Sep 4 Check-In: Transcript
In which Magda is already hip-deep in the Metro West Boston real estate market, and Doug asserts that murder is wrong.
Doug:
All right, so you're discombobulated.
Magda:
Yeah, and so I'm discombobulated, first of all, because it's Labor Day, and I totally forgot it was Labor Day. I thought it was Sunday again.
Doug:
Right. Exactly. The title of this one will definitely be, Oh, Fuck, It's Monday.
Magda:
Yeah. I don't know if this is like, the truth that Metro West Boston is always more humid than Michigan is. I thought Michigan was pretty humid, but the humidity level here in Metro West Boston has been steamrolling me. Like I just am unable to function with this level of humidity. Last Wednesday, it was only, I think it was like 82 degrees or something. It wasn't even that hot. But it was 5 o'clock p.m. and it was 87% humidity. And I was like, this is why I can't function.
Doug:
That's one of the worst bait and switches and weather forecasts in the world. It's only going to be 75, yes, but it's going to be 90% humidity.
Magda:
Exactly. And people are like, “Well, wait until winter. It's going to be so humid.” But you know what? I'm actually fine with that because then you don't get nosebleeds. In Metro West Boston …
Doug:
That's the new terminology that you're going to refer to all the time now. “You've been watching weather reports and the weather from Metro West Boston.”
Magda:
Yeah, so I mean the city is Natick and I didn't know what to call myself, right? Like the Natickites, whatever. And so Mike jokingly said they're Natitians. And so I just joined Blue Sky and so I put that I'm a temporary Natitian on there. And he's like, “Nobody's gonna know what that means.” And I said, “Yeah, but I'll know what it means.” It's funny.
Doug:
It means you know the mathematics of birth.
Magda:
So Natick is one of those towns that is far enough out of Boston that it was very much a bedroom community. And it has all these really cute, tiny Cape Cod houses, just like really small, two or three bedroom houses with one bathroom that are adorable.
Doug:
Okay, so we're going toward the house you saw.
Magda:
Do you want to talk about the house we saw?
Doug:
Sure.
Magda:
People are moving in. They're priced out of the communities that have the size houses they want, so they come by here and tear down a perfectly delightful house and put up some huge monstrosity with almost no yard. Yeah, so that they can live where they think they deserve to live, but they're priced out of the other houses, right?
Doug:
This is what This Old House does. Just so you know, This Old House, you were charming back in the day, but now you're just rapacious consumerism gone amok.
Magda:
I'm living in a house that was like a very beautiful colonial, I don't know, like 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, something colonial that then had a horrible remodeling and expansion sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s.
Doug:
Which you're sitting in.
Magda:
Yeah, which I'm sitting in and it sort of destroyed the center of the house. There's no real center of the house anymore. It's just this sort of conglomeration of rooms, a lot of unusable space, that kind of stuff. So I really can't talk about these people coming in and tearing down houses because I'm living in a horribly remodeled house. There is a beautiful little house that has the most beautiful landscaping, just old fashioned flowers, roses, that kind of stuff kept up so well, just tiny and beautiful. And the whole time I've been saying, Oh man, I hope these people don't get taken over by this house next door, all this kind of stuff.
So we come around the corner and there's stuff moving out of that little beautiful house. And we stopped to talk to them. And it turns out that the lady who lived there by herself. She had cancer and died, and this was her brother and her sister-in-law and they were cleaning out the house and ...
Doug:
How old as she?
Magda:
I don't know. They were like sort of late 50s looking and so I'm guessing she was in her 50s or early 60s.
Doug:
Oh great, like me. Awesome. Another reminder of my mortality.
Magda:
Yeah, exactly. And they are going to sell the house and they're terrified that they're going to end up selling it to somebody who tears down the whole thing and tears out all the landscaping and builds this huge monstrosity there. They don't know if there's any way to stop that from happening. So, of course, now I'm convinced that I can find them the right buyer who wants the house. So if there's anybody who wants to move to Metro West Boston, Natick specifically, onto a really quiet street that's very close to an entrance to the Rail Trail.
I have to say, like, the rail trail is the one thing I love about this neighborhood. It's beautiful for walking and biking and but it's a two bedroom, one bath house. And it's tiny, but the backyard is just luxurious with these old trees that are like four stories tall. It's like almost like being in the Redwood Forest. It's just a really, really beautiful tiny little house with a lot of original details, and it's gonna be crushing if somebody tears it down, but it'll be equally crushing if somebody comes in and you know puts that gray wash laminate on the floor that makes it look like a flip show from HGTV.
Doug:
What do you think it's gonna sell for?
Magda:
They said they were asking for mid 500s.
Doug:
For a two-bedroom one-bath.
Magda:
Yes, in Natick, Massachusetts. Why would you want to come to this town so desperately that you would pay that money?
Doug:
And that's where I'm confused. Because you're like, “It's terrible here. Move next door!” Have you consulted the Chamber of Commerce for that as a new slogan?
Magda:
Well, I just want somebody to move into the house that will value the house that will treasure the house. If you want different things from a community than I do, this is perfect for you, right?
Doug:
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You want me to follow you again? I followed you to Michigan once. And then you left. And now you want me to come to Massachusetts so you can leave and move back here?
Magda:
Well, yeah, but that's because right here where I am in Massachusetts now is two hours from your parents.
Doug:
Right. But, you know, of all the places I could choose…. Of all the gin joints that are within a short radius of my parents, I'm going to walk into yours?
Magda:
It's true. Of all the places that are two hours from your parents' native Massachusetts, it's like the worst. I mean, OK, I have to say, like, this backyard's pretty fabulous. It's just the trees. It's just those really tall trees, right?
Doug:
Wait, your backyard, or the backyard of the tiny house you want me to buy?
Magda:
Oh, the backyard of the tiny house I want you to buy. It's not a tiny house, it's probably a house that's perfect.
Doug
You want me to cut the grass a lot too still, okay.
Magda:
Yeah, exactly. It's true.
Doug:
So it's bigger than my house.
Magda:
It's two stories, so yeah.
Doug:
With a basement?
Magda:
Yeah, it does have a basement, but it's got like one of those old-timey basements that's not finished at all, you know.
Doug:
I really like living like a retiree with everything on one level, I have to say. I have grown to love having my washer-dryer just right there that I can just throw dirty clothes into. I was born to live on one level, just like, you know, 20 years in New York apartments and now this. I mean, my 80-year-old parents have three floors and I can't understand how they still teeter down this very steep staircase to wash clothes and they won't stop.
Magda:
Yeah, so that's what's up. And, um, yeah, we went to a party yesterday, a Labor Day party in Cambridge. And, you know, Cambridge is great, right? Cambridge is like Brooklyn. And these people have this beautifully renovated house. I don't know what you call it. To me, it would be semi-detached. Mike thought it was a duplex, but to me, a duplex is one up and one down. These are two side-by-side houses, kind of like row houses, I guess. Had a backyard, has a little driveway. I don't know.
Doug:
I think of all the types of housing that would be good for me, “semi-detached” would match my personality. I think semi-detached would be ideal.
Magda:
Semi-avoidant attached.
Doug:
Yeah. Semi-retired. Semi-reclusive. What was happening in Cambridge?
Magda:
Just a Labor Day party and it's a new friend of mine. So I had posted on Facebook something about how I'm screwed up because I'm at the other end of the time zone now. And so the sun comes up in the morning and goes down in the evening so much earlier, like almost an hour earlier than I'm used to from Michigan. And a friend of mine who lives in Ann Arbor sent me a screenshot that I had posted this post and right below it, another friend had said, so here's the thing I've noticed since I moved to Massachusetts from Michigan, the sun comes up so much earlier and goes down so much earlier that I'm getting exhausted halfway through the day.
And so she said, you two need to meet each other. So we did, and we went and had lunch on Thursday, and then she and her partner were having a party that she moved out here about a month ago to live with.
Doug:
I don’t understand, though. Aren’t you used to humidity after your time in New York?
Magda:
We don't have air conditioning here. We have a couple of window units, but we don't have air conditioning.
Doug:
Ahhh, right.
Magda:
And it's just, there are trees and there are lakes and just a lot more vegetation. So it is more humid. I think, you know, when you're in Manhattan, it's just the relentless sun blazing down onto the pavement or all the humidity just coagulates in the subway stations.
Doug:
I think the humidity in New York, it marries with a particular filth. It feels like particulate-based. There's that, there's the urine, you know, there's a whole salad.
Magda:
Well, and it comes from the armpits of a million be-tank-topped dudes riding the subway, you know.
Doug:
Be-tank-topped!
Magda:
And a funny thing is when Mike was in Detroit with me, when we were packing up to move me, a week and a half ago and we went to the German American Festival. It's really beautiful. It's very wooded, but we were there and the cicadas wound up and you know, they did that little thing that to me is the sound of summer.
Mike hadn't heard them before and he was like, “what is that?” And I had not realized that they don't have cicadas out here. And I figured out the other day that the reason I hadn't realized that is because they have enough insect noise at night that I just hadn't processed the fact that they didn't have cicadas as part of that. And I kind of miss that cicada sound too.
Doug:
Hey, can we talk a bit about Bad Sisters?
Magda:
Yeah, I don't know anything about it.
Doug:
Okay. Well, it's on Apple Plus, Apple TV Plus. And I just got into it because I'm reading Rob Delaney's book. Did you ever see Catastrophe on Amazon?
Magda:
No.
Doug:
Oh, brilliant show. The premise is Rob Delaney visits London, has a one night stand with Sharon Horgan, gets her pregnant, and they decide to build a life on that. He moves to London and marries her and yeah, and what it's like to just be an instant family.
Sharon Horgan is a genius. Everything she writes just is really compelling and really interesting. And now she has the show Bad Sisters and it's about these five sisters, one of whom is married to a very abusive, emotionally cut off, controlling, gaslighting, horrid man.
Magda:
Okay.
Doug:
The Sisters are basically lamenting the fact that their sister is wasting away just protecting herself from the very subtle emotional abuse.
Magda:
So do they get together to take this guy down?
Doug:
That's the point. Yeah, it's got a lot of dark comedy, Fargo-esque.
Magda:
Oooh, I am ready for this.
Doug:
That's the thing, I knew you would love it, but I really wanted to talk about, it's about female empowerment, but it's also laments the fact that, is this the only avenue that women have to find their rightful place in equality, is to murder people?
Magda:
Right, like why can't she just leave in the first place, or why was she not even in the relationship with him in the first place?
Doug:
Well, she's already just scared to leave. She's modifying her behavior now.
Magda:
Well, but the obvious thing to me is how did she end up in this relationship with this horrible person in the first place? Because that's the fix for it. The fix isn't murder the guy. The fix isn't even get her out of the relationship. The fix is she doesn't even get in this relationship in the first place. It's battered woman syndrome or whatever they're calling it now, right? Like disempowered victim syndrome or whatever. At a certain point, you just become a different person. Your personality changes because you have to save yourself in every minute.
Doug:
Right. But I think the interesting point here is this is Sharon Horgan's first experience with the hour-long format. She has time to build characters and build nuance and build layers. You actually understand why this guy is the way he is. He is as much a victim of patriarchy as the women are in a way because he was never taught.
Magda:
Yeah. But there are a shit ton of men who are victims of patriarchy in the same way who don't turn out to be abusers.
Doug:
Right, but Sharon Horgan is smart enough to say this guy is as terrible as he is. He's monstrous, right? He's not cartoonishly monstrous, just because we're getting a sense of why that is of the trauma he incurred as a child that basically retarded his emotional development forever. I mean, granted, he's awful and deserves to die. I think it's a really important message about hating the patriarchy isn't hating men. It's not a man-hating show. There are plenty of great men on the show.
Magda:
I think a lot of times when we say somebody's a monster, that's letting them off, you know? And if you can say, this is why he's like this, it's like, oh, okay, this is why he's like this. There's a reason, but that's still not an excuse. That's useful for people who are trying to figure out in their own relationships, not necessarily even their main romantic relationship, like, what do I owe myself? What do I owe other people? And is it just a straight line from being abused to becoming an abuser? And I would argue, no, not at all.
Doug:
No, I'm not defending abuse, nor am I defending him. I'm just saying, any time a show takes the time to create nuance, to work beyond the standard good versus evil approach, and skillfully have us rooting for four women to kill this man.
Magda:
Right.
Doug:
Just anything Sharon Horgan writes, I will make a beeline toward. And I listened to a podcast that she talked about, she's recently divorced. She's got a couple of daughters. She's in her mid fifties. And she's like, “this is great material.” She wrote Divorce, that show with Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church. It was the three-named-actor dyad.
Magda:
Seriously.
Doug:
But that was before she had a divorce. And now she's been through a divorce and it's like, oh, okay.
Magda:
Why would you write a show about divorce before you'd been divorced?
Doug:
I think you have people who are divorced, that's a traumatic thing, you know, it ripples out and affects a lot of people. As an inciting incident, divorce really can't be beat as something that affects so many people, I think.
Magda:
Yeah, I guess I would agree with that.
Doug:
Right, which is also about murder. There's really a lot of shows about murder, and any time you find a show that treats it with the gravitas it deserves, I mean, let's not be numb to the fact that killing people is a terrible thing to do.
Magda:
Brilliant insights.