Episode 9 - Religion
0:00
AUSTIN: I’m Austin,
MITCH: Oh yeah yeah yeah. Let’s do that again where I’m not gonna talk over it.
AUSTIN: All right! I’m Austin,
MITCH: I’m Mitch,
AUSTIN: and this is Devil Town.
MITCH: And welcome to,
AUSTIN: (laughing) Devil Town
(Devil Town theme music)
MITCH: Dang it, I lost my notes again.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
Mitch: Where’d they… There they go. I’ve had this computer for like a year and I don’t know how to use it.
AUSTIN: Have you heard of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
MITCH: (laughing) Heard of him.
AUSTIN: Have you heard of my Lord and Savior Eric Taylor?
MITCH: Ohhhh
AUSTIN: (laughing) I’m kidding! It’s actually Buddy Garrity. I’m a lawful evil.
MITCH: Yeah, Buddy Garrity is…
AUSTIN: He’s not chaotic.
MITCH: No, he’s very lawful. The sad thing is, Buddy Garrity doesn’t consider himself selfish.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: He thinks that he is always doing what is best for everyone.
AUSTIN: He is altruistic in all the right ways.
MITCH: (laughing) I will say, this, uh, the way they do Lyla’s reawakening in Christianity, the way that plays out with her mom and with Buddy, Buddy comes out better than her mom on that one.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Oh yeah.
MITCH: Like, that’s one of the few times that he’s not the bad guy, and her mom is like, pretty bad, in that arc.
AUSTIN: Oh, well, later on, in seasons four and five when he becomes The Disgraced Buddy Garrity, he’s not a terrible human being, I mean… Early on, he’s a shithead.
MITCH: It’s one of those - you see it with all the conversations we have about his situations - he has this idea that he can do whatever he wants and if he ever just, like, looks sad and apologizes, everyone has to accept that.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: At no point does he ever not have a very successful business and a place to live and access to his family. He’s doing pretty well, all things considered. Nobody owes him anything more than that.
AUSTIN: No!
MITCH: But he has this idea that if he just grovels hard enough for thirty seconds, everything’s gonna come back to him exactly as good as it was when he was a state champ football player.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’s like, no, Buddy, that’s not…
AUSTIN: Well, one of my favorite moments of his is when he gets confronted at the church.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Mmmm. So good. So so good.
MITCH: That’s early, with Tyra’s mom?
AUSTIN: Yeah, Tyra’s mom comes up and - Does she slap him in the face?
MITCH: I think she slaps him.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I think so.
MITCH: I can, like, hear it in my brain.
AUSTIN: (laughing) I can see Tyra’s face, after she makes eye contact with Lyla and then pulls her mom away and is like, (whispering) I’m so sorry.
2:45
MITCH: (laughing) Yeah. If I was gonna slap somebody on the show it would be Buddy, because he’s jowly, and I feel like most of the actors on the show are very sharp featured. Buddy would be the funnest to slap.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: He would.
AUSTIN: Mine would be the only lineman that speaks in the entire show.
MITCH: The red headed guy?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah. Similar.
AUSTIN: The only one.
MITCH: That’s a future Buddy Garrity if I ever saw one.
AUSTIN: Actually, no, nope. It would be - if I had no repercussions, none - it would be Tim Riggins’...
MITCH: Oh yeah, of course.
AUSTIN: brother. Not Tim Riggins, his brother.
MITCH: Uh, nope, that’s where we disagree.
AUSTIN: No, I love him, but it would be fun. (laughing)
MITCH: Yeah, he… You also picked the fighter on the show. The guy that could definitely kick your ass.
AUSTIN: I said no repurcussions.
MITCH: (laughing)
3:24
AUSTIN: That’s part of it. It feels good to know that he can kick my ass but he won’t.
MITCH: I also, in my speed run of season two, watched the scene where Tami slaps Julie. And I feel like we just skate over that one in the show. She does it, we see her explain what happened to Eric and obviously feel bad about it, but we don’t see her apologize…
AUSTIN: So, um,
MITCH: We don’t see CPS get called (laughing)
AUSTIN: the last time that I watched that season was five years ago. What’s the lead up to that?
MITCH: Um, I think it is… See the thing with Julie is, most of their fights aren’t about any one thing. It’s that it’s such a pattern. Like, every conversations that they have is actually about everything that’s happened over the past year.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So I think that one was, I think Tami might have had to go pick her up from somewhere that she wasn’t supposed to be, after hours. But then they argue about it in the car and it comes down to, like, “You can’t tell me what to do. Why would I ever listen to you. Don’t talk to me.” And she says something, and Tami just slaps her. Oh! I think it’s, I think it’s, she’s like, “You need to do all these things for your future. You need to care about your future.” And she’s like, “Why? So I can grow to be just like you? No thanks.” (laughing) And Tami slaps her.
AUSTIN: Ughhhh
MITCH: And I’m like, “well, Tami… Is she wrong?”
(both laughing)
4:44
AUSTIN: Tami is a very respectable - she’s not the principal at the time is she?
MITCH: No she’s the counselor. No, she’s nothing at the time.
AUSTIN: Oh really?
MITCH: That’s before she goes back as the volleyball coach.
AUSTIN: That’s right. Yes, that’s right.
MITCH: She’s a stay at home mom again.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, that reminds me, she’s not respectable anymore.
MITCH: No
AUSTIN: I mean, she is. Stay at home moms…
MITCH: I respect her, but in her eyes, in Tami’s eyes, how can Tami sit there and say, you know, “Take it from me, an expert in all things being a perfect grown up.” Like, at that time she’s not really… Her life is pretty clearly falling apart right at that time.
5:22
(Devil Town theme music)
AUSTIN: We can start out with, we can get to all the legal ramifications of all the stuff you’ve researched…
MITCH: I’ll go last.
AUSTIN: Mine is… Honestly, it’s really hard.
MITCH: We haven’t said what it is we’re talking about yet.
AUSTIN: We’re talking about church.
MITCH: Yes
AUSTIN: We’re talking about religion. We’re talking about Jesus.
MITCH: I would say it doesn’t have to be Jesus, but there’s no other religions in the show.
AUSTIN: No, there’s not. Football, but we’ll gloss over that one. Alcohol, for the Riggins.
MITCH: Yeah, but I mean, like, they’re also Christian.
AUSTIN: I mean, Tim definitely uses it to get back with Lyla, so…
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I would loosely say that he’s Christian.
MITCH: Christianity has been used for much worse.
AUSTIN: That’s true. Land grabs mostly.
(both laughing)
6:15
AUSTIN: But, my side of this whole thing is, I was planning on trying to figure out what types of churches they go to in the show. I paused on several scenes, trying to figure out what type of church they went to.
MITCH: The suits at NBC do not want you to know. (laughing)
AUSTIN: No, it is impossible. It is impossible. So, I then - not looked at the creeds or anything like that because they don’t really give you much of that either. I tried to look at architecture. (laughing)
MITCH: Yeah. You have to.
AUSTIN: And, the church that everybody goes to - we have the Streets, Taylors, Garritys, Landrys, and the Saracens.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: The Landrys. Landry’s family, excuse me.
MITCH: The Landrys.
AUSTIN: The Landrys. Landry Landry, that’s his name. What is his last name?
MITCH: Um… Clark.
AUSTIN: Clark. That’s right. The Clarks. They all go to the same church.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I don’t remember if it’s ever mentioned what it’s called. I don’t think so.
MITCH: I don’t think they say a name. We definitely don’t see a sign, ‘cause we paused on those scenes to try to find a sign and they won’t show you one.
AUSTIN: They won’t show it. But, for some reason, and I don’t know why, it reminds me of a Church of the Nazarene. And I do not know why.
7:28
MITCH: I went to a Nazarene church when I lived in California, so like late elementary school. Very similar vibe, like, of all the churches I’ve been to in my life, the closest to the Taylor’s church is that Nazaene church I went to. Or the Methodist church I went to in Louisiana.
AUSTIN: Ok. I feel like Methodist for some reason, and I don’t…
MITCH: My Methodist church was very abnormal for Methodists.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It was the non-Catholic, white church in Buras, Louisiana. There weren’t very many options.
AUSTIN: And even then, Methodists are still on the side of Catholocism when it comes to tradition.
MITCH: This one was much more Baptist seeming. If you just went in there you would’ve assumed it was a Baptist church.
AUSTIN: Oh, really?
MITCH: It was technically Methodist, but it wasn’t really.
AUSTIN: For some reason I think it was a Nazarene church.
MITCH: That makes sense.
AUSTIN: So, the only Nazarene church that I really remember is the church that is from my home town.
MITCH: Yeah. You also lived across the street from one, for a while.
AUSTIN: That was Church of Christ.
MITCH: No, in your old… In your first house.
AUSTIN: I did. I forgot about that. Yeah. I never went into that place.
MITCH: We parked our cars there for parties (laughing)
AUSTIN: Ohhh we did.
MITCH: Sorry Nazarenes.
AUSTIN: (laughing) They were accommodating in ways that they didn’t know.
(both laughing)
8:41
AUSTIN: So they did us well. But I looked up the church that was in my hometown,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: and tried to find anything in terms of creeds and then I got distracted because - I’m gonna put these people on blast, I don’t know his name -
MITCH: I’m gonna open my Diet Coke.
AUSTIN: Ok
(soda can opening)
MITCH: That was a loud one. Ripe.
AUSTIN: (laughing) That’s a fresh one, fresh from the vine.
MITCH: This podcast brought to you by Diet Coke.
AUSTIN: (laughing) Mmmm chemicals. Um, so, the reason I got distracted was because in August, their head pastor, who had been there for -
MITCH: Of this year?
AUSTIN: This year - who had been there for 14 years, just got arrested for… Guess. I already told you.
MITCH: (laughing) You already told me.
AUSTIN: I’m gonna put it on Twitter -
MITCH: I’m not a good enough actor.
AUSTIN: (sarcastically) “I don’t know.” Child pornography.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I mean, what else is it gonna be?
AUSTIN: Well, I was hoping like a drug ring, but…
MITCH: He wasn’t giving too much money to the poor.
AUSTIN: Yeah, hmmm, I was… God…
MITCH: Anyway, let’s assume that their church in the show is a Church of the Nazarene, your Church of the Nazarene has this scandal very recently.
AUSTIN: Yes. Also would not surprise me if there was that scandal in that church there.
10:07
MITCH: Yeah, I mean…
AUSTIN: Buddy Garrity goes there, so…
MITCH: It is the respectable church, and those are the ones that I feel like have the problems that you don’t see for years and years and then it’s very scandalous when they come out.
AUSTIN: Yep. But he had been there… They put out in the newspaper, they were like, “Ok if you have any questions of whether or not your son or daughter has come into close contact and you have questions about whether or not there was any sexual misconduct, please get a hold of this person.”
MITCH: Yeah. That’s terrifying.
AUSTIN: So yeah, I got distracted and did not - I went to the Church of the Nazarene website, like the official, not just theirs. It’s the one -
MITCH: Their denominational website.
AUSTIN: And their website was so incomprehensible that I could not figure out what they actually believed.
MITCH: No, that’s the point of Nazarenes.
AUSTIN: It was… (laughing)
MITCH: It is! (laughing)
AUSTIN: It’s very Gnostic of them, it’s just.
MITCH: No, it’s like, I was a kid when I went to a Nazarene church obviously, but my impression of the denomination is, like, they wanna keep the seriousness of the liturgy without actually having a liturgy.
AUSTIN: Mmmm yeah.
MITCH: So yeah, I feel like that’s the church you go to if you want everything to be very serious and professional and respectful but you don’t actually want to think too hard about the theology. That’s how it strikes me.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And that’s how the church in the show, like, that’s the impression I get from the scenes we see in their church. Very nice sermons, very pleasant,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: probably good, moral things to talk about. But I don’t think any of those people are digging deep, or like really studying or anything.
AUSTIN: No.
11:47
AUSTIN: They are… The orientation is Holiness, I don’t know what that means. They’re Protestant, of course. But their polity(?), it’s mixed elements of congregationalists, Presbeterian, and Episcopalian.
MITCH: Yeah, that tracks to me.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that tracks. Meaningful Worship, number one. This is a list of Seven Characteristics of the Church of the Nazarene as Set Up in a General Assembly in 2013. Meaningful worship, theological coherence, passionate evangelism, intentional discipleship - as opposed to unintentional discipleship - number five, church development, number six, transformational leadership - my hometown’s church is just killing it - and seven, purposeful compassion.
MITCH: Ok, I was waiting to see when we would get something focused outside, it’s seven, purposeful compassion.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. It’s a very broad term.
MITCH: Yeah, it could be anything.
12:49
AUSTIN: Anything. But it started in Pilot Point, Texas (?), in 1908.
MITCH: That’s way more recent than I thought it was.
AUSTIN: Mhmm, but it branched off from the Church of the Nazarene in 1895.
MITCH: Oh
AUSTIN: Association of the Pentacostal Churches of America.
MITCH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: I did not think it was Pentacostal.
MITCH: Well, back then, they didn’t have the same, uh… There were huge differences between the denominations, but they weren’t the same differences that we have now.
AUSTIN: Yeah. But for some reason, Nazarene, that made sense to me.
MITCH: Yeah, it could be any other thing, but the fact that it’s an old building, it’s small, stained glass, it’s clearly got like, most of the towns power players go there but not a huge congregation.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: They’re clearly not interested in, like, bringing new people.
AUSTIN: It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the pastors, one of the guys who’s like on a committee or something like that for the church is probably a booster or something.
MITCH: Oh, I bet the pastor isn’t a booster because of money, but I bet that the board of the church and the booster club are close to a circle Venn diagram.
AUSTIN: Oh definitely. And I feel like that… Was that the place that they did the pancake thing?
MITCH: They don’t say.
AUSTIN: That was just a general church.
MITCH: Yeah.
AUSTIN: Is that just a normal thing? In every -
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: In every high school? I mean, is that just…
MITCH: I mean, in my high school’s, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, the high school I went to, we had one in the bottom of our First Baptist Church downtown.
MITCH: Well, yes, and that is, like, it points to how tied these things are culturally. But also, practically, if you’re in a small small town, what buildings in the town can facilitate a meeting that size? Churches.
AUSTIN: That’s true.
MITCH: Or the school itself.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: My high school in Missouri, the weekly dinners before games for the football team and the cheerleaders was at the church, at the First Baptist Church. So they did it every Friday.
AUSTIN: We had all you can eat pancakes.
MITCH: They did spaghetti dinners on Fridays.
AUSTIN: It was the Thursday nights before games.
14:41
AUSTIN: So, we have that church, that one church. The second one that we see most often is the Williams’ church. Again, could not figure out what that was. It’s the stereotypical smaller, like, community Black church.
MITCH: Yeah. We see the Williams family there, we see… uh, what’s her face, his girlfriend. Is that her dad’s church?
AUSTIN: I don’t think so. I think that it was at one point.
MITCH: Waverly. Yeah.
AUSTIN: It was at one point. He was a pastor there.
MITCH: And do they leave when they leave the show? In season one?
AUSTIN: They left prior. He was not the pastor,
MITCH: Ok ok ok
AUSTIN: they come back to town.
MITCH: But if that’s true, those are the only people we know on the show who go to that church, are the Williams family and Waverly’s family.
AUSTIN: Yeah. One way that they do - and it’s the way that they kind of make each of these churches distinct, and there’s one more that we kind of touch on that is prominent in season two - is by worship.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Almost exclusively. We don’t know anything about what they know, i mean, what they teach. We never really… It’s all vague, kind of, Christian teachings…
MITCH: I mean, and that makes sense. There’s never any story - Lyla in season two is the closest we ever get to, like, a story need for that. You can, you know, you can gather a lot based on how characters react to certain things, what they probably believe, and assume that their churches align with that.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But no, we don’t, we don’t, we don’t get any primary source, like, confirmation of the church’s teaching.
AUSTIN: Yeah, so, again, the Williams’ church is kind of hard to figure out in terms of any type of tradition or anything like that, just because, I don’t know what the denomination is.
MITCH: No. I would buy - not Southern Baptist Convention - but I would buy Independent Baptist or Freewill Baptist, or just a nondenominational.
AUSTIN: Now I did look up…
MITCH: Maybe Church of God? Is that realistic?
AUSTIN: Church of God, maybe. First Assembly of God.
MITCH: That’s what I was trying to say.
AUSTIN: Something like that.
MITCH: That’s what I was thinking.
AUSTIN: I did look up a Baptist church here. They are assocaited with -
MITCH: Henderson Hills?
AUSTIN: No, not Southern Baptist.
MITCH: That’s like the fifth biggest city in Oklahoma.
(both laughing)
MITCH: It is.
AUSTIN: They technically are Baptist, right?
MITCH: Henderson Hills Baptist Church, yeah.
AUSTIN: But I don’t think they’re southern -
MITCH: They’re not part of the convention.
AUSTIN: They’re an independent Baptist Church. No, this one is associated with the East Zion District, which is an association. It’s out of… “We are an association of regular Missionary Baptist and Baptist Missions who practice the teachings of the New Testament and exhibit Christian conduct as a local church.”
MITCH: They could be Missionary Baptist, I would believe it.
AUSTIN: That would make sense, yeah.
17:30
AUSTIN: But again, their website, absolute chaos.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I don’t know what to click on. I’m trying, and I can’t figure it out. It talks about Covid, we can get on their email list, there’s a video, there’s another video. 123rd session Oklahoma Baptist State Convention.
MITCH: So they might be part of the Convention, that church.
AUSTIN: Yeah. “What we believe.” Got it. Scriptures: was written by men, divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction. We’re gonna see that in pretty much every church.
MITCH: Yeah, it’s all of ‘em. What is it, 2 Timothy? “All scripture is God breathed…”
AUSTIN: God breathed, and God forbid, they think it’s inherent. Inerrant, excuse me.
MITCH: Inerrant.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Good Lord. “We believe the scriptures say that there is one and only one living and true God.” Uhhh, the fall of man, the way of salvation, that’s the Roman road type shit. I’m being very sacriligeous at this point.
MITCH: I don’t care.
AUSTIN: I know you don’t.
(both laughing)
18:32
AUSTIN: Justification: we believe that the scriptures teach that the great gospel… ok, yep, the freeness of salvation. I thought it said the freshness of salvation.
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: I got really excited. Regeneration, repentance in faith, God’s purpose of faith, sanctification, perseverance of the saints. Really? Oh, perseverance, I thought it said…
MITCH: That’s all very, you know, cookie cutter American Protestantism.
AUSTIN: Very much so. Oh, civil government, that’s on here. “We believe the scriptures teach that civil government is of divine appointment.” If it wants us to go down to hell, that’s what it seems like it’s doing right now.
MITCH: I mean, that is a… that is something that I feel like is implied in the belief of a lot of churches, but most of them don’t have it in their, like, in their mission statements.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, if that was the case - and I’ve heard that argument for Trump, a lot, is that “Oh he’s ordained by God,” - the same people decried Obama.
MITCH: Oh yeah yeah yeah. When there’s a Republican in office, you have to respect it because obviously it’s God’s will. If there’s not, then this is a sign that the end times are upon us and, surprise, the Devil’s in charge now.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Yeah, we’ve been through this cycle before. About every eight years, for about a hundred years.
AUSTIN: Every eight years it just goes back and forth.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Oh shit… I mean, the Devil’s red, Republicans are red, I mean, it’s whatever. Actually, did you know that the color thing, red and blue for Republican and Democrat, actually came about in the 2000 race?
MITCH: I did not.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: I knew that it was, like, recent-ish, but I thought it was older than that.
AUSTIN: It was like on CNN or MSNBC and somebody posted it and started using those graphics for them and that’s when it kind of started.
MITCH: I didn’t know that.
AUSTIN: At one point in the 80s it was like purple and blue.
MITCH: Oh I like that better.
AUSTIN: I don’t know about that. But yeah, that’s a general, whatever, we got a general gist of that one. Now Lyla’s church is the nondenominational -
MITCH: It’s really just in season two. The first episode of season two she gets baptised in a river. That’s like the first thing we see of her.
AUSTIN: Ughhh
MITCH: White robe, there’s like a hundred people going down to the river and she gets baptised there.
AUSTIN: God, just, solid O Brother Where Art Thou?
MITCH: Yeah. The music’s not as good.
AUSTIN: “Come on in boys, the water’s fine.
21:05
MITCH: I watched all of season two over the past few days, but only the Lyla church scenes.
AUSTIN: (laughing) That’s the saddest cut.
MITCH: (laughing) It really is. Not my favorite fan edit of the show. It does have Matt Czurchy, I don’t know how to say his last name, Carey Agos from the Good Wife.
AUSTIN: Cersei?
MITCH: It’s c-z-u-r-c-h-y.
AUSTIN: Oh. No idea.
MITCH: I don’t know. I was trying to look stuff up and if you go to the fan-pedia Friday Night Lights page, most of its like very well researched and like thorough. But if you click on that actor’s name and go to the actor’s page, it just says “hott af.” (laughing) And that’s it.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: I’m like, there’s not much, but it’s accurate.
AUSTIN: It’s accurate.
21:48
MITCH: Lyla goes to the church. I was saying, when I rewatched it, I was under the impression that, like, I kinda get the feeling that this church maybe isn’t in Dillon. It strikes me as one of those that’s just out of town or maybe in the next town over.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: ‘Cause it’s big. It’s way bigger than any of the others we see. And it’s clearly supposed to be the, like, new, growing, exciting church.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But we don’t see anybody else that we know from the show there, except for Lyla.
AUSTIN: No. It looks like… That maybe what it is. It very well could be. How did she hear about it?
MITCH: It doesn’t say.
AUSTIN: It doesn’t say.
MITCH: We start season two with her getting baptised and that’s like, she’s like gung-ho.
AUSTIN: Hmm ok. It would not surprise me if it was out of town. Also would not surprise me, like you said, if it was in, like, a mall.
MITCH: Oh, it looks like one of those, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I say that, but it is not flat.
MITCH: No, yeah yeah, but it has the - it’s not a sanctuary with stained glass, it’s like, you know, high ceiling, drop ceiling, big screens, electric instruments.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It’s one of those. They have the rows of maroon chairs instead of pews.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But the preacher we see is like an old guy, old white guy preacher.
AUSTIN: John Piper.
MITCH: He’s very that. It’s very, if you’re in Oklahoma City, it’s very Bridgeway.
AUSTIN: Yes. And luckily, I did find out what they believe.
23:10
MITCH: They’re pretty up front with it.
AUSTIN: So, just generally, and what we can kind of assume what these people believe, based off of what kind of churches they’re going to. Based like what we went through earlier, same thing with Lyla’s church, they’re just a little more fervent.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: But it’s incredibly conservative, across the board. The one that everybody else goes to, like, the Taylors and stuff like that, it is conservative, but it is not as stringent.
MITCH: It strikes me as the kind of place where to talk too specifically about politics would be, like, crass.
AUSTIN: Yes.
MITCH: Like, yeah, they’re all conservative, but they’re not gonna be talking about that kind of stuff at church. That’s too ugly of a conversation.
AUSTIN: Right. Exactly.
MITCH: I will say, I am still very, very anti church, in like a Norweigian death metal, burn ‘em to the ground type of way,
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: but Lyla is one of the only characters in the whole show who actually puts her money where her mouth is.
AUSTIN: It’s true.
MITCH: Like, over the course of season two we see her doing a lot of things that are at least, like, she is trying really hard to do the stuff that they talk about.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So it’s like, I don’t know how much of that she’s getting from the church and how much of that is her own changing and growing, but like, she’s part of, like, a prison ministry and a radio show and, like, she’s like doing stuff.
AUSTIN: Oh, she goes full tilt, but then she realizes it was boring.
MITCH: Yeah, but that’s not, you can’t… Can you imagine the Taylor’s church having a prison ministry?
BOTH: No
AUSTIN: They probably have a potluck from time to time.
MITCH: They might raise money and send it to a prison ministry, but they probably don’t go to a prison. And we see that when she brings an ex-con home, how her family reacts to that.
AUSTIN: Oooof. I mean, that’s definitely putting your money where your mouth is.
MITCH: She literally says that. She goes into the prison - did you watch that episode?
AUSTIN: I’ve seen it all, it’s just been a while.
MITCH: It’s a juvenile facility. But she goes there, she kind of gets, like, laughed at and shot down by the guys there, ‘cause she’s like a seventeen year old who doesn’t really know anything. But as she’s driving down the road, she sees one of the guys she recognizes walking, and he just got out and doesn’t have money or a car or anything. So she, like, tells him to get in the car. And he’s like, “what is this? What are you doing?” And she says, “I’m putting my money where my mouth is. Get in the car.” Brings him home.
AUSTIN: Takes him out into the field and kills him.
BOTH: (laughing)
25:36
MITCH: She brings him home and her mom is like, “Absolutely not. How dare you. You’re crazy to think that I would ever let a convict into my house.” And her dad gives him a job. Like, when it comes right down to it, you have somebody who needs help, Buddy Garrity’s the one who helps him.
AUSTIN: I know.
MITCH: Mrs. Garrity absolutely wants nothing to do with it.
AUSTIN: But see, the issue is, you have two people, the Garrity’s, Lyla’s being fairly not selfish,
MITCH: Lyla’s being genuine, I think.
AUSTIN: She is. Buddy is doing it to make it seem like he’s doing the best for a kid.
MITCH: Oh, I know. It’s not altruistic. But you have this… Like, I feel like if you asked, hypothetically, all the people that go to the Garrity’s church, they would say that it is good to help people.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: When they actually have one on their doorstep ready to be helped, we saw who actually did and who didn’t.
AUSTIN: Oh, yes, definitely.
MITCH: Yeah, Buddy was helping for selfish reasons. In the end, he helped in some ways, he hurt in some ways, but he did try. Just like Lyla. You can look at Lyla’s whole arc and say that it’s you know, you could make the argument that it’s selfish and she’s just trying to rehab her image or something. I don’t think that’s true. Even so, she still did something. She still helped, more than anybody else is helping.
AUSTIN: She did, yeah.
MITCH: The radio show, hmmmm
26:54
AUSTIN: Yeah. We’re gonna get into the weeds on this one. I’m pretty sure that they don’t believe in transubstantiation.
MITCH: Oh, definitely not.
AUSTIN: Yeah, consubstantiation, it doesn’t -
MITCH: None of the three churches do.
AUSTIN: It would not matter… It does not matter in any way, shape, or form to the show.
MITCH: No, but given how most Protestant churches in America are, none of the three churches we’ve talked about are close to that.
AUSTIN: Not even close to Catholic. Not even close to Catholic. Which is pretty much the only denomination that believes in transubstantiation.
MITCH: Maybe Russian and Greek Orthodox.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s true. Actually, I don’t think that they are. I really don’t. Either way, for the listener -
MITCH: We don’t have any listeners anymore, we’ve talked about this for too long (laughing)
AUSTIN: Transubstantiation, it’s whenever you take the sacrament, or the Body of Christ, whenever you put it in your mouth, it literally turns to Jesus. That’s what they believe, you’re eating, you’re eating Jesus.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: The actual piece of his skin, whatever, body.
MITCH: Thinking about his flesh is not that gross to me. Thinking about his, just, skin that has come off is disgusting (laughing)
AUSTIN: Ughhhh, Jesus jerky.
MITCH: He has one of those foot egg, pedi-egg things from the infomercials,
BOTH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: It’s actually those little crackers,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: They’re flakes of skin.
MITCH: Listen, you wear sandals in the desert for thirty years, you don’t have perfect feet.
AUSTIN: That’s what he did, he just, like, everyday. It’s the actual body of Christ and they just disperse it. But that’s what they believe. That’s what transubstantiation is, they don’t believe that. Obviously they’re not Catholic. Varying degrees of Calvinistic beliefs, but the congregation would not know what is most of the time.
MITCH: Some of them would. Most of them wouldn’t. I don’t think Lyla would.
AUSTIN: I think Lyla’s church would.
MITCH: Yeah, but I don’t think she would.
AUSTIN: Because, again, it’s a John Piper church. And that dude, he’s something else. Let’s see, Calvinist is pretty much just, if you talk about predestination, that’s almost exactly what you’re doing. You’re a Calvinist at that point. The other one’s Aryanism, which is… doesn’t sound good, but it’s more free will. Like we said, you only get to see the worship side of pretty much all the churches.
MITCH: I will say, the show really nails the feel of a worship service in 2007.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: They’re playing those - what was the song that was stuck in my head all day? It was the - I almost said Phil Collins.
AUSTIN: I wish!
MITCH: There was a very, very specific type of worship music that was very popular in, like, the mid-2000s, and Lyla’s church gets it, like - it has to be that they just hired an actual church to play themselves.
AUSTIN: They had to, yeah. Well, it’s, it’s…
29:39
MITCH: And it works.
AUSTIN: Chris Tomlin is -
MITCH: That’s the word.
AUSTIN: Chris Tomlin is, Hillson is,
MITCH: Late era Michael W. Smith.
AUSTIN: Yes. It’s the same shit. Early Gunger.
MITCH: Yeah. Effective music, I will say. I don’t wanna listen to it all the time, but like, for its purpose, that music is passionate and exciting and -
AUSTIN: It is efficient.
MITCH: Yeah. It does what it’s supposed to do better than hymns do. I don’t enjoy it. I’ve played a lot of it in my life.
AUSTIN: But you can definitely tell, the crowd there belies what the church probably actually is, just based off of pure demographics.
MITCH: Well, the churches i went to, you have this thing where, like, two different church I went to had the split where they were growing too big and they had to split congregations for space. But it also morphed into a, you know, 9 am traditional service with hymns, 11 am contemporary service with contemporary worship. There’s a lot of churches that have two services that the only difference between them is, do you have electric guitars or do you have an organ?
AUSTIN: Yeah. One of the churches that I went to when I was in college - it was a part of, you know Matt Chandler?
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: Ok. It was his church, The Village.
MITCH: Is that a huge church?
AUSTIN: Oh it’s a megachurch. But it’s multicampus, and there’s one in Denton. So we only watch whatever. And I only went there a handful of times, ‘cause I usually went to the Church of Christ that was attached to the guys that I worked with. But they had one, where it was contemporary. They had that, and then they had the liturgical, too.
MITCH: Oh really?
AUSTIN: I did not get to go to that one. I wanted to, but I did not get to. We tried a liturgical at our campus ministry and nobody came.
MITCH: It’s cool once. It’s boring after a while.
31:23
AUSTIN: The church, obviously, the church that I regularly went to was Church of Christ. We did not use instruments.
MITCH: There’s no Church of Christ in the show, thank goodness.
AUSTIN: Oh my god. But the ministry that I was at, we did, ‘cause we were technically a nondenominational ministry. We were just funded by them, so… It was all right. It was fine. (laughing)
MITCH: I played in a lot of worship bands in my life, I’ve played in pretty much every type of worship service you can imagine. Like, I’ve done the hymns, those are hard to play.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But I’ve done that, and I’ve done the, like, very contemporary, Hillson style. I was saying earlier, it’s - I absolutely never wanna go back inside another church ever again in my life, not even for a wedding, so keep that in mind if you’re gonna invite me.
AUSTIN: (laughing) It’s gonna be outside of a church.
MITCH: Outside only. Put it in a barn. I’m ok with a barn. Barns are fine. Not in a church.
AUSTIN: What about the fellowship hall of a church?
MITCH: But there are not very many opportunities to play music that is so, like, big of an experience,
AUSTIN: Oh, it’s very true.
MITCH: much less weekly.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Very true.
MITCH: Like, I kinda miss that a little bit. I wish there was a way to get that experience without having any religion attached to it.
AUSTIN: I just had, like, a little bit of anxiety, like, thinking about my wedding, like, later on. Inviting my family to it, and then them realizing that I don’t have any, like, religious tie in any way, shape, or form, in the ceremony. That just terrified me.
MITCH: Imagine having to tell them there’s not gonna be any religion or women.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Even worse!
32:57
(Devil Town theme music)
MITCH: Can we talk about the radio show?
AUSTIN: We can, one second.
MITCH: Oh yeah, finish what you’re doing.
AUSTIN: I just wanna trash on their teachings. It’s fun. Inerrant Bible, we already got that. Trinitarian, although it seems like that’s ubiquitous,
MITCH: There are denominations that are not trinitarian.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Not many, but there are. Young Earth creationist, almost to a t. Every one of them, they believe in a six day creation, rested on the seventh day. I hate it. But this is on, honestly, I pulled almost all of this from the Bridgeway thing. And then the last one that I have is homophobic.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: So
MITCH: They all are that.
AUSTIN: What is the -
MITCH: Especially in a town like Dillon, Texas, in the mid-2000s, it would’ve been, no exceptions, homophobic.
AUSTIN: Oh yes.
MITCH: Now you might have one in that town that is - there’s a pretty good chance that there’s a church in Dillon now, in 2020, that is -
AUSTIN: Not gay affirming
MITCH: not affirming, but accepting. Where, like, they’ll be very friendly to you, but laugh in your face if you ever try to, like, teach a class or have them condone your marriage or anything like that.
AUSTIN: Like Chris Pratt’s church.
MITCH: Yeah, most cool churches now. I don’t even know if there would be - there might be, Dillon’s not a tiny town, there could be a UCC or a, what’s the one, Presbeterian. There could be, based on numbers.
AUSTIN: Even then, with Presbyterian, it’s
MITCH: It’s a split, but there are some.
AUSTIN: it’s very conservative and then fairly progressive.
MITCH: I don’t think any of the characters that we see go to church would go to one of those churches, though.
AUSTIN: I’m looking up Pflugerville UCC to see if there’s anything there. St. John Evenagelical Lutheran Church of Richland.
MITCH: Could be. But like, because that is such a nondenominational thing, it could be called a community church, it could be called a universalist church, Universal Church of Christ,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: There’s a lot of things that it could be called and be affirming. My hometown had one that was pretty open. But only one, and we had 25 that were not. So like, the numbers aren’t gonna be good in a town like Dillon no matter what.
AUSTIN: I’m trying to think if there were any in my hometown and I don’t think that there are.
MITCH: I’m also not one of those people that wants that. When people are like, “Oh you don’t have to hate Christianity. There are churches that are accepting.” I’m like, “Well good for them. Don’t need it, don’t want it.”
AUSTIN: The core tenets of almost all Christian belief is exactly what we think it is.
MITCH: Also I was forced to spend the first 20 years of my life studying the Bible hard core and if there’s one thing I am, I am a studier. So I know that book inside and out. If I go to a church that can explain away all the stuff that I know is bad about the Bible, then why would I listen to them? They’re obviously just, like, not reading very closely, or doing mental gymnastics.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, if you read that book and you can handwave away all the stuff that I find unacceptable, I don’t care what you think. There’s too much.
AUSTIN: That’s what I did for the longest time. I tried -
MITCH: I know a lot of people who do it. And they’re not bad for doing it, I just don’t want any of that.
AUSTIN: I tied my brain in knots, trying to figure out how to make sure that I wasn’t a bad person ‘cause I believed a certain way,
MITCH: You’re a bad person for other reasons.
AUSTIN: (laughing) That’s very true. But not because I’m homophobic.
MITCH: That’s true.
AUSTIN: But, it turned into some arguments with the people that were going to that place,
36:36
AUSTIN: But that’s pretty much it. Like I said, you can infer exactly what that town is, based off what these types of churches are.
MITCH: When I watch it, like, no the show does not tell us what denomination these churches are. We don’t see a whole lot of… It doesn’t come into the story that much. But it does fill a very specific, like, cultural role in the show.
AUSTIN: Yes.
MITCH: The Taylor’s and the Garrity’s church is very clearly the respectable, nice church that nice families go to in that town.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Lyla’s church is pretty racially diverse, but none of the others are. Smash’s church is completely Black, the Taylor’s church is completely white. And you can see, you know - we can’t tell for each of the individual people at the Taylor’s church how much it matters to them on an individual level, but for some of them it seems like a thing you’re supposed to do. Whereas Lyla’s church, you can feel however you wanna feel about what they’re convicted about, but they do seem convicted. And they do seem like they are there because they want to be there for the teaching, not because of social pressure.
37:41
AUSTIN: Yeah, they do. Yes. Well, we can talk about Lyla’s radio show.
MITCH: I don’t really have much to say.
AUSTIN: I don’t either.
MITCH: It is, it is one of the more unrealistic - season two is unrealistic in general for most of the storylines. But you have Lyla, who is a senior in high school, I think, at this point. Just gets this job doing a radio, call in, question show with her future-boyfriend Chris. And like, it’s great that she wants to go out and do these things. I do not believe that they would hire Lyla, the least charismatic person in the town of Dillon, to host a radio show as a 17 or 18 year old with no experience, who also has just started going to church again. Like, how did she get that show? Who did she audition for? What was that interview like?
AUSTIN: I don’t know.
MITCH: ‘Cause like, we listen on the show, and she does ok, but she’s not great. And also, like, I was thinking, when they introduce it, it’s probably gonna be like a, she’ll read some spots and do some banter between songs. It is a call in show, where they are just taking calls from the audience asking very tough questions about faith.
AUSTIN: Yes.
MITCH: And like, that is not a position you put a high school senior in to try to take care of themselves.
AUSTIN: Well they would not, she would have… That’s hard for somebody that’s been teaching that stuff for years.
MITCH: It seems to me like - whoever this, we never really learn who Chris is, we know his family’s very, very rich. We know that he is maybe 19 or 20, but is sometimes speaking on Sunday morning at church, like, as the preacher. So he’s clearly something, he’s something of like a wunderkind. It makes sense to me that he might get a show. And I bet that he just picked Lyla. Like she put in an application like, “I wanna be involved with the radio station.” And he sees her and is like, “oh you can come cohost this show with me.”
AUSTIN: “You got a face for radio.”
MITCH: The less realistic part is, Tim goes in and auditions to do a sports radio show, and they just give him one.
AUSTIN: God
MITCH: So we see a couple episodes of Tim, by himself, hosting a call-in sports talk radio show.
AUSTIN: I would listen to that.
MITCH: I mean, it’s better than the other sports talk radio we hear.
AUSTIN: Well, yeah. I would definitely listen to that though. ‘Cause that’s the only thing on radio I listen to.
MITCH: That’s true.
AUSTIN: I don’t listen to anything else. It’s just one station here.
40:08
MITCH: The name of their show is I Was a Teenage Christian, which I feel like is a reference to those 70s and 80s anonymous written teen books. Like, I Was a Teenage Mother, I Was a Teenage Crack Addict.
AUSTIN: Oh it’s definitely one of those.
MITCH: It’s definitely one of those. But like, why is it that? (laughing) Why is the show called I Was a Teenage Christian?
AUSTIN: If that was the case then that’s, that’s obviously… The title is completely opposite of what they’re trying to do.
MITCH: Oh yeah yeah yeah. Also, Lyla, you haven’t been a teenage Christian until very recently.
AUSTIN: And also, what? I was? I’m done. That’s (laughing)
MITCH: All I know is Matt Czurchy, hott af. That’s all that really matters. I need to go watch -
AUSTIN: Is that in your notes?
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: He is! Have you seen him?
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: He’s pretty good looking. Watch The Good Wife, he’s like a full grown adult in that show.
AUSTIN: Is he the guy that kind of looks like the lead singer for One Republic?
MITCH: No, I don’t think so. He was Logan in Gilmore Girls, but you didn’t watch that either.
AUSTIN: Nope I didn’t.
41:11
(Devil Town theme music)
MITCH: All right. I have some Two Truths and a Lie
AUSTIN: About what?
MITCH: About Texas.
AUSTIN: Texas. I’m gonna butcher this.
MITCH: I went to the subreddit - have you ever looked at Not the Onion?
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: It’s just headlines that look like they could be The Onion but they’re Not the Onion.
AUSTIN: Jesus Christ.
MITCH: So I found a bunch of Texas things on Not the Onion and then some Texas things on The Onion. I’m gonna give you two real ones and one The Onion headline, you gotta tell me which ones which.
AUSTIN: Oh no. I’m nervous.
MITCH: Number One: End of Last Meals for Death Row Inmates Could Decimate Texas Restaurant Industry.
AUSTIN: Is that?
MITCH: Headline Two: Teacher of the Year from Oklahoma Moves to Texas for the Money. Number Three: Texas Judge Interrupts Jury, Says God Told Him Defendant Is Not Guilty.
AUSTIN: The second one is wrong.
MITCH: The second one is real.
AUSTIN: Really?!
MITCH: Yeah it was like three years ago. Our state teacher of the year left the year after he won teacher of the year.
AUSTIN: It feels… It just feels like it’s so just…
MITCH: It is -
AUSTIN: rudimentary.
MITCH: It’s perfect. It is. (laughing)
AUSTIN: It would not surprise me.
MITCH: This probably happened many time, but it was - he won teacher of the year and the next year went to Texas.
AUSTIN: Now that I’m thinking about it, The Onion’s not that specific.
MITCH: No. The Onion was End of Last Meals for Death Row Inmates Could Decimate Texas Restaurant Industry (laughing)
AUSTIN: I hate that I didn’t pick that one, but the second one seemed so, just, simple.
MITCH: Here we go. Texas Approves Feral Hog Hunting from Hot Air Balloons. Inclusive New Texas Bill Prevents Gun Sellers from Discriminating on Basis of Background Check.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Or Texas Teacher Accused of Lassoing Student.
AUSTIN: They’re so hard!
MITCH: (laughing) They’re all believable.
AUSTIN: Ughhh the second one.
MITCH: Correct.
AUSTIN: Ok. Yeah
MITCH: Texas did approve feral hog hunting from hot air balloons. (laughing)
AUSTIN: Doesn’t surprise me one bit.
MITCH: And a Texas teacher did lasso a student in the classroom.
AUSTIN: I knew that the feral hogs, you could shoot from a helicopter.
MITCH: Yeah, I knew that. I didn’t know hot air balloons were legal. I don’t wanna be shooting anything from a hot air balloon.
AUSTIN: Hell no.
MITCH: It’s just a wicker basket. I don’t trust wicker furniture, much less a basket up in the air.
AUSTIN: Well yeah, just a wrong gust and you got an extra hole.
MITCH: Yeah. (sigh) Here we go. Nearly 200 People Arrested, Two Shot During ‘Go Topless Jeep Weekend’ in Texas.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: Texas Superintendent Suspended After Allegedly Headbutting Another Superintendent While Drunk at Fast Food Chain. Four Out of Five Texas Dentists Advocate the Death Penalty.
AUSTIN: (laughing) What was the first one again?
MITCH: The Go Topless Jeep Weekend.
AUSTIN: I’m gonna say that one.
MITCH: That one’s real.
AUSTIN: Really?!
MITCH: Yeah (laughing) 200 People Arrested, Two Shot.
AUSTIN: I figured I would have heard about that.
MITCH: I don’t know what it was. I’m guessing just some kind of mud festival.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: God, I hate that state so much.
MITCH: Which other one do you think it is?
AUSTIN: Four out of five dentists.
MITCH: Yeah. Although, I bet if you polled Texas dentists, it probably would be about 80% of them are pro death penalty.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah.
MITCH: Here’s another one. Texas Schools to No Longer Teach Students About Autoerotic Asphyxiation. Judge Orders Texas Man to Marry Girlfriend, Write Down Bible Verses. Or: Texas Attorney General Sues Self to Stop Self from Releasing Documents He Says Can’t Be Released.
AUSTIN: Third one.
MITCH: That ones real.
AUSTIN: What the actual fuck.
MITCH: He did that. (laughing)
AUSTIN: What twisted Twilight Zone world do we live in?
MITCH: He could be compelled to tell, but also, as the Attorney General, he could also sue somebody to not tell, so he sued himself.
AUSTIN: (laughing) I’m thinking that the first ones wrong.
MITCH: You’re right. That is not real. I didn’t take sex ed in Texas, I doubt they get into autoerotic asphyxiation.
AUSTIN: They don’t. Well, in 2007 they didn’t, 2006.
MITCH: That’s just something we all gotta figure out on our own.
AUSTIN: (laughing) I learned what is was from the movie World’s Greatest Dad.
MITCH: Yeah, World’s Greatest Dad. Ooh that’s a bummer.
AUSTIN: It is. Yeah, that’s a full on accidental suicide.
MITCH: Yeah. I mean, it has to happen more often than we hear about.
AUSTIN: I know. Ughhhh. Good movie, just not easy to watch.
MITCH: I remember thinking it was a good movie when I watched it. I won’t watch it again and I wouldn’t recommend it.
AUSTIN: It is not easy to watch.
MITCH: Robin Williams is good though.
AUSTIN: You get to see Robin William’s dick.
MITCH: You do.
AUSTIN: And his buttcheeks.
MITCH: He’s naked in that, he’s naked in The Fisher King too, but like, at a distance.
AUSTIN: He is, isn’t he? Fisher King was good.
MITCH: I love The Fisher King.
AUSTIN: Yeah, it was good.
5:11
MITCH: Headline number one. Texas Lawmaker Suggests Asians Adopt Easier Names. Number two: Commissioner Says Fighting for Fryers in Schools ‘Isn’t About French Fries, It’s About Freedom.’ Or: Outdoor Music Festival Grounds Mistaken for Refugee Camp.
AUSTIN: Three
MITCH: Yes. You got it right. Texas lawmaker did suggest that Asians adopt easier names.
AUSTIN: Does not surprise me.
MITCH: And a commissioner did say it’s not about french fries, it’s about freedom.
AUSTIN: The amount of arguments about how bad France was, when I was in high school.
MITCH: I know. This isn’t even about that. I saw a bunch of articles that were about this debate, about taking deep fryers out of school cafeterias.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
MITCH: And people were furious about the idea of taking deep fryers out of cafeterias. (laughing)
AUSTIN: I don’t even remember… Honestly, I don’t even remember if they had deep fryers. I’m sure they did.
MITCH: I never ate in the cafeteria, but when I did, we had, like, the hot lunch line, which was, like, meat loaf, green beans, whatever.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And then we had like a snack bar, which was like the other line. And that was, like, those pizza stuffed breadsticks, and tater tots, and chicken fingers.
AUSTIN: That’s what we had.
MITCH: It was garbage. But if I ever ate in the cafeteria, it was that stuff.
AUSTIN: We had like chicken sandwiches and junk.
MITCH: Yeah. But it was also, like - you could get the hot plate lunch for like $1.75, and that stuff in the snack bar was expensive, but that’s all anybody ate. I mostly ate off campus because I just had to get out of the building.
6:58
MITCH: Here we go. Texas Governer Deploys State Guard to Stave Off Obama Takeover.
AUSTIN: That’s true.
MITCH: Texas Environmentalists Lobby for Solar Powered Electric Chair. After Texas High School Builds $60 Million Stadium, Rival District Plans One for Nearly $70 Million.
AUSTIN: The second one.
MITCH: You’re right.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: This is where I was kinda like - The Onion had a lot of death penalty stuff back when that was the conversation.
AUSTIN: (laughing) What was the third one? Do you know who it was?
MITCH: I didn’t look up who they were. I just like that someone built a $60 million dollar stadium and the next district over was like, cool, $70 million.
AUSTIN: Ok, so, you know the - Have you seen Denton ISD’s at all?
MITCH: I don’t think we ever drove by.
AUSTIN: Ok. So it’s kind of off of the loop. I went to UNT, I taught at Denton-Guyer, but I never went to any football games. I should have because they won state that year, but…
MITCH: You didn’t go to any games?
AUSTIN: No, ‘cause I had other shit I had to do with the college ministry and stuff, so…
MITCH: Every ministry I’ve been involved in is not gonna compete with a football game.
AUSTIN: Plus, I didn’t have any students who played football.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I had freshmen pre-A.P.
MITCH: Yeah, not prime football crowd.
AUSTIN: Yeah, no. I mean, maybe a couple, but they didn’t expect their student teacher to go.
MITCH: No, but like I, I thought you would’ve gone just ‘cause you like football and…
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, I probably should have. But either way, they built a stadium - was it them of Allen? Or Highland Park? It was one of those, there were three of them
MITCH: I know Highland Park from marching band.
AUSTIN: I think it was Denton. But they built a, I wanna say it was like, $15 to 20 million stadium or something like that. They built it, and then they realized that the foundation was faulty.
BOTH: (laughing)
MITCH: I love an on-the-nose metaphor.
AUSTIN: It was bad. It was for all three of the schools in the district.
MITCH: That’s incredible. I love that.
AUSTIN: I played on that field. Whenever we played on that field it was 105 ambient temperature, it was 115 to 120 on the field.
MITCH: Absolutely not.
AUSTIN: Oh it was miserable.
MITCH: Was it grass or turf?
AUSTIN: Turf.
MITCH: I hate turf. Ooh I hate turf.
AUSTIN: It was so much worse.
MITCH: All those little black things. I hate it. All right, last one. Texas Man Injured as Bullet Ricochets Off Armadillo.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Student Says Teacher Gave Unwanted Hair Cut Due to Dress Code Violation. Or, this ones sad, Texas Boy, 4, Killed When Barbecue Pit Shaped Like a Gun Fall On Him.
AUSTIN: (laughing) I don’t want it to be the last one. I don’t want that to be real, but I feel like it is. I’m gonna say the last ones not real.
MITCH: Trick question, they’re all real.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: I like to think that they were, like, the same town, the same day. It’s like a Seven Pounds situation where they all intersect at the end.
AUSTIN: It’s just, this dad has a very bad day.
MITCH: The kid has a bad day. He goes to school, his teacher gives him a forced haircut ‘cause he violated the dress code. And he thinks he’ll cheer himself up with some barbecue, but his little brother is crushed by the gun shaped barbecue pit. (laughing) And some guy is just shooting at armadillos.
AUSTIN: (laughing)
MITCH: Also, like, are… I thought even at the strongest point, an armadillo wouldn’t ricochet a bullet.
AUSTIN: I know.
10:36
AUSTIN: That shit…
MITCH: I guess they’re strong.
AUSTIN: Yeah they’re strong. They also carry leprosy.
MITCH: My grandpa who reminds me of Harrison Ford in Texas, I saw him do it once - he claims to have done it many times, I saw it with my own eyes once - saw an armadillo out of his truck. Jumped out of his truck to go catch it, it ran away from. But you know how armadillos are, like, strong and fast, they got those slick tails. Shoved his hand down in the armadillo hole, grabbed it by the tail, and then pulled it out of the hole and, like, wrung it’s neck. Imagine grabbing an armadillo by the tail, which is like slick and like that big around, and pulling it out of it’s hole with all four claws dug in. And he just, like, yanked it out of the hole.
AUSTIN: Your grandpa’s strong.
MITCH: (laughing) Yeah. He’s like 6’5” and, like, strong.
AUSTIN: That sounds like the shit that my family out in North Carolina would do. I told you about the story with my dad, right? The first time he met ‘em?
MITCH: The first time you met your dad?
AUSTIN: The first time my great uncle met my father.
MITCH: Oh ok. No, I don’t know this story.
AUSTIN: Ok, so, he goes out to North Carolina with my mom, meet the whole family type thing. So, they… they’re there the first night, and my great uncle - he’s named Ranny.
MITCH: Not Randy.
AUSTIN: Ranny
MITCH: Ranny
AUSTIN: Ranny and Lucia, they have a farm out there. They have, just, tons of fields behind it, they have a big old barn that’s decrepit, and they have a clunker. It’s an old Cadillac, and the bottom of the passenger floor is missing. (laughing) So, Ranny gets my dad, and he says, “Hey, we’re gonna go take a ride.”
MITCH: Oh no
AUSTIN: And so, they get in the Cadillac and they start driving around. He doesn’t tell him what they’re doing, but apparently Ranny had it in his, like, in his head that he was like, “we’re gonna go find a black bear.”
BOTH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: So, they’re just driving around these back roads, and he sees one running along the side of the road, and he looks at my dad and he goes, “Grab the wheel.”
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: So he rolls the window down, my dad grabs the wheel, all the while there’s a hoel underneath my dad’s feet. He grabs the wheel and Ranny leans out of the side of the car. They drive up, and he gets close enough to where he can reach out and grab the tail of the bear and yank on it. (laughing)
MITCH: That’s insane. That is truly unhinged behavior (laughing)
AUSTIN: Ranny is also the man in my family that used to work at a paper mill, and a piece of paper got stuck in the mill so he decided to pull it out with his bare hands.
MITCH: Ughhh
AUSTIN: (laughing) Two and a half of his fingers are missing because of it.
MITCH: Ranny. How old is Ranny now?
AUSTIN: Oh, 80s.
MITCH: Ok.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Love him.
AUSTIN: They used to live… He lived next to his mother, Mama Ruth - she died when she was 92, I wanna say - but she had eight children. In the same house, and it was - that house (sigh) I went to visit her the last time I was out there, and, I mean, she had dementia so she could not remember a thing. But that house, I swear to god, was haunted. It was either that or it was just the amount of wasps that were in the top floor. Because we went up there to look around and it was just covered in wasps.
MITCH: I mean, that’s like, real life haunting.
AUSTIN: Oh my god.
MITCH: Like, I’d rather a ghost than wasps.
AUSTIN: And my mom was just walking through, just looking at things. She was like, “I remember when we used to come up here.” I was like, “Mom, we need to leave now. This is terrifying.”
MITCH: (laughing)
AUSTIN: I also jumped into - there’s like a little creek that’s in between the two houses and it has a little, like, wooden bridge. My - let’s see - it was not when I was 14 when I did this, so I was probably like five - I decided to try to jump over the top of it,
MITCH: Oh no
AUSTIN: and I made it, and then slipped, and then fell into this just green creek. That place is wild. It’s in the Outer Banks, so it’s just the middle of nowhere.
MITCH: That’s wilderness.
AUSTIN: The town is 200 people. The coolest thing that you can do is drive around and look at cemeteries, because the dates go back to the 1600s.
MITCH: I wanna go back out there. I lived there when I was really little, barely remember it, and I haven’t been back since.
AUSTIN: It’s so pretty. It’s so pretty, but it’s like,
MITCH: I was a little, little kid. We were spoiled, ‘cause we were living on a military base, so our apartment was, like, you open the door, there’s a street, there’s the beach.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And because it’s a base, tourists can never go there. So we had a whole section of… And it wasn’t the Outer Banks, but it was one of those where you have the beach and then you have some water and then sand bars, the real beach. And no one’s allowed to go there unless they’re in the Coast Guard.
AUSTIN: That’s so cool.
MITCH: It was great. Definitely had an encounter with a shark that I was too young to remember.
AUSTIN: Nope.
MITCH: It was when I was a baby baby.
AUSTIN: When we were out there, the last time I was out there, apparently they had a underwater camera that was live. There was some website -
MITCH: Perverts?
AUSTIN: Yeah, perverts. No, they had a great white that they had spotted on multiple occasions.
MITCH: Oh! This one must not have been very big. It was… I was like a baby, I don’t remember it. My mom was walking out in the area between the sands, and something bumped her leg a few times. And she’s like, “It’s probably nothing, it’s probably just a big fish. I’m not gonna freak out.” But she’s, like, carrying me, and she’s walking back to shore, and she gets about half way back to shore, maybe like a minute after this thing’s bumped her leg several times, and then other people on the beach started like pointing and freaking out ‘cause it’s like Jaws style, see the fin swimming around.
AUSTIN: Ughhhh
MITCH: And she was still, like, a hundred yards out from the beach and had to, like, slowly walk back in holding a baby.
AUSTIN: God! No, the sound. It is miles, miles in, I mean, it is a big, big sound.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It is, at the deepest, like, twelve feet. It’s incredible. I’ve never, like, I could literally, in most of the areas, like, tiptoe.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It was incredible.
MITCH: All right, we went over our time. We had a very, very strict time limit.
AUSTIN: We did.
MITCH: We do need to sign off and tell people where they can find us.
AUSTIN: Oh, yes. You can find me on twitter, I think it’s @a_greenameyer.
MITCH: It is.
AUSTIN: You can find Mitch @organzapleats. And you can find out twitter, I think it’s @deviltownpod
MITCH: @deviltownpod. Our email is deviltownpodcast@gmail.com, and our website is deviltown.buzzsprout.com. And this week I actually have a transcript. There’s some missing ones in the middle there. Yeah, if there’s somebody who’s, like, really wanting those, I feel bad because I didn’t put them up for some of the episodes (laughing)
AUSTIN: We can do it.
MITCH: But there will be for this episode. And also links and stuff for everything.
(Devil Town theme music)