Bonnaroo and COVID-19: What's Next

A podcast for Bonnarubians by Bonnarubians the what podcast

Listen on all your podcast devices whether it be your phone, your computer, the voice in your head as you self quarantine for the next six months

Barry Courter, Brad Steiner, even Lord Taco! He's pressured us to allow him to talk I guess

Too big to keep off, that's great

Alright so here we go, we're I guess postponing, I have bad news, we're postponing the what podcast because of self quarantining

I don't mean to make light of it but we're putting off Bonnarulette for next week and gonna talk all things

Oh god, all things covid

Now I will say this before we get into this, I had one of the worst cups of coffee I've ever had in my life this morning

Guys here's the thing, I don't want a flavored, artificially flavored bean in any form or fashion

It is useless, it makes me angry, I am in a terrible mood because of it, it is a praline flavored bean and even worse I bought the ground version of it not even the whole bean

Why?

I made a mistake, I was at the store

You were reaching for toilet paper and you got praline flavored coffee instead

Ding ding ding, so I was at a store so we moved right so we're now in New Orleans and so I went to a store that I'm not familiar with

And I was in a rush, I had to get back to the house to finish dinner, we needed a new thing of soy sauce so I had to run out to the store and I'm just picking up things in an emergency

So I was like okay I'll just grab some toilet paper, I'll grab it and then I grabbed some coffee, I was like oh it's a local bag of coffee, adorable

And I didn't get home and realized that's when I bought a praline flavored bean and now it has irritated me, damn you covid 19

Making me buy the wrong coffee

Alright but does the house smell good, does it smell like praline?

You know

See that's the thing about that flavored coffee is it smells pretty good but it doesn't taste any good

It tastes disgusting and you know the smell does seem nice but there's no way it's going to fill up the whole house

There's no way, there's like I don't know maybe Craig knows better than I do but I don't know how the house smells

But I sure as hell know that the praline flavored coffee not going to change anything in this house

It's 150 years old, it's not going to work

Alright so

You bought 150 year old coffee?

Yeah thanks Taco

Alright I've been

We've identified the problem

Yeah I'm trying to, what I'm doing is a little thing called stalling because I don't want to talk about this

This is not something I wanted to talk about

No it's not a happy topic and it's a weird topic because as soon as we say anything it's already changed

We don't know how it's changed so yeah

Did you wake up this morning, this being a Saturday morning, did you wake up this morning feeling better about it?

That's a great question and that's an interesting question because things changed overnight

And we're going to get into it here talking about Chattanooga in particular which is where Taco and I are

You are in New Orleans and I have no idea how listeners, how things are, where they are

I'd almost be curious if we could figure out a way to sort of gather some of that kind of information

I mean I woke up this morning to a New York Times story about a Hickson man

For you guys who don't know Hickson is a suburb of Chattanooga

This guy now has 17,760 something bottles of hand sanitizer

He and his brother drove up and down Tennessee, Kentucky buying every bottle of hand sanitizer they could get

Thinking they would sell them for anywhere from $10 to $70 on Line and Amazon and eBay shut them down

So yay Chattanooga, yay this guy for trying to take advantage of a horrible situation

And even, I mean I don't even know what he's doing being quoted

But he's trying to set his family up

Sure I bet, but whatever

Guys I have a hot take, this is a massively hot take

This guy's a prick

Yeah, yeah, yeah

This guy is a total prick, him and his brother are absolute jerks

And there is not a chance that there isn't people around him

He's in trouble, he's in a big load of trouble

Because his neighborhood is, they're eyeing his garage door ready to kick it down

Yeah the only good thing he could do would be to take that U-Haul that he rented

And live in it

Well live in it or go find a parking lot and start giving away hand sanitizers

Yeah he needs to do

But here's the thing, again I've never thought that the hand sanitizer works

You know anytime I'm on the farm and somebody gives me hand sanitizer I say to myself, oh that's cute

And it makes me feel okay for about 10 seconds

It never feels like it's actually clean

And have you ever, look, Bonnarooo is the perfect example of why hand sanitizer doesn't work

You put it on your hands and then you look at your nails and they're still covered in black

Listen, the last time I used it was at Bonnarooo, probably second, third year

That's all I used and I left Sunday as I did at that time

Went to that McDonald's across the street

Washed my hands and it looked like mud

I was bleeding into this, it was disgusting

And I've never used it ever since

It works for me, I think it tastes great

Okay good, thank you

Was that Craig? Was that Craig?

Craig piling in

Yeah, again, regular bar and soap, this is not hard

You know, just regular bar of soap

By the way, I hate to be this guy

But the hand sanitizer, not good for the environment

It's in plastic bottles

Why don't you just use a bar of soap, carry it around with you, around your neck

Like an old fashioned hipster

Wear soap around your neck

Soap on a rope, I like it

Who doesn't love that?

I like it

So what are we going to do here?

Let's just go through the numbers

Total cases, 1629, total deaths 41

46 states in the District of Columbia

There's 138 travel related cases

129 close contact cases

Under investigation 1362, total cases being 1629

So the House passed a virus aid bill after Trump declared the national emergency probably two weeks too late

And then the big one that I think rich white people care about

The stocks roared back

So they lose 10,000 points over the course of a few days and they get 2,000 points all back on Friday

And you're going to start to see the narrative all focused on the, around Wall Street

And once the markets start bouncing back, then everybody starts to get a little bit more confident, right?

When we basically can't test anyone

We still can't test anyone for anything

The Utah Jets have more effectively test people than the actual federal health

Let's do this, where, I mean, where are we on this? You and I, where are you and us?

Where are we on this? Because I mean, everything is shut down

I just, you know, went to the store and the guy said you better get multiples

Because Walmart closes on Monday and the gas stations are going to close after that and then

Stop it

No, that's

Stop it

Yeah, the official word that I got is if anybody tests at a Walmart, they're going to close that Walmart for a week and clean

You know, I mean, we're being angry about it, we're making light of it, but you know, all these things are shutting down

Do we feel like they're shutting down because they know something or is it just a total panic?

Well, see, this is the part where you mentioned earlier, it's really a different world where you are

And again, I think that your point is a solid one

I would love to hear where you are and your experience with this

How is your local community responding? Send us a tweet, send us a message, send us an Instagram message

You know, look, I can't wrap my head around the news that I'm reading from Chattanooga

Look, I'm still connected to all these things and you guys and my friends and my local news sources

Chattanooga is reacting to this like it is another 9-11

And I can't really I can't even wrap my head around that because New Orleans is acting

So New Orleans is different, I understand, but this is the way that they're reacting

They are this is a hurricane and they're going to wait until it makes landfall until it makes landfall

It might just miss and that's the way everybody is responding

Now the mayor here has taken action and she's shut down all of the

Just like everybody else, she shut down all of the mass gatherings

Except for her thousand dollar plate dinner for 1500 people

She didn't shut that down either way, she shut down all of that

And the schools just now decided to close yesterday

So, you know, the normal government operations are shutting down just like everybody else

But everything else, it's business as usual

Nobody's really worried about it at work, nobody's worried about it at restaurants

Nobody really is operating like this is something that they need to totally change their life about

But yet when I look at the news in Chattanooga, I mean, you might as well say that oxygen is going to, you know, blow your head up

Yeah, TACO, jump in if I'm missing something

Our mayor yesterday shut down all our Tivoli, our Memorial Auditorium, Finley Stadium, the library, schools

We being the newspaper, you can now work from home if you can, if you have that option

We are going to stop printing our sports section next week

Oh, stop. Well, there's no sports, so

There's no sports, yeah, high school sports

I kind of laughed yesterday morning when I got up in our newspaper

The SEC and the NCAA had canceled, you know, all sports

But SEC spring football was going to continue

They decided late yesterday afternoon that that was not going to happen as we knew it would

So, yeah, there's no sports to cover, so we're going to stop printing a sports section

We're going to fold in what we have into our regular, into our business section

Our entertainment section will probably print this week, but not the next because there are no events

So all the concerts that were coming, you know, to our venues have been canceled

Okay, can I ask, can I ask just a random question that means nothing to anybody?

But seeing papers struggle the way that they are struggling just in general

Do you see them using this opportunity to eliminate sports entirely?

No, no, no, it's a fair question

No, we're a different paper. We are individually owned by one man out of Arkansas

So we are not corporate and he is a huge newspaper guy

So we're going to keep fighting as long as we can fight where there's rarity

So no, sports, you know, look, sports drives the train, sports and business and food

That's what people care about

I think I also read that they're going to remove the paywall online for articles related to the coronavirus

Is that true?

That was actually a really good point because the Times, the press and Chattanooga is one of the very few that are doing this

New York Times is not doing it

Yeah, I think we've done a terrific job if, you know, we pat ourselves, but this is what we do, you know

I mean the newsroom yesterday, just like 9-11, just like when tornadoes, everybody just sort of they know what they have to do

And they start doing it and no one else has the resources that we do

So anyway, there's my plug, but

So that's so but there's obviously been a difference from Monday to Friday

Now, there's a difference from Wednesday to Friday

You and I spoke on Sunday, if you remember, if we can get into that with some of the predictions of what might happen and change

If you followed me on Twitter, and I'm not plugging to follow me at Brad Stinks, but follow me at Brad Stinks

The thing that I said on Sunday was get ready, Monday is going to be a bloodbath

Correct

And then what happened? I got news on Saturday that Coachella was going to cancel

And again, I'm going to I'm I may be wrong about this. I have no inside information about this part, but I have no

Way to think that they're going to be able to take 150 artists and move them five months down the calendar

There's no way

With all of the we look at all the conversations that we've had with lineup people or go back to the Brian and Steve episode and how hard this was for them to put together

The idea that you can pick up 150 artists and not just do it once, but twice, five months on the road. It seems literally impossible

It the number of questions that keep coming up are mind boggling just to use again to go back to sports

And we can talk about music because that's usually what we I mean, that's primarily what we do, but eligibility

The spring sports calendar stopped before it got halfway

So the NCAA is going to say all the guys that were athletes are going to have eligibility again next year

Well, what does that do to the incoming freshmen? What does that do to the numbers? That's just an example

You shut down Live Nation announced they were going to shut down their tours

Well, apparently it's just the big ones unless that's changed since yesterday

I mean, they shut down the venues here. That means your parking lot attendance, your restaurants that benefit from that, the ushers, the ticket takers, you know, all those things

It's unbelievable to try to think about the ramifications of all of this

Right. How about how about a vendor? How about a vendor who already has some land for October? Now they're disposed to pick up and show up to Coachella

Because they've decided to change it. Like I know that Coachella people are going to sell the general public on

Oh, yeah, we'll just have it another day. And feasibility, it really doesn't make much sense

Now, talking about sides of my mouth, if any operation was able to get you to cancel part of your tour to include yourself on a Coachella lineup

Coachella could do it. You know, if Insert Band here has a couple of shows in October or September that coincide with the new date of Coachella, probably choosing Coachella

You know, they're probably choosing Coachella

Well, but that's a good point. What about those other events? Everything keeps rescheduling to like, not everything

The few things that I have seen, October seems to be a popular month to reschedule for. I mean, how many things can you put on in October?

Well, I live in a city where it's a festival and a parade every single day. So September and October could be a lot of fun

Yeah, it's I don't even I don't think we know. And you know what? It's interesting. We haven't even talked about in our case, the elephant in the room, which is Bonnarooo

I can't imagine what was going through Ashley Capps head this week. You know, on Tuesday, they announced they're going to go on with big ears. And then what? Thursday morning? Thursday morning

He has to announce Ashley Capps has to announce that they're not going to do it. I can't imagine what that 36 hours or whatever was like. They have not announced anything that I know of regarding Bonnarooo. I'm assuming they're holding out to the very last minute

Yeah, I mean, why would they? And that's the thing that none of us can predict is, you know, you get the Chinese version of the CDC saying they're on the backside of it three months in and they're starting to see a decline in cases. You know, we don't know when the decline of ours is going to begin or maybe it already has. We don't know. So if you're Bonnarooo, why would you even risk saying anything right now?

That's like back to your sports analogy, the NFL, there's no reason for them to do anything. They can have free agency. They can own the space, the new space of the sports world for a month until everybody starts to figure their stuff out. Bonnarooo doesn't get, Bonnarooo is lucky because they're in June.

No, and by the way, they're really lucky because they own their own space. So if they were to reschedule it at insert time here, I feel like they would have a lot easier of a time making something happen. Now, of course, lineups are going to change. But I feel like Bonnarooo is in a much better spot than anybody else.

Yeah, that's a great point. They don't have to get anybody else's approval. They own the space. I mean, they'd have to work with the state and the county and the city there to get support. But I would think that's not that big a deal.

I think Manchester will be okay.

Yeah.

But that's the question and that's where it gets into who knows what actually the Masters postponed. I'm going to guess there's somebody on the board down there at Augusta National that has a phone number of somebody that's kind of important.

Does that mean they know more than we do? Does that mean most of the reports predict that the spike is coming?

Barry starts that over. You cut out.

Most of the reports that we're seeing predict that the spike is yet to happen, that the numbers you read earlier are the beginning of the graph, the parabolic graph or whatever.

And I think that's what a lot of these NASCAR, NBA, Masters, I think that's what they're predicting is that at some point we're going to start to see a huge spike in the number of cases and that's what they're trying to prevent by doing all this.

But who knows?

No, I understand and it does make a lot of sense and I said this to the wife a couple days ago. Is it really going to kill us all just to be at home for a few weeks? You know, it almost is like one of these things where like it sort of is baffling that we don't just go ahead and do this.

I actually do think that there's going to be a conversation. Maybe I'll start it. Maybe I'll be the only one having a conversation.

We should self quarantine for like three, four weeks out of the year where we just don't leave the house. We all just stay inside and we don't really talk to anyone.

Yeah.

Bryan Stone already does that.

He's always been ahead of the curve.

We really all should just like not leave the house, all of us collectively and let the whole universe and the planet sort of like get its bearings back for a second.

How do you think that would work at the office if you said, I'm self quarantining for the next week?

I think that it should be an option.

We get vacation, we get sick leave and then we get self quarantine time. I'll be honest.

No questions asked. Don't ask me why. I'm just self quarantining.

The other piece, I'm sorry, Taco.

I was going to say I work from home all the time anyways so it's pretty much business as usual for me.

The other piece of news that I got that Saturday is that you've got, you still have a festival that hasn't announced their lineup.

Lollapalooza was two weeks away from announcing their lineup. Now they're not announcing anything.

They've shut down the idea of even announcing who they have and it's too bad because the lineup was pretty, pretty good.

And there's going to be some familiar faces on that lineup from Bonnarooo.

It was going to be young as it always is but look, there are certain festivals that I know are affected much more than Bonnarooo.

Bonnarooo to me seems like a self-contained thing but when you find a city festival, that's more problematic to me.

That's a big, big problem when you have an already volatile situation with a city and then you add 80,000 people on top of it.

Bonnarooo just being by itself not really interacting with a major city other than maybe Nashville for some cases seems a little bit easier on the palate.

But maybe I'm just making that up.

Well, they already said that exit 111 isn't happening this year so Bonnarooo has got a completely open calendar if they had to move.

Yeah, they've got all of October. It's nice in October.

Yeah, I was there. I didn't hate the weather.

No, it was nice. And you wonder about War Chest. They've done this now almost 20 years.

So I would assume they have a fairly decent War Chest over almost 20 years.

Some of these city festivals, if they get heavy rain, they can survive maybe one year but not two.

But didn't I ask and maybe I didn't. Maybe I tried to ask and they sidestepped me but didn't I ask about a War Chest?

Oh, I did. I asked if they saved money some years for lineups the next year and they said absolutely not.

So that's a little different. That's a different answer.

No, I mean they have to figure knowing what I know about festivals.

They have to bank on that bad year when rain just crushes them or whatever weather just crushes them and they can't survive too many of those.

Yeah, there's no way. There's no way you have two date moves in you.

You get one and you hope the guy the next year can make back up some of the revenue loss.

All right. So what does it look like? And I don't mean to get too, whoa is me, sky is falling.

But what does Bonnaroo look like if it happens some other time other than June?

Do you think that some of the installations are not there?

Obviously, you can probably scratch 25% of the lineup off just because of scheduling problems.

Are you trying to condense it? Do they change the schedule?

Do they rearrange people and take away a day? Do you really get there on a Wednesday night?

I'm just trying to think of the options of things. How does it look? How does it feel if it's in October?

Worst case scenario. I think we have two good examples.

2016 and exit 111. You know, 2016, Brad, if you remember, they moved the silent disco.

They moved everything. They moved the hill. And then they didn't.

They moved everything around to make it feel. You and I commented because we'd been there for many years.

We noticed all the changes for somebody who that was their first year. They didn't know.

It felt like a big giant full festival. And as our friend Ken says, it never is not great.

You know, it was a good festival.

Before you get too crazy about that, they moved the walls in to make it a smaller space because the attendance was off.

I'm going to bet that if Bonnarooo happens in October, it's still going to bring 85,000.

Oh, you think so? OK. Oh, yeah. I don't think that I don't think the actual attendance will change.

I'm wondering what the actual festival looks like when you have to rearrange vendors, artists.

Well, that's I guess I guess that's what I was thinking.

You think there's going to be you think there'd be an attendance drop off if it happens?

People have school, people have work.

I would be curious if 80,000 is able to show up because of school, work, other priorities, you know, other things on the calendar.

You and I, me especially, me and Taco, it's a 60 minute ride.

It's going to be a little more difficult for you now that you're living where you are.

But, you know, the folks that are in Seattle, Dallas and Orlando, I mean, that's a it's a bit.

It's a great point. It's a great point. We talk we talk to some of our Patreon.

Like how exactly do they rearrange a flight and their work schedules to take off a week for Bonnarooo in September and October?

I mean, that's a good point. I forget a lot about that.

Yeah, we could leave for the farm right now if we wanted to. Yep. Yep. See you in a minute.

And be there before the show's over. That's right. That's right.

So it's a lot easier. All right. So, OK, so it's a smaller footprint.

It's a smaller amount of amount of attendees. What do you think?

What do you think the lineup looks like? Well, let me add one more thing.

You know, we talked to the spicy pie guy last year. This is all he does is what a handful of festivals.

I mean, does he mothball everything in the fall?

I don't I don't remember when his actual working schedule is.

Do you think he mothballs the spicy pies? Yeah, he said he doesn't have a storefront.

He just does a handful of festivals. Now, you know, can he mothballs is maybe not the right idea for food.

You know what I meant? You agree you're going to get there one way or the other.

I got it. You know. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know.

Do they gear back up? Do they shut down now for the next four weeks, six weeks, whatever, and try to make their money back in October?

Talk to our friend, one of our friends at at AC, who and his friend owns a restaurant.

Just being shut down for a week is going to cost her like 70 grand. Yeah.

So, you know, the ramifications again.

I mean, how many how many of these vendors can survive not having a summer of festivals?

Well, here's where I and I'm not going to try and beat up on Bonnarooo or Coachella, but here's where I get I get my I get a little irritated.

I guarantee you the reason why Coachella is postponing is because if they give you a festival to go to, they cannot refund your money.

It is on you to get there on the dates that are provided.

I highly doubt they're going to offer a refund for if they actually go through with a festival.

I highly doubt they're going to offer you the ability to refund your money, no matter how hard it is to get there.

I don't think they're going to care and I don't think they're going to give the same allowance either to the vendors.

If you've signed up, you're obligated and your money is now.

Now, the problem with the vendors for them is that they get a cut or they pay, you know, an overall fee.

So they pay the overall fee or you can pay a daily cut of your profits.

I'm probably guessing that you're not going to be able to get out of that either.

So you either show up or you don't. The festival is going to happen.

That's why I think these things are postponing and not canceling so they can save, you know, at least on their bottom line, which is a tad irritating to me.

But I understand some of that is true.

AC canceled had to get the city closed down our Tivoli and auditorium, which meant that all those shows, which AC books for us in Chattanooga, they are trying to reschedule them.

They did say in their release that your ticket that you bought will be good for the reschedule.

If they have to cancel, they will refund to your point.

That is not an easy. That's an expensive decision, but I think it's the right one.

And again, I can't imagine.

I'm not sure I would like to have been in those rooms when they were having discussions, but it would have been interesting because this is this is unprecedented, obviously.

Another example, all the events that were scheduled at our trade center, trade and convention center, have canceled and they're talking about layoffs already.

They think they can, you know, survive a week or two.

So, but that's absurd. Hang on a second. This is what I'm fearing. I'm fearing that people bad business decisions are going to be made with the cover of coronavirus.

You know, you are not running a very good business if you are the size of a CVB, a convention and visitors bureau, and you only have two weeks of wiggle room to pay your people.

That is a convenient excuse and pretty, I think, pretty lame.

Could be. You know, 2008 when the economy tank, there were reports of a lot of businesses using it as an excuse to get rid of employees.

There's no question. And somebody's going to do it. I mean, you know, like I said, this guy has 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer.

What the heck was he thinking? If we are really a week, this has been just, this whole thing is really only a week, two weeks old, right?

The heavy duty part of it, right? Now you've got a president who called it a hoax nine days ago, but it doesn't matter.

This has been the meat of it. How about giving it a couple more weeks?

How about if you run an operation, you just let this simmer for a second and reevaluate your business decisions here in a couple of weeks. Your people matter enough to give them a shot at letting this thing cycle through and end before you start going on massive layoffs.

Yeah, I agree. And that's where the conspiracy theorists, you know, I watch, I read a lot of these books and that's where your brain can go down that road and say, these people must know something, something, you know, they wouldn't just cancel the masters or postpone it or whatever.

If they didn't know something.

Yeah, like for instance, masters, they're going to play the masters. They won't give a damn if they have to play it in October, November, December, two straight tournaments next April. They're going to play the masters.

They're going to play it. Yeah. Yes. But I don't know, man. It's a fair question.

There is one festival in particular we have not talked about because they've remained eerily silent except for one announcement. That would be Hangout Festival. Have I missed, before I get a little too into this, have I missed any news about Hangout Festival?

While you talk, I'll look. Not that I know of, no.

Okay. I don't either. And I think that this is the one that's going to be, they're in the weirdest position because their timing is so strange because they might catch this pretty well.

There's still two months to go. And so they can, and by the way, they've already sold out. So they can basically sit around and wait for all of this to sort of shake itself out.

Now, if we are in something that is far worse than maybe some of us understand or think, then we're all in it. But there at May 19th, they've got some time to wiggle.

And last Sunday, they dropped this little piece of information that they're now sponsored by Corona.

So I don't foresee Hangout Festival knowing the ownership group like I do. I don't foresee them canceling at all.

They don't have anything on their website. And that's a month basically before Bonnarooo.

Yeah. But they're in a tight window. They need this all to, I guess, come to fruition one way or the other.

They've got about three weeks. Don't you think they have about three, four weeks before they have to make a call?

Yeah. I think this next week will be very telling. The next 10 days will be very telling.

I think we'll know. I mean, so much happened. When you called me Sunday night, it felt pretty urgent.

But by Wednesday, it was beyond urgent. I mean, it was stuff was happening by the minute.

We started creating a list of closings just to give you an idea at the paper. I think Wednesday, there were three things.

And now it's just almost as fast as you can open it up to add something.

Might as well make it a list of what's actually open.

Right. What's closed? Everything. It's one word. It's pretty simple.

But see, that's the weird thing. You guys are living in a world where everything, literally restaurants are closed.

Nothing here is closed. Nothing. Who's right? Events are canceled. Who's right? I don't know. I don't know.

But here's what I do know. I was in a restaurant for lunch yesterday and a woman while I was there for 15 minutes, she might have coughed 25 times.

At some point, somebody needs to ask her to leave.

We had a guy, one of our editors, bed bath and beyond and picked up a candle and took a big sniff and it immediately caused him to sneeze.

And the guy next to him picked up his four-year-old and ran out the door.

If you sneeze in public right now, you're a public enemy.

Yeah, that's the thing. It's spring. Hay fever is about to kick in. I mean, somebody's going to get killed over this thing.

They're going to sneeze on somebody.

I walked out to my car the other day and there was about an inch and a half of pollen on it and I said, I'm screwed. I'm done.

Yeah. I mean, we're laughing, but it's going to happen.

I'm going to be beaten in the streets.

Yeah, because of your allergies.

This is why I'm self-quarantining just because I don't want to face any judgment.

I don't want anyone to judge me for my allergies.

I'm just staying at home. But other than that, you're feeling good? Everybody feeling all right?

Yeah. Everybody here is good.

We're good.

I can't think of...

Here's why we are the three most powerful immune systems in all of podcasting is because I am convinced that last December when I got the flu, I actually got coronavirus.

They're saying there are tons of cases that they're finding people getting infected long before they knew what this was.

I'm convinced that I had it because it was the most bizarre, strange flu I've ever had.

It's the weirdest feeling I've ever had. I don't even know how to explain it.

But then within hours, I transmitted it to Taco.

Taco then gave it to his girlfriend. I gave it to Barry Courter. Barry Courter gave it to his wife.

Who never gets sick.

So you guys, I'll just go ahead and say, you're welcome.

You're welcome.

It was truly the weirdest illness I've ever had.

Same here.

I've never sneezed and coughed so much in my life.

I've never been able to move my arm less. You know how you sleep on your arm and your arm will go bad?

Yeah.

My whole body was like that.

Well, here's the other thing.

There was no way I could literally function and move my body parts.

Here's my other admission. I didn't even want to have any whiskey.

I didn't eat.

You were sick.

Yeah. Usually I like a hot toddy when I'm sick, you know, to clear the chest. I didn't want to touch it.

I'll go you one step better. For five days, I didn't wear any hair product.

Ooh.

There we go.

This is full disclosure here today, isn't it?

That's where you would insert like a sting music right there.

We're telling tales.

I leave the crowd a gasp.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm guessing. I don't know. I had no facts to back that up.

I'm just, you know, it's total conjecture, but it was a feeling like I've never felt before.

And I did give it to damn near everyone that I was around.

I've never been that contagious and I've never like you could have drawn everyone's sickness straight back to me.

And that just something about all of that just never really added up.

Well, I know I'm going to be fine because I have the Bonnarooo couch in my house now.

It's a great point. It is. It is the natural immunity to all.

What kind of cultures are living on that thing?

You know, the guys, the, you know, Daniel and Charlotte, they've got the Rue bus.

We've got the Rue couch. Why can't we have a whole account just for the couch?

I think we could.

Yeah. What's the couch doing today?

Right.

It's going to be on a couch. It's going to be on a couch.

Still a couch.

You should put a camera on it.

You know, live couch.

Like the Eagles nest.

The reason why we call Taco this is he's the lord of tweeting and communicating online.

Will you create a Rue couch account?

Probably by the end of this episode, there'll be one.

We could get a live stream just at the couch. That would be amazing.

I like it.

I mean, you've got to get plenty of, you know, spy cams in that house of yours.

Point one right there at the Rue couch.

I wonder what the Rue couch, what the Camp Nut Butter couch is doing today.

The Camp Nut Butter couch.

Just check them in.

I can put the marquee up above it.

Please do. Please do. It needs some friends.

All right. So what are we doing?

Anything else that we want to say?

We're going to put this one up this week and we're going to put Bonnet Roulette next week.

Is that what we're letting?

Well, you know, by the way, you know, we're not going to stop the ticket giveaway.

So, you know, if you still want to share us, like us and get the word out, please do.

The What underscore podcast on Twitter, the What podcast on Instagram.

What is our Instagram there, by the way, Russ?

I forgot.

It's just the What podcast.

The What podcast. Man, consistent branding.

We're really good at that.

The What underscore podcast on Twitter, the Whatpodcast.com.

Share us, get us out there and we'll find somebody and give tickets away here in the upcoming weeks.

Hey, Brad, what about should we let, should we mention the gift bags to the Patreons even when those might?

Oh yeah, yeah. We do have to. We're putting those together very soon, I promise.

You know, piecemeal by piecemeal. They're all coming together.

I guess we're done with the mixtapes, right? The mixtapes are ready to go?

We have a lot of mixtapes.

I've got a few more to create of yours and then be good to go. That's what made me think of it.

Yeah, we got to get the, we got some shirts and koozies together. I'll be honest with you, that's on me.

I've had a couple of things going on.

I've been a little busy and that's why I wanted to mention it, just to let people know we hadn't forgot.

I've had about 12 to 14 straight days of like 12 to 14 hour days.

So it's been non, it's been nonstop for a little while, but soon enough, I promise.

That's a lot coming from somebody who uses, usually works four hours a day.

Oh my God. It was 12 to 14 minutes.

You know, you mentioned, and I did want to say this, you mentioned Daniel and Charlotte, the, the rew bus.

And I kind of wanted to put it out there when we were talking today, but the whole radiate positivity thing, you know,

even though we're talking about this virus, it is important.

And that's one of the great things that I think Vonaru does is that sort of attitude.

And so hopefully everything will work out.

Yeah, I think, I think that there is a, there is definitely a serious tone to take and you have to acknowledge the facts on the ground.

It is remarkable how differently those facts are being transmitted in good ways and bad ways across the country.

I'm, I'm still standing up.

By the way, the other problem that I have is that I'm just, I just don't have the time and the energy and the resources to invest into a lot of this, this conspiracy theory stuff and freaking out about every case.

I don't have it in me, but you know, our company.

I do, it's my job.

It's your job. Exactly. I know.

And up until, and I'll be honest with you up until Thursday, the company that I work for now, they took it seriously, but then they really amped it up on Wednesday and Thursday.

And I had to start, you know, being on conference calls and video chats and it really, really hit and it became my entire life the last couple of days.

And for somebody who was in a completely different world mindset wise, I was dropped into coronavirus land and I, you know, I was like looking around like what in the world is happening in the world?

So I've been a tad removed from it, but you know, I really do think that's that call I made to you on Sunday after I got that information about Coachella that Monday changed everything.

I think Coachella changed it all.

And you know, it's weird to say that a music festival changed everything, but to have something that big.

You could argue South by did.

South by is the one that sort of was the first domino. Coachella, Coachella, that call Sunday, seriously was, was big.

That was, that was the one. And I reached out, honestly, I don't think he would mind me saying I reached out right after you called the Ted Heinegg at AC and reached out to Ken in New York.

And that Monday morning, yeah, it's, it's been crazy ever since. So you're not wrong that Coachella was the, was the big domino, but South by was probably the first.

Yeah. And you got to give, you know, that, that festival who, by the way, we still don't know who he is.

He's killing it.

I know. He or she, they don't even know their gender.

He or she knows all.

I have talked to, I've talked to this person in the past and this person has a few other people that run that account from what I remember. I don't know if it's still like that, but at the time I talked to that person, they had like two or three different people.

That makes sense. There's no way that no one, one person could be that clued in.

Well, yeah. And, and the great job.

The, the, you know, I was a little like he, and good for him. I mean, he put the information out there or him or her, put the information out there and was able to, you know, keep themselves in cloaked and, you know, privacy.

If I would have put that information out, the, the person that gave me the information would have seen it and would have known, and I would have been in big trouble.

I would have been in big, big trouble.

Welcome to my world every day.

Yeah, I understand. Anything else we should cover before we get out of here? Huh?

Not that I can think of. Are we going to, I'll ask this because I think probably listeners may wonder too, are we going to try to stay pretty on top of this or not? I mean, if something happens in the next four days, are we going to do it again? That type of thing.

My inclination is no.

Okay.

I know. Look, here's, here's the reason why. And I'll be totally honest with you and we, this is, this is, you know, basically, you know, me and Barry talking on the phone at this point, but there's not much that we're going to say that is not going to be said by somebody else.

Correct.

And I, I don't really like living in that world. If, if I have something different or, or something else to offer, then maybe. But getting on here and just doing a news report, I don't know if that makes, I don't know if that moves the needle at all.

How about the other side of it then things like Bonne Roulette and we have an interview with Larkin Poe, which I did. Are we, do we want to continue on as if not happening or you know what I mean? Is it disrespectful to?

I think, no, I think it, I think that's a good question. I don't know. My inclination is to just keep pumping out content as if we're going and as if we're going to be there.

Okay.

And you make a good point to, you know, it does it come across as a tad insensitive and I just don't know. And that's a, that's a question for, you know, the, the Bonne Rouvian listening to this right now.

You know, yeah, totally the total, total honesty, you know, we don't know. So I don't want to appear tone deaf, but I also don't want, you know, the world to stop. So, okay.

Let us know what you think the what underscore podcast on Twitter, the What Podcast on Instagram, the webpodcast.com. Leave us a comment. Taco, thank you so much for your, your new couch Twitter account. Appreciate that.

Thank you. Yeah, Barry Courter for your news acumen. Me for my shitty coffee this morning. Other than that, we'll talk to you in Bonne Roulette next week.