RIP Bo Hall, Municipality Elections, Westman Islands Flyover, Grindavík & Inflation

The Reykjavík Grapevine's Iceland Roundup brings you the top news with a dash of local views. In this episode, Grapevine publisher Jón Trausti Sigurðarson is joined by Grapevine editor-in-chief Bart Cameron, and Grapevine friend and contributor Sindri Eldon to roundup the stories making headlines in the past week. On the docket this week are: 

Pop Legend Björgvin Halldórsson Passes

Björgvin Halldórsson passed on April 9th last week, a week short of his 75th birthday. Björgvin, or “Bo” may be a bit hard to explain to non-Icelandic audiences, but he started out as Iceland’s first teen pop-star in the late 60s, and went on to have a prolific music career and series of hits, along with becoming a larger-than-life character in Icelandic life.

Eleven “parties” in the running in Reykjavík’s upcoming municipality elections. One “party” in the town of Vopnafjörður

The municipality elections will take place for all municipalities in Iceland, on 16 May. Excitement seems to vary between places, as eleven entities turned in a candidate list for the elections in Reykjavík, while one such list of candidates was sent in for the elections in Vopnafjörður, east Iceland.

Icelandair Pilot On Last Flight, “Hedgehops” Over Hometown

Last Friday, an Icelandair passenger jet flying to Keflavík from Frankfurt, made a very low and unauthorized flyover over the Westman Islands. The pilot was celebrating his last flight, by flying low over his home town, and as is reported, much to the satisfaction of the passengers onboard, but to the chagrin of the residents of the Westman Islands.

 Man Wakes Up, Sees Notice Of Own Demise In Newspaper

Sölvi Guðmundarson woke up last Friday to the unpleasant experience of reading about his own death in Iceland’s last remaining daily paper, Morgunblaðið.

Government Announces Three Pronged Plan To Battle Inflation

In short, the government announced that they’d be 1) lowering VAT on fuel from 25% to 11%, 2) more diligently watching changes in prices, 3) Spending 500 million ISK to increase access to EV charging stations. Opposition members were unsurprisingly unimpressed, but so were union leaders.

New Report On The Town Of Grindavík, Advices Against Families With Children Moving To The Town. 

The report was met with little enthusiasm by some of the former residents of Grindavík.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Oh, go online. The Recio Graven also has an online store. It funds our journalism. Go shop there and it helps feed our journalists just like these skis serving fat pipe bread. Hello and welcome to Iceland Roundup. We're me, Cynthia, and this time around uh Bart Cameron, the editor of and chief of regular grapevine, tried to roundup the last week of Icelandic news. We've been away for two weeks for Easter vacation. We're sorry about that. We've uh it was supposed to be a week and then we overdosed on the chocolate, I guess. We had publication of the new issue and then we yeah, we ran straight into publication week.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

You guys and your jobs, it's just an excuse to not sit here and talk about bullshit for an hour every week. Sorry, it was a few months on the news.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Simply enough bullshit, it's news.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

What's the difference? Might I add, go and end.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Go and then yeah, I'm gonna just gonna go do a uh short run through of what we have on the docket now. It's uh we're gonna talk about uh the passing of Pop Lanchet Björkenhalterzone or Bo. Uh we're gonna talk about a bit about the municipality elections that are upcoming now in May. Uh we're gonna talk about uh a low pass what do you call it? A low pass? A flyover, I think. Low blow.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Of a commercial airliner over a small town in Iceland. Yeah. Uh we're gonna talk about a man who woke up to a notice in the newspaper about his own demise.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Which is less cute than it sounds. The yeah, it actually gets But it sounds so dark. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Um and then the government's announcement on Friday about how to battle inflation, which is an our present problem here, and more so than usually. Which has me digging through Morganblon.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

Surround it in like a pincer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

It's a pincer move.

SPEAKER_04 2:04

Well blow the bridges.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Everybody's yeah, everybody's trying to like uh get the battle of uh what is the Hannibal the Battle of Canae?

SPEAKER_04 2:14

The elephants will teleport in once the ninjas have been successfully deployed. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Uh then there's a new report on the reconstruction of Grintavik, the town that was uh abandoned during the eruptions. That's a rough one. And then we have two beached whales.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Yeah, the sperm whale and the Another sperm whale. Two sperm whales.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

So yeah, that's about it for now, unless you guys come up with something else, and we I hope we can actually make it through the whole thing. Right. Let's get to it.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

I don't like to make stuff up. I mean just the facts. Problematic, yeah. Just the facts.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Yeah, I like unlike uh a 24-hour news service, we actually don't make stuff uh stuff up here.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

Yeah, I've never I've never made anything up.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Problematic when you're a fiction writer.

SPEAKER_04 2:59

What?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Problematic when you're a fiction writer.

SPEAKER_04 3:01

Well that's sort of where all of my making up uh brain goes. Like I just I have no imagination left over. Like I can barely even finish um my own sentences.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

I was wondering where that was going. I'm from the same background as you though with fiction writing. It's such a joy to come to journalism where you you just use facts and you don't have to make anything up, and then you can always, since they're facts, you can find them again and again. You don't have to remember what you made up.

SPEAKER_04 3:31

Yeah, see I hate that. I hate I hate having to like do research. It it stresses me out.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

This is also why I like like this career rather than I don't know, politics, where you actually have to keep track of the things you made up.

SPEAKER_04 3:43

No. I haven't seen a politician do that.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

That used to be the thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:48

But in the days of Seneca or something?

SPEAKER_02 3:50

But uh nowadays it's just bullshitting 24-7. Uh do we do we start with Bo?

SPEAKER_04 3:59

It all starts and ends with Bo. I think uh so um Yeah, there's this story about him when the you know like they were waiting to get started somewhere and the crowd was like, Where's the band? Where's the band? And and the MC was like, Alright, you guys want to start playing? And Bo was like, it's it ain't Bo until Bo says it's go. No, it ain't go until Bo says it's go, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

The Elvis of Iceland.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

He's a a fantastic character. We should spell his name so people can look him up, because the YouTube videos are pretty good, though. You should dig for the deep for the older ones. Yeah, there's a lot of recent ones on the YouTube.

SPEAKER_04 4:30

Yeah, I have like some stylistic 80s gold, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

His correct spelling of the name will be in the description of this episode. Right. Björkwin. Björkwin Halterson. So I'm not gonna spell it out. It's uh it's gonna take five, ten minutes. Björkwin, son of Haltor. So he passed uh last week, uh week short of the 75th. Um and I don't know, I mean he he's the I guess he's kind of the first teens pop star in Iceland. I thought he'd get older somehow. He started out like in the late 60s as a teen pop star, yeah. Uh as a singer.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Well he sort of went through all the phases, didn't he? Because like Iceland is so small that you know, like once you have like a relatively bankable name, you know, you just keep putting out records.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah, and then uh I mean series of albums with in like various bands or solo or whatever, like for like 50 years, it's a lot of output. And in the last decade and a half, he was doing these two A albums with uh, you know, people he uh he liked, he adored, and he wanted to work with.

SPEAKER_04 5:43

It's funny because initially, like he would he and all his bands were doing all these covers, right? But people in Iceland didn't necessarily know these were covers. They're like, oh, these guys are so talented, they can just whip out all these tunes. And they were really just listening to like the American radio stations.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Some of the UK, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah, but they actually did both because he ran like uh kind of a country band. So there would be like a bunch of uh Nashville originating stuff that But then it was like later on, it's just like oh shit, he just likes doing covers.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

He like he had no real reason to keep doing covers, but he just kept doing them.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Yeah. And then I mean his his kind of like which is gonna be his most like one of his most lingering sort of uh things for Icelandic culture. You're gonna talk about the Christmas music? Yeah, like every Christmas we'll be listening to these like we don't know that generally, but we'll be listening to Italian pop songs from the 80s that Björquin liked and decided to like give Christmas lyrics to and then just put them out.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

Yeah, wasn't he like wasn't it because they would go to like you know, they would go to the Mediterranean and get drunk and then they would just you know I'm not sure. I think he just scribbling all these songs.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

He definitely vacationed there personally. I don't know about the drinking.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

I think he personally like vacationed in Romini in the 80s and stuff like that. So I guess he was just listening to the radio and thought, nah, this would go well like in a Christmas setting.

SPEAKER_04 7:04

It it speaks well of the of, you know, I guess my opinion of Icelander's health that a man who dies at 75, I suspect, was probably still drinking to some degree, like just because he didn't make it to 80. Oh. I don't know, man. I it's it's it's it's such I ran into him at like a supermarket when I was like a teenager and and just had this really cool conversation with him. I don't think anybody that cool could be completely sober.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

He he was cool. Let's give it that to him. He was very cool. I I I know I was actually talking to his son this weekend from the band Minish. Yeah, who also very cool guy. And um, but we were talking about his appreciation of Bo, because for uh like my in-laws, their love of Bo is is is almost like Coca-Cola. He was such an institution that they couldn't help but speak fondly of him. And then I because I'm around musicians all the time, I know so many people who've who've done studio work for him, and every everybody there is is so fond of him. Um but Krimy was saying, which is kind of funny, we were at a blues festival, and he said, Yeah, my dad's more into the Flying Burrito Brothers, and he used to play the Flying Burrito Brothers. And I was like, Okay, that that's awesome. Every swing you can take, he does a cooler swing. I was like, Oh, that's just awesome. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

I know she I didn't when I ran into him, I'm realizing now I wasn't this I wasn't a teenager, I was like early 20s, and he he had to have read my uh not exactly complimentary review of his uh his compilation in the grapevine recently. And he was just like, you know, yeah, so many people just get so up in arms about it, and he was just like, didn't give a shit. No, hey yeah, you write for the grapevine. It's like yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

No, I mean there was like a delightful interview with him from twenty thirteen or fourteen in the Grapevine where we like where Altni Herrwer, who took the interview, goes through his career, but also like has like a very personal, interesting really like talk with a man. And we put him on the cover, like in his sort of Italian um mafioso setting, like you know, in a restaurant having a cigar, which I hope he enjoyed that. It was uh it's a nice picture. We were just posting it again. Uh but yeah, it is kinda hard to explain kind of like in a sense with Puppy, the Puppy Martins, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:37

Yeah, because they've they've sort of filled multiple roles in the public consciousness, haven't they?

SPEAKER_02 9:41

They have filled multiple roles and they're really it's kinda hard to articulate what they mean to Icelandic society and culture to an somebody who doesn't know very much about Iceland.

SPEAKER_04 9:51

He was almost like you know, he he he was almost like one of the Icelandic like Rolling Stones or something. And then sort of gradually becomes like the Icelandic I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Like big bands.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Engelboard Humperdinck? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Neil Neil Diamond. Neil Diamond, but like somehow cooler.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah. And then I feel like he yeah, and then there's But you become an industry, somebody like this, he would train musicians. I know, I I've known his bassists, and I know like he worked them through the through how to do a set, how to how to uh perform live and in the studio. He this kind of thing, I mean he he's responsible for generations of musicians in town. Yeah, because for for one thing he paid. For another thing, he treated them like humans, and then the third he w he took people under their wing and gave actual guidance and he'd lived it. So I just this is a sneak peek because we'll do something in the grapevine. And I know that you know it's not maybe his music doesn't quite pick up for a foreigner. You can't quite immediately get into it.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

But what's something that's I you know I I'd go as far as to say it doesn't really, you know, translate to a lot of Icelanders. Yeah, like I think if you're a stranger to him, you're ne probably never gonna get it. Like kids are never gonna be like, you know, I can't.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah, this this reminds me of like late period Elvis. Yeah. Whereas musicians love what late period Elvis was doing and how he was training musicians, building a taking care of business band. And like most people when they get really into recording, they they follow that stuff. But if you're not a musician, you're like, why are you listening to Fat Elvis?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

And Bo is the same, like maybe there's a lot of flaws, uh, you know, there's a lot of flaws in the recordings, but he was building something.

SPEAKER_04 11:32

Yeah. If anything, it's their like relentless drive to be flawless that annoys me so much. Like this is so overly smoothed that like nobody could really connect to it.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

But sometimes it works. Like in odd odd like I'm gonna take an Elvis example. Like his band plays on the Gram Parsons solo albums, at least the latter one.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because yeah, everybody loved the Elvis band.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Yeah, because they were so then they're so good and they're playing like perfectly, but it because like I don't I guess because of who and what Grant Parsons is and how he delivers and and what kind of songs he's writing, it's just perfect. To me anyway.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Somehow we've turned Bo into a Flying Burrito Brothers feature.

SPEAKER_04 12:13

No, yeah. I mean I was talking about Bo there. I don't know where you were talking about. It doesn't take much. I guess honestly it's not here. We can talk about old ass music as much as we want.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Well, Graham Parsons passed away at what, 27?

SPEAKER_04 12:32

Six.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Twenty-six. So in Iceland, the Icelandic equivalent dies at 74. Maybe they have something good in the water here.

SPEAKER_04 12:39

Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, uh the the trick is to actually drink water every once in a while. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

It helps when it tastes good.

SPEAKER_04 12:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Not inject it. No, wait.

SPEAKER_04 12:49

Yeah. Whatever you're, you know, whatever orifice you're inserting those chemicals into uh sort of secondary to the chemicals themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean uh yeah. I hear Bo had like four animas a day, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

No comments. So anyway. Uh no, I mean, let's let's uh so yeah, rest in peace, Bo. I mean, uh the the that king has left the building.

SPEAKER_04 13:15

Cool ass dude who made sucky ass music.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

He made an incredible variety of music, I would say.

SPEAKER_04 13:22

Yeah, I mean I can't argue with success. I'm not gonna sit here and say that he didn't do what he did incredibly well, but I'd never put on any of his records.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

There is all there is also a lot of stuff in there that is just so much the music to like the the theme to like specific times and eras and holiday alcoholism and mediocrony and depression. No, no, no, to like specific uh parts of of Iceland's history that you can't just separate them from from the rest of the mood that's a lot of people. No, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

I mean the kind of the kind of mediocrity I'm talking about is sort of it is what you have to do to attain success here. And I think like his career is as much a statement of Icelandic music and the industry thereof uh as it is to you know his own life. I think in the end, like, you know, he he is he is the winner. He he is the pro who who figured out the formula. There are like I mean I I re-listen to like all these you know suburbanites buying his CDs at Hog Kuipe who just think that he's like God's gift to music. I think that speaks to something.

unknown 14:30

Right?

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Somebody must have V. I was saying Vesterbar is is is the old Reykjavik and the poser neighborhood. Yeah, but uh at your core of at your core of Icelandic identity.

SPEAKER_04 14:46

You don't think I listen to the you know I'm yeah call me what you want, but I am not a poser. I'm all kinds of asshole, but I'm I'm not, you know, what you see is what you get.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

I was listening to Vistnablodon. Do you remember this one?

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Like the kids the kids record?

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Yeah. It's it is something.

SPEAKER_04 15:05

Yeah, the musicians back then that's really tight.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

It's a really tight album. It even has like there's a song, I can't remember which one, it's just kind of sounds like a wall of sound production.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah. This is an album we listen to a lot as when we're trying to get our kids into Icelandic. Yeah. So we should we should link that in the uh description.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Yeah. I'm not sure what their intention with this album was to begin with.

SPEAKER_04 15:28

There's some very like ambitious, high-concept children's music in the Icelandic sort of 60s, 70s, and 80s catalogs. Like that that's sort of like where most of the professionalism seemed to have gone into.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

That's where you could get some sales, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

Yeah. But uh yeah, I mean, that had to be part of it. But I I I feel like there's like this extra element of of commitment to it, you know, and and I feel like there were a lot of people in my generation who were sort of disgusted that Botlalia basically became like a kid's band. But I think if you look back into Icelandic music, you'll see that there's like a strong tradition of excellence when it comes to comes to these jams, just these really tight little breaks, and like the bands play so well together, and like really interesting chord and beat work sometimes. I mean, for uh for a band like more interesting than what is supposedly like pro Icelandic prog rock, yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

No, no, I I like uh polopunk or whatever it's called. Yeah, polopunk is what I'm referring to. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, nothing wrong with that. Uh and I mean Dr. Gutney's Yeah, yeah. Dr. Guten's.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Speaking of smelling your own farts in Vestabuer.

SPEAKER_04 16:40

Yeah, yeah. Literally a song by featuring prominent Vestabainger Junknar as a man almost literally high on his own farts.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

This is this is yeah, a favorite children's song written by Dr. Gundney. It's just about it Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:56

Dr. Gunny is like this noise musician, you know, he's like, I don't know, like almost like the Icelandic like J Mascist or something.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

And he he sort of became, yeah, and then like in the late 90s, when I was a you know, that the like the perfect age for it, like he put out this kid's record. And um yeah, it it really it sold a lot of copies.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

It was very the highlight of CD sales and and I think not to to any choices of my own. That's the Dr. Goodney album I know the best. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

Uh I will always think of think of him when like because like I have a seven-year-old now, and he, you know, of course, like when he gets into some song, he just listens to it repeatedly, like again and again and again and again and again. And now it's like the fucking Shakira song from Zootopia 2, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:46

And every time there's a Shakira song on Zootopia 2.

SPEAKER_04 17:49

There's a there's one in Shit I like the one in Zootopia 1 better, actually, because it's more country. You should check it out. It's uh it's your kind of jam.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah, I like Shakira.

SPEAKER_04 17:57

Yeah, the the the Zootopia 2 has a little bit more of a world music jam, which I'm also very much there for. I actually learned through this thing, this phase that he's going through, that everybody kind of likes Shakira. Like she's a good recruit for Disney movies, because this is like a musician that I feel like everybody can sort of agree on. Um but yeah, anyway, I think of Dr. Gundne when he's listening to that song, because at the end of the fucking up above record, right? The the kid's record that he made, there's this little bit of Gunni talking, like after the last song, and he said, like, well, kids, now the record's over, but you know what you should do? You should just start it over again and listen to it again and again and again and again and again and again. Because that's what mom and dad love.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

And I was just like, you motherfucker. Like, how you cheeky ass bastard.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

That is funny. Yeah, that's a good one. So, um, next story. Municipality elections are coming up, uh, was it I'm gonna say May 16th?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yes, exactly May 16th, May 16th, and come too soon.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

And it kind of like I guess the I'm pumped. Are you guys pumped? Uh yeah. So I guess the uh You sound pumped. The last notice you have to like announce that you're running past this weekend. Thank goodness. So it turns out that uh there are eleven lists or or parties or whatever you call them running in in Reykjavik. And I'm you have to look up who like six of these are because I know what the main ones are, but uh yeah, but yeah, you've got to dig deep and into the you know the potato party and the the wellness on earth party.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

And yeah, I think we try to cover this for the grapevine. It's a bit of a struggle.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

There is also this party that ran just to talk about COVID, like for uh like the anti the anti-COVID party. It was like, you know, we should talk more about COVID, and everybody's like, no. We're fucking done with this shit.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

No, it's like, oh my god. This was this was post-COVID, right? Because this was like two thousand sixteen, I'd like to.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

That would have been interesting, yeah. Like uh these people, those people should have been running the country then if this is what they knew about.

SPEAKER_04 20:08

But uh no, there's been It's also kind of a bizarre issue to focus on because I feel like there's this universal consensus that Iceland handled COVID very well.

unknown 20:16

Right?

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Yeah, right, isn't there? According to like the people who run Iceland, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

Oh, okay. So it's just like them saying like we did a great job.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

I mean you were in Sweden.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Oh yeah, licking doorknobs.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

And I was in the United States, so I think Iceland maybe outperformed Sweden in the United States.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah, they didn't really uh participate much in closures.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

But um I hear Björn Ulevers has licked five million doorknobs, is it true? Who knows? All of them in his palace.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Yeah, that's possible. Yeah. It's an incredible uh amount of bathrooms in one palace. And then then what like this and this is like, you know, we'll get into this as the uh like for the next issue, I assume. And you know, we we should it's it's kind of this is a good time to emphasize that people who have lived consecutively in Iceland for three years or more who do not have citizenship, they can vote in the municipality elections.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

That's c that's correct. Are there some other exceptions for people from the Scandinavians?

SPEAKER_02 21:16

Yeah, Scandinavians can just start voting as soon as they enter the country and and register as living here. That's so fucking rad.

SPEAKER_04 21:22

I feel like that's this is an underexploited loophole in Icelandic politics. Like more needs to be done to For the Danes? That's wild. Like you can campaign in fucking Copenhagen to just like you know, come over here and vote and you know Come over here for a couple of weeks and vote. Yeah. We can turn it into a place, you know. There will be free beer. As if.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

As if.

SPEAKER_04 21:44

No, but uh what what caught my fancy was that uh I think you're gonna allure Danish people here with cheaper free beer.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Like is that in the municipality and town and fjord of Wapnofjord there's just one uh list of candidates. So far. I guess they have like I I I saw that I saw that uh Is it the abandon this town party?

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Like No, it's strange enough it's the COVID party. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:13

It's not the move the whole town to accurate party? Like you've had enough of this shit party?

SPEAKER_02 22:17

No, and I I guess I guess that's uh kind of a problem because the the whole point of holding elections is that you have one more than one party. Unless obviously you're doing like a Soviet-style one party state.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

Yeah, is there any like internal, you know, they want, you know.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

So this is now the North Korea of the North Korea of municipalities, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 22:40

Can you even be mayor of Opnafered? Isn't it just like town?

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Like a town council thing?

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Yeah, like town town person who I think it's called kind of town mayor or something. Yeah. Svetastory, no. Yeah. Svetistory is a different word. Uh country. Country manager? Yeah. And the old word Country Clubber. The old word for the shires, like rapir. Uh there was this one guy left with that title, Rhapsture. Yeah. Which was my favorite. It's been we used it for like I don't know, 800 years and then we stopped using it in the last two years old.

SPEAKER_04 23:13

Yes, when people say rapper, I picture like a hillside. Like you're basically governing like like a like a grassy field. And that is more than that. May or may not contain sheep.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Well, uh up until recently that would not have been a question. But uh you know the sheepline. There were shape. The sheep. Yeah. Sheep or anticline. We're gonna sadly mourn uh but everybody uh we just hats up, municipality elections are taking place if you've lived here for uh long enough.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, I'm just trying to get information. I mean I think we all are as all as foreigners are looking for surveys and trying to understand what's going on. I know like I was looking at like 100 FMs survey today, which had completely different results from anybody else.

SPEAKER_04 23:56

Yeah, the first time that like any Icelandic political campaign will hire like a competent communications manager, it will just blow everyone's minds. Just like somebody who will like give you information, like factual information about like how to vote what we're actually running for. It's just gonna I feel like the bar is really, really low. It's always very hard to find out just like very simple information.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah. So we'll talk about it later with the with the government's announcement to battle interest rates. But when sh when Christian addressed municipal um activities that would uh uh uh affect a municipal function, um the response uh you get three paragraph responses teeing off, I mean, with um a ma surgeon-like precision with everything she has ever stood for, it's kind of astounding and makes you understand why maybe people don't announce platforms because the it's it's really um people come at you as soon as you say something, it's like maybe what we used to have a reputation for at the grapevine of being really critical of like a bow review or something.

SPEAKER_04 25:02

But uh this is uh No, you can't say fucking anything in this country, like you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

But apparently you can you can go after somebody's political agenda in detail without proposing anything else. It's really, really, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

You can do that.

SPEAKER_04 25:17

Uh I was astounded, as especially with former mayor uh Yeah, because they know as well that like uh you know that the the the people listen more to the people criticizing you than you yourself. There's something wired in us to just like, oh, if someone's talking shit about this person, I better listen to them more than what the person's actually saying. Right. Yeah. But then there's very suspicious people, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Well, I I attribute it, and I and I'm an outsider, I shouldn't maybe, but to this uh history of colonization and a susp um suspicion of authority for that reason.

SPEAKER_04 25:53

Anyone who's up on a podium talking is is suspect automatically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Yeah, we have a lot of that. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:01

You'd think it was good, but I feel like it really stands in the way of progress a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yeah. Well, uh the I think this was maybe not the weirdest story of last week, but the uh I was trying to find a good word for like low flyover. I I found the word hatch hopping. Oh, ball dragging. Yeah, I I don't think uh uh the Westman Islands has enough hatches to hop, but uh well so the one thing the Westman Islands really has is a lot of birds.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

So you really don't fly low over a place with lots of birds. So this is actually a profoundly stupid thing to do.

SPEAKER_04 26:38

Um I'm gonna do that and just like blood and feathers rains down like a tropical style.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Yeah, so last Friday, an Iceland took Iceland air passenger jet flying to Kepler from Frankfurt made a very low and unauthorized flyover over the town of Lesman Air or the Westman Islands. The pilot was celebrating his last flight by flying low over his hometown. Damn straight it's his last flight. Much as it as is reported, the satisfaction of the passengers on board was apparently a lot. They loved it. Yeah. Which is kind of a funny. The townspeople of the Westman Islands, however, were not as thrilled with the experience. When are they ever thrilled? Because like if they were doing like a uh, what is it, like uh 300?

SPEAKER_04 27:24

You want to live there or not? You want an airport? You want airplanes, you want to be able to get to your fucking five more?

SPEAKER_02 27:29

These types of airplanes they never have. Uh this is like a fully blown Boeing jet. And yeah, they apparently passed over then there's video online somewhere at around 100 meters or 300 feet, which is pretty damn low.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah. Isn't that great?

SPEAKER_02 27:47

And you know, the townspeople who obviously both saw and heard this, you can't avoid it, were obviously terrified that something terrible was about to happen. Which is then, you know, they realized that they lived in the Westman Islands, I guess. Oh, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Somehow I'm picturing Tom Cruise like catching that flight somehow. Has he done that as a stunt yet?

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Just jumped up and grabbed on well, isn't it like a that's my that's that must have been him or you know, James Bond, where like somebody just picks you up. Yeah, dark night.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

It was a dark night. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, this is there's something really sort of like in Iceland, sort of prior to a lot of specific regulations and and rules and and you know, people just did uh whatever the hell they wanted to do. This is kind of like the old Iceland to me. This reminds me of like the 90s or 80s.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

You're not the first person to say that, too. No, you know what I mean. Yeah, a lot of people are saying this is just an old school Icelander.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

This is very old school Icelander, like going out from his job in the same way he kind of went in, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

The w the one thing that I found even remotely enjoyable uh having to like fly a lot of domestic flights in America was those moments when the pilot is kind of just being a human being.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:06

Uh, you know, like it was it was hit or miss, you know. I feel like some of the those guys they get on the radio and it's just like, why the fuck are you telling us this? Like, shut the fuck up. Oh, that's true. But sometimes it's like, you know, they crack a moderately funny joke or just like say anything, or something in their tone gives away the fact that they are a human being, such as yourself. Um I don't know. And I feel like it it always does a lot to lighten the mood. I feel like this is the, you know. I like yeah, like the people on the plane enjoying it, you know. I I think we don't, you know, the the people the people who don't leave their little town, they don't feel sorry enough for the people who have to fly on airplanes because they don't know what a horrible fucking experience it is. And how like any even the tiniest you know the tiniest inkling that, you know, I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm not I'm done. I ran out of the way.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

I actually when you were speaking, I remembered when on the subway when somebody when the subway operator would say something uh slightly amusing, it would it would make my weak usually in New York.

SPEAKER_04 30:10

See, it's like a unifier, there's something about it. The you know that person has a position of power and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

But they're dealing with the same obstacles you are of like they have to go to work.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Yeah, which is at the same time too. So uh a Solvi Kulmanson, which is an Icelandic name for a person, woke up last Friday to the unpleasant experience of reading about experience of reading about his own death in Iceland's last remaining daily paper, Morgenblad. Solvi took to Facebook and wrote there, quote, dear relatives and friends, you have been sending messages and checking whether I have truly died. Yeah. That is absolutely not the case. I am very much alive. He continued uh by saying, quote, this is no this is no joke having to deal with such a goddamn nuisance while the authorities are sitting around scratching their asses. End of quote.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, but that's when the story took off. You're like, well, that seems like a I remember reading that, like, that seems like a big sentence to end your like, I'm alive, like, and and screw the authorities, then you're like, uh-oh, and then it takes the turn. Here goes the turn, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:15

Yeah, so here goes the turn. So so what's Sulvi here who who had to read about his own It was it was a crazy ex, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Not entirely sure. That's even like that.

SPEAKER_04 31:28

For her other dudes? Yeah, and kids. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

What do you say next?

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Children.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

She stalks children?

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Apparently. Somebody who's not 18 yet. Uh so Sulvi here, the man who just read about his own demise, is referring to his suspicion that the death notice was actually sent in by a stalker who has been harassing him for some time, or a pair of stalkers actually. The main perpetrator, according to him, or seems to be a Iris Helka Jonathan Stotir, who, according to a Hamilton report last month, uh has had at least seven complaints filed against her to the police for stalking.

SPEAKER_04 32:06

Last month? So March before the story broke? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, before the state was. She was already on the radar as like a crazy stalking.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Yeah, she had already like then had seven like individuals filing complaints against her with the police.

SPEAKER_04 32:19

Everyone's gotta have a hobby, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

And this, like, he tried to get her arrested for this, but that didn't pan out, I think.

SPEAKER_04 32:26

Which I mean, I guess this does piss you off unless it is very like speaking from personal experience, it is very irritating how little the police can actually do about stalkers. Yeah. Uh you know, but I don't know. This is the price you pay, I guess, for living in a you know, a quote unquote free society.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah, I mean, maybe this is related to the fact that uh 150 people have disappeared in Iceland since 1945. You just What'd you just say? Without trace? No, I'm kidding. Uh just warning warning to stalkers out there. You might No, I'm kidding. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was dark, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yeah, no, you you love to feel something just uh broken your mind.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Yeah, it's a it's an interesting statistic in general, since I brought it up. Because like 150 people in the past eighty years have just disappeared.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

What? You're not making this up? This is true?

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Yeah. And then it's just like evaporates from the face of Earth. And I mean, given given these So you're cool with this?

SPEAKER_00 33:27

You're just like, this makes sense to me? That's that's a percentage of the population. That's the highest disappearing rate for population.

SPEAKER_04 33:34

Yeah, but think about the what am I gonna do with some anti-disappearance force fields? And I look at the power listed. Maybe it's my anxiety meds, but you know I think we have the lowest murder rate.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

And those two things are definitely not related.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Oh man.

SPEAKER_04 33:50

I don't know, man. If there's a person if there are people anywhere on earth who could get away with like killing someone or making them disappear and never get caught, those people do not live in fucking Iceland. Like there's the other thing.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

If you have traveled around the island, and not to mention like twenty, thirty, forty years ago, the places you can kind of disappear in accidentally are numerous and not far between. Yeah, and you can get like again, you can fall into a crevass somewhere and never be found again.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Yeah. Because like Iceland is like the size of Kentucky, but has the population of like a gas station. Like there's so much space that you could just Yeah. And yeah, yeah. A lot and a lot of it is like rough terrain where they will not find you.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

They're places people it's just mostly on an uninhabitable islands. Yeah, yeah. It's just the coast. Anyway, that would take a weird turn. I'm sorry about that.

SPEAKER_04 34:52

Why are you guys complaining about us taking weird turns? I mean, it's just like people don't tune in to see us talk about.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

So 150 people are missing since when?

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Uh 1945. So anyway, uh talking about falling into potentially falling into crevasses, and uh now I'm not making a joke. I mean, there's a new report out on Friday about the reconstruction of Grintervik.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

And the report that was made by some sort of a committee that the government put up, uh they advise against opening the schools, school in Grindavik this fall, and they just generally advise families with children against moving to the town of Grintovik.

SPEAKER_04 35:35

I think this is moderate language, it's very Icelandic. It's like the strongest possible, you know negation you can give is I strongly advise you not to do this.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

And then like the uh the World Bank also put out a report in relation to this, which has similar worries about like evacuations and stuff in the area, pointing out that the last time this area was uh volcanically active, it lasted for decades, not years.

SPEAKER_04 36:03

And uh the World Bank has an opinion on this?

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Apparently the World Bank, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:07

Okay, because la money is made of lava or something. I have no idea how the connection is. Why do they give shit? Yeah, don't touch it, don't touch it. I I actually skimmed the report. Money is lava, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Yeah, I actually I actually skimmed the report, which is 120 pages. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:24

It does skimmed more than I did for this episode. Well, uh it actually gives you the skimming trophy.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

It briefly talks about the uh what did it call it? The just completely like they talked about the mort mortgage market in Iceland being in shambles. But I'm not sure. Like I was trying to.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

I don't think you need to work at the World Bank too.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

No, but it was interesting.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

The member of Parliament for uh Bidres.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

Noted friend of the grapevine, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Um Friend of the Grapevine? Yeah, he's been he's he's been a big thing.

SPEAKER_04 37:01

Anyone whose name I vaguely recall being mentioned on this podcast, I like to subtitle them Friend of the Grapevine.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

I have a complicated relationship with all political figures in that uh I'll talk to them and so that we we're publishing like what they're saying, but we're not exactly friends in that if they were to say something that you know went off the off the rails, I could see us covering it the exact same way.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

So I didn't describe him as friend friend of Bart. He's friend of Jules.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

He had an amazing quote though, he said, you know, it's like the temperature is is you know three degrees, it's it's slightly rainy, and the mortgage rate is eight point five percent. You're like uh you know because he compared the temperature with Iceland and Europe and then compared the mortgage rate, which is insane.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

Um is this something that will that could conceivably be mitigated by us joining the EU? I I uh So well, back to the weather.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Okay, all right. I mean I think I think like arguing that we can definitely have the same uh interest rates in Iceland as are on average in the EU is kind of sane country. Relatively similar to arguing that we can have the same average temperature as the rest of Europe almost to an extent. We still will have a pretty volatile economy based on like a few large sectors that tend to fluctuate a lot. Yeah, that doesn't go away.

SPEAKER_04 38:32

Because we're like you could fit all of us in a sports stadium and yet we have our own currency. Yeah, but but at the same time it's like if a sports club had their own currency.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

At the same time, I'm pretty sure that there is something to be said about the argument of the futility of trying to maintain our own currency. So I don't know. It's a hard thing to fathom.

SPEAKER_04 38:52

Yeah, it's a stupid fight that I feel like honestly we should have just conceded loss.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Every time Pavo writes about this, and I'm not sure, you know, how much I agree with many of his politics, but every time he talks about the currency or the mortgage rates, it's it's like an easy double. Yeah. Which is a baseball term, which is great on bringing that up on uh do tell.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Uh baseball is that's the sport we're never mind. Yeah. It's the sex sport. It's the cricket sport. It's kind of like it's what is this double?

SPEAKER_00 39:22

It's American cricket. Double's like second base in sex?

SPEAKER_03 39:25

No.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

So it's like it's like American cricket, so it takes like three weeks to finish each game, and you drink a lot of beer instead of tea?

SPEAKER_04 39:32

The tracks so far.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 39:33

Oh, like they don't drink beer at cricket. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

They drink tea.

SPEAKER_04 39:38

Okay. That's not what I hear, but alright.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Okay, gin and gin and tonic. Never mind.

SPEAKER_04 39:43

I don't yeah, yeah. I mean, I've I've yeah. Okay. I'm not gonna So really close to making an Australian joke here, but I'm I'm not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

No, okay. Uh yeah, so this is this is like we've talked about Grintawik a lot in the past three years, obviously, because it's the town that is next next to all of these eruptions.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

And the mayor there seems very admirable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:05

It's a ban it's a bananas thing to live through witnessing. It's just like you know, with uh like a stone's throw from the capital, like literally on the way, like between the airport and the capital, is a town that has just been crossed over on the city.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

That's one of our old covers, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

And it's not, and that's the weird thing. So like the government basically bought out the whole town. So every like every single residential building, they just bought. And people moved elsewhere for a majority of like almost 4,000 people moved away, including my parents actually. And then they also spent billions on building protective berms around the town. Which are massive. Which are massive structures, and obviously a lot of berms around the other infrastructure in the area, like the power plant and with it the Blue Lagoon, which is, as we like to remind people, uh a runoff from the power plant, an accident.

SPEAKER_04 40:56

Yeah, and like the blue lagoon is crucial to our economy, and that power plant is crucial to you know the regional.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Regional power and and and and hot water. Yeah. Uh and so it's kind of like uh uh and in many ways a weird thing. Like, why do you like evacuate and buy out the town and you still save the town? It's both like it's two measures that are equally very expensive.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

And then currently, like there like there was no sort of line drawn in the sand. So people have been free to move back, and some hundreds of people have done so, but obviously the vast majority of the people who used to live there are not planning that. And and those people who want to move back or have moved back have been unhappy, like in this case, with the fact that there's no school there. And uh what do they expect? And and the the the former local who wants to move back, who has has three kids and currently resides in Daken is bad, you know, t told her that she felt like this the finding of the uh the report and the the fact that the schools wouldn't be open like felt like a violation of her human rights and that she is not trusted to take decisions for herself or her children.

SPEAKER_04 42:08

And then on the other hand like a con like a contest to that is the fact that like the most at least uh uh Does this not smack of like you know, vote fishing for you, like making this firm a stand against it?

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Like these are you know, this is like a constituency that this mayor is protect you know, I'm I I don't I don't know because like this is because at the same time, like I mean they're out of there are such a stubborn refusal to face reality?

SPEAKER_04 42:42

Yeah, in Iceland, like to face the realities of where we live. It's just like there's a you know, there's like a uh an insane life-threatening blizzard, and you're still expected to show up on time for work. Yeah. You know, that kind of shit. And just like, yeah, we live next to all these volcanoes.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Aaron Powell with corrugated iron, as I remember just recently, like flying through the air, right? Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

It's just like fifty miles per second. I love running into corrugated iron on my walks with the talk.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

Yeah, and then the and the Icelanders like regard this as some sort of like strength of of character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is it's just stupid. It's just this is it's insane almost.

SPEAKER_02 43:16

But I mean just to like, you know, the the geologists I have talked to, it's been a while though, but the ones like the wolconologists I talked to, he they at least the wolconologists pointed out that you know, all the earthquakes and all the crevasses that had sort of like formed in and around the town of Grintavik were so unstable in his opinion, that having kids or or you know, pets there was not a very good idea for the time being and for and probably for some. So I I don't really understand why the like living in Grintavic is an option or people are allowed to live in this limbo. It's kind of weird to me. But it smacks off like giving the Decision that they both bought out the town and decided to like spend billions in saving it is that they haven't been able to come to a conclusion of what to do about the government that is what to do with the town. So it's kind of like neither here nor there.

SPEAKER_04 44:11

Nobody wants to be the politician who killed Grintavik with a pen stroke either. Because it's like it g it looks the optics are bad. And I feel like doing everything to like it it always makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

The alternative is that you're gonna be the politician who allowed people to like fall into those crevasses and die, which has happened.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

Yeah. That was uh about five weeks ago when they recovered the body from somebody who did they even recover the body? Or they made a big attempt. They tried, yeah. And then they pointed out the the legal consequences for allowing this man to fall into the crevice.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Yeah, having uh having people work there at that time in those conditions was probably m may be criminally criminal neglect on the behalf of whoever was in charge of that. I think that's still to be announced. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:56

I think it's just politically smart to to evacuate the town and build the berms. That's just like, you know, on th coming from the side of like I don't know what it's called, but like positive politics of just like never you know, never be against things, always be like for things, even if they contradict each other.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

Which they do, which is kind of awesome in a sense. It's really weird.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Anyway. So one of those moments where I picture the mayor and Jaws. Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

No, the beach is open! Yeah. No amount of beached whales will close this beach. Speaking of beached whales, we've uh had two reports in the past uh few days about uh beached sperm whales, which are large ass whales. Yeah. One up in Kuverscaler, which is in Sniffelsness, and then another one on Saturday, I think, in uh Stock City, which is to the south, south of Selfos.

SPEAKER_04 45:54

So is this where squid triumphs again?

SPEAKER_02 45:57

Is this where we try to like create a reel talking about like how a beached whale is actually Icelandic for great good luck? We've done it already.

SPEAKER_04 46:05

It's kind of uh it's one of our catchphrases, yeah. May a beached whale come onto you.

SPEAKER_02 46:09

Yeah, which is just tells you a lot about sperm. How how uh challenging it was to survive Iceland in the Middle Ages, I think.

SPEAKER_04 46:19

Yeah. Your idea of good luck is like you gotta get that sperm.

SPEAKER_02 46:23

Is uh eating a half rotten whale that's got beast on your beach. That's that's rough.

SPEAKER_04 46:32

That's how all those people disappeared. Probably should have left that whale meat alone.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

In the old laws, there are also quite specific rules about like you know who who owns what part of the whale based on who found it and whatnot. So it's uh it was a big thing.

SPEAKER_04 46:49

They measuring the gallons of sperm.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

There's three. How many times how many more times you got on this one?

SPEAKER_04 46:56

S P E But you know what? It's called the sperm whale, right? Because the sperm is out of brain.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Yeah. In the head in the head. This is not a cum joke.

SPEAKER_04 47:05

It wasn't until you said something about it.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Well, I'm a big fan of Moby Dick. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:09

And uh he goes and Yeah, they do quite a lot of detail there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Yeah. I have this terrible joke about oh.

SPEAKER_04 47:19

You can't like not say it now. Here it comes. Yeah. The disclaimers make it worse, you see.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

I had people over from America 10, 15 years ago when the the when the the phallological, or as we call it, the penis museum was still in Husavik.

SPEAKER_00 47:36

Which which my uh my daughter is very offended that there's not a butt museum nearby. Feels like it should be.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

This is this is something I might paint.

SPEAKER_04 47:45

It should be kind of close.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

Uh also I kind of feel like this is gonna be a joke completely lost on anybody who doesn't speak Icelandic.

SPEAKER_04 47:53

I feel like it used to be in Husovik, I wish you could have stayed there.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

I feel like the penis museum and the butt museum should be all moved to Spunkin. However, you translate that. Anyway, that would be location appropriate. We're not gonna translate this joke.

SPEAKER_04 48:09

Uh well it's because all our place names are like names for farm equipment, right? And a spunk is like uh yeah, what is it, like a like a girdle? Yeah, something like that.

SPEAKER_02 48:19

But it also means the area between your uh bottle and taint, yeah. Yeah. Anyway. We explained the joke. That wasn't the So anyway, I I took people to Hussevig, this is 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. And I didn't want to go on the boat with them to whale watch, because they went whale watching.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Husavic is a great place to whale watch.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

It's a great place, but I had already done it and I was just through tired, I can't remember what my excuse was. So I was kind of just twitching my thumbs, like doing nothing, and I came up with one joke, and it was so bad because like when they entered the car after they got off the whale watching, I was like, well, from Moby Dick to Moby's dick, and then we went to the penis museum.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Well, and that stayed in your head for a yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

Yeah, it stayed in my head rat-free, mostly because of the emperor. Oh, it's just a silent drive back.

SPEAKER_04 49:04

Because remember the sea baron, the sea feature is still there. Because it had this ad for the long time, because they sold fucking whale meat. Like well past the point where this was like politically I say, as I do like, I should like to point out that there's the spook and what's the one. I realized I do that when I'm like putting on deodorant.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

I'm like doing like a lot, depending on where you put it on the page. It's okay to do that.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

Yeah, yeah. I mean I gotta I think I gotta get into the habit of doing that because I would like to point that out. But eventually I'm gonna get photographed doing this, and it's too late now. I'm gonna be in the thumbnail for the the YouTube. Good. Yeah, maybe just stick with me and you and Alice outside with the hot dogs. Yeah, so I was gonna do that. People gonna be real disappointed when they tune in and see Bart, but you know, they're used to disappointment at this point.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

The slogan of the seatborn was actually conjured up within the offices of the Rico Gripman. Do you remember what it was? Moby Dick on a stick? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:57

Yeah. Is that ca that comes from you?

SPEAKER_02 50:00

It comes from this office.

SPEAKER_04 50:01

That's wild. Because I remember like driving past that, you know, and the year was still, you know, it was fucking like, I don't know. When did they when did he finally give in on that? When did he finally stop selling the whale meat? Was it 2020 or something?

SPEAKER_02 50:14

No, if he ever did stop it, but he passed away. I can't tell you. I I haven't been for a while. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

His favorite thing was to pretend like he didn't know that whale wasn't fish and serve whale to people. And people would I'd I'd be walking to the office and be like, excuse me, this man says that this is fish, but it's red meat.

SPEAKER_04 50:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

And it was Kjarton, right? Yeah, I think it would be like, uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 50:39

Inexcusable levels of will fish. It came from the seas.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Yeah, we don't have a word for whales other than fish. It's all fish. Yes, you do.

SPEAKER_04 50:47

Do you have a whale for murder-enabling asshat?

SPEAKER_00 50:53

I I I had a great deal of affection for Oh, he was great.

SPEAKER_04 50:57

I have a great deal of affection for whales. I mean, it's a horrible shit. I mean, and I had his fucking lobster soup. Like, that was like legendary next level shit. Like no one will ever I will never ever I've I've I've I've sort of settled on the the sad fact that I will never ever have lobster soup that good ever again.

SPEAKER_00 51:16

That was with saffron in it, I think.

SPEAKER_04 51:17

It was kind of an orange like spicy and like just the right level, like not over spicy.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

I forgot about that, how good that was. That was very good.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Well, that was it. I think this was uh this is we did seven stories to make try to make up for like two weeks off the air. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:33

Um what in two weeks it was. What a two weeks of uh chocolate poisoning and uh you know I was yeah, I was so upset that no one gave me an Easter egg that I like after the day after Easter, I went to like three stores and bought myself a bunch of Easter eggs. You did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

That's funny because I was looking at the stores for the old for the old Easter eggs, thinking there must be a big stock of them, and most of the stores didn't have the old ones.

SPEAKER_04 51:56

Yeah, because like the uh the when I went to like Crambooth and Cronan like the day after, yeah, and the Easter eggs, they just disappeared. Yes, they're all just gone. And I like I even asked, like, so are are do you like put them out back because it's no longer Easter? And he was like, nope, people bought all of them. Like, what?

SPEAKER_02 52:12

Really?

SPEAKER_04 52:13

And then but no, but then I went to um then I went first at to netto and they they had they still had the little ones. And this is actually a good little consumer report for people. And then I went to bonus, and not only did they still have the the thrister eggs, which are so fucking good, but they also had their own eggs, their own Goa eggs, right? The bonus eggs are still all there.

SPEAKER_02 52:33

Yeah, I I have like I've always thought like they must just take them and mess them back down or something. That's what I always thought.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Well, whatever they're doing, this this these people may need to start talking to us about city politics or something, because they seem to be very efficient about getting the eggs out there and getting rid of them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:49

And also getting eggs to the handing them out to yeah, to somebody. Because in a same country they would just be on discount, they would be on sale the next day. Yeah, I think they Well I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

We're we're saying in America you go out the day after Easter and you go get all the Easter candy. Right? That's the tradition kind of.

SPEAKER_04 53:09

I think in most places, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Yeah. Here it's gone.

SPEAKER_02 53:12

You can get some Christmas candy.

SPEAKER_04 53:15

That lingers. That might be a little bit of a general.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

Yeah. Bonus is an experience though.

SPEAKER_04 53:24

The bonus egg kind of like a little pig on the top. Did you see? Uh I should have brought it in the episode. It was like this is my my favorite thing I acquired in in the the two or three weeks.

SPEAKER_02 53:34

The famous Easter pig. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:36

The pig of may the pig of Easter rain its blessings upon you. As we say in Iceland. I say unto you, as I say unto my own king. May the pigs bless you with their faculence. Facculence.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

And the whale bless you with their sperm.

SPEAKER_04 53:56

Alright, so faculence and sperm rain upon you on these this uh this glorious Easter season.

SPEAKER_02 54:01

On this questionable uh questionable blessing nobody asked to ask for, uh I uh bid you farewell and thank you very much for listening or watching.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

Don't forget to visit the town of Taint for your Monday next week.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

Go on Dynam the regular graven also has a store. It funds our journalism, it sells all sorts of stuff, including specially curated gift boxes. Just like the uh famous island hot dog box.