Speaker 1: Get ready for it. And it is the twenty ninth day,
Speaker 1: is that right? Twenty ninth Yeah, twenty ninth day of
Speaker 1: August twenty twenty four, allegedly, according to that thing we
Speaker 1: call a calendar, Sore's Day and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: Welcome to it. It's the O'Kelly effect. And if you're
Speaker 1: hearing us live, that's what day it is. But most
Speaker 1: of you listen to the podcast, So whatever day it is, greetings,
Speaker 1: whatever night it is, Hello. Anyway, here we are on
Speaker 1: a Thursday, and before we get to the call in
Speaker 1: show on Friday, which I'm sure is going to be
Speaker 1: an adventurer this week, we'll see has anything happened in
Speaker 1: the news. I don't know, you know what. Everything is
Speaker 1: a muddled mess as of late. But I had a
Speaker 1: cancelation and was able to grab up somebody who I
Speaker 1: haven't had on a while, but strangely enough had a
Speaker 1: project that they're doing, a piece of writing they're doing.
Speaker 1: And I saw what it was, and I said to myself, gee,
Speaker 1: you know, I put about ten years of my life
Speaker 1: into something associated to a project this person was. Okay,
Speaker 1: I used to make a living. I've said it many
Speaker 1: times on this show. I worked for Exxon Mobile. I
Speaker 1: tell you guys that all the time, right, But what
Speaker 1: was I doing for Exxon Mobile? I talk about personnel
Speaker 1: management and all that kind of thing, and how I
Speaker 1: could not dig dealing with the edicts coming from Houston, Texas,
Speaker 1: which is where the corporate headquarters of Exon was. I
Speaker 1: think it still is. But anyway, you know, it was
Speaker 1: one of those things. But what was I doing Convenience stores,
Speaker 1: gas stations. I worked for Exon and their Tiger Marts
Speaker 1: later on on the run stores because when they merged
Speaker 1: with Mobile and they had to cross brand and rebrand
Speaker 1: and everything else. And even when you guys hear me
Speaker 1: talk about, well, yeah, I worked in a sandwich place.
Speaker 1: I did this, I did that. I've had some people
Speaker 1: say you had a lot of jobs. No, it was
Speaker 1: really one job that turned into a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: I had to do fuel management, fast food, cash earing
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. You have gas attendance, which you know
Speaker 1: you might see them in some places where you have
Speaker 1: full service gas. Somebody comes out and pumps your gas
Speaker 1: for you. By law. You have that New Jersey. Anyways,
Speaker 1: back to it, convenience store world. That also included being
Speaker 1: a lottery agent and stuff like this. A lot of
Speaker 1: things you got to do. And that's what I did
Speaker 1: in the nineties going into the two thousands when I
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, on nine to eleven, and I
Speaker 1: end up sending water to the guys over you know,
Speaker 1: digging people out because I tried to get over there
Speaker 1: onto the island to help. I'm sending water from my job. Why,
Speaker 1: because I was ordering cases of water for convenience stores.
Speaker 1: I also happened to be ordering things like gloves, so
Speaker 1: I sent over work gloves, I sent over some of
Speaker 1: those masks, things like that, in order to give supplies
Speaker 1: to people to help out. Because again I had been
Speaker 1: in the New York, New Jersey area my whole life,
Speaker 1: and there was a very personal aspect to what happened
Speaker 1: to the people and the towers falling and all that.
Speaker 1: But today's show is not about nine to eleven or
Speaker 1: any of that. Today's show, well, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let the author explain it now that I've given
Speaker 1: you this weird, weird setup, and you know what appropriate
Speaker 1: weird setup. Why Joseph L. Flatley is with us and
Speaker 1: everything he writes is kind of weird and quirky, and
Speaker 1: I love it for that reason. I mean, at one
Speaker 1: point it was like taking a look at a psychotic
Speaker 1: man's art project. For a cover of one of his zines.
Speaker 1: We talked about that, you know, evoking the imagery of
Speaker 1: the old trope of a candy a van looking for
Speaker 1: you know, having candy looking for children, almost when he
Speaker 1: releases a picture of something. And what was this the
Speaker 1: searchers and all that weirdness? What was it? Satan goes
Speaker 1: to the mind control convention, you know, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: all of these things sound pretty odd. And I said
Speaker 1: to myself, this guy needs to get to know Adam
Speaker 1: go rightly. And that's weird enough in and of itself.
Speaker 1: And I was right about that. Plus we used to
Speaker 1: do a thing on here where he did the strangest
Speaker 1: of interviews. What did we call that?
Speaker 2: I think that was the Was that the Bad Ideas Department?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a bad Ideas Department. And it was
Speaker 1: just these really strange interviews that him and I would
Speaker 1: listen to his interview back and discuss what happened during
Speaker 1: a very weird interview, and you came up with some
Speaker 1: very unique subjects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, just following my my weird radar,
Speaker 2: I guess, but yeah, it's it's crazy and we haven't spoken.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: I think according to Skype July twenty twenty two, is
Speaker 2: the last time. Oh yeah, it's been a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I And back then we would have been talking
Speaker 1: about the failed state update, which you know, are you're
Speaker 1: not doing that anymore? Are you?
Speaker 2: No? So I had to let that drop. You might
Speaker 2: remember a constant seam in our conversations. If not, you know,
Speaker 2: if not for broadcast and our personal conversations, it's you know,
Speaker 2: when you're an independent journalist who're always broke, which led
Speaker 2: me to take a full time job repairing lottery machines
Speaker 2: for the state of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: I was like, two years ago, I hit the wall.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I can't do this freelance indie journalism thing anymore.
Speaker 2: And spent two years repairing lottery machines and hey out
Speaker 2: in convenience stores and talk about the bailed statement.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait a minute, how the hell do you get
Speaker 1: that job? First of all, before we get into the weird, uh,
Speaker 1: you know part of invisible America, because this is what
Speaker 1: this is, folks. There are parts of America that people
Speaker 1: don't do news stories on that, people don't do documentaries
Speaker 1: on that. People try to ignore because it's either embarrassing
Speaker 1: uh completely incomprehensible to most of the normies in the
Speaker 1: world for one reason or another. And it's not because
Speaker 1: it's about conspiracy theories or you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's just an uncomfortable, in some cases illegal or gray
Speaker 1: zone area of life in general that happens all around you.
Speaker 1: In almost any place where there's a population, there is
Speaker 1: you know, the criminal underbelly. There is the weird sort
Speaker 1: of part of society again that is either ignored on
Speaker 1: purpose or accidentally one way or the other, falling between
Speaker 1: the cracks, and that ranges between homeless people again and
Speaker 1: the embarrassing characters that might be part of the local
Speaker 1: scenery one way or another, that might be endemic to
Speaker 1: a community but are never really truly acknowledged until something
Speaker 1: crazy goes wrong or whatever. Then you might see them somewhere.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, these are constants all around you in America,
Speaker 1: and they're there whether you know we're thriving as an
Speaker 1: economy or not. They're there whether the politics are going
Speaker 1: you know, business as usual and on autopilot, or if
Speaker 1: we're at a time of great conflict and upheaval. As
Speaker 1: we are currently, these things continue to go on. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like there's always going to be a drug dealer
Speaker 1: somewhere nearby, unless you're in a state where it's legal,
Speaker 1: and even in places where it is legal, there's always
Speaker 1: pop dealers nearby. There's always somebody to buy weed from,
Speaker 1: although you know, maybe not everybody knows who they are.
Speaker 1: And again they might be ignored on purpose or accidentally
Speaker 1: by everybody in a community and all that good stuff,
Speaker 1: and they're sort of the rejected and supposed to be
Speaker 1: quietly unseen parts of society, the ignored, the cast out,
Speaker 1: the cast aside, whatever. And you will find all of
Speaker 1: this converging with the normal people in life and people
Speaker 1: who just need gas, or people who just need a
Speaker 1: pack of smokes or whatever, or people who just you know,
Speaker 1: need something to you know, a tobacco product in order
Speaker 1: to utilize tobacco. But really we know they're smoking weed
Speaker 1: when they come to buy a pipe or whatever, and
Speaker 1: they'll go to that little convenience store that always has
Speaker 1: a happy, strange corporate name as opposed to the thing
Speaker 1: that's up on the sign. One way or another. Some
Speaker 1: of them are chain stores, and some of them are
Speaker 1: Jimmy's Groceries, you know, or something like that it's called.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you know they're not there to sell groceries anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is part of it. But how do you
Speaker 1: get a job going and fixing lottery machines? Again, totally
Speaker 1: acknowledged in one way. They happily give you commercials on
Speaker 1: the new scratch offs out there, right, get in on this.
Speaker 1: It's going to support education in your state. You know,
Speaker 1: the usual theme, blah blah blah, blah blah. And you
Speaker 1: have scratch off tickets everywhere in that crap that comes
Speaker 1: off of that latex stuff everywhere and under some people's fingernails,
Speaker 1: almost permanently. And there are people running around who devote
Speaker 1: their lives to scratch off tickets, who have a gambling
Speaker 1: addiction that's acceptable by society standard. You know, nobody's looking
Speaker 1: to break their legs over what they owe to the
Speaker 1: lottery tickets. But it gets strange anyways, that's an aspect
Speaker 1: of those convenience stores too. But I lived in the
Speaker 1: convenience store world and that's a weird place to be.
Speaker 1: How do you end up with that job though, as
Speaker 1: a guy fixing lottery machines, because I imagine you get
Speaker 1: hired as sort of a contract guy, like nowadays, if
Speaker 1: you have a cable company or an internet provider, somebody
Speaker 1: shows up with, you know, a magnet on the side
Speaker 1: of their truck. It's their truck. They were hired, you know,
Speaker 1: off the shelf from somewhere usually and they're not you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm working for Comcast or Cox or whatever communication company.
Speaker 1: But really that's just one of the many jobs they
Speaker 1: could be doing in the new gig economy, whereas you know,
Speaker 1: the old in the old days, lottery people might have
Speaker 1: been assigned, they might have had permanent maintenance people. But
Speaker 1: how do you get that job for a while fixing
Speaker 1: lottery machines in Pennsylvania, which again is only next door
Speaker 1: to New Jersey, so minus the gas attendants. It's the
Speaker 1: same kind of convenience store underbelly that I used to
Speaker 1: live in. Anyhow, get into it. How do you get
Speaker 1: that job?
Speaker 2: Well, I knew somebody it was, you know, it was
Speaker 2: a you you know you you uh, you nailed it.
Speaker 2: So you know, I was a contractor working for the
Speaker 2: lottery company who was contracted the State of Pennsylvania, so
Speaker 2: it was like twice removed from any like state benefits
Speaker 2: or you know state you know, like you know, when
Speaker 2: you work for the states, you get the good benefits.
Speaker 2: When you work for a company that works for a
Speaker 2: company that works for the state, you don't get great benefits, right,
Speaker 2: but yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: So, so you have this regulatory thing in your state
Speaker 1: and it's the Lottery Commission and it's probably got you know,
Speaker 1: between five and eight people on it, and that serves
Speaker 1: as the core who makes the decisions for they contract
Speaker 1: whoever it is that has to build the lottery machines
Speaker 1: to that's another thing. They usually put out a contract
Speaker 1: thing and somebody bids for it. And in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: g Tech is the company that ended up doing all
Speaker 1: that technology. And that technology was like, you know, four
Speaker 1: years out of date the moment they introduced it in
Speaker 1: New Jersey, clunky crap that you know, somebody who's on
Speaker 1: the convenience level has to keep running as best they can,
Speaker 1: and that's a trip in and of itself. But you
Speaker 1: contact the Lottery Commission people. They've contracted everything out from
Speaker 1: the people who answer the phones to the repair people
Speaker 1: to god. I mean they even had had weird ways
Speaker 1: of delivering the rolls of paper and the supplies you need,
Speaker 1: you know, those blank sheets that you get to fill
Speaker 1: out for the lottery. Somebody has to deliver that stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, and they created different ways and went
Speaker 1: through different ways of doing that. But everything is a
Speaker 1: subcontracted issue. So the person who shows up and they
Speaker 1: deliver signage to you, you know, the cute little signs
Speaker 1: you end up with in the window, the giant lottery
Speaker 1: ticket that they give you so that you have a display,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. All that stuff is all subcontracted out.
Speaker 1: So there's really like hundreds and thousands maybe people that
Speaker 1: end up doing the work of the lottery in a state.
Speaker 1: But you're one of these subcontractors that they pick up.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they don't have to give you benefits, they
Speaker 1: don't have to pay attention to you. You just have
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to pay this account. You get
Speaker 1: paid and that's the end of it. And you don't
Speaker 1: really work for New Jersey or excuse me, Pennsylvania in
Speaker 1: your case, you don't really work for the lottery. You
Speaker 1: work for yourself. But you're there to do their work.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you happen to know somebody and you
Speaker 1: got in on this. So anyway, enough of my interruptions.
Speaker 1: I wanted to lay this out for people because I
Speaker 1: swear to you most people don't give it a second
Speaker 1: thought when they see the lottery, and most normal people
Speaker 1: don't even think about the lottery until the power ball
Speaker 1: or the what's the other one or the Mega millions
Speaker 1: is up over one hundred million dollars or close to
Speaker 1: a billion. Now, sometimes you know, they don't even think
Speaker 1: about it anymore, and unless it's that big, and then
Speaker 1: everybody rushes to buy a ticket, and that's all they do.
Speaker 1: Nobody considers there's paper, there's the machines, there's all this
Speaker 1: other crap that the guy trying to sell you chips
Speaker 1: and cigarettes or whatever is also having to manage. So
Speaker 1: now they needed to repair. Guy, was there a problem
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania or did you just kind of randomly stumble
Speaker 1: into the normal flow of repairs that were required in Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, they there's a fleet.
Speaker 2: They have a fleet of guys in white vans that
Speaker 2: are just constantly prowling around a rural Pennsylvania looking for
Speaker 2: a lottery problems. And the reason I wrote about it
Speaker 2: is because, you know, the convenience store, especially when you
Speaker 2: get into rural PA or when you get into like
Speaker 2: inner city Pittsburgh, and especially some of these independent operations,
Speaker 2: it's really like its own subculture. You meet so many
Speaker 2: crazy characters.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer, he wrote a one
Speaker 2: of his novels was called Virtual Light. It took place
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six, which was you know, the
Speaker 2: future at the time that the book came out, and
Speaker 2: he wanted to highlight like class disparity. So he so
Speaker 2: a lot of his novel takes place in convenience stores,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of like I was like, wow, I'm
Speaker 2: living a.
Speaker 3: William Gibson novel.
Speaker 2: It was between the bitcoin machines and the weird like
Speaker 2: weapons that they're selling behind the counter, and the like
Speaker 2: designer drugs, and just the fact that broke people go
Speaker 2: there to buy food because they live in food deserts.
Speaker 2: You know, it's all very I mean, it really is
Speaker 2: a part of the you know, a part of the
Speaker 2: failed state project.
Speaker 1: Right, and these things thrive based on their surroundings. Convenience
Speaker 1: stores in reality, you know, the business of it thrives
Speaker 1: on their surroundings. What do I mean by this? You
Speaker 1: ever notice that there's a ton of them in poor
Speaker 1: areas because, like you said, there's food deserts to start with, right, So,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, a convenience store tries to be
Speaker 1: everything to an area because a lot of their customers
Speaker 1: are going to walk there on foot. They don't have cars,
Speaker 1: even in places where it's almost impossible to live without
Speaker 1: a car, so they're not going to the grocery store
Speaker 1: that could be you know, twenty thirty forty fifty, one
Speaker 1: hundred miles away, even you know, a decent grocery store,
Speaker 1: So they try to be a grocery store. But on
Speaker 1: top of it, they'll also have toys, and around Christmas
Speaker 1: time they'll have more toys, and they try to do
Speaker 1: everything for the holidays, and all of this stuff kind
Speaker 1: of comes together. In areas where again they're trying to
Speaker 1: be a grocery store, they are a gambling outlet now
Speaker 1: because the people that live there are not going to travel,
Speaker 1: you know, many many miles to go to a casino
Speaker 1: which might be nearby regionally, depending on if they have
Speaker 1: a Native American tribe nearby or you know, maybe Vegas,
Speaker 1: or if they're in Jersey, Atlantic City. The people that
Speaker 1: can afford to go to Atlantic City but still have
Speaker 1: the gambling bug might be sitting at a convenience store
Speaker 1: in a car somewhere scratching off tickets for six seven
Speaker 1: hours a day.
Speaker 3: Okay, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: We have the skill games in Pennsylvania, which are like
Speaker 2: they're basically like slot machines, video slots, except there's some
Speaker 2: weird so you know, gambling is regulated, but game playing
Speaker 2: is not regulated, So they like have these like basically
Speaker 2: video slot machines with this like Byzantine rules where there's
Speaker 2: a way that you can win it that's not by
Speaker 2: random chance, so it's technically not gambling. So it's obviously
Speaker 2: like nobody's playing it as a skill game. They're they're
Speaker 2: they're gambling. But it's gone to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Speaker 2: so many times, and the Supreme Court doesn't even want
Speaker 2: to deal with this for whatever reason. I don't know
Speaker 2: who's getting paid off. So now there's like basically video
Speaker 2: slots in like all the gas stations and inconvenience stores
Speaker 2: and even like my supermarket down the street. There used
Speaker 2: to be a pharmacy there's no pharmacy there anymore, but
Speaker 2: you can go in and play play these skill games.
Speaker 2: And now you can go in there and blow your
Speaker 2: whole paycheck on a Friday night right now.
Speaker 1: In the Northeast, this is kind of odd because it's
Speaker 1: highly regulated there, even more so than in a place
Speaker 1: where I sit. Now. See if I go down to
Speaker 1: the local Circle k Okay, which is just as abundant
Speaker 1: here as say a seven eleven would be in the Northeast,
Speaker 1: maybe on the level of a wah wah almost in
Speaker 1: New Jersey but not quite. And in Pennsylvania, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: because you have a store that's just like a wah
Speaker 1: wah and it's a dear God, they make ice cream
Speaker 1: and stuff some farm, oh man, what is the name
Speaker 1: to that store, But it's just like a wah wah.
Speaker 1: And these are big, fancy convenience stores, and some of
Speaker 1: them don't carry lottery at all or games of chance
Speaker 1: at all. But like down here a Circle k or
Speaker 1: many other types of convenience stores, there's literally like a
Speaker 1: video poker sitting there, right But you can't technically just
Speaker 1: go there and cash out and play cash for cash
Speaker 1: like you can at a video poker machine, saying Atlantic City.
Speaker 1: There's all these little workarounds in order so that they
Speaker 1: have to get around the regulations. But it's less regulated
Speaker 1: in the South, So, believe it or not, video poker
Speaker 1: and video slots and things like that are more available
Speaker 1: in the South, in the southeastern region than they are
Speaker 1: in the northeastern region of the country. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of odd that Pennsylvania even has this. But anyway, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And on Friday nights, if you guys want to talk
Speaker 1: to people about the video games in the South, talk
Speaker 1: to be Pete, my co host, because he plays that
Speaker 1: po poker religiously in North Carolina. But I see it
Speaker 1: down here all the time. You're in Georgia, but I
Speaker 1: don't play, And that's another subculture of people.
Speaker 2: Anyway, people still and it's like I think, on a
Speaker 2: state level, it all depends on who's getting paid off
Speaker 2: or whose buddy is in office. Like, for instance, we
Speaker 2: have the super liberal, you know, skill game situation. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, for years, you couldn't buy a
Speaker 2: bottle of wine or a beer in a convenience store.
Speaker 2: You had to go to like a state owned liquor store,
Speaker 2: right for a bottle of wine. And then for a
Speaker 2: while they had I sear of got they had these
Speaker 2: like robots. They were like these huge display cases full
Speaker 2: of wine. And you would go in and you would,
Speaker 2: you know, order your wine, and then a screen would
Speaker 2: come up and somebody in Harrisburg, the state capitol, would
Speaker 2: look at your driver's license through like a web cam
Speaker 2: and then you and so and then you have to
Speaker 2: like breathe into a breathalyzer and then and then if
Speaker 2: you're all clear, then it'll like the robot arm will
Speaker 2: give you a bottle of wine. And it's like like somebody,
Speaker 2: somebody got paid for that machine.
Speaker 1: Because guaranteed and you know. Again, the funny thing is
Speaker 1: your neighbor to the east, New Jersey, there is no
Speaker 1: alcohol sales. Like in most parts of the country. You
Speaker 1: can buy a beer at a convenience store in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: you can't. In some parts of New York you can,
Speaker 1: and some you can't in New York. But the weird
Speaker 1: thing is that they so overregulated it regulated at one
Speaker 1: point in certain areas of New York, the near Ithaca
Speaker 1: uh near Cornell University, right, the guy ended up opening
Speaker 1: something he called the inconvenience store which only sold beer,
Speaker 1: because you couldn't sell the beer at the convenience store.
Speaker 1: And this and that, Like if you want beer or
Speaker 1: wine in New Jersey, you can't get it at a
Speaker 1: grocery store. You can't get it at your you know,
Speaker 1: Sam's Club or your big box stores, none of that.
Speaker 1: You have to go to a liquor store to get
Speaker 1: beer in New Jersey, okay, or what they call a
Speaker 1: package store. But it's odd. See, the regulations are different
Speaker 1: in every place, and they've again had to come up
Speaker 1: with a workaround. See. The interesting thing about those games
Speaker 1: of chance again though, is just to go backwards in time.
Speaker 1: This problem of gambling machines and regulation and corruption and
Speaker 1: all the weirdness that goes on. You know, that's been
Speaker 1: with us in this country a long time. A lot
Speaker 1: of people who don't know the whole history of Jim Garrison,
Speaker 1: you know, the prosecutor you know, ended up taking the
Speaker 1: clay Shaw trial. Right, you're aware of Jim Garrison. So
Speaker 1: one of his big controversies before the JFK case is
Speaker 1: he took on people playing the pinball machines. There was
Speaker 1: a gambling pinball machine racket that went on in New
Speaker 1: Orleans where these machines were technically illegal if they were
Speaker 1: for money, but you could set them up and play
Speaker 1: without them being for money, so you could whatever. And
Speaker 1: there was this whole thing going on, and it went
Speaker 1: so far as the Mob was involved with this and
Speaker 1: skimming money off of the top of it, of course.
Speaker 1: And Garrison took on the pinball machine people for a
Speaker 1: little bit, and that was some of his you know,
Speaker 1: history as a prosecutor before JFK, which is weird. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about a problem in the mid sixties with
Speaker 1: the machines that had already been corrupted and co opted
Speaker 1: by the mob, and then there was government corruption involved
Speaker 1: in it and all kinds of crap. He actually takes
Speaker 1: a judge to trial over it who was getting paid
Speaker 1: off to make sure the mob could keep operating with
Speaker 1: pinball machines back then. So, you know, it's a weird
Speaker 1: thing that's been with us a long time. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I sidetracked there, but I thought you would find
Speaker 1: that interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's such an amusing image of like,
Speaker 2: you know, going after to big pinball.
Speaker 1: Right pinball ball. Yeah, something that you definitely would not
Speaker 1: see in the headlines today. But anyway, let's get back
Speaker 1: to your story, because there's a reason why this story's
Speaker 1: big to you, because you spent a couple of years
Speaker 1: now working in this underbelly. Again, a lot of gray
Speaker 1: area stuff, maybe even possibly black market stuff comes together
Speaker 1: in your local convenience stores. No matter where you are,
Speaker 1: some variation of this exists. I guarantee anywhere in America
Speaker 1: where you sort of have civilization, you have a town,
Speaker 1: you have a city, especially if you have poor people around,
Speaker 1: I guarantee it even in rural America where you have
Speaker 1: a collection of people and there's sort of a centralized
Speaker 1: town and the corner store of the convenience store exists.
Speaker 1: This is an aspect of life going on around you,
Speaker 1: whether you know it or not. So anyway back to it.
Speaker 1: You're in Pennsylvania and there's a weird thing going on
Speaker 1: with the games of chance, which, by the way, why
Speaker 1: the hell was the state lottery involved that? Or are
Speaker 1: they of what with the.
Speaker 2: Games of chance or games of still yeah, well it's
Speaker 2: just a different thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The lottery you know, is the state monopoly, right, and
Speaker 2: they got their their thing going. It's I mean, it's
Speaker 2: all legal gray area, and I mean everything in the
Speaker 2: convenience store world is legal gray area. I mean the
Speaker 2: I did learn, you know, just the vast majority of
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs in this country, small business owners in this country
Speaker 2: are immigrants, and which I find absolutely fascinating, you know,
Speaker 2: because I don't know, I don't know if people I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's like a different culture you move
Speaker 2: here from India or Pakistan or you know, I've met
Speaker 2: people from from Iraq and Iran, and well.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you if it was Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern immigrants, because again in certain areas of the country,
Speaker 1: but in the northeast, it is a lot of Middle
Speaker 1: Eastern slash Asian immigration. That that is, it's people from
Speaker 1: other countries, you know that you know, came here and
Speaker 1: they've got their cousins here, they've got their brothers here,
Speaker 1: They've got you know, a lot of that chain migration
Speaker 1: people were talking about years ago, a lot of that.
Speaker 1: And these people come here and they'll buy a convenience
Speaker 1: store after working at one for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: you know, seven days a week, never stopping. They save
Speaker 1: up their money and maybe a couple of brothers get
Speaker 1: together or a couple of cousins get together and they
Speaker 1: buy their own stores and they start running these places.
Speaker 1: And what do they do. They carry on any kind
Speaker 1: of business they can that they can possibly do in public. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's weird. Yeah, but okay, so it's
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern again. So it's like New Jersey because that's
Speaker 1: what it's.
Speaker 2: Really cool, because it's like it's a network, you know
Speaker 2: of like you know, some guys will buy a business
Speaker 2: and then they have now a base of operation is
Speaker 2: when they have relatives or not even relatives. Just people
Speaker 2: want to move to the United States, they'll help them
Speaker 2: get a job and find a place to live. I've
Speaker 2: heard some amazing conversations where you know, this guy's fresh
Speaker 2: to the country and he's like talking to a shop owner,
Speaker 2: and the shop owners.
Speaker 3: Like, do you have a place to live?
Speaker 2: He's like, I can put you up in one of
Speaker 2: my apartments. You're going to need a car, you know,
Speaker 2: I have a car you can use.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They either own or control apartments for people to
Speaker 1: live in. And they might have five guys and you
Speaker 1: know when you see like ten guys living in an apartment.
Speaker 1: No joke. This isn't me being racist or anything you
Speaker 1: see like ten guys living in an apartment. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: because they all work for the same store, or they
Speaker 1: all work for the same chain of stores where you
Speaker 1: know there's a couple of again brothers or cousins who
Speaker 1: might own them, and who do they work with. Well,
Speaker 1: it just so happens they know somebody else that came
Speaker 1: from India or wherever they came from, who has the
Speaker 1: tobacco distributorship. So they do all their business with them,
Speaker 1: and they get the.
Speaker 2: Workers, you know, and it's like, I want to be clear,
Speaker 2: this isn't like and I know you're the same way.
Speaker 3: This isn't like immigrant bashing.
Speaker 2: This is like, this is what it takes to to move.
Speaker 3: Up in the world like Americans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, go ahead, I mean because even in the case.
Speaker 2: Where crack of that, because I mean, this is what
Speaker 2: our relatives did when they moved here from Italy or Ireland,
Speaker 2: like however many years ago, well they.
Speaker 1: Came here, they grabbed a hold of whatever kind of thing. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the run of the mill American wasn't doing. Because even
Speaker 1: when I would go to these big meetings where they
Speaker 1: would bring together, you know, representatives from all of the
Speaker 1: you know, Central Jersey gas stations together, or we would
Speaker 1: bring all the representatives together of just the exxons in
Speaker 1: Central Jersey. I mean, I was like weird being there.
Speaker 1: It was almost like guys were looking at me strange,
Speaker 1: like what's the white guy doing here? Because nobody else
Speaker 1: was basically born in America or sounded like or they
Speaker 1: all had accents, they all spoke other languages, you know,
Speaker 1: like Hindi or you know, stuff like this, or they
Speaker 1: might have spoken Arabic to each other. And I'm like
Speaker 1: the white guy and they're like, who do you work for?
Speaker 1: You know, and I'm like, eh, well, I'm actually a boss.
Speaker 1: I run stores that really you're a manager. They're surprised,
Speaker 1: or they used to be surprised that I was even
Speaker 1: like supposed to be there, because this is again one
Speaker 1: of those things that you know, your average run of
Speaker 1: the mill American is not out there trying to buy
Speaker 1: a gas station or a convenience store that is all
Speaker 1: relegated to and people complain about it or make jokes
Speaker 1: about it. You know, they talk about, well, of course
Speaker 1: it's owned by an Indian guy and blah blah blah whatever,
Speaker 1: and they used to make jokes about the seven eleven's,
Speaker 1: but everything from your chain store to like I said,
Speaker 1: something that might be called Jimmy's Groceries in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Guess what it's not. You know Joe Smith, whose family's
Speaker 1: been here forever, that buys those business, runs those businesses,
Speaker 1: or works in those businesses. So what do you expect
Speaker 1: it's And again, I'm not trying to make over I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to make a big grand stereotypes up here.
Speaker 1: This is just the reality of the situation. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll shut up and let you go on with this story. Finally,
Speaker 1: but all this context needs to be laid out. Joe,
Speaker 1: don't you think? Sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's yeah, it's quite fascinating. I yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's funny because like the further
Speaker 2: into the city, into the like you know, urban neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: you get like the crazier these stores get. Like they
Speaker 2: go from being like just looking like a seven eleven
Speaker 2: to like being oddly shaped and everything's beat together with plywood,
Speaker 2: and then like then they like start selling like saw
Speaker 2: I swear to god, I saw this guy, Like this
Speaker 2: guy was selling it was like a plastic club and
Speaker 2: like on one end was pepper spray and the other.
Speaker 3: End was like a taser. You know, it was just
Speaker 3: like it was like, you know, it's like you invented that.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know clothing like stuff for magical like
Speaker 2: occult practices like candles and incense and like oh weird, weird, uh,
Speaker 2: like perfumes and you know with name that say like
Speaker 2: Michelle Obama or get a Man or it's just like
Speaker 2: oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's like and there's traveling what I used to
Speaker 1: call the junk salesman guys who literally have like an
Speaker 1: area and they just sort of show up and they
Speaker 1: have like just car loads or truckloads, depending on who
Speaker 1: they are, of all kinds of odds and ends. Like
Speaker 1: you know, they might have big lighters. Now you can
Speaker 1: order that from your grocery distributor, but your junk guy
Speaker 1: might have them cheaper or or what we call the
Speaker 1: cheap lighters, right, you know, those really crappy sea through
Speaker 1: plastic ones. And he might have anything from lighters to
Speaker 1: the latest over the counter sexual enhancement pill, you know,
Speaker 1: the horny goat weed. And then and then he'll have
Speaker 1: stuff like you're talking about, like this club, right, and
Speaker 1: then he has stuff for different seasons too. He might
Speaker 1: come in and swap out his seasonal stuff with you. Right, Oh,
Speaker 1: we got this for Valentine's Day. Oh, Mother's Day's coming up,
Speaker 1: we got this. Oh, you know, Halloween's coming up. We
Speaker 1: got Halloween stuff for you. All of those weird little
Speaker 1: odds and ends and little gadgets that you just see
Speaker 1: to just seem to pop up at your convenience store.
Speaker 1: There's usually a guy running around just selling this stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, I used to know how they got
Speaker 1: a hold of it all. But nowadays, you know, with
Speaker 1: the Internet and everything, I'm assuming a lot of those
Speaker 1: guys went out of business because now people could order
Speaker 1: stuff online. You can just order the stuff from China
Speaker 1: instead of buying it from a guy you know anyway,
Speaker 1: But yeah, continue on this club with the pepper spray
Speaker 1: and the taser, which I totally believe, and the only
Speaker 1: reason why it's legal to sell it in that store
Speaker 1: is because nobody's figured out how to regulate it yet,
Speaker 1: right right, you know, And of course there's always the
Speaker 1: classic like.
Speaker 2: Glass pipe with the paper rows in it for smoking crack.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, technically it's a decorative rose, but everybody knows
Speaker 1: that what it is is a crack pipe. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: That's like the one thing where I'm like, you know
Speaker 2: what this is for? Why are you selling this like
Speaker 2: anything else? I'm like, you know, if you want to
Speaker 2: do bath salts, if you want to, like.
Speaker 1: It's got another purpose. Like you look at it and
Speaker 1: you go, well, look, somebody could actually be using the
Speaker 1: bath salts as I don't know bath salts, you know,
Speaker 1: But but this thing is clearly I mean, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: got the little rose in the glass pipe. But you
Speaker 1: know who's you know. I used to laugh, by the way,
Speaker 1: older lady used to come into one of the places
Speaker 1: that I worked, which was surrounded mostly by retirement villages,
Speaker 1: and she lived in one of those retirement villages and
Speaker 1: was like sixty years old, which is kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: But the sixty year old lady would come in and
Speaker 1: get handfuls of these and look at me and go,
Speaker 1: I like to decorate with these. Like she would always
Speaker 1: make it a point to tell me that she was
Speaker 1: doing craps with these crack pipes, you know, And I'm going, okay, man,
Speaker 1: whatever you say, no problem, I'm guessing. Just coincidentally, you
Speaker 1: also need five lighters you know, Oh yeah, I do.
Speaker 1: In fact, you know, I'm always losing my lighters. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, year sixty five or whatever, sixty eight years.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you she's dead by now. But I mean,
Speaker 1: but back in like nineteen ninety nine, she's going, yeah,
Speaker 1: I lose my lighters a lot, so I need to buy,
Speaker 1: like you do you have six or seven of these
Speaker 1: cheap lighters. I only need the cheap lighters, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm like, uh huh. And then she got really excited
Speaker 1: when I actually got the cigar lighters, you know, the
Speaker 1: torches right right, which again technically it's a cigar lighter,
Speaker 1: but you're buying a glass tube and a torch. And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, do you happen to have a box
Speaker 1: of baking soda? You know, because oh, you're really doing
Speaker 1: some home crafts. I got you. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: By the way, But in some places they've tried to
Speaker 1: ban those by the way, those little roses. But they're
Speaker 1: having a hard time because technically speaking, what is it.
Speaker 1: It's not something that says it's even a pipe or
Speaker 1: anything else. It's just happens to be a glass tube
Speaker 1: that you get a little crappy. You know, rose in
Speaker 1: and technically speaking it's a rose and glass. It's a
Speaker 1: nice little present, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you can't. There's only so many things
Speaker 2: that you can ban, you know, before it just gets
Speaker 2: you know, people are gonna find it some way to
Speaker 2: do drugs no matter what.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Plus they're busy trying to figure out how bad
Speaker 1: the stimulant level is in these different you know, supplements
Speaker 1: you sell. You know, I have vitamins to sell, So
Speaker 1: every one of these stores has a vitamin rack.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, in Pennsylvania we have medical marijuana, so you gotta
Speaker 2: so if you want to do that, you have to
Speaker 2: like get a two hundred dollars card. So everybody does
Speaker 2: the the.
Speaker 3: Delta nine like.
Speaker 2: THC, which is like THC extracted from hemp, but that's
Speaker 2: somehow legal. But you know, they come to from like
Speaker 2: weird factories in China, so nobody really knows what you're getting.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's closed, apocalyptic, and you know it's
Speaker 2: crazy to be in one of these places and see
Speaker 2: somebody come in at like eight am with like a
Speaker 2: pile of cash and go straight to the skill game.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like plugging money in. Or one time,
Speaker 2: the lottery machine was broken in a gas station and
Speaker 2: I get there and this guy's like pacing around and
Speaker 2: he's like, are you here to fix the machine. I'm
Speaker 2: like yeah.
Speaker 3: He's like, thank god.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So so he.
Speaker 2: Fixed in the machine and he's like, oh yeah. He's like,
Speaker 2: I won seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars from one
Speaker 2: of these machines. And I'm like, why the heck are
Speaker 2: you at a gas station on a Sunday morning, Jones
Speaker 2: and for your lottery ticket if you have three quarters
Speaker 2: of a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Because he's spent that already back on the machine. See.
Speaker 1: That's the funny thing too, is because all over the
Speaker 1: place again, in these convenience stores, most of them that
Speaker 1: have a steady lottery clientele, we used to be able
Speaker 1: to you could just barely sign back onto your machine
Speaker 1: at like six am. In New Jersey you were allowed
Speaker 1: to sign back on from midnight to six am. They
Speaker 1: would shut your machines off. Everybody's machines are off, so
Speaker 1: you couldn't cash lottery tickets or print new ones or whatever,
Speaker 1: uh for six hours. And every single day of the week,
Speaker 1: I would have people waiting, uh, you know, for six
Speaker 1: oh one, okay, outside of my store, pacing around, some
Speaker 1: of them smoking, some of them holding you know, big
Speaker 1: stacks of lottery tickets that they, you know, had been
Speaker 1: scratching off the night before, but because after midnight they
Speaker 1: couldn't cash anything, they still have them. And it'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know, a pile of thirty things, all of them
Speaker 1: with two dollars winners right right that they're waiting for
Speaker 1: me to cash, even though I'm trying to get people
Speaker 1: off to work and out of my gas station as
Speaker 1: fast as possible at six am, because some people are
Speaker 1: commuting in Jersey, you know, to go somewhere else. This
Speaker 1: guy's gotta hand me a pile of tickets. I need
Speaker 1: to stumpcash now. And God help me. If I tried
Speaker 1: to sign back on and like I'm sorry, the lottery's down, boy,
Speaker 1: people would get bent out of shape. Uh, And they would.
Speaker 1: And they knew where all the other lottery agents were
Speaker 1: in the area. And I'm gonna go down to this
Speaker 1: place and I'm gonna go over to hear and you
Speaker 1: know what, maybe over at the shop right dating their
Speaker 1: machines up, maybe it'll work there, And like You should
Speaker 1: see the panic that would happen when I would tell them, no,
Speaker 1: I'm being told that our entire area is down for
Speaker 1: some reason. Uh so you're not going to find like
Speaker 1: a working machine in the county until around seven or
Speaker 1: eight o'clock. They would freak out. But anyway, so yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy's thank god you're here to fix the machine.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, what happens next?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good one.
Speaker 2: Or like, uh, I was in inside the machine, so
Speaker 2: the machine was resetting, and it's a piece of hardware
Speaker 2: way in the back of the bottom because of course
Speaker 2: it is, so I had to turn the machine off,
Speaker 2: pull a bunch of shit out, stuff out, excuse me
Speaker 2: to to.
Speaker 3: Get to it.
Speaker 2: So like, picture me on the floor of a gas
Speaker 2: station with my hands inside this machine with components all
Speaker 2: over me. Nothing's lit up, nothing's on. The woman comes
Speaker 2: over to me and goes, is the machine working? And
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, it's constant, like like they.
Speaker 1: Like, it's working, just mine. I mean, don't you normally
Speaker 1: know that I've got eight components hanging out and there's
Speaker 1: a guy hanging out of the hood of this thing, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, they put no lights inside of or anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, under a car hood an occasion
Speaker 1: when you lift up the hood there's a light underneath
Speaker 1: so you can see. But hell no, not in a
Speaker 1: lottery machine. And yeah, I pulled out the printer itself
Speaker 1: and it's sitting on the counter outside of the machine.
Speaker 1: That's normal. Of course it's working. Are you I mean, like,
Speaker 1: really you're asking me, is it working?
Speaker 2: Uh? Okay, woman, I'm thinking about I just started laughing
Speaker 2: because it was the most absurd thing, and she looked
Speaker 2: like so hurt like that I was making fun of her,
Speaker 2: and I was like, it's like, come on, man, you.
Speaker 3: Know, but it's I think you.
Speaker 2: I think when people it's like when people are in
Speaker 2: stores or people are behind the wheel, they're hiptized and
Speaker 2: it's like you throw just a little like wrench into
Speaker 2: their thing and they don't know what, like what to do,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: So it's like, well, you didn't.
Speaker 1: Understand her whole life revolves around what comes out of
Speaker 1: that machine. Joe.
Speaker 2: I mean probably every day for the last three years,
Speaker 2: she's gotten out of the car without thinking, walked into
Speaker 2: the store, walked right to the machine and started pressing buttons.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, the fact that you're on the floor and nothing's
Speaker 2: lit up isn't going to stop her from doing that,
Speaker 2: And it's you know, it's like a real I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just kind of like the hypnotism of the American populace.
Speaker 2: It's like, ye until I like started laughing, it like
Speaker 2: didn't break that hypnotic spell she was in.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean even weirder is see there she can
Speaker 1: press her own buttons. And in some places, by the way,
Speaker 1: they have these, uh, dispenser machines, like a it's like
Speaker 1: a soda machine, but instead of SODA's being up on
Speaker 1: the you know, pictures on the front cover or whatever.
Speaker 1: You have a lottery ticket and you punch your tickets.
Speaker 1: You can put your own cash in the machine and
Speaker 1: get your own lottery tickets out and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff for scratch offs, right, and scratch offs is
Speaker 1: one part of it. But then there's also people that
Speaker 1: have to play their pick threes and pick fours. I
Speaker 1: used to stand behind that lottery machine sometimes and people
Speaker 1: would run in and start barking numbers at me because
Speaker 1: they're trying to remember some number that they've seen all
Speaker 1: day that now is going to come out because if
Speaker 1: they don't play it and a whole thing. But before
Speaker 1: they get to telling me that story, they go, I
Speaker 1: need eight seven, three straight in box and give me
Speaker 1: all the pairs and and they're like eight numbers in
Speaker 1: barking them at me to punch them into the machine.
Speaker 1: And I say to them, look, the machine's not working
Speaker 1: right now. They didn't hear that. They keep going, I
Speaker 1: got to say it three four times before it even
Speaker 1: registers because they're on automatic pilot, coming at me to
Speaker 1: come and play their lottery. So yeah, but this is
Speaker 1: the wildest thing. I don't know if they're hypnotized or
Speaker 1: what to call that, but they are so they're so
Speaker 1: wrapped up in they have to get their number, they
Speaker 1: have to play the machine. Uh it's it's that same
Speaker 1: thing that you can see in a casino, except one thing.
Speaker 1: You can't live like right next to the casino usually,
Speaker 1: and if you do, you're in trouble because areas right
Speaker 1: next to the casino not pleasant neighborhoods to live in.
Speaker 1: But you know, and that would be a weird thing
Speaker 1: to watch, is to see if lottery goes well like
Speaker 1: in that neighborhood just adjacent to Atlantic City, Like I
Speaker 1: wonder what those lottery players are like, I never had
Speaker 1: to deal with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's well we have.
Speaker 2: You know, we had a machines in the casino here
Speaker 2: in Pittsburgh and it was like I was surprised, but
Speaker 2: I would think that, you know, you got real gambling,
Speaker 2: why would you want to play lottery? But yeah, yes, people,
Speaker 2: you know, it was always busy.
Speaker 3: So right, oh man.
Speaker 1: Man, anyway, I keep interrupting your stories. I'm sorry. You
Speaker 1: know what it is, though, is that there are a
Speaker 1: million of these stories that you could tell. So you're
Speaker 1: immersed in this and you get to start going around though,
Speaker 1: and you started telling us that you're you're in rural areas,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I bet a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, think, oh, well, there's all kinds of white,
Speaker 1: trashy weird things that go on there. But really, the
Speaker 1: convenience store it varies a little bit, but it's not
Speaker 1: that big of a variation in a wide spectrum of communities.
Speaker 1: You know, as long as there is a significantly poor
Speaker 1: population nearby, the convenience store will thrive because again it
Speaker 1: becomes a store that like it covers everything, Like you
Speaker 1: can go in there and yeah, you're buying your novelty goods.
Speaker 1: You need to buy your lighters and things like that.
Speaker 1: Whether you're smoking crack or you're smoking Marlboros, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: They got you covered. Sometimes they have you know, weird
Speaker 1: other things going on. Plus if it's a gas station,
Speaker 1: they also have stuff for your car, things that go
Speaker 1: into your car. I mean, it is a crazy wide
Speaker 1: variety of items that end up in this place and
Speaker 1: therefore end up attracting a wide variety of people. But
Speaker 1: to some people, your whole store, even with all that
Speaker 1: work and all that craziness that you put in. You know,
Speaker 1: whether you're an immigrant or you're whoever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You built up this store to serve all these different people.
Speaker 1: To some people, you're nothing more than another lottery outlet,
Speaker 1: and like you're their lottery outlet because one time they
Speaker 1: came in in one one thousand dollars. Oh yeah, And
Speaker 1: therefore you now have a customer for at least a
Speaker 1: few months who's going to come in there consistently trying
Speaker 1: to recapture that win and expand on it. Right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile you get thrown into this world. You know,
Speaker 1: tell me about what your your first day was like,
Speaker 1: how about that, like what was your first adventure where
Speaker 1: you he got totally immersed in this world? Like what
Speaker 1: went on?
Speaker 2: Well, you know it was it was funny because they
Speaker 2: they trained the training, they didn't really train me, Like
Speaker 2: they just had me like hang out with a different
Speaker 2: you know, with another guy and go watch him work
Speaker 2: for like a month and then they and then at
Speaker 2: that point you're just like, I am so bored watching
Speaker 2: this guy work.
Speaker 3: Just throw me into it. I don't care if I.
Speaker 2: Mess up, I don't care how hard it is.
Speaker 1: Just follow this guy around. He'll show you how to
Speaker 1: replace the printers or get him working, or what the
Speaker 1: reset codes are. He's going to show you everything. Just
Speaker 1: follow him around while he does his job and you'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. Okay.
Speaker 2: And kind of the thing was they when they threw
Speaker 2: me into it, it was like right at the end of
Speaker 2: this transition where they're like transitioning out the old like
Speaker 2: mechanical like pot machine style lottery machines where you like
Speaker 2: hit a plastic switch for like they're switching.
Speaker 3: Them out for these big windows computers.
Speaker 1: Oh god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it was like.
Speaker 2: The mechanical machines, the old machines, you would go if
Speaker 2: you had like a light bulb about in one of those.
Speaker 2: You would go and look at the service sheet. Nobody
Speaker 2: had even opened it for like three years, because they're
Speaker 2: like tanks, they just work, you know, right, there hadn't
Speaker 2: been a service call.
Speaker 3: But then these windows machines break down.
Speaker 2: Every three or four days and then and it's just
Speaker 2: I mean, imagine troubleshooting a Windows machine in the middle
Speaker 2: of like a gas station in the middle of the winter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And because somebody got the lowest bidding contrary. See,
Speaker 1: this is what happens. They put out a bid for
Speaker 1: these lottery things when they're going to change stuff over,
Speaker 1: and it's like the lowest you know, bidder who can
Speaker 1: reliably give us a system. This This is why I
Speaker 1: bring up g Tech And I don't know if I
Speaker 1: mentioned them yet in this discussion, but Geech is one
Speaker 1: of the ones that came up with those clunky ass
Speaker 1: big button machines that look like they're from the seventies.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, theah G Tech ITVM I believe that's called.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they have a variation on that in different
Speaker 1: states because they won contracts all over the place because
Speaker 1: they were the lowest bidder that said we can do this.
Speaker 1: We can build you a whole system that will work together.
Speaker 1: And some of those things, even to this day are
Speaker 1: still working on phone lines. Of all things, landlines. Believe
Speaker 1: it or not, you used to have to have a
Speaker 1: dedicated landline for your lottery machine. Okay, I think some
Speaker 1: of them today might be on satellite dishes or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it's so backwards ass technology that even when I
Speaker 1: was running it in the nineties, we were looking at
Speaker 1: it going this stuff is like nineteen seventies cutting edge.
Speaker 2: I know. It was like when you see like Doctor
Speaker 2: Strangelove and they have these like big telephone exchanges with
Speaker 2: like huge like switches and light bulbs and players and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like it's so funny.
Speaker 2: But I mean, but I absolutely loved it because the
Speaker 2: people that work in these places are so nutty, and
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, there's it's it's either like people
Speaker 2: from other countries who are just trying to like, you know,
Speaker 2: work hard and provide for their family, or it's these
Speaker 2: screwball Americans who just want to talk about Trump and
Speaker 2: the transgender agenda and groomers and you.
Speaker 1: Know, all these things, and you're talking about the people
Speaker 1: that work there, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: The people who work there, I've got I've had heard
Speaker 2: some crazy chewing on stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you know why it attracts those people though,
Speaker 1: because again, you know, a whole lot of immigrants shore
Speaker 1: and who are they going to hire again, they're immigrant
Speaker 1: friends and people who know they're immigrant friends, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: But when you see Americans end up in these convenience stores, again,
Speaker 1: not the big chains like a seven to eleven or
Speaker 1: something like that, but you know, the independent ones, these
Speaker 1: are guys that are already on the fringe of society
Speaker 1: to begin with. I mean, I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many times, like you know, I was faced with how
Speaker 1: many felons do I have here? That you know, they're
Speaker 1: not allowed to operate a lottery machine in the state
Speaker 1: of New Jersey if they got a felony conviction that
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah. But but again, you know,
Speaker 1: they got criminal records, they got problems of all sorts
Speaker 1: where they can't get jobs in you know, any place normal,
Speaker 1: and they want to come over and beg to have
Speaker 1: a job because they can't work anywhere else. And they'll
Speaker 1: come over and do a twelve hour shift or a
Speaker 1: sixteen hour shift at a convenience store because they can't
Speaker 1: get work anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So, you know, remember when Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2: I was in a store like Winkles pit Stop or
Speaker 2: something in the middle of you know, Greensburg, Washington County,
Speaker 2: and this woman who was behind the counter had to
Speaker 2: get cat to lock up and get home because she
Speaker 2: was sure that the deep State was going to like
Speaker 2: shut off all the power and shut off the internet
Speaker 2: so that we couldn't watch the Tucker Carlson interview. So
Speaker 2: she wanted to get the store secured. Like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: She's like, what's gonna happen?
Speaker 2: They don't want blow to more Putin tell them the truth, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: somebody's telling the.
Speaker 1: Oh you should have seen what happened in the subculture
Speaker 1: of the day nine to eleven went down because that
Speaker 1: was bizarre. I mean I had to stop you know,
Speaker 1: Jersey style rednecks from like wanting to attack my Pakistani
Speaker 1: gas pumper.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I bet.
Speaker 1: I mean literally I had to physically get in the
Speaker 1: middle of altercations because they wanted you know, blood on
Speaker 1: that day because it was like those people attacked, those
Speaker 1: those Arabs, and I'm like, they're not even Arabs, they're Pakistani's.
Speaker 1: They're dude, they're they're Indians. I mean they're not you know,
Speaker 1: calm down, this is not al Qaeda pumping your gas.
Speaker 3: You know, Americans don't know the difference.
Speaker 1: No, you know, it was wild, man, it was I'm serious,
Speaker 1: it was wild. I mean even the local call in
Speaker 1: station in New Jersey is one on one point five.
Speaker 1: You might have heard of it. It's like all over
Speaker 1: the state. It's the most popular call in and talk
Speaker 1: New Jersey issues. For like eighteen hours a day. That's
Speaker 1: all they do is take phone calls. I literally heard
Speaker 1: on that station people talking about the Arabs working at
Speaker 1: my gas station. You know what about them? We should
Speaker 1: be suspicious. I mean it was wild. But again, the fringe,
Speaker 1: you know, white people that you end up with, or
Speaker 1: you know, or black people whatever, the the homeborn Americans
Speaker 1: that end up working at these places. First of all,
Speaker 1: they're not you know, the cream of the crop out
Speaker 1: there in the job market to begin with. But in
Speaker 1: addition to that, working in a place like this will
Speaker 1: make you more crazy, I gotta tell you, because of
Speaker 1: the characters you deal with. But okay, so Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: is going to get shut down by the deep state,
Speaker 1: so I got to shut down the store and get home.
Speaker 1: H That's probably not even close to the weirdest thing
Speaker 1: that you heard there, but yeah, go ahead, oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that was a really good one.
Speaker 2: And you know, fights people trying to start fights with me.
Speaker 3: Because the lottery.
Speaker 2: Took or like you know, because you know, because the
Speaker 2: lottery machine's not working or something.
Speaker 1: It's story yony, don't you know how to do your job?
Speaker 1: How come it's not fixed? Is it only take five
Speaker 1: minutes to fix this? It's just a computer, you know.
Speaker 2: But the weirdest thing was, like the most remarkable thing
Speaker 2: for me about the job was I was I was
Speaker 2: in my van driving around probably six hours a day.
Speaker 2: So it was like I wasn't even doing that much lottery.
Speaker 2: It was more just like a view, like an up
Speaker 2: close view of like rural Pennsylvania at the you know,
Speaker 2: in the end times. And it was you know, passing
Speaker 2: all the like churches with crazy signs with like you
Speaker 2: know about how Joe Biden's the anti Christ and stuff,
Speaker 2: and you know, and you know, of course I like
Speaker 2: I took my little break from journalism, but you know,
Speaker 2: I never stopped being a journalist. So I talked to
Speaker 2: everybody I could and took pictures and took notes.
Speaker 3: And that's what this book is all about.
Speaker 2: Really. It's like, not about the lottery business, because I
Speaker 2: don't know how interesting I can make it.
Speaker 3: But it's just about living.
Speaker 2: In this particular time in the United States history, which, right,
Speaker 2: it's kind of scary, but I I you know, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I can't think of
Speaker 2: anything more interesting than watching the decline of civilization.
Speaker 1: Well, again, you got exposed to a very gray area,
Speaker 1: and I want you to tell people about you know,
Speaker 1: how this project is going to be viewable by people
Speaker 1: and want to go and subscribe and all that, because
Speaker 1: you're not going to just put out a standard book.
Speaker 1: How is this being put out and how are you
Speaker 1: going to tell the story before we get back into
Speaker 1: uh huh, this fringe of society, please tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Well it is.
Speaker 2: The book is called Convenience Stories, and I'm releasing it
Speaker 2: on substats, so three times, three times a month, you'll
Speaker 2: get a chapter in your email, so roughly once a week,
Speaker 2: and you know, if you sign up Lenny Flatley dot
Speaker 2: substack dot com, you'll get you know, free updates with
Speaker 2: all my work. I'm working on a couple books and
Speaker 2: doing some journalism now. But you'll also, you know, for
Speaker 2: seven dollars a month, you can read my novel and
Speaker 2: if you kick in seventy five dollars or more, you'll
Speaker 2: receive a print copy when it comes out next year.
Speaker 2: So that's my that's the model, and the reason I'm
Speaker 2: doing it like that is just because I love going
Speaker 2: straight to the people. I love self publishing. I have,
Speaker 2: you know, I have my cult book, which Ferrell House
Speaker 2: put out. I have a book I have, like a
Speaker 2: biography of Timothy Leary coming out next year on Inner Traditions.
Speaker 2: And I have another kind of like investigative project on
Speaker 2: a cult that a major publisher is putting out that
Speaker 2: I can't really talk about right now because it's investigative.
Speaker 2: But but so I've doing a lot of weird stuff,
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 2: stuff that we used to talk about on the show
Speaker 2: all the time when I was a guest. And if
Speaker 2: you go to Lenny Flatley dot substack dot com you
Speaker 2: can see it all.
Speaker 1: Right, that link will be in the show notes and
Speaker 1: right now, if you go there right and you just
Speaker 1: you know, land on the page, you'll see introducing convenience Stories,
Speaker 1: and you know, and and some of your passwork too,
Speaker 1: is right there as soon as it pops right up.
Speaker 1: The deadly subculture of Internet video vigilantes. Another article that's there.
Speaker 1: Alex Jones has and quote actual cult end quote. You know,
Speaker 1: and I love this. There's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of wild things that you've written about, a lot of
Speaker 1: the very out of the way sort of things, the
Speaker 1: quirky stuff that is in the gray areas and the
Speaker 1: the much ignored and invisible parts of America. You know,
Speaker 1: Failed State Update is one of those things. I think
Speaker 1: was a perfect phrase, and I think it was a
Speaker 1: great thing that series you were doing, and you were
Speaker 1: doing that with JG. Michael for a while. I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened there with that partnership or whatever, but anyway,
Speaker 1: you're back to well what it was that you really
Speaker 1: did in the first place, which is again this odd journalism,
Speaker 1: except now you have a collection that's going to go
Speaker 1: into convenience stories, and again it's based on a whole
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that you and I have just
Speaker 1: bounced back and forth. None of this has planned out
Speaker 1: as per usual, no script. But I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: banging back and forth with you here because, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, I hardly have anybody in the world that
Speaker 1: I could even talk to about this anymore.
Speaker 2: Because we're veterans. Yeah, we've been through the wars. Well
Speaker 2: it's convenience wars.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And again it is a series of subcultures and
Speaker 1: something that goes on again in invisible America because, like
Speaker 1: I said, from homeless people onto these you know, weird
Speaker 1: little groups that get together and like little clubs that
Speaker 1: are out there and uh and so on and so
Speaker 1: forth where people do converge, convene and associate with one another,
Speaker 1: uh for one reason or another. There's the criminal world.
Speaker 1: There's the gray area, there's the black market, various gray markets. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, like I've talked about on here, the the
Speaker 1: subculture of like say, the flea market is yet another
Speaker 1: one of these subcultures that is going on all around you.
Speaker 1: You the listener, that's going on all around you all
Speaker 1: over the country that again is never focused on, is
Speaker 1: never meant to be really examined by anybody outside of it.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of there and humming under the surface,
Speaker 1: and most people go, well, I stop into my local
Speaker 1: gas station. One of my chatters commented, Oh, I love
Speaker 1: a truck stop. Did you have any truck stops along
Speaker 1: the way with the because truck stops have lottery a
Speaker 1: lot of times?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean yeah, any place with lottery.
Speaker 2: I yeah. My favorite though, was my absolute favorite, was
Speaker 2: going to this one rest stop on the on the Parkway,
Speaker 2: so the highway heading east towards you out of Pittsburgh,
Speaker 2: because you know, you get to like you get on
Speaker 2: the highway, then you get off and you know you
Speaker 2: got you fix the lottery machine.
Speaker 3: You know, it's real quick. Then there's a star.
Speaker 2: Box, Anti Ms, Pretzels, you can talk to some truck drivers.
Speaker 2: That's another business. That's a lot of Indian truck drivers
Speaker 2: in the in the East Coast and the northeast. Now
Speaker 2: really yeah, yeah, you go to you'll go to uh
Speaker 2: rest stops. I didn't see any last time I was
Speaker 2: in New Jersey, but like up towards like like Connecticut
Speaker 2: and uh, Rhode Island, and you'll see like really good
Speaker 2: Indian restaurants like in these truck stops because of all
Speaker 2: the Indian people, you know, and.
Speaker 1: Let's yeah, let's let's differentiate though a little bit, because
Speaker 1: there's a difference between a rest stop and a truck stop,
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, but do you mean it's at a
Speaker 1: truck stop or a rest stop because the okay, because
Speaker 1: that's the place with the anti ms, yeah and all that.
Speaker 2: Then and then the truck stop, you know, the pilot
Speaker 2: station where you could take a shower, right.
Speaker 1: Right, that's a different thing. And there's a huge area
Speaker 1: somewhere where a lot of trucks are just parked because
Speaker 1: people are resting, you know, yeah, stuff like that's a
Speaker 1: truck stop. But rest stops your regular run of the
Speaker 1: mill rest stop. We have a parkway in New Jersey too,
Speaker 1: but it runs excuse me, you know, north to south.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, like that again, it runs north to south
Speaker 1: in Jersey. And we also have the Turnpike, which is
Speaker 1: Jersey's part of I ninety five. But there's also a
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Turnpike too, right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, don't get me started on the New Jersey
Speaker 2: Turnpike because I was just there in the easy past.
Speaker 2: Didn't work, Oh god, I got so going in and
Speaker 2: going out. I got fifty dollars fines, So thank you
Speaker 2: New Jersey Turnpike.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they will find you and send you a
Speaker 1: picture of Oh yeah their bs fine too.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was.
Speaker 2: Oh I can't wait to tell you that story I
Speaker 2: was in. I went to like a cult, a meeting
Speaker 2: of a cult, like a recruitment meeting where they like
Speaker 2: tried to hypnotize me for three days straight in New Jersey. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. It was like it was like in a
Speaker 2: It was in a like a hotel on the at
Speaker 2: the the Newark airport on like a service road, and
Speaker 2: there was like nowhere to go to eat.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, you know, okay, like.
Speaker 2: If you wanted to eat, you had to like sneak
Speaker 2: out and like you know, drive into Newark to like
Speaker 2: find a white castle or a wah wah you know.
Speaker 1: And like I was going to get I was going
Speaker 1: to guess Cherry Hill area, but no, you you were
Speaker 1: you were up by Newark. Okay, that's okay. So you
Speaker 1: had to go all the way across the state, which
Speaker 1: doesn't take long because Jersey's a skinny state to go
Speaker 1: to Newark and uh wow, and so you're at this
Speaker 1: this cult gathering for three days while they're trying to like,
Speaker 1: you know, mind control you.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, what's crazy is they're mind controlling everybody. But
Speaker 2: since I know what's going on, I'm just sitting there like,
Speaker 2: are you guys serious?
Speaker 3: It was like one of these like.
Speaker 2: Self improvement cults, so everybody goes there with problems.
Speaker 3: Oh I wish I can't wait to tell you the story.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 2: But like these people are like they have all these
Speaker 2: problems and they're there for like the guy, the guy
Speaker 2: that's running the thing, to solve the problems.
Speaker 1: Right, And this time discount Tony Robin shows up and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh dude, dude, you nailed it. And and I'm like, so,
Speaker 2: first of all, I'm like, I have there's no way
Speaker 2: even if I had like a big problem, I'm going
Speaker 2: to them for it. So I had to like think
Speaker 2: of a like a fake problem, you know, and lying
Speaker 2: in that sort of situation is not easy, and like
Speaker 2: are lying doesn't come naturally to me? But with this,
Speaker 2: it was like I had to like it would be
Speaker 2: like acting, but I couldn't skip my story straight. And
Speaker 2: then eventually I was like, you know what, guys, I'm cured.
Speaker 2: It's like you did it.
Speaker 1: I'm cured.
Speaker 2: You can stop asking me because you know what, I'm fine.
Speaker 2: My relationship with my parents is fine, my relationship with
Speaker 2: my kids is fine.
Speaker 3: I'm doing good at work. Just don't waste your time.
Speaker 1: Just just in the past ten minutes, I see a
Speaker 1: deposit my bank account. My my financial woes are over.
Speaker 1: I gotta go. Yeah, And they they didn't want to
Speaker 1: keep you and say, oh, look, you need to stay
Speaker 1: here and give testimonials to tell people how we helped you.
Speaker 1: They didn't do that to you.
Speaker 2: Well, it was funny because they knew, they knew right
Speaker 2: away that I was a troublemaker, so so they let
Speaker 2: me hang out, but they you know, purposefully did not
Speaker 2: call on me.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know it was it.
Speaker 2: Was weird, like and but what was crazy about it
Speaker 2: was it was such an intense experience being around these
Speaker 2: other people going through these emotional problems and that like
Speaker 2: I found like the other two people who were like
Speaker 2: cynical and didn't believe in that this worked right, and
Speaker 2: they were like and they but they paid money to
Speaker 2: go to this thing, so they stuck it out. So
Speaker 2: it was like we had this like terrific bond of
Speaker 2: like being like the three weirdos who you know, weren't
Speaker 2: being sucked in by the fault, but it was. That
Speaker 2: was an interesting story. So I'm that's kind of that's
Speaker 2: what happened with convenience or with a felt state. That's
Speaker 2: what happened with JG. There was no like falling out
Speaker 2: with JG. It was literally like when I realized I
Speaker 2: couldn't I wasn't making enough money to hack it as
Speaker 2: a journalist, and like all my sources started drying up,
Speaker 2: and like I had a couple like movie projects that
Speaker 2: I was working on, and it just that kind of
Speaker 2: like fizzled out. And it was just like I was
Speaker 2: so I guess I was depressed in hindsight, like I'm
Speaker 2: not like a naturally depressed person, but like I was
Speaker 2: just so deflated that I was like, I'm gonna I
Speaker 2: didn't tell anybody. I just stopped updating my website, stopped
Speaker 2: doing podcasts, stop calling JG. And you know he never
Speaker 2: called me. Stop calling you you guys would like my
Speaker 2: podcast buddies. I just kind of, you know, every once
Speaker 2: in a while JP so till he would email me
Speaker 2: and be like how you doing.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, that's nice, No J.
Speaker 1: You know what JP is exactly that guy who does
Speaker 1: actually care about you. You know, in the real world,
Speaker 1: you could have brought this up, but the mind control
Speaker 1: fixed my problems. Seminar.
Speaker 2: I know, but they yeah, I could have.
Speaker 1: I'm depressed, I'm a podcaster. I wasn't quite making it
Speaker 1: with what I was doing, and things fizzled out. Helped me.
Speaker 1: You should have brought that up. It would have been real.
Speaker 2: It's funny because that's what I tried to do. I
Speaker 2: was like, really, I was like, I don't have I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't have any problems, but I can
Speaker 2: like put myself in the headspace of like two years ago,
Speaker 2: and I could be that guy. But it was so
Speaker 2: much work, like just trying to like fool them.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It was the same with the Gabriel of your Rancha cult.
Speaker 1: I would let your mind control me, but it's too
Speaker 1: much work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, oh it just hurts. I mean
Speaker 2: I've been mind controlled. I had past life for regression
Speaker 2: last week. Oh boy, it was it was like it
Speaker 2: was funny because I don't believe in that stuff obviously,
Speaker 2: but because you know, I'm like the arch skeptic. But
Speaker 2: the process still works. It's still like a hypnotic process.
Speaker 2: So whether or not you believe that you're experiencing a
Speaker 2: past life or or it's just a fantasy, you're still
Speaker 2: having that experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're having.
Speaker 1: An experience that's a projection of something from deep inside
Speaker 1: of you. Because you're obviously inventing this for a reason,
Speaker 1: even if you're just inventing it, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: one of my chatters says me, you know you're not
Speaker 1: having this problem right now. You've actually gone back to
Speaker 1: work and you're doing your thing again. But you know,
Speaker 1: there was a time where you were deflated. But they
Speaker 1: basically said, you need a show again. You should do
Speaker 1: it on here with with me, like I should pardon
Speaker 1: the wienie dogs. You should do it on here with
Speaker 1: me because it would make some of my lefty friends
Speaker 1: happy to have you on the network. I think is
Speaker 1: the inference here, Uh yeah, because because you know you're
Speaker 1: you're one of my my leftist friends. Obviously you're you're
Speaker 1: one of those communists I happen to associate with, which
Speaker 1: is a weird divide that's gone on. You know, everybody's
Speaker 1: a communist if they're not a trumper. So you know
Speaker 1: it is what it is, but no offense.
Speaker 2: Dude.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm giving the guy your comment so
Speaker 1: he thinks you should do a show. I would produce
Speaker 1: a show for you, by the way, if you wanted,
Speaker 1: I mean, we could do a radio show, even briefly,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to do like a regular weekly or something.
Speaker 1: I'd be more than happy to produce the Joseph L.
Speaker 1: Flatley Show. And I'd keep the wienie dogs out of it,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: So you know, I've been thinking about it, but I
Speaker 2: don't know if I really enjoy like I love talking
Speaker 2: to you or talking to whomever in an interview type scenario.
Speaker 2: But I don't know if I like the idea of
Speaker 2: doing a podcast, or if I doing a radio show,
Speaker 2: or if I just or if I genuinely would enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Like it's like, you know, it's like I toy with
Speaker 2: the idea of starting a band just because it sounds
Speaker 2: like fun, but I don't think I would actually like
Speaker 2: to do it. I think I would be like, it's
Speaker 2: just too much work.
Speaker 3: I want to go home, and.
Speaker 2: I mean writing books, like I kind of came to
Speaker 2: the conclusion that all I want to do is write
Speaker 2: books like everything else exists like in order to.
Speaker 3: Make books happen. I actually believe it or not.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking about this when he brought
Speaker 1: it up. I said to myself, you know, if you
Speaker 1: did like an hour, like a singular one hour per
Speaker 1: week show, you know, you could make a big part
Speaker 1: of it being Hey, here's the update on my stuff
Speaker 1: in a podcast form. You know you can go and
Speaker 1: here's the latest convenience story. Oh, by the way, why
Speaker 1: don't you go back and download you know, some of
Speaker 1: my old and hey, I got other books available that
Speaker 1: I've written before. Plus here's what I'm working on. You
Speaker 1: could literally do that once a week along with the
Speaker 1: other material that you just feel like venting on if
Speaker 1: you felt like you don't necessarily have to do it
Speaker 1: with me either, but but I'd be happy to just
Speaker 1: have you plug into Skype, show up, and I'll take
Speaker 1: care of the rest, you know, as far as production.
Speaker 1: But you know, if that's what you wanted to do,
Speaker 1: that would be great. But otherwise, you know, hey, no need.
Speaker 1: But I'm just thinking it could be something that would
Speaker 1: be a vehicle exactly for that to be a mechanism
Speaker 1: to help, you know, promote and push and keep you
Speaker 1: kind of making new contacts or whatever. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could take phone calls if you wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: up to you. Just something I'm throwing at you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've been thinking about that specifically because like the
Speaker 2: one thing that kept me sane driving the lottery of
Speaker 2: van around was I discovered like these people that would
Speaker 2: like upload old episodes of the Stern Show, like on
Speaker 2: the YouTube, and he was such a such a master
Speaker 2: like of like broadcasting in the nineties or whatever. But like,
Speaker 2: and the reason I like those shows is because the
Speaker 2: callers and like the weird community around it, Like I
Speaker 2: would love to you know, I was thinking about doing
Speaker 2: something like that, like like imagine like the leftist conspiracy Stern,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Try and build a whack pack around that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, because it's like there's something oddly even
Speaker 2: though like you know, Stern is the one of the
Speaker 2: tenth richest people in the world and hobknobs with really
Speaker 2: boring celebrities. Now he still has that like weird community
Speaker 2: of like Marianne from Brooklyn or whatever, right, people who
Speaker 2: have been calling him for twenty years. And that's what
Speaker 2: I love, is like that sort of interaction. But that
Speaker 2: sounds like another job to me. And I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm.
Speaker 3: I have it in me.
Speaker 2: I start a buddy of mine and I started a business.
Speaker 3: That's the other project.
Speaker 2: This is why I was able to leave the lottery
Speaker 2: biz is. A friend of mine started a media company
Speaker 2: here in Pittsburgh and it's called Amphibian and we're producing. Uh,
Speaker 2: we're like like pitching stories and producing podcasts for podcast
Speaker 2: networks and writing books.
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Speaker 1: Express my caller schools there anyone else who happens to
Speaker 1: get on the air of Jelly dot com. Do not
Speaker 1: necessarily reflect debews Li, Jilly dot com or Jumbo Chilly,
Speaker 1: and we are not responsible for any stupidity which might ensue.
Speaker 1: Thank you go ahead calling the truth about the day
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Speaker 9: This Doug Campbell, host of the Dallas Action podcast presented
Speaker 9: by Wall Street Window, and you are listening to the
Speaker 9: o'chill effect Revelation through Conversation.
Speaker 5: Radio Revelation through Conversation SHO chilly dot com.
Speaker 1: This is James Corben at port Report dot com and
Speaker 1: you're listening to the Chilly affected Olly dot Com.
Speaker 7: Well, no, no, I'm.
Speaker 6: All shot the tar rots the lot at the drut show.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing all shot lock and tear rot the lot
Speaker 1: at the drafts shows. So for the second and final
Speaker 1: segment of this Thursday Night O Shelley Effect, I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here with Joseph L. Flatley as a brand new series
Speaker 1: on substack that he'd love it if you would subscribe to.
Speaker 1: And I am gonna find interesting all the way because
Speaker 1: of my own past life experience, but you might find
Speaker 1: interesting because it'll give you a glimpse into a part
Speaker 1: of invisible America. That invisible American story might be told
Speaker 1: by a guy going around and fixing lottery machines at
Speaker 1: your local convenience store, or at a convenience store in
Speaker 1: a community that maybe you think is a million miles away,
Speaker 1: But I got to tell you, I guarantee you it's
Speaker 1: only just a few blocks from wherever you are. If
Speaker 1: you're near civilization, the convenience store world and the characters
Speaker 1: that are attracted to the lottery machines that Joe had
Speaker 1: to go fix, et cetera, et cetera. And again, even
Speaker 1: though it was in Pennsylvania, I assure you there are
Speaker 1: stories just like it near you. Yeah, so that's at
Speaker 1: Let's see, let's make sure I have the web address correct.
Speaker 1: What is that address again? I know I put it
Speaker 1: in the chat room already. Oh here it is Lenny Flatley. Okay,
Speaker 1: Lenny spelled l e n n y Flatley f l
Speaker 1: A t l e y Lenny Flatley all one word
Speaker 1: dot substack dot com. And yes, indeed you can also
Speaker 1: see failed state update stuff there previous articles. But beginning
Speaker 1: now convenience stories, and this will be a novel that
Speaker 1: you'll be able to get a chapter of three times
Speaker 1: a month, he said, And you know, approximately once a week.
Speaker 1: I guess it won't be exactly on a particular day
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but around three times a month
Speaker 1: you get an installment if you subscribe for what is it,
Speaker 1: seven dollars a month?
Speaker 2: You said, yeah, seven dollars a month, which you know substack,
Speaker 2: meaning I only see five of that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but and don't get me started, and.
Speaker 1: Then you can get a physical book when it's completed
Speaker 1: if you put in seventy five bucks. Now does that
Speaker 1: mean that if I put in seventy five bucks over
Speaker 1: the course of a year, I'll get it. Or does
Speaker 1: that mean I got to make a seventy five dollars
Speaker 1: payment to get the book?
Speaker 3: Well that's the big Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you do the big payment all at once, it's
Speaker 2: kind of like a a you know, a thank you
Speaker 2: to giving me a big chunk of change, so they'll
Speaker 2: be at options. It's actually seven dollars a month or
Speaker 2: seventy five dollars a year. And then there's another item.
Speaker 2: It's called a founding member, which is any amount over
Speaker 2: seventy five, So you can put seventy six dollars in
Speaker 2: I'll give you like that comes with the gift of
Speaker 2: the free book. So substack makes it a little confusing,
Speaker 2: but hopefully that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get this straight. Seven dollars a month
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to it. If you want to put
Speaker 1: in seventy five bucks for the year, you'll save some
Speaker 1: money because twelve months at seven dollars. Let's do the math.
Speaker 1: Eighty four bucks so you can save yourself nine bucks,
Speaker 1: or if you put in anything over seventy five bucks
Speaker 1: and become a founding member, like you said, seventy six dollars. Done. Deal,
Speaker 1: you get the added gift of getting a physical book
Speaker 1: when they're printed. Any idea. Is there a target on
Speaker 1: when that's going to be printed?
Speaker 2: Well, it looks like that with the publishing schedule I have,
Speaker 2: it'll be you know, January February of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: But oh, you know, yeah, so not to not too
Speaker 3: you know, not too far off.
Speaker 2: But you know me, I've always been really good to
Speaker 2: your listeners. If anybody wants a book there, if they
Speaker 2: want to, or if they want to get the thing
Speaker 2: but they don't have money, email me. And you know
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna I'm not going to keep somebody from
Speaker 2: reading my book just because they're broke.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it works something out, but I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you also got to eat too. So the thing is,
Speaker 1: if you chip in though, you end up with this
Speaker 1: book and I want a physical copy of this, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you because physical copies are way better than you know,
Speaker 1: than the digital, because digital can disappear on you. You
Speaker 1: lose your computer, you lose your account, you forget your password,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you don't have a book.
Speaker 1: So I love the physical book. So I would advise people,
Speaker 1: if you can afford it, yeah, go there and just
Speaker 1: chip in even a dollar more. Or hey, if if
Speaker 1: you're generous and you have it, kick in what you
Speaker 1: can to Lenny Flatley and fund what he's doing.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: But either way, if you want to go for seven
Speaker 1: bucks a month, all these options are there, So seven
Speaker 1: seventy five for the year, or go over seventy five
Speaker 1: and you'll end up with a physical book as like
Speaker 1: an extra thank you. Okay, So all of that at
Speaker 1: Lenny Flatley dot substack dot com. The link will be
Speaker 1: in the show notes with the podcast, and it's also
Speaker 1: in the live chatroom at Ochelli dot com. And I'll
Speaker 1: share it with friends and stuff too, So hopefully you'll
Speaker 1: get some sign ups out of this, and I hope
Speaker 1: that you guys listening to this will also support Joseph L.
Speaker 1: Flatley's work. I've always urged you to do so, and
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it. It is the quirkiest stuff that there
Speaker 1: is from an intelligent guy who tells you stories that
Speaker 1: are unique. You're not going to get, you know, convenience
Speaker 1: stories all over the place. There's not one hundred of those. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not like a clone of somebody else's work. It's
Speaker 1: all original, all unique and very quirky and well written,
Speaker 1: because again it's written by Joseph L. Flatley. So with
Speaker 1: all that having been said, maybe you could give us,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just kind of a pearl to go
Speaker 1: away with here, anecdote from your time doing you know,
Speaker 1: doing this trek of two years.
Speaker 2: You said it was yeah, two years, yeah, two years
Speaker 2: almost almost two years.
Speaker 1: Two years among the subculture of the lottery people inconvenience
Speaker 1: storeland that you're telling inconvenience stories. Maybe you could just,
Speaker 1: I don't know, give us a good teaser or a
Speaker 1: roundabout or maybe something you left out of the book,
Speaker 1: just one little anecdote, and then I'll let you go
Speaker 1: for the night because I'm sure you got other things
Speaker 1: to do, So go ahead, tell.
Speaker 2: Us something so funny, because I'm like paging through the
Speaker 2: manuscript because it's done, you know, I'm releasing it one
Speaker 2: chapter at a time. But I wrote it. I think
Speaker 2: I wrapped it up in February, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like a ton of anecdotes or you know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's really just like ruminations on like that
Speaker 2: Unseen America, a lot of like thinking back to my
Speaker 2: childhood and like, you know, kind of coming to grips
Speaker 2: of growing up in the old Rust Belt during the
Speaker 2: Cold War. But I mean, probably my my favorite adventure
Speaker 2: in this whole thing was when like met some ghost hunters,
Speaker 2: ghosts people that go around to like you know, haunted
Speaker 2: locations and try to like film them with their THEO camera.
Speaker 1: Okay, so not not not the guys with the TV
Speaker 1: show ghost Hunters, but like amateur ghost hunters like what well,
Speaker 1: like filming their adventures when year olds Okay, we're in.
Speaker 3: Like a polygamous relationship or like.
Speaker 1: A poly polyamorous okay, polyamorous Goths people of a young
Speaker 1: age or are they older?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think the oldest one was like thirty and
Speaker 2: the other ones were like twenty four.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that generation of people goths sort of Now
Speaker 1: are they running around with retrocamquarders or are they using
Speaker 1: cell phones to take their.
Speaker 3: They're using cell phones?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so they're not fully dead catered to the
Speaker 1: retro gospel.
Speaker 2: No, no, but it was. It was great because like
Speaker 2: so there was I might have told you this story
Speaker 2: like right when I like before before it took the
Speaker 2: lottery gig. I applied for like a newspaper job at
Speaker 2: this weird newspaper in this like abandoned oil ex oil
Speaker 2: town called Sistersville, West Virginia, and this like crazy guy
Speaker 2: owned like a hotel and he realized that there was
Speaker 2: no newspaper in the hotel or in the town, so
Speaker 2: he like launched a newspaper and he needed a reporter
Speaker 2: to move to West Virginia to work at.
Speaker 3: The hotel part time and to write for this.
Speaker 2: Time.
Speaker 1: Sure, so.
Speaker 3: So all right, so I applied.
Speaker 2: Guy was a lunatic. It didn't work out, as you
Speaker 2: can imagine. And here I am a year and a
Speaker 2: half later, depressed because I'm working at a for the
Speaker 2: in the lottery game, and I hear these goths talking
Speaker 2: about this hotel and how they want to check it
Speaker 2: out because they're, you know, because they heard it was haunted.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's a legend of spiritual activity going on at
Speaker 1: some hotel. Uh. And meanwhile, you're in the Pittsburgh area,
Speaker 1: and where did you say this hotel was West Virginia
Speaker 1: or yeah, this is West Virginia.
Speaker 2: So it's like we're in western Pennsylvania. This is the
Speaker 2: part of Western Virginia that's like between like if you
Speaker 2: look at West Virginia, part of it sticks up and
Speaker 2: it's like in between Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's like so.
Speaker 2: It's pretty close, but there's no direct roads, so it's
Speaker 2: like an hour and a half drive anyways, Okay, and
Speaker 2: I heard them talk and I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: I was just at that hotel.
Speaker 3: So they're like, oh man, you got to.
Speaker 2: Come with us, You got to come with us. Okay,
Speaker 2: So they're like showing showing all there, like like ghost
Speaker 2: catching equipment, and like like the big one was like
Speaker 2: something called like cat balls. They're like toys, they're like
Speaker 2: round toys. They're just little balls, but they have like
Speaker 2: an led light in it, and if the cat hits it,
Speaker 2: it like lights up.
Speaker 1: And so they put it in a room where nobody
Speaker 1: is and there's no cats, and if it lights up,
Speaker 1: then obviously the ghost got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ghost got it.
Speaker 1: Okay. That's almost as weird as did you ever see
Speaker 1: the thing that they were using something from one of
Speaker 1: the video game consoles that was like a motion capture
Speaker 1: and you put the motion capture thing in a room
Speaker 1: where nobody is and then the motion capture suddenly picks up,
Speaker 1: you know, figures of people and things in places where
Speaker 1: there are no people. And they were saying for a while,
Speaker 1: that's a ghost on the ghost on the emotion capture.
Speaker 1: You ever see that? No, but I do know it's
Speaker 1: a real thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I believe, do you know if I'm talking to
Speaker 3: ghost hunters that.
Speaker 2: They love like cheap like electronics and like cheap stuff
Speaker 2: because they think it works better when when you think
Speaker 2: about it, what's gonna malfunction something that you got from
Speaker 2: Temu for two dollars or something that you bought from
Speaker 2: like Apple. You know, it's like, you know, so it's
Speaker 2: kind of like a self reinforcing glitchy technology.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, so so we went to Sistersville and.
Speaker 1: You went with these guys.
Speaker 3: Okay, and is.
Speaker 1: This story laid out inconvenience stories about the Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so people will read all about it, kind of.
Speaker 1: Like the the off road trip of the of the
Speaker 1: trip during convenience stories as a trip through your your
Speaker 1: time as a repair man.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, this was a weird time in
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 2: Just I mean, I'm not sure if much chuck, but
Speaker 2: I am sure that I'm supposed to be writing and
Speaker 2: when I'm not writing, I am so depressed and angry.
Speaker 2: And so what happened is I would work this utterly
Speaker 2: exhausting job where I was driving around these country roads
Speaker 2: like six hours a day plus working you know, you
Speaker 2: know these are like nine hour days, and then I
Speaker 2: would come home and write for five hours because I
Speaker 2: can't live with myself if I'm not writing.
Speaker 3: So I don't think I slept for two years.
Speaker 2: And then I got a book contract for a like
Speaker 2: basically a biography of Timothy Leary and nice that goes
Speaker 2: into everything from like his his history to how the
Speaker 2: cult influenced him and whether or not he was an
Speaker 2: FBI snitch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna ask whether or not he's an
Speaker 1: agent and all that. And oh, by the way, is
Speaker 1: the whole Acid thing actually just a part of MK
Speaker 1: ultra and all that?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: Well, I didn't go much into the mk Ultra thing,
Speaker 2: but I might. I mean, so I just finished the
Speaker 2: first draft, so like, like that's on my list of
Speaker 2: like of editions. But so I got that contract. So
Speaker 2: what's the first thing I did was I wrote a
Speaker 2: book about working for the lottery. So I should have
Speaker 2: been working on the Leary book. But this Lottery book
Speaker 2: came out of me. And it's really just an expression
Speaker 2: of my frustration and you know, my love for just
Speaker 2: regular weird people and kind of you know, some of
Speaker 2: my reflection on my childhood. It's probably parts of it
Speaker 2: are probably the closest to like a memoir or a
Speaker 2: autobiographical book I'll ever get because you know.
Speaker 3: So I think people are really going to dig it.
Speaker 1: And you know, it occurs to me that you're writing
Speaker 1: in essence should be like a Netflix series, like just
Speaker 1: like it should be like Joseph L. Flatley's you know,
Speaker 1: Strange People or something like that. That's what it should be,
Speaker 1: like Joseph L. Flatley's whatever. You know, Like like make
Speaker 1: it like a PT Barnum kind of template thing where
Speaker 1: it's like I'm going to show you the odd people
Speaker 1: all around you, you know, and I'm going to show
Speaker 1: you the odd things that go on in the underbelly
Speaker 1: of this that and the other thing, the world of cults,
Speaker 1: the world of you know, the underground, the underbelly of
Speaker 1: this and that the lottery just you know, Joseph L.
Speaker 1: Flatley's underbelly call it maybe you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And it would just be a series about here's weird
Speaker 1: people from this segment of society. Here's the people from
Speaker 1: the different cults you know here, let me focus on
Speaker 1: this cult. Let me go and tell you about the
Speaker 1: guys who are like supporting legalizing weed and somehow are Nazis.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about the Satanists who are over here,
Speaker 1: but they're loving Satanists, you know, I mean all that
Speaker 1: stuff like one step further with Joseph L. Flatley or something,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And I mean and it's funny because you know,
Speaker 2: you're like, you know, you describe it, or when I
Speaker 2: describe it, I'm like the weird people, and it's like
Speaker 2: there's no there's no other word you can use. But
Speaker 2: it's like I say it, and I think you say
Speaker 2: it with love.
Speaker 3: It's like I.
Speaker 2: Hate to break the news to you, Chuck, but you're
Speaker 2: one of the weird people.
Speaker 3: Oh I know, And I'm one of the weird people.
Speaker 1: So right, I mean, you're definitely a weird person. I
Speaker 1: have no problem with being out of the ordinary or strange.
Speaker 1: I've always been that way and I'm aware of it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, some people take offense set I'm not weird
Speaker 1: at all. This is very normal, and they'll tell you
Speaker 1: about how normal whatever it is they're doing is. But
Speaker 1: it's because if you're immersed in that world, you don't
Speaker 1: realize that you're abnormal. Usually, you know, most people aren't,
Speaker 1: you know, they think way no on what That's no
Speaker 1: different than me being, you know, anything, a Republican you know,
Speaker 1: like well nowadays it isn't, but uh, it used to be. Uh,
Speaker 1: you couldn't be, you know, part of the normies. And
Speaker 1: also this but but anyway, you know, there is the
Speaker 1: unusual aspect here. This is not the majority, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So I got no problem with being
Speaker 1: one of the you know, one of the items on
Speaker 1: the island of misfit toys. I know that It's fine.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, I've got my own little clutch there
Speaker 1: where the rest of the misfit toys they come a misfit.
Speaker 1: I'm fine with that, you know, uh, and I think
Speaker 1: you are too, So yeah, of course this is with love.
Speaker 1: This is almost like not only do I say it's
Speaker 1: it's loving and uh and and all that and and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying anybody's normal there. But what I am
Speaker 1: saying is I don't hold it against anybody. For sure.
Speaker 1: I can't because I'm one of you in a way.
Speaker 1: You know, I realize and recognize I am one of
Speaker 1: the strange people. So you know, strange person. That means
Speaker 1: you're you're actually part of my world as opposed to
Speaker 1: everybody else's, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2: That's right, man, it's we're weird and uh, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: want to be any other way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're weird. We're here and we're not going to
Speaker 1: rhyme it. You know, pretty simple. So anyways, with all
Speaker 1: that having been said, yeah, definitely, I suggest people go
Speaker 1: over to Joseph Flatley. Uh let me just make sure
Speaker 1: I got that straight. No excuse me, Lenny Flatley dot substack.
Speaker 1: I always mix that up. Lenny Flatley dot substack dot com,
Speaker 1: which is what the L stands for, by the way, anyways,
Speaker 1: Lenny Flatley dot substack dot com. And you can get
Speaker 1: convenience stories and follow your work and there's lots of
Speaker 1: ways that people can support that plus when you come
Speaker 1: out with the Timothy Leary book, you got to come
Speaker 1: back on and talk about that at least.
Speaker 2: Heck, yeah, that's a weird one too, so and I
Speaker 2: don't throw that word around lightly.
Speaker 3: That's gonna be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: So I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: And you know, I love it when you're when your
Speaker 2: listeners reach out to me, so they can they can
Speaker 2: email me from the same you know, when they get
Speaker 2: my newsletter, it'll come from my email address, so they
Speaker 2: can reply to that because your readers always, your listeners
Speaker 2: always have interesting stuff to say. So so let's be friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do that, contact him. He loves it, especially if
Speaker 1: you're one of the weird people yourself. You never know
Speaker 1: you might end up in one of his blogs or
Speaker 1: books or et cetera, et cetera. Right, Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: you go. So josephel Flatley, thanks for doing this with me.
Speaker 1: And again Lenny Flatley dot substack dot com. Go there,
Speaker 1: sign up for Convenience Stories. I'm finding the idea of
Speaker 1: and entertaining and I've read the first part and you
Speaker 1: guys can go there right now and do that yourselves,
Speaker 1: get into it. It's it's a lot of fun in
Speaker 1: my mind, and again another glimpse into part of what
Speaker 1: is invisible America. So with that being said, I'm merely o'celly.
Speaker 1: All of you are indeed the effect. Have a good night.