How Hulk Hogan Ruined America

Episode Notes

Transcript

Above the Law

Thinking Like a Lawyer

How Hulk Hogan Ruined America

07/31/2017

Laurence Colletti: Hello listeners, it’s Laurence Colletti, Executive Producer of Legal Talk Network. I want to tell you about one of our longest-running and most informative shows, The Digital Edge. Each month our expert hosts Sharon Nelson and Jim Calloway, talk with renowned authors, speakers and legal technology gurus about tools, tips and tricks for running a successful legal practice.

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Intro: Welcome to Thinking Like a Lawyer with your hosts Elie Mystal and Joe Patrice, talking about legal news and pop culture, all while thinking like a lawyer, here on Legal Talk Network.

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Joe Patrice: Hello. Welcome to another edition of Thinking Like a Lawyer. I am Joe Patrice from Above The Law. With me as per usual is Elie Mystal also from Above The Law. Hey…

Elie Mystal: It is hot man!

Joe Patrice: It is! It is!

Elie Mystal: I don’t have air-conditioning in my home office and usually I have my fan on but because we’re recording I’m just I’m just sitting here my wife beater showing off a little side man boob, it’s hot.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, yeah most people say like showing off the guns but I know yes so yeah the man boobs.

Elie Mystal: Well I mean I’m very against the Second Amendment rights that we have in this country. So —

Joe Patrice: Yeah well I but I kind of meant that more as a metaphor but I guess maybe that was lost.

Elie Mystal: I’m proud of my man boob. Hey can I bitch about something right now?

Joe Patrice: Oh I mean what would it be without that? Go on.

Elie Mystal: So as you already know Joe I spent most of my morning at the mechanic. I found out last week that my car was out of inspection. Apparently for about 17 days I’ve been rolling around with a car out of inspection and as an African American this scared the hell out of me. I don’t usually miss the inspection day. I realized that I was basically taking my life in my own hands for 17 days by driving around with this kind of minor violation.

And while I’m sitting at mechanic paying my $25 in cash of course as it’s required in New York State, it really made me think the way to save black lives involves having kind of robots or some kind of technology prosecute these traffic violations as opposed to like actual human cops, right?

Joe Patrice: So you’re going after droid police now because that never ever goes wrong.

Elie Mystal: I think Robo-Cop.

Joe Patrice: There’s not even movies about it or anything, yeah –

Elie Mystal: It’s 17 days — for 17 whole days I’ve gone and gotten gas, I’ve gone to get my kids ice cream, there was multiple opportunities for the giant surveillance state to figure out that I have a car that’s out of inspection and just send me the ticket in the mail as opposed to literally risking my life by being stopped by a police officer who’s going to stop me for that violation and then who knows what threatening maneuver I’ll make while I’m saying what I’m out of inspection, like who knows what that’s going to do to my life.

Joe Patrice: Yeah that that really seems like that’s — uh yeah that seems like a nightmare scenario that we’ve played out in several dystopian films.

Elie Mystal: Don’t you think Robocop would be a more fair adjudicator of justice for all races than actual cops?

Joe Patrice: Well now you set up for the sidebar. Yeah, there you go with the turn, not sure if anybody has to answer that so — fair enough, so but your car is fixed now. Everything’s fine.

Elie Mystal: Everything’s fine. I just have to make it from here to DC tomorrow without attracting the ire of law enforcement. That will be great.

Joe Patrice: Well there you go. All right, so let’s actually talk about something substantive. So you and I both watched movie over the weekend and we are going to talk about it. So –

Elie Mystal: Winter is coming — oh wait yeah not that one –

Joe Patrice: Yeah, true I guess there was the Game of Thrones Return which I didn’t watch actually, I’ve kind of given up ,I don’t know.

Elie Mystal: Look the world is so awful with the actual world that I appreciate the why would I watch a TV show that’s just going to make me sad.

Joe Patrice: Fair enough. So a story that was fairly big a while back was Hulk Hogan sued this company called Gawker that many of you may remember if I remember I mean because it’s not there anymore largely because of this lawsuit.

Elie Mystal: We did a whole podcast on it.

Joe Patrice: We sure did –

Elie Mystal: Well a couple of years — maybe a year back by now.

Joe Patrice: Yeah so that story which we’ll talk about here kind of forms the initial frame for a broader documentary about the free press as a whole when it’s called Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, it’s on Netflix now and we have the writer and director Brian Knappenberger with us today to kind of talk about the law and freedom of the press and the media altogether.

Welcome to the show!

(00:05:12)

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah thanks for having me.

Joe Patrice: So I’ll say — so Elie and I are both lawyers who have become journalists, so this really — this whole case really was at the intersection of our lives and in a lot of ways not the least both as an insult and compliment depending on who is using it Above the Law is often called locker. So we’re very looped into that world. I know a lot of the people who were in the documentary and that’s what I kind of like –

Elie Mystal: But that’s a lot of people in the documentary to give me money –

Joe Patrice: Yeah but that’s what got me though as I was watching it and just watching even in the background all these people that I know and have met many times and it’s a story about something I know a lot about and I know all the people but I’m still being — I catch myself being fully drawn into the narrative like, Wow then what happens, I’m like I know what happens why but like that’s kind of a testament to how much I enjoyed the way the storytelling worked is, I lost myself in something I already kind of knew about.

Brian Knappenberger: Well I love that, that’s a great. That’s — I’ll take that as a great compliment actually. If you already know the details and you’re still kind of on the edge of your seat, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Joe Patrice: Yeah absolutely! So I guess there’s much more than just Gawker and Hulk Hogan in this movie but I figure maybe that’s the place to start. So talk to us little bit about why you thought that the Gawker Hulk Hogan story was kind of the –the frame with — on which to build a larger story about freedom of the press?

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah I mean it was started — it started just by being really interested in the Hulk Hogan Gawker case by itself. I was really captivated by what was going on there. This was the first time a sex tape case like this had ever gone to trial and despite the kind of veneer of tabloid kind of sensationalism you could tell that there was some pretty big picture privacy versus First Amendment issues at stake.

So — and my previous work I’ve done films that were largely kind of built around you know based on the First Amendment, I’ve done some privacy advocacy kind of work too. So I just thought it was a really interesting case that might have some broad reaching kind of ramifications. So that’s how it started but I didn’t really dive into the documentary until this just staggering $140 million verdict which was paired with a requirement for Gawker to put up $50 million right away, that was the death sentence of Gawker basically.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Brian Knappenberger: And then this very bizarre revelation that bankrolling kind of secretly in the background, a Hulk Hogan’s case was Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel one of the first outside investors of Facebook, co-founder of PayPal, very famous in Silicon Valley, very famous kind of venture capitalist. So that became something very different. Suddenly this story that I that struck me first as a kind of balance between privacy and the First Amendment became about something different and it really became about money leveraging against a press or trying to silence critical voices.

So — and this was at the beginning of just a bizarre year in which Trump’s rise was largely kind of based on attacking the media, attacking the press and of course Peter Thiel later spoke at the RNC and gave Trump money and became part of the transition team. So it was a story that kind of — it happens sometimes in documentaries, it starts off as one thing and it really kind of reveals itself to be something very different.

Elie Mystal: At what point — I thought that documentary did a great job of pointing out how — what Hulk Hogan was really trying to get out of this. And one of the things that you point out I think correctly, is that while kind of up here at 30,000 feet the lawyers and the and the journalists are talking about privacy, for Hogan, it’s also he’s trying to quash video of him using racial slurs, right? I mean that –

Brian Knappenberger: Yes –

Elie Mystal: — that’s a core value for him to get out of this case.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah I think that’s true and that’s one of the things that is revealed in the course of this trial that nobody knew at the beginning. So yeah and if you talk to the Gawker folks, the Gawk people on the Gawker side, you say well that’s probably what he was really, really concerned about.

I mean those tapes did eventually come out, the National Enquirer and others printed stories about them and that led to the end of his sort of career with the WWE, got him out of the – they kicked him out of the World Wrestling Hall of Fame, it was a big deal for him. That was sort of the real the real effect of all of this.

Talking with Nick Denton and some of the Gawker folks they seem to think that that stuff probably never would have come out if not for this lawsuit.

Elie Mystal: For Thiel what was he getting out of it? — Like it’s — I think that you know Joe has made the point repeatedly I think Wow that — from Thiel’s perspective this wasn’t necessarily a winning case. His goal was to just keep suing Gawker and kind of drive their liability shield up to a point where it was running their business was untenable.

(00:10:06)

Brian Knappenberger: That’s true and that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t necessarily realize about this case, that the Hulk Hogan this was only one of the things that Peter Thiel was backing against Gawker, one of the kind of efforts in order to attack Gawker.

Forbes has done a lot of great reporting on this where they’ve kind of strung out all of the lawsuits that Charles Harder, the lawyer that Peter Thiel was using, all of the lawsuits that he had brought against Gawker, some of those they can tie directly to Peter Thiel, some of them they can’t, some of them were just kind of suspicious.

But yeah this was only one part of a kind of broad attack on Gawker. The Hulk Hogan case was just the one that kind of struck gold for them.

Elie Mystal: Brian are you afraid having made this documentary, Nobody Speaks, are you afraid that they’re going to come after you because I talk about Thiel and Hogan with real kid gloves because I want my job.

Joe Patrice: Absolutely, I agree what he said.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah, I get that and you don’t make a documentary like this about highly litigious thin-skinned billionaires who just seemed to file lawsuits at the drop of a hat without being cautious. I mean – I — but I didn’t do that much different than I would normally do in a documentary. I mean we’re usually very, very kind of careful about insurance and we fact check things multiple times and we’re very careful about what we present. So I mean maybe we sort of stepped it up a notch on this one but it’s really the same kind of process we normally use.

But yeah I think it’s a legitimate thing. I mean Sheldon Adelson for instance sued a reporter for The Wall Street Journal for calling him a foul-mouthed billionaire. This was a libel suit against them and the paper stood up and backed the reporter. It led to one of the most bizarre kind of court transcripts you’ll ever read because he actually — they’re calling people on — and they’re calling people up and asking them if they’ve ever heard Sheldon Adelson use a specific curse word and in order to determine –

Elie Mystal: So it’s a defense –

Brian Knappenberger: The meaning of fouled-mouth. So that’s — it gets a little surreal there but yeah this is the world we’re in and I think you don’t want to be chilled by that stuff, you want to sort of proceed and make the case of something that I think is a real threat to journalism.

Joe Patrice: One of the lessons of the Theil stuff that always got me is that, it really speaks to the way that in the legal profession this is why we can’t have nice things. For a long time we had rules to prevent people from funding litigations. Those are somewhat relaxed and brought up this whole industry of litigation financing which kind of gives the little guy theoretically an opportunity to sue powerful interests because they might be backed by somebody who’s investing in helping them for a little share on the back end and it was — it has its ethical issues but there’s something of a good view of it at the end and this is why we can’t have nice things. It’s been perverted into a guy paying every lawsuit in the Sun against a company in order to drive up their bills and push them out.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah I like I like the way you put that. It’s true obviously litigation financing is a common thing. What I — a lot of people say well what’s the difference here between the Sierra Club or Greenpeace or something funding a lawsuit or ACLU and for me the difference is the secrecy of it. I just think that’s very different. As I understand it and it sounds like you guys are – what you say lawyers turned reporters, I guess I’m a reporter becoming a lawyer or something but –

Elie Mystal: It’s a trap!

Brian Knappenberger: Its trap I guess but as I understand it yeah I mean the law you are talking about our Champerty laws, right? So this was illegal back to I guess common-law all the way up until the 50s where it’s illegal for a secret — someone to fund a lawsuit in secret or I guess another word is maintenance where it’s illegal for a third party to enter an existing lawsuit and try to prohibit the parties from settling or and extending the dispute.

And the way I understand is that those were overturned in late 50s when the NAACP was filing lawsuits against segregation and the opponents to the NAACP wanted to force the NAACP to reveal their donors list and the court said no and that’s — I guess there’s only a gray area on that in a couple of states in Florida and I think also Nevada but a lot of Champerty laws are still on the books. So it’s not — it’s far from a kind of clear-cut legal area as I understand it but I’m not saying that what Peter Thiel did was illegal for sure, it’s legal and that that’s kind of what worries me.

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Elie Mystal: Yeah I mean I think that — when I think of the real bad guy here it’s easy to think about Thiel, it’s easier to think about Hogan but I also personally think that the real bad guy here is the dumbass Florida Jury, just because somebody throws a law suit up in front of you it doesn’t mean that you have to vote for liability, it certainly doesn’t mean that you have to vote for $140 million of liability.

(00:15:06)

Brian Knappenberger: Well it’s just — it’s staggering and one of the things that was so shocking is that that the judge in this case Pamela Campbell who was the lawyer for the parents of Terri Schiavo which back if everybody remembers that that was the big sort of liberal versus conservative brouhaha of its time, right –

Elie Mystal: I know the Seminal South Park episode on that where it —

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly, that was a big deal but anyway she was a lawyer, the attorney for the parents of Terri Schiavo. She was appointed by Jeb Bush and a lot of people thought she was biased in this case when she kind of lamented in front of the jury that the state of online journalism, these people said she shouldn’t have done that but even she told the jury you’re not supposed to bankrupt Gawker here, you have to — you can’t put them a position where they can’t — we have to – or forced to go out of business then of course that’s exactly what happened.

Joe Patrice: Yeah, well let’s transition to we’ve already kind of talked about Shelly Adelson, but there’s another aspect of this movie that goes down the kind of the sad story of the R.J. out in Las Vegas and Sheldon Adelson’s efforts to get more favorable media coverage out there.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah that that bothers me — that story bothered me — well first of all I love the story of the reporters there. I just admired what they did there but that bothers me for a similar reason to what Mr. Thiel did, Sheldon Adelson bought that newspaper in secret and that’s a problem — that’s a problem for a newspaper.

It’s not that very wealthy individuals haven’t owned newspapers before. Of course they have, but the idea that it would be done in secret and which you wouldn’t know what the expectations were, you wouldn’t know what the perspective was, you wouldn’t know where there were conflicts of interests of the actual owner, that part is particularly egregious.

So basically we tell that story. We tell the story of a group of reporters that were called into a big meeting, told that the newspaper was sold and when they asked well who bought our paper, who owns our company, who is our boss, they were told don’t worry about it. So that story is a story of them trying to — them worrying about it and going to figure out who bought their paper.

Elie Mystal: So in that case and Shelly Adelson is always my pick for main criminal, here main bad guy for this. Joe you were making the point that the rich people buying up the news is nothing new and that I shouldn’t be as worried about it.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah I mean look I think there’s still cause to be worried about that — what really pushes it over the edge for me is the secrecy, a lack of transparency, that’s the part in both of these cases that really starts, I think is really egregious. I still think you have to watch, I mean even someone like Jeff Bezos who bought the Washington Post, I mean by all accounts that’s a pretty traditional stewardship of the Washington Post, that is pretty hands off and all that but you still have to watch that coverage very carefully, how do they deal with Amazon buying Whole Foods or something. It’s still something that you have to be aware of but you can’t be aware of it if you don’t even know who it is. I mean there’s something about the secrecy that I find really troubling.

Joe Patrice: So Brian with the Adelson thing and with the secrecy that you’re worried about I have to once again kind of bring it back to the public and I wonder at what point do we need the public to kind of stand up and demand better, demand more transparency, demand better from journalists, at what point is the public going to be willing to perhaps I don’t know pay for journalism, so that we don’t have to rely on Shelley Adelson or Jeff Bezos to do it.

Brian Knappenberger: Well right now I mean I think it’s critical for people to kind of stand up for this and also support journalism that they think is doing the right — what journalism is supposed to do speak truth to power and question power and look out for the public interest and all of that and try to surface the truth in any given story.

So yeah we’re in a very difficult position right now where we’ve in the last few decades of course inequality is just getting out of control completely staggering and at the same time journalism is more vulnerable than it’s ever been. It’s lost so much of its traditional sources of revenue to the Internet.

So early on there was a kind of collective decision to sort of give some of that content away and we’re feeling the results of that. So the old model of journalism is dead and the new one hasn’t quite been born, but it’s really important that we figure this out and we find a way to support journalists.

(00:19:56)

I mean I think we’re even in a position now where we have to stand up for the concept itself, why do we need this journalist – I mean no president in history has liked the press, that’s never happened. Of course — I mean even Obama has made that kind of speech to the Press Club at the end he said I never liked you guys but I support the notion of a free press and I support you are coming after me, that’s kind of the point.

And so we’re in this position now where we just get this wave of deceitfulness and lies coming out of the executive branch and we — it’s so clear why this is important. So hopefully we’re in a transition period where we’re remembering what the press was there for in the first place.

Joe Patrice: That hits on I’m glad that what you just said shows that it wasn’t just me kind of drawing this conclusion from the documentary but it really was something you were going for that I’m kind of noted as a bit of a First Amendment hater and by that I mean I’m not against the First Amendment but I have a kind of a problem with some of the First Amendment fundamentalism out there and for the same reasons I have problems with a lot of fundamentalism that it when you kind of boil things down to just we’re just going to follow the words and that’s what we’re going to do mischief happens, like you get people invoking freedom of religion to go after LGBTQ communities and stuff.

So I’ve always had issues with that and so I loved how the documentary builds up why we actually need a free press and doesn’t kind of rely on the idea of hey it’s a necessary evil and may it’s — gee it’s written there and that’s what the framers like it, it goes that next bit to be like now you’ve always heard you need a free press, here’s why you need a free press which — I think people need to be reminded of a lot.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah I think so and there’s some reason for hope, at least a kind of glimmer of hope where yeah I think a lot — there’s certainly legitimate criticism of the press has gotten too cozy to power, that it’s gotten too corporatized over time, that it’s gotten trade softball stories for access to power and celebrity, and there’s something about Trump that has kind of reinvigorated it. It kind of reminded people what they were there for in the first place and I hope that continues. I hope that — like these press conferences are so absurd.

Elie Mystal: Yeah, I mean you have to put some serious scare quotes around press conferences.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah, I mean you just shake your head and it’s hard to understand what the value is of a press conference and in terms of trying to get at the truth and so especially the way it is now and then of course they are banning cameras and all this stuff. So it’s — it’s important. This is — this is how — you can’t have a substantive debate about any policy issue unless you can get at what the truth is.

Elie Mystal: Yup!

Joe Patrice: Yeah and it’s important to get not to — get those reasons back because like you said there is something kind of corroding a little bit at what media is — what the softballs and someone that have happened over the years and when all that stuff happened it can be easily brushed aside with a kind of what I’m criticizing is the fundamentalist, oh well that’s the press and just the press, blah, blah, blah but get back to, hey this is what you guys are supposed to be doing. It’s not just writing your softball story and being him to have somebody on a Sunday show, it’s –

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah –

Joe Patrice: It’s actually getting — your job is I think I think it was Cook who said it in the documentary but like the thing you should be proud of is you pissed off a billionaire.

Brian Knappenberger: That’s right.

Joe Patrice: That’s what should make you happy.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah.

Elie Mystal: All right Brian, closing question since you are unshelled by pissing off billionaires, what’s next for you?

Brian Knappenberger: Wouldn’t go that far. No, I’m just kidding! No — you have to be — I’m continuing to work on a couple of other documentaries, just — I’m just really fascinated with — the way our kind of world is changing with technology and the way we communicate and private information and all that stuff and the way that whenever that kind of brushes up against I guess what — I guess you’d call kind of traditional values or human rights or civil liberties, I just think that’s the world we’re in we’re trying to figure that out. Now it’s new ground and I know that’s vague but that’s the kind of landscape that I’m working in and interested in. So we’re working on a couple more documentaries and actually maybe a narrative piece which is new for me.

Elie Mystal: Cool!

Joe Patrice: So you have multiple projects and irons in the fire all at once?

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah at various stage of Heath I guess.

Joe Patrice: I could not keep that many things that’s straight did by hand — like I pride myself on multitasking but having all of these clips than editing and like all these ideas, learning different fields, yeah that that would be — that’s impressive.

Brian Knappenberger: Oh insane!

Joe Patrice: Yeah.

Brian Knappenberger: Well thanks!

Joe Patrice: Yeah well all right, Elie do you have anything else before I go to wrap up?

(00:24:57)

Elie Mystal: Oh no I’m talking about irons in the fire, yeah no I’m also thinking about all the other things that I have to do after we’ve finished recording many of them involving my children who always get the short shrift.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Patrice: Well-meaning and you’ve got a pack for your trip it sounds like.

Elie Mystal: Yeah.

Joe Patrice: All right, well okay –

Brian Knappenberger: I know about the robot thing though that’s –

Joe Patrice: That’s — I mean right that seems are usually –

Brian Knappenberger: It’s an interesting argument. I am usually on the other side of it in terms of like license plate readers and facial recognition software and stuff and the privacy concerns of that but I do kind of get what you’re saying though.

Elie Mystal: No I honestly think that as a black person in this country I mean if the thing that helps me most is a robot as opposed to a person, the thing I want my kid, my young black son right to confront a robot cop as opposed to a real actual cop. They’ll be safer that way, I’ll pay the fine, I don’t care.

Brian Knappenberger: Do you think there’s a — no I totally — and its physical safe I mean I totally get that but do you think there’s something like in — I don’t know if you guys can use this I’m just talking in –

Joe Patrice: Oh no this is great!

Brian Knappenberger: In the like for instance license plate readers and the ability to sort of track and trace I mean and surveillance stuff, isn’t that kind of generally speaking been biased against kind of the same communities that are targeted by police? I mean –

Elie Mystal: Sure and I think –

Brian Knappenberger: I mean isn’t that technology kind of done that too?

Elie Mystal: I think you’re absolutely right, I think that that will continue to happen. I’ll go kind of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs on you, right? Like the thing that I need most and most importantly is the physical safety of myself and my children, right? I need to establish that which I clearly don’t have.

Once I establish that then we can talk about if those readers, if that surveillance state kind of unfairly or unwarrantedly harasses and oppresses vulnerable communities, that’s a legitimate concern. But we can’t get to that legitimate concern until we establish some basic level of safety from the police state which we just clearly don’t have right now.

Brian Knappenberger: Wow! That’s fascinating! Yeah I’ve just never heard that, I hear it — I get it, yeah.

Joe Patrice: I mean this really gets to, this relates perfectly actually like it’s almost like we planned this segue but we didn’t — this gets to that whole — this is why we can’t have nice things. I think that – and we go down this road and there’s — we need a nuanced approach to know like maybe it’s not just surveillance maybe there are folks who need like the physical safety but then this is why you can’t have nice things. I’m positive that all that data gets perverted on the back end into something that we can’t even predict.

Brian Knappenberger: Yeah which is what I know normally been kind of more concerned about but yeah I get it and that’s interesting.

Joe Patrice: That’s a great discussion that we should get some robot expert on and keep going with this with future.

Brian Knappenberger: Well when those robots get hacked then that’s – that will be interesting.

Joe Patrice: Well yeah, and that’s – yeah we –

Brian Knappenberger: We live in weird times, maybe we could just agree on that.

Elie Mystal: Insane!

Brian Knappenberger: Insane!

Elie Mystal: This is weird as damn!

Joe Patrice: Well thank you so much! That’s Brian Knappenberger, the writer, director of, Nobody Speak: Trials of The Free Press go watch it on Netflix, like we all did. It’s a great documentary about why we need a free press and all the threats that that currently faces.  Thanks for coming on.

Brian Knappenberger: Thanks a lot for having me.

Joe Patrice: And thank you all for listening. If you are not subscribed to us through some various podcast subscriber, you should do that, that way you get every episode when they come out, you should also follow us on Twitter, I’m @JosephPatrice, he is @ElieNYC. You should give reviews to the podcasts, that helps us be seen by more people, you should get the LTN app to listen to more podcasts from our sister podcasts in the LTN network. Those are all things you should do, you should read Above The Law because or as some people call it blocker because we put out good stuff there.

Elie Mystal: And we’re still here.

Joe Patrice: And we’re still here for now, well we haven’t published any nude pictures of Sam Alito yet, if anyone’s listening. So and maybe that’s why we’re still here.

Brian Knappenberger: That will be a specific kind of deterrence there.

Joe Patrice: Right. All right, and with that we’ll talk to you soon on another episode.

Brian Knappenberger: Good, looking forward to it.

Elie Mystal: Stay cool everybody!

Joe Patrice: Bye!

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