November 18, 2024 • 27 mins
Bunny and Scot spin Mega-Wheel the Magnificent to tackle some bizarre questions with a uniquely Gen-X twist. In this episode:
💬 Would you take $1 for a compliment or $100 for an insult?
📼 Movies and shows we refuse to watch (yes, one of us still hasn't seen E.T.)
🤯 Dealing with stress, depression, and why reality TV is the worst.
From hilarious stories about failed challenges to deep dives into mental health stigma, this episode is a perfect mix of humor and reflection — with plenty of snark to go around.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Generation X. In general terms, it was born between 1965 and 1980. Lachkinite. Independent.
(00:15):
Existentialism. Modern philosophy focusing on personal experience, human ability and
responsibility in an otherwise meaningless universe. We're the cause. This is the effect.
We're the Gen X existentialists.
(00:39):
Welcome in friends to the Gen X existentialist podcast. My name is Scott.
And I'm Bunny.
And this is where we randomize ideas and questions and come up with all kinds of wacky stuff to talk about from a Gen X point of view.
To do such, we have Mega Wheel the Magnificent and we will give her a spin right now to see what our first topic will be.
(01:01):
How you feeling today, Bunny? Feel lucky?
Oh, I'm feeling not so lucky, but I'm feeling pretty lovely.
Awesome. And so our first question would be, would you rather get a dollar every time you compliment a stranger or a hundred dollars every time you insult a stranger?
Wow. Okay. Let me tell you a little story from back in our day.
(01:27):
Now, my friend sitting across from me, Scott, used to work at a record store.
Oh, yeah.
And we were driving around as we were off to do when we were younger.
I know exactly the story.
You know the story. Yeah. And Scott's like, man, you're always like bagging on people.
How about I give you any CD you want from the record store if you just if you can make it the whole drive without making an insult at somebody.
(01:50):
And I'm telling you, and by the way, let me throw in not give. I was I always paid for.
Well, sure. Yeah. You know what I mean? I could pick out any CD that I wanted and Scott would buy it for me. There you go.
And it's pretty sweet deal. You know, we were we weren't more than 20 minutes from home.
I think I made it about 10 minutes. I saw some some lady on the side of the road and I said, oh, Finman, you know, or something.
(02:15):
I called her something insulting. And yeah, I didn't know. I'm not screaming this out the window.
And so the window was open. Now, was it? Yes. Well, I'm just kind of saying it to Scott, you know, because I just have a cantankerous soul.
And there it was. I blew my chance at a free CD. So I would say one hundred dollars every time I insult someone because it comes so naturally.
(02:36):
It does. I mean, I compliment people a lot, but not as often as I.
Now, this means insulting someone to the face. I get the hundred. I would take the compliment one if that were the case.
If it were just on a natural day just driving around and I see somebody and I call them a potato head or something, you know, then I would take the hundred dollars.
(03:01):
But if it's insulting them to their face, I would say at least I do the compliment one.
If you insult the wrong person, you're going to have more than one hundred dollars worth of dental work.
This is fair. This is true. I wouldn't go around trying to make my living off of the insults,
but I think you could do it in such a way to pull in an extra four or five hundred a day and turn it into kind of a comedy thing.
(03:28):
Sure. Because you have Don Rickles. Yeah, there's plenty of that kind of stuff.
And especially if you turned it into like a comedic thing and became a comedian doing that kind of stuff, you could really make it work.
And think about it. That would be a hundred compliments for every insult.
You would have to compliment a hundred people or give a hundred compliments to get that same bang for your buck.
(03:55):
True. And I have to say about that story, I knew that was going to happen.
Yeah, he knew it was a safe bet. I knew that everything would be good for five or ten minutes
because you'd be focused on not saying the things that popped in your head.
And we were driving through downtown Cincinnati. So there was a plethora of targets.
It's like the zoo let open the gates. People would just wander around.
(04:18):
And I'm looking ahead of us because I was driving, trying to pick out who the targets would be
and trying to think about what you were saying in your head, but not out loud.
And yeah, it was thin mint. It was thin mint. Oh, she's so thin. She's so thin mint.
So svelte. Yeah. Bad. So fine. So svelte.
(04:39):
Yeah. So I would go with the hundred bucks for insulting strangers. That would be the key for me.
So we will give Megawheel a Magnificent another spin here on the Gen X existentialist podcast
and see what kind of wackiness we can come up with.
And our next question is, is my stress level too high? Why or why not?
(05:02):
So I guess we're answering for each other based on this question. Oh, OK.
Is your stress level too high? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I would agree.
Yeah. He's like rigid like a board when you walk in.
Yeah, he's having some situations outside of the podcast going on right now
that are not as optimal to him as he would like. So he's pretty darn stressy.
(05:27):
Yeah. And what was the second part of the question? Why or why not? Why or why not?
Well, I won't go into why. Yeah, we don't need to do that.
Because we don't want to endanger anyone's livelihood. But yeah, it's your stress level is way too high.
Yeah. Yeah, it is. You seem like you're in a pretty good place. Yeah.
Like I've seen you way more stressed. True.
(05:49):
Than you are lately. So it seems like, you know, things are pretty calm in your world.
I'm enjoying the doldrums of the summer. Yeah.
And I think you're in a fairly new place. You've got a new vehicle.
Business is going well. Not worrying about my car falling apart around me when I drive.
(06:10):
Takes a lot of the stress out of life. Yeah, it just seems like things are going pretty well for you.
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. And let it be known that the stress that I'm going through is all of my own making.
Self-inflicted stress. Yeah, basically. I think most people, if you get down to it, if you dig down to the causes of their stress,
(06:34):
I think a lot of times most of it is self-inflicted.
Well, I think a lot of times stress is your way of, you know, the world's way or your body's way or whatever's way of telling you that, you know, you can be happy with less.
Yeah. And you can be happy with the present and you can be, you know, you need to just kind of cool your tits, as they used to say back in the day. Yeah.
(06:57):
And just sort of, OK, kind of reevaluate and see where you can get yourself.
I think we had a question a while ago that was about poverty. Yeah.
And impoverishment and whatever they call it nowadays. Any cool new words to not scare people.
But I mean, there's a lot of times where you can live with a lot less and be just as happy or even happier.
(07:25):
I think when you get our age, the idea that time is really. Time is really what's valuable. That's what makes you rich is time.
Yeah. And that and that's that's the truth. And I learned that once before.
And I. Even having the lesson in the back of my mind, the universe's way of telling you, you get back on that.
(07:48):
Yeah, I would get back honky cat, as John would say.
Yeah. One of those for me, I should have known and I really should have.
That's OK. That's how you learn. I mean, yeah, you can't you can't theorize everything.
Sometimes you have to you have to go into situations and see how it works out.
(08:10):
So yeah. And kudos for expanding your horizons in that respect.
Well, you have to. I think for both of us, you know, learning is a focal point.
Yeah. You know, a day you don't pick up something new or read something new or do something new is kind of a waste.
And I've always tried to learn from especially my mistakes, but even from successes, you know, continual improvement could have been better.
(08:38):
How can I do better next time? And and I knew I knew it when I made the decision.
But I, you know, it's just one of those things where I was focused on the wrong stuff.
Sure. And, you know, one of those things.
So we will give Megawheel and Magnificent another spin here on the Gen X Distentious Podcast.
(08:59):
Where there's life, there's hope, man. Just keep on plugging. Exactly.
The next opportunity will present itself. Yep.
And it's weird, too, because that presentation of opportunity, there's a part of me that feels like, you know, the universe provides, but you still have to be an active participant.
So it's it's one of those things where and that's the opportunity knocks thing. You have to answer the door.
(09:24):
You know, it's the opportunities always knocking. Yeah. If you look at it that way.
And my wife and I have talked about this and we have so many times in our our lives and our relationship where if we want to do something and things just keep happening to knock it off the tracks,
and there are times we haven't listened and we followed through with it at the end of it, we go, man, we should have known everything was going badly about this.
(09:53):
And it turned out badly. So listen to the universe.
If you're trying to plan a trip and every place you're trying to book a hotel at is too expensive or there's something that's not right.
Pull back. Sure. Pull back because you're just setting yourself up for things to go wrong.
We've tried to learn that. And I in certain recent situations, there were signposts.
(10:19):
There were things there that were like waving at me like, hey, you need to pay attention to this to don't get waylaid by the stuff you're focusing on.
And I didn't. Sure. And that's what put me here. Yeah.
That's, you know, listen to your gut. That's basically what we're saying. If you don't want to listen to the universe, that's too woo woo for you.
Just listen to your gut. It's almost never wrong. Yeah.
(10:41):
It's frightening how you've got this amazing prediction item right in your gut. Yeah.
You know which way to go. You're like a magic eight ball, except you're usually always right.
Instinct and experience count for a lot. And that's your gut. It really is.
So where did old Meg land this time? Meg landed on.
And I find this to be a perfect next question. Why is depression so stigmatized in society?
(11:10):
I don't think it is anymore. I think there was a time maybe when we were younger in our Gen X days where being depressed was.
Oh, buck up soldier. Come on. Put a smile on that face.
Sure. Between that and you had cartoon characters like Shlep Rock. You remember him from the Flintstone kids or whatever.
Yeah. There was always nobody wanted to be around the mopey sad gothy kid, you know, back in the day.
(11:34):
And that was sort of this manufactured depression.
I think actual depression is something that has become so mainstream anymore. Yeah.
And I'm not sure why that is. It's kind of a bad thing, really, when you think about it, that it's so mainstream now that nearly everyone you know,
I would say eight out of every ten people you meet has been prescribed some sort of SSRI or some sort of drug, you know, for either hyperactivity or depression or something, some sort of mental instability.
(12:10):
It's kind of depressing. So I don't think it's. Yeah, I mean, segue. Yeah.
But yeah, I don't know if it's really stigmatized at all really anymore.
I think depending on who you're talking to, it can still kind of be that way.
But it largely it's not when we were younger, like you said, it was.
(12:34):
And having been treated for depression therapy did me more good than drugs did.
OK, I did try drugs twice and didn't like the the counterpoint to where I was.
Say no to drugs, kids. Yeah.
But out of therapy, I was in therapy for a very short time, actually.
(13:01):
But the tools that I got from that helped me a great deal and still help me today.
OK, when I start to spiral, I lean back on those things that I learned in those sessions with my therapist back in 2013.
And they they are they have been and are a consistent help because I think I think creative people not to put a cap on.
(13:30):
But, you know, you relate to this. You tend to look deeper into things.
And when you look deeply into the mirror, there's more of a chance that you're going to see not only the extreme good, but the extreme bad.
And if you have a natural tendency leaning toward focusing on the darkness anyway, seeing that extreme bad can pull you down very easily.
(13:52):
And here's a controversial question to add to this.
Do you think it's different with different races?
I believe that with Caucasians or European people, it's more acceptable.
The whole idea of depression is more acceptable.
I wonder if it's the same with Middle Eastern races or African-Americans or Latinos.
(14:18):
Is it is it looked at differently?
It's a great question.
I mean, because I would think in some in some cultures that are more into the machismo or the masculine or the you know, just if you have too much time to if you have time to lean, you have time to clean that sort of idea of, you know, navel gaze.
(14:39):
And that gives you too much time to sit and think about dumb things.
You need to keep busy.
You need to fill that with religion or something, you know, instead.
I mean, the cultures that have that as more of their core.
I wonder if it's different because I know within a Caucasian society, I swear everybody's got depression or everybody has anxiety or everybody has ADHD or autism or something going on.
(15:06):
And the thing is, you look at those things like ADHD is brain chemistry, autism, brain chemistry, right?
And not all of it, not all of depression is chemistry.
Some of it is literally thought processes.
(15:27):
And I think that's what my issue was.
I think that's why the drugs didn't really do for me.
Okay.
What you would typically expect, because it wasn't a brain chemistry thing.
It was how I was thinking and how I was processing things.
So there are a lot of different aspects to depression.
And I think bringing in the culture stuff, that's a great question too, because some cultures do look at these kind of things very differently.
(15:54):
I think it would be much more stigmatized in some cultures.
Maybe you guys out there can help us out.
If you're a, if you're someone who feels like you can answer that question, go ahead and drop us a line.
Let us know what your thoughts are on that.
Yeah, absolutely. Because I would be interested in even having guests on from different cultures to literally like make this a topic or like do a sub show on this.
(16:17):
Because I think it would be really neat to uncover some of those different aspects.
And maybe even from like jobs, not even cultures, but jobs, depending on what you do.
Is depression something that is accepted and you can get help with, or is it something where it's, you know, put a smile on that face, buck up.
You just got to go. You just got to take it.
(16:41):
Because mental health is important. Your well-being in your head affects everything.
It affects your point of view and it can tumble quickly if you're not taking care of it.
So yeah, for us white males, I don't think it is as stigmatized as it used to be, which is a great thing.
(17:03):
But for everybody else, women, people from different cultures, people from different religions, I would be interested in kind of ripping the lid off and seeing where that can go and where people think they stand based on their place in society.
So with that, we will give Mega Wheel the Magnificent one more spin for this episode and see what she comes up with.
(17:29):
And we're spinning and spinning and we have got...
What popular TV shows or movies do you refuse to watch?
I have still never seen E.T., the extraterrestrial.
What?
I am a Gen X kid through and through, born in 73, never saw E.T., never had an interest in seeing it.
(17:53):
Now it's a point of contention with me where I refuse to watch it even though I have access to it.
I have it pulled down on my hard drive in case I ever decide this is deathbed time. I need to watch it take and have my system.
That's one of them. I absolutely refuse to watch reality television.
Yeah.
(18:14):
I hate these things like the great race or whatever it was called or whatever the island one was where you go and you stay on an island.
Survivor.
Yeah, Survivor. I don't watch anything like that. I have this thing. It's funny.
My wife used to go over to her friend's house to watch Survivor because they were really into it when it first came on.
Yeah.
(18:35):
And this was one of the only times I ever put my foot down, like really hardcore. This was like hardcore patriarchy mode.
I was like, I refuse to have that stuff on my television in my house because it breeds negativity.
The whole thing. When you let poison into your system, it fucks everything up.
And this kind of manufactured, I think coming from everything as an editor, as a TV film editor, I know the tricks that these people play.
(19:04):
Oh, sure.
Everything is manufactured on these programs. There's very little that happens that is unexpected.
And it's manufactured to bring out the worst in everybody.
So I had this like coming to Jesus moment. It was bizarre. I was just kind of like, no, I refuse.
And, you know, my wife still giggles about that to the day where it was just like, no, he just he doesn't want to watch it.
(19:26):
So we're going to go over and watch it at the friend's house because he's got a real stick of his butt about that stuff.
That's definitely something that I will not watch.
Yeah. So those are the two biggies, I guess, right there.
I don't know what my bone is about E.T. I don't. I passed. I got passed up.
I didn't get to see it. I've still never seen Karate Kid.
(19:48):
You know, these are like defining Gen X movies I'm talking about here.
You know, and I never saw it. I have no interest in watching it. I don't want to watch Cobra Kai.
You didn't get as much with Karate Kid. I figured I would.
I thought that was like a chick movie. Karate Kid was terrible.
I was like, this is a chick flick. I won't watch that.
E.T. is a legitimately good film. OK, it really is.
(20:12):
But I I have not seen nor do I intend to ever watch Die Hard.
OK, just you're missing that.
Well, everybody everybody says you are missing a lot because of the whole Christmas aspect of it and all that.
That stuff. And I don't mind Bruce Willis. I like Alan Rickman.
There's no reason for me not to watch it except for I haven't seen it yet.
(20:36):
It's your same thing with E.T. I haven't seen it yet. I'm not going to see it now.
You know, I'm just not what we should do.
We should do a live stream where we sit down and we watch those movies together.
You know, because I remember I saw Die Hard in the cinema.
OK. And I mean, it's fine for what it is.
It's one of those movies that's like this is not connected other than being a Christmas movie.
(21:01):
But National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Sure. OK.
Where people have created this entire mythos around shit or full, you know, funny.
You know, the turkey's fucked up or whatever.
Yeah, they create this whole kind of mythos around it and it becomes this kind of it's like the that movie with the dude in it.
I can't remember Big Lebowski, Big Lebowski, where they've I haven't seen that either.
(21:24):
I've seen it. You're not missing a damn thing. You've seen that and I haven't.
That's surprising. Yeah, I have seen that. But that's another one, though.
I haven't seen it. I'm a big John Goodman fan. I'm a big Steve Buscemi fan.
So I love both of them. Jeff Bridges. That's a sell for me.
They're all three good actors for me. So I watched it.
I don't understand the fascination around it. It's definitely a cult film.
(21:45):
Yeah. Like the Christmas Vacation film is. Yeah.
Like Die Hard has become because everybody's like, it's a Christmas movie.
Damn it. And I just started seeing that like three or four years ago on social media feeds.
And that just reinforced. Fuck. No, I'm not going to watch it.
I'm not interested. That's the way I was with ET because I'd see all the commercials around Christmas time.
(22:08):
And they're like, oh, he's doing this and he's doing that.
And here's the Reese's Pieces and here's our tie ends with McDonald's.
And here's our tie ends with wherever Burger King.
And I was like, this sucks. I don't want to watch this. You know, look at all this tie in stuff.
And but it is really good. I'm not going to get into the cult of ET.
On the reality TV, because we talked about movies. My TV shows are also reality TV.
(22:33):
OK. And it goes back to this first couple of years of Survivor.
I thought it was interesting. That was in the infancy of quote unquote reality TV.
But there was an episode. I don't remember if it was Survivor or one of the other like similar shows.
But during the episode, one of the contestants fell on fire. OK.
(22:57):
And this is what pissed me off. I got literally livid about this and have not watched any reality TV since.
The dude fell in the fire. OK. And they had EMTs there. Sure.
They took care of him. Yeah. Took him off the set. And eventually I think he came back.
(23:18):
My take, if it's called fucking Survivor, guess what, buddy? You're going to die on that island.
And that's what should have happened. So to call it reality TV is a load of horse pucking.
As Colonel Sherman Potter would have said. It's the interactions between people is the reality.
(23:39):
No, not not for me. You remember the real world on MTV? I never watched that.
That was sort of the infancy of reality television. I came out in like the mid 90s, I guess, early 90s.
And all it was was sticking a bunch of bratty idiots in a building in some fancy city,
whichever city they were trying to push, Seattle, Chicago, whatever, and watching them fight over each other.
(24:04):
Oh, so and so fucking so and so. Oh, you're making eyes at that. Oh, you're a you're a homo.
Yeah. Back when you could say stuff like that. And this is, you know, that's all it was was just constant in fighting.
And that's where it all spawned from. So now let's have them in fight on an island.
Now let's put them in a mansion and have them fight over a bunch of bachelors or whatever.
(24:26):
Or the crap with all the singing competitions. Yeah. The voice.
But just stop. If you want to be a singer, go out, find a band, go sing. Sure. Go do it. Do it for real.
Yeah. Don't just sing in your bedroom. Go sing. Because God knows so many bands out there need a singer.
(24:50):
I'll tell you, the landscape of television is since the 2000s probably has just been deplorable.
In a lot of ways. There's I know there's been stuff like what ER or whatever the show is that everybody watches scrubs.
I guess that was it. I think. Yeah. But I think the chasm between the excellent and the crepulent is much wider.
(25:17):
Now, I think a lot of TV is just you wonder how the network gave somebody the money to make this. My 600 pound wife.
Stuff like that. Stuff like that. And then you see stuff that's really well done that really strikes you from an artistic point of view,
(25:40):
from an emotional point of view. And you're like, OK, this is what we're supposed to be doing. This is great.
The simple fact that they took my channels like TLC and Discovery and the learn, you know, the food network and all that.
And it's all reality TV. Yeah, it's all reality TV. Now I got some Asian chick popping people's pimples on television like Dr. Pimple Popper.
(26:03):
Have you not seen her? No. She's old school. This is like five years old or whatever now.
But the simple fact that they had an entire show where this attractive Asian woman lanced people's boils on television or extracted blackheads from them in graphic detail.
This was on the learning channel. Why am I learning to hate humanity? Why would you make a show about that?
(26:26):
I guess the fat people, you know, with their skin cracking and stuff and being able to be hauled out of their house on a crane, whether an engine block crane wasn't gross enough for everybody.
Yeah, I mean, and honestly, folks like that, I feel bad for them. Sure. It's exploitation.
But yeah, and I mean, they sign the waivers and that television is always about exploitation in a lot of ways.
(26:50):
You know, anyway, and that's the way we will end this episode of the Gen X.
You're going to put a pin in it. You're going to lance it. I'm going to lance this episode.
Please let us know your your TV shows and movies that you absolutely refuse to watch.
Leave us a note and may come up as a topic again in the near future.
(27:13):
So yeah, some good stuff to talk about, especially the movies.
It'd be a great list to actually set up and see if we've seen it and do some live stream. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
OK, until next time, my name is Scott and I'm Bunny and we are the Gen X Specialist.
We'll catch you next time. Have a good one.
(27:56):
Thank you.
Generation X. In general terms, it was born between 1965 and 1980. Lachkinite. Independent.
(00:15):
Existentialism. Modern philosophy focusing on personal experience, human ability and
responsibility in an otherwise meaningless universe. We're the cause. This is the effect.
We're the Gen X existentialists.
(00:39):
Welcome in friends to the Gen X existentialist podcast. My name is Scott.
And I'm Bunny.
And this is where we randomize ideas and questions and come up with all kinds of wacky stuff to talk about from a Gen X point of view.
To do such, we have Mega Wheel the Magnificent and we will give her a spin right now to see what our first topic will be.
(01:01):
How you feeling today, Bunny? Feel lucky?
Oh, I'm feeling not so lucky, but I'm feeling pretty lovely.
Awesome. And so our first question would be, would you rather get a dollar every time you compliment a stranger or a hundred dollars every time you insult a stranger?
Wow. Okay. Let me tell you a little story from back in our day.
(01:27):
Now, my friend sitting across from me, Scott, used to work at a record store.
Oh, yeah.
And we were driving around as we were off to do when we were younger.
I know exactly the story.
You know the story. Yeah. And Scott's like, man, you're always like bagging on people.
How about I give you any CD you want from the record store if you just if you can make it the whole drive without making an insult at somebody.
(01:50):
And I'm telling you, and by the way, let me throw in not give. I was I always paid for.
Well, sure. Yeah. You know what I mean? I could pick out any CD that I wanted and Scott would buy it for me. There you go.
And it's pretty sweet deal. You know, we were we weren't more than 20 minutes from home.
I think I made it about 10 minutes. I saw some some lady on the side of the road and I said, oh, Finman, you know, or something.
(02:15):
I called her something insulting. And yeah, I didn't know. I'm not screaming this out the window.
And so the window was open. Now, was it? Yes. Well, I'm just kind of saying it to Scott, you know, because I just have a cantankerous soul.
And there it was. I blew my chance at a free CD. So I would say one hundred dollars every time I insult someone because it comes so naturally.
(02:36):
It does. I mean, I compliment people a lot, but not as often as I.
Now, this means insulting someone to the face. I get the hundred. I would take the compliment one if that were the case.
If it were just on a natural day just driving around and I see somebody and I call them a potato head or something, you know, then I would take the hundred dollars.
(03:01):
But if it's insulting them to their face, I would say at least I do the compliment one.
If you insult the wrong person, you're going to have more than one hundred dollars worth of dental work.
This is fair. This is true. I wouldn't go around trying to make my living off of the insults,
but I think you could do it in such a way to pull in an extra four or five hundred a day and turn it into kind of a comedy thing.
(03:28):
Sure. Because you have Don Rickles. Yeah, there's plenty of that kind of stuff.
And especially if you turned it into like a comedic thing and became a comedian doing that kind of stuff, you could really make it work.
And think about it. That would be a hundred compliments for every insult.
You would have to compliment a hundred people or give a hundred compliments to get that same bang for your buck.
(03:55):
True. And I have to say about that story, I knew that was going to happen.
Yeah, he knew it was a safe bet. I knew that everything would be good for five or ten minutes
because you'd be focused on not saying the things that popped in your head.
And we were driving through downtown Cincinnati. So there was a plethora of targets.
It's like the zoo let open the gates. People would just wander around.
(04:18):
And I'm looking ahead of us because I was driving, trying to pick out who the targets would be
and trying to think about what you were saying in your head, but not out loud.
And yeah, it was thin mint. It was thin mint. Oh, she's so thin. She's so thin mint.
So svelte. Yeah. Bad. So fine. So svelte.
(04:39):
Yeah. So I would go with the hundred bucks for insulting strangers. That would be the key for me.
So we will give Megawheel a Magnificent another spin here on the Gen X existentialist podcast
and see what kind of wackiness we can come up with.
And our next question is, is my stress level too high? Why or why not?
(05:02):
So I guess we're answering for each other based on this question. Oh, OK.
Is your stress level too high? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I would agree.
Yeah. He's like rigid like a board when you walk in.
Yeah, he's having some situations outside of the podcast going on right now
that are not as optimal to him as he would like. So he's pretty darn stressy.
(05:27):
Yeah. And what was the second part of the question? Why or why not? Why or why not?
Well, I won't go into why. Yeah, we don't need to do that.
Because we don't want to endanger anyone's livelihood. But yeah, it's your stress level is way too high.
Yeah. Yeah, it is. You seem like you're in a pretty good place. Yeah.
Like I've seen you way more stressed. True.
(05:49):
Than you are lately. So it seems like, you know, things are pretty calm in your world.
I'm enjoying the doldrums of the summer. Yeah.
And I think you're in a fairly new place. You've got a new vehicle.
Business is going well. Not worrying about my car falling apart around me when I drive.
(06:10):
Takes a lot of the stress out of life. Yeah, it just seems like things are going pretty well for you.
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. And let it be known that the stress that I'm going through is all of my own making.
Self-inflicted stress. Yeah, basically. I think most people, if you get down to it, if you dig down to the causes of their stress,
(06:34):
I think a lot of times most of it is self-inflicted.
Well, I think a lot of times stress is your way of, you know, the world's way or your body's way or whatever's way of telling you that, you know, you can be happy with less.
Yeah. And you can be happy with the present and you can be, you know, you need to just kind of cool your tits, as they used to say back in the day. Yeah.
(06:57):
And just sort of, OK, kind of reevaluate and see where you can get yourself.
I think we had a question a while ago that was about poverty. Yeah.
And impoverishment and whatever they call it nowadays. Any cool new words to not scare people.
But I mean, there's a lot of times where you can live with a lot less and be just as happy or even happier.
(07:25):
I think when you get our age, the idea that time is really. Time is really what's valuable. That's what makes you rich is time.
Yeah. And that and that's that's the truth. And I learned that once before.
And I. Even having the lesson in the back of my mind, the universe's way of telling you, you get back on that.
(07:48):
Yeah, I would get back honky cat, as John would say.
Yeah. One of those for me, I should have known and I really should have.
That's OK. That's how you learn. I mean, yeah, you can't you can't theorize everything.
Sometimes you have to you have to go into situations and see how it works out.
(08:10):
So yeah. And kudos for expanding your horizons in that respect.
Well, you have to. I think for both of us, you know, learning is a focal point.
Yeah. You know, a day you don't pick up something new or read something new or do something new is kind of a waste.
And I've always tried to learn from especially my mistakes, but even from successes, you know, continual improvement could have been better.
(08:38):
How can I do better next time? And and I knew I knew it when I made the decision.
But I, you know, it's just one of those things where I was focused on the wrong stuff.
Sure. And, you know, one of those things.
So we will give Megawheel and Magnificent another spin here on the Gen X Distentious Podcast.
(08:59):
Where there's life, there's hope, man. Just keep on plugging. Exactly.
The next opportunity will present itself. Yep.
And it's weird, too, because that presentation of opportunity, there's a part of me that feels like, you know, the universe provides, but you still have to be an active participant.
So it's it's one of those things where and that's the opportunity knocks thing. You have to answer the door.
(09:24):
You know, it's the opportunities always knocking. Yeah. If you look at it that way.
And my wife and I have talked about this and we have so many times in our our lives and our relationship where if we want to do something and things just keep happening to knock it off the tracks,
and there are times we haven't listened and we followed through with it at the end of it, we go, man, we should have known everything was going badly about this.
(09:53):
And it turned out badly. So listen to the universe.
If you're trying to plan a trip and every place you're trying to book a hotel at is too expensive or there's something that's not right.
Pull back. Sure. Pull back because you're just setting yourself up for things to go wrong.
We've tried to learn that. And I in certain recent situations, there were signposts.
(10:19):
There were things there that were like waving at me like, hey, you need to pay attention to this to don't get waylaid by the stuff you're focusing on.
And I didn't. Sure. And that's what put me here. Yeah.
That's, you know, listen to your gut. That's basically what we're saying. If you don't want to listen to the universe, that's too woo woo for you.
Just listen to your gut. It's almost never wrong. Yeah.
(10:41):
It's frightening how you've got this amazing prediction item right in your gut. Yeah.
You know which way to go. You're like a magic eight ball, except you're usually always right.
Instinct and experience count for a lot. And that's your gut. It really is.
So where did old Meg land this time? Meg landed on.
And I find this to be a perfect next question. Why is depression so stigmatized in society?
(11:10):
I don't think it is anymore. I think there was a time maybe when we were younger in our Gen X days where being depressed was.
Oh, buck up soldier. Come on. Put a smile on that face.
Sure. Between that and you had cartoon characters like Shlep Rock. You remember him from the Flintstone kids or whatever.
Yeah. There was always nobody wanted to be around the mopey sad gothy kid, you know, back in the day.
(11:34):
And that was sort of this manufactured depression.
I think actual depression is something that has become so mainstream anymore. Yeah.
And I'm not sure why that is. It's kind of a bad thing, really, when you think about it, that it's so mainstream now that nearly everyone you know,
I would say eight out of every ten people you meet has been prescribed some sort of SSRI or some sort of drug, you know, for either hyperactivity or depression or something, some sort of mental instability.
(12:10):
It's kind of depressing. So I don't think it's. Yeah, I mean, segue. Yeah.
But yeah, I don't know if it's really stigmatized at all really anymore.
I think depending on who you're talking to, it can still kind of be that way.
But it largely it's not when we were younger, like you said, it was.
(12:34):
And having been treated for depression therapy did me more good than drugs did.
OK, I did try drugs twice and didn't like the the counterpoint to where I was.
Say no to drugs, kids. Yeah.
But out of therapy, I was in therapy for a very short time, actually.
(13:01):
But the tools that I got from that helped me a great deal and still help me today.
OK, when I start to spiral, I lean back on those things that I learned in those sessions with my therapist back in 2013.
And they they are they have been and are a consistent help because I think I think creative people not to put a cap on.
(13:30):
But, you know, you relate to this. You tend to look deeper into things.
And when you look deeply into the mirror, there's more of a chance that you're going to see not only the extreme good, but the extreme bad.
And if you have a natural tendency leaning toward focusing on the darkness anyway, seeing that extreme bad can pull you down very easily.
(13:52):
And here's a controversial question to add to this.
Do you think it's different with different races?
I believe that with Caucasians or European people, it's more acceptable.
The whole idea of depression is more acceptable.
I wonder if it's the same with Middle Eastern races or African-Americans or Latinos.
(14:18):
Is it is it looked at differently?
It's a great question.
I mean, because I would think in some in some cultures that are more into the machismo or the masculine or the you know, just if you have too much time to if you have time to lean, you have time to clean that sort of idea of, you know, navel gaze.
(14:39):
And that gives you too much time to sit and think about dumb things.
You need to keep busy.
You need to fill that with religion or something, you know, instead.
I mean, the cultures that have that as more of their core.
I wonder if it's different because I know within a Caucasian society, I swear everybody's got depression or everybody has anxiety or everybody has ADHD or autism or something going on.
(15:06):
And the thing is, you look at those things like ADHD is brain chemistry, autism, brain chemistry, right?
And not all of it, not all of depression is chemistry.
Some of it is literally thought processes.
(15:27):
And I think that's what my issue was.
I think that's why the drugs didn't really do for me.
Okay.
What you would typically expect, because it wasn't a brain chemistry thing.
It was how I was thinking and how I was processing things.
So there are a lot of different aspects to depression.
And I think bringing in the culture stuff, that's a great question too, because some cultures do look at these kind of things very differently.
(15:54):
I think it would be much more stigmatized in some cultures.
Maybe you guys out there can help us out.
If you're a, if you're someone who feels like you can answer that question, go ahead and drop us a line.
Let us know what your thoughts are on that.
Yeah, absolutely. Because I would be interested in even having guests on from different cultures to literally like make this a topic or like do a sub show on this.
(16:17):
Because I think it would be really neat to uncover some of those different aspects.
And maybe even from like jobs, not even cultures, but jobs, depending on what you do.
Is depression something that is accepted and you can get help with, or is it something where it's, you know, put a smile on that face, buck up.
You just got to go. You just got to take it.
(16:41):
Because mental health is important. Your well-being in your head affects everything.
It affects your point of view and it can tumble quickly if you're not taking care of it.
So yeah, for us white males, I don't think it is as stigmatized as it used to be, which is a great thing.
(17:03):
But for everybody else, women, people from different cultures, people from different religions, I would be interested in kind of ripping the lid off and seeing where that can go and where people think they stand based on their place in society.
So with that, we will give Mega Wheel the Magnificent one more spin for this episode and see what she comes up with.
(17:29):
And we're spinning and spinning and we have got...
What popular TV shows or movies do you refuse to watch?
I have still never seen E.T., the extraterrestrial.
What?
I am a Gen X kid through and through, born in 73, never saw E.T., never had an interest in seeing it.
(17:53):
Now it's a point of contention with me where I refuse to watch it even though I have access to it.
I have it pulled down on my hard drive in case I ever decide this is deathbed time. I need to watch it take and have my system.
That's one of them. I absolutely refuse to watch reality television.
Yeah.
(18:14):
I hate these things like the great race or whatever it was called or whatever the island one was where you go and you stay on an island.
Survivor.
Yeah, Survivor. I don't watch anything like that. I have this thing. It's funny.
My wife used to go over to her friend's house to watch Survivor because they were really into it when it first came on.
Yeah.
(18:35):
And this was one of the only times I ever put my foot down, like really hardcore. This was like hardcore patriarchy mode.
I was like, I refuse to have that stuff on my television in my house because it breeds negativity.
The whole thing. When you let poison into your system, it fucks everything up.
And this kind of manufactured, I think coming from everything as an editor, as a TV film editor, I know the tricks that these people play.
(19:04):
Oh, sure.
Everything is manufactured on these programs. There's very little that happens that is unexpected.
And it's manufactured to bring out the worst in everybody.
So I had this like coming to Jesus moment. It was bizarre. I was just kind of like, no, I refuse.
And, you know, my wife still giggles about that to the day where it was just like, no, he just he doesn't want to watch it.
(19:26):
So we're going to go over and watch it at the friend's house because he's got a real stick of his butt about that stuff.
That's definitely something that I will not watch.
Yeah. So those are the two biggies, I guess, right there.
I don't know what my bone is about E.T. I don't. I passed. I got passed up.
I didn't get to see it. I've still never seen Karate Kid.
(19:48):
You know, these are like defining Gen X movies I'm talking about here.
You know, and I never saw it. I have no interest in watching it. I don't want to watch Cobra Kai.
You didn't get as much with Karate Kid. I figured I would.
I thought that was like a chick movie. Karate Kid was terrible.
I was like, this is a chick flick. I won't watch that.
E.T. is a legitimately good film. OK, it really is.
(20:12):
But I I have not seen nor do I intend to ever watch Die Hard.
OK, just you're missing that.
Well, everybody everybody says you are missing a lot because of the whole Christmas aspect of it and all that.
That stuff. And I don't mind Bruce Willis. I like Alan Rickman.
There's no reason for me not to watch it except for I haven't seen it yet.
(20:36):
It's your same thing with E.T. I haven't seen it yet. I'm not going to see it now.
You know, I'm just not what we should do.
We should do a live stream where we sit down and we watch those movies together.
You know, because I remember I saw Die Hard in the cinema.
OK. And I mean, it's fine for what it is.
It's one of those movies that's like this is not connected other than being a Christmas movie.
(21:01):
But National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Sure. OK.
Where people have created this entire mythos around shit or full, you know, funny.
You know, the turkey's fucked up or whatever.
Yeah, they create this whole kind of mythos around it and it becomes this kind of it's like the that movie with the dude in it.
I can't remember Big Lebowski, Big Lebowski, where they've I haven't seen that either.
(21:24):
I've seen it. You're not missing a damn thing. You've seen that and I haven't.
That's surprising. Yeah, I have seen that. But that's another one, though.
I haven't seen it. I'm a big John Goodman fan. I'm a big Steve Buscemi fan.
So I love both of them. Jeff Bridges. That's a sell for me.
They're all three good actors for me. So I watched it.
I don't understand the fascination around it. It's definitely a cult film.
(21:45):
Yeah. Like the Christmas Vacation film is. Yeah.
Like Die Hard has become because everybody's like, it's a Christmas movie.
Damn it. And I just started seeing that like three or four years ago on social media feeds.
And that just reinforced. Fuck. No, I'm not going to watch it.
I'm not interested. That's the way I was with ET because I'd see all the commercials around Christmas time.
(22:08):
And they're like, oh, he's doing this and he's doing that.
And here's the Reese's Pieces and here's our tie ends with McDonald's.
And here's our tie ends with wherever Burger King.
And I was like, this sucks. I don't want to watch this. You know, look at all this tie in stuff.
And but it is really good. I'm not going to get into the cult of ET.
On the reality TV, because we talked about movies. My TV shows are also reality TV.
(22:33):
OK. And it goes back to this first couple of years of Survivor.
I thought it was interesting. That was in the infancy of quote unquote reality TV.
But there was an episode. I don't remember if it was Survivor or one of the other like similar shows.
But during the episode, one of the contestants fell on fire. OK.
(22:57):
And this is what pissed me off. I got literally livid about this and have not watched any reality TV since.
The dude fell in the fire. OK. And they had EMTs there. Sure.
They took care of him. Yeah. Took him off the set. And eventually I think he came back.
(23:18):
My take, if it's called fucking Survivor, guess what, buddy? You're going to die on that island.
And that's what should have happened. So to call it reality TV is a load of horse pucking.
As Colonel Sherman Potter would have said. It's the interactions between people is the reality.
(23:39):
No, not not for me. You remember the real world on MTV? I never watched that.
That was sort of the infancy of reality television. I came out in like the mid 90s, I guess, early 90s.
And all it was was sticking a bunch of bratty idiots in a building in some fancy city,
whichever city they were trying to push, Seattle, Chicago, whatever, and watching them fight over each other.
(24:04):
Oh, so and so fucking so and so. Oh, you're making eyes at that. Oh, you're a you're a homo.
Yeah. Back when you could say stuff like that. And this is, you know, that's all it was was just constant in fighting.
And that's where it all spawned from. So now let's have them in fight on an island.
Now let's put them in a mansion and have them fight over a bunch of bachelors or whatever.
(24:26):
Or the crap with all the singing competitions. Yeah. The voice.
But just stop. If you want to be a singer, go out, find a band, go sing. Sure. Go do it. Do it for real.
Yeah. Don't just sing in your bedroom. Go sing. Because God knows so many bands out there need a singer.
(24:50):
I'll tell you, the landscape of television is since the 2000s probably has just been deplorable.
In a lot of ways. There's I know there's been stuff like what ER or whatever the show is that everybody watches scrubs.
I guess that was it. I think. Yeah. But I think the chasm between the excellent and the crepulent is much wider.
(25:17):
Now, I think a lot of TV is just you wonder how the network gave somebody the money to make this. My 600 pound wife.
Stuff like that. Stuff like that. And then you see stuff that's really well done that really strikes you from an artistic point of view,
(25:40):
from an emotional point of view. And you're like, OK, this is what we're supposed to be doing. This is great.
The simple fact that they took my channels like TLC and Discovery and the learn, you know, the food network and all that.
And it's all reality TV. Yeah, it's all reality TV. Now I got some Asian chick popping people's pimples on television like Dr. Pimple Popper.
(26:03):
Have you not seen her? No. She's old school. This is like five years old or whatever now.
But the simple fact that they had an entire show where this attractive Asian woman lanced people's boils on television or extracted blackheads from them in graphic detail.
This was on the learning channel. Why am I learning to hate humanity? Why would you make a show about that?
(26:26):
I guess the fat people, you know, with their skin cracking and stuff and being able to be hauled out of their house on a crane, whether an engine block crane wasn't gross enough for everybody.
Yeah, I mean, and honestly, folks like that, I feel bad for them. Sure. It's exploitation.
But yeah, and I mean, they sign the waivers and that television is always about exploitation in a lot of ways.
(26:50):
You know, anyway, and that's the way we will end this episode of the Gen X.
You're going to put a pin in it. You're going to lance it. I'm going to lance this episode.
Please let us know your your TV shows and movies that you absolutely refuse to watch.
Leave us a note and may come up as a topic again in the near future.
(27:13):
So yeah, some good stuff to talk about, especially the movies.
It'd be a great list to actually set up and see if we've seen it and do some live stream. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
OK, until next time, my name is Scott and I'm Bunny and we are the Gen X Specialist.
We'll catch you next time. Have a good one.
(27:56):
Thank you.
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