#15 Jack Cameron & Jessica Vargas - True Crime

We chat about:

True crime obsession, Jack Cameron's work, of course racism and raising kids.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome toanother edition of It's Not
About You podcast with myself, Jamala Harrington.
Marianne Riley is on her way andour third host, Jonathan Zegel
will not be with us today, but we have a great treat for you
guys. Celebrating Black History Month

(00:23):
with me is one of our guests. One of our amazing guests.
So we've had him on the show before and I'm so glad he's back
on. He is a he has a masters in
creative writing. You can catch his stories on
tacomastories.com. He also has his writing in a
shot of Jack on sub stack. He's appear.

(00:45):
His stories has appeared on GritCD magazine.
I mean this guy is a writer. He is every woman's wet dream
when it comes to true crime writing.
Our We love this guy too. Welcome Jack the Jack Cameron.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Cameron.

(01:07):
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you.
And I and I. And The funny thing is I I say
these these things because now it is there's a new norm when it
comes to the true crime. When it comes to now that True
Detective is out with Jodie Foster.

(01:27):
All my lady friends are about that, you know, It's like, hey,
do you want to go out on a date?Sure.
When I come over my house and watch, you know the the the
current season of True Detective.
I had an ex-girlfriend who I waswatching.

(01:47):
What was that? It was on Netflix.
It was Mindhunters. Oh yeah, And that show.
At first I was like OK, but thenafter a while it kind of grabs
you. Yes it does.
And it grabs you in a. It grabs you in a way where it's

(02:10):
so uncomfortable and you're justlike but but but I'm and I like
it. I'm not in.
I mean I I I do like it. I love watching like the CS is
and all those courtroom dramas. But when you step it up a notch
with a lot of crazy the the women are into the Can you tell
me why do you have this answer? You want me to tell you why

(02:34):
women are into true crime? Yes, because I I I don't know.
I never thought I would move women that would be into it.
But I'm. Not sure I know the answer to
that and and I kind of should know the answer, but I like.
Like. But my mom watches practically
nothing but true crime. Like, constantly.

(02:56):
Like to the point where I'm surprised she answers the door.
Because if I watch that, I wouldn't.
But I I think that there's, you know, there there's always been
the the female fascination with male danger because men are
dangerous and and like I it it took me forever to figure that

(03:20):
out because I'm a big guy and itit took me forever to figure
that out that that that it's like my girlfriend's fairly
small and you know she she and she said something to the effect
of it. It's kind of like walking around
where there's bears everywhere. And and when I thought about it

(03:47):
like that, I thought two things.I thought, wow, that's
dangerous. And the other thing I thought is
I kind of wish a bear would hug me, You know, like I'm a big
guy. I I would need Chewbacca to hug
me to be the same, You know, it would be, you know what I mean?
But when I'll? Get and and welcome.

(04:09):
Welcome Marianne. Thank you.
I always now Marianne she and thank God you're here.
You came at the right time actually your time is is
impeccable. Thank you.
We're talking about we're talking about why women are so
obsessed with true crime. Our guest here Jack Cameron is

(04:30):
is a writer he's we've had him on the show before.
He's written a lot of crime pieces, but a lot of people I
always hear like, well, women are just using this as like a
template for us for like what they would like to do to us if
we're stepping out of line. And it's like but really like.

(04:51):
I don't think it's that. I don't think so.
I know like so. My one of my sisters, she is an
ambulance chaser only because she wants to see what all the
drama is about. She's very much into the drama
and like women. I think a lot of it is is not so
much like that you're crying, but it's just that they they

(05:11):
want to know what's going on, all the gossip, you know, and be
able to tell all the best juicy stories before everybody else.
And for me, I'm the exact opposite.
Like I've I've had too much truecrime happen in my life that I'm
like I don't I don't need. I like I'm all about comedies I

(05:33):
don't watch the truth crimes youknow and stuff like that.
But I think you know I and I'm not saying that I haven't when I
do watch it it's usually will besomething more along the lines
of it. It's interesting to see the
human nature same reason why do you watch Survivor you know that
human nature part of things likeSurvivor I OK that's one of my

(05:54):
guilty pleasures when I do get achance to watch it because my
husband hates it. So of course he if I do try and
watch it around him, it's like and I'm like fine just.
Change the fucking. If anybody should be watching
Survivor, it's him for sure, OK?He definitely should be watching
Survivor get and with the notepad, right?

(06:17):
Right. I'm just saying.
But it's that human nature and that human interaction and you
see how and I think a lot of it too.
So it's also that that sleuthiness like you know The
Who done it can I figure out whodid it And and it's the mystery
side of things, right. You know it's who did what to

(06:39):
who and why. So it's a true crime.
You you don't know the end of the story.
But like I know that if I want to know all the latest drama on
or even the news with the the true crime kind of stuff.
I always call my stepmom. She has all the the information
about who who did what to who and who killed who and you know

(07:00):
like the latest on on the the news.
It's crazy to me. You know, my my father way back
in the day, he was a bounty hunter.
So all the people that we would hear the true crime like
suspects about like he, he has, you know dragged them from one

(07:23):
part of the country to another to you know and and and it's
always, there's always an interesting story man.
This guy chopped off everybody in his family's head off and
then skip bail and it's like youknow, it's like Oh yeah, we got,
it's like we got him chained to like the the toilet in the hotel

(07:43):
room while he's visiting us. You know what I'm saying?
It's just like holy shit, like the people that you know jump
bail for the the, the craziest things that they've done.
It's almost like, you know, he'slike, Oh yeah, you're right.
I got a lot of stories. I got stories, he's got stories
and and it's just like, you know, I watch a lot of, yeah, I

(08:06):
watch a lot of law and order because I'm always into like
that kind of, you know, But I know there was a show that was,
and I don't know what channel itwas on.
It was talking about like females poisoning people, you
know, Discovery Channel. Jamal, I do a joke about it.
Discovery Channel Women Who Poison.
Or snapped or any of those. Yeah, there's Yeah, it it's we

(08:33):
have so much true crime stuff that even though crime is the
crime rates are actually going down.
We don't feel like that because we've never had this much
information about crime that's happened and it's and and
usually it was more localized. You know, you didn't know about
a murder that happened in Indiana.

(08:54):
And now every time there's something like that, you can
find it on the Internet. You can.
If you wanted to, you could really make yourself depressed.
Yeah. And yeah.
Oh my gosh, you. And you know what?
He's right. Because you could hear about a
murderer in Indiana. And then six months later,

(09:19):
you'll see the trial of it on TV, like the trial.
And you're like, oh, shit, that's right.
You know, it kind of brings backmemories of when you first heard
the news. And it's like, OK, and it's like
the jury has been selected. She's sitting here.
You know, the witnesses are testifying against.
Oh yeah, you know, he, we thought he or she was, you know,

(09:42):
they kept to themselves. It's always the ones that keep
to themselves that are just murdering their fans.
Oh, it's got their voices in their heads.
You know, the ones that keep to themselves and Oh my God, yeah,
wow. Yeah, the, the they're, you
know, it worries me sometimes because I will.

(10:04):
I'm somebody who keeps to himself, and I'm somebody who
has voices in his head. But I'm a writer, so I'm
supposed to have voices in my. Head.
But every now and then I'll be like, you know, demographically,
I should be a serial killer. But I'm totally not, you know?
And part of that's just why my my like when I was a kid I used

(10:26):
to obsess about crime trying to understand why people did did
these things that put them in cages because cages seemed bad.
Said like bank robbery. I get it.
Sex offenders OK, whatever they're getting off serial
killing. I'm like why you All you have is
like 200 lbs of evidence that you have to hide forever.

(10:49):
That's just a that's just bad criming.
Like to my mind of like like if I'm going to spend that much
effort doing something that I I want more than a dead body to
get rid of. I want, you know, I'd want money
like a lot of it or something. I just don't.

(11:09):
You know and and you know that'show I've always kind of
approached it. It is why it fascinates me when
I, you know, it's why I ended upwriting about to go on homicides
was because I wanted to write about.
I wanted to write about the victims more than anything else.
Right. Because there's so much focus on

(11:31):
the killer in the mind of the killer.
And you know, all that, and to my mind, the much more
interesting story is the one that's cut short.
You know, it's the one that endsthat.
That's the much more interestingstory.
You know, I don't really care about the story of the cops who
killed Manny Ellis. I carry.

(11:52):
I care about the story of Manny Ellis, you know, for example,
you know, it's just and it just seemed like the thing to do was
focus on the victims. And then I started getting the
emails from family is of the victims.
And then I realized I couldn't stop focus the victims.

(12:14):
You know, that's really interesting because I can tell
you that almost 30 years ago, this May, 30 years ago May, my
dad was almost murdered by his business partner and his two
girlfriends. Yeah, his two girlfriends.
And one of the girlfriends got off Scott free because she was

(12:39):
having sexual relations with oneof the female judges.
The other female got six months and the business partner got
five years. Just five years, Yeah.
See and and see. All of that stuff that you just
said is crazier than most fiction, and that's that's part

(13:03):
of you, is fascinating. Is insane.
So my my dad's like, just so just kind of give you something
to to basis to go off of. My dad's a veterinarian.
He's a veterinarian. The State Board of Veterinary
Medicine, huh? The seedy world of
veterinarians. Clearly a dangerous job.

(13:27):
OK. Vegas veterinarian.
And keep in mind that in Las Vegas, the people who are
running the drug trade are the cops.
OK, this is very well known fact.
I'm not telling tales out of school.
This is the narcotics departmentis the ones who run all the

(13:49):
drugs, and the State Board of Veterinary Medicine approached
my dad and said we know that Doctor Rugamer is practicing
medicine without a license. We know that you have all the
evidence against him. We've been trying to get him for
cruelty to animals and everything else for a long time

(14:12):
and you're going to turn state'sevidence on him or we're going
to take your license. So now he's in it whether he
wants it or not, yeah. So my dad was, he had a
conversation with my brother. He said I've got to do something
I don't want to do because he hedidn't want to have to do that.

(14:35):
But so my dad and my stepmom were supposed to go into town
because they were living on the outskirts.
And they were, my dad was going to be on television.
The animal foundation that he worked for, Animal Foundation of
Las Vegas. They were having their 10th They

(14:56):
were celebrating their 10th thousandth surgery of spaying
and neutering. And since my dad had done most
of the surgeries, he they asked him to be the one on TV.
Well, he went to go leave, and my stepmom wasn't ready yet.
And so she told him, go ahead without him, But he got a phone

(15:18):
call from this woman saying thatshe was moving and she was
trying to get her cat into one of the carriers.
And the cat was freaking out andshe couldn't get it in the
carrier. Would he come give it a
tranquilizer and help her put the cat in the carrier?
So he wrote down the address of where she was going to be at,

(15:39):
where she was at. He got there, knocked on the
door and as soon as he opened the door he recognized her and
he turned around and they hit him with a baseball bat and drug
him in the house and proceeded to beat him to death or almost
to death clearly because they didn't finish the job, he said.
He woke up and he could hear theone woman who only did six

(16:01):
months screaming, you know, stop, stop, stop.
And they the other ones were saying no, he knows who we are.
We got to kill him and so Fast forward.
My brother was living in St. George, UT and my my stepmom was
calling the cops, calling everybody when my dad never
showed up to the foundation to do the surgery.

(16:23):
So especially because they knew that this guy Rugamer was Allen
Rugamer was crazy and he threatened them and and
threatened a lot of people. So they called the cops and the
cops said there's nothing that we can do until 24 hours, all
that shit. So my brother, he was, you know,

(16:44):
he knew something was wrong. So he drove a few hours, went,
you know, the next day he showedup in Vegas and he grabbed, he
goes, where's Dad's notebook? Dad takes meticulous notes.
He writes down everything. So he grabbed his notebook, did
the whole pencil thing to write to see what he the address that
was on the pad paper from the day before from the phone call.
And so him and his no ex-wife, but they should they drove to

(17:06):
the address that was only a couple of miles away from dad's
house. He shows up and there's two cops
outside in a cop car. And so my brother gets out and
approaches him and it's a house that was for sale, empty,
abandoned house. And when the cops asked my
brother, you know, what are you doing here?

(17:26):
Why? And he said, hey, my dad went
missing. This was his last known address
that he came to, My brother saidthe cops went inside the house
and literally he was Mary Ann. Within two minutes there was 15
cops surrounding me. They called the cops he goes.
It was the most the same thing. They wouldn't let my brother in
the house. They said that there was blood

(17:49):
smeared over all the walls in the house and so fast we've we
finally found out what happened was is that they attacked him.
When they they brought they saw him, he recognized them.
They knocked him out. They brought him in.
They tried to beat him to death.I mean, like they were stomping
on him, his groin, everything, and his, his face, and they

(18:12):
thought that they'd killed him. And so they laughed.
Well, he came to, and that's where all the blood was because
he was. He walked to the house trying to
find his way out. He went out to his truck, opened
up a pack of cigarettes to lighta smoke because he's a cowboy.

(18:32):
And then he opened up his jockeybox and gave himself a shot for
something for the pain. Because he was a veterinarian
and he had all the medicine, he goes to pull out of the the yard
it. But they had like a gate and
this is how much of an old time cowboy he was.
He gets out of his truck, opens the gate, pulls out, gets out of

(18:55):
the truck, goes, closes the gatebehind him and made it a mile
down the road before he lost consciousness.
And that's where they found him.Wow.
And the trail was even crazier because so they found a baseball
bat with with hair on it and it got lost.

(19:15):
The evidence got lost because the person who was the head of
narcotics at the time called my dad and threatened to kill him
if my dad went evidence. Of course, you know, back then
there was no recordings or anything.
There's no proof you could you couldn't prove any of that shit,
right? And all this evidence went

(19:37):
missing. All this other shit.
I mean, it was. It took five years before that
shit went to full trial and thisguy finally served anytime.
My dad, meanwhile, lost everything he had, including his
his ability to work because it scrambled his brain so bad that

(19:58):
he couldn't maintain his information.
So my dad went from being a millionaire to being on welfare,
and it couldn't have happened toa better person.
Best thing that ever happened tohim.
Turned his whole life around. Well, that that's one of the

(20:19):
things that I find when I'm writing about a lot of victims
is quite often they're like they're not just like like some
a lot of them are straight up criminals.
But there's a lot of them that are just these people that it's
one of the reason I call it Tacoma stories is because I feel

(20:42):
like their stories were cut short.
Like like what they were going to do would have been something
that you know, there's especially with the the, the
younger ones. But every time it's one of those
kind of things. You know, the the latest
homicide I wrote about was a guywho he got shot by the cops, but

(21:09):
he was shooting at the cops. It was it's hard to go.
It's hard to, you know, go a cabon that one.
Because any any time somebody's shooting at you, if you're not a
cop if you shoot back, I get it but it but at the same time you

(21:30):
know in writing about it, I I didn't have a lot of information
about him. I don't you know I don't have
superpowers when it comes to that stuff.
I can just find what I can find and and as I recall his name was
like Peter Collins. I might have that wrong because
my memory sucks but it was something very common so it made

(21:50):
it harder to find things about him.
But I found his record, which was extensive and I didn't
really mention that because to my mind, I'm like the guy's
already dead and and whatever, I, you know, I've known some
good people, I've known bad people, I've known some people

(22:11):
have done some very bad things. But I've never encountered a
person who all they ever did in their life was bad, right?
And so and so I always try to. I always try to write them,
assuming that their mother lovesthem, and assuming their
mother's going to read it. And which?
Is a good philosophy. Right, because because quite

(22:34):
often they do and and and that and you know I've been doing it
for 18 years and so I've had allsorts of things happen.
I I've posted the wrong picture of the wrong person.
You know, I've I've had death threats.

(22:56):
I've had, I've had people tell me things that I shouldn't know,
like they've told me things where I immediately had to
contact the police and say, hey,I have this information, I don't
even want this, but I have it. But but I also get things like I

(23:21):
got an e-mail from this young woman whose mother was murdered
by her boyfriend when this youngwoman was 8.
And I've been doing this long enough that she's now 18 and she
wrote me asking or she was 18 when she wrote me.
It was a couple few years ago, but she it was 18 when she wrote

(23:44):
me and she said I just want to know the name of the man who
killed my mom. And that was difficult for me
because they go out of my way tonot mention the names of the
perpetrators. To my mind, they get enough
press I don't really want. They usually will say their
their age or something their their age and whether they're

(24:06):
male or female, that's usually all you get about who they are.
But I could not tell this young woman, I don't know.
So I did a deep dive and and found information said here's
who he is. Here's what prison he's in.
Here's what I have. But yeah, so you know there's it

(24:30):
it it's a weird experience doingit.
But I've also had to cut down. Like I I only post one a week.
That way I don't get to. I was going to say, yeah, how do
you keep yourself like when you write these stories, how do you
not get like just emotionally attached to the people that?

(24:53):
I do That's why I that's why I don't that's like it's why last
year is when I started I realized one point I basically
took two years off. I I just I just I there had been
almost two years in between posts because it just got to me.

(25:13):
But at the same time, I'm still getting emails from like I got
one e-mail from a woman whose father was a homeless man who
was murdered. And she said your article is the
only evidence that my father exists.
Right. And.
And she hadn't seen him in 30 years, since she was a little

(25:36):
girl. And she the only way she even
she knew he was homeless in Tacoma.
And the only way that she even knew that anything happened to
him was my article. And because so many news sites,
they get rid of things after 90 days or they put them behind pay
walls and and and and quite frankly a homeless murderer

(25:58):
doesn't get a lot of press. That's one of the other things
that I try to do. A lot of people were like, why
don't you write more about MannyEllis.
And I have lots of feelings about that.
But I I really try to write a 200 to 500 word article about

(26:20):
each person and try to treat them all the same.
Because if I start focusing on one, then all of a sudden it's
like, well, why am I not focusing on this other one?
Because every single one of these is like a meteor strike to
a dozen lives, dozens of lives. You know, because that, like
that's what I'm always when I when I talk to people about

(26:41):
homicide, the The thing is like,like here I'll just get personal
here. My, my son, he's in his 20s and
you're you're all fired up in your 20s.
I I remember. And he was really, really upset

(27:01):
about something. And he's like, I'm going to kill
this guy. And I'm like, OK, First off,
never murder hot, right? Like, first, for starters, never
murder hot. It's always a bad idea, no
matter what. Even if they needed killing,
don't murder hot thing #2 is yeah, maybe.

(27:29):
Maybe the person is a bad guy. Maybe he's done bad.
You know, whoever it is, maybe there's all sorts of reasons
that that person should die, buteveryone that person knows is
going to be impacted by it. And everyone that person knows
isn't a bad person. And you're hurting so much more

(27:53):
than just one person When you when when like that's the thing
people don't understand about hurting people is you know, you,
you're hurt somebody and you're hurting the their people too.
Yes. And and it's like, there's
there's just so much grief with it that I did.

(28:14):
I told my I told my girlfriend Iwas like, don't even allow me to
write about two homicides in a day.
I shouldn't write about two in aday, even if I'm trying to get
ahead because I post one a week.But but I try to.
I tried not to write more than one a day because if I do it
just gets to me. I mean because these people are

(28:38):
I've, you know I was born in Tacoma my parents were born in
Tacoma. I know the whatever St. somebody
dies on I know that street you know and sometimes I know those
people you know and so yeah it is draining.
But it's also one of those things that I I feel like I
can't stop. Like if I stop, I have to get

(29:01):
somebody else to do it. And no, And that makes sense
because it's something that it has it an absolute value to it
because like you said, most people, you know, they're
looking at there's some of thesepeople would be non entities if
you didn't write about them. Nobody would know about them,
nobody would know their stories or anything about them.

(29:23):
And those stories matter. It.
Took breath. They they walk this earth, their
story matters to somebody and their story was ended too soon.
Right there was I I can't remember his name and it was
many years ago. There was a guy like 10-15 years
ago. He was my age at that at that

(29:44):
time and we we were the same ageand we had gone to the same bar
that night and I had gotten a ride home from my friend and he
had gotten a ride. I didn't know him.
I didn't see him there. I I didn't notice him there.
But we were in the same bar the same night He got a ride from a
stranger and got murdered. Wow.

(30:07):
And if that one was hard to write about and totally freaked
me out, Oh yeah. No chat.
Yeah, 'cause I was like, I I waskind of I I, you know, and I've
had, I've had things like that. I've had like I said, I had the
the the death threat that that was just writing about gang

(30:32):
related things. If you start writing nice things
about the person that the rival gang killed that they sometimes
they get mad. But you know, at the same time
I've also had you know, because I write about other things the
the I had one death threat from a guy who found me on Facebook

(30:58):
and can we swear on this? Sure.
OK, OK. Because he said he said you got
to watch what the fuck you say online.
You don't know me. I'm fucking crazy.
I live in Tacoma. I'm going to find you and
fucking kill you. I'm off my meds blah blah blah
blah like on and on and like what the hell.

(31:21):
So I just ignore it, you know? And like 5 hours later he sends
me this message, says, hey man, I'm really sorry about all that.
I was off my meds. I I took them.
I'm good now. I'm really sorry.
I just don't think Chris Evans is a good Captain America.
I think you're wrong. Wow.

(31:43):
Wow. Wow.
Wow. And he was mad about my Winter
Soldier review. And I'm like because he when he
said I'm like, well, what was it?
Was it when I was talking about gun regulation?
Was it when I was talking about Trump?
What? What's he mad about?
No, he's he's mad and he's and and on top of that, he's wrong.

(32:07):
Chris Evans is a great Captain America, right?
Yes, you. Yeah, he's.
Very inventory, I thought. He was perfect for the role.
Who else do you want? Right, so, so, so that guy into
got me into the mind frame that it kind of didn't matter what I
said. Like like.
Like like to the haters, it doesn't really matter because

(32:28):
there's somebody who's going to hate you for something.
So you know, and it's fun that you say that.
So I have a question. Take me through a scenario where
like you live in Tacoma. Like you said, you live in
Tacoma. Your your parents are from
Tacoma. You go out, you and your
girlfriend to a nice dinner. Do you feel that people

(32:50):
recognize you? Do you feel that when you go out
and you try to have like you know, new time, you time.
And when I'd say you time, you're not writing your your
mind is in a much more happier place.
You know, you know rainbows and sunshines and bunnies and but do
you ever feel like whenever you're doing things outside of

(33:13):
what you're doing? Like whether you go to a
reindeers baseball game or or orat at at at a Fred Meyers, do
you feel people are like watching you?
Do you feel like people know whoyou are?
No, I I really don't. And I might be naive that way.
And it's probably partially due to hanging around with the late

(33:37):
great sonics guy, Chris Brannon.Because when I walked around
with Chris Brannon, that was when I read, that's when that
guy got recognized. Like it was insane.
I I I never got to ask him how the hell he managed to do what
he did when it came to like he would have a conversation with

(34:01):
me be mid sentence stop to talk to somebody who's like oh sonics
guy and then he'd come back withwith finishing the sentence.
You're basically describing all of our relation, our entire
relationship with him. Me, Marianne's, Yeah, that was
you could. You've hit the nail right on the
head with that. Yeah, he was so present and it

(34:24):
was just amazing that way. Like, and I'm, you know I went
to high school with the guy so Igot to watch.
OK, yeah, we yeah, he was one year ahead of me at Wilson High
School. And there there are, they're
lost to time sadly. But we made, we made home movies

(34:44):
back then and I would pay anything to have those now.
But because those were they. They were they were silly and
amazing and stupid and like great memories.
Yeah, we, we have a lot of fun and you know, and I miss the
guy. But yeah when I'm walking around

(35:05):
Tacoma there there's a lot of people I know.
Like there's places that I go that I I know I know people you
know and but for the most part you know I I I don't think I've
I don't think I've ever had somebody stop me and say hey

(35:27):
you're the Tacoma stories guy like that that that's never but.
Really. OK.
I mean it's just like, I mean because Tacoma I mean it's a
it's a he's not a huge town likeyou said like Sonic's like
Sonic's guy could go anywhere inthat town and be recognized.

(35:48):
Yeah. You know he's been on TV he's
been newspapers like he he's oneof the most not for that he's
one of the most recognizable people in Tacoma and Seattle one
of the most. I mean, just recognizable, but
as a, as a person who is a distinguished writer such as
yourself who write about these things and The thing is they're

(36:09):
near and dear to the heart. People are reading about the
people you write. Family members.
I mean are you're writing about the victims of these of these
heinous crimes. And I mean your your name has
got to be somewhere like, Oh yeah, written by Jack Hambridge.

(36:30):
Right, right. Right.
And you know, I I don't know maybe if I put a picture of me
next to it but that'd be weird Like that's like I don't know
it'd be I I think it'd be reallyweird for me if somebody went
hey you're the Tacoma stories guide that that that would.
But I do get, you know, I do getquite a bit of e-mail from the

(36:55):
Tacoma stories thing and it's and it's not always about the
homicide I just posted about quite often.
It's something I posted about 10years ago where or you know,
there's one who she writes me every now and then and just to
tell me that she's still thinking of her lost loved one

(37:17):
and they assume that's just partof her grieving process like
that. That's the other thing is I I
try to welcome any emails that aren't threatening me.
Like like I I try to because to my mind they've already lost a
loved one. What is it that I can do to
help? You know if if my article, like

(37:40):
that's the other thing if that if I said anything in the
article they don't like. I'm pretty quick to change it if
if I need to. You know.
Yeah, sometimes that gets difficult when they want me to
change factual things, but but typically that's a that's a rare

(38:01):
occasion that happens. I mean, I'm pretty sure you go
through, you know, you you're above reproached when it comes
to right. Because like you say you got
people who you know who read this, who may want to comment,
who may want to reach out to you.
You know and and and again the stuff that you write about.

(38:23):
I mean again like I'm thinking about all the things that you've
been saying I'm like wow. What is his safety like Like are
you looking over your shoulders or or do you have good.
OK. So whenever you're not writing
about these things here like I want to know about what What do
you do for fun? Because man you're depressing.

(38:45):
No, no, I'm kidding. I I first of all I will say
this. I do respect what you do.
That's This is why I got I I asked you to come on the show
because I I know what you do. We had you on here the last time
and what you do is, I mean you're pretty much doing the
Lord's work and it's got to be it's got to be hellish trying to
come up with one story a week. But now I'm more now I'm

(39:10):
interested in when you're not doing these things, whenever
you're not writing these stories, what what are you doing
to get your mind off of those things?
What are you doing to decompress?
Usually. Decompress.
Yeah, you're usually reading, watching movies or reading comic
books. I've been I've been on AX Men

(39:33):
comic book binge for the last, like since the beginning of
2024. I decided I wanted to read the
recent Kricoan era of X-Men, which is like 600 issues.
But to give you an idea of how many comic books I read I'll be
done this week but but yeah so II'll dive deep on a long term on

(39:59):
long form storytelling is like kind of my jam but but to your
your you mentioned like walking around and you know if I feel
like dangers afoot at all times or or anything like that.
There are parts of Tacoma that Iprefer not to go to and or not
to spend much time in. You won't see me on the bench at

(40:22):
72nd in Pacific. You know I won't be walking on
Hosmer. I mean, I I, you know, I, I,
I've got a, you know, Hosmer hashad I I think it's 5 homicides
in the last year and a half. Like and like three of them in
the same parking lot like, you know, it's there there there was

(40:46):
an article last year in the newsTribune I think it was where
they're talking to one of the cleaning ladies at one of the
motels on Hosmer and she had these two hatchets that she had
holsters for that she just had with her, you know, for when
she's cleaning the motel room. Sometimes things get dangerous

(41:11):
and I'm like, that's insane. She's got like lady shows up
with hatchet holsters. I'm done right there.
I'm. I'm out.
But but yeah, I they have. I don't have PTSD.
My girlfriend thinks I do. But because I like yo, if you do

(41:34):
see me in a bar or a restaurant or something, odds are I can see
the exit. And odds are I've looked at
every single person in the place.
Yeah, I've got, you know, to useevery crime Joe's phrase.
I have my head on a swivel. But but when it comes to, you

(41:59):
know, like I said, I have my sonin his 20s and a few years ago
he was the victim of a crime. He was, he was stabbed over at
the 711 over by Wrights Park andhe was, he and his friend got
stabbed by this guy who was mentally ill and it punctured

(42:22):
his lung and sliced his liver. And he literally, he he drove
himself from himself and his friend from the 711 to TG to
Tacoma General, which was like, you know, it's like 3 blocks,
but still I have pictures of thecar because he basically just

(42:44):
abandoned it in the ambulance parking.
There's blood all over it and itwas, it was terrible.
But then then I get the police report on this thing.
By the way, the guy was never arrested or charged for stabbing
my son. So but I asked for the police

(43:04):
report. They sent me the police report
and the really freaky thing to me was the IT was not redacted
in any way. So they had questioned the guy
who stabbed my son and they had listed his first and last name
and his home address. And so then I'm sitting there

(43:26):
with the home address of the guywho stabbed my son and didn't
get charged for it. I'm like, there's yeah, you
know, they don't. I don't know what to do with
this. I shouldn't have this
information. Yeah.
But did they ever tell you why they didn't charge the guy?
They never told me why, but I think I figured out why.

(43:49):
What ended up happening with that guy, by the way, was about
three months later. He stabbed somebody else this
time they did arrest him for it and then they found him mentally
incompetent and he's been in a mental institution ever since.
But I don't know why the second guy had to get stabbed for that

(44:10):
to happen, except that the guy what what happened was it was
like 2 in the morning and the 711 clerk and my son got into an
argument because they didn't want to sell them beer because
it was it was it. It wasn't quite 2:00 in the
morning, but they had already switched things or whatever.

(44:31):
Whatever reason he didn't want to sell them.
And so they got into an argument.
And then when my son left the there, this guy came up to him
and since I can't even remember what he said, he said some
nonsense thing to him and stabbed him.
At which point his friend got out.
My son's friend got out of the car and tried to get my son away

(44:53):
from him from the guy and the guy stabbed my son's friend in
the hand and then they took off to the you know they got away
from him and but the the but theclerk had reported that they
that that my son was the aggressor which was insane for
many reasons not the least of which he didn't have a knife and

(45:16):
the other guy did like you know the other guy had zero injuries.
It it was a very quick thing that happened because a mentally
old guy had a knife. But when when when the crime.
But as somebody who writes aboutcrime and I I've been you know I

(45:40):
I'm friends with Mark Lindquist who used to be the Pierce County
prosecutor. I'm acquaintances with some of
the other prosecutors. They know a few cops.
I I know this area you know and hell I I live two blocks away
from that 711 years ago. So.

(46:03):
So when it hits home like that it just reminds me of what
people are going through every single time I'm writing about
these things. Yeah.
And it really doesn't matter. It's very impactful.
Yeah, it's it's probably the most important thing I'll ever
do. And it's weird because it's

(46:24):
start. I swear to God the reason I
started writing about it. It was a joke.
It was literally IIA friend of mine from Seattle in the early
aughts was saying how Tacoma wasso full of crime because they
were thinking of Tacoma mid 90s and and I was like, it's really

(46:48):
not like the 1990s anymore. And then I just kind of
offhandedly said, you know what,I bet I could write about every
single homicide that happens in Tacoma and I wouldn't even be
all that busy now. I was wrong.
Eventually. I was right at the beginning, I

(47:09):
was like when I started in 2006,I was right, it was usually it
was 12 to 18 homicides a year. So I'd have to write like one a
month in a big deal. But it's gone up significantly.
In 2022 we had like 45 or 46 depending on how you count that
and that's a record. You know we had 33 in 2023.

(47:34):
I think we've we're only at liketwo or three right now.
But you know the years young if if, if they if the murderers of
Tacoma take a year off and don'tkill anyone in 2024.
If they did that and I kept writing one a week every week, I

(47:57):
would catch up by this time nextyear.
But that's how long it would take if I was doing one a week
every week and nobody else died.So I haven't figured out what
I'm going to do when it when I do catch up, when and if I do.
But. The thing is, I've lived in

(48:19):
Seattle, the Pacific Northwest for eight years.
I go to Tacoma all the time. My mom lives in Tacoma and we
hang out and, you know, hang outwith Marianne in Tacoma,
whatever. And it's like I never, I know
the kind of reputation that Tacoma has or any city for that
matter. I mean, for Tacoma, it's a very
small town. So for even for me, like 30

(48:41):
murders, it's a lot for Tacoma in my in like 30 murders in New
York, that is two months at best.
You know a good a good example is New Orleans.
New Orleans is not much it's it's a little bigger than
Tacoma, but it's not that much bigger than Tacoma and they have

(49:02):
200 murders a year. Yeah.
Like so. So when it comes to like we had
that, you know, and I'm forgetting his name but the the
the that the guy that ran the bagel shop that was on vacation
with his husband in New Orleans and he is from Tacoma and they

(49:24):
and he got killed in New Orleans.
I think it was a robbery or something.
But yeah, there's there's towns that are so much worse off than
Tacoma and I. And really, you know, it's not
that I don't feel safe in Tacomalike anywhere there's parts of

(49:44):
town that you don't want to be. And you know, like, you know,
like my grandmother would say nothing good happens after
midnight. You know, like if if if it's two
in the morning and you're on Hosmer run.
But you know there's certain places that you but but by and
large, it's safer than a lot of places.

(50:08):
And it doesn't snow 9 feet. Ever.
Thanks. You know, and The funny thing
is, is that I always say, you know, like Seattle people
because Tacoma has that really bad reputation from the mid 90s,
late 80s, mid 90s. I'll tell you what.

(50:32):
I would not even drive on I-5 through Tacoma in the mid 90s.
I would drive all the way over the mountains Theresa Washington
just to get to Olympia. You know but.
Because it was so scary. It was so bad.
I was here in the 90s, I in the 1990s.
I literally, I had a shell casing collection just from

(50:55):
wandering around my neighborhood.
Yeah, it was there was, you know, the the cops, the Tacoma
cops from that time. They would say that literally.
They had like most, most, most departments they'll tell you

(51:15):
about the shootings that happened the previous day during
the mid 90s. They were doing the shootings
that happened to the previous shift because there was just so
many that, you know, and that that's that's the that's another
thing about like my awareness ofTacoma crime back around 1999,

(51:41):
two thousand. Around that time I was working
for the Law Enforcement Support Agency doing police records,
which was just transcribing handwritten police reports into
the computer. And let me tell you, that was
like the best job for a aspiringcrime writer because it was like

(52:05):
it was 50 stories a day. It was.
It was and it was and not only was it 50 stories a day, but
like I said multi generational Tacoma in here.
So sometimes it would be, oh I went to high.
I went to middle school with that guy.
He beats his wife now. No.

(52:27):
Like like, it gets weird becausesometimes you'd run into people
that you knew, but but at the same time it gave a much better
idea of what crime happened in Tacoma as opposed to what you
see in the newspapers. That to me, would be the most
awkward thing ever. Like you can't talk to them
about like, look, you. Too bad.

(52:48):
I know what you did to your wifelast month.
Right. Shit.
You know, like Jack. How are you?
I haven't seen you in forever. How you been?
It there's there's when back then, there was a guy who was a
friend of mine from elementary school.

(53:09):
I literally had not seen him since 6th grade, and he was
murdered. And this was before I was
writing about homicides. Oh wow.
But it was when I was working atthe Law Enforcement Support
Agency. And so I asked around and got to
the point where I could talk to the detective in charge of the
case, because I wanted to know what happened.

(53:31):
And I I'm glad I don't remember the guy's name, because I'd
probably say it if I did. But he was like if you took a
hard boiled detective and hard boiled him some more he like, I
I I like I'll try to do my best impression of what he what the

(53:56):
conversation was like. I told him my you know the guy
the victim was my friend. What happened And he goes stupid
fuck ran after a guy who was stole his fucking radio guy with
the radio shot him and like do you have any suspects?

(54:16):
And he's like Jesus fucking Christ they should just wall off
that whole fucking neighborhood.The only person who's not a
suspect is the God damn fucking Vic.
Like he was so like like. Needless to say, that homicide
was never solved. Wow.
And I wasn't shocked that it wasn't solved, because it was.

(54:38):
Because it was like that guy wasn't going to solve anything.
He was a guy who should have retired 5-10 years ago.
He was clearly so burned out that he just didn't care.
Yeah, it's it's another day for them.
Right. I think that that's one of the
hardest things, you know, that alot of people don't realize with

(54:58):
the cops is that when they do see this kind of crime on a
regular basis, they do become very hardened to it and they
dehumanize not just the the perpetrator but also the victim.
Everyone, everyone. That's that's absolutely true.
I've gone on ride alongs with cops and IT and ride along do

(55:20):
like I advise anyone who can to do so because it's eye opening
on multiple levels. You get to see how cops treat
people and how cops are treated and what a given day is like as
opposed to an episode of cops because it's so different but
but but they're very much is a adehumanizing that they have to

(55:45):
do because it's just not a natural thing to put somebody in
a cage. Like I'm putting another human
being in a cage is just not something that that humans like
to do to other humans. So it's better if we can pretend
that they're not. But it was really like like the

(56:05):
first ride along. I went on guys like, well, it's
a Monday and you know, it's day shift, so it's probably going to
be boring. But we'll try to arrest somebody
make it interesting for you. And I'm like, what?
What did you just say? Like somebody's going to be
arrested for my entertainment. And and the scariest part about

(56:31):
that ride along was right aroundlike, you know, 1/2 hour, 45
minutes before the end of the shift.
We arrested somebody because we're going to have to go back
to headquarters anyway. So, you know, and and and and we
could have arrested any of the three previous people that we
had talked to. We just chose that one.

(56:52):
But the second that person was in the car, he started talking
about her like she was not a person.
And it was really, really, really creepy to me.
Like like how quick that switch was and and you know the thing
the thing that I do, the reason I write about these.

(57:14):
I I write about all of them liketheir people because they are
you know and so but I get it. You know it I I don't know that
you could be a fully effective cop and fully empathetic.
I mean yeah I did. I did go I did go on a oh you're
raising a hand. I.

(57:36):
Miss Vargas, welcome to the show.
Not botany and girl. Hi, Jessica.
Hi guys, I just happened to chime in.
I'm just kidding. I was invited and I just wanted
to say on that part, did you hear the, the cop that basically
planted about 400, he he planteddrugs on 400 people I have.

(58:04):
Not heard about. He was recently indicted, Yes.
Where? Was this, is this?
I don't know. Where?
I mean I don't know where I watch a lot of crime I'm I'm now
into huge crime and and and videos and and you know on the
crime what is it the the crime network And then I go on to the

(58:30):
you know like the police that dowrongs and and and they have
videos of of the police like like mishandling you know the
victims and putting the victims in in shaming And then when the
other cops this is another videotoo that I saw.

(58:50):
The cop actually a Sergeant you know was harassing the victim
and he was basically pushing himin in the cop car and the and a
woman one of the cadets was likehey you know take it easy on him
and he put his hands on her throat and he said you know
don't you think talking talk to me like that ever again.

(59:15):
And she was like, you know, holding her hands up.
She's like back up, back up. And everybody had to pull him
away from her. And eventually he was, you know,
charged for assault. Yeah, that's the I wrote a thing
a while back. Grit City Magazine used it where

(59:35):
I said that there's there's three kinds of cops in my view
there. There there's the Boy Scouts the
the guys who all and I'm I'm I'mnot trying to be sexist here.
I'm just saying Boy Scouts because you know I guess you
could say scouts but but but theBoy Scouts who just want to do

(59:57):
good who at genuinely want to beyou know superheroes there.
There's the adrenaline junkies who are just there for the high.
The high of the chase, the high of being able to do things that
you can't do if you're not a copand you know they're just there
for. They're the ones who definitely

(01:00:18):
showed up when Ed Troyer wanted help, you know.
But and then you have the bullies who were bullies when
they were kids and were bullies in high school and realized that
the only way to keep being a bully was to get some authority.
And and the thing of it is in the right mix that works but if

(01:00:45):
you but it's almost always the wrong mix.
I mean like I don't know. I had I went on this one ride
along with this where you know on a domestic they always have
two units show up and so it was this domestic where where as
soon as they the guy I was with who was kind of a gung ho guy.

(01:01:06):
I mean to give you an idea of the how gung ho.
The first thing he said to me was see the switch here this
unlocks the shotgun back here you see me get into any trouble
don't get on the radio or any ofthat shit just unlock the
shotgun shoot the fucker. And I'm.
I'm just fast forwarding in my head to the courtroom and going

(01:01:27):
I believe he said shoot the fucker.
I mean like, like, like I he didn't even ask me if I'd ever
fired a gun before, before he said that.
So that's the kind of guy he is.So we're going to this domestic
and as soon as he finds out who we're going with, like the other
unit that's going, he's like, oh, great.

(01:01:48):
Like he is not happy. And like, why?
What? What's wrong with this guy?
And he's like, we're going to bethere for two hours and he
didn't say anything else. And I'm like, OK, so we go in
and it's just this young couple that were arguing really loudly.
They didn't neither wanted to hit each other or anything.
They're just neighbors, small apartment.

(01:02:11):
We were there for two hours because the other cop happened
to before you, he was a pastor. And so he literally sat down
with them and was like working out their problems and like it
was really like the guy I was with was like just he was beside

(01:02:36):
himself with it. Like he, you know, he he wanted
to leave so badly. And I was watching something
that I'm like this this is what should fucking happen.
Like rather than rather than just dragging the loudest 1 to
jail and and calling it good, this is what should happen.

(01:02:57):
And it was so weird to watch it in that frame because I'm also,
you know, the guy I the, the copI'm with is like, get out of
here, you know, because. Because he's more of an
adrenaline junkie guy. Yeah, you know, and and it
really is, it does really show you that when the cops show up,

(01:03:18):
it's a luck of the Dr. Who showsup and what their personality
is, how that outcome is going toplay out.
Definitely the the, the, my biggest thing when it comes to
police and police reform is community police.
My dad tells this wonderful story about his first day at
Stewart Middle School when it was Stewart Junior High.

(01:03:41):
At the time it was you know early 60s and the liaison
officer saw him and said what's your name and he has the same
name as I, I, I do and he's likeJohn Cameron and and the cop

(01:04:05):
looked at him and went sister joy brother Jim you live on 53rd
St. because that was the that was that cop's beat.
The cop knew who lived everywhere and they knew him.
And I I think if we had more like if you knew that when you

(01:04:28):
called the cops you were gettingOfficer Miller who you knew
because he walked your street and you saw big.
Difference. Yeah, big difference.
That that is it. It it it there was my my
girlfriend and I are are we're watching Barney Miller.
I've got the box set of Barney Miller and there's this episode

(01:04:50):
where the entire precinct is turned into the homicide unit.
They're they're they've decided that, you know, the bosses have
decided that it's no longer going to be a local precinct.
It's going to be the homicide. And the guy, the of the
recurring character, this guy who's always getting robbed at
the local convenience store. And he came in and he he comes

(01:05:14):
in and says, hey, they robbed meagain, I need you to come down
and help out. And they're like, we can't.
We're the homicide unit now. And he in the character in the
show ends up getting killed by arobber because he didn't report
it. And he got robbed again.

(01:05:35):
And he didn't report it because his local community police
wasn't there. And even though it's, you know,
it's a sitcom, but it's a very real kind of thing.
If you could, if you, you know. If, if you know who you're
calling, it's a whole different thing.
And and and and not only that, but it's a different thing for

(01:05:56):
the cop too. Because.
Yeah, because the the the because the cop, if he like that
this is, that's the thing. If if the cop who killed Trayvon
Martin or Manny Ellis or any of them knew their families first I

(01:06:17):
don't think they could pull the trigger like because you if you
know these people it you know ifyou know people it's really hard
to to unless you unless you justnot a unless you're not wired
right as a human being. It it's it it it, you know, it's
it's like a right. It's a One of the writing tricks

(01:06:39):
that you know Dan Harmon talks about it is, you know, you don't
care if I break a pencil, but ifI name the pencil Steve and then
I break it, a little piece of you dies.
There's a little saying. We're just saying what that does
is it eliminates. Well, because it eliminates that

(01:07:01):
fear that they have. Because if they don't know you,
you know. But if it's like like if I'm
friends with somebody or I know them well, I'm going to be as
friendly with them as possible. I'm not going to try to be.
I'm not going to act malice towards them because I know you,
I know your family. And even if there's and even if

(01:07:23):
we come to a point where there'sthe situation, we know how to
handle it. Because I know you.
I know how to push your buttons.I know how you can push my, you
know how to push my buttons. I always find that because I my
biggest fear, even in New York, Houston even, is the police.

(01:07:44):
Because I'm a minority. And the cops will look at me
now. I don't know.
I mean, Jessica, you're a, you know, you're a Latina.
I don't know how the cops would view you.
I mean, you're probably less of a threat than me.
You know what I'm saying? As a black man.
But I always feel like every time I'm being pulled over or a

(01:08:04):
cop detains me, it's oh, they look at me as a black person
first. That is very threatening.
I don't know am I right or wrong, Jessica?
Like help me make sense out of it.
I would say probably back in thedays, cops treated me
differently. My younger partying days

(01:08:32):
nowadays, after, you know, Trumpwon the presidency and then and
then going to COVID, all that happened.
Houston changed the police. That's another story.
But in living in Houston, I was born in Puerto Rico, but I've
been here forever. I realized that the police have

(01:08:57):
changed. Whether it's the funding,
whether you know, it's it's whatever happened with the
COVID. But they don't have any
patients. And when I was first going out
with the mask mandate came out in Texas before New York, 'cause
you know, Texas is a, you know, a red state and they wanted

(01:09:20):
masks off and everything and andso I would, I would be timid and
go out. I got pulled over twice.
They both sheriffs for no reason, they said.
And I had my signal on, which isBS.
And yeah, they told me to get myimmigrant ass out the car

(01:09:44):
without even knowing what I am, you know, So that happened
twice. And it scared the living crap
out of me because I, you know, got pulled over by big sheriffs
and then another time. And since I went into a gas
station, this is like, right When COVID quarantine was, was

(01:10:05):
in the peak of its time, people were had to wear masks.
And I went into a convenience store and I saw a policeman and
I saw three other guys. And I was like, officer, do you
have extra masks? Because I don't see any any in
the store, you know, I was just,you know, trying to be nice.
And he looked at me like really ugly up and down.

(01:10:27):
And he's like, you know what? You, Why would I supply a mask
to you? You're an immigrant and and to
these three guys, these black guys behind me, I would arrest
them ASAP. So yeah, I'm the wrong person to
talk to. I'm just looking at him and I'm
like, OK, his name is sheriff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(01:10:48):
So I can report him later. But things have changed in
Houston. It back in the 80s, it was bad.
Back in this all the way goes back to the 60s.
You know, cops did not report. You know, you've got the story
of the Texas killings, of the 45killings.

(01:11:09):
That man lived 4 miles from my house.
And now we're famous on Netflix because it was a League City and
that's called a road. I lived 4 miles from the house.
He had thirty women buried in his backyard for three decades
and he was accomplice, but he was ruled out because a bullet

(01:11:33):
fragment was compromised. So the police, every time it was
a girl that ran that disappeared.
Oh, it's a runaway. Oh it's a runaway for decades
and decades and decades until the 90s when the 12 year old
disappeared from Friendswood andthen the Galveston girl
disappeared in late 90s is when Harris County.

(01:11:55):
This is all in Galveston County.Harris County stepped in the
federal The FBI finally came in and stepped in.
I mean, I'm telling you, Houstoncops, I'm sorry if you're a
Houston police officer. I, you know, I grant you salute.
But for those who were corruptedback in the days that did women

(01:12:16):
so bad, that treated women like,hey, oh, they must be runaways
because they were, you know, 16 and partying.
But but yeah, it it has a bad Rep.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, go check out the
Netflix series The 45 Texas Killings.
That is an actual story. And I lived through it and I

(01:12:39):
couldn't watch the whole thing, 'cause I was I I lived through
it, you know, I remember all this the time, so Houston
police, and I'm sorry, one more thing.
The crime rate after at Katrina rose not 80% in 2000.
Katrina, right after Katrina, 80%.

(01:13:00):
It has remained at 80% till thisday.
You know, it's funny that you say that.
I went, I went to Houston, I mean, right after Katrina.
As a matter of fact, it was the Christmas of that year.
And when I got there, there was one thing that I've noticed
because I took the bus. Actually, I didn't fly to New

(01:13:23):
York from New York. I actually took the bus from
there to New York. There was Houston PD was all
over the city, especially downtown.
And the my buddy who I stayed with, my best friend, got his
car broken into while I was staying there.
I mean, somebody threw a rock. Luckily, he didn't keep.

(01:13:45):
He didn't, You know, he doesn't even keep his radio in his car.
But they broke into his truck and he had to pay like $125.00
to get the truck to get the window fixed.
But it was just, it was rampant.Everywhere you go, it was just
all the people. The victim of Katrina went from

(01:14:07):
the the Mercedes-Benz Stadium toHouston and it was, it was just
a ride. It was a ruckus I was there for.
I was there for a week and a half and there was criming every
day, every waking moment. Somebody was doing dirt.

(01:14:28):
Yes, I can contest to that. I lived in 2000, 2006 by myself.
I could do my laundry at midnight.
I can, you know, off off site and go to Walmart.
I love going at night because nobody goes at night.
And then after Katrina, I lived in Fuqua in the in the southeast

(01:14:50):
and by Ellington Field. I know.
You know where that is. Yeah.
So I lived there and, you know, it was a nice area.
But Katrina, I swear you saw people that you never seen
before. I live by the pool.
So I would, you know, one time II got out of my apartment, I was

(01:15:12):
doing laundry and there's like 2, you know, guys standing on
the other side of the pool and one guy standing on my side of
the pool. And the guy was like like had
his hands to his face and he waslicking his lips and he was,
they were staring at a woman, you know, a nice, good looking
woman. And there was just.

(01:15:33):
He was just licking his. Lips and and I was like, excuse
me, and he looked at me, he's like.
Oh. Oh, her battery died.
Oh no. Her poor.
Battery died. What's live?
Charger. And.
The cliffhanger. Yeah.

(01:15:53):
Oh boy. Talk.
Yeah, God damn it. Yeah.
Yeah. Gross.
But yeah, it's. But yeah, she was right that the
the crime in Houston has gone upand it's crazy how a hurricane
can migrate so many people to another city to to affect its

(01:16:17):
infrastructure. And I mean, there was so much
crime, the cops could barely. The cops were so overwhelmed.
It was crazy. Yeah.
Well it's it's like you know here in Tacoma we had that we
had in 2020 we had you know 4546homicides and and then this 2023

(01:16:38):
we hired 20 more cops and our homicide rates down 30% are you
know it it there there is like the it's funny I I wrote this
article about police reform for the weekly Volcano and they

(01:16:59):
decided not to publish it. They like literally the editor.
What she told me was your article will piss off Democrats
and Republicans, and I don't want everyone mad at the paper.
And I'm like, well, what was the?
Gist of it What? Was the gist of it.
Well, it was there. There was a lot in it.
But one of those things was community policing, that the

(01:17:23):
other is, you know, defund the police.
It was a stupid slogan that got a lot of Republicans elected and
isn't a good idea. It's funding the police
correctly because The thing is with like, and I know that
people like to say that defund the police doesn't mean defund

(01:17:44):
the police, but then you need tosay other words because those
words have definitions, right? Exactly.
But, but, but, but defunding thepolice, Like the way I look at
defunding the police is First off, the military equipment that
they get. The surplus military equipment
they get, not all. I don't know how many people

(01:18:06):
know, but that equipment is freeto them.
They literally only pay shipping.
They don't have to pay for that equipment.
So if you're defunding the police, they're going to get
more military equipment and they're going to have less
training on it because you defunded the police.
And so you put those two things together and then you vilify

(01:18:29):
cops and say all the cops are bastards.
Well, you do that. And now who wants to?
Who? Like who wants to be a cop?
Right. You put it, so yeah.
So with the with a cab and defund the police, what you've
done is effectively make it so they'll have a lot of military

(01:18:50):
equipment, not a lot of trainingand probably be white
supremacists. And if you and if you put all of
that together what you're going to end up with is more innocent
dead black people who are unarmed and shouldn't be and and
and so that's where so that that's that was the part of the

(01:19:11):
article that they clearly would upset the the Democrat you know
that the the the left you know but at the same time it has to
be acknowledged that there is systemic racism throughout
police departments throughout the country on a level that has
to be addressed. Jack, you have not said that

(01:19:32):
loud enough and too many times enough because I've been saying
that for a long time. Look, it's impossible not to
talk about that. It it it's like.
But the the pushback that I get,and I love it when people tell
me this, what racism. I mean, Tim.

(01:19:53):
I mean. Tim Scott and Nikki Haley did
not believe that racism happenedin South Carolina.
I'm like Tim, you're a fucking idiot because you're a black
man. You can't spell racism without
South Carolina. Right, right.

(01:20:14):
Yeah, right. Yeah.
The the racism is obvious and rampant and and and the thing
that's like the thing that proves that point, that that
proves the point that it's systemic is that quite often
there will be there that quite often there are black officers

(01:20:37):
hurting and killing black people.
And they're doing it because of the systemic racism, whether
they know it or not. They're doing it because
everybody's told them that theseguys are bad guys and they don't
want to be seen as secretly moreblack than blue.

(01:20:58):
And so they and and yeah the themy line about racism in America
is basically it's it's it's it'slike a layer over everything.
Like, you know when you dig in soil and you find the part where
there's an earthquake? Well, if you dig into any given

(01:21:21):
topic in America, at some point you'll find the racism layer,
where racism did something to fuck it up even more.
You know, it's like the South was an economic boom town.
You know, boom towns everywhere.Please ignore the slavery.

(01:21:42):
Just ignore that statue that we have the the one they tore down
in South Carolina and no, no wasin the.
Robert E&B statue. Yes.
Right. All right.
We have to we have to go backwards.
Jessica was right in the middle of a story.
Right in the middle of that. That cut off and left us all on
a cliffhanger. OK, so the story that I guess I

(01:22:10):
was saying, what was it? Can you remind me because I have
short term memory loss? You was at the swimming pool.
There was a guy licking his lipsbecause there was a hot chick he
was looking at and you said something to him.
Yeah, I was. I just said, excuse me, you
know? And he looked at me and he
looked at me up and down. And he was like, oh, oh, hang

(01:22:31):
on. Hey, what's up?
I was like, pretending like I had a husband in my apartment.
I was like, hey, babe. Hey, I got to go, you know,
like, I got to go. I have a boyfriend or I have to
go to my husband. So I ran up the stairs.
But I I reported them. But the the point what I was
making is that after Katrina, I actually had to move to another

(01:22:57):
apartment and then I live next. And then eventually that apt.
I live next to a crackhead. And.
He had a wife and yeah it was just Houston just got so bad as
as far as the cops and they theyare getting better but there's

(01:23:18):
still so many unsolved you know homicides in Houston.
That's why that police the the chief of police left.
He had so many unsolved cases underneath him that he was
probably involved and he left togo to what Florida.
And then he got kicked out of Florida.

(01:23:41):
But. So bad you kicked out of
Florida. Yeah, he got, yeah, exactly
kicked out of Florida, so. He was not a once in man and.
A friend of mine, a really good friend of mine, he his dad was a
policeman. He was retired, but they had
beef. He had a had beef with the one

(01:24:03):
of one of the guys, I don't know.
Long story short, he was murdered in this apartment and
they they what the cops did is they, you know how when you go
into a scene they take out, theytook out stuff.
They took out the piece of a carpet and when the family got

(01:24:26):
there they were picking up you know his brains and and and and
you know and stuff and and they're like well why is this
carpet missing and the cops werelike oh you know we don't know
what happened it was it was you know it's a non solve murder
it's all soft case so it it's it's horrible to hear that but

(01:24:50):
and he said it's half and a half.
I tell people like when they move here, like hey stay away
from this area. Stay away from Guns Point, stay
away from 5th Ward, that that now they've built the Houston
camp. U of H camp is on, which is
getting better but it's still Scott Street.

(01:25:10):
I don't know Jamal's familiar with that area of downtown.
But yeah it's it's 1/2 and 1/2. It's just you know you just
don't know what kind of cop is going to approach you or pull
you, pull you over. But you know there are a lot of
I have a lot of friends that arecops and they're good cops and

(01:25:31):
they're good guys but you know you always hear that stories on
the bad news of bad crooked cops.
But but yeah he sends. But I wanted to bring up a topic
the in Seattle, Jamal, you livedin Seattle, Philadelphia.

(01:25:54):
There's an area that they call the drug area where people go to
move there just to take drugs and stay there.
Basically the community or people have to go and sweep up
needle caps on a daily basis or needles or if you get you have

(01:26:15):
to wear like steel toed shoes towalk in that area, otherwise
you'll step on a needle. They have places like that in
Skid Row in Los Angeles. San Francisco's turning into
that. It almost well, Oregon, I know
that. I think all of Oregon has done

(01:26:36):
that, but it almost. I don't know if you guys are
familiar with the show. The Wire kind of reminds me of I
believe it's season three, wherethey had certain sections like
the the rundown sections of Baltimore and they allowed free
flowing drug trade with no repercussions as long as they as

(01:26:59):
long as they were in what they call the safety zone.
Yep. They were allowed to trade
drugs, do drugs. It was called Hamsterdam.
That was the name of the, they call it Hamsterdam.
And this was based on an idea that one of the Baltimore mayors
I think had and they called him the most dangerous mayor in

(01:27:20):
America because of that idea implemented and they implemented
it on the show. And yeah, it was crazy, but I'm
so that's what it kind of reminds me of.
I am hearing that there are moreof these ideals coming out in
Portland OR they are allowing. You could walk around with crack

(01:27:46):
cocaine. Meth is a small portion of it,
but you could have it on your persons and not get arrested.
Yep. Believe it or not.
There's a YouTube that does that, that goes to rural areas
and of course he's got he's protected.

(01:28:07):
But I go like I said to Philly, see they had Portland on there.
They had Skid Row, but they alsohad an area I forgot the I think
it was in. I think it was in Florida where
people purposely moved there. No, it was a part of Hawaii.

(01:28:28):
People purposely moved there because that area is like The
Purge. They control the cops like they
they they walk around with weapons.
They walk around with bats, withthe balls and the chains and and
and guns and and do drugs and and and the cops are like just

(01:28:53):
walking around. You know the area.
And literally, I was watching the video.
I was like, this looks exactly like The Purge, like nobody's
doing anything about it. The cops are going to get killed
if they do something about it. So what is happening in America?

(01:29:15):
Oh, that's a good question. Well, The thing is, I think what
what's happening in America is people are always going to get
high. That's just one way or another.
Drugs. It's a billion dollar industry.
I I don't think you're ever going to.
I think the war on drugs is the biggest joke in America.

(01:29:36):
I'm sorry. It is.
I've never. Won the drug war.
Like, I mean, and and The funny thing is, like, I would watch
these. I would remember these.
These. Not YouTube, but these these
commercial. This is your brain on drugs.
This this is your brain on drugs.
And it's the fucking, I can't even eat fried eggs anymore

(01:29:56):
because of that fucking commercial.
But and and not thinking about getting high because of that
damn commercial but it's it's these anti drug commercials.
It's these Now. I'm not saying that I I think if
if you want to know how you can keep your kids off drugs, how
about we start off with just being parents?

(01:30:17):
1st thank you. Right, OK.
Let's yeah I I think what the issue is now and and and and I'm
and I'm not even going to bring this up a little bit as well
because this I'm tired of hearing parents bitch and moan
about things like Oh my kid got cyber bullied on your platform

(01:30:39):
Mr. Zuckerberg we want you to pay for that.
It's like move. On a fucking second.
Whatever happened to parents taking responsibility?
OK, I was bullied. I was bullied when I was a kid.
You know what I'm saying? I didn't like it, you know?
But I knew that if I was gettingcyber, if someone was writing

(01:31:00):
shit about me on social media, Icould always turn off my
computer. I could turn off my phone.
I don't have to. I could delete that friend or
delete friends who are associated with them, You know,
I'm tired of parents not holdingthemselves responsible.

(01:31:20):
And I and I say this because I'mnot a father, so it's easy for
people to say, well, what do youknow about raising children?
What do you know about educatingchildren's about this and that?
Well, I may not have children, but I do have a niece and I see
her all the time and when she's here I make sure that I'm not.

(01:31:44):
I don't shield her from shit. I don't do that because that's
to me, that's fake parenting, I say when she asked me a question
like, why are those two girls kissing?
I don't shield her from that. Why are those two girls kissing?
Because when you get older, you may not understand it now, but

(01:32:05):
when you get older, you will. Sometimes women, women like each
other and it's like, that's justthe thing.
Why are two guys kissing? Same thing?
She she's not. She won't be able to process it
and understand it at age 9 or atage 8, but when she's maybe 1718

(01:32:28):
and in her and in her in her 20s, she'll be, oh, this is what
Uncle Jamal, Uncle Hayden was talking about.
And she'll understand. I don't shield her.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't drink or smoke weed
around her that that that's just, you know, like that's
just, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't, I don't do none

(01:32:50):
of that stuff around her. But The thing is, we could only
shield our children from so much, but we cannot be afraid to
answer those hard questions. That was all me and my my
daughter, I mean, my daughter, my niece were watching a movie
and in the movie 2 guys are kissing and then first she says
eww. And I'm just like, I don't say

(01:33:12):
nothing because I'm like, OK, I don't want to be like, yeah,
you're right. Fuck those gay pee.
You know what I'm saying? Like I don't want to.
I don't want to do, I don't wantto like initiate that to her.
But The thing is she's like, whyare they kissing That's not a
girl. That's and and I explained to
her as elementary as I can because this is AI, never think

(01:33:33):
I would have this discussion with my niece.
But at the same time I think this is something that she's
got. I mean we live in New York.
A lot of she she's going to that's going to that's not going
to be the weirdest shit she seeson TV.
We live in a city where word shit happens on her front Stew
all the time and we have to explain this, you know.
So I just kind of feel like instead of trying to shield our

(01:33:58):
children from things we need to let them understand why certain
things are bad. You know or or or not even why
bad. Why we do certain things and why
get them to understand better rather than just be like don't
do it. You know, like that.
No. You always want the reason
behind it and and and like, you know, my, my son is 26 years

(01:34:23):
old. Most of my friends, for whatever
reason, they had their kids about 10 years after I did.
So they're all dealing with teenagers right now.
And and and and and these are people who are good friends of
mine, but they never really asked me for parenting advice
until now. And I'm like, guys, guys, folks,

(01:34:50):
It's too late. It's.
Way too late. It's way they're 13 and they're
a problem. Well, guess what?
You've got a problem. Yeah, First off, all 13 year
olds are problems. That's OK.
But second off, you know, like my son, he doesn't make you

(01:35:13):
know, he he what I know about him is he knows how to make a
good decision. I made sure that he understood
that. He doesn't always make the
decisions I want him to make. But that's OK because that's
what kids do. I I like this, this, this, this
is so much sappier than I typically am, but I I I tend to

(01:35:36):
refer to my kids as just a pieceof my heart that I can't
control. That's so true.
Because it hurts every time any anything bad happens to them, it
hurts. And I'm like, why did you do
that? Or why didn't you make this
other choice? Yeah, but I and at the same

(01:36:00):
time, you know, my, my my line to him is, hey, when I was your
age, you were four. So you don't have, you know, I'm
not a grandpa, so oh, just. Wait, just wait.
That's that's the best thing? Because so my my oldest son just
turned 30 and my youngest one is28.

(01:36:23):
My oldest one has three kids. And I'm telling you, what you
said is so true because I alwayssaid, like as a parent there is
this a woman. You don't, you don't realize
that there's this little switch inside your body that your
child, as it passes through the vaginal canal, the birth canal,

(01:36:46):
and on its way out, flips that switch.
And it's called guilt because you have never felt guilt in
your life. I was raised Irish Catholic.
We know about guilt, but it compares not one bit to that
child. Once they're born in this world
and something happens, you feel a guilt that is like nothing

(01:37:10):
you've ever experienced in your life.
Yes, it is definitely a part of your heart that just.
I I I what? I tell people whenever, I'm
whenever I'm going out of my wayto help my son with something or
something is I I just say, look,there is one person on this
planet who's here, and it's partially my fault.

(01:37:35):
Everyone else, everyone else. It's not my fault that you're
here. I'm sorry that the world is
happening. But but there is one person who
is here, and it's kind of my fault.
And so I feel responsible regardless of how old he is.
I I want to help him out becausehe's my son.

(01:37:55):
And I I I love and hate that. It's.
I wrote an article in Great CityMagazine called the 3:00 AM
phone call. That was all about the 3:00 AM
phone calls I've gotten from my son because I've gotten quite a
few of them. He he, he lives an adventurous

(01:38:16):
life. He he's a very much the child my
mom cursed on me. My mom said I want you to have a
child as challenging as you werefor me.
And that's. That's a threat.
It is it. Is.
Worked. It worked.
You know, he he is a challenge and I love him for it.

(01:38:38):
But you know, at the same time to make sure my phone's on that
way, it will ring at 3:00 AM when and if he calls.
Because when he calls at 3:00 AM, it's never anything good.
It's always something really, really bad.
He he grew up on Tacoma's hilltop.
He has had 27 friends die and. Yeah.

(01:39:03):
And and he yeah, he has had. So they they they've been
murdered. They've a lot of them have
overdosed. He's had three or four that have
overdosed on fentanyl in the last year.
One of them was, one of them wasnot this past New Year's Eve but
the previous New Year's Eve as we're going to end of 2023.

(01:39:27):
He was literally partying with that guy.
That guy went, he he went home and he went home after the party
and he found some fentanyl in his in his car and took it not
knowing what it was. You know just thinking oh I'm
partying what the hell. And you know he didn't didn't

(01:39:49):
wake up and that was how my son started last year was with his
good friend Amari dying. And so he he's had more tragedy
in his life than I have and and yeah, but but at the same time
you know he he's really. Introspective about it, you

(01:40:11):
know, he he says that he goes. It makes me both not want to
have friends and also spend all my time with all of my friends
as much as possible. You know, that's just a a
reality check that the things that our kids go through.
Right, Yeah. For us.

(01:40:33):
It wasn't. A chance we didn't have the
things like the fentanyl and allof that stuff.
I mean, like I was never a partier anyways, but it's very
scary about the things and and how much worse.
Like, I'm so scared about how things are going to be even
worse for my grandkids. It's so fucking scary.

(01:40:57):
Right. It's it.
It, it, it's terrifying these days.
All of it. And and it's why you got to
sometimes look at other things take a day off.
You know I I will occasionally have a no screens day where the
only screen I look at is my Kindle.
But but yeah it because sometimes you just got to unplug

(01:41:21):
from the world because the can you know I there's all reasons
to be sad and upset and depressed and you can find them
if you're looking. But there's also just so much
good. You know my like my my son's
been through so much but at the same time he's so loving like he

(01:41:43):
loves like like this is the kindof guy he is just a gush of.
Yeah. He's got knuckle tats, right.
But they say love and life. I mean you know and he's got
from and he's got another one onhis on his hand that says do

(01:42:06):
better. Yeah.
Also he's got all this positive stuff that yeah that I I just
love about him and it's but but yeah being a parent is scary but
I'm with you 100% Jamal that younever complained to the teachers

(01:42:27):
about my son's grades right. It's not their fault.
I never complained to Verizon that my that my son is texting
too much. Or Or you're the the mother
that's suing PlayStation becausetheir son is playing too much

(01:42:48):
video games. Right, that's yeah.
No. True story.
Yeah, none of that makes any sense to me, you know, It's
always, you know, like, I'm gladhe's 26 because at this point no
one's going to blame anything. Wow, 26.

(01:43:09):
It's I. Mean.
It's just the fact that I see a lot of this and it's almost
like, OK, at what point are parents looking at themselves
and saying it's the parents should be saying I need to do
better and and don't wait till your kid is 14.

(01:43:30):
That's just The thing is that term is already lost now.
And the time that you should be the the nurturing time when your
kid is, you know, a toddler to five years old and then and then
you and all that neglect in between, that neglect never goes
away. You always remember that

(01:43:50):
neglect. It's true.
Jamal, you're you're 100% because I grew up in a Catholic,
really Catholic religious house.But my parents loved each other
and they loved us and they taught us at a young age.
You know, drugs are no good. Of course school does the same

(01:44:11):
thing. And you know I was just
terrified of substance abuse andand and I didn't know and and I
guess at an early age 8-9, you know, I knew better.
And then when you get into middle school that's all the
kids are doing and 6th grade is introducing you to acid and and
Roach pills. Back in my days it was like

(01:44:31):
Roach pills, acid. I'm like 6th grade like, OK, you
guys are crazy. You know, like I knew better.
It's like weird. I knew better.
You know I didn't go to school high.
Yes I did Maybe once in time. Drink alcohol.
Skip school, come back in and and then you know was drunk and
then just passed out on my desk and I was like what was the fun

(01:44:55):
in that. So I knew at a young age and my
parents, they did a really good job because I was a gamer.
I video, I played video games. I also did.
I was also outside, but I was sointo video games and Nintendo,
PlayStation 64, Xbox, whatever. But PlayStation, I would play 12

(01:45:15):
hours straight. Me, my brother, he would play, I
would play Silent Hill, Doom, all the horror games, and he
would play Final Fantasy and we would just like Switch and watch
each other play. But my parents, they knew
better. Like I was going to go out and
you know, I would play that shooting game.

(01:45:36):
What was it? Always forgets we're just
killing people, you know, And Grand Theft Auto, you know, I'm
not going to go outside and go start shooting people.
Like I knew better. So it's it's the parenting, it's
not the video games. I'm sorry I didn't come out as a
mass murderer because I played those mass murderer games. 100%

(01:45:56):
and. On and on top of that you had
both of your parents to show youan example.
You know what I'm saying? Some, some, some now some kids
don't have that luxury and I under and I get that I give
sometimes I give them a pass. But if you're a single mother or
single dad, you still have that responsibility to make sure that

(01:46:17):
when you say, Oh my child is everything, you make sure that
your child is your everything, OK, because all it takes is for
you to slip up before your your your kid is, you know, doing
meth peer pressure. There, there's a line.

(01:46:37):
I can't remember where it's from, but it it was something
like the only person who's goingto remember that you worked late
a lot as your children. Yeah.
And and there, there, that there.
There's a bit of that. There's a bit of hike.
Yeah. You're like, like the problem

(01:46:59):
with parenting in a lot of ways is we all, I think we all go
well, I'm not going to do what my parents did most of the time.
Most of the time there's something that our parents did
that we're like, well, I'm not going to do that with me, with,
with, with personally, with me, with drugs.

(01:47:20):
I didn't. I similarly was like, oh you
guys, I can't figure out life asit is.
I don't need drugs then. Like, it was like right after
high school. And so I managed to get through

(01:47:41):
all, you know, all through gradeschool without it.
And then literally the day my parents split up, just
coincidentally, the day my parents split up, I smoked my
first joint and I got high and Iwas like, oh shit, it totally
is. Broken families that cause drug
use because I was high and I waslike, well I'm but I've always

(01:48:11):
felt that the anti drug movementnever approached it the right
way. Because telling kids that it's
bad isn't going to work. Telling kids that's not good for
you isn't going to work. Telling them they'll kill them
isn't going to work because they're immortal as far as
they're concerned, Yep. Exactly.
Let's bring out the real historyhere.
Let's bring out the real historyof how drugs were planted in the

(01:48:35):
70s, sixties and 80s from the CIA.
Yep. Yeah so the but the way to
approach the whole anti drug thing is name the five things
you spend money on now erase them because you're spending
your money on drugs. Drugs are expensive, especially
illegal drugs are really, reallyexpensive and and not having

(01:48:57):
enough money for something is something young people can
understand it. Costs your money, your life,
your, your, yeah. Well.
Like I have I I had a friend whothis is years ago.
I had a friend who he told me he's like, I did cocaine for the
first time the other day. And I I was like, well, that was

(01:49:20):
dumb. And then I asked what, what was
it like, you know? And he goes, you know, I've done
a lot of drugs. This is the first drug I've ever
done where the first thought I had wasn't I'm high or this
feels interesting or whatever. The first thought I had was I
need to get more cocaine. And he goes, that scared me.

(01:49:43):
And then a couple weeks later, because apparently it didn't
scare him enough, he said he he goes, I did cocaine again and I
said, you stupid idiot. And he goes, what?
I'm like, no one in the history of the world has done cocaine
twice. It's never happened.
You either do it once and go, that's not for me, or you do it
until your life falls apart. You've chosen door B.

(01:50:05):
You can't even choose not to smoke or not to do more cocaine
a third time. You're going to.
I I have been offered cocaine somany times in my 12 years of
doing comedic of comedy. It is.
And the thing that upsets me themost is the people that offer me

(01:50:27):
cocaine obviously did not listento my set because I do jokes
about weed and how much I love weed and how much like weed,
weed, weed, weed, weed, weed allday.
I I mean, just a corner of my set is on weed and then I go
outside and I'm hanging out withmy comic friends and I'm smoking
weed and some guy who comes up to me like, Amen, good set.

(01:50:51):
You're very funny. Want to do some cocaine?
And I get upset. I'm like, no, I don't want to do
cocaine. Like first of all did you even
under. Did you even look at my listen
to my set. No.
Where did I mention cocaine or or or or any like you know so
it's just like I I and it it always happens.

(01:51:13):
Yeah I got some cocaine man. You want to, you know, you want
to do it near my, you want to doit by my trosell or whatever.
And it's like, no, no, I I I I've been in many rooms, hotel
rooms where there's cocaine and everything and it's like and
everyone's having a punch and everyone's having a good time.
And I always think to myself this is how, you know, like this

(01:51:37):
is how it started for prior thatone.
And then, you know, I don't wantto go down the Richard Pryor
route where I'm spending $2000 amonth snorting cocaine, going
down that downward spiral. Oh my God, you know what?
I have never been offered any drugs and people don't even

(01:51:59):
fucking buy me drinks when I'm on stage.
What? That's not that's.
Completely rude. I know first of all, I don't
drink anymore, so I don't care and I don't do any drugs, so
that's cool too, but. It's just they're.
Not going. To offer the next time you and I

(01:52:20):
do a show, when somebody offers me cocaine, I'm just going to
point to you and be like I don'twant it, but offer it to her.
She'll feel good about it. I would just feel good about
that. They offered me cocaine and
then. I'd be like be like that guy
over there said that you're intococaine.
What do you say, miss? They take one look at me and

(01:52:41):
they would know there's no way in hell that fat bitch is into
cocaine. Cocaine in the hell of a drug.
Yeah, it's not it. It is definitely not.
They see me doing weed. Felt like I am.
They've been like, yeah, she's had too much weed.

(01:53:05):
She passed out on the floor. She had too.
Much weed. Look, I've gotten massive highs.
I've gotten so fucking high justfrom people around me passing
pipes that I was like, OK, I gotto tap out.
I'm so fucking high just from being around you guys smoking.
I need to go put my head on a table.

(01:53:28):
Yeah. Oh my God.
This has been a a really, incredibly, incredibly engaging
show tonight and I'm so thankfulfor both of you guys for coming
and joining us Just so we alwayslove seeing you and always,
always love you. Always have such a great

(01:53:49):
insights on things and thank youso much for sharing those.
And Jack. Holy shit.
Yeah, we definitely need to haveyou come back again.
I I want both of you guys next time there again.
Yes. Yeah, anytime.
A lot of fun. It's been a lot of fun and we
are getting to the end. So let me ask real quick, Jack,
do you have any socials, anything you would like to

(01:54:11):
promote? Sure.
I have a weekly newsletter at Sub Stack called The Shot of
Jack. It's at
jackcameron.substack.com. It's usually about crime, crime
fiction, and whatever else I'm up to.
It also has a serial crime novelthat's finishing up that that's

(01:54:34):
on the paid tier. But the the weekly newsletter is
absolutely free, and of course tacomastories.com, always free
and always will be. There are people who are doing
paid subscriptions on Tacoma Stories, which is helping pay
for it, which is amazing. And I and I just want to say

(01:54:54):
shout out to those five people because it's literally like 5
people but. That's amazing.
Jack, you do really great work and I really appreciate you
taking us down that journey intoyour head and how you you do it,
man. It's again, more power to you,
bro. You do, Yeah.

(01:55:17):
And thanks for inviting me. And again, I'm happy to.
Come on anytime. Thank you, Jack.
You bet you. Want to check this out, Jamal?
Sure. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this
has been our show. Our special thanks to V Jack
Cameron. Thank you again, Jack.
And of course our lovely reoccurring host this with the

(01:55:39):
most I say Hostess, but reoccurring guest Jessica
Vargas. We love having you on the show.
Thank you. Like Marianne said, we we do
appreciate your input because you with what Jack is going
through, you bring sunshine to this podcast.
So thank you for being the Ying to Jax Yay.

(01:56:01):
And ladies and gentlemen, if youhave an issue with your
parenting and you want to blame your bullshit on somebody else,
remember it is not about you andblame us all you want.
Bye bitches.