E.H. "Boss" Crump

Nova, take us in with the triumphant return of Agony's Corner.

Agony's Corner, or as I like to call it,

Ailments Parade.

So my injury today is the dumbest possible one, but it's very on brand for me.

I discovered a video game called Parcel Simulator.

Typical Nova game.

This is like me trying to make fun of you.

Let me finish.

Parcel Simulator.

Parcel Simulator, in which you have to sort parcels across a number of criteria.

And I want it noted that I've done several hundred and never gotten a single one wrong.

However, it's a lot like Papers Please, except without any of the story.

And it's just the story is

you are

the parcel sorcery anyway.

So I played this game for some period of time, which I'm not going to disclose, but so hard that I realized that when I had to stop playing it in order to record a podcast with my friends, I had given myself actually quite serious eye strain.

So now my eyes don't work good.

Okay.

I was wondering why you're wearing two eye patches.

on the recording.

No,

it's genuinely uncomfortable.

And the reason why is because I have been staring at

purely fictive parcel labeling conventions.

Have you considered calling fictional OSHA?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like maybe at this point, this is a workplace safety issue.

Point of order.

I would call that Phocia.

Phoscia.

Facia is pretty good.

When you said you were playing Parcel Simulator, I was expecting the plot to be the plot of the Velvet Underground song, The Gift,

where a man mails himself to his girlfriend which would be a pretty cool video game i think you're just in the box you're you're simulating being a parcel

i take an issue with the title of the game being parcel simulator you're a parcel sorting simulator that's true if you're a parcel simulator i'm i'm simulating being a parcel i'm being folded up into a box i'm being taped clothes i'm being jostled in the mail actually

Here's the thing, Maddie, I think you might have struck a little gold here into the video game idea because I think parcel Simulator combines a logistics management game with tactical espionage action because you have to get, you have, you start at home and you have to get yourself, you have to, you actually have to do everything and you have to sneak yourself as a parcel into the mail.

Yeah, they need to avoid getting

to get not and then not stabbed in the head with a pair of scissors when your, when your cheating girlfriend opens the package when you arrive.

That is what that GCHQ guy was trying to do.

It just didn't really come off at all.

Yeah, I mean, that's what all those guys that worked at NEOM were actually trying to do.

They just kept getting hurt.

Anyways,

that's just a little like insight, a little vignette into what I spend my days when I'm not working doing.

I think it would be fair if you just did the rest of the episode with your eyes closed.

It's totally fine.

I got the notes because hello, hello, hello.

And welcome to another free episode.

of No Gods, No Mayors.

I'm your mayor for this episode, Maddie Lepchansky.

I'm joined as ever by my deputy mayors, my deputy friends, my deputy family, even.

November Kelly and Riley Quinn.

Good morning, girls.

How are you?

Good morning.

First, today we have our opening segment, of course, which we keep not mentioning the actual name of as like a joke, but it is not called Item Parade.

It is not called Municipal Rodeo.

It is not called the Hiawa Experience, though these are all perfectly fine names.

Since time immemorial, it has been called and will forever be called Municipal Roundup.

Sam, give me a Hiaw.

I'm not letting letting you reassert this.

It's called Things That Happened in City Government.

It's called Items Thermidor, apparently, according to whatever Riley put the notes here.

That's what I called it.

I was debating between Items Foster, Items Thermidor, Items Rockefeller.

Items Thermidor is a Bioshock character, but from like Bioshock 2, I don't know if you remember that.

Items Rockefeller is this segment, but on our companion

podcast about governors.

Yeah, no governors, no matters, which will be coming soon to a podcast in medium near you.

Yeah, when we get the whole like pots in American network out of just this, we do one about presidents, we do it about our governors.

Every level of government.

We do one about your family.

You write in and we you tell us about your dad that you hate.

We just do an episode about him.

No precincts, captains, no mans, no, no gods.

No, fuck.

No gods, no.

No precinct captains.

There we go.

No gods, no priests.

Your parish is turns out though, the thing holding it together was not, in fact, the steady release of of uh carbon monoxide gas into my apartment it was my eyes and now that i don't have good functioning eyes i can't tell jokes anymore

so i'd like i'd like to posit two things please just before we go into items thermidor which i'm calling items thermidor okay number one i think it's high time for us to if he's okay with it to ask sam if he just if he has it to hand if he has some agonies music

because i realized yeah sam can you give me the first three bars of the eel's hospital foods, please?

I was going to say, can you give me the first bit of the chorus of the song Agony from Into the Woods?

Agony

beyond power of speech.

I was putting away some laundry when I realized Sam is our Paul Schaefer.

That's that's true.

That is true.

That's pretty cool.

I was saying this as well, that like

earlier, what I'm doing in my life, amongst other things, amongst giving myself ice train, simulating parcels, is

trying to maximize the number of podcasts in my life that I have someone named Sam that I can tell to do things.

I'm not sure why it's shaken out that way, but like...

Trash Utra is shortly to have a Sam.

Well There's Your Problem is shortly to have a Sam.

And of course, No Gods, No Mares has our beloved Sam.

So we are Sam maxing.

Sorry, do you?

Are these all three separate Sams?

Yeah, three Sams.

And I mean, I'm hoping for at least four.

Look, here's the funny thing: is that even though we are going to do this, Sam hasn't yet received the email saying, okay, like, come work with us.

So if he listens to no gods no mares, this is how he finds out.

Getting your job acceptance from a podcaster that is not the podcast that you asks to work for is about the level of like personnel management that I think we're capable of.

Yeah, that usually only happens in like the first Trump term.

That's when that kind of thing would usually happen.

Listening, listening to like all in and being like, I'm the Secretary of Energy now, I guess.

Huh?

All right.

All right.

Let's get into the

items.

I would love to hear it.

I put the items together.

Riley's our sort of item

sommelier today.

So, Riley.

Sorry, do you have a longer item list?

Mine doesn't have the prices on it because I'm a girl.

I asked that one time.

You asked that one time in my hearing.

And here's the thing.

They insert a tape recorder in the skull during homosexual surgery to paraphrase a tweet that I really, really like.

And that means that even when you think I'm drunk, I will remember the embarrassing things that you say and do and then repeat them back to you as an inopportune moment.

Okay, well, we do have a longer item list, actually, but it was too long for the episode because there were so many items.

I just have one question.

We have it.

I have one question.

Look, November.

When this happened, where they put the recorder, and was the ski dude there?

Yeah, actually.

Yeah.

The ski dude does a lot of like, because skiing is like his hobby, of course, and that's a hobby that's beloved of like people like surgeons.

So yeah, I think the ski dude was part of the like, you know, operating team.

Great recovery.

Riley, take us away.

All right.

So

I think we need another kiosk just to like remind us.

Yeah.

Hya.

Hya.

So, I have, I, this is all old friends.

We have so many amazing like

items in the Blue Sky DMs, and we would have been using them more, but we've been having really long mayors or lots of mayoral stuff has been happening to people that we already follow.

You've been learning Portuguese.

Like, we've all had stuff going on.

Yeah.

So, there's Randall, or sorry, Randow Wedow

in London, Kentucky.

That's Randall Weddell in Portuguese, I assume.

Old friend Randall Weddell.

Our old friend Randall Weddell, he's embattled.

I'm afraid he has become fully embattled.

Before he could do his chomo parade?

Oh, he's being sued by someone else now, too.

He's out defending a third.

He's defending a third lawsuit.

And I don't think we picked this up at the time we first reported on his initial lawsuit, but his lawyer is now also named in the lawsuit.

How badly do you have to hasego to sue him and his lawyer?

Yeah, so the London City Council on Monday, so this was on early August, levied several allegations against Mayor Randall Weddell as it sought to remove him from office.

And I need to tell you right now, the thing that is really exciting to me is that based on the time zone difference and based on the news updates I read today, while we are recording this podcast, Randall Weddell will be impeached.

Like while we're doing it.

Whoa, okay.

Can we, can we, like, get like some prayers up just like in the room?

Could it, do they call it a spirit bomb?

Yeah, we need

to be a little bit more like a baby.

Every prayer warrior on

this municipal earth, let's get a municipal mayoral spirit bomb going for our old friend and completely innocent man, Randall Weddell, who's never done anything wrong except for all the stuff he did.

Yeah, as far as I know, the only thing he's ever done is try to organize an anti-child molester parade in order to embarrass his political opponents whom he accused of being child molesters.

One of which, who is a pedophile, but to be fair.

One of whom was, yeah.

To be fair.

Yeah.

I'm going to try to find the text of like the prayers that Melanie Mack's followers give to her that we're going to do for Randall Lettle.

I forgot that he was right.

In all of this confusion, in all the time we've been following him, I forgot that one of the guys he was accusing of being a pedophile was.

Well, he was saying a pedophile and then like the brother of the the pedophile, who must be some sort of pedophile clan is what he called that.

Sure, as like a kind of like hereditary quality or something.

Sure.

Yeah, I don't think you can say, I don't think you can say the, I think the second thing follows from the first.

So any case, yeah.

So among the allegations were that Weddell lives outside London, Kentucky city limits, improperly removed and appointed city employees, misused police resources for personal means, mishandled city funds.

And also there was these political scandal where Andy Bashir did roadworks for his like trucking company in exchange for political donations, allegedly.

Weddell has also had all of the defamation lawsuits that he filed against London, Kentucky residents thrown out.

They've all been dismissed.

I see here that he made those lawsuits because of negative Facebook posts about him, which is one of the funnier reasons to sue someone as well.

Wouldn't you know it?

Those weren't meritorious.

So, Weddell said to Lex 18, a Fox Doca Fox affiliate on Friday, I'm not guilty of anything they're accusing of.

Now, I may not be a perfect human, but I'm not guilty of breaking any laws since I've been in office.

I hate that this is happening to London.

I hope that we would not go this far into the politics, but we're here and we got to get through them.

Probably's nerfed, Your Honor.

I love that he, the specificity of I am not guilty of breaking any laws since I've been in office.

Yeah, oh, yeah, that's a that's one very targeted sentence.

Deciding my own statute of limitations just to get out ahead of it to be like, well, you know, I certainly haven't committed any crimes while I've been in this job.

Yeah, I can't believe people are playing politics at me, the mayor.

Yeah,

we would not go this far into the politics.

Like the politics is a kind of location.

I guess that's why it's the swamp, you know?

I agree, right?

Like Randall Weddell is doing a lot of very important work.

And whether that is, you know, he had to personally take over the police department for example apparently and like if you take him too far into the politics then you know even if you're here you're gonna get through them then i hate that this is happening to london yeah he was he was like clicking and dragging over all of the cops from an isometric perspective and then right clicking on the houses of his enemies to send them all there

yeah

something you're doing

okay boss

Yeah, you would hate to find out that you're being controlled in like a kind of RTS situation, you know?

So again, there's going to be a process in this.

A lot of the information doesn't meet the statute for removal, and there's a lot of outlandish claims in there.

The mayor then called for unity with this, within the city.

We need to be about the people's business that voted us in and stop these petty politics, the division and the hate that's been going on.

I love, yo, mayor is a protected class.

We talked about it.

I love a call for unity.

It's the kind of mayoral you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, right?

Like you wouldn't hit a guy with a sage, would you?

Anytime you start talking about like, yeah, healing the divide or whatever,

to like stop the division, stop the hate, it means

please stop investigating the fact that I tried to do a Zerg rush of cops on someone else.

I was to say, I want to heal the divide, and the divide I'm referring to is the wall of the prison they've put me in for all the crimes I committed.

So the motion to continue with the accusations passed only one dissenting vote and the dissenting voter then like like resigned from the council.

And so, and then they had to, they argued with it quite a bit.

Weddell tried to call a motion to dismiss the motion to dismiss him, but no one else showed up except for him.

And so it was ruled out of order.

So it was a two-minute long council meeting with only Randall Weddell in the chamber.

I know so much about London, Kentucky local politics now, and I didn't expect that would happen.

We're going to have to embed you soon, I think.

I think we're just going to send you there.

So he's, like I say, he is currently right now, like he's right now pacing around outside the council chamber rehearsing his speech, his like, don't impeach me speech, right while we're recording this.

That is what he's doing.

I hope that your first child is a masculine child.

Your honor.

He's going to walk in expecting to get made, and then the council chamber is just empty.

He's going to be a made mayor?

So the other thing is, he's being sued by one of the police officers who apparently like, don't, don't left-click on me.

Yeah, don't left-click on me.

And if you must, don't keep doing it to see what my dialogues are.

Those aren't for you.

A former London police officer.

A former London police officer is taking the mayor and the city to court, accusing them of defamation and retaliation.

This is the third defamation lawsuit in 2025 that names Randall Ledell.

Jared Hale was hired by the London Police Department in December 2021 and resigned in March 2025 after the shooting of Doug Harless.

An emotion filed on Thursday, August 14th claims that he had no choice.

According to court documents, Hale was dispatched to Taylor Drive on Christmas Eve Eve, 2024, for what would eventually be known known as the start of the chain of events that led to the shooting of doug harless wait wait wait wait wait hold on hold on randall weddell made this cop made this cop like shoot a guy allegedly no it's that randall weddell then accused him of shooting the guy but it then turns out that he wasn't there or at least that's as i understand it is randall weddle the cop shot a guy and then randall weddell accused the wrong cop of shooting a guy randall weddell like promoted a podcast a london London, Kentucky local conspiracy theory podcast that like alleged that he was involved.

And mostly I'm reading this.

It's very confusing.

The payoff for this really is just the next name I'm about to say.

I see it.

Let's hear it.

Court, thank you.

Yep.

Maddie, please don't look.

I want you to hear this with fresh eyes.

It's great because I've got eye strained from playing too much envelope simulator.

Uh-huh.

Listen, envelope simulator has a lot of distinct nuances that make it, it's not comparable.

Okay.

I'm playing as uh sam yordy in envelope simulator 2025

when when in parcel simulator you can actually unlock smaller envelopes as like a riley what's the name please okay i'm gonna tell you this so this is actually another article stolen weed eater case tied to fatal london police shooting ends in plea deal so this is where so this is the crime that um uh he was investigating okay just before midnight uh doug harlos was allegedly shot and killed by london police as they investigated a search warrant as details began to emerge community members began questioning if they had the right address As earlier that day, officers arrested 49-year-old Hobert Buttery.

So, so wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Hobert Buttery.

A guy got shot, like, to death over

a weed eater stolen by Hobart Buttery.

Hobart?

I'm afraid it's tragic, but the specifics of it are very bizarre.

And now the mayor is involved.

Yeah.

Yes, the mayor is involved because of a podcast.

Because of Hobart Buttery's weed eater theft.

Well, it wasn't Hobert Buttery's weed eater.

Like, if it was Hobert Buttery's weed eater, this whole thing never would have happened.

See, now I only know this device.

I was a weed eater.

I only know this device is a weed whacker.

So just for the listeners who were confused by the term weed eater.

I've also never heard the term weed eater.

Yeah, weed whacker, we're all familiar with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But whatever it was, Hobart Buttery stole it.

The cops, I guess, maybe like went to investigate and then shot a completely unrelated guy.

Great.

And that appears to be what happened.

And now Weddell is getting sued again.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Tremendous.

I think it's hard not to see the American Operation Gladio in all of this.

Yeah.

Them trying to do like a limited hangout in the kind of years of lead in order to prevent him from

like revealing the Chomos.

Also, Eddington is a documentary, I think.

I still got to watch it, but that's maybe a Christmas kind of episode to talk about that movie.

You You know what we need?

Yeah.

I think, well, I have another movie episode that we're going to talk about soon because I have more items.

I'm sorry, I have so many items today, but the items have been great.

It's okay.

So this is the Randall Weddell situation.

I'm going to conclude that by saying the Cohen brothers need to stop making movies separately and reunite to do the Randall Weddell story.

I agree.

I've never been more certain of anything in my life.

That's why you need both brothers as one brother brings the...

the sort of Hobart butteryness.

Yeah.

And the other one brings the kind of like fatal shooting.

Yes.

I know both of you listen, Joel and Ethan.

I know you're listening.

I know you're at that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, Eric, you might have been wondering, hey, a bunch of Eric Adams stuff happened here the last week.

Why are you talking about Hobart buttery?

And you know what?

You're right.

Why are you talking about hotel bar butter?

Yeah.

You know what else is buttery sometimes is a lovely bag of sour cream potato juice.

Uh-huh.

Well,

yes, please.

I was just going to say, me and Riley talked about the chips on last week's Trash Future.

I will talk about it again.

And we will talk about it again because it is such a no-gods, no mirrors kind of event that.

Yeah, it's just

the short and long of it is that Winnie Greco, who is an Eric Adams campaign surrogate fundraiser.

We've talked about her.

Yeah, we've talked about her in the second part of the Eric Adams episode with Alex Press, but it was like she was involved in a straw donor scam and at the New World Mullen Fleshing.

She is like currently Eric Adams's uh like outreach person to the asian american community here in new york and she tried to give a uh real ass reporter katie honan a uh from a website called the city um which is a non a great non-profit local news source uh uh that she tried to give katie honin a uh 160 in an envelope inside of a bag of her sour cream and potato chips that's so little money and then claimed that it was a common like well she

well apparently the new york times had been seeing it happening for months and And it was like, oh, it's no big deal.

It's like a, it's like a culture clash thing.

It's a culture clash

because

it's like, oh, like Chinese, like reporters from Chinese language outlets always get handed an envelope with $50 in it for coming to events.

And it's like, well, that's not good.

I understand like maybe culturally that's a thing that happens elsewhere, but like, perhaps you are operating as journalists in America, so you should follow the ethical code of conduct here.

I thought kind of the New York Times seeing the red envelope and be like, got it.

It's a Chinese thing makes it not bribery, you know, which basically was what Winnie Greco said.

Yes.

Albeit in, I think, possibly the funniest way,

which was to call them after the facts

to say, apologize profusely.

Yeah, we got the quote here.

I made a mistake.

She said, I'm so sorry.

It's a culture thing.

I don't know.

I don't understand.

I'm so sorry.

I feel so bad right now.

I'm so sorry, honey.

And then she called back.

She called the city back and said, can we forget about this?

I try to be a good person.

Please, please, please don't do in the news nothing about me.

I just wanted to be her friend.

I just wanted to have one good friend.

It's nothing.

Her attorney then said, I can see how this looks strange.

Literally, because her attorney's been quoted like three times, and every time he's opened with some variation of the phrase, I can see how this looks strange.

So this looks, hey, Your Honor, this is going to look a lot weirder than it is.

Look, here's the thing.

Winnie Grico was also quoted as saying, I'm not guilty of anything they're accusing me of.

I'm not a perfect human, but I'm not guilty of breaking any laws since I've been in office.

I hate that this happens to me.

Last ate a bag of chips.

I have not committed any crimes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do like just love also how like Winnie Grico was absolutely like, she was defended for a while, but she's become too much of a liability.

And Eric Adams is just like, I've never met this woman before in my life.

Dropped her.

I love the phrase, it's a culture thing, where it's like, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

You know, like the Eric Adams trans outreach coordinator, just giving a reporter from the city a shitload of Eastrogen and Poppers and being like,

I was just being friendly.

It's like, it's like cultural.

It's a cultural thing.

Yeah.

I just wanted to have like one friend.

Honey?

Look, Winnie Grico was doing it for the culture, okay?

I just like, I also love how, like, just absolutely rushed and shitty and panicked all of the Eric Adams bribery shit has been the whole time.

$140 in a bag of chips.

Hey, November, $160.

They're all living in uncut gems to talk about more movies made by brothers.

They are living in uncut gems.

What's the funniest item you can buy with $160?

You continue this.

I'll look into this in my own time.

Okay.

Okay.

I can buy one of the shoes with the eyeballs on the side.

I can buy one Adidas Sam Smith shoe.

One.

I'm going to neimanmarcus.com and I'm going to accessories and I'm sourcing by a very specific price range.

What's your price here?

Between $159 and $161 thereabouts.

Anything in there?

I'm writing chips into the

field.

Yeah.

Let me see.

What wine could you buy for $160?

Look up up money, how much stuff costs?

I'll take us to the next Eric Items news, which is another staff.

Excuse me?

Okay.

Do you think it's time for Hall Caesar to get a little name change?

Do you think it's not cool to call him Eric Items?

Well, of course it is, but I'm still going to change the name of the name.

It's not called Eric Items.

I'm going to kill myself.

Anyways,

another staff.

I'm just like dropping a cool $160 on this quilted leather zip card case, which looks like absolute ass.

Oh, boy.

I'm paying for it in chip bags as well.

We have one.

One chip bag.

Do you want to turn to Jesse Hamilton?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He left his

staff returned defendant, Jesse Hamilton, left his job handling city leases at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services

this last Thursday.

Oh, yeah, following an indictment.

Still mayor.

Yeah.

Adam said, I wish him the best, calling him only a former employee.

I forgot he's still mayor of New York.

Yeah.

So the first deputy mayor, Randy Mashro, who was appointed to the position in March after other deputies resigned in protest, said he didn't want to, quote, dwell on the past.

He referred to the accusations as ancient history, even though prosecutors say the alleged criminal behavior took place in 2024.

Well, B C or I D.

I mean, because one of those actually would be ancient history.

It took place in the middle kingdom of Egypt.

We found this like red figure Kylix that shows like a local reporter being handed a bag of chips with some drugs.

Let's not talk about what Pepe II did right now.

I'm not interested.

Riley has found a $160 bottle of Cab Sav in a three-liter box.

It's a box OY.

$160 for three liter.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

Luxury goon.

The luxury.

We're not familiar with goon in this context.

Yeah.

You know, it's a vague wine.

Australians.

Eric item.

Eric item.

We got one more Eric item, which is a big one.

I love the Ingrid Lewis Martin one.

It's so funny.

Can I do it?

Can I do it?

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry.

I'm just going to give us a little context for Ingrid Lewis Martin if you do not remember her, because I think we talked about her in the bonus second Eric Adams episode.

She was, she's like Eric Adams's like right-hand woman for years and years and years.

She calls herself like the lioness of City Hall.

She has a painting of her with a lion behind her own desk.

She is cool as hell.

She is so indictable.

It's crazy.

And she is the person that basically like behind the scenes has been running the show for Adams,

let's say, alleged crime-wise for a long time, Riley.

So basically, here's the deal.

Ingrid Lewis Martin right now is currently being prosecuted.

Like, she's now being parpwalked, essentially, by the DA and has been indicted yesterday on influence peddling charges, or I believe she was indicted yesterday on influence peddling charges.

Her attorney disparaged the seriousness of these charges, saying her so-called her only so-called offense was fulfilling her duty, helping fellow citizens navigate the city's outdated bureaucracy.

At no point did she receive a single dollar or personal benefit for her assistance.

This is not justice.

She was just trying to make friends.

She was was just trying to make friends.

You know what?

There's nothing in the news about this.

She is from a culture, and therefore this is a cultural thing.

And it's a culture clash again.

Culture clash.

Culture clash.

Culture clash.

So basically,

the funny thing is, here's the amazing thing.

Ingrid Lewis Martin, the thing at the center of this right now, one of the big things at the center of this is the remodeling of McGinnis, I believe, Boulevard, Maddie?

McGinnis Boulevard.

I think it's McGinnis Boulevard, which is a very dangerous, a notably dangerous street.

It is, it is a dangerous street.

It is one that I believe turns into the Pulaski Bridge in Greenpoint.

Yes.

And so it is like, it is a traffic, it's insane.

And because it's also like, it's off a drawbridge.

There's a big bike lane.

It's heavily trafficked.

It goes through a really

heavily trafficked part of a neighborhood.

It's, yeah, it's a, it is like a traffic nightmare.

It's dangerous.

And like people, like cyclists are getting killed in it like constantly.

However, also the studio of a pair of wealthy movie executives and Eric Adams donors, the Argento siblings, the Argentos,

their studio is on McGinnis and they don't want it changed.

So they oppose this thing, the road diet, that would reduce traffic lanes on McGinnis Boulevard, which is used by their company.

This put the siblings at odds with advocates who'd fiercely push for a redesign of this thoroughfare.

So what were they?

Yeah, I want to be able to see a cyclist get killed looking out of my window anytime, day or night.

How do you think I'm going to get the inspiration of what movies to fund?

So basically, here's what, so Ingrid Lewis Martin blocked this redesign.

So here's what she was given.

Prosecutors say the sibling owners of Broadway Stages got Ingrid Lewis Martin a role on the TV show Godfather of Harlem as part of a bundle of gifts in exchange for scaling back a bike lane project.

Outstanding.

These people, all of the bribery is so low stakes.

She got a cameo in a TV show that I've never heard of.

Yeah.

It's like, I'm going to be famous, maybe.

Yeah.

Thank you.

It was, she's more famous as a politician or like a civil servant.

So thank you.

It was everything.

She texted the siblings.

The indictment said in the months that followed, she texted Tony Argento that she said she wanted to appear on TV again, this time as a cameo of the show Blue Bloods.

Oh my God.

That's a real show.

I have a detail here, which is a real like Wikipedia formatting thing, which is on the Wikipedia page for Broadway Stages, which is Tony Argento's company.

They have all the usual headings of like, here's what they do, here's the stuff that they film there.

And then they have

the section, criminal indictments by Manhattan District Attorney, but that's italicized, which makes it sound like the title of a movie or a TV series.

And I really like watching criminal indictments by Manhattan District Attorney.

That would be a really smart thing to do, right?

Is they could SEO, they could SEO their way out of trouble and just be like, what do you mean?

It's a movie we made.

It's a movie we made starring Ingrid Lewis Martin as Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

She was paid $806.31

to cameo in Godfather of Harlem.

So John, John Ciafone, a lawyer for the Argentos, said Broadway stages had no hand in hiring production staff or actors on anything that produced on their stages.

He suggested the siblings may have connected Lewis Martin to Ray Quinlan, but the producer of Godfather of Harlem.

Maybe a recommendation, but no good deed goes unpunished.

These people are so self-weapiest lawyers.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I was doing this quid pro quo out of the goodness of my heart.

I was doing this quid for the goodness of their quo.

So

I promise we're going to be done the item zone soon.

Items Thermidor will be complete soon, but there's just a little bit more.

Lewis Martin, of course, is not the first person close to Adams to score a job on the show filmed at the Broadway Stage's locations.

In 2020, Adams' awesome son, Jordan Coleman, served as actor Forrest Whitaker's personal assistant during the show's second season.

And Anthony Argento, Tony Argento's son, produced a zombie movie written by and starring Coleman, filmed at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island, which they bought and are using for shooting things.

Oh my god, I have to watch that.

I watched, we have, there's like a five-minute thing that we, that I will link in the show notes that is.

It's supposed to be a military base, and the whole time you're like, this is a prison.

They're in prison.

They're in prison.

here's the funny thing.

Because, Nova, as you mentioned earlier, Eric Adams is the mayor.

And so a lot of these quotes are coming from him going out and being like, I want to talk about my new garbage initiative or whatever.

And then a reporter being like, was your son in a zombie movie produced by Anthony Argento?

And he has to say that he has to answer that question from like the official podium.

Yeah.

And he says, I don't want to talk about ancient Sumer at the moment.

I'm busy.

So what he talked about.

So what he, again, he said, my son finds his own way.

My son's been working and finding jobs.

He hustles.

But what he really did was he was just, he was Forrest Whitaker's COVID paranoia shield.

So he basically just kept Forrest Whitaker stocked with like alcohol hand wipes and masks and stuff because he was so afraid of getting COVID, which makes 2020 makes sense.

Yeah.

Everybody had a weird COVID, but like.

I feel like Eric Adams' son had a really weird COVID.

You're just like, you know, just spraying hand sanitizer in Forrest Whittaker's direction.

Yeah.

I think you had a very lucrative COVID.

The movie Striking Back is a zombie thriller that stars Jordan Coleman as like a young black soldier who is in Marine training at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility.

It is produced by Roland Studios.

Yes.

It's produced by Roland Studios, a firm owned by Anthony Argento.

They say it only costs $10,000 and was shot entirely on location at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility.

So don't worry, we will be watching, of course, Striking Back, one of the most mayoral films ever made.

I'm sorry the items took so long.

These were wonderful items, beautiful, incredible items.

Each of them, a jewel in the no Gods, no mare's crown.

And I'm happy to have them.

I would like to take us now into the main event of the episode, a full half an hour into the show.

We are here to talk about Edward Hull Crump, known generally as E.H.

Crump or Boss Crump.

Yeah, you you wouldn't keep the hole would you no you two are never going to guess what century he was born in e hole crump if you will yeah if it's a if it's a mayor i'm doing is it shocking you know he was born in 1874 anyways great crazy maddie i i might as well oh yeah i might as well pick a fucking lucifo next i guess yeah i threatened to do so last episode and you got mad at me um

so he was the mayor of memphis tennessee where we all know about memphis tennessee right We can skip the context on that.

It's a former Confederate city.

There's a large black population, a big cotton industry.

Um, it was the site of race riots in the 1860s that led to the 14th Amendment and the Reconstruction Act being passed.

Memphis, Tennessee.

You've heard of it.

Um, not Egypt.

Not

some music occurs.

Yeah, right.

We'll get to that, actually.

So our guy Crump was born in 1874 in northern Mississippi, about an hour south of Memphis.

When he's four, his, his father is a planter and a former Confederate soldier, dies of yellow fever.

Crazily, this yellow fever outbreak was so severe in the area that Memphis was so depopulated that it was disincorporated for like 15 years.

So, wait, there are 15 years Memphis had no mayor because it just was like not a place.

There's 15 years that Memphis didn't exist.

They got rid of Memphis for a lot of weaklands.

There's like not enough Memphians, which I believe is the official Demon M, which is driving me crazy.

19th century mayor's son goes with his like

his friend whose dad owns a train, like a train company, to go make an autochrome in the abandoned Memphis.

Christ.

So

Crump and his mom and her two other children move in with her family.

He drops out of school, like 14 to work.

At the age of 19 in 1893, he moves to Memphis looking for work during the panic of 1893, which is at a point, the largest recession in U.S.

history.

Eventually, he finds work as a clerk.

at the Walter Goodman Cotton Company because people love to be a clerk at this time in history.

I don't know what a clerk is or does, but everybody's a clerk.

It's like a guy who's literate, right?

You get to do, it's like an email job.

You get to fill out like spreadsheets.

Yeah, I'm sick of these clerk PMC.

When I say PNC, I seem professional management clerk.

So yeah, people are on the telegraph being like, I'm so sick of this, the PMCs.

tapping it up.

So he's really ambitious and he starts frequenting Memphis's various social clubs and he tries to meet all the right people.

He's a very quick riser in like the business and politics community of Memphis.

And by 1902, he is a delegate to the Tennessee Democratic State Convention.

In fairness, the business and politics community of Memphis is like still ravaged by plagues at this point.

One guy limping around.

Yeah.

The business and politics community is one total person spread across like eight guys.

So Tennessee is essentially a one-party state at this time in history.

So he's like getting to the Democratic State Convention is a big deal.

He is also by 1902, the treasurer of the Woods Chickasaw Manufacturing Company, which is a carriage saddle firm.

He courts and marries a wealthy woman by the name of Bessie Bird McLean, who's a prominent socializer.

Yeah, I assume the courting went something like, do you know the saddle stitching is actually a technique used in certain like high-end leather goods?

And she said, that's a really nice harness you've got on.

I think the courting probably went like, hey, I'm alive.

Yeah, notice how I'm not like coughing up every organ in my body.

She was said to be one of the city's most beautiful and most sought-after women.

Again, there's like three of them at this point.

Yeah.

She is the daughter of Robert McLean, who is the vice president of the William R.

Moore Dry Goods Company.

You don't see a lot of dry goods anymore.

Yeah, people are, most goods are wet now.

It's unfortunately, you do.

It's just the William R.

Moore Dry Goods Company is the name of a bar in Memphis now.

Yeah,

I tried to buy, it's a real problem with Modernity today is that we don't sell dry goods anymore, and it's all what I like to call wet bads.

Yeah,

we're all the wet food, you know, like a spoiled cat.

Wet bads, wet bads, bads.

So, his father, his new father-in-law.

I'm gonna remember that when I like drown because of climate change, one of the last thoughts I'll have will be,

well, this is certainly what my good friend Massey calls wet bads.

It's quite wet, and it's very bad.

It's sort of a damn thing.

You can really use some dry goods right about now.

Oh, God.

I don't know why this is getting me.

I don't know why either, because it's a great joke.

It's the best joke I've ever told.

His new father-in-law loans Ed money to buy

the manufacturing company that he's working at, which he renames the E.H.

Crump Buggy and Harness Company.

So

he's a harness man.

Subtitle.

Did you know that saddle stitching.

Yeah, he's like, you know,

like every third guy in Berlin.

He's making his money on like harnesses.

Yeah, and he's walking around Memphis in a beautiful gimp gimp suit.

He's stuck himself.

Yeah.

Does the guy have like an Etsy or something?

I'm always in the market for harnesses.

Yeah.

Okay.

So in 1905, he makes it under the local Board of Public Works.

In 1907, he's appointed commissioner of the fire and police.

In 1909, he decides to run for mayor and he commissions a campaign song, which is called The Boss Crump Blues by this guy, WC Handy.

And it might be one of the first ever blues songs ever recorded.

I'm now thinking of the onion headline: White Man Enjoys, Causes the Blues.

It is literally like the song, it is released and recorded as Memphis Blues a couple years later, and it's one of the first ever blues songs that's like that exists in the record as a recorded piece of music.

So this is like us only knowing what pop music is in 100 years because of Kamala Harris being Brat.

Yes, essentially.

Oh my gosh.

He commissions Brat by W.C.

It says, it's so confusing to be a mayor.

Also, to be clear, I am still conceptualizing Memphis as a kind of like windswept hellscape at this point.

It's looking like the back end of threads.

So like I'm picturing kind of like

Memphis blues or boss crump blues playing out of a single loudspeaker echoing through the waists.

Yeah, and everybody's wearing beautiful stitched leather, full leather outfits.

Oh, so it's Mad Max then.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

The only remaining indust, but it's very good leather.

That's the thing.

It's beautiful saddle stitching.

Supple leather.

Oiled.

Beautifully stitched.

So Crump takes office and he converts the city government to a commission system.

Like the mafia?

Well, it's five commissioners that basically run everything

along with the mayor, like the mafia, the mayor fear.

There's public affairs and health, fire and police, streets, bridges, and mafia.

Yeah, the Gambinos,

the streets, bridges, and sewers.

Grounds and buildings.

He wages a brief war for publicity, like on vice, but he immediately backs off.

I mean, a lot of the output got really bad before the bankruptcy.

Yeah, you were saying, like the mob, but yes.

So he immediately backs off and he lets the gambling and prostitution underworld kind of run wide open.

And they all pay protection money to the city government

to let the mobile.

Like the mafia.

Like the mafia.

Like the mafia.

It must have been so frustrating for you, Maddie, when November and I were being like, like the mafia, when in the next paragraph, it was in fact like the mafia.

It's like, yeah, and guys, in two seconds, he's going to invent the mafia.

But the thing is, like, if communism is when there's two things, it turns out that the mafia is when there's five things.

That's my, that's my understanding of the mafia.

That's correct.

That's why, that's why conservatives don't like it when you show up, like a pentagram.

That's why they're afraid of pentagrams, because they think it's the sign that summons the mafia.

I'm sorry, do you mean a quintograph?

My quinquangle.

Still thinking about the quinquangle to this day.

Of course, of course.

It's been running through my brain.

So in 1909, Tennessee passes a prohibition law, but Crump doesn't really enforce it.

And in fact, a chart is the bootleggers' protection money.

Oh, southern politicians, my ex-husband has a story about

his grandfather running bootleg whiskey for QE Long.

Turns out all of those guys really liked whiskey and also making money off of whiskey.

Yeah.

I mean, who doesn't?

So a later, a police chief later testified that as much as $80,000, which is $2.8 million today, was contributed in a single year to the city from bootleggers, prostitution, gambling.

Crump used this money for God knows what, but he became very rich personally.

But he uses it basically.

Probably just because of his saddle research.

Probably because of the saddle stuff.

Yeah, weirdly, he was spending a lot of money on like leather conditioner and stuff.

He got really like hyper-focused on it.

In 1910, he sells his Boogie and Harness Company to focus on his

mafia running of the city.

Boss Crump is here and you can tell from the like gleam of leather and it's just he's just creaking

all three residents of memphis running scared boys we got to get our protection money together boss crump's gonna be here already oh no i'm blind he's already here

the shiniest cat

he was this was aside from the like this was the first leather man i'm sorry yeah yeah oh god look out it's america's shiniest mayor

i'm just like imagining like the silhouette of Daniel Plainview and there will be blood, but it's like all leather with one big zipper going all the way up to the top of the hat, including his head.

He can't do this to me.

Okay, here's my problem.

Here's my, okay, can I just tell you my problem with the mayoral gimp suit, if you're going to run the city this way?

What's your one problem with the mayoral gimp suit, Riley?

I got one problem.

I got one problem.

Okay, actually, I don't know very much about gimp suits.

So I need to know, do they often have feet?

do the gimp suits often have feet do you know i don't know actually don't i never looked at them

no no i don't know i i don't think so no okay so my problem i don't have a problem then anymore because i was gonna say where's how's he accessing his socks for all these bribes but well because because you're layering it with the boots right and then you're like that's why you have to invent the like side zip boot is so that you can like access your bribes quick just he's squeaking from the leather gleaming from the reflection of the shiny leather, and also the

clanging of the change in his boots.

Oh my God, I'm telling you

incredible.

He was, this is the most conspicuous mayor we've ever talked about.

Every time I'm the mayor, I'm like, I'm going to pick this guy from the 1800s.

Then we just generate arcane bits for an hour and a half.

It's like, yeah, yes, that is the business strategy.

It seems like it's quite successful.

One-third of the episodes of the show.

So Crump also, he uses all this money that he's made to build like a classic early 1900s political machine, right?

You know, the stuff we've talked about before.

James Michael Curly.

Yes, like a very curly-esque thing.

So he begins building power in the city and he's one of the only statewide Democrats to back black people having the vote and is even known to pay poll taxes to turn people out for him.

So like he is, he is no great champion of

universal suffrage or anything, which we'll get to later.

Like he's not a racist.

That's like, oh, hey, I can exploit these people.

Yeah, precisely.

And so his big thing as mayor and also he is simultaneously still the fire and police commissioner is to modernize and expand the fire department uh the whole thing ends up motorized under his watch and they get new fire houses um by all accounts everything actually seems to work pretty good in the city while he is mayor he steals but he works that's the thing about these political machine mayors if it's like yeah it works fine but not as well as it could because this there's because there's a mafia there's a mafia don basically running the whole thing yeah you know patronage kind kind of works.

Some people feel like they are listened to and then they stop working because the rest of everybody's like, hey, we're not being listened to.

So I actually found a monthly newsletter issued by the city of Memphis in 1913, which basically extols all the stuff the new commissioner form of government is able to get done.

And I found a bunch of really exciting stuff like how cotton is king and Memphis is the throne.

And also how the entire city...

Cotton sits in Memphis.

I get it.

The entire city is being like sprinkled.

Like they're putting in sprinklers.

What's it called?

The dog catchers have worked are the dog catchers at work on the various curves around the city.

The sanest 4th of July in the history of Memphis was celebrated.

The baby hospital was sane.

It was just like there wasn't anyone setting up fireworks and killing each other.

I think it used to be a lot rowdier.

The baby hospital was operated by the bachelors of Memphis, which resulted in babies being saved.

A thing I don't quite understand.

Doing a kierstama, like, you know, while, while, you know, Nigel Farrow shouts from the sidelines, right what have we done sprinkles

insanity uh baby hospital

i mean this all sounds pretty good though like he's doing dog catching he's he's responsible for the combination of the light gas and water utility uh the memphis one is still one of the largest combined municipal utilities in the u.s to this day it's like oh yeah we were founded by an extremely supply coated man called boss crump back in back in 1913.

also i want to go back to the baby hospital being operated by the bachelors of Memphis.

I find what that really means.

But I think it would, to me, what that suggests is that they were churning out an industrial quantity of two and a half men situations.

Did you find the cartoon?

There's an incredible cartoon where it's just...

I'm still opening it.

Okay, so there's just a cartoon, and it's just a man in a rocking chair.

And his sleeve says, old bachelor on it, and he's rocking a baby

in a bassinet.

And the bassinet says baby hospital.

Weird to get an old bachelor tattoo that go off, I guess.

Memphis's confirmed bachelors have opened a baby hospital.

Yeah.

And the bachelor is saying, gee, I never knew before how much fun it was to take care of a baby.

Maybe the bachelors are growing up a little bit.

Yeah, it's sweet.

So another thing, though, despite him being apparently so shiny and loud, he was responsible for some of the most aggressively enforced noise ordinances in the country.

Still continuing.

He can make noise.

You can't make noise because you can't afford leather that makes that kind of freaking.

He was really into like early 20th century broken windows.

Like he was really big into keeping the city clean of litter and like smells.

And he'd be really into like painting buildings and like fresh coats of paint all the time.

I know who this guy is now.

This is the menswear guy.

Not the menswear guy, but the like the genre of menswear guy who gets like Cordovan leather like loafers or something and is like, if I get like, if there is a a single stain or like, uh, like scratch or anything occurs to these, I will kill myself.

So I have to create a completely frictionless world in which all of this leather, it doesn't crease, it rolls, right?

Like, I know exactly what that guy says, because that guy says, if any of that happens, I will have to work harder at the No Gods, No Mayors podcast.

So we'll make more money so I can replace my shoes.

I was targeting you with the fact that Cordovan leather doesn't crease.

Okay, number one, that's exactly right it's cordovan leather doesn't crease um and i think that that's really important for people to know yeah thank you for telling me um so he's got his political machine humming right curly style and meanwhile the governor is a like humming at a moderate volume because of

the noise

that's right um The governor, who is a rare at the time Republican holding the office, passes

an ouster law in 1915, which is designed basically to get Crump out of office.

The law provided the judicial method for the removal of public officials from office who like refused to enforce state laws back in the prohibition.

This is kind of homophobia.

Oh, it's the prohibition.

It's the prohibition.

Crump leaves office instead of dealing with it.

He's like, you can't fire me.

I quit.

Yeah, you can't fire me.

I already got unfathomably rich from

I'm taking all of these like quilted Russia leather like panels that I installed out of everything.

You know, he does his mayoral office.

It's like Trump's Oval Office, but instead of all the gold filigree on everything, it's just beautiful leather, like leather curly cues.

When, when,

okay, who do I have to vote for?

Who do I have to campaign for?

Who do I have to elect?

To get the leather man in office.

To get the leather oval office.

Yeah.

Can you imagine having a big Tom of Finland guy?

I mean, I hope not for the politics.

No, no, no, no, not the politics.

I'm saying aesthetic.

Character.

You mean like you're talking about like the guy with the sort of station master's hat, leather vest and the big penis?

I mean,

that would be really surreal, right?

He'd probably have the president like dancing to YMCA.

He'd probably have the president talking about big, strong guys and like singling out those big, strong guys at events.

He'd probably be obsessed with musical theater, maybe.

Fuck.

Probably talk about like having a beautiful body, but like, you know, it might be like covered in wounds.

Oh, by the way, I just want to say,

because a lot of people have been sending it in.

We are not going to cover Donald Trump on this podcast.

I don't care how much of American cities he takes over.

I'm not doing it.

Like, look, here's the thing.

Here's the thing, right?

Imagine, just go into your, go into your mind palaces, right?

Imagine you click on an episode of No Gods, No Mayors that's labeled Donald Trump, and it starts with one of us saying, okay, so Donald John Trump was born in 1946 in Jamaica, Queens.

Come on.

Come the fuck on.

Let's go.

Listen to the dollop for this.

Yeah, that is true.

Yeah, okay.

So welcome back to the dollop.

I'm Matty.

Thank you for listening.

So instead of getting removed from office, he just leaves.

And in 1915, So now begins his actual career as like an interesting municipal figure, basically.

So I'm reading from a website I found called the Tennessee Encyclopedia here, which is a very reliable news source.

Sounds like an anti-Tennessee joke name for like an extremely simple book.

Yeah.

Oh, shit.

So

you know who would have come up with the Tennessee Encyclopedia in 2010 is Stephen Colbert.

That's correct.

So while loss of office embarrassed Grump, he never admitted guilt.

Instead, he presented himself as a victim of conspiracies by evil private power corporations that feared his plan for public power corporations.

Crump's public relations campaign succeeded so completely that his fabrication was accepted as true, even though no evidence supported the alibi.

Well, it succeeded so completely that I'm prepared to believe it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm kind of saying, like, hey, you know, Tennessee Encyclopedia, who funds you?

Yeah.

You know, hey, is it evil private power corporations?

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

You notice how the Tennessee Encyclopedia isn't leather bound?

So the guilt, of course, is that he did not enforce the prohibition law that everyone knew he was not enforcing.

And everyone knew his corruption was fairly open, and that's why they wanted him out of office.

So he basically, he realizes that public life isn't for him, but he's got a big, loyal following and a political machine humming under his watch.

So in 1917, he becomes a treasurer of Shelby County, which is the county Memphis is in.

He starts an insurance company, the Crump Insurance Company, but he buys a Coca-Cola bottling plant in upstate New York and he becomes a millionaire properly.

But he unofficially begins running the city from his insurance offices.

Unofficial mayor.

Unofficial mayor.

Yeah, he was the mayor of that mayor, I think.

The shadow mayor.

The shadow mayor.

He was, everyone was like forced to pay like homage to him.

People would like break into the political system and they'd be like, or they wanted, so say you wanted to open a shop right in town.

You would quickly learn that city inspectors would not approve your building unless he purchased an insurance policy from Crump's corporation.

It's it's weird how the city inspectors showed up and they were wearing the kind of like tom of finland hats they're all head-to-toe gimp suits yeah including yeah i couldn't i couldn't even really hear them through the gimp mask but i i i'm pretty certain what they wanted me to do was get an insurance policy they they only remembered to unzip the mouths to talk to me about halfway through the beating so i can catch a lot of it I gotta be honest, as a woman who is like, you know, thoroughly immersed in like BDSM culture, like the zip mouth gimp mask is not a, that's not a pleasant thing for me.

Like, you think about like zip on like, you know, lip proximity.

That's, that's not good.

I don't have to think about that.

That's horrible.

Yeah.

That's one of the many reasons I just have no relationship with BDSM is that I just hate being uncomfortable.

I was going to say, Yacht Sucks is pain.

I really don't like discomfort.

And

I also, I even try, and on the other side, I tried boxing once, but I couldn't stop pulling my punches.

You don't want to be the cause of discomfort in others.

To you, a good time is where everyone's comfortable.

Right.

He's like a beautiful piece of leather, and then he does not crease.

I'm like a Cordovan shoe in many ways.

Yeah.

They call him the Cordovan kid.

He rolls with the punches rather than creasing.

I don't increase discomfort.

I roll with it.

So that's how you're mnemonic for remembering why I'm the cordovan kid

When E.H.

Crump left.

I don't often one-shot November, but what I do, it's really satisfying.

Yeah, no,

that's very good.

When E.H.

Crump left off,

he gets a number of mayors elected.

First, this guy, George C.

Love, who's like a steamboat and lumberman, who did not prove loyal enough to Crump.

So Crump ditches him and went instead for the next election for a different guy, Thomas Ashcroft, who's also not loyal enough, who created a bunch of political turmoil in the city.

He just can't get the stuff anymore.

You know, like these various gimps are disobeying him.

Yeah.

So there's this like this line of gimps that are like not loyal enough to him.

This guy, Ashcroft, also allows theaters to open in the city on Sunday, which is like a defiance of the blue laws, which everyone in the city turns on him.

So the entire government's ousted.

So another crump pick gets in.

This guy, Ari H.

Liddy, he enforced the blue laws no problem.

Not as he said because they're right, but because they're on the books.

The crump machine then was actually, after many, many years of crump picks, was defeated by a Memphis native called Frank El Monti Verdi, the city's first and only Italian mayor.

The and only makes it sound like they passed a law, you know, like never,

ever again.

They amended the anti-crump law to be like, also no Italians, also no Italians allowed.

I mean, down in the protest in City Hall in Memphis, holding a big sign that says, yes, Leather, no Italians.

I'm part of a very important political constituency in Tennessee.

Basically, how Stonewall started i think

you know an ital an italian threw the first brick at stonewall yeah but it was but it was coated in leather so it didn't do much it just it just squeaked off the cop

um but so after the crump machine is defeated by this by this guy so what crump does is he goes to nashville the state capital And he tries to get the state to rearrange Memphis's government into a city manager model, which would abolish the office of the mayor.

Oh,

if I can't be mayor and if an an italian has to be mayor then no one can be mayor i also can i tell you about that there's been something has been rattling around in my mind about this guy that i have been struggling to articulate and i think it's only occurred to me now as to how to share it You've only unzipped the mouth of your mind's GIMP mask.

That's right.

I reached into my brain and I unzipped my mind's GIMP mask and my mind has now shared, A, number one, ow, that leather hurts on my

brain tissue.

My brain is folded.

The Cordovan leather GIMP helmet where you have to do it.

My Cordovan brain, which is just full of folds and rolls.

No, it's that he is so incredibly ambitious, but just for this.

He knows exactly what he wants to be and will just

adjust his life however he has to to stay this thing.

He doesn't want to be president.

No, no.

This is a classic boss.

He is fascinating to me, and I love hearing about him.

Like many pharaohs of the lower Nile,

he only seeked being in charge of Memphis.

Lower?

I think lower.

Ancient history, 2024.

I just looked him up for the first time.

He looks like a kind of fucked bird.

Yeah, he kind of looks like the chicken lady from Kids in the Hall.

Yeah, he looks like Truman Caposi.

If Truman Caposi had been like recently startled.

And I'm now thinking about this guy in like full leather man.

And it's, I'm, I'm,

he looks a lot different when he's younger, I'll say, if you look at old folks

he looks like a combination of Truman Capote and Virginia Woolf.

Doesn't write like one, though.

No.

So it doesn't, the, the, the state government is like, no, we're not getting rid of the mayor for you.

And he's like, fine, I'll go get another puppet elected.

So he does.

His name is Rowlett Payne.

Bring in the next GIMP.

They pray to the next GIMP who runs on an anti-KKK ticket, and they barely eke out a win.

Oh, God.

All right, get the GIMPs out of here.

It's so

difficult to like come because these guys are obviously insanely corrupt, but they're just like, well, I suppose the best way for us to continue our political machine going is to beat the other political machine.

That's the KKK.

Yeah.

And so, and Payne, like, so so like, he's got this parade of mayors.

There's like five of them.

And he keeps bringing in mayors that like are basically his handpicked guys.

And then they fall out of favor him for favor with him for like all sorts of reasons, but mostly it's like you're not really.

It's a reactive attachment disorder or something.

Like anytime a mayor gets too close, he like drives them away.

It's really sad.

And this guy, Payne, is elected in 1920.

And after a couple of years, he's like, I'm going to be a reformer.

And Crump is like, fuck you.

We are not friends anymore.

So So he gets another puppet, Watkins Overton elected in 1927.

Watkins Overton?

Watkins Overton is mentioned.

He has a park.

There's a park that he has named after him in Memphis that's in the newsletter.

And there's just a big,

there's like a big pictorial display that says Overton Park draws great crowds, such as with white bacteria and camel.

Yeah, so I will say the park is probably not named for him, but for his great-grandfather who founded the city.

Oh, well, that'll be why.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, there are dozens of people who have all congregated at Overton Park.

Yeah, all four residents of Memphis are there.

They're all there with their limping into their coughing out their organs.

So Overton is like this elite guy, you know, is the great-grandson of the founder of the city.

He's perfectly happy to let Kremp run the show.

He just wants to be the mayor for show.

So he sticks around from 1928 to 1939.

And Kremp is like very in charge of Memphis during this period.

And he's pretty beloved,

Watkins.

He's Memphis's longest-serving mayor to this day.

He was really big on getting like

WPA funds directed to the city during the worst of the Depression.

Yeah, weird that FDR funded alongside like the Federal Theater Project and like the Civilian Conservation Corps, also a lot of like leather waxing and restoration work.

Yeah.

Well, it's like that's it's he because he understood that how you restore the economy isn't just by like cutting taxes.

You actually have to put a lot of money into the Tennessee Leather Authority.

And that's actually still one of the biggest fetishwear organizations to this day.

I hate it when I'm forced to move out of my house so they can flood a valley with cows.

I would go to a bar named the Tennessee Leather Authority.

I think it's very interesting every time I do an episode to like find out what thing the two of you chuckleheads are going to like seize on.

And I wouldn't guess carriage company.

No, no, but this is the thing.

That's why

it works.

That's why it works.

And that's why it works, baby.

So

it's just passing kind of detail about this guy's life.

Oh, yeah, he worked.

He worked, you know, like maybe saddle stitching one time.

And we go from there to full gimp suit.

An hour of gimpsuit bits.

This is the same thing as, yeah, Tiffany Henyard was not so good of a landlord.

All right.

But it's also like, this is the Tennessee Leather Authority is very, very useful because, like, obviously, as we know, around the corner from the New Deal is World War II, when the U.S.

Army needs like a bunch of GIMP suits to invade Europe, right?

And where are they going to get those gimps?

Exactly, exactly.

And so, like, you get the kind of leather equivalent of the U.S.

as we built this yesterday, where the Germans are taking like a year to build a GIMP suit and it's all like perfectly stitched or whatever.

And then the American one is like good enough and they make 50.

It's all the ways to Berlin and everybody's in a GIMP suit because they're just trying to get into Berghain.

Okay,

I know there.

Raising the Soviet flag over Berghine.

So it wasn't all fun James Michael Curly stuff.

It was also some of the bad James Michael Curly stuff.

It never is with a James Michael Curly type of guy.

Yeah.

So like, yeah.

So in 1926, a local reporter called Turner Catledge, who was later the executive editor of the New York Times, he was investigating corruption in the local Democratic Party, and Crump followers found him and beat him bloody.

Shouldn't have been walking around with a black handkerchief hanging out of the, was it left-hand pocket?

Yeah.

Wait, is a black handkerchief hanging out of the left-hand pocket like jump me?

Well, it's not that, I guess.

I see.

Yeah, the followers were quoted to say, I thought he wanted that.

Yeah.

Also, I do love that the names that we're talking about are like.

It's on the right.

It's on the right-hand side.

Fuck.

Okay.

What if you do it?

Okay.

Quick question.

Quick question.

What if you do a black handkerchief on the left?

What does that mean?

That means that you want to shillely something.

So you also be the one who shillelies something.

Also, I do like that the names that we're talking about here, they've now come back round in popularity, but as Mormon names.

I can totally buy a Turner Catledge as like, you know, a sort of sales manager from Provo.

I was going to say that's the wide receiver for BYU.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Turner Catledge operates like a like a startup, right?

That like

sort of like applies surveillance to crumble cookies.

So I was just going to say, in general, the city is working pretty good at this time.

Like the garbage is getting picked up.

The streets are clean.

Taxes are low.

Memphis is doing fine.

It's pretty repopulated.

The firemen and police officers, which Crump's patronage was like laser focused on during his mayoralty,

they used to transport people to the polls on behalf of his chosen ticket, which is a lot of how his machine worked.

Getting driven to the polls on a fire engine in order to vote for a like a gim.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

That's Memphis, baby.

Pretty good.

Also, that's, by the way, that's one of the, sorry, I forgot this earlier.

That's one of the things Randall Weddell was accused of was like using limousines to drive voters to the polls and then giving them free gas.

Beautiful.

Just like loose or like in a jerry can or

still while I like spray some like gasoline into you.

Now, if you don't want me to light this match, go vote for me.

Doing like a grain dole or doing like a like a t-shirt cannon thing where I just fire a bunch of gasoline at somebody.

He supposedly kept a card index of every white voter in the city and could call whoever he wanted to get them to vote whichever way he wanted.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the whiteness because that was going to be my question about this kind of like bucolic vision of like the city that works.

It's about to happen.

So he

also had control of like every public job and you would apply pressure that way.

So everyone like in every position in the city is there because he wants them there.

So basically, sorry, he's like the mayor of the corn.

Like he can send you to the cornfield if he doesn't like you.

This is unlike Randall Weddell, who's merely trying to, this is the mayor who is running his city like a real-time strategy game.

He is clicking on people and then right-clicking on places.

He's really, he's clicking on everybody in every way that he wants.

He's built an arcology in the middle of Memphis in 1930.

So he has at this point run for Congress and he is in Congress for a couple of terms.

And it is kind of like he sucks at being in Congress.

Nobody likes him.

He can't get anything done.

So what he does is he picks his replacement in the House and then he returns home to Memphis where he is in charge of things.

In 1936, he is named to the Democratic National Committee.

And then in 1939, there is another mayoral election in Memphis.

Crump's chosen guy, which is the guy that replaced him in Congress, Walter Chandler, he wants him to be the mayor, but

he wants to be the mayor.

But Crump is like, don't worry about it.

Don't campaign.

Don't go deal with your shit in Washington.

I will handle it.

But what he does is Crump doesn't campaign, doesn't have a platform, makes no speeches, runs opposition lists, and Crump wins the election without campaigning.

He is sworn in on a train platform on his way to New Orleans for a football game and immediately resigns.

And then like the next day, the vice mayor is the mayor.

And then the city council, who's all Crump picks, just makes Chandler the mayor who then serves for another like seven years.

That's, I mean, that is really funny.

Just being like, don't worry, I'll handle it.

And then the way you do your friend a favor is to effortlessly get elected mayor and then resign.

Yeah.

That's so.

Like, like the casualness with which he's like, oh yeah, don't worry, I'll handle it.

It's like he's buying you a pizza.

It's so casual.

It is impossible to overstate how in charge of Memphis this guy is.

You know, I think this might be the most in-charge mayor we have done.

Yeah, he's really in control.

But you were asking, November, about the racism of it all.

Yeah.

Well, we've arrived to the last stop on this tour.

Oh.

So

there's this guy, J.B.

Martin, who is a longtime Republican Party activist and founder of the Memphis Red Sox, which was a New Yorker league team.

He is the Shelby County County Republican Party chair.

In 1940, Crump makes a little bit of a mistake.

After J.B.

Martin stages a rally for Wendell Willkie, the Republican presidential candidate, Crump orders police officers to basically stop and frisk every patron of Martin's drugstore that he owns in South Memphis, including children.

Crump threatens Martin with some fake criminal charges, and Martin has to flee the city out of fear for his life.

The NAACP urges the Roosevelt administration to bring charges against Crump, or at least like denounce him, because he's close to Crump.

A directive from senior officials in the administration is basically like, don't worry about it.

Crump and FDR were close.

In 1943, Martin returns to Memphis to attend a baseball game at a stadium named for him.

Police arrest him, put him in a cell, and order him to leave the city.

And he ends up living in Chicago.

Less than a month after this incident in 1940.

or 1943, Martin, J.B.

Martin and this other guy, Robert Church Jr., who was another black Republican leader, had been driven out of town by Crump and his cronies.

They convinced Philip Randolph, the labor leader, to come to Memphis and speak out against Crump's machine.

Crump's men denied Randolph any speaking venues via political pressure and also physical intimidation.

Philip Randolph writes to Eleanor Roosevelt, who responds, I referred your letter to a friend of mine when I received it, and I am sorry it has not been answered.

I was advised not to do anything as it might do more harm than good.

Thanks, Eleanor.

Thanks, Eleanor Roosevelt.

So Chandler, Crump's like picked mayor at the time, also falls out of favor with Crump by 1946.

He's like, I can maintain total racist control of this city just so long as I have, just so long as I maintain a good working relationship with my like 50th gimp

for like a year.

Yeah.

So, I mean, he maintains an okay relationship with this gimp for six years, but he wants to run for.

He wants to run for Senate and Crump is like, I don't care.

You know, I'm not going to support them.

I, I, we are no, you're not loyal enough.

I'm not supporting you for Senate.

So, uh, Chandler, the mayor returns to his private practice and is replaced by another crump guy, Sylvanus W.

Polk Jr.

Oh, see, this is the guy who like loses the left flank of the like Confederate lines at like a, you know, sort of like battle.

And then like everybody gets over.

Yeah.

He resigns the next year also and is replaced by yet another crump gimp, James J.

Pleasance Jr.

Uh-huh.

So he loses the other flank in the same battle.

I'll say this for him.

He's got a deep bench.

He's got a really deep.

He's not looking around for guys.

Yeah, no, a gimp oublias.

It's got like a, it is business.

A gimpy dark room.

What do you call a spawn point for gimps?

I don't.

I think the dark room is pretty good.

Yeah.

So Pleasance is notable for an incident in 1947, which was there's this thing called the freedom, the freedom train, which was like a museum exhibition on a train that was carrying the original versions of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Truman Doctrine, and the Bill of Rights.

Oh, Remember when people cared about the Truman Doctrine?

You know what's crazy is they just put that on the original documents on a train and just took it around for a couple of years.

But it was on a tour of more than 300 cities and all 48 states at the time.

And it was famously integrated, the freedom train.

All the exhibit stops were integrated, which was notable.

It comes to Memphis, and this guy, Pleasance, who was influenced by Crump, basically refused to allow whites and blacks to attend the train exhibits together.

And because of this, the train just said, we are not coming to Memphis, which is kind of cool on behalf of the federal government for 1947.

The local black clergy, for obvious reasons, like really, really seized on this.

They're calling pleasants and crump fascists, all sorts of stuff like that, which they are.

They are, but it's like largely at the impetus of like, again, one very leathery man.

Yeah.

And, you know, by the end of the 40s now, most likely due to his horrible racism and like changing demographics in the city and changing landscape politically for uh you know civil rights activism his political influence really wanes really quickly and in 1949 watkins over to him that crump picked mayor turned enemy uh great grandson of the founder of the city uh gets back into office as memphis mayor no longer a gimp now as himself he's freed of the suits let's just review then so 1948 is the um

first

1948 or nine is that is the first like year where Memphis is not being run by a Crump crony.

49, but there's also a brief period when

what's the name of the Italian gentleman?

I got a scroll.

Frank L.

Monteverdi was also the mayor for a couple of years.

So, one brief interregnum.

Yeah, he was the mayor.

But other than that, it has been the Crump century.

He was the mayor for two years, Monteverdi.

So, it was like basically 1909 to 1948, 49.

Just being in Memphis being like, hey, remember those two years when we were all Italians?

And then, of course, he was kicked out and we all had to get the leather back on.

It's so hot.

Yeah, I was going to say the two most comfortable years we have enjoyed in four decades.

Yeah, he was basically in charge of all Memphis politics for like 40 years.

Four decades of just this guy.

This guy and his gimps running town.

So in 1948, one year before that happens, one of Crump's close allies, Tennessee Senator Tom Stewart, was defeated in the Democratic primary by an anti-monopolist and anti-organized crime U.S.

Representative whose name was Estes Kafelver.

Like the mafia?

Like the mafia.

And one of his other closest allies was the other Tennessee senator, Kenneth McKellar, who had been serving in the Senate since 1917.

In 1952, he was beaten also by Albert Gore Sr.

It's a small world.

It's a very small world.

But so in 1952,

Crump had like one absolute last last gasp at relevance.

His gubernatorial candidate, Frank G.

Clement, won the governor's mansion.

And one last mayor, Frank T.

Toby, beat his rival, Watkins Overton.

Toby, the last mayor of the Crump machine, died of a heart attack while running for re-election.

Oh my God.

And then in just a short two years later, Crump himself was dead.

Finally, Crumpled.

Crump really, thank you.

Crump really didn't spend much of his life not in charge of Memphis.

Yeah.

I mean, he like, he was born born

1874.

He's mayor in 1909.

Yeah.

So it's like fully half his life.

This is a king, functionally.

Like a pharaoh of Memphis.

Very racist.

Yeah, the Pharaoh of Memphis.

Yeah.

So basically from the ages like 35 to 75, he was in charge of Memphis.

And then he died.

And all it took was what, like, one plague at the right time.

Yes.

Yeah.

Completely depopulate the city.

Yeah.

That's, that's, I guess that is actually kind of a big part of how he just became so powerful so quickly.

He was just one of the people who was there.

I think there were just less people around.

But anyways, that was, that's my mare.

There are many like it, but that one was my

glorious, a glorious

man himself, not glorious, but what a story.

What a fun story.

Yeah, I think he's just a, it's a very fun example of this kind of like machine politic that's really fascinating to me.

Yeah, that's my guy.

I, I'm so happy to have met him in this context.

Aren't we all?

Thank you for introducing him to me.

The leather machine.

The leather machine.

The leather glove.

The leather fist and the leather glove.

Oh.

It's like a line from Gravity's Rainbow.

I think it's Nova next week.

I believe it is Christmas.

I believe it is Nova next week

on the Bono feed.

Okay.

Well,

I'll pick someone.

The Mayor Tankylus has not revealed it yet to you, but it will be when it does, it will be on the mayoral benevolent feed, which you get by paying into the mayoral benevolent fund, like the mafia, which you get

to no gods, no mayors.com.

It's just five bucks a month.

You get extra twice the mayors in your life.

Absolutely.

I'm sorry that I unprompted did the Tina Belcher anxiety noise.

That's just sort of the noise you make.

I just want to remind everybody, this is really important.

Kind of me.

This is really important.

Oh.

We need prayers for Randall Weddell.

All prayer warriors.

Prayer warriors.

I have been praying that his first child will be a masculine child.

That, you know, he lives a long life, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, wherever you are right now on the bus, on the subway, driving in a car, doing your dishes, whatever it is, look up to the sky and scream as loud as you can.

Just make your soul's noise for Randall Weddell for something that happened a week ago.

Pray that it will have gone well.

And that if it doesn't go well, that the angels bring him prosperity.

Yeah.

Flights of angels sing.

Angels, if you're listening, please provide some prosperity for our friend Randall Weddell.

You can also, if you're an angel.

Flight of angels sing just rest.

That would mean that he died.

Don't pray for that one.

Don't pray for that one.

If you're anybody, including an angel, you could also go buy a copy of my new book, Simplicity, which is still out in all bookstores, the Simplicity book at XYZ.

I love you.

Please buy it.

Sorry, I'll say that again louder.

The book is called Simplicity.

And you can buy it it at simplicitybook.xyz.

That's true.

That's all true.

You know what I did?

I went to a bookstore that was made out of bricks attached together with mortar.

I have it on good authority that Gay's the Word in London has copies, actually.

It's all over England.

That's right.

It's everywhere.

So I recommend it.

And it's a good book.

I read it in one sitting because I found it very compelling.

Wow.

So take a look at that book.

Okay.

We've been running extremely.

Okay, so long.

We've been going so long.

We have to go.

Bye, everybody.

Bye.