the
thing is, I was it's just all that shit went
(24:17):
around in my head that never came out of my mouth,
and a lot comes out of my mouth everybody, but
there were certain things and that I was thinking about.
Why watching all of this about stopping that negative that
negative talk internal talk, right, because to me, that's also
a part of what is also karmic to us because
(24:39):
that inside talk, which I'll say doesn't happen nearly as
much as it used to, but it still occurs. But
back in the day, you know, when I was a
big dummy, I you know, I think it was ego
and jealousy and admiration or things that I thought I
should have and do and be that others were, and
(25:00):
I think that's why that shit happened. So this is
like a blanket apology maybe for people who didn't know
what was in my head, but it is those things
of how could I have thought this about that person?
So it's funny, I'm now facing a part of my
life where I have I'm very much a different human
(25:22):
being than I was before, but I'm facing it again
and I'm asking I started asking questions of myself and
because I think that Also, I think that does play
a role even if the other person doesn't know, because
that is still that energy, those thoughts, those ideas are
still out in the ether somewhere, and I'm working on
(25:46):
pulling those back, and I'm having interactions with people and
I'm being very genuine and honest, and I'm actually looking
them again with a different set of eyes, just like
I watched my name is Earl with a different set
of eyes. I'm looking these people with a different set
of eyes, and I see why they are who they are,
why they are brilliant, why they are doing what they do,
(26:07):
why they were able to do what they did then,
why they should have success, why they should have these
things Because I'm not that insecure kind of dip shit
more on assholey kind of person that I could have had,
possibly had the tendency to be. And so that's part
(26:31):
of my cleanup. So again I'm making my list. I'm
looking at all of these events, the real life events,
the TV series, movies and relooking, and I just wanted
to share with everybody. You know, it never it never
hurts to give yourself the opportunity to at least look.
You might not do anything, but to at least look,
(26:53):
and if you want to be Earl, you can make
your list. But that we can minimize the afterlife regret
for things. We'll all have it. I think, undoubtedly again
perfectly imperfect, but I sure would like to take care
of things here. I don't want to carry them on
(27:15):
with myself. I don't want people to have to deal
still in this lifetime with things I may have done
that even cause a butterfly effect that I am completely
unaware of. Hopefully, with some cases a butterfly effect was
actually a good effect, but I have a feeling in
some cases it probably wasn't. So this is my encouragement
(27:35):
to you, guys. Reach out to those that have been
meaningful to you, even if they're not in your day
to day life. Take a look at the things you
think maybe you could have done differently. If you want
to be vulnerable about it, write a letter if you
don't want to face them, a phone call something, have lunch,
whatever it may be, to kind of deal with some
(27:56):
of that stuff, and hopefully you'll feel that tinkly in
your heart your stomach, the way that actually, you know
Earle did when it you know, when he really started
to figure out that doing good, the real reward was
how you felt, because how you felt was watching the
reaction of how The response from everybody else was Okay, everybody,
(28:20):
I hope that you got a little something from elf
Talk today, and let's hope it is the first and
the last time you have to listen to just me
and not my wishipoo. So I will leave you with this.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Or school.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Is really really hard without the other side. Take it
from me and take it from Earle. All Right, everybody,
thank you so much for tolerating me today. Have an
awesome day. Thanks again, everybody.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Thank you for joining us. Everyone, and a special thanks
to our producer Joey Patt and our executive producer Maya
Cole Howard, who guides us while we guide.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
You hit us up on Instagram at other Side Guides,
or shoot us a note at high Hi at vibes
dot store.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We want to know what you think, we want to
know what you know, and we want to hear your stories.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
And remember our school is hard without the other side.
Insider's Guide to the Other Side is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Spotify,
Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts
Welcome to Insider's Guide to the Other Side, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hi y'all, I'm Julie.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi there, I'm Brenda. Welcome to Insider's Guide to the
other Side.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Now, y'all need to know that we are obsessed with
everything on the other side.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes, we are, because once you learn to navigate the energetic,
or to some the invisible world, life is going to
be more fun and much more serene.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Uh heck, yes it can, because, let's be honest, br in,
earth school is hard. In fact, you taught me.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
That let's crush earth school together.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Well, hello, everybody today is elf talk. It's elf talk
because my wishy poo has a lot going on, So
I hope you hang in with me. I think I
have some interesting things to talk to you all about
was actually, you know, wondering. Talked to Suzanne and some
(01:04):
friends like what should I talk about? I don't have Brenda,
I'm a little lost. What is the loss elf to do?
And you know, recently, I always, as you guys know,
like to I find a lot of lessons in my
own life. I find a lot of lessons from listening
(01:24):
to other people. And one of them actually arrived well
on the screen on my phone in the form of
a news alert. And the news alert was a former
colleague and friend he just jumped. And the man's name
(01:45):
is John Landau. And you guys may have never heard
of John. John. John was the film producer. And funny
thing about John is I'd actually started working at Fox
when he was twenty nine. He was head of production
and then he ended up working with Jim Cameron, and
so they did Titanic together. We worked with him on Avatar.
(02:12):
We also worked with him on a movie called Alita
Battle Angel. And I have to tell you when I
saw that, I was my heart sank and I was crushed.
He was I think sixty three sixty four. He also
lived kind of sort of ish around the corner from
us in Sherman Oaks, so he was also a neighbor
(02:36):
and a colleague and a friend. And I you know,
it set me to this place of really thinking about
the times with him and thinking about I mean, honestly,
his kindness and by the way, his Hawaiian shirts, and
he was so gifted in this field. He was also
(02:57):
so loyal to Jim and so loyal to the vision
that he had because with avatar. You know, Jim had
a vision thirteen years prior before even beginning to make it.
Technology had to keep up, had to come keep up
with his vision, had to meet him at his vision.
(03:17):
And John was a big part of that, a big
believer in that. And I was just, you know, twirling
in my own head and recalling memories. And so I
ended up just texting some friends of mine that I
worked with at Fox, and because I need to get
out of my head, I needed to talk to other people.
(03:39):
So there's this you know, text chain that was going on.
And one of my friends was so vulnerable when she said,
she goes, you know, I've been thinking about John for
the last year, and I wanted to reach out and
tell him grateful I was for what he taught me,
(04:04):
how grateful I was for how he treated me and frankly,
how he treated everyone, and that was one of his superpowers.
And she goes, but I didn't listen to myself. I
in some ways felt unworthy to go to him and
(04:24):
tell him this. And I said to her, I go,
I wish that I would have done the same. In fact,
I'm sure all of us wish we could have done
the same, And just shown him our gratefulness and our
compassion and caring for him, not just as a professional,
(04:46):
but as a human. And you know, this really ties
into and I know Brenda and I have talked about
this before. We've talked about some other instances in our
own life where we have reached out to people because
it was important for us to let them know how
we felt about them. I mean, I think I shared
(05:08):
probably within the last six eight months. It's hard to
keep track of time these days. Everybody. I reached out
to my dad's girlfriend's daughter, so strange, and I wrote
her letter, you know, and I said to her that
(05:29):
I was just so grateful a for her mother, and
her mother had passed, and I was so grateful to
her because she was so kind to me in a
very difficult situation because even when my father was living,
he liked to drink, and you know, it's a pretty
unstable environment for eleven twelve year old, you know, to
(05:52):
deal with that. But I just wanted to reach out
and thank her. And even at the end of it,
I had said to her, you know, no reply is request.
I just want you to know. And every once in
a while I get it right, I tell I tell
enough people you know, whether it is from you know,
recent or whether it's from what feels like a lifetime ago.
(06:15):
But sometimes I miss people, and honestly, John is one
of those I've missed, and I I of course, what
I had texted in this chain was I said, well,
he knows now, and my friend was like, ah, She's like, oh,
that's why you're a mind, that's why you're my friend. Yeah,
(06:37):
thank god you told me. Yes, of course he knows now,
and she's but I wish I could have done it,
and I said, I totally know, but he does know now,
and so it just it it got me thinking, and
I'll confess a little bit of spiraling. I like the spiral.
I like to ste I like to kind of go
live in that kind of emotion and that I'm feeling.
(07:03):
So what I did was I was thinking about, like,
what do I actually want to watch on TV? It's
a long weekend. What do I want to watch? And
I started rewatching a show that interestingly played into this,
and then after that I watched a movie. So I
promise you all of this is linked. I'm going to
be back in just a minute. I'm going to tell
(07:23):
you about a little binging that just happened. Okay, everybody,
I'm back. I'm going to talk about some binging and
luckily this go around, it's not about food, but it
is TV. You know, when I, you know, found out
about John, I was, you know, distraught, and the conversations
(07:47):
had me thinking about you know, that would have, could
have should a part of who we are. And funny enough,
I started watching rewatching a show from the early that
aired on NBC called My Name Is Earl. And if
(08:07):
you've watched it, raise your hand. I will look to
see if I can see you. So those that know
my Name is Earl is about the lead character is
named Earl. I think it's obvious by the title. Probably
didn't need to tell you that, but I am. Anyway,
Earl is our lead character. And Earl has a brother, Randy.
(08:29):
He has an ex wife, and well he has two kids,
but they weren't his kids. But that you got to
watch it to understand that whole part of the story.
But the thing about Earle is Earl was a bad
guy and he actually won a scratch off lotto and
(08:52):
it was one hundred grand and he's all excited going
out of the convenience store and then gets hit by
a car and he sees the lotto ticket fly away
from him, and then he watched something on television learned
about karma. And for the record, just so you guys know,
the creator of the show was called Greg Garcia, and
(09:13):
Greg got the idea of karma from watching something, and
so he wanted to create a series about it. So,
you know, sometimes understanding the show runner, the creator and
what their intention was this, you know, and how it
came to them and what they ended up creating is
also kind of fun. So just know, if you want
(09:34):
to dig around, his name is Greg Garcia. But back
to Earle. So Earle, who really I mean? Or it
was a dick? He really was. He was a jackass, Earl.
You know, he loved to steal, so he stole things
from people. He did them wrong, He lied to them,
he cheated, manipulated, you know, you name it. He would
(10:00):
destroy people's property. I mean, the list is long, in fact,
on Earl's list that he put together because he wanted
to go make it right with all those people that
he did wrong because he now believed in karma. And
the funny thing is, I was talking to a friend
of mine and I was telling her what I wanted
(10:21):
to talk about today and she said, she goes, well,
do me a favor. I go, what's that she's will
you explain, like why do people always say Karma is
a bitch? And I said, well, Karma's a bitch if
only if you're a bitch. And of course that should
be a T shirt. Go ahead, something, please feel free
to make it. And she said, because everybody thinks that
(10:44):
it's bad. Well, in the case of my name is Earl,
my name is Earl, it is actually he's done a
lot of bad things, and he wanted good things to
happen to his life. And some of the good things
that would happen, you know, sometimes it would be materialistic.
So when he started his list, he actually got the
LOTO to get back and wanted to use that money
to make everything right. But I'll also tell you the
(11:09):
other thing that I thought was even more valuable that
they addressed in this show was he would say he
would have this kind of funny feeling in his stomach
or in his chest when he would finally be able
to cross something off of his list. And that's the magic.
Because he had to go through a vulnerability of admitting
(11:31):
to people what he had done. He went through a
lot of tasks to right wrongs, and many times the
wrong wasn't what he actually thought he needed to go fix.
It was the kind of butterfly effect of it. It
was because he did one thing, it really ruined somebody's
(11:52):
life in another way, but he would feel better by
by writing his wrongs. And that's really what karma is.
It's not about, obviously, the monetary part of it. But
you know, as Brenda and I have talked about before,
karma just is, you know, is in a way of
you know, it can come back, and it does come back.
(12:15):
It can come back quickly and it can come back slowly.
But there is a universal balance. There's a neutrality that
we all end up having to get to with our actions,
our words, our intentions. And I'll give you a dramatic
example of something that Earle did in one of the
one of the episodes, but I really encourage you guys
(12:36):
to watch it if it is all interesting to you.
But he and his brother would they would go They
went to a country club and uh, actually the guy
Johnny Galecki who played in the show Roseanne, was in
the guest star in this particular episode, and he walked
into the bar and said, I got a hole in
(12:56):
one today. You know, A beers for everyone. And so
these guys they don't know anything. They're like, wait, we
can go back her all the time and get free beer. Right,
So they went back the next day and Johnny Gallecki
came back in and someone's like, did you get a
hole in one again? He's like no. So to these guys,
there was no free beer. So what they started to
(13:19):
do is they would go hide on the golf course.
Now remember, guys, this is a comedy. It's hilarious. I
mean you can like it's literally taking your medicine with
some sugar. It's fantastic. They would follow him around on
the golf course and you know, they would grab his
golf ball and they would either put it in the
hole or throw it into the fairway. So all of
(13:39):
a sudden, Johnny Glecki is getting more hole in ones.
He's the hole he's I think he's the golf champion
or he is I think he broke a course record
with the lowest score. And so he starts buying everybody
beer and wings and all of this and you know
these two losers, Earl and his brother are you know, Tom,
(14:00):
it was worth it because they were getting free beer
and free food at a country club. So fast forward
twenty years for Earl when he has his list, he
has this guy, this golfer on his list that he
needed to go make things right. So he goes and
he finds the guy. Actually, I'm going to take that back.
I don't think it was twenty years for this one.
(14:21):
It was probably more like five, so forgive me. But
he goes, he finds the guy. He finds Johnny Gileki,
and he's living in his car and he's and Earl
is like, tells him what he did. He's confessing and
so on and so forth, and he says to the guy,
He's like, he goes, why are you in your car?
(14:44):
And he said, well, I thought I really had it,
Like I like, golf was my thing, so I everything
in my world revolved around golf. I would show up
late for work because I was practicing or getting new equipment.
And I got fired from job. I would be home
and I would be hitting golf balls or practicing and
(15:04):
trying to get better to get my game back. Because
apparently when you guys left, I wasn't as good as
I thought I was and I lost my girlfriend. You know,
this is that butterfly effect, right, It's like the flap
of a wing can create that chain reaction. So with
Earle just trying to get free beer and wings again
comedy from this guy's golf game, his life ended up,
(15:30):
you know, going south because he was made to believe
he was really good at something, and when Earl and
his brother stopped with their Shenanigans, he wasn't as good
and you know, started losing faith and spending too much
time focusing on it and he got obsessed. But that
was that was the That was a chain reaction that happened.
(15:54):
So you would think, you know, he just went to
go tell a guy and wanted to make it up
to him, but what happened was the guy's life had
fallen apart. The same thing happened and another story about
his dad and with his dad, he stole his dad's
Mustang that he was working on. He came back told
his dad that he you know, drove it into a lake.
(16:14):
But really what he did is he lost it in
a drag race at eleven years old, and so his
dad was on his list, so he went to the
guy that won it from him again he's eleven. He
came and reached the dam pedals to get the car back,
so he had to do another drag race with the guy.
And Earl has an El Camino. You'll see when you
(16:35):
watch the show. I want a new guy with an
El Camino. They were cool in the day. So he
wins it back and he goes and he's all proud
to go show his dad. He's his dad got your
car back, and his dad was like, that car wasn't
for me. That car was for you. When you turned sixteen,
(16:56):
you lost your own car in a drag race. It
wasn't mine, it was for you. And so of course
Earl is like, Okay, now what do I do, which
is part of what we do when we go back
and try to make things right, you know again chain reaction.
It's not what we think it is, which is another
thing I absolutely love about this show and why it's
been so helpful just to be processing through you know
(17:20):
what I had expressed before about kind of living in
the loss of people and not saying things and doing
things that you would wish you would have done. But
what Earle does is he decides he's going to get
the car running again and restore the whole thing, and
he does it at his dad's and his dad comes
over there and starts to help him, and he realizes
(17:43):
all his dad really wanted to do was, you know,
refurbish this car with his son so they would spend
time together. So what he learned is that it really
wasn't about material things. It wasn't about the car about
the time. So I've been putting my own list together
(18:07):
things I need to go deal with because, like you,
I am perfectly imperfect. I am processing ways I'm going
to deal with it. I want to have that feeling
of vulnerability and have that feeling of oh, I just
took care of something, because you know, I'm human, and
(18:29):
and of the things I want to take care of,
they're normally people. By the way, I didn't never stole anything. Actually,
if I did, I probably stole some double bubble from
the Rexul drug store when I was a kid. I
don't know. I should probably send them twenty cents with
some interest. I'm not sure. But outside of that is
more about for me. It's probably treatment. I can be
(18:50):
a bit of an asshole if you guys you know,
can imagine. So I have some work to do there
because what I don't want to have happen is actually
the movie I watched after I started watching. My name
is Earl, And remember, y'all, I love TV and movies,
so you guys are getting the elf life weaved into
(19:18):
art and entertainment. So hold on for me. I'm gonna
close this one. I'm hopefully pretty good. Bear with me.
There was a plan. I'll be right back. Okay, y'all,
I'm back. So I didn't plan on this, meaning the
series of entertainment events that I watched. But I watched
(19:42):
a movie again my same friend who wanted me to
clear up the whole you know, Karme's a bitch? Well
se Linka's you're a bitch comment, same friend, and she said,
have you watched ghost Town? And I look it up
and I'm like, how could I have missed this? It
was two thousand and eight, I was in the industry.
(20:03):
What the hell is wrong with me? So? And funny enough,
by the way, my old boss actually made it, Stacy Snyder.
So there's all these weird little things that happened. And
of course I reached out to her and we had
a long text chain about it. But so she goes
watch this movie. She goes, I think it has a
little bit to do with karma, you know, but I don't.
(20:24):
I don't know. You put your own damn pieces together.
And so I watched this movie and it was pretty
crazy because it was a full circle every for this
conversation for elf talk today because it centered on a guy,
the actor's Great Cannar and he actually was hit by
(20:47):
a bus and his widow he left behind was a
woman played by Taylione. And if you're a fan of
Madame Secretary, that is our same beloved tayl aone And
if you haven't seen Madame Secretary, very highly encourage it, folks.
And then we also have a dentist in this story,
and it is played by Ricky Gervase. So Ricky also,
(21:11):
by the way, was the creator of the UK version
of the Office Just f yi, And an actress who
played in that is Katie Flanakin, who's a friend of
the Witchipoo. So I was gonna bring Wichipoo back, all right,
I'm going to go back to ghost Town and I'm
going to try to turn off my add but I
don't know how. So, uh, Greg Kanear is hit by
(21:35):
a bus and he actually finds this guy that can
see him and hear him. And I'm gonna not give
everything up to you, guys. I just want to get
to the heart and the core of what this is.
But so so. Greg Kinnear is seen by Ricky Gervase
(21:56):
and so are, by the way, a lot of other spirits.
In fact, all these spirits you could see them in
one scene shouting at him about all the things they
wanted him to do for them. You know, Tell so
and so I love them, Tell so and so, I'm sorry,
Tell so. You see where I'm going here is if
we don't take care of our business while we're here
(22:18):
in our body, we got to try to take care
of it another way. And it is super hard to
find people that can see. And here goes to get
that across for you. But in this.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Movie you actually see that Greg was not Greg King's character,
not a great guy, a little douche, and he was
really struggling to figure out why he had not crossed over,
like truly crossed over, like the Bright Light crossovers.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
How they portrayed it in the movie, So we kept
trying to come up with different schemes, different ways, and
part of it was, you know, he was trying to
cover up his bad behavior, and really what it came
down to wash it was the truth and it was
(23:10):
his attempt, you know, to rectify that because he didn't
deal with it again when he was alive. So I
think the overarching message today starts with well, started with
death and ends with death, because you know, death is
my genre, y'all. But it is really thinking through, you know,
(23:31):
the full circle of how we are on the planet
and when we are perfectly imperfect, how do we deal
with our imperfections? How do we deal with who we
are and what we've done, what we've thought, you know,
listen even our thoughts, you guys. It's so interesting because
I'm working with some people that I worked with twenty
(23:54):
years ago, and I've loved it. And it's so funny
because when I was in Can, I saw people I
had not seen, literally for twenty five years, and they're like, oh,
you're back, Jillie, big hug, and here's what's really fucked up.
I'm thinking to myself, was I really that nice to
you for you to treat me this way. And the
thing is, I was it's just all that shit went
(24:17):
around in my head that never came out of my mouth,
and a lot comes out of my mouth everybody, but
there were certain things and that I was thinking about.
Why watching all of this about stopping that negative that
negative talk internal talk, right, because to me, that's also
a part of what is also karmic to us because
(24:39):
that inside talk, which I'll say doesn't happen nearly as
much as it used to, but it still occurs. But
back in the day, you know, when I was a
big dummy, I you know, I think it was ego
and jealousy and admiration or things that I thought I
should have and do and be that others were, and
(25:00):
I think that's why that shit happened. So this is
like a blanket apology maybe for people who didn't know
what was in my head, but it is those things
of how could I have thought this about that person?
So it's funny, I'm now facing a part of my
life where I have I'm very much a different human
(25:22):
being than I was before, but I'm facing it again
and I'm asking I started asking questions of myself and
because I think that Also, I think that does play
a role even if the other person doesn't know, because
that is still that energy, those thoughts, those ideas are
still out in the ether somewhere, and I'm working on
(25:46):
pulling those back, and I'm having interactions with people and
I'm being very genuine and honest, and I'm actually looking
them again with a different set of eyes, just like
I watched my name is Earl with a different set
of eyes. I'm looking these people with a different set
of eyes, and I see why they are who they are,
why they are brilliant, why they are doing what they do,
(26:07):
why they were able to do what they did then,
why they should have success, why they should have these
things Because I'm not that insecure kind of dip shit
more on assholey kind of person that I could have had,
possibly had the tendency to be. And so that's part
(26:31):
of my cleanup. So again I'm making my list. I'm
looking at all of these events, the real life events,
the TV series, movies and relooking, and I just wanted
to share with everybody. You know, it never it never
hurts to give yourself the opportunity to at least look.
You might not do anything, but to at least look,
(26:53):
and if you want to be Earl, you can make
your list. But that we can minimize the afterlife regret
for things. We'll all have it. I think, undoubtedly again
perfectly imperfect, but I sure would like to take care
of things here. I don't want to carry them on
(27:15):
with myself. I don't want people to have to deal
still in this lifetime with things I may have done
that even cause a butterfly effect that I am completely
unaware of. Hopefully, with some cases a butterfly effect was
actually a good effect, but I have a feeling in
some cases it probably wasn't. So this is my encouragement
(27:35):
to you, guys. Reach out to those that have been
meaningful to you, even if they're not in your day
to day life. Take a look at the things you
think maybe you could have done differently. If you want
to be vulnerable about it, write a letter if you
don't want to face them, a phone call something, have lunch,
whatever it may be, to kind of deal with some
(27:56):
of that stuff, and hopefully you'll feel that tinkly in
your heart your stomach, the way that actually, you know
Earle did when it you know, when he really started
to figure out that doing good, the real reward was
how you felt, because how you felt was watching the
reaction of how The response from everybody else was Okay, everybody,
(28:20):
I hope that you got a little something from elf
Talk today, and let's hope it is the first and
the last time you have to listen to just me
and not my wishipoo. So I will leave you with this.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Or school.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Is really really hard without the other side. Take it
from me and take it from Earle. All Right, everybody,
thank you so much for tolerating me today. Have an
awesome day. Thanks again, everybody.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Thank you for joining us. Everyone, and a special thanks
to our producer Joey Patt and our executive producer Maya
Cole Howard, who guides us while we guide.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
You hit us up on Instagram at other Side Guides,
or shoot us a note at high Hi at vibes
dot store.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We want to know what you think, we want to
know what you know, and we want to hear your stories.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
And remember our school is hard without the other side.
Insider's Guide to the Other Side is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Spotify,
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