This was written by AI, so I felt like I had to share it:

🎙️ Exciting news, fam! Just joined Threads, the new Twitter-like app. Ready to dive into conversation about battery life, social accusations & more. Let's connect and keep the dialogue flowing! 🗣️📲 #Threads #NewApp #JoinTheConversation

The show is more complex than that, including prayer for a class war and love for the Running of the Bull in Dewey Beach. You know how these things go.

This is the AI transcript, it’s not super accurate, so if you’re confused check the tape.

Todd DeHart [00:00:20]:

I am Todd from Good Cleanfunlife.com.

Tony Russo [00:00:22]:

And I am Tony Russo. No relation. And you're listening to Day Drinking on Delmarva, a show about life and culture on the Del Marva peninsula. Tod drinks because he gets to live here. I drink because I have to live here. And since I've been back, I've been drinking a lot more. So as you know, if you're a regular listener, we haven't been regular posters because we've both been away. But now we're both back for at least two weeks.

Todd DeHart [00:00:49]:

This week and we'll see about next, right?

Tony Russo [00:00:52]:

So much to get to. We won't get to it. All I do want to say so I was on vacation in the Pacific Northwest. I was in Pullman, Washington, which is by Washington State University. And every day when I woke up, I'm like, it is so great not to wake up in Del Mar. It was shocking. What did you do on vacation? I not del. Mar. That's what I did. I woke up, I saw what it's like to wake up and not be in Del Mar and I felt like I could live another six months.

Todd DeHart [00:01:24]:

Yeah, well, there you go. That's good for you. That's good for you.

Tony Russo [00:01:28]:

Yeah.

Todd DeHart [00:01:29]:

I mentioned before the show, we got started, been up and down the road, all over the place and some work, some fun, but all great experiences. But summer is in full swing now and our busy season, and I always say that we're busier in the off season now, but we are really busy running. And I think towards the end of last year I tried to stop using busy in sort of like a negative connotation. Oh, yeah. Some friends that we just saw live in Montgomery County and talk about how people use busy like a badge of honor. It's like, oh, I'm so busy. And it's sort of a toxic environment, but we're very busy. So not a badge of honor, just the facts.

Tony Russo [00:02:31]:

No, just keeping ourselves occupied. Yes. Yeah, that's what you say. You say we're well occupied. The other thing that we do every week is we're sponsored by a company that is a local business that we like. And this week it's you because you're clearly not ready for it. And I clearly just remembered it. Yeah, we're still knocking the rust off a little bit, but Good Clean Fun Life Productions, I guess I've started looking at social media, so I've seen you more on social media, but you guys have been running all around taking photos and doing events.

Todd DeHart [00:03:08]:

Well, one of the things that causes us to be very full this time of year is Freeman stage is up and running. We're going to be doing covering about a third of their shows all summer long. We're back at Hammerheads, we're back up in Dewey quite a bit, and big events there. We've had the Running of the Bull, which is one of the most enjoyable and silliest events that you've ever witnessed, which is also a fundraiser, which is super fun for the local fire department up there. And we've been doing all sorts of stuff. And of course, as the business as the commercial would go, we do event video, photography, websites and in general marketing, digital and all sorts. I said media production.

Tony Russo [00:04:08]:

So let's spend a minute talking about something we didn't prepare to talk about. Threads. Have you looked? Have you gone? Have you been? I have.

Todd DeHart [00:04:19]:

We were actually out at a shoot when I guess it dropped and I hadn't been paying attention enough, close enough attention to anticipate it. But I signed up. I got our good, clean fun handle. I got the starboard handle. I'm just going to hold it there for now. But I never was a big Twitter user to begin with. And it was sort of funny though. I had a friend who shot me a text and she said, if I learned anything from you, it's always just sign up for the new thing and then give it a taste test, right? And she had actually signed up before I did, but I was one of the first night. It was super easy to do the next day. Then they have all the conversation and articles about, I don't know, battery life and more information gathering accusations. And I'm like, yeah, you know what, I didn't use Twitter a whole bit. I don't know how much I'll use this, but I'm going to check it out.

Tony Russo [00:05:35]:

Actually, this morning was the first time I messed with it at all because it was a little overwhelming. But it reminds me of early Twitter and early Facebook. And as long as they don't mess it up, it would be really interesting to see if they genuinely just if this is a present to people who use social media, that would be nice because it really is. You see your friends post. If there's an algorithm, I haven't figured it out yet. It is the perfect marriage between Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. You can have longerish posts, you can use photos, you can use videos. I'm trying to train the algorithm, so I go on to Instagram until it shows me the first reel. And then once I accidentally click on a reel and it won't let me back to not reel, I turn them and I don't go for another week. Yeah, I don't know if that's going to train the algorithm, but that's what I'm trying to do. But I can at least say, as you say, you should at least be on it to make sure you have your handle, if nothing else, right? And I don't think anyone can take your handle if you're already on Instagram.

Todd DeHart [00:06:52]:

Well, that was one of the nice and interesting things, is that everything pulls over. Everyone you follow, you already follow. What a way for them to just throw a switch and for people to feel like they they already have a presence, even if they've never well, nobody had ever used it before, so yeah, it's a good integration.

Tony Russo [00:07:21]:

One of the things that I thought was very interesting about it was that they chose to do Instagram rather than Facebook, knowing that it was like they were admitting that Facebook is an unsalvageable cesspool. And we don't want that vibe over here. We want the Instagram vibe. We want the sharing vibe. These are the people that you share with. These aren't the people that you follow so you can mock. These aren't people that you follow with your fake accounts or whatever. These are the people that you want to see what they have to say already. And so they chose Instagram instead of Facebook, where it's which, like Twitter has a lot of hate following right. And different lovely things like that. I don't know. I'm for it. I'll be for it until I'm against it. But I haven't been on Twitter in a long time.

Todd DeHart [00:08:11]:

It is interesting. Like I said, I haven't been a Twitter user. My first thread, I think, was something to the vein of I liked Twitter sucking so that I didn't have to do it for my clients. But there is something is it considered shot in Freud? Like seeing Twitter getting beat up a little bit for the number of users that are jumping on this right away and seemingly to be excited where that was missing something for a long time now.

Tony Russo [00:08:53]:

Yes. And actually, one of the last things that I wrote, I think I wrote it two or three weeks ago or maybe last week, I don't know. But I wrote about the submarine. Remember the submarine guy died?

Todd DeHart [00:09:10]:

Yes.

Tony Russo [00:09:11]:

And everyone was so happy that these people the only argument was if you felt better that they died. When everyone heard that they may not have experienced any pain, we were all a little disappointed. Good. I was very happy they died. I was very disappointed that they didn't die painfully. But what is that feeling? Schottenfreude, for sure, but more important, like, this kind of hatred of the ultra rich feels very guillotini is what I yeah. Is what I wrote.

Todd DeHart [00:09:57]:

So somebody, somebody very similar to kind of making the same point and commenting that how close it seems we may be to eat the rich sort of revolution.

Tony Russo [00:10:17]:

That's what I said. What I said in my little story. I'll put my story in the show notes. I said, I'm not going to build the guillotines, but I'll come out and cheer if you want to start dragging people out of their mansions by their hair and cutting off their heads, I am not going to stop you at all. Right. Yeah. And it's a weird feeling to have. It's not pleasant to know that that's my gut reaction. Right. Because if you asked me to think about it, I'd say, no, we shouldn't drag people out of the houses. But what I think it kind of represents for us as a culture is, as we were talking about at the beginning, we're starting to realize that the fix, like, everyone is starting to realize that the fix is in, and there increasingly doesn't seem to be we can't vote our way out of it. We can't negotiate our way out of it. You know, the second the Prince Andrew can have 16 year old girls to rape, shipped to his house and rape them all and kill them all, and nothing bad will happen to him because he's ultra wealthy. And we're starting to realize that you can only let so many people off before people stop feeling bad for rich people having awful things happen to them.

Todd DeHart [00:11:53]:

Well, and it's also interesting when you say the ultra rich, everybody has this preconceived notion that there's the general population and then the 1% is like a gentle slope, and there are some moderately wealthy people think that it's like a steady incline, but it's not. It is like a flat line and then a cliff that goes straight up.

Tony Russo [00:12:22]:

In the right angle yeah.

Todd DeHart [00:12:26]:

To the 700 billionaires that there are in the world. And I had seen something that kind of just quantifying how much a billion dollars is so much more. They have examples if you put it in terms of time or if you put it in terms of grains of sand and that sort of thing, like how much more it is. And it's just impossible for one person to acquire that much wealth based on their own skill or work. They're obviously exploiting the work of others and hundreds of others and all of that.

Tony Russo [00:13:20]:

Yeah. Anyway, let's get the guillotines out. I'm all for it. But the other thing is that as far as people liking to see Twitter fail, the notion that you have to pay, like they want everyone to be an advertiser. And when Elon Musk said, if you don't get a blue check, we're not going to show your tweets, that was the last time I tweeted, except for having been paid to do it. My company wants me to tweet my show out, so I do that. But it took the joy out of it. It looks as if threads might have the opportunity for fun interactions. I'm still a big fan of Substac, and you can still find me over there if you'd like to find me in Substac, it's by Tony Russo. Substac.com. But the idea of just being able to communicate with other people online without to have strangers see what you post and respond is something that doesn't happen to those of us without blue checks on Twitter. Right. One of the things that I am doing, though, on threads is whenever someone pops up that does have a blue check, I block them.

Todd DeHart [00:14:56]:

Yeah. Instagram has kind of gone the same model, too. Now you can purchase a blue check on Instagram.

Tony Russo [00:15:05]:

It's fine with me. Let me know because I won't block you. But if you buy a blue check, but everybody else, if it's a blue check, you know how sometimes you'll be standing in line like cleaning out your email inbox?

Todd DeHart [00:15:19]:

Yeah.

Tony Russo [00:15:20]:

So my new thing is when I'm standing in line, I'm going to go through and block people with blue checks on threads or whatever it's called. Perfect. Just like Tony Russell block, you said.

Todd DeHart [00:15:35]:

Yeah. You want them to know that you block them. A lot of times it's like they won't know if you need to do this. And I'm like, no.

Tony Russo [00:15:45]:

Well, yes, because you can hide them and just not see anything. No, block them and anything else they post. I love the option. It says block so and so and any accounts they create in the future. And I'm like, thank you for saving me the time. And so that way if you block Kraft, you don't have to also block Kraft macaroni and cheese and Hines Ketchup. And they blocked the whole company. Yes, thank you. Thank you for making that easier for me. Facebook. Sorry. One of the things that I did on my vacation, I did lots of things on my vacation and I had a wonderful time. But I think one of the real highlights was we went out into the world of the Pacific Northwest, which is not where I'm used to dealing with. And there's this town we went to called Colfax. And Colfax is very much like Berlin circa 1986. There's six different junk shops, five of which were closed, and a ballet studio and a Chinese restaurant or something like that. And we had walked across the street, we had jaywalked, and this lady pulled over and she's like, wow, I can't believe you did that. It's it's so dangerous, you know, this is a dangerous road. And I'm like, no, it's not. This town has a population of maybe 6000, maybe 8000. And it was weird to get all like, east coast hip.

Todd DeHart [00:17:45]:

Right?

Tony Russo [00:17:47]:

This is not dangerous. And it was also weird that she even mentioned it because she wasn't scolding us, right? She wasn't saying, you Jay walked and you shouldn't have. She said, you got to be careful. Roads are dangerous. They have cars on them. And I'm like, yeah, going back to New Jersey tomorrow. I'm going to Jaywalk when I get there, too. Don't worry about it.

Todd DeHart [00:18:12]:

Have you ever crossed coastal highway in the summertime?

Tony Russo [00:18:17]:

It actually was one of the last things I did before we came here. Kelly and I had a wedding shoot in Ocean City, and we had to do the whole frogger thing. That's taking your life in your hands.

Todd DeHart [00:18:32]:

Absolutely.

Tony Russo [00:18:33]:

Because even when I see people slow down at a red light, ocean City is one of the few places where I make sure that they stop. Also, a lot of places, once everyone starts to slow down, you go, Ocean City, I want to see you stop. I want to see take your hands off the wheel and check your text messages before I'm going to cross the street there, because otherwise you might decide to run me over.

Todd DeHart [00:18:55]:

Right. And you only have 15 seconds to get across 18 lanes of traffic.

Tony Russo [00:19:02]:

It can be quite a challenge. We also went so my hips have gone or are going. And I don't want to carry a cane because I don't want to feel that old. So I have a walking stick, and I'm very proud of the walking stick that I have here, but I had to acquire one on the West Coast, too, because the walking stick I have here has, like, spikes and stuff on it. It's like a punk rock walking stick. Yeah. But they're never letting me on a plane with it.

Todd DeHart [00:19:28]:

Right.

Tony Russo [00:19:31]:

And I'm like, Cane stores in Spokane, Washington. How exciting. So we drove to this cane store in Spokane, Washington, and it was an Internet only store. It was closed. It was, like, open by appointment only, and everyone was giving me a hard time about it. But it's something that I guess we have to take into consideration. I recall in Salisbury, I went to a place that fixes your Macs, and I went to get my laptop fixed, and I knocked on the door, and I came in, and they're like, can we help you? And I'm like I'd like to have my mac fixed. And they're like, we don't do that. And I'm like, It says you do it. And he's like, yeah, but people mail them in. You're supposed to mail it to this thing on the website. I'm like, I live a mile and a half from here. Why would I say you? And they're like, yeah, I guess good point. But this was before I knew Patty. This is a long time ago, okay? And they were baffled. They were baffled. And it's interesting to think of as ecommerce becomes just kind of primary, how many false front doors we're going to have, how many places that there are going to be where there are just like, this is where our business is. But we only deal with you online. It's an interesting concept.

Todd DeHart [00:21:05]:

Yeah. Sorry about that. Little distractions in the background.

Tony Russo [00:21:10]:

That's fine.

Todd DeHart [00:21:12]:

Yeah. If you're an Internet only business, I guess it still does make sense to have a brick and mortar to some.

Tony Russo [00:21:20]:

Extent, if you've got enough stock.

Todd DeHart [00:21:22]:

Yeah.

Tony Russo [00:21:23]:

At some point, your wife is like, you can't keep those canes in the garage anymore.

Todd DeHart [00:21:30]:

So were you able to get a.

Tony Russo [00:21:33]:

I just bought another walking stick that I can't take on a plane and I leave it there. So now I'm by coastal walking stick man.

Todd DeHart [00:21:39]:

Oh, well, that's good.

Tony Russo [00:21:40]:

But I don't know if you've been I can highly recommend Spokane. Spokane is a hipster city waiting to happen. Lots of bars, lots of restaurants. We went into a place called Nito Burrito that had a place called the Baby Bar in it. And the Baby Bar, it had like two tables, three tables, a six foot long bar, and the walls were all done in red velvet.

Todd DeHart [00:22:13]:

Oh, nice.

Tony Russo [00:22:14]:

And it was very vampirey, but also kitschy. The needle. Burrito guy collects Christ portraits. There's black jesus. There's like all the different Jesus's portraits. Right.

Todd DeHart [00:22:35]:

The red velvet. Makes sense, then, right? Because the Velvet Jesus is probably my favorite.

Tony Russo [00:22:43]:

But I can't recommend Spokane highly enough. There's like three comedy clubs. Well, there's one comedy club and two theaters in Spokane. And there is a video game arcade that was closed. It opened today, it opened yesterday. It opened back up on the 11th. And I was so disappointed because all I wanted to do was play pinball. That was the only thing I didn't do on my vacation that I had desperately, desperately wanted to do.

Todd DeHart [00:23:13]:

Well, it's funny and it's surprising that it's taken me this long to remember and to bring it up, but I'd mentioned that we were in four states in four days, and one of those states was New Jersey. We went to the Stone Pony. Oh, I saw that in asbury. What a neat little also kind of weird place. And I heard a story, and I'm sure you can confirm that it was sort of like run down and not very they're like half built condo buildings ten years ago. And now it's had this sort of revitalization. The Stone Pony is this venue, and then they have an outdoor venue that's right on the beach, and they don't care if you pull up right next to it and just hang out in your truck on the other side of the fence and listen. It was really quite neat. We wanted to go see one of Natalie's favorite bands and then turns out her cousin, who has lived there for a while now, and it's an up and coming hipster ish area.

Tony Russo [00:24:28]:

The Asbury Park that you were in looks nothing like the Asbury Park of my childhood, I'm sure, right. It doesn't even look like the Asbury Park of the 1990s, which was the last time I was kind of around in there. My story about so the Stone Pony, if you're listening and for some reason don't know, the Stone Pony was a place where Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played a lot before they were super famous. And then even after they got famous, still today, Bruce might show up and just do a show. A lot of times I remember when not to show too much my age, in case you can't say. But I remember when he was touring and supporting Born in the USA. Was that the name of the album? Whatever album. Born in the USA was on. One of the few that I really desperately don't like. But when he was on tour, the rumor is always he's going to do a set at the Stone Pony when the album comes out or when he gets to Jersey before he goes and does the metallands and stuff like that. So there's always like this groundswell of you'll be like this local band because they have local original bands play there all the time or play there all the time. When I was a kid, anyway, I was friends with a band that played there. So you go and you're used to seeing like, 20 or 30 people, and there are 200, and it's just like, oh, the rumor was that Bruce was going to show up tonight, and so people just came out in case he did, but he didn't. But here we are.

Todd DeHart [00:26:05]:

Yeah. And good for that band who had that slot, right?

Tony Russo [00:26:08]:

Yeah. But the other thing that it used to be also a bar, and I didn't know that it was no longer a bar.

Todd DeHart [00:26:20]:

It is a bar.

Tony Russo [00:26:21]:

Well, yeah, but it's only open when there are shows.

Todd DeHart [00:26:24]:

Oh, I see.

Tony Russo [00:26:25]:

Okay. Yeah. And so I went in and I wanted to take my wife and see what the inside looked like now and get a drink, because I haven't been there I haven't been inside the Stone Pony since 1990, 1980. 919. 91. Right around in there. And, you know, the last time I was in there, it wasn't very pretty asbury park was still falling down the stage. Did you go inside the Stone park? Yeah. Yeah.

Todd DeHart [00:26:57]:

Well, that was one of the the fun things that happened is we we saw the outside venue, you know, reggae band, and then we're, like, getting ready to leave, and we're gonna, like we're gonna have one more beer, and we go inside. And then as soon as the show ended outside, a local van started playing inside, and we hung around and they were fantastic, and we had a great time.

Tony Russo [00:27:25]:

Is the stage still like there's only 5ft between the stage and the ceiling? Is that still the case?

Todd DeHart [00:27:31]:

No, that was definitely not the case. It was a small riser, but had plenty of headroom.

Tony Russo [00:27:38]:

Yeah. No. So when I was a kid, it was almost like a bunker. The ceilings may have been 12ft, maybe 12ft.

Todd DeHart [00:27:49]:

Right.

Tony Russo [00:27:49]:

I want to say ten, but let's say they're 12ft. But the stage also 12ft. So if you were 6ft tall standing on the stage, there was maybe just a foot or two between your head and the ceiling. And I just remember after hearing that this was this epic place getting there and just how ratty it was and how small it felt. But also you can get French fries and a beer and you can hang out and you can't do that anymore, apparently, because I went maybe three or four years ago with Kelly. And we went to the door and they're like, can we help you? And I'm like, yeah, now we just want to get a beer. And they're like, we're not open that's. Wait till the show starts. And I'm like, oh, all right, new rule. And they've probably been doing that for 30 years. I haven't been there 30 years, but.

Todd DeHart [00:28:46]:

It was a really neat experience and definitely would like to go back. And it was good to connect with a cousin, too. It's been a good summer for that already.

Tony Russo [00:28:57]:

Yeah, there's so much cool stuff up there, too, because Asbury Park is Asbury Park. But that whole strip has been long branches not far from there. And that's got all sorts of cool places to see shows. You can see a lot of live music on the Jersey Shore. And you can well, we're calling it the Jersey Shore. I'm not going to fight about that. But you can see live shows and all winter, too. It's not just a summertime thing, it's all winter. You can see shows in all of these bars and still lots of local bands doing original music or mix originals and covers. I can recommend it. I like Dazbury Park when it was shitty, though, so there's no when I was a kid, we would go to the boardwalk and it was like, again, they hadn't updated the rides. It made Trimpers look fancy. Some of my fondest memories are going through, like the fun house and stuff there. If you go Christmas time, I don't work for the Asbury Park Tourism Board, but they have a big Christmas fair there. And Johnny Cash famously played that show at the convention center there.

Todd DeHart [00:30:15]:

Yeah, big deal.

Tony Russo [00:30:16]:

Big deal. So, yeah, I like Asbury Park. You should go more often. We all should.

Todd DeHart [00:30:21]:

We all should.

Tony Russo [00:30:24]:

All right. It looks like we are up against it now, so we're going to call it a day. I got nothing else anyway. How about you?

Todd DeHart [00:30:31]:

I got nothing.

Tony Russo [00:30:32]:

All right, well, until next time. Remember, at the beach, it's happy hour.

Todd DeHart [00:30:36]:

Whenever you say it is. Oh, I'm supposed to end it. Hi.

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