The World’s Deadliest Water Park (w. Seth Porges)

This is exactly right. Welcome to Brief Recess. I'm Michael Foote. Please state your name for the record. Melissa Malbridge. I'm Melissa Malbridge and this is Devol Charges. Thank you for joining us. We're going to talk about the craziest lawsuits, the weirdest things in the headlines, all the case law, all the amendments behind the actual lawsuit here today in court. That's good going. That's the thing about nail polish for men though. Sometimes if you're trying to do... Why? No, it is actually different. Oh, go ahead. Because if you're trying to do nail polish on a man... Yes. You actually need it to be like custom because I've tried to do like press on nails for Halloween costume. No, I understand because the width of the nail. I'm at the dollar store buying big toes for my pinky because that's... I'm serious. That's how big my fingers are. I'm pressing fake toenails onto my giant nails. Let me find them for you and because they have this array and I'm sure they have an array of sizes that would work for you. I want to know what the dolls are doing. What's the trans community doing with their nails? If they wanted to press on nails or these gel stickers. I think a lot of them are going out and getting their nails done and they're building a nail because you can build a nail. So there's like a little thing back in the 90s when I was getting nails, you could build a nail. To tell you about the craziest thing that happened in court though, I forgot to tell you this earlier. Okay, tell me. So first of all, I go to immigration court today. It is a 7 a.m. call time in front of the station. They don't know you at all, do they? It is cattle call. Just checking out an Italian airport, trying to get in front of an immigration judge in America at these days. You just done pissed off the Italians. Continue. Continue, continue. By the time I'm called, it's like 11.30 and I'm watching as the other attorneys are litigating beforehand because it's open court. So you're just kind of sitting there watching. So this litigator goes up in front of this judge and I'm going to be like really vague here for just to be, I mean, it was open court. So I'm allowed to talk about what I saw. This person was right out of law school. I could tell. So a child. Brand new to the practice. Yes, not at all long. New lawyer smell. Yes, fresh new car smell. The judge really wanted specificity in this one situation that we were in. And the judge was like pretty reasonable. They're not always reasonable. And what they're asking, they're like, hey, your case hinges upon this one specific incident. We don't have any details. It just says incident in this report. Now if your case hinges upon something like that, you better have an affidavit witness testimony, a police report. You need to have like documentations, exhibits A through Z backing up that one incident. This person did not have that. This person had nothing and was like blinking at the judge like, just why don't you just believe me? Just take my word for it. And the judge is getting more and more frustrated. It's 7 AM. The judge is like, I don't know if I want to be here. I don't have makeup on yet. We're all tired. And so... This is what you get for stumbling home at 7 o'clock in the morning. 6.45 and putting on a suit. And so we hop right in. The judge is freaking out on this attorney, really leaning in. Is it ugly? Throwing the book at them. Yes, and this attorney is giving it right back. And now I love pushing back. I will push back all the time to push back on something where you don't have a leg to stand. It's like a wild choice. It better be you have nothing. This client won't give you that testimony. You can't get the police record. But enumerate the things you've done to try and get that information at least. Judge, I've tried this, this, this, this, this. It got so ugly. So my advice, honestly in any argument or any new lawyer, if you're not a lawyer and you're watching this, pick the hill you want to die on. Choose your battle. Choose your battle. Here's the thing. I think that that's something that you sort of learn with experience. So if this person is straight out of law school, they have no idea what they're doing, and they feel like my job is to make sure that justice is served. They're really earnest and they want to make that effort. I think that's something that they learn eventually. Absolutely. Yes, it comes with experience. And I think even if you were to befriend this person and say, listen. Listen, cool your shit. Listen, put in pop. Put it on ice. They're not going to believe you. Do you know what I'm saying? I know, because especially when you're first litigating, it's like all you've seen is Alicia Floric and the good wife fighting for justice every day in court. And it's like, okay, you're going to be in front of this judge 50 more times on this same case. Yes. You're going to really need this judge to rule in your favor. To like you, right? Yeah. You know, to at least not hate you. To at least not hate you. To the evidence to back it up. For sure. The judge really has to be on your side. You're going to just issue a ruling. Anyway, that was my weekend review so far. I mean, it's still ongoing. I know. The week is young. So I've been thinking a lot about political violence just because it seems that we're living in a time where it's happening more and more. Yeah. And it's something that you used to hear about like in far off like Eastern European countries or in more developing nations, right? For sure. For the Haitian assassination. Absolutely. That was all over my feed. I've heard a lot about that. Right. And now I think what's interesting in a scary way is that it seems to be happening more and more in this country. Pelosi's husband. Pelosi's husband, Melissa Hortman and her husband and her dog, which I have to tell you, I really think that I thought that that would get more play especially because of the dog. Dogs cut across the political spectrum. Like period. Because one of those things where I think they even paradise it on beep where like they were drone striking someone's home and there were like animals in the home and Selena Meyer took all this political heat because they killed the exotic animals on this farm. I mean, Americans love animals and you would have and I really would have thought that that would have gotten more play than it did. Yes. I think these other acts are getting more play and I'm wondering what the difference is. Why is that happening? I mean, I can guess. I think that things get play when they are convenient for any particular party. I think when it comes to like political violence, certain parties are like better at using that violence to move their cause forward. I mean, we keep circling back to this notion of like what conservatives are willing to do to advance their agenda and what liberals are not willing to do. Correct. It's not the same sort of like gut check. No, it isn't. The level of like how people are approaching it. It's just different with different parties. For sure. I think the hypocrisy tolerance level is like much higher. It is. Yeah. Among conservatives where it's like we are going to completely make this entirely about this one person's death or this one person violence against this one person in our party and completely ignore what happened on the other side. Right. We'll barely talk about it or we'll make some sort of canned statement that gets tweeted out or whatever. Make it seem like it's not a big deal at all. I think that's really what it is is the hypocrisy of it. It's so overwhelming. It's overwhelming. That is almost like more frustrating sometimes than like the actual situation we're dealing with whatever it is. Sometimes I'm like this is actually the thing that's pissing me off or upsetting me or like getting in the weeds for me. It's so interesting. My emotional response to it is like not logical at all. Maybe that's what's happening to the other side as well. Right. Their emotional response to it is illogical because they're so vehement. They're so steadfast in their beliefs that they're just like they're determined to make everybody else understand and how it's the liberals did this, the Democrats did this. What are you saying when Charlie Kirk died, your friends at HBCUs were getting before they had released the race and affiliation of the shooter. Your friends who worked at HBCUs were getting like death threats. They were bomb threats. They were shutting down campuses. But I think what is absolutely wild to me is that there is this sort of expectation that people should sort of now looking back at the life of this man and honor him in some way. And I think that I am obviously, I am appalled at his murder, at his assassination, but I'm wondering what it is that is expected of me. And I will speak for myself. I will speak for anybody else. But as a black woman who is a first generation American who is married, that the idea that this man outwardly said that he did not think that I had any intellect and he thought that my husband owned me basically. So I'm just wondering why it is that I am supposed to be broken up. Right. Why are you supposed to be saluting the flag at half mass? Why? Why are we having moments of silence for this man? And I also think I've been hearing a lot that people are saying this is our Martin Luther King. And it's so… I haven't heard that. Oh, I have heard that. Okay. Like this is our moment. This is our Malcolm X. This is the difference between our algorithms, right? Like you're getting certain messages that I'm not getting. And like your experience of this is going to be like totally different from… For sure. I mean like as like a gay dude, he had some really fucked up things to say about like being gay in America. Yeah, for sure. And I was like, what is startling to me is that there's all this ruckus around it, right? And what is always like a problem for me is when we can't talk about something. That is when I'm like, ooh, this is… Right. We're tiptoeing into like Putin's fascist society. It's the idea of like secrets, right? Yeah. We're not allowed to bring it up. We're not allowed to talk about it. And if you do, you're doing like you're evil, you're bad. You're saying that you love one another, right? Yeah, you're speaking ill of the dead. Right. So that's what's always concerning to me. But what I'm always curious, and this is where I'm a little bit more like, I guess, disconnected from him as a person or his messages, where what I see is a complete lack of clips playing of him speaking because most of the clips of him speaking are him saying something really fucked up. So all these like eulogies are like photos. Yes. There are no actual like roll the clip of him speaking because it's the wildest, most cancelable thing. Every single, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It is so yikes. Well, I think people don't want to say the quiet part out loud, right? The fact of the matter is that absolutely, and again, I feel like I really want to say that it's not okay that he was killed in the way that he was killed, right? It is. There's a difference between saying like, oh, I don't think people should be murdered for their opinions and saying like, I disagree with hate speech. Hate speech under the Constitution is not protected speech. Like I'm an attorney. I took a lot of First Amendment classes. I litigated the First Amendment. The First Amendment hate speech is not protected, period. It's widely accepted in case other Supreme Court decisions. You cannot incite violence with hate speech and then say, oh, well, it was First Amendment. I was using my First Amendment rights. That's unprotected speech under the Constitution. I think that a lot of people think that your opinion is protected, right? I'm allowed to say what I want. I'm allowed to say that I think that black women are not intelligent. I'm allowed to say that I think that gay people are sick. I'm allowed to say those things. The other thing that I think is really interesting is listening to the folks that have been talking about him. It's that, well, yeah, he said those things and he was right. You know what I mean? Yeah. I need to get on the record and just say like, condemning hate speech isn't condoning murder. No. Period. Like that's it. But that is honestly like the way people are reacting when you are saying, I condemn hate speech. Right. Oh, well, you love murder then. You think this person deserved to be killed. No, not at all. That is not at all what we're saying. No, it isn't. Yeah. What happened after they found the shooter? I wonder. Nothing. Crickets. It just stopped. I mean, the governor of Utah, when they found the shooter for Charlie Kirk came out and was like, you know, I was really praying that it would be somebody from another country. I was really praying that it wouldn't be. As someone who goes on the record all the time, like reporters call me for a quote, to be on the record saying something so fucking crazy. I was praying that that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn't be one of us. Like when a reporter calls you, like even when I first started when I first started practicing law and I had like a case that hit the headlines and I would get a call from someone, you like you do sort of snap into it. You you're conditioned as a human in society to watch your fucking mouth in front of a reporter. Not these motherfuckers. To say that is crazy. But it's what and I mean, and he was so earnest, right? He was like, I was really hoping that it wouldn't be somebody who was from Utah. I was really hoping that it wouldn't be somebody like us. Barbie's dream house list of hoping. I'm telling you, let me let's get the Mac color swatches from fucking Sephora. And you show us where you're cool with it being. And then I was looking at the picture of the shooter and the governor and it's at the same BDI. No. It was I was so I was like, wow, you know what? There is also another part of me that is almost as disgusted as I am by the hypocrisy. He said it. Yeah. He said that shit. And now we know. And now we know. I mean, we knew, but now we really know. My angel, when someone tells you who they are, believe them, you should believe them. Believe them still though. Disgusting. I'm actually really excited to give it to you, Melissa. Tell me. Okay. And I'm so excited to talk to you about this case. I'm nervous that you're this excited about it. We have gone to great lengths to keep this case a secret from Melissa. On the team, there have been conspiracies, cahoots, sidebar conversations, separate dogs, blink twice if you need help. We are going to be talking about Action Park. No. Oh my God. Really? Oh my God. Oh my God. Sorry, did I just yell really loud? My bad. Poor sound guy. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. So Action Park is a famous, famous, infamous, I'm sorry. Oh, infamous. Yeah. Infamous. Do you want to introduce it? For those of you who don't know, in the 80s and 90s, there was this water park in New Jersey, and I can't remember where it was in New Jersey, but it was called Action Park. It was in like 10 acres. In Vernon, New Jersey. It was in Vernon, New Jersey. And everybody wanted to go. We went, but everybody knew somebody, several somebody's, if it didn't happen to you yourself, who got seriously hurt at Action Park. Oh my God. This place was one calamity after another. No. No. You wanted to go to Action Park. Plaintiff party. It's a real class action. You would get hurt. I mean, I'm telling you, people would come back like scrapes and like, but like, oh, serious injuries from Action Park. I want to set the stage for what the context in which Action Park existed. It's 1988. 1988. I was. My Chirona's playing on the radio. The boys are in. You can't sing. I won't. Otherwise, William Morris himself will come to the people knocks in the West Village and my Chirona was a good one though. My Chirona is playing the boys are in those cut off tight short shorts. The girls are in there. What is it? Brightly colored members only jackets. What are they wearing? But they were members. Members. No. It was neon buffer like, like the zip up jogging jogging suits. I'm just imagining Carrie. I'm just imagining Carrie Russell in cocaine bear. She's wearing like this, like one piece. Oh my God. I'm done. Anyway, so Action Park was this crazy, crazy. It opened in 1978. Amusement Park. Yeah. And. It closed in 1996, but reopened in 2014. So there were so many. So many suits. They actually made a documentary about it. It's on HBO. Did you watch it? So on Friday, we were pulling together this episode, which is like a couple days. A couple days ago. And I've reached out to exactly right. And I just mentioned, you know, CJ, we're going to be talking about this. And someone jumped in and said, we actually know the director and he's in New York. So he's here today. Shut the fuck up. And he's going to talk to us about this episode. Hear now, hear here. Yeah. He's going to be here any minute. We're going to talk about. We're going to talk about Action Park. I'm nervous. I'm nervous. Your show. I am. I'm nervous. I don't know. My heart is beating really fast. You don't understand. I'm going to Action Park. If you lived in the tri-state area. Action Park. I was a Long Island kid, so it was Splish Blash for me. We did that too. But Action Park. And my husband's from Maine. It was Fun Town Splash Town, USA is where he went, which I think he's actually just fucking with me. That kid, that's not a real place. That's not real. That's not a real place. There was a jingle, but for licensing reasons, I won't sing it. So we're going to bring in Seth, who's the director of the HBO documentary award-winning. Oh my God. I'm really excited. Class Action Park. Hi. Hi. Thank you for joining us. So excited to meet you. I'm Michael. It's nice to meet you. This is Melissa. Nice to meet you. As well. Thank you for joining us. Great to be here. Thank you so much. Seth is the director of Class Action Park. It's a 2020 HBO show. 2020? Oh my God. That was crazy. So long ago. Yeah. And what was it? Why don't you introduce yourself to the viewers, to the audience. Hi. I'm Michael. I'm Melissa. Nice to meet you. I'm Michael. Nice to meet you. And I'm going to introduce myself to the viewers, to the audience. Just tell us a little bit about who you are, how you sort of came to this. Park, we've got a couple of Action Park survivors in the room. Oh, can you see the scars to prove it? Is there? I came out unscathed. I came out unscathed. Is there? But one of the few. I guess future plaintiffs. Yes. That's right now. But yeah, please introduce yourself. Thank you for joining us. Yeah. I'm Seth Porges. I'm a director of Class Action Park, along with my friend Chris Scott. I also made the movie How to Rob a Bank on Netflix and my next movie is about Santa Con. Oh my God. Santa Con. A scourge of New York. Oh my God. I hope you take them down. Oh man. You'll see. You'll see. You'll see. Kill them. I love Santa. Father's Day. Oh, you're going to love this movie. Oh, I love it. But we hate Santa Con. Yeah. It is actually where everyone comes to the city to just fucking piss themselves. Baby's First Day Drinking. Can we get actually, I think you need to interview us for Santa Con. No, no, no, no. Fuck this. Baby's First Day Drinking. Santa Con is really, it's like one of the worst things. I didn't mean to put such a damper on the mood by mentioning Santa Con. No, no, no, no. But like, it's like the worst thing in the best possible way. I love to shit talk to Santa Con. It's like too soon to talk about Santa Con guys. Too soon. And it always sneaks up on you like a fucking animal. You don't know until you step outside and you're like, okay, one Santa's fine. The second you see two or three, you go, wait, what day is it? And it's always like two guys and they're like, Tony. Chasing after each other. This is some poor, unfortunate girl. Like, is Angela? Everybody's at Tony and Angela. It's weird. Oh my God. Anyway, Santa Con. Oh my God, you really got us on something great here. And now I'm actually really excited about this. But yeah, to talk about, I'm sure there will be a Santa Con class action suit one day. So just save your receipt if you bought a Santa suit because at some point we'll all be in court together. But we're here to talk about Action Park, which I thought would be a really cool episode as we're sort of talking about class action lawsuits and civil law and how people, you know, sue for damages. I'm a criminal defense attorney and immigration attorney. So there's a little bit of the vernacular that it'll take me a minute to kind of adjust to because I'm just not in civil court that often. But I would love to hear just a little bit. Why don't you introduce Action Park to the viewers? They've heard a bit about it from Melissa and her personal experiences a little bit. But why don't you both go for it? Yeah. I mean, so Action Park, the music park in Vernon, New Jersey, 90 minutes from New York City. It was the 80s embodied is what it was. Right. It was simultaneously the most fun and exciting and thrilling place in the world and also very possibly the single most dangerous place in the world. And those two things didn't just coexist. They were, you know, two legs of a tripod, right? Like it was this. And the more people because New Jersey was propping up the most dangerous place in the world, the state of New Jersey. And the perverse thing about Action Park and the reason I became obsessed and fascinated with it other than I went there as a kid as well. Yes. I went there as a kid as well. But the thing that really lingered in my mind was the fact that the more people experienced Action Park and learned how dangerous it was, it was no secret it was dangerous. Right. The movie is called Class Action Park because that's a nickname the locals had for the park. Oh my God. People called it Action Park, Traction Park, Class Action Park. It was no secret, right? Oh, so this was everyone. Everyone knew, right? Oh, wow. Everyone knew. And the more people learned about it rather than scaring them away, it just became more and more popular. Right. And that to me was like, what? Right. Yeah. It's like moths to the flame. Moths to the flame. It's sort of like, OK, this place is crazy. I got to go. And what does that say about us as people? Right. You know, masochists. Well, you also want to be able to say, I went and I survived. I came out on the other side. Especially as a kid in New Jersey, right? Yes, right. Right. Yeah. You go to school and you don't have those scars. Yeah. Do you even live in? Your lunch money is gone. You're a second. You're a second. You don't have a scar. Your neck, bro, this is the badge of honor. Right, right, right, right. You know that wedge is going to be nuclear. If you don't have scars, you're mad. If you don't have scars, you're mad. Oh, no. Yeah. Right. OK. And so it sort of found you and you found it. Yes. And you sort of decided with your friend to make this. Yeah. Well, it was a lot of it was, I think, a desire to fact check my own memories. You know, I went there as a kid as you did. And as I got older, I'm looking back and I'm like, did I really see that? Did I really experience that? And I had this moment where I really was questioning like whether that was real or something I picked up in a comic book or cartoon. OK. Especially because this is an amusement park, right? And the whole premise of an amusement park. You got a Disney world. You have rides that are supposed to simulate terror, simulate danger, simulate fear within a safe constructed design context. Like Tower of Terror. The whole idea is you're in an elevator and it's going to fall. But it's not really dangerous, right? And you go to Action Park and you're like, that ride actually could kill you. Yes. As a kid, how do you tell the difference? Right. And also like, I'm sorry, but my fear center didn't fully develop until I was like 26. And I think I remember it happening like at brunch and being like, oh my God. At brunch. What? What have you been doing up until this age? What was in the holiday sauce? Like, yeah. I just like there was this one specific moment where I was like, oh shit. Like I'm going to be afraid of everything now. Yeah. Well, that's a thing too, right? When you're a kid, you have no fear. Yeah. You have absolutely no fear. And if you do have fear, it's the fear of being left out, right? Yeah. Everybody wants to be able to, at least at the time when I was growing up, everybody wanted to be able to say, have you been to Action Park? Yes, of course I've been to Action Park. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure their kid's lying about going to Action Park, you know, and you can call them on it. Yeah. Melissa, why don't you tell us how you ended up at Action Park? I've been to Action Park twice. And I want to say it was like two consecutive summers, maybe I was 14 or 15 or 15 and 16. I went with some friends. I can think of their names right now because you never remember everyone's name that I went to high school with. And the first time I went, it was I had this friend who had a boyfriend who was older and he drove. Yeah. And didn't tell my parents where I was going because I was a lying liar who lied. And your parents wouldn't have let you go, probably. Probably not. But I will say that my parents didn't want me to go anywhere ever, which is why I was a lying liar who lied. And we went to Action Park and I have to tell you, in my memory, it was great. I had a great time. I didn't get too badly hurt. You know what I mean? I think maybe I got scraped. Sure. I feel like maybe at one point my inner tube wasn't so to be. You know what I mean? When you said that and as the lawyer in the room, I do have to kind of say this. When you said I got scraped, my literal first thought was soft tissue damage. We think in damages. And so as attorneys, we think in damages and like scales of damages. So there's something called the CPLR. It's the Civil Code for all damage for lawsuits. You're ruining this for me. I'm sorry, but no, we'll get there. So there's this thing in the CPLR where they scale what your damages owed are based off level of injury and it's flesh like tissue wounds and bone breaks. A tooth is considered a bone. I worked on a lawsuit where someone broke a tooth in a car accident and they got bone damages which are higher than just like a flesh wound. This is really useful information. Isn't it crazy? Yeah. So if you're in a car accident and you're suing for damages, they're going to look at the injuries scaled on that level based off the CPLR. Anyway, go ahead. You're a killjoy. Sorry. You really, really are. I love that. But I mean, it was a bunch of us went and we had a great time. And I will say this though. I do remember feeling like I feel like I'm older than the people running the rides. Oh yeah. I mean, that's just the rides probably running. The whole park. The whole park. Yeah. For sure. I love, if I lived in New Jersey, I could probably work here. Right? I could probably work here. That was the ideal. That was like that. No, because I was like, I was thinking to myself, it'll be fun, right? Because it's Action Park. Yeah. At some point, my friends will come through. Yeah, like the whole clientele are your peers. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So why don't you sort of tell us a little bit about what did you discover, right? Because Action Park clearly was epic. It was the sort of place that people knew about. It was, you know, they speak legend of this place. They do. Yes. They do. So you took on this project to make this film, which we've seen. Right. Love it. Great job. Yeah. What made you even want to do this? Like where did the idea come from? Oh, you know what? I'm going to make a movie about Action Park. Well, it really was like, I said, a desire to fact check my memories. Because, you know, I was a journalist before as a filmmaker and I had done some light reporting and I was doing it, realizing that there hadn't been really any reporting. And, you know, this thing had entered the realm of urban myth or suburban myth. This is the jersey of legend. And it became really hard to determine what was real and what was some random internet rumor about this place. And I had my own memories, which all felt like random internet rumors about this place. And I was like, I want to fact check this thing. And everywhere I looked, I realized not only is that crazy story actually true, but the truth is 10 times crazier. Oh, no. Every rock you look under answers, yes, it happened and then some. Right. Oh, yes. It was just escalation. And it got to a point where like, I could believe anything. You could have an Action Park because the craziest stuff that ever could have you could imagine. Stuff I can't even imagine. No, this is like when I drink tequila. I'm serious. I go back through my camera roll and see what actually happened the night before. And I'm like, it's way worse than I remember. You're a mess. You're a mess. And if people knew, I mean, I wonder if they would be more attracted. It seems like they would have or less. But the place was, I mean, truly, truly insane. And this was, you know, no accident. It was run by this guy named Gene Mulvihill, who was sort of a cross between Tony Soprano and Donald Trump. Yeah. New Jersey embodied. I was thinking like a Chris Christie sort of like. Yes. A bridge gate. Well, I mean, Chris Christie was definitely, he's definitely quoted in his obituary. I'll say that. But like, like an aspirational quote, like on the tombstone. You know, in this like, you know, obituary in the newspapers, you know, lauding the entrepreneurial spirit that Gene brought. Yes. That I don't, I did not know that. I don't think that's unbelievable to me. But this man was responsible for multiple deaths, right? I mean, quite a few deaths. I mean, is responsible legal term. I don't know if I could say. And he hurt kids. Yeah. That was the thing about Gene that I found so fascinating as a person is he was this complex person, incredibly charismatic, probably brilliant, definitely had ideas, sort of visionary guy who seemed to draw people to him. And he, I think, became this incredible example of something we see happen, of course, today about how people with power and personality make problems go away. And the big question everybody asked me is how did this place stay in operation so long? It's not like it was open one season. Action Park under the name Action Park is open from 1978 to 1996. So it's busy. Yeah. And it never shut down because some regulator was like, this death trap has to close. It was financial. It was bankruptcy. It's what shut that place down. Oh, it wasn't like, oh, fuck that. No, no, no, no, no, no. They could have, they could have kept going, but you know, time to change money, whatever. Yeah. And that to me was, was the real mystery is how did this place stay in operation? And it's, I mean, there's not just one answer to that. It's everywhere you look like, you know, people are getting injured every single day and they were getting injured. They were getting injured every single day. One ride, the Alpine Slide on a busy Saturday. Can you describe the Alpine Slide for us? All right. You go down this like shady plastic toboggan sled thing down this track that's made out of a mixture of asbestos and cement and concrete. And you're wearing asbestos. Yes. It's very useful material. I'll have you know. And you're wearing a swimsuit because it's largely a water park, right? Right. And your break probably doesn't work. And the guy going behind you, his break probably doesn't work. And he's probably a little high, a little drunk. And he slams into you and you fall off this track and you lose all of your skin, all of your skin. And then to deal with that, assuming you survived because not everybody did this ride, they would take you to this really shady infirmary tent booth shed type thing where a nurse and I am using air quotes for people listening, a nurse type person would spray your wound with this orange Windex bottle type thing full of what we later learned was to make sure of iodine alcohol and everybody who experienced it said it was the single worst pain in the world. And this is true story. After the movie came out, Judd Avatar tweeted that the screams, you guys seen the movie, the four year old version? Yes. You know the scene where Steve Carell gets his chest waxed and he's screaming bloody murder. Judd Avatar tweeted that the screams he was directing out of Steve Carell were inspired by the screams he heard out of the infirmary tent next to the Alpine slide in this film. And then you go back, then they throw you back into the park and now you're you know, wearing a swimsuit, your shirtless and half your body is covered with this like blood that's got this weird orange goo on it that everybody can see. So you can just look around and see everybody who's got boots. Who got, yeah. He did on the Alpine slide. For those listening and not watching, CJ's going to throw up a photo of the Alpine slide. Yeah. I would describe it as just like one of those Hot Wheels tracks. That's a good one. And it's just literally made of cement. And you're on what I would call, I guess, just like a literal piece of plastic, like a shopping bag, stepped up shopping bag. And this ride was lying down a hill. And this ride, the problem with this ride, like the problem with many of the other rides wasn't that the concept itself was a bad idea, although often they were. There are Alpine slide rides at other places. Surely not. I've seen on something like this. The problem with this one is that it wasn't actually designed in an intentional sense. They have this mountain, they throw this track on it and they kind of see what happens. Right. And so the idea that you're going to model something out and use physics and math or maybe software or these sorts of things that figure out what's going to happen. Engineering. Engineering. That was not happening. And so many of these rides, like the people riding them were kind of serving as guinea pigs to figure out, does this thing work or not? And then they make shifts on the fly based on whether or not it works or not. And so the Alpine slide on a busy Saturday, that ride alone would injure several hundred people every single day. And so every day. Every day. What really stuck, I mean, that is horrifying. What really stuck out to me about what you said was the health care that was being provided. Oh, yes. The notion that. The lack of health care. The notion that a theme park run by teenagers is providing health services to the people that they fucked fucking injured. Well, I mean, it's happening. And then being like, we're going to pull you into an infirmary. Someone in a lab coat with a Windex bottle is going to take care of. Cut off like. Like spray it over. Right, right, right. So really. We said my sharonah earlier was like the. No, no. Lab coat. Lab coat. Someone. Michael's young. He's so nice. He's so nice. Lab coat. It's like a horrible. I mean, any amusement park has like an infirmary area that hopefully though it's rarely ever used. Hopefully it's run by a medical professional. Someone with some sort of an EMT maybe not necessarily credentials. So you get injured at Action Park. They kind of do everything they can to make it go away where it doesn't reach a, you know, a settlement or a payout or something like that. And so they would maybe give you a complimentary pass to the park. It wasn't that bad. Yes. Now let's say you're digging. Let's say like, I'm going to sue you negligence, whatever it is, which is probably valid. I can say is good luck because they developed a reputation very intentionally. Let's say cultivated a reputation for fighting every single lawsuit. These personal entry cases, as you're surely aware, are the kind of ones where they're almost designed to be, you know, negotiate out of court, right? Yeah. That's how I'm going to set out. Well, if you say I'm never going to settle. Well, good luck finding a lawyer who's going to do that understanding that he's got more lawyers, bigger lawyers, better lawyers than you. What people need to understand about sort of civil law is that most cases are taken on a contingency fee basis, which is there are many different like fee structures that lawyers get paid, but specifically in civil court. And this is not something that I do in like criminal court, right? If this proprietor came to me and said, I've been convicted or I'm being charged with criminal charges, I would say, okay, we're going to do it hourly or for the whole trial, I'm going to charge you X amount. Contingency fees are I'm going to take 30% of whatever we make. So lawyers are almost incentivized to settle, right, to get these payouts. And get it done as quickly as they can. Exactly. Like you don't want to spend months preparing for a trial. You want them to spend an afternoon in a smoky room and then move on. Unless that trial is going to be $50 million versus $50,000. Yes, exactly. And so, you know, he would never, ever unless there's very few extenuating circumstances, like, you know, they would fight everything, every single case. So let's say you find that lawyer, let's say you take it to trial and let's say you get a payout. How are you actually going to collect physically collect that money? He just would not give it to you unless you had the US Marshals show up at their door, ask for the cash, and this became a regular occurrence to the point where the people were to the park, they knew the Marshals and they would point them in the right direction. They kind of knew where to go, right? And literally what they would do, the Marshals would show up with duffel bags and they would just like load cash in because this place was also. Was it probably in a rears for many different settlements? Well, not so much that it was more this place. The detergent of the money laundering was rife in the air, let's just say, you know. And so it was it was all a lot of weird stuff going on in that regards for sure. Looking back now, you're an adult, looking back as to what you were doing as a teenager, knowing what you know now about the park. What do you feel when someone says action park? Do you feel excited? Are you like, oh fuck, like what is the like emotional response you have when someone brings up action park? Because Melissa screamed when I brought it up a minute ago. And CJ, our producer, went when he was a kid and he was so excited to talk about it. So this fucking masochistic like feeling that people get when they bring up action park, this like, oh, I want to do this dangerous thing. So I live to tell the tale. Do you still have that after making this film? Well, let's just say if I had a time machine, would I go see the dinosaurs? Would I go see the French Revolution? I don't know, but I would definitely go to 1985 in Vernon, New Jersey and see action park. And that to me is really what drew me into making this movie is the feeling I think we survivors, if I can use that term, all have about this place and in that weird mix of feelings. And to me, you know, even if you didn't grow up in the New Jersey area going to action park, maybe there's something that you look back at and have this weird mix of terror and fondness and nostalgia to me. And to me, the story largely became about how nostalgia kind of fuzzes the darkness of use and fuzzes the traumas and make us kind of look back at things fondly because that was our childhood, whether it was good or bad. Absolutely. That's so interesting. I'm trying to think of like an analog of something that I could point to and say like, oh, I feel like fear and nostalgia and excitement and joy and all these things around. Yeah. But I mean, I think, you know, I can look back on it and remember how excited I was to go, how much genuine fun I had while I was there. But as an adult, recognize how dangerous that was. And if I had a kid who was just like, mom, I'm going to get action park. Absolutely fucking not. And you know, to us, like one of the things we sort of began inquiring about when my filmmaker friend Chris and I started making this movie was this question of why were the latchkey kids of the 80s, how are they now the helicopter parents of today? Because they were. Because of that. Because of that. Because of that. And that the pendulum swang because of that. And so you have this entire generation of kids who grew up and, you know, stranger things in it, right? Like without helmets on fighting demigorgans and stuff. And then they get older and they have kids and they look back and you're like, man, that was awesome. There's so much nostalgia. And you're like, well, would you let your kid do that? Absolutely not. You know, and I think that was really fascinating. I mean, I say this all the time. It's a miracle I made it out alive. Truly. I mean, I have life or action like you, sir. The decade of the 1980s. Yeah. 90s is because a my parents never knew where I was because I lied constantly. Yes. And there was no find your phone. There was no. And I could say whatever I wanted. I could say, oh, I'm going to Michael's house and my mom will be like, OK, be home by dinner. Be home. Be home by the time the street lights come on. And as long as you were. Yeah, exactly. That was it. And that's what 80s parenting was. And the story of Action Park, I think really struck a the movie, I think struck a nerve with a lot of Gen Xers and elder millennials who grew up in this time because even if again, they're not from New Jersey, they didn't go to Action Park, they can relate this idea of doing something they absolutely should not have been doing because their parents weren't paying attention. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody and they were not paying attention. Yeah. They weren't. Can you walk us through like the end of Action Park? Yeah. What was the downfall? You know, so there's a lot of shady money movement with this park and its parent company. But more than anything, it was that the times had changed. You know, this was a product in the 1980s. You're reaching the early and then mid 90s. It sounds popular as it used to be. It's harder to cover up the weird financial amassations. It's harder to deal with the endless number of injuries. Interesting. And eventually the park just, you know, this Action Park itself was a summertime attraction on the side of a mountain. It also housed a ski resort in the winter. Yeah, it's a highly seasonal. Highly seasonal. And eventually it just doesn't open for the 1996 season. And then soon thereafter, they sell the whole mountain, the whole resort to a multinational corporation, the same one that owned Whistler Mountain that really only cared about the ski resort. They didn't really want much to the water park. And so the water park, all the creative rides, the fun rides, they were sort of stripped away and it became just kind of this generic seasonal water park called Mountain Creek. And it's open now. And it's actually like a really great little water park run by different people. You know, it's a very safe place to go. And people who run it are lovely nowadays. They like the movie. I was really happy about that. And so, but it also is a park where you go to today. There really is a sense of history and ghosts almost. You walk around and you're like, not many of the original rides are there, but like, oh, my goodness, that's still there. And that one is still there. And these are sorts of rides because think about Action Park. It was one of the very first modern water parks in the country. And so the idea of what a water park was hadn't been fully defined. And so almost all of these rides were originals, one offs, early prototypes of things that would then become standardized. And so I remember from the film that some of them were like his brainchild where he would draw something on the back of a napkin and then they would quite literally built it the next day with like a couple teenagers with a hammer or a brainchild of some lunatic who no normal amusement park would speak to. Right. And so these entrepreneurial ride designers, guys in their basement with a doodle pad and an idea would come with track sheen down and give them their ideas and they would build these things and then test them by throwing teenagers out. And so you had, you know, saw in the movie, the man in the ball and the ball, which was one of the more infamous examples where you just roll a guy down a ball, down a hill in a ball and maybe it falls off the track and ends up going over the highway and in the swamp. Who knows anything could happen. So please watch this film. I do have to say, can I, I want to talk about the one that was just like a circle. The loopity loop. Yes. The loopity loop. The loopity of the cannonball. So you could, you could probably tell the story better than I can, but essentially what I remember from the film was it was just sort of like this loop. It was like a slide. It was like a Hot Wheels track. It was a slide, one loop and you're out. And they couldn't figure out why people kept getting hurt in it. And so they kept sort of modifying it because people kept coming out with scrapes and cuts all over themselves. Right. First, when they first built this thing, this ride, they would test out and in course, the most rigorous scientific manner possible, which is Gene owner of the park standing next to the bride waving $100 bills in the air and tempting teenage employees to go down in exchange for $100 bills and then seeing how injured they got. And $100 when you're 19, eight is money. And you're 15. I'm not in any idea how many big. That's how much money you can get. A lot of cigarettes. Comic books. You can buy new teeth. Yeah. And so these. How many looses you're going to buy? Yeah, so. What do you know about looses? I know about looses. I know about looses. Yes. So. Do you remember this ride? Yes. The loopity loop. Yes, I do. The second you walk into the park, it greeted you. It was loomed over you. It was right there. It was a landmark. And it was the signal that the world you're about to enter was a different universe from you're not in Kansas anymore. The second you see that loop, right? And so you, they would send some teenagers bribed with $100 and cold hard cash, right? Down this thing. And first couple of kids they send down. Well, they realized they hadn't put sufficient padding in a loop. So they get to the top and it's kind of like face plant against the fiberglass and they're missing teeth and her mouths are bloody. Not a pretty picture. So we got to fix this, right? So they go in, put in some more padding, send some more. Kids down these kids. No more missing teeth. They fix that problem. But what are all these lacerations on their body? Where are these scrapes coming from? So they open up the thing and realize, well, who done it looks like some teeth got stuck in that padding and it's just scraping into these kids like some human teeth, human teeth, chewing up these bitches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is one of the most horrifying, primal, like aggressively distressing Munch the munch. And things crunched. Munch the crunch. Munch, munch, baby. And so this, this ride. Wicked. This ride was not open often. They spent many years trying to perfect it and make it work. They spent many years sending employees down and bribed $100 a pop. I spoke to some of them. I remember when I went there as a kid, I was told, I think it was not open to the public, but I saw people going down and was told those are employees. And the problem with this ride was that you could never fully control the experience to ensure somebody actually made it through to the other side. Right. Because you go on a roller coaster, you're shaking. That is. I think there probably were a lot of kids who were willing to go on that ride. I was not one of those kids. I mean, like, it made everything else seem normal. Like I'm not going in that, but this other thing that's definitely death trap. I guess I got to go on that now. You know, a hundred percent. Yeah. And so it really, it changes the goalposts of what is normal from the second you step through. Knowing all that you know, seeing all that you've seen. Being a man of a certain age. How do you enter the world from this learned perspective? How do you reenter society after making this film? Knowing everything that you've learned about Action Park. Does it change the way you approach life, amusement parks, risk? Are you just like, wow, that was fucking crazy. New go back to the way you were. Well, to me, it was mostly, it's gonna sound all hoity-toity, but an investigation into human nature and why people knowing that this thing was going to hurt them still chose to do it. It's very interesting. And the biggest questions I was bouncing around and I think I was seeking answers for was about my fellow humans and understand what is it about us because I could relate to that. I could feel myself being drawn into this and wanting to go there and saying, what is that? What is going on? It's real a bit. Yeah. And that to me was really the biggest question. Everything else, it's like, yeah, the world's a dangerous place. We get it. Right, right, right. But also I think asking me how does it change my life. Not nearly as much as it changed that of the kids who went there and the kids who work there. And I think meeting so many people from that area who either spent their childhoods with Action Park as their babysitter or spent their childhoods working at Action Park, childhoods working at Action Park is like a coal mine. Some triangle shirt way of chef. Yeah. Childhoods working at Action Park. But truly. Workhouse of New Jersey. Yeah. And I think it explains so much about the generational nature of Gen X and the people who came from there and the resilience, the grit, the weirdness of them. And that's kind of cool. Well, listen, I talk about Gen X a lot. I do. And I think when, now that we're talking about this, it makes me oftentimes as a member of Gen X, I feel like nobody cares about us, right? And I feel like Action Park sort of exemplifies that. Yeah. Like we were going to Action Park, kids were getting hurt all the time. We went anyway. Yeah. Our parents, I mean, granted, I lied to my parents. I snuck out to go. But I mean, I think, but like you said, there was some parents who were using Action Park as the babysitter, right? Like, what am I going to do with my kid this summer? Send him to Action Park. Go to Action Park. But if you lived in the area, you knew that Action Park was dangerous, but you were sending your kid to go there anyway. It's really interesting, you know? Like what does that say? It says something about, you know, kids will be kids and some kids are sort of thrill seekers and they'll go. What does it say about the parents of the kids who let them? And a lot of my kind of early investigation into the story was driven by trying to answer that question about my parents. My parents are extremely risk-averse. Like if we went to some like fly by night carnival, they would have been like, hell no, you're not going on that ride. You know, that thing, I don't trust that carny. I don't trust that thing. But we went to Action Park and I, you know, I called my parents up when I got into this. I was like, mom, what were you thinking? Like it was so out of character for them. And they said, well, they advertised on TV and made it seem like a great place to take your family. So I go, OK, OK, that explains the first time we went. I remember my dad making jokes while we were in line about his place. It's called Action Park. And I'm like, what is going on here? Yeah, yeah. It's amazing to just think about like what branding or just a nice sign or the sort of definition of establishment can do to trust in a consumer. It's really interesting. I also think that, you know, we I think we're also looking at this through the lens of today, right? Having all the information in our fingertips. So we know now today that just because something is on TV or on the news doesn't necessarily mean that you can trust it. Yes. But I feel like when I was growing up, if it was on TV, well, they wouldn't have it on TV. They wouldn't let us go there if it was dangerous. That's right. They wouldn't they wouldn't charge admission and say, drop your kids off here if it was dangerous. It's just like great adventure. And it was nothing like great adventure. Do you know what I mean? It was a wild time. It was. It was. It was. Well, thank you for joining us, Seth. It was great. Thank you so much. It was so much fun. I was so excited. Watch Class Action Park on HBO. Yeah, at Joe Max. Yeah. And be on the lookout for something Santa Con related in the coming months. Absolutely. But also Santa Con, watch the fuck out. Yeah. Yeah, we're just plug it. If that's cool. We're premiering the Santa Con movie November 13th as part of Doc NYC Film Festival. So by this point, I'll probably be too late for you to see it, but look out for screenings afterwards. It sounds like an invitation for us to go. I think you should go. That's really. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for that invitation. Thank you, Seth. Thank you. I love talking to Seth. That was crazy. It brought back so many memories. You have no idea. It was so good. It was so good. What a sweetheart too. It's a super nice guy. Yeah. Clearly survived something. As did we all. As did we all. As did we all. Now we're going to jump into Tales from the DMs where we read all of your burning questions that you submitted through my link tree, either in a voicemail or you wrote into the show. This should be good. So the first question is it deals a lot with immigration law. A lot of them deal with immigration law. Of course. I mean, it's sort of my specialty, which I'm happy to answer all the questions until I'm blue in the face. We have to remember while Michael is a lawyer, he is not your lawyer and that you should find your own attorney in your own state so you can ask them your questions. This is just for. Great reminder. Informational and entertainment purposes. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. You'd think that I'm not a lawyer. No, but you know what though? I'm going to say that you get really excited and passionate about the work. And also like immigration law is it's federal law so I can help people in other states, but it's like you need a local lawyer to go to your hearing with you. People are contacting me in California and I'm like, I can't fly to LA for your bail, your bond hearing. No. And also, I mean, you don't know the particulars of their case. Exactly. The first question is, is there a path to citizenship for people who have DACA and are we left with marriage as our only option is kind of the question. That's a good question. So Michael, for people who have DACA, is there a way to citizenship or are we just left with the only option of marriage? Also, are people with DACA at in danger of being deported by ICE? Great question about whether or not DACA is something that, you know, how do you get status if you're a DACA recipient? So DACA is sort of like the Dreamers Act you came here as a child with a parent. It's not a pathway to citizenship. It is a protected status. It's a temporary status. So the thing about DACA is that you usually do need some sort of other avenue to seek full citizenship where you're voting, where you are a US citizen with a US issued passport. So marriage is not your only option. I don't know your situation. I would need to know sort of like everything about your life to say like marriage is your only option. But I can't like advise people to get married for green card purposes. That is just like totally not okay. It's technically fraud. But if you are seeing someone and you decide to get married and they are a US citizen, it is something that does lead to citizenship. I will say under the Trump administration as of today, I am working with clients who are seeking green cards through marriage and they are getting them. Like I had a client who went in front of their sort of interview with USCIS and they said that it was like a lovely conversation with this person and that it wasn't this horrifying draconian experience. That's gratifying to hear. USCIS is US Customs and Immigration Services. It's sort of like the government agency where DHS, Department of Homeland Security sits. And beneath that is what everyone knows, ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So USCIS is sort of like the big umbrella where all of immigration customs activity happens. So you pass through USCIS when you are going through customs at the border. Your flight just landed from Aruba. You're coming back for a vacation. That's the government agency you're kind of passing through. And that's who all these ICE officers work for. Yeah. I can't say much because I'm up against these folks in court every day. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to say anything. I'll just quietly look and just... I mean, you can say whatever you want. You have first amendment rights. Do I still? I mean, for now, I guess. Today. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Every now and then, I'm like, maybe we don't. I don't know. Hop step jump. Every day the law comes down, it's a little different. Let me ask you a question about people like this. So, but these are folks who started the process a while back. These are not people who just started the process because they started under the Biden administration or maybe even the... No. ...the situation they had gotten married after. Yeah. Interesting. I think it really is like... I thought it took more time. Again, I can't advise people like you should or shouldn't do this. Yes, yes, of course not. Of course not. But from my perspective and the things that I have seen and I'll speak about like this is my opinion, it really is a fucking crapshoot sometimes. We just don't know what's going to happen and it's crazy because it's your life. Yeah. And it's like high stakes for many people. You might get deported back to a country where you might be unalived for whatever political reason or whatever. Or you haven't been there since you were two. Yes, exactly. Right. So, I have this kind of separation from it because I'm not an immigrant but I deal with it all the time. Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, there is possibility there. Still, I am still seeing successful cases brought and it's very reassuring and wonderful for me too experience but I'm not the one not sleeping and the day is leading up to the interview at the immigration office. So it's interesting. It's kind of like a... So what's the answer? The answer is that there are many pathways to citizenship. DACA is not one of them. Marriage is one of them but there's also asylum. There's also asylum based on like political claims. There's asylum based on convention against torture. There are many different sort of like avenues. So definitely work with an immigration attorney. I mean, if you want to reach out to me directly through my link tree, I'm happy to sort of hear all about your case and you as a person and then say like, okay, these are what your options are but marriage is not the only pathway forward for DACA. So this next question is going to be about how often does the search warrant lead to formal charges and how often do those charges lead to convictions? So... Okay. Hi, Michael. What is the conversion rate between a law enforcement agency or if there's a difference between state, local, federal? What those conversion rates are between getting a search warrant, searching a person's place and then that turning into real charges? And then what is the conversion rate between those charges being brought and convictions? So interesting. Search warrants are one of my... I like love nerding out about this. If you see me at a party, please come up to me and ask me about the Fourth Amendment. I took every single fucking class in law school. I remember that. And it's also one of these things that like kind of doesn't come up that much in court. So like the Fourth Amendment is unlawful searches and seizures and there's a long history to it. It was basically in England, we're trying to get away from this sort of concept of like we were able to just kind of grab people out of their homes and lock them up until they told us what they wanted, which is starting to sound like something that happens a little bit more often here in America, but at least for a really long time, we weren't doing that. And the Fourth Amendment is the one that people often talk about when we talk about stop and frisk. And when we talk about people getting pulled over in their car, those are like the two big scenarios is like, what can they search and what can they not search? But this specific question was really coming from like whether a search warrant leads to formal charges, which is a really cool question to think about because a search warrant is just sort of a letter from a judge saying that the police have authority, they have enough probable cause to believe a crime has been committed to then go ahead and search this person's home, car, into purse, whatever it may be. But the likelihood of charges is really like dependent on what evidence I guess they find in that search and what evidence they had to kind of get to a place where a judge was issuing a search warrant. So really depends on the situation here. Maybe they had like overwhelming evidence and they needed like one little critical piece. Like we had all these eyewitnesses, but we didn't have the actual like murder weapon. And but we saw the murderer alleged murder go into the house with the weapon. We're going to get the warrant for the house and go search the house. So somebody gets a search warrant. Do they have to be very specific about the places that they can search? So can you search someone's home but not their car? Can you search their car but not their person? This is I am obsessed with this. I love this question. You have no idea. The way you got excited about Action Bar. Okay. I get excited about questions about the fucking Fourth Amendment. So anyway. So it has to be reasonably within the scope. So there was this really cool case in law school. I'm like lit up where the clothes that the murderer was wearing were like in a washing machine and they weren't looking for the clothes. They were looking for the weapon, but the cops looked in the washing machine and it wasn't a reasonable place to search. It was or it was not? It was not. It was not. And so the court ruled like it wasn't reasonable for them to like look in there and find like a blood stain shirt and use that as evidence. And so in court you argue something of it's the fruit of the poisonous tree. So that was an unlawful search. So anything you find is poisoned. So you can't use it to prove that this person. They had a search warrant for the house. Yes. But the washing machine that is in the house doesn't count. It wasn't reasonable. I can't remember the specifics of the case, but it wasn't reasonable that whatever the weapon was. Yeah. Maybe it was drugs. Whatever they were looking for, it was unreasonable. That it would be in a washing machine. Exactly. And the cops went in there and found it. It was a pretty liberal decision, I would say, from the court. That's wild. Anyway, that has been Tales from the DMs. Thank you for submitting your questions. Please continue to submit through my link tree. We love hearing from you. We do. We love hearing these questions. Keep that forth and then come in, baby. Really cool conversation today. I love talking to Seth. I love talking to you. I love talking to you. I love sort of jumping into like your... We had very different like childhoods. For sure. For a lot of reasons. Yeah. For a lot of different reasons, like geographic, generational. Yes. But I love sort of hearing a little bit about like that time capsule, that moment in time, the notion that the street lights coming on was like an indicator of time. I thought everybody... I never knew that before. No. Street lights come on every... No. And you could see it like kids running home. Oh, shit, the street lights are on. Yes. I know that. Yes. My parents didn't give a shit where I was. So I also wasn't that cool. I wasn't anywhere. I wasn't going anywhere. What do you mean? I don't know. I just, I wasn't... I don't believe that. I wasn't like out. You were. I don't know. You were. Anyway, thank you for joining us. Thanks, everybody. This is Melissa Malbranche. And I'm Michael Flood. I'll see you in court. This has been an Exactly Right production, recorded at iHeart Studios, hosted by me, Michael Food. And me, Melissa Malbranche. Our producer is CJ Ferroni. This episode was edited by Nicholas Gallucci. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker is Patrick Cottner. Our theme song was composed by Tom Brievogel with artwork from Charlotte Delirio and Vanessa Lylak, with photography by Brad Obono. Reef Recess is executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Heartstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can find me on Instagram at Department of Redundancy Department or on TikTok at Michael Flood. And I'm on both Instagram and TikTok as Melissa Malbranche. Got legal questions? Reach out at briefrecess at ExactlyRightMedia.com. Listen to Brief Recess on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, we're a podcast with video. Search for Brief Recess on YouTube.