Happy Hour 65 — TGIF, Mudwater on Whatnot, and a Soul-Eating Landlord

Delivered entirely in first person as the man who bought Twitter for "40 some odd billion dollars" purely for political gain, borrowed against stock rather than spending a dime, and planned to let the accidental rugs and bugs run their course. He then pivoted, without pause, to how grateful he is to be alive and to help someone cross the street. Mike took the bait seriously for a minute and turned it into a decent primer on borrowing against assets — including borrowing against your apes, and why a three-day loan term makes no sense to anyone.

Mike had warned people days earlier and watched it play out live: packs opened at $20, people bid them to $200+, and Profits herself came into the chat at one point to tell everyone to stop running the bids. His read was consistent all night — no blame on the seller for starting low; the room did this to itself.

Two people effectively run it — Fanatics on one side, PSA/SGC/Collectors Universe on the other. And pop counts, he explained, are fiction: crack a nine out, resubmit it chasing a ten, do that eight times across two or three companies, and the numbers never get corrected. Mike's one-of-one follow-up — why grade something with nothing to compare it to? — led to the story of a Big Papi one-of-one that came back a 7.5 and will probably get cracked out of the slab on principle.

The Aspiring Nobody and Mike on the gulf between perceived and actual talent, and on parents as the single worst element of youth sports. Mike's contribution: he filmed every shift of his son's games from a spot deliberately away from the other parents, partly for the memories, mostly so their voices wouldn't be on the recording.

He had, by his own account, scheduled a product release for after the game specifically because he knew what state he'd be in. Mike apologizing for reopening the wound did not help. But the rant resolved into the night's best bit of coaching philosophy: put people in positions where they can succeed, including your own six-year-old, who was out there picking a flower off the ground and kicking it around.

Burningbush walked through what he'd shipped that night — searchable lyrics so anyone mentioned in a song can find themselves, links out to their X profiles, mutant and Re:gen skins with matching animations, $5 a month or $50 a year. Pat 1:24:32 asked how the room could actually get behind him; Tim 1:29:23 noted Burningbush has never been good at asking for anything, and plugged the think-tank Discord where he screen-shares his AI workflows for free while others charge thousands. Pat then raised his one bone to pick: the orange background slander. A ceasefire was negotiated at subscriber rates, with Burningbush announcing the tip jar open for any song that needs removing from the platform.

Tree described saving for a long time, the wide-eyed baby-trait ape that spoke to her, and the feeling after ApeFest of knowing exactly where she wanted to be. Bored Osaka matched it with the watch he'd wanted for twenty years, ordered and engraved when his then-wife became pregnant, worn for about six months, then cleaned, reboxed and handed over at his son's high school graduation. Tree then revealed she'd spent the evening fighting a hardware wallet to get everything into cold storage, which TRIPLE ACE endorsed with the only real security advice: do less, click nothing, revoke permissions.

A casual "see you in 2027" from Bored Osaka sent TRIPLE ACE into instant location FOMO — is it Japan? Is it Osaka? From there the room cast itself for jobs at the unfinished clubhouse: Mike as the ex-boxer host working the tables, TRIPLE ACE as a sous chef with ambitions, Bored Osaka warning him to expect ten years on rice. Mike then delivered an unscheduled improv lesson — yes, and; never negate — which TRIPLE ACE immediately applied to the problem of being ordered to prepare a poisonous fish he has no license to cut.

Meteor, east coast of Canada, and a prep kit consisting entirely of marijuana and alcohol — he doesn't need guns, though he noted he may be holding one right now, as is his habit on Spaces. The room reached a gentle consensus that the weed, the alcohol and the firearms should probably not all be in play simultaneously; a bow and arrow was approved, tip removed. Minutes later he admitted his wallet got drained in the Magic Eden exploit and he may not own the Showman Mori he's using as a PFP — a confession Mike promised not to call him out for.

Prompted by the improv talk, he delivered a lengthy Poe-pastiche passage about how poverty empties a man's pockets and then devours the dignity of his soul — "the most dreadful prison is not fashioned of iron bars, but of endless necessity" — and landed it on "ask not what your crypto mori can do for you." Mike, a self-declared Poe fan, tied it straight back to the night's thesis: not being able to bid $220 on a pack says nothing about your worth.

Not the Whatnot prices — the collusion. He described gift-code holders in a private chat agreeing nobody would sell Sapphire under $7,000 before the product had even shipped, and extended the critique to community members who price their merch at $400 simply because they can: "they're kind of farming their own communities." Teacher-(Katie) agreed she'd never touched the Sapphire boxes for exactly that reason.

What started as "what's the weirdest piece of merch you still own" (his Major League 2 costume and a memorial Cleveland stadium cap) escalated into the Shakespeare puffy shirt, the Thomas Jefferson wig sourced from a women's wig shop, Greater Tuna — two actors, ten characters each, including a high school cheerleader and a gun-shop owner — and finally the horror movie, available to rent now under a title the distributor invented so it would sort near the top of a streaming menu.