Calvin Tilokee 0:02
Hello and welcome to the midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin, also known as Revparblems on Instagram. I’m excited to do this talk show with my best friends from high school and college. Steve and Mikko, what can you expect on this podcast? Well, I like to call it a talk show for Men of a Certain Age. We’re not quite old. But we’re the kind of guys that have to make sure we don’t mix our alcohol on a night out, you know? we’ll chat about current events, trending topics, and things that we just need to get on our soapbox about knowing us. We’ll be laughing the whole time. And ladies, don’t worry if you ever wanted to know what your husband or boyfriend talks about in the man cave. Stick around. Now, keep in mind, we’re old enough to remember when Parental Advisory stickers went on CDs. If you don’t know what CDs are. You’re too young for this podcast. Speaking of which, make sure you have your headphones in. It’s NSFW as these kids say. We’ll be bringing that flavor to your ear weekly on your way to work while you’re shaving. Or just sitting around wondering why your back hurts but let’s get this show on the road. Hello and welcome to midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin here as always, with my boys Steve andMikko bringing that flavor to ya ear on a weekly basis. On today’s episode, we’ll be giving our thoughts on religion. Just had to pause make sure we didn’t get struck down by lightning or anything. Of course, you’ll get Chris Rock quote of the week. I don’t like that jerk and get off my lawn. But first, how was the week fellas?
Steve 1:23
It was annoying. It was annoying shit. It really was. It’s like having fuckin Thanksgiving dinner. Like any of the bullshit like family bullshit that goes on and Thanksgiving. It’s usually that day. It’s not like the week or two before. And I feel like with COVID it’s just like, the holidays are in true 2020 fashion, just a pain in the ass. And it’s not that bad. But there’s definitely a pain in the ass element. But on the flip side, I’m buying a bunch of presents for my kid.
Calvin Tilokee 1:56
Oh, nice,
Steve 1:57
It’s fun shit. So the week kind of evens itself out with all that.
Calvin Tilokee 2:03
Nice Nice. Yeah, that’s always fun to get gifts for kids and just like. anticipate what uh, what the reactions are going to be
Steve 2:09
for sure.
Calvin Tilokee 2:10
I did see a picture the other day on Instagram with her. Her little get up with the glasses and everything. Yeah. Cute. So
Steve 2:19
the kid has is just fantastic. Because she’s at that perfect age, though, where she, you know, she doesn’t know. She’s not self conscious. And so she’s just zero fucks leopard print skirt. Yeah, tights, rain boots with sunny out. Doesn’t matter. She likes it.
Calvin Tilokee 2:35
That’s the best age man. I actually used to do some coaching for kids soccer. And I’d love when I would get the age group between two and five. The imagination and they’re just down for anything. Everything you say is like wow, like they’re into everything. Every that’s a great age. It’s a great age. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Mikko Miller 2:53
For me, like we were talking about in a pre game got into Pokemon cards this week. Hmm, I never knew that the cards had so much monetary value, like they’re almost as great as collecting baseball, basketball and football cards. So I went to a few targets this week got some elite trainer boxes, which, you know, to explain it. It’s like, you kind of build a deck basically with Pokemon cards that you battle other people with. But I’m not here to battle kids, because I’m fucking 42 years old. I’m just here to collect like the rare cards right? So I was able to pull the secret rare Charizard, which is that lizard dragon looking thing and it’s worth about $2,000 graded. So I gotta send it over to a grading system. And it’s worth two grand. So you know, that’s getting into Pokemon now, which is kind of strange.
Steve 3:48
Did you just find this in like a random pack?
Mikko Miller 3:51
Yeah, certain packs have certain sets of cards, and you have to look for like specific sets of boxes in order to get this particular chars card. And the one that I have is like a secret rare. So imagine a card pack having 200 cards, and it’s numbered one to 200 this one’s number from like 201 to 209 out of 200. Hmm. Go to like, extra, you know, and yeah, it’s worth about 500 to two grand it depending on the grade that you get when you send it for grading like you would send a baseball card for grading. You know, if you get some grade 10 some of it on eBay’s even going as high as like 7000 for freaking Pokemon cards. Yeah, it’s it’s insane, man. It’s crazy. Yes, I’m 42 Shut up. I can hear you audience judging me.
Calvin Tilokee 4:45
That’s actually one of the regrets I have. You know, I had the first season of all the x men cards. I used to collect those as a kid. And I had all of them. I had them in a book and everything. I was a straight up nerd. I had them like you. Don’t delay laminated thing. I had them all I had there was like, I think two or three Wolverines, like every single one day. I have no idea where that book is now. And I didn’t keep it in like pristine condition. You know, they were cards so I pull them out sometimes like look at the read them, but I didn’t know any better. And now like I look back and I was like, Oh, shit. You serious? Yeah, that could be few grand right there.
Mikko Miller 5:26
very lucrative. Very, very lucrative
Steve 5:30
I’ve hung on to a Hank Aaron that I got when I was. I think I was probably 11 I got them for birthday present. And yeah, I still have it in the thing. It’s like one of like, a few cards I kept.
Mikko Miller 5:43
Hmm, wow.
Calvin Tilokee 5:44
Yes, definitely a good one to keep.
Yeah, hang on to that one. For sure.
Yeah, this week was was chill man. The week itself was pretty busy. kind of stressful. There’s a lot going on. But I made up for that. On the weekend. I slept my ass off on Saturday. I went to bed. I think at like 11 or Friday. I woke up at 1030 on Saturday morning. straightened. It was nice because I don’t usually sleep like that. I usually don’t get that much sleep. It felt great. felt great. And then we went to lunch and had a couple drinks at lunch. It was like just taken all the stress away. I was like, yeah, Saturday was dope.
Mikko Miller 6:23
sounds relaxing
Calvin Tilokee 6:24
It was nice. Yeah, it was good. It was good. And then yesterday was just like, you know, chillin watching football, that kind of stuff. But what led to this, this week’s topic is recently been watching a lot of Netflix. And we got into the Scientology show. I don’t know if you guys have touched on that at all with Leah Remini. Yeah, the aftermath of Scientology. So yeah, so we started watching that. And no, she had I don’t know if it’s the same show a couple of years ago was out on some streaming service on TV. So we watched a few episodes of that. But there’s a new one out on Netflix. So we’ve been watching that. And I’ll just seeing a lot of the similarities between a lot of the religions and stuff. So been having a lot of different thoughts. I said, Hey, you know what, let’s bring this to the table. Because you know what, last week, we got you ready for Thanksgiving, right? And if all the politics that’s likely to come up, doesn’t stress out the dinner table too much, you got a few religion points you could take because this is coming out on Thanksgiving. So listen to this, on the on the way to your family’s house, we gave you some more shit to talk about, get out of there early, bring some shit up and leave, you know.
But yeah, kind of wanted to talk about, I guess, our religious journey, I guess, if you wanted to put it that way, and just all of our feelings on the topic. So before we do that, you know, we’ll we’ll put out the disclaimer as they do with, you know, the Assassin’s Creed video games that, you know, this is a multicultural, diverse panel. So we’re all coming from different angles, we’re talking about our experiences and our opinion, nobody going to try to tell you what to do with your religion. But we talking from our perspective. And you know, hopefully you hear that if some of y’all out there very religious, this is all coming from a place of respect. just sharing opinions. But you know, I grew up Roman Catholic, my family, you know, most of my family’s pretty religious, my grandmother definitely was, she’d say a rosary on a regular basis. And my brother and I went through like a confirmation class. So it’s like Sunday school, but I ours was on Wednesday, what that was about, after regular school, we go to the church, and it was in class. And this is you may be around 14-15 years old, in a Roman Catholic Church, before you confirmed in the religion, there’s a ceremony and you’re, it’s kind of like another baptism, you take on a religious name, people usually take a middle name, that’s something from the Bible. And you’re officially confirmed into the religion. So during this class, there was a situation arose Now, part of the class was for us to go to Mass, but you had to attend, say, like three masses while the class was going on before you could pass the class. So us, as in the entire class, goes to mass this evening. And we’re sitting there and I’m sitting next to another student. And you know, kids are playing around like the person like elbowed me like playfully. So I was doing the same thing back and we kind of just went back and forth. One of the priests walks by, he sees this and pulls me out of mass, not the other person, just me, pulls me out of mass. So I’m like now in the front of the church, and he starts going off on me and telling me like your behavior is so inappropriate and disrespectful. You’re not going to confirm in this church.
Well, I’m like, What did I do? And he’s like, well, I saw what you did, and don’t talk back to me and this and that, of that. And I do have to put it out there that I was only one of two people of color in this class. So the unfortunate part of that is you have to now it has to cross your mind that like was that the reason the other student didn’t get pulled into this situation? Because you’re only talking to me right now. So now you’re telling me this is a priest. This is the head priest of this church and this parish. So now I’ve got to think you probably are a little racist. So I’m like, Okay, that’s strike number one. So tell the story to my parents, my mother goes into the church, and basically does what a mother would do and says, Oh, no, he’s he’s confirming here, we ain’t trying to hear that. So I did go through the process, I did confirm, but then come to find out later, the same priest, I saw him out front of the church once and he was smoking. And while it’s not a sin, it didn’t look right. It’s not a good look like because in Roman Catholic the priests are supposed to be a conduit between you and God, they’re supposed to be more quote, unquote, perfect people. So to see him doing that, and then after the situation, it really started to shake my belief in the church and like, well, if this person could be a priest, and could be supposedly more perfect than I am, but you don’t really seem like a better person than I am. And then later come to find out this guy was an alcoholic. On top, of all of this. So pretty much at that point, I really stopped believing in church. And that really shook my belief in the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, not necessarily in God or anything like that. But at that point, it was like, Okay, hold on. Something’s not right about this. And I needed to take a step back and kind of reassess. So. I’ll start there. There’s other things that have, you know, going on over the years, but you know, I’ll be talking for half an hour straight if I do that. So what aboutyou guys?
Steve 11:43
Yeah, so we weren’t raised religious. I mean, we didn’t go to church. My mom didn’t have a great experience at church with nuns. She went to Catholic school back in the day, and the nuns would hit her and shit. I mean, they were just like, hitting kids with rulers or, you know, you’d have to hold books out, you know, with your arms spread. She just didn’t like that at all. And we were never in church, and they’re on my dad’s side. They never went to church. I asked my grandmother, the woman’s 96. Again, fit as a fiddle and all that she has faculties. And I asked why they never went to church. And she’s from Philly. And so she’s got this great Philly accent. She goes, I just never thought it was important. I mean, I know God. And you know. That’s a Philly accent. I’m trying to mock badly. But
Calvin Tilokee 12:33
no, it was pretty good, reminded me of Tina Fey, yeah.
Steve 12:40
It was never, never important in the family. And I know my sister’s not. I’m not really religious. But my wife was raised Catholic is Italian. And like that whole, I go to church with them. And because it’s a family thing, and
Calvin Tilokee 12:57
you guys still do that now.
Steve 12:58
We only went with them to church, whenever we were in town. This is when we didn’t live in the same city as them. And yeah, we would go with them every now and then. I mean, for them. I mean, it’s more of a family thing. But religion is certainly the big deal with them. And it’s, you know, you know, my wife and I had to talk about how we’re going to do things with our daughter. You know, is she going to get baptized or not? And she is so Hmm. Certain things.
Calvin Tilokee 13:24
Yeah, that’s a good point. So, are you guys doing that because it’s a true belief or?
Steve 13:31
No, it’s for her family.
Okay.
Calvin Tilokee 13:34
Got it. Got
Steve 13:34
it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 13:37
yeah.
Steve 13:37
You know, we went through pre Cana and all of that. Did you guys have to do pre Cana before you were getting married?
Calvin Tilokee 13:43
Is that the class?
Steve 13:44
That’s the class
Mikko Miller 13:45
Yeah. Yeah, we did that. We had to spend like a weekend retreat away from everybody. And it was just all about, you know, husband and wife the roles how religion plays in it, and taking notes in it’s almost like marriage counseling, pre marriage counseling, what to expect what to get into they even talked about, like, fertility and how it’s kind of weird because they talked about the couple that was teaching a class they only had intercourse with the intent to reproduce to procreate Otherwise, they didn’t do it. Yeah, basically to procreate. And yeah, they just like discussions about that kind of stuff. It was like a two day little retreat. Definitely how to do it.
Calvin Tilokee 14:28
So what about you because we’re like we did you guys grow up? Catholic?
Mikko Miller 14:33
Yeah. Um, well, Filipinos are mainly Roman Catholics and my parents grew up Roman Catholic, hence we grew up Roman Catholic. And you know, as a kid, my brother was a altar boy. Okay, I didn’t do that. He did that whole thing. And we did the same thing that you did Calvin confirmation. Ours was on Thursdays. We would go through confirmation classes to get ready to be confirmed at the church which is one of the religious rights To go through, you know, baptism, confirmation, you know, holy matrimony, all that good, good stuff.
My parents are still highly religious, they still go to church every Sunday, my wife, we got married in a Catholic Church, very religious her family. I’m spiritual, I talk to God, I have conversations with God, I’m not a big churchgoer only because, like here in Southern California, a lot of the priests are getting in trouble for molesting boys and children and whatnot. And my view is if you are in a position of power, like a priest or a pastor is and you are an instrument of God, why are you doing this shit? You know what I mean? Like, what? Why are you going around molesting children and then having the church pay fines to go hide it so that it’s not reported? Like, I don’t understand that. I can’t wrap my head around committing a sin. And yet you’re the one that’s preaching not to commit a sin? Is is kind of weird. Like, that’s the kind of shit like I can’t get along with. So, you know, I have my own personal conversations with whoever it is that I believe in. And that’s like, kind of how I feel about my religion. You know, my wife doesn’t quite agree so much. Because she’s still very church going she the whole COVID thing. We can’t go to church. She’ll still watch it on TV. And you know, I’m watching football on Sundays.
Calvin Tilokee 16:35
He got a fantasy team to worry about
Mikko Miller 16:37
gotta win. Just a
Calvin Tilokee 16:41
couple weeks before playoff,
Mikko Miller 16:42
you know, praying for them ravens to win.
Calvin Tilokee 16:45
Exactly.
Mikko Miller 16:50
going to hell dude
Calvin Tilokee 16:53
I mean, we knew that before when we agreed to this episode. This might be the last one. So I hope y’all enjoy it. Download and share with your friends.
Mikko Miller 17:00
Exactly. Share.
Calvin Tilokee 17:04
Now, but you know, he reminded me of the the Chris quote I used last week, you got alcoholic priests. You got ya smokin priests. You got ya molester priest every church Got that molester priest
Mikko Miller 17:17
True. That’s true. And I know you super religious folks, you super Catholic folks. I know you guys are kind of like itching at the butt right now. But um, it’s true. Every not every I guess not every church because that’s kind of like saying every guy does whatever. But a lot of churches have these priests that do these things. And it’s just being covered up and it’s fucked up people. It’s fucked up.
Calvin Tilokee 17:38
It really is. And I think you started out hitting it on the head. It’s an abuse of power.
Mikko Miller 17:42
Yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 17:43
And the fact that there’s no accountability, like they’re just these things come up, and they’re just shifted from parish to parish. You know, you’re not taking this seriously. And I don’t want to say it like this. But it’s kind of like, it’s one thing if this happens in a business, like if this is somebody’s CEO, who has sexual harassment cases, many alleged let’s just move into another branch or keep it quiet. But we’re talking about religion here. Right? Right. Right. Like you’re supposed to be better than all of us. We’re coming to you for the advice and the guidance and exactly all of that in your I mean, going back to like my story, like, I’m not a smoker, I’m not alcoholic, like I’m better off than you already. I was 14. You know, I’m not racist. I don’t discriminate against anybody. This is a joke to me. And yeah, again, I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but this is my experience, right? And something that’s also come up because we’ve been watching a lot of shows, you know, we in the house a lot these days, right? So we just watch a lot of TV. And as I mentioned before, I dabble in the reality TV with my wife because I’m a good husband. So watching we’ve been watching the 90 day fiance you know, everybody got different levels. You know, that somebody else stick a toe in the pool. Yeah, I stick my whole leg. I go in waist deep and you know, I mean, levels are both in the pool.
Mikko Miller 19:16
Some people play around the perimeter, you put your finger in
Calvin Tilokee 19:26
I ain’t got no shame. And the truth is I’m speaking about truth.
Mikko Miller 19:32
That’s right.
Calvin Tilokee 19:34
But yeah, we watch 90 day fiance. And there’s this couple where this girl she’s she’s Jewish, was raised Jewish, and met a guy on a trip to Ethiopia. And they had a kid, she got pregnant and she decided to live there. So she’s recently had this baby and the husband’s family is very Christian and they are relentless about baptizing this child, to the point where, while she was still pregnant, this couple went to a church and the church basically, will this, the priests told them that the baby can’t be baptized in the church unless the mother converts. Because if the baby were to feed from a non Christian breast, he can’t be baptized.
Mikko Miller 20:25
What?
Calvin Tilokee 20:27
Yeah, so this girl who is Jewish by heritage, I don’t know how strong she is in, you know, the faith or how much she believes in practices, but she would now have to convert for this kid to be baptized. And the husband is like relentless about he brings the family to pressure her and everything. And what stuck out about it to me was that them being African, because that’s not inherently your religion. This was forced on you centuries ago, by colonizers and it to me it was like, it’s like a smack in the face of like, how could you guys be so wrapped up in this and so brainwashed by a religion that’s not even inherently yours, I could more understand it. If it was something that was African and something that was there before all it is. And then this, hey, we very much believe this is our culture. But you’re talking about something that’s not yours even that was forced on you, by people who oppressed you and took you over. And now you’re doing the same? It’s like, how do people not see this?
Mikko Miller 21:33
It’s one of those things that’s like, when you look at history, right? When you look at how everything goes throughout the course of the world. I don’t know when it started to where. And I’m Roman Catholics. I’m gonna start off by saying that, when did it become were Roman Catholic is like the super religion of the entire world. I mean, they basically, like you said, took over lands and forced Catholicism on everyone. And it’s like, and if you didn’t convert, you got raped and pillage. I mean, the Crusades was just another word for like, the massacres that went on, to try to get everybody to convert. And it’s just, I don’t know, like, as I got older, like, religion just became like, not a sore spot. But it’s a nice topic of conversation, because depending on how you view it if you’re a realist or not, it’s definitely definitely heavily debated amongst the kitchen table. And it could lead to I’m pretty sure like a lot of rifts in families,
Steve 22:34
for sure.
Calvin Tilokee 22:35
Oh,sure. Yeah. I’m sure. That was a big thing. My grandmother, on my mom’s side, she was very religious, like I said, and she always wanted one of us, one of us cousins, or her grandchildren, to be a priest or altar boy, and she never got her wish, unfortunately. It was it was a running joke amongst us, we’d be like I would who’s it going to be?
Steve 22:59
We were out to breakfast, one time with my wife’s family. And there was this, like some guy that they know, commented that, Oh, my gosh, your daughter is going to be a nun when she grows up. And I’m thinking to myself fuckin talking about my kid at the time was like a year and a half or two years old. And apparently what had happened was one of the nuns was going by, like, pick up a tray of food. And my daughter just looked at her. And I go, she’s not gonna be a nun. The entire table looked at me, like I yelled the word cunt.
Mikko Miller 23:38
Cunt
Calvin Tilokee 23:44
do gotta say that probably one of the first times in history that those two words have been used in the same sentence,
Steve 23:50
right? know, it’s just as I’m listening to each of your stories, I’m just thinking about all these interactions I’ve had and whether it’s been, you know, someone who’s apparently taking the Bible like the nth degree where they, they’re like, Oh, you can’t do this because of this, like the example you were given with the breastfeeding. Like, show me where that is. How much of that is just you or is that your OCD that that is just really glomming on. So I’ve certainly been in situations where I’ve been near a couple of religions, Christians, Jewish people, and there been people in the crowd who just have to take it to the nth degree. And I don’t know because I’m not I’ve never read the Bible or Quran or anything like that. So I don’t know, I can’t come back and say, Oh, this is bullshit. This is just you being an asshole. Right? But then I don’t understand why people. Oftentimes I think they enjoy having that control. They enjoy having that control over a person or a congregation or I’m going off on a tangent, I’m gonna pull back but
Calvin Tilokee 25:02
not really you’re actually leading us down a road. we wanted to go down. So go for it. No,
Steve 25:06
I just see this stuff. And I just think myself, how much of this is OCD versus, you know, really either following a path or believing in something or whatever the case may be. It’s just something I’ve always thought about not growing up religious. It’s just always something I’ve, you could say I’ve had the luxury of being able to observe very, impartially and I’ve had a ton of friends for kind of backgrounds, you get to see a lot of stuff.
Calvin Tilokee 25:31
I totally agree. And that’s, that’s something I wanted to bring up. So a couple years ago, we went to Rome. And we did a tour, which was, I think I mentioned on our travel episode, where you got to go underneath the Colosseum and see where the Gladiators came in, and everything. But part of that same tour was you walked across Palatine Hill, over to where Rome was founded. So you go into ancient Rome. And it’s really cool. If anybody’s never done that, definitely do that, because you’re in the spot where Rome was actually founded. And if you like, you’re underneath the city, almost. So you know, how they still find some of these ruins, you know, under buildings, even today, when they you know, demolish a building, they’re finding stuff underneath. So when you’re in ancient Rome, you look up, you see the level of current Rome. So you’re like, underneath it. It’s, it’s really cool. But one of the things I learned during this whole tour was the guy was talking about, before Christianity came in, they studied what they call paganism. And I immediately cringe because growing up Roman Catholic, everything pagan was referred to as evil. Like, yeah, that was just wrong. So it was like, Whoa, pagan is like you start thinking that they worship the devil or some kind of thing like that. And then come to find out, all it is, is just people who practice who believe in more than one God. So they believe then like the God of the earth, and the sky, and the wind, and different things like that. So there was nothing inherently evil about it. And before Christianity came along, they would when they had the gladiator fights and stuff, they were letting in a lot of Romans into the Colosseum for free. There were days where they would fill that fill up that Coliseum for free, feed them, give them wine, and people were happy. Even the poor people could come in, get a meal, enjoy the gladiator battles, and was fine. So I had to ask the guy, I’m like, why that sounded pretty cool. Like, why would they ever switch from that? And he said, Well, it was emperor, Constantine. He was the first one to be really exposed to Christianity. And then he, he started to bring it in. And then the one after him whose name I forget, now, he was the one who made it official because it’s easier to control people. It’s easy to control Christians, because your Catholic faith is all about living meekly on Earth, not spending a lot of money and living poor in order to live a good afterlife. So it was easy for them to collect money from these people. And you know, as a church, we all know Roman Catholic churches all over the place, and is one of the richest entities on the planet. That’s where this all started, because it was easier to keep people in line and get their money. If we made them Christian. I was like, wow. That’s, and that is, yeah. And I was like, Yeah, I think I’m done here. You know, I mean, I think that’s probably it. For me, and there was a lot of other cool things, too. I mean, if you look at a lot of the churches in Rome, these were pagan temples. And there’s so much that was part of the Catholic Church that we think was formed by them, but was actually stolen. So the first thing that caught me was, you know, again, the pagans believe in multiple gods, so all of their temples had a window for each God. And because the Christians couldn’t pull down a lot of these temples, they’d like physically couldn’t pull them down. If you go, you’ll see, there’s lines in the stone from the rope where they were literally trying to pull this temples down, they couldn’t. So they slapped a cross on top instead, and then change them into churches. But in the Catholic Church, if you go into almost any church, you have this all the stained glass windows, right? Yep. And in there, you either have different saints, or like the Stations of the Cross. Yeah, where, you know, the different steps of Jesus carrying the cross, to be crucified. And it’s like, the reason they did that is because they couldn’t tear down these temples that had windows dedicated to each thing. So they just changed it. I was like, What!? do you like, you know, made you feel like you were like, you’re a fan of a dope rapper and you find out you don’t, write, none of his shit. You’re like, wait, whoa.
Mikko Miller 29:53
cardi B. No,
Calvin Tilokee 29:58
I was good. It was It was crazy, man. It’s crazy. And then Steve, your thing about the nun that was an another one. So the pagans had something called Vestal virgins, which were, they would select young women early on in life to be priestesses of a Roman goddess called Vesta. So that’s why I call Vestal virgin. So basically, they live their life as virgins, you’re only committed to the church, and that particular God, and they weren’t allowed to marry. And they had to serve for 30 years. And once they serve for 30 years, they could go on to lead a regular life, but most Didn’t they, because that’s all they knew. But basically, that is the whole concept of nuns. In the Catholic Church, they stole that whole concept.
Mikko Miller 30:46
I was just gonna bring up a point one of the, I don’t want to say last straw, but I’ll say it anyway, one of the last straw said me like going into an actual church to worship quote, unquote, worship was, um, I went to a church right down the street from me. And it was a time when LGBTQ, were gaining popularity, they were dominating the news. And we’re all over social media and the media. And the priest who was preaching at that time stopped in the middle of a sermon and was just like, let me just bring up a point here, he wrote a letter, he said, He’s gonna write a letter to the bishop, and said that, you know, we need to stop all this gay and lesbian talk, because gay and lesbian according to the Bible, and according to his exact quote, were going to hell for what they did, because they said, What gays and lesbians do is an abomination. And that’s what the word he uses an abomination and their activities isn’t smiled upon by the church. And it’s actually frowned upon because it’s, it’s not in the course of nature, basically, for a woman and a woman to get together or a man and a man. And he said, there’s a reason why men have male parts and women have women parts. And I was like, fuck it. I’m out here. And you can ask my wife, I literally got up and walked out.
Calvin Tilokee 32:07
Yeah, that’s Wow,
Mikko Miller 32:08
t’s just stupid. Yeah,
Steve 32:09
Mikko, I meant to ask you something. So you had to do an entire pre Cana?
Mikko Miller 32:14
Yes. Yeah, that’s a Saturday, actually. It was a Friday, Friday, all day. And then we left Saturday night. And we stayed. It wasn’t even in like a it was supposed to be at a mission because a lot of missions here in California. But at that time, the mission that we had reserved or that the church had reserved was going through a renovation. So we ended up doing it like a Holiday Inn in Anaheim, but it was just us on this conference room floor, you know, so, yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 32:42
Okay. Did you guys get to stay in the same room or did they make y’all like, stay in separate rooms in the
Mikko Miller 32:48
same room But we were there with? Um, no, actually, no, we were in separate rooms. I had to share a room with another male. And my wife had to share a room with another female and we met for breakfast. That’s right. We have we didn’t sleep together.
Calvin Tilokee 33:04
Wow.
Mikko Miller 33:05
You know, I can understand that. Yeah. Sort of.
Steve 33:09
Yeah. Yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 33:12
Kinda.
Mikko Miller 33:13
Little did they know that we live together already. But you know, yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 33:17
And it was only a weekend away
Mikko Miller 33:19
Exactly.
Steve 33:23
You had like an eight hour day. For hours, it was six or eight. That was eight hours. And with ours, they were doing something so similar to what Mikko was talking about. How they, you know, tell you something, then you, you write it down. And you know, you come back and you talk about it. Yeah, I will never, ever forget this guy. This one line just stayed with me. And I’ve been with my wife now. 16 years. After they they say, you know, hey, the pullout method and all that. And you know, people write stuff down.
Calvin Tilokee 33:53
Wait wait that’s part of the class?
Steve 33:56
Yeah, I mean, come on.
Calvin Tilokee 33:58
Wow,
Steve 33:59
they were talking pull out. They’re talking about, you know, timing it and all that shit. Well, and all that separating the men from the women is some shitty air wall. That’s it. It’s like some like paper, thin air. Well, you could hear a fly fart on the other side was cold. So the fucking guy leaves, right? He leaves and then this guy who was you know, around my age. So I was like, you know, early 20s. And I remember he worked for the lottery. But as soon as the guy leaves, there was a beat. And then guy says, Whatever happened to anal?
And I lost my shit. There were so much. I was so nervous about being there because I’m not you know, I’m kind of bored and I just wanted to, you know, release and when this guy said that I blurted out laughing. There was like,
Calvin Tilokee 34:54
I mean, I would have too
Steve 34:55
there was probably a 12 or 15 guys and five of us laughed. and like a couple of guys, they looked so angry. And then this dickhead pops his head back in and he goes, you know, guys, you do you want, but your wives are right next door, and we can all hear you. And I’m thinking myself, the guy just yelled anal, like full volume and a quiet room. I think you are exactly. I’ll never forget that man, whoever you are, sir, you’ve made an incredible impression on me.
Mikko Miller 35:32
Should a high five the guythat would have been worth it?
Steve 35:35
I said to him, I go, that was funniest shit and needed. I’ll never forget that
Calvin Tilokee 35:40
reminds me of this scene from 40 old virgin when they go to see the dead like sex therapist with asking questions. And the guy goes, you know, like, I walk into his room, and he’s doing all kinds of stuff. Stuff that my wife won’t do. Lady goes, is there a question? How do I get my wife to do those things?
Unknown Speaker 36:05
Yeah,
Steve 36:06
pretty sure that the therapist and that was his Steve Carrel’s wife in real life.
Calvin Tilokee 36:11
Yes,
Mikko Miller 36:11
yes,
Calvin Tilokee 36:12
you’re right.
Mikko Miller 36:13
Where do we go from here?
Calvin Tilokee 36:20
I mean, there’s more. But I think I think we’ve summed up our, our feelings on the topic. You know, I guess for me, it’s just people, I just think have an open mind. You know, don’t get to Steve’s point earlier, don’t start quoting scripture. That’s, you know, that’s, that’s not in there. Right. And I’ll tell a quick story about that actually did have this conversation. It’s not a conversation you typically have at work, because you don’t really know people that well. But I’ve gotten into a conversation with this guy once about religion and the Bible. And I just said, Listen, I don’t I believe in God. I just don’t believe that everything in the Bible happened exactly the way it’s written. Yeah, there was a situation at that same job where I basically told the GM in a meeting, I said, No, I’m not doing that. And she was kind of a bully. So that was a big deal. People were like, Oh, shit, somebody finally stood up to her kind of thing. And by the time the story got to him, he was like, Oh, yeah, I heard that, you know, you went off on her and this and that. And I was like, I kind of shrugged it off is like, I’m gonna let you have your fun. That’s not really what happened. But it wasn’t that big a deal. And I told him that during that conversation, I was like, just think about that. This is the matter of two days, you heard a story from somebody who may not even have been in the room or whatever. And that’s not how it happened. You don’t think over thousands of years? Somebody embellished a story?
Mikko Miller 37:44
Yeah. Or Yeah, yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 37:47
And he’s like, Yeah, well, you know, it’s a great way to live your life. And I’m like, of course, I’m like, I think there’s the, I think the basic tenets of most religion is sound. Sure is just people fuck it up. You know, people take it to do all other kinds of shit. And that’s my synopsis on religion. So you know when i’m doing Oprah that’s what I’m sticking to.
Oh, man, so alright, so we’ll move on and get these last couple segments in because we might have a show after this.
Steve 38:21
Mm hmm.
Mikko Miller 38:21
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.
Calvin Tilokee 38:23
Now, after that, we’re gonna move into and I think we discussed this earlier, but Sherman Williams, Sherwin Williams, excuse me. Is the jerk I don’t like this week. I don’t know if he’s a real dude or not. But everybody in that company could eat a dick. So today, I find out that they fired a young man, a college student that was working for them part time. I believe in Ohio. Right, Steve? Is he on Ohio?
Steve 38:53
Yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 38:53
Yes. So yeah. So Columbus, Ohio, part time college student working at a paint store. He gets into it. And starts to really love mixing paint and colors and stuff. He starts to tick tock for this gets 1.2 million followers on Tiktok goes completely viral. And what does he do? He decides I’m going to put together a presentation for this company to show them the power of using social media to market their products. We’re talking about gen Zers on Tik tok, okay. They don’t give a fuck about almost anything. You got them into paint. Nobody likes paint. paints. not interesting, right? What do you want to talk about something boring, he would like it. I was like watching paint dry. Because that’s not that interesting about paint. And this dude made it interesting to a bunch of kids. And what did they do with this information? So he went to his manager, his manager, and the sales rep at the store was like, Hey, this is really cool. You should reach out to our Director of Marketing reaches out to the guy, email, LinkedIn guy takes two months to get back to him and says, Well, we don’t have any promos. running right now and didn’t even look at the presentation. Yet at the same time, the company started getting calls about these videos because he was doing cool shit like putting like blueberries into paint and then taking him out and you get this like blueberry colored paint which I mean who thinks about doing stuff like this? So people were calling the company asking about it. It became it got on their radar instead of saying wow, this is cool people are calling us about fucking paint. This is what we want. They turn around now and fired his kid for recording tik toks at work. I can’t believe how unbelievably stupid that is.
Mikko Miller 40:38
asshats
Calvin Tilokee 40:40
really boggles my mind as somebody obviously who does social media marketing for a living, but I mean, how fucking dumb Can you be as 2020 nobody? Most people are out of work. People are calling you about your goddamn paint and you figure the right thing to do is fire a part time employee who most an hour no way I’ll work but part time employees don’t give a fuck about nothing. Right? Not only did this dude air about the job, he cared enough, he didn’t even go viral and say well, I’m just going to quit and do this. You tried to get help Sherwin Williams and make money. And they kicked him out. I can’t imagine being that short sighted. So as far as I could see, they’re gonna be the next blockbuster. I talk about this shit all the time, like the CEO of blockbuster should never get another job. So he needs to take Sherwin Williams with them. Because, you know, blockbuster said they like it. People always gonna want to leave their house and drop off tapes. You know, otherwise we’ll fine them. And Netflix came in and said Oh word? Okay. Yeah, watch this. And they didn’t adjust at all. Nope. And this is what it reminds me. I can’t believe it.
Mikko Miller 41:47
Yeah, fuck that company. If they don’t understand the marketing power of social media from a part time employee who created a fucking business proposal for you guys to fucking pop off via social media. You’re a fucking paint company.
Calvin Tilokee 42:04
Exactly. You ain’t selling you’re not selling nothing cool.
Mikko Miller 42:08
You know Nike you don’t
Calvin Tilokee 42:09
mean just it’s a right it’s a right you’re not Nike is it’s not a necessity. It’s not something that’s like you know people sell shit you all got who gave me some paint this weekend. I do it when they have to. Right Andy the gens ears is at some point they’re gonna have to buy a house and guess what they’re gonna need to paint them shits, won’t they? Yeah, I mean, Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Idiots morons. Anyway, Sherwin Williams is a joke. Good week. Okay, if he’s a made up dude or not fuck you.
Mikko Miller 42:45
It might be two people isn’t it? Sherwin Dashwood? I don’t I don’t fucking know. I don’t know shit about
Calvin Tilokee 42:49
I thought maybe hyphenated maybe he got married.
Mikko Miller 42:59
Yeah, see? Look at Tik Tok dude. Did you find got people talking about you? Ass hats? I swear, man
Calvin Tilokee 43:06
all the wrong reasons. Exactly. Yeah, cuz I would never buy that fucking paid anymore. I’m going to, you know, Benjamin Moore. He sound like he got some sense.
Mikko Miller 43:15
DuPont that bitch.
Steve 43:20
That’d be my move. You’re not into it. Awesome. My next phone calls are the Behr paint. Benjamin Moore any of those guys.
Calvin Tilokee 43:30
I would hope that one of those companies would offer him a job. But at the end of the week, they’d be silly not to I mean, these guys mistakes can be their game.
Steve 43:40
What would 1.5 or 1.2 million Tiktok viewers be worth? Like, if you came into the situation that same tuition? Williams? Would it be worth like 50? Grand 60 grand? More enough to lock the kid down? I don’t know.
Calvin Tilokee 43:56
Probably more. I mean, you’d have to look at what their average paint sells for. Right? I mean, I think any like a strong engagement is like, at least on Instagram is like 3% free so. So you take 3% of 1.2 million and then take whatever their average paint can sells for. You know,
Steve 44:18
it’s got 36,000 notice buying a $30 gain up
Mikko Miller 44:25
a million dollars.
Steve 44:27
Roughly, it’s between like 25 and 60 bucks for a gallon of paint you’re usually buying for no average buyer would buy you know two to two to six. If you’re doing it more or more if you’re doing the exterior. Mm hmm.
Calvin Tilokee 44:44
So you’re looking at, say 36,000 people buying at three
Steve 44:50
times 120 bucks. Even 100 bucks just make it easy. So 36,000 you got another hundred 3.6 million.
Calvin Tilokee 44:59
3.6 million dollars
Mikko Miller 45:02
down the drain
Calvin Tilokee 45:04
where you gettin $3.6 million in 2020? ridiculous ridiculous.
Steve 45:11
Yeah, I mean that would be my next move. Sure. Oh yeah if they don’t want them the other to
Calvin Tilokee 45:17
go to Behr go to Benjamin Moore.
Mikko Miller 45:19
I think he’s gonna do his own though. I think that’s what the last part of the article that I read he was gonna actually like mix paint and create like his own little company with his own little creations. Hmm I mean, that’d be a cool move
Calvin Tilokee 45:33
you never know. Yeah, I mean he’s definitely needs to do his own thing actually found him on LinkedIn he’s doing you know social media creation and stuff now you know? Yeah, definitely branch out do your own thing and you may create some paint that one of these companies may want to buy they may want to partner with you so Um, but yeah, leave this shouldn’t in the dust but I just can’t believe a company could be this dumb in 2020 especially given the climate you almost understand blockbuster because that’s before things really changed and went online the way it was and you know, maybe you should have seen it. But I mean, it’s something you had to pay attention to but you could almost say I that was like the first really big boom you know, with internet and Netflix and things changing the way they have still a moron you still got a pivot but you didn’t but haven’t seen that in 2020 when everybody’s out of work and money for any business pretty much it’s hard to come by. You figured I’m going to fire a guy that has a goldmine sitting there and brought it to you he didn’t need to do Yeah, I just can’t believe how stupid these people are. Anyway, anyway, time for
Mikko Miller 46:46
mine is these entitled kids who drive around in their 50 60 70 $80,000 cars and don’t know how to fucking Park what is like how do you take up two lanes in an already crowded parking lot? It’s just an asshole move. And I hope to god someone doesn’t key your shit. It’s not gonna be me because I don’t do that shit but I know plenty people who will take heed my friend Park correctly or someone’s gonna key your shit
Calvin Tilokee 47:18
seriously man idiot
Mikko Miller 47:21
who double parked Mercedes who does that nowadays? So I can understand if you got like a Bugatti or Ferrari or whatever don’t double park a fucking Mercedes let alone a fucking Honda don’t do that shit.
Calvin Tilokee 47:34
I’d be way too scared Am I should just somebody driving too close to scratch in it. Yeah,
Mikko Miller 47:38
exactly.
Steve 47:40
I’d go off like Tracy Morgan. When that lady scratched his Bugatti and he was just going off on her that was
Mikko Miller 47:50
you know I can’t I can’t say tracy morgan without going blehu
Steve 47:56
yeah
Mikko Miller 48:01
you know sound I know exactly. It’s all good about the noise
Calvin Tilokee 48:12
Oh, man. Yeah, we got to go to Confession this week.
Mikko Miller 48:16
Yeah real wash off my sins. Jesus
Calvin Tilokee 48:20
wash off your hate
Mikko Miller 48:31
he’s like no no. You’d like certainly got blacking out his fucking genital area Yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 48:44
Oh man,
Mikko Miller 48:46
you are not a fish
Steve 48:48
good I’m gonna make this one real quick cuz I don’t want to devote a ton of time to this Takeshi six nine. Danny Hernandez.
Mikko Miller 49:00
Oh, guys.
Steve 49:03
Just go away man. Got however much money you have. Just go away. Just your rainbow colored ass with your tattoos and all that bullshit. And just go the fuck away.
Mikko Miller 49:17
Is he still alive?
Steve 49:19
Yeah, yeah.
Calvin Tilokee 49:21
Yeah, he got out of jail.
Steve 49:23
He was pitching and he was making like a rap video with like a phone like a day later and they were finding out where he is. And so then he would have to go somewhere else and hide. You know? Yeah, just him. Just get the fuck out of here.
Mikko Miller 49:39
Good riddance.
Calvin Tilokee 49:41
Mine will be real quick too the Instagram update. could Fuck off.
Mikko Miller 49:47
Yes,
Calvin Tilokee 49:48
yeah, fuck off my lawn desk like that notifications up top. You’ve got to go up to the top left to post that like it was fine. It was fine.
Mikko Miller 49:58
Yep, nothing wrong with it. Even when you exit like a live videos on the opposite side now it’s like what?
Yeah. Yeah, fuck you. Love you too, same time don’t ban my account please.
Calvin Tilokee 50:26
Oh shit. All right time for the Chris Rock quote of the week.
Steve 50:31
I can’t think of Chris Rock and then the theme of our show religion without thinking of the movie dogma.
Calvin Tilokee 50:37
Okay, because we see that okay,
Mikko Miller 50:39
yes,
Calvin Tilokee 50:40
I actually haven’t seen that.
Steve 50:42
Are you kidding me?
Calvin Tilokee 50:44
No I haven’t
Steve 50:45
you got to put it in but Chris rock is funny as shit. There’s like 1000 quotes of Chris rocks all over though Yeah, that are just perfect. Perfect
Calvin Tilokee 50:57
I’ll watch it after after make some time after 90 day fiance this week
Mikko Miller 51:06
squeezing in after the latest episode.
Calvin Tilokee 51:09
right right right
Steve 51:15
I mean there’s so many of them in there. This woman asks, this woman asks, so you were martyred? and his response is simply that’s one way of putting it another way of putting it would be to say that I was bludgeoned to shit by big fucking rocks. And what kinds of Chris Rock and given the topic we’re discussing, you gotta watch. Yeah, it’s a fantastic film.
Mikko Miller 51:37
Deal. Deal deal deal. I’m gonna rewatch it again actually, cuz it’s so fun like 20 years I think since I last saw a good fucking movie though. Yeah, my mind short I wanted to tie it in with religion, but I saw one that I thought was funny. So I scrapped the religion one and I went with men. We all lie all the time. You know what a man’s lie is like a man’s lies like, I was at Tony’s house. I’m at Kenny’s house. That’s a man’s lie. A woman’s lies like that’s your baby. We’ve all heard that. Like
Calvin Tilokee 52:15
oh look he has your hat
Mikko Miller 52:17
Yeah, yes your hat I saw that when I started cracking I was I use that nice
Calvin Tilokee 52:28
before there was frigerators before there was freezes before there was seasoning a pork chop might kill you. That’s right one drop wow dead But times have changed. And you know for like 5000 years ago people were like damn this pork is killing everybody. how can get people to not eat pork. Okay, God said don’t eat it. And everybody said okay, God said they need it and they stop eating it. But times have changed now we got refrigerators we got freezers we got some cellophane wrap. We got aluminum wrap. Now a pork chops your friend
Mikko Miller 53:01
a pork chop can save your life.
Calvin Tilokee 53:05
Eat a pigs ass if I cook it right
Mikko Miller 53:15
it’s funny
Calvin Tilokee 53:15
Cool. All right, time for the shout outs got a special shout out Goodwin cuz shout out goes out to my pops. Who? Papa revpar made a donation to Mikkos No Kid Hungry last week after last week’s episode. Awesome. Thank you. Yes, sir. You know he be listening to this while he’s on his on his peloton. So you probably sweating it out right now. So thank you. Thanks for that. Thank
Mikko Miller 53:39
you for your donation. Thank you. Thank you.
Calvin Tilokee 53:40
And for the for the support. Tell all your friends.
Mikko Miller 53:45
Yes, yes. No, thank you. That’s very much appreciated. $1 to $10 to whatever donation anyone can give to that organization. It’s, it’s a lot. So thank you.
Calvin Tilokee 53:58
Right. Oh, bright and time to head on out. Before we get struck down by lightning. This is Calvin, aka Revparblems aka revpartravels, aka revpar growth, aka revparblems.com.
Mikko Miller 54:14
And this is Mikko the Filipino catch me on Instagram at Mikko underscore eats and I hope everyone has a wonderful, wonderful holiday.
Steve 54:24
Hey, everybody. This is Steve you can hear me every week on the midlife crisis podcast with Cal and Mikko.
Calvin Tilokee 54:29
All right thank you for joining us on another episode of midlife crisis podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave us a review on iTunes and tell a friend to stay up to date with us on Instagram at midlife crisis podcast and on Twitter at midlife pod show notes for this and all episodes are available on midlife crisis podcast.com where you can also sign up for the mailing list. Drop us a note, let us know what topics you’d like us to discuss. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll catch you on the next one.
Mikko Miller 54:58
Let’s go
