Episode 2 - Vizige Update and PNW-speak

Kim and Jim share some of the theories and speculation that have poured in regarding those mysterious faces popping up all over the PNW, courtesy of the street artist named Vizige. (And you'll never believe who Jim's been talking to.) 

Is there a Pacific Northwest dialect? We beg to bag.

Plus, your favorite social media platform just won an Emmy, which may explain the hangover.

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Transcript

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Jim just put his makeup on. It's not normal makeup though. It's professional podcast makeup. Nipple makeup. Okay. I have an unusual amount of pigmentation beneath my thing. Right nipple. Okay. Hi friends. I'm Kim. I'm Jim. And this is episode two of the Upper Lefters Podcast. Woohoo! Your voice is a little hoarse, a little rough. We'll talk about that later. Yes, you had a night, but we'll get back to that. Right now, though, what we ri what we really really want to do is talk about the thing that everyone's talking about. Everyone, because Jim did another video that went viral, and it's getting passed around and shared, and there's more than a thousand comments. And the question is, whose face is that all over Seattle and Tacoma? Who is this man? It's a poster that's been wheat pasted up on signs and abandoned buildings on the side of a train. What is it? Wheat pasted? It's called wheat pasting. What does that mean? It's basically just like, I think they just take flour, like wheat, and they mix it with water and they make glue. I think that I think that's what it it is. There's like a real soupy gruel that they use to put up uh posters and to deface public property, some would say. Okay. Fair. You know what? Fair. One person's defacement of public property is another person's art. And this is deface that is defacing is de talk of the town. Describe it, please. It is the face of a middle-aged man with some facial hair. Uh it's in black and white, it's very graphic looking. So it's it's not an actual photo. So people have brought their own interpretation to who this face might be. He's uh appeared everywhere from Portland. We have reports from Portland up uh through Seattle, all up and down the I-5 corridor, um, Tacoma, yes, but no one's Boston in Tacoma everywhere, everywhere. And yet, no one knows who he is, but everyone thinks they do. That's the fun of it. It is the fun of it. Comments section really goes into that too on this uh this video. Yeah. People with lots of conjectures. Some say it's a celebrity. Um, people mentioned have been uh Howard Lutnick, is he the treasury secretary or something like that? Something like that, yeah. Um it's you it's basically bald white men for the most part. Uh Shell Silverstein, Walter White, yeah, breaking back. A little bit. Uh Vern Funk. Uh-huh. Now, Vern Funk was act was a real man who started that insurance company, but his commercials were done by a guy named Rob Tilke, who had this who had a fun sort of face. Yes. A fun visage, if you will. Ooh, now why are you using that word, Jim? I used that word because visage in French means face. And the artists. Or they probably say visage. Vijage. Visage or something. So a different spelling of that word. V-I-Z-I-G-E-H has been left near a lot of these uh these faces. And so people say, well, that's the artist. The artist. Right. Well, we think he's signing his work when we when we see that. That's it appears as such. Or she. They we don't know. It could be a singular person, it could be multiple people. It's a mystery. At this stage, there could be copycats. That is true too, actually. I hadn't even thought about that, but that is very true. There are so many theories, and so I've heard from people, and you've heard from people who are um very certain. Absolutely certain that they know who this person is. Many of them have DM'd us, emailed us, and then posted in public comments, naming the people, and these are not all the same people. No. Not even close. I mean, we are talking dozens and dozens and dozens of guesses, and everyone is certain about their guess. So we're digging through this mess of theories and conjecture and speculation. And in fact, one name that was mentioned um the most that I had seen early on uh is a real estate broker in Seattle, and I reached out to him. He said, Yeah, this whole face thing is weird, uh seems to make him kind of uncomfortable. But then there were some comments from other, and I'm not giving his name on purpose because I don't know that we, you know, how much he would like that to happen. Uh his name's out there if you want to go look it for it yourself. But um other people, even in his industry, have said, yes, he's doing it himself. Wow. Now this is probably a competitor, so maybe they're trying to make him look bad by saying that. The other on the other hand It is great marketing, though. It is in theory. I guess so, because except I'm not saying his name for a multitude of reasons. Yeah, that's fair too. Um so it could be a good thing. But other people have other people could be great marketing, but you have to actually identify yourself in order for it to be good marketing. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're talking about the uh artists. Yeah, yeah. But like, or or who if it is this realtor and he is visage, it's yeah, I don't think he is. You don't think so? I don't think uh I'm just thinking, doing a little thought exercise here. Yeah. You have a giant poster of your own face, yeah, and then you go out and you're putting it up around town, it seems like, well, if you're the person who's uh I'm gonna have to let Marvin out in a second. Here, you keep talking. Okay, I think I hear what you're saying. That if you if you are an anonymous artist, because this is almost Banksy-esque in some ways in terms of the mystery of who is this guy, right? So if you want to remain anonymous, why would you put your face everywhere? That does make sense. That does make sense. Yeah, so but the theories are really fun. First of all, I'd say the number one guess from people who've made comments on this is my dad. Not my dad, but they're saying my dad. They say my dad. That's definitely my dad. My favorite comment is the guy who said uh cement worshipper is is their name. Uh I don't think that's their given birth name. No, that's just their handle on social. Okay. Uh said, look like my dad because he bald. That's great. Okay, this is why I find this fascinating. Let me just jump in and say that like this looks like a very singular face to me. Yeah. It's a very interesting face, has almost a like mona Lisa type expression where you're not really sure, like, is he mad? Is he just like, does he have RBF? Like, why what is constantly yeah, it could be that. Um so I wouldn't ever associate this face with an average-looking guy. No, in air quotes. And yet, this is clearly a very average-looking guy because thousands of people think that they know who it is and it's not the same guy. Yeah. Like I have a colleague, him and his wife have been joking about this for weeks. I just learned this last week, because and with all their friends too, because they all think it's him. Yeah. And he sent me a picture of himself next to one of the faces, and it looks exactly like him. Exactly like him. Yes, I've seen the picture. I guess we could put that picture up somewhere so people can see. I'll ask his permission first. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's true. We're good like that. We're not just here to output. That's true. That's true. Maybe he doesn't want that. Well, if you want to know what he looks like, just look at the poster. He looks exactly like it. It's it's kind of crazy, but um I don't know where I was going with all of that. Well, I kind of interrupted you just to say that it is an average, uh an unexpectedly average looking face, as it turns out. Yeah. I see a shiny object and I get interrupted right away. Or a squirrel. It's a very fair, yes. A crow? I wonder if the crows are out today. Let's not. Let's focus on the side. Oh, stay with us. There you go. Okay. One person says they thought it was this Russian mercenary who uh Putin assassinated. And maybe, you know, maybe there is some kind of political message. There could be a whole thing. We there could be, we don't know. Some people think, oh, it's um it's an artist of one sort or another, a musician or something. But I think if that if it were that, I think we would know who it is by now. Uh there's another guess that keeps popping up. A lot of people are saying, yeah, I thought so too. And it's not a famous person. Okay. It's uh a guy, Chris, who works at Iron and Gold Tattoo in Spokane. And I'm gonna track him down because so many people are dropping his name, it makes me think, well, maybe I love that this is bringing out the investigative journalist in you. You're like, I'm gonna get to the bottom of this. Well, you really want to know. Yeah, it's fun. I've seen other um other people on social media since this came out on our platform. We've seen other people now doing it more too. So it's gonna really spread, I think. What and it's not like we discovered the story. I mean, it was floating around out there. Oh, you discovered it. Yeah, not really, but we did shine we did shine a massive spotlight on it, I must say. It's true. You know what I think is the bottom line that for me, the definition of great art is something that gets people talking, hopefully in a good way, in some sort of positive way. And that's what this has become. Like it's this mystery that all these people are buying into. And whatever happens, whether we figure out who this face belongs to or not, it's just kind of a fun, very, very upper left specific mystery. Yeah, I love it. Uh, visage, by the way. I've I've noticed some clues on my, I've discovered some on my own. One thing I noticed about, because I went to a few of these locations where where the poster was up. One thing I noticed is that they seem to have like maybe a little bit of a code of ethics about where they're gonna put it. Now, I've seen other people say, oh, they pasted it over, they put it over a mural somewhere, which is not cool in the world of street art. You're not supposed to do that. But I haven't noticed, I didn't see that one. But the ones I've seen generally are on defunct businesses that are just look like crap to start with. They're all boarded up, so he'll put them there. Um, yes, on highway signs on i5, which is also kind of a no-no. You're kind of a kind of a douchebag if you like spray paint over the exit signs that people can do. Information that people know, yeah. But he seems to be sticking with those like blue signs that maybe advertise some businesses up the road. And he's not, from what I noticed, doesn't seem to be covering up the information itself. So I'm thinking, okay, so there's like a a little bit of a method to it. Yeah, he has a moral code. There are some guardrails, yeah. Where he's not just going crazy and putting it in obnoxious places. So Well, you know, I think that um we need to share that you may be closer to the answer than anyone would think because you did get an email from Visage. We think it could be Visage. We don't know. It could be someone pretending to be Visage. It's from an email address that contains Visage. Now you can anybody can get an email address, but would you go to all that trouble to just give me this the following message? Here we go. Are you gonna read the whole thing? I'm gonna read the whole thing. So settle in. Okay. Uh okay, so the email begins. Visage here. And that's all. For long and short of it. That's it. That was it. And so what I did, because I'm a sleuth, I immediately responded very excitedly. I said, ha ha, that's great. Um, I don't need to know your identity, but I definitely need to know the identity of this face that you're putting up all over uh the Pacific Northwest, or my head will explode, is what I said. I wanted to make it dramatic. Yeah. No, when someone's running a scam, they say, do this by midnight, or all your data will be gone or whatever. Right. The artist needs to know that your health is your health is at risk. Yeah, and here's the smart part. Okay. I I ended my message with tell me something that only visage would know. Isn't that incredible? Like a detective, basically. Yeah, except how how are you movies. How are you gonna know if what he tells you is something that only visage would know? I don't think you thought this through. Oh shit. No, you're right. You're the worst detective in history. Yeah, you're kind of right about that. Right? Yeah, wait, let me think. He could say visage likes eggs, and you would just have to take him at his word. Then you are him. I guess. But let me check, let me ask you if that's true. I sh I'm really bad at this. Yeah. Also, he does not care about your health because you sent this a few days ago, right? And he has not gotten back to you. So your head could be exploding right now, as when I say he, right now, as far as he, she, they know, and no response. No response at all. Wow. Does not care about my health. This is why it's good that we're crowdsourcing this because lots of people are probably totally better at this than you are. And then but they can help now on the back end. Just keep keep engaging with us, and we're gonna we're gonna figure this out. We're gonna, yeah. We're gonna crack the case. We're not letting it go anywhere. No. And you know what else we're gonna crack the case on? What's that? What makes a Pacific Northwest dialect? What what vocabulary is used? What is the accent? Let's start with the accent. Do we have an accent? I don't do we have an accent. That's a question a lot of people have asked. Yeah. Is there a Pacific Northwest accent? And there is, I did a little research. My friend Google. Look at Professor Dever. Professor Google and I actually got together and we did this together. Collaborate. We did a collab with Google. Yeah, you collabed. I collabed with Google. And uh yeah, it was it's really interesting. I love accents. As you as you know, Kim, I love accents. I love using accents. Not again. And um, you know, there are those who say, I don't do them right. You know what that did make me think of when you said um? One of my favorite things on earth is if you're ever watching like a British film or show with the subtitles on, when they say um, it's spelled erm. Oh, yeah, yeah. E-R-M. Yeah. I love it so much. And when they say ass, it's spelled ars. Ars. And sometimes they do pronounce it more like ars, too. Erm. Even their ums are better than us. Erm. It just sounds more d interesting somehow. Full on your ars, you wanna. It's so bad. Okay, back to accents. Please just speak in your normal one. Okay. Your your upper left accent. Yeah, but I love accents, and every part of the country's got its accent, but people have for a long time said, well, every part of the country except the Pacific Northwest, we do have an accent, but it's noted more by what it doesn't have rather than what it does. There's no twang. I guess it's as close as you can get to what you'd call standard American English. Upper lefters will say caught. Like a cot that you sleep on, but as I caught a fish. Yeah. How else are you supposed to call it I caught a fish? How else are you supposed to caught a fish? Quat. Yeah, you caught it. That's from like New Jersey. No, you caught it. So that's Pennsylvania. Yeah, I caught a called. Okay, caught. Okay, yeah, that's true. The other one that I have heard of is if you go grocery shopping, do you put your groceries in a bag or a bag? I put it in a sack. That the Northwest is a little bit more than a lot of people. Another Northwest ism, actually. They don't people don't say it as much anymore. But 30 years ago, I remember a lot of people. I couldn't do it because it sounded dirty. But a lot of people said, You want a sack with that? And I'm like, I beg your pardon. How dare you, good sir. Um, okay, so so bad do you say bag or beg? Bag. You say b I say bag too, but wait, wait, let me test it. Hey, you old bag, move your car. Yeah, I say I say bag. Okay. Yeah. Um, I think it n most upper lefters say beg. That yeah. It's sort of a it's sort of a short, it's not a full-on like I'm begging you. Yeah. Oh, it's kind of close though. Grocery bag. A grocery bag. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It just gets kind of shortened and turns into an E. So we would generally though, I would say we are just very vanilla boring accent-wise. Yeah. And in and with everything else we do. Yeah. That's not true because we have great sayings here. I know. I just other parts. I just pull on your leg, Kim. Or as I like to say it, leg. I'm pulling your leg. Pulling your leg. Um other parts of the country would not know what we're talking about sometimes, I think. Like the mountains out. That's a very specific upper left. And you know what's cool about it too? Um, you can say that in Seattle. Yeah. Or in Portland. Yeah. Because Mount Hood is the mountain that's out in Portland, and Mount Rainier is the mountain that's out in Seattle. And uh I mean, if you go north, yeah, you could then you're seeing Mount Baker. Yeah, you can you can see it from parts of BC too. Yeah. Listen, we have like seven volcanoes here, don't we? There's lots of mountains to be out in the northwest. They're active too. I don't like that. Yeah. Um what we say, oh, we just did a video about um the bridge is up, that that's a really good excuse if you're running late because when a bridge is up, what are you gonna do? Nothing, nothing you can do. But not everybody lives in a place where bridges go up. No, there are more than 80 movable bridges in across Oregon, Washington, and Russia. What is movable? I mean, I know what our bridges are. Mostly drawbridges, but then there are a certain number that are swing bridges. The one in West Seattle was uh one of the oh, what was that? One of the first swing bridges or biggest, or it's look it up. It's called Google, all right? I'm not supposed to know everything. You are stripped of your professorship. Yeah. Forget it. I think it was sort of like the longest swing bridge. Anyway, I'm gonna go on a tangent again. We don't want to do that. Um but yeah, a bridge that moves in order to let traffic pass beneath. So there's more more than 80 if you count them across uh province of British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington. And uh trap traffic underneath being boats. Oh boats, yeah. Barges, what else could go? Yachts. Oh, yeah. Uh the Mark Zuckerberg's mega yacht might be coming through. I'm not touching that one. Uh so anyway, bridges I'm sorry, I just had extreme jealousy and bad feelings. I'm starting to wish bad things for people, and I don't want to do that. No, this is a this is a place of joy, Jim. That's right. None of that here. But what's interesting to me is that as I'm looking at the numbers of bridges in each of these states, uh, I looked at Idaho. Yeah. Um, there's none. There may be one, but it it was seemed to be kind of uncertain whether it was still operating. Oh. There's like zero drawbridges in Idaho. If that's true, if you live in Idaho and you know that for a fact, let us know because I found that fascinating. But it makes sense because drawbridges are built to allow they're built over navigable waterways. You know, tend to be closer to the ocean where you know cargo ships or big sailboats or big cruise boats of some sort come through. And and usually in population centers, too, that need to have roads going over these places. You're talking about like the Snake River in Idaho probably doesn't have a lot of wouldn't have a drawbridge. Yeah. I hope I'm not way off on that. We're we'll hear from somebody. Oh, you are gonna. This is this is the last podcast. If that's the case, if you're wrong, that's it. Boop, done. What else do we say? Oh, the sound. We say the sound here like it's nothing, and we all know what everyone's talking about. Yeah, but think like do would you if you were not from the upper left and you came here and you had no understanding and someone said that, the sound, we're going to the sound. The sound of what? Yeah, music. Yeah. That would be kind of fun, actually. That would be kind of fun, actually. I do go to the sound of music when it's in town. Do you ever do the sound of music sing-along? No, but that sounds like a blast. Is that a thing? Oh, yeah. Oh, they hand out props. It it it was at the uh Fifth Avenue Theater in Seattle for a while. Wow, how do you think? I had actually MC'd it one year. And and they have a script. You have to know. You have to hit all your marks, you have to know when you're supposed to say this or say that. Uh much like this show that we're doing right now. So specifically. Very the excellence bar, it's high. Very high. Yeah. So where were we? We were talking about uh language, accent. Oh, we covered that, didn't we? Upper leftisms. Any other upper leftisms? Uh I mean we can say when people say the peninsula. Oh, yeah. You kind of know. I mean, I guess you have to specify which peninsula. That always confuses me. Because if you go west from Seattle, you are going to the peninsula, but like the Kitzap Peninsula is basically a peninsula on a peninsula. Two pen peninsulae. Yeah. And then there are smaller peninsulae, like up by Port Gamble, there's a bit of a peninsula up there. And I can't remember what it they call that actually up there. Um it's probably agate. Everything's called agate. Bag it? Yeah. Bag it? Bag Bag It? Beg it. Alright. We should probably wrap things up. We should. We're talking nonsense now. Oh, but before we go, we have to circle back to why you're a little horse. Why you're a little hungover today. Oh, when you said little horse, I'm like, is that your nickname for me? Hey little horse. Hey little horsey. Hey little pony. No, your voice is horse. Well, I'm just slightly hungover. Slightly. I'm just gonna move while you keep talking, I'm just gonna redecorate our channel. There's two. There's two shiny ladies with wings holding a ball. That sounds really weird if you're just listening and not actually watching what we're talking about. Shiny. This is what it sounds like. Oh, don't that's Jim's. I hope I didn't break the microphone. That's Jim's microphone being struck by an Emmy. I hold in my hand the first upper left's Emmy. Amazing. Uh and this was for some this was for stuff that you can see on our social media platforms. That's true. And uh we are quite proud. We're very excited. Jim also won for hosting the last show he ever did on the television. The television. That let that show left people with a really good feeling because they were happy to see that I was leaving. It's absolutely untrue. They were uh so yeah, people loved seeing it again. They were like, how can I relive this moment of him getting off my television set? It was a great night. Congratulations. And this is just so wild, it's so fun. It was fun to meet up with you and Rob too and our friend Diane, and um probably drank a little too much. Speak for yourself, horseman. Uh yeah, maybe. Well, but we took a we see that my voice puberty. We took a lift to get out there, so that was good. Yeah. I've decided I don't like um ride sharing anymore. It's a whole other story. I'll I'll share that some other time. Wow, people will just be on the edge of their seat. Yeah, waiting. I don't like it. I don't like it when humans drive. Oh. I don't think humans should drive cars. Okay, now no one is. Unpopular opinion, but I don't think humans should drive cars. You get in the car, you think, oh, this is gonna be great, because uh someone else is driving. They they've got all the safety regulations, they know what they're doing. They do not. That is actually, I'm loath to say, a pretty good point. Yeah, I look for it's the one thing I look forward to robots doing. Everything else, they can suck it, but but driving cars, someday we will look back on people driving cars and say, that was crazy. That was just nutso. They don't people don't have the reflexes to drive a car. That's insane. No, none of the above. All right, on that note, thanks for sticking with us. If you did, wow. Impressive. We need to start uh we need to have an alarm for our tangents. Yeah. Like when they start, we we you know what? We're gonna give you a bell, and when I start on a tangent, you just lift the bell, dingling. No, it's not gonna, I want a cowbell. And then then you know you just hit the skip forward button. Yes, okay, that's good. This is a great idea. Yes, we will give you demarcations where you know, oh, Jim's on a tangent. If you enjoy the tangents, keep listening. Otherwise, just go ahead for another couple minutes. Skip forward 12 and a half minutes, and everything should be fine. Are we saying goodbye? We're saying goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.