Allegedly… with Bo and Ryan Podcast E9| Transcript

Ryan: [00:00:00] Here’s something else that happens Every game. Somebody lands on your property, doesn’t pay you rent, and then claims they don’t have to because you weren’t paying attention. It’s like I was in the bathroom. Just pay me my money.

 

Ryan: [00:00:12] Welcome to aAlegedly with Bo and Ryan, the only Entertainment and Law podcast that brings you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth … Allegedly.

 

Bo: [00:00:23] I’m Bo Bowen.

 

Ryan: [00:00:24] And I’m Ryan Schmidt.

 

Bo: [00:00:25] You’re listening to Allegedly with Bo and Ryan. We’re coming to you from our law offices in beautiful historic Savannah, Georgia, where we’ll be chatting about pop culture, hot legal topics in the news, and doing our best to change the way people think about the law and lawyers. But first, a little about us. Ryan recently made world news when he participated in the Running of the Bulls. He was the first runner in the event’s 700 year history to make the bulls turn around and run from him.

 

Ryan: [00:00:57] And Bo is an incredible dancer. Bo is so good, in fact, that during his first year of law school, he had to turn down offers to join both the Funky Bunch and Lord of the Dance

 

Bo: [00:01:07] It’s true, I can jig.

 

Ryan: [00:01:10] Together we are Savannah’s consummate renegade legal titans.

 

Bo: [00:01:13] And the only corporate and entertainment lawyers in the free world who have never lost a single case … Allegedly. Welcome to episode nine, Ryan. Let’s see, nine episodes. We’ve got enough episodes for…

 

Ryan: [00:01:28] Every region of the Seven Kingdoms in Westeros.

 

Bo: [00:01:32] Really? You’re going to go Game of Thrones this morning?

 

Ryan: [00:01:35] Yep.

 

Bo: [00:01:36] All right. Okay, nerd, Put your money where your mouth is. What are the Nine Kingdoms of Westeros?

 

Ryan: [00:01:44] Seriously?

 

Bo: [00:01:45] Yeah, absolutely. Why not?

 

Ryan: [00:01:47] Okay. Okay, so we got the North, obviously.

 

Bo: [00:01:51] Obviously.

 

Ryan: [00:01:52] The Vale, the Riverlands. The Storm Lands.

 

Bo: [00:01:57] I’m counting.  That’s four

 

Ryan: [00:01:58] The Crownlands, oh King’s Landing.

 

Bo: [00:02:02] OK.

 

Ryan: [00:02:03] The Western lands. The Veil with the moon door.

 

Bo: [00:02:07] Oh, yeah.

 

Ryan: [00:02:08] The Iron Islands. And … How many is that? is that eight?

 

Bo: [00:02:12] Yes, eight.

 

Ryan: [00:02:15] Dorne!

 

Bo: [00:02:17] Dude. And now, I love Game of Thrones as much as the next person. That was intense.

 

Ryan: [00:02:24] Oh, thank you.

 

Bo: [00:02:26] But if there’s nine, why are they always saying the Seven Kingdoms?

 

Ryan: [00:02:31] That’s a bit of a misnomer, for sure. I mean, apparently there were only seven kingdoms when Aegon the Conqueror came into Westeros. But over the years, the dynasty grew. It seceded, took on, took on Dorne. And it also, I believe the the Iron Islands also split off from another region.

 

Bo: [00:02:49] Oh, that was going to be my guess.

 

Ryan: [00:02:51] Yeah, of course.

 

Bo: [00:02:53] Okay, so I understand that there’s something in the news right now that you want to talk about today. There’s apparently some major drama going on in the live concert industry, particularly regarding Taylor Swift. I know. You know, you’re somewhat of a Swifty. So tell me, what on earth is going on here?

 

Ryan: [00:03:14] Taylor Swift fans are losing their shit right now. Taylor recently announced the Era’s Tour, which was billed as a journey of all of her musical eras in her career. And for the largest pop star of today’s age, it was it’s actually surprising. It’s going to be her first concert tour in over five years. So as you can imagine, people were pretty excited to get their tickets this past week, that goes on sale on ticket ticketmaster.com, and the website immediately crashes and all hell breaks loose. People can’t can’t get their tickets. Fans are frozen out of the system. Customer service is unable to field and support requests and people are pissed off. Really, really pissed. It gets so bad that countless individuals petition their elected representatives. And now the Tennessee Attorney General and the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights are getting involved.

 

Bo: [00:04:20] Seriously.

 

Ryan: [00:04:22] This moment has been building for over a decade, really, since Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010. And the concern from consumers, state and federal government is that events like this Taylor Swift ticket debacle is just the tip of the iceberg for what this company–that has a virtual monopoly–is capable of.

 

Bo: [00:04:42] Well, I mean, I guess you’re right. I mean, so many people do go through Ticketmaster. I mean, I can understand why they’d be upset, you know, I mean, but competition is important. I mean, we talk about that all the time in many industries. I mean, without competition, I mean, that’s what you need to protect consumers. And, you know, it drives innovations, it keeps costs down. So what’s the deal here? I mean, why is Ticketmaster have so much power?

 

Ryan: [00:05:09] It really came, I mean, it’s been it’s been boiling up for probably the last 30 years. Right. But it really came to a head in 2010. There was two major competitors, as you know, in the market. There was Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Well, Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010 under a monopoly consent decree that they had to follow all these different rules to protect consumers. And now the federal government is saying you’re not doing enough.

 

Bo: [00:05:40] All right. Well, I guess that makes sense then, because AOC, who, as you know, I’m pretty sure I could convince to be my best friend and or girlfriend if we met in person.

 

Ryan: [00:05:52] Of course.

 

Bo: [00:05:53] I did see a tweet from her, which now I understand better. Now you’re telling me she let me see here. It said, a daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly. Its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved and they need to be reigned in, break them up. So exactly the same thing I say about AOC and her boyfriend.

 

Ryan: [00:06:12] Right, Exactly. Well, at what point is this this monopoly … Is enough, Enough? I mean, this isn’t actually the first time that Ticketmaster has been in the legal hot seat. Back in 1994–I think Taylor Swift would have been five at that point–Pearl Jam filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster, not because of the unfair competitions that the band themselves faced, but to prevent their fans from being ripped off from hidden fees and service charges. I mean, they went so far as to try to purposely book national tours in venues that weren’t controlled by Ticketmaster. And I got to tell you, it was very difficult. They had to seek out all these nontraditional venues, and they and they did it. But the matter went all the way up to Capitol Hill, where the band actually petitioned that Ticketmaster be stopped from its harmful practices. And after a year investigation, the Department of Justice, kicked it out with two sentences saying no wrongdoing.

 

Bo: [00:07:15] Geez. Nice.

 

Ryan: [00:07:16] But we’re having that exact same conversation nearly 30 years later, and it’s only grown since. You know, I know that you love stats. Since since its merger in 2010, what percentage of the live concert market do you think Ticketmaster owns today?

 

Bo: [00:07:32] Well, I mean, just by virtue of the fact that you’re asking me the question, I’m going to assume the answer is very high. But that having been said, I mean, it’s obviously not 100% because there are numerous other venues where you can get tickets either directly and there are some other ticket companies. So I’m going to guess 60%.

 

Ryan: [00:07:54] It’s a good guess, but it’s actually 80%.

 

Bo: [00:07:57] Wow. Okay. I mean, 80% of all tickets sold in the United States to any event are going through Ticketmaster, correct? Well, I mean, with that much money at play, then probably no wonder that Ticketmaster is going to do everything in their power to “shake it off” and try their best to remind customers that “you belong with me,” when in reality they should “never, ever get back together.”

 

Ryan: [00:08:27] Why on earth are you speaking in Taylor Swift songs?

 

Bo: [00:08:31] I think the question is why are you not.

 

Ryan: [00:08:34] Man? Bo, I mean, “I knew you were trouble when you walked in,” dude.

 

Bo: [00:08:38] Too far. Okay? I mean, this whole conversation, monopolies are bad. I think everyone can agree on that. But it does make me think about. The board game Monopoly. Oh, no. I mean, possibly the only thing in life worse than actual monopolies, is the board game monopoly. That scourge to mankind that my family inexplicably feels the need to pull out every holiday season.

 

Ryan: [00:09:12] Mine to. It’s the absolute worst.

 

Bo: [00:09:15] No, I mean, I know we love lists on this show, so I’m going to challenge you right now, because I could come up with this off the top of my head easy, why don’t we make a list of the things that are absolutely horrible about the board game Monopoly? I mean, wait. Parker Brothers is not a sponsor of this podcast, right?

 

Ryan: [00:09:35] Considering we don’t have any sponsors. Yes, that’s fair to say.

 

Bo: [00:09:38] Okay, well, take this Parker Brothers. I could tell you one thing that I absolutely hate about playing Monopoly with my family: someone else always calls the top hat like they’re calling Shotgun. OK. I mean, I get left with the f***ing thimble. All right? I mean, look, there is 100% a power ranking when it comes to Monopoly pieces, and I will accept no debate over this. All right. It goes top hat, race car, dog, battleship, shoe, iron, wheelbarrow, and then thimble. Thimble is the f***ing worst.

 

Ryan: [00:10:25] He’s got a point there. One thing I hate about it is that the player always ends up putting multiple hotels on Boardwalk. Right? And then my piece gets drawn to that spot every time, like an electromagnet. I land on it. I don’t even have enough money to pay the thousands of dollars you owe. I have to go into bankruptcy. And then it’s like: Really, Mom, you’re going to take all my money?

 

Bo: [00:10:48] That is the worst. And listen, I have never once, ever played a game of Monopoly where the banker did not cheat. Look, I get it. Being the banker sucks. It’s a lot of extra work for no reason. No one volunteers to be the banker unless they straight up have a plan to embezzle from the bank, which typically involves stashing extra hundreds under their legs. Right. Period. And by the way, one message to all you monopoly bankers out there: I’ve got OCD. Keep the damn bank bills organized, please.

 

Ryan: [00:11:32] You may not like cheating by the banker, but what about all the cheating by literally every other player? Like, Hey, sis, you move seven spaces, not six. Like you landed on Boardwalk and you owe 2000. Stop cheating. We see you. We all see you

 

Bo: [00:11:46] Well, how about this? How about when you get set to jail and every other players reaction is to laugh at you? Oh, if pisses me off. I mean, it’s like I’m an hour into this damn game. I haven’t even made it around the board once yet. I’m yet to pass “Go.” I’m yet to collect $200. I keep landing on, go to jail and my brother won’t sell me his get out of jail free card, and everyone thinks it’s real funny. Well, you know what? F*** all of you.

 

Ryan: [00:12:19] Wow. This is, like, the most heated I’ve seen you, and it’s Monopoly. You know what I hate when unfair alliances form. You know, that’s. That’s really the stuff that. That will ruin a holiday real fast. Yo, Grandma and Grandpa, stop bailing each other out. Stop selling all our properties for cheap. You can’t write each other IOUs. You know this isn’t fair.

 

Bo: [00:12:41] Yeah. And how Oh, how about this? How about how literally every single person playing apparently has a different interpretation of free parking? OK Free parking is not a thing. When you land on free parking, nothing happens, period. You don’t get to take a bunch of money from the bank, you morons, because you landed on free parking. It doesn’t mean anything.

 

Ryan: [00:13:09] You park for free.

 

Bo: [00:13:11] Exactly.

 

Ryan: [00:13:14] That makes me think of something else that I hate. I could probably just shit on Monopoly for, you know, the rest of the weekend. Probably. But what I hate is when someone takes out the rulebook to prove some ridiculous rule that you’ve never even heard of. Like the fact that the banker is supposed to auction off properties if somebody lands on one, but doesn’t want to buy it. No one plays that way. Sorry, this is my house. And the house rules say nope.

 

Bo: [00:13:39] Nice. Another one of my least favorite things, and this happens all the time when we play at home, when someone is playing, pulls out the game literally just for revenge. I mean, you got to see it, man. It’s like there are consequences when you force someone to be the thimble. All right? You don’t know when it will happen. You don’t know how it will happen. But ultimately, they’re going to make you pay and they will relish every moment of your misery once they screw you over in Monopoly.

 

Ryan: [00:14:12] Oh, for sure. I mean, here’s something else that happens every game. Somebody lands on your property, doesn’t pay your rent, and then claims they don’t have to because you weren’t paying attention. It’s like I was in the bathroom. Just pay me my money.

 

Bo: [00:14:26] And of course, oh, my God, I literally could do this all day long. But one of the all time worst is when the inevitable, sore loser storms off and just quits six damn hours into the game.

 

Ryan: [00:14:43] That’s me, actually.

 

Bo: [00:14:44] I mean, I can picture now my little brother loses his stake in the railroads, throws all his money on the board, storms out of the room. Well, you know what? Sorry, bro. This is Monopoly. You can’t get out that easy. There is at least 12 more hours left in this game.

 

Ryan: [00:15:02] Which is the number one reason why I hate Monopoly. The game just never ends. Why won’t it just end already?

 

Bo: [00:15:11] Well, finally, I’ll leave it with this. All right. There’s only one thing worse, but the fact that the game never ends is when it actually finally does end. And you don’t just lose. OK, no. You fail miserably. You’ve mortgaged all your properties and then you have to live the rest of your life in humiliation and disgrace due to a board game. F*** my life. So basically, I believe what I’m trying to say is this. I’m no fan of Ticketmaster, but I’d rather drop ten grand for a Taylor Swift ticket than ever play another game of Monopoly.

 

Ryan: [00:15:51] It’s fair enough. I will say, though, I love live music and this whole Taylor Swift Ticketmaster situation really makes me miss the days where you could just see a major touring act without having to sell a kidney.

 

Bo: [00:16:03] Well, I mean, I like live music, too, but I’m not the concert-goer you are, but … it actually kind of does make me curious, what your first concert you ever went to.

 

Ryan: [00:16:15] My first concert I ever went to was and not including like, some, like, free music in the park by, like, a local band, but like.

 

Bo: [00:16:23] A concert concert.

 

Ryan: [00:16:24] Concert, concert. I was eight years old and I saw Hanson.

 

Bo: [00:16:31] Oh.

 

Ryan: [00:16:33] And it was impossible to hear. I remember it was impossible to hear any music over the sonic boom of pre-teen excitement.

 

Bo: [00:16:39] Hanson Nice. Let me tell you a little something about Hanson, OK. First of all, that song “MMMBop,” [is] easily one of the greatest guilty pleasures of my life. Because if I’m in the car and “MMMBop” comes on the radio, I mean, just warning to anyone that may be in the car with me, I am singing that at the top of my lungs and I will probably continue going, “MMMBop,do-be-dop-dop-do-da” for the whole rest of the day and maybe the next day. It’s it’s kind of like that. That Chumbawumba song. “Tub thumping.”

 

Ryan: [00:17:18] Tub thumping.

 

Bo: [00:17:18] It’s like, “I get knocked down, but I get up …,” you know, Yes, rationally, I know that song sucks. But I’m going to keep singing it for days and days, probably.

 

Ryan: [00:17:30] “You take a whiskey, drink, you take a vodka drink.”

 

Bo: [00:17:34] Hahaha. So Hanson. First concert. Were they like your musical idols back then?

 

Ryan: [00:17:39] Definitely not. I mean, I liked Hanson. I was. I was about their age when that all came out in the nineties, and it was great. I wanted to be a pop star, so that was, that was cool. But I was, I was a pretty weird kid. I was actually obsessed with the Beatles. So I remember my parents kind of let me do whatever I wanted to do as a kid. I was I was “that kid.” You know, like, hey, like, I don’t really want to do, like, math right now, like in elementary school, I don’t want to do math. I want to do art. And the teachers, like Ok. And so, like, I would just like, do what I wanted to do. And I don’t know why people just, like, empowered me to do that. It was pretty weird. But one day, after listening to “The Magical Mystery Tour” at age six, not understanding any of these LSD references, I’m like, You know what? I want to paint a mural of of the Beatles on my wall, and I want to do one, you know, like “Help,” one like, you know, like “Magical Mystery Tour,” one “Yellow Submarine Era.” Like different, different murals all over the place. And I just took some paint and it was terrible. It was so, so bad.

 

Bo: [00:18:49] Grade F.

 

Ryan: [00:18:52] But I did it. And I just remember, like listening to those albums and being like, This is this is the good stuff right here.

 

Bo: [00:19:00] Fair enough. I think a lot of people apparently agree with you.

 

Ryan: [00:19:05] Yeah. I mean, what about you? Would you remember your first concert?

 

Bo: [00:19:08] Oh, I absolutely remember my first concert. And and the artist remembers my first concert too. It was actually, no … who else but Bocephus, Hank Williams Junior. Now, let me let me set the stage. Now, you have to understand, I grew up in Athens, Georgia. My dad worked for the University of Georgia when I was a kid. So, but when I was ten, we moved to this little tiny town in the extreme southwest corner of Georgia called Pelham, Georgia P-e-l-h-a-m. Maybe three, 4000 people, [in] the whole town, and Pelham had this little theater there called the Park Plaza Civic Center, where you could fit, I don’t know, maybe 300 people inside there. And this was well before Hank Williams Jr. started winning Country Music of the Artist of the Year Awards, that kind of thing. He had not broken big yet or anything. And really the only thing we knew about him is he was Hank Williams son, but no one even knew what to expect. So I remember the night my parents are going to take me to go see Hank Williams Jr. And it’s a major thunderstorm going on out there. So we walk in, and we literally lived across the street from this Park Plaza Civic Center walk in, and there’s maybe a dozen people have braved the elements to to see Hank Williams Jr. And so he comes out, you could tell like, oh, he’s just totally not into this. He plays about, I don’t know, I’m going to say maybe 3 minutes when there’s a huge lightning flash and all the power goes out.

 

Ryan: [00:20:44] Oh my God.

 

Bo: [00:20:45] So that’s end of the concert. And so then it’s like within a couple of years he becomes very popular, very famous, like I said, becomes Country Music Artist of the Year multi years in a row. Is like a huge star at this point. And I remember on a Country Music Television seeing an interview with him and they ask him the question, what is the worst place you ever played? He goes, Oh, that’s easy. Pelham, Georgia.

 

Ryan: [00:21:13] Oh, no.

 

Bo: [00:21:14] I thought, yes, I was there. So that was my first ever concert.

 

Ryan: [00:21:21] That’s pretty good.

 

Bo: [00:21:22] I mean, I have to say, for both me and Hank Williams, Jr, very much a life changing experience.

 

Ryan: [00:21:30] You mean? Kind of like how our listeners can change their lives by hiring us for their entertainment legal needs.

 

Bo: [00:21:35] Exactly. Ryan Which is why, of course, we’re the most successful lawyers in the history of human jurisprudence … Allegedly.

 

Ryan: [00:21:46] That’s our show for today. Thanks for listening to the legal mastery of the highly intelligent and easily most attractive true legal outlawyers in Savannah. And remember, the only lawyers in the free world who have never lost a single case…

 

Bo: [00:21:58] Allegedly.

 

Ryan: [00:21:59] To continue to receive free edge-of-your-seat legal antidotes mind blowing takes on hot legal topics, s general master-class in Awesomeness, please head over to bowenschmidt.com/podcast and look …

 

Bo: [00:22:10] Dude, enough’s enough, people. Are you not tired of Ryan’s lectures at this point? Just hit the subscribe button.

 

Allegedly… with Bo and Ryan Podcast E8| Transcript