11/20/12 – Shane and Amy Bugbee – The Scott Horton Show

Ben Franklin said those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither.
Hi, Scott Horton here for the Bill of Rights Security Edition from securityedition.com.
It's a playing card sized steel Bill of Rights designed to set off the metal detectors anywhere the police state goes so you can remind those around you the freedoms we've lost.
And for a limited time get free shipping when you purchase a frequent flyer pack of five Bill of Rights Security Edition cards.
Play a leading role in the security theater with a Bill of Rights Security Edition from securityedition.com.
The Scott Horton Show is brought to you by the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org.
Join the great Jacob Hornberger and some of the best writers in the libertarian movement like James Bovard, Sheldon Richman, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McElroy, and more for a real individualist take on the most important matters of peace, liberty, and prosperity in our society.
That's the Future Freedom Foundation at fff.org.
So you're a libertarian and you don't believe the propaganda about government awesomeness you were subjected to in fourth grade.
You want real history and economics.
Well, learn in your car from professors you can trust with Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom.
And if you join through the Liberty Classroom link at scotthorton.org, we'll make a donation to support the Scott Horton Show.
Liberty Classroom, the history and economics they didn't teach you.
Hey everybody, Scott Horton here for libertystickers.com.
If you're like me, then you're right all the time, surrounded by people in desperate need of correction.
Well, we can't all have a radio show, but we can all get anti-government propaganda to stick on the back of our trucks.
Check out libertystickers.com.
Categories include anti-war, empire, police state, libertarian, Ron Paul, gun rights, founders quotes, and of course the stupid election.
That's libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Full archives, interview archives are at scotthorton.org.
Find my blog at scotthorton.org/stress.
And we will be getting back to the cause of war and imperial politics later on in the show.
But now for something a little bit different.
It's my old friends Shane and Amy.
Shane and Amy Bugbee from A Year at the Wheel.
And they have just put out, they finally finished I guess, the book and the movie, The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America.
Hey, how the hell are you guys?
Man, good to talk to you again.
Oh, it's great to talk to you, Scott.
How have you been?
I'm doing great.
You know, I guess we still type back and forth on Facebook occasionally or something, but I don't guess I've spoken to you since way back then, which would have been 2007 and 2008, the years spent at the Wheel by you and your husband Shane and then also your dog and turtle.
And what were their names again?
Cheyenne and Myrtle.
Oh, okay, cool.
Cheyenne and Myrtle the turtle, that's right.
All right, so now for, you know, long-time fans of this show, I don't know if you've ever seen that YouTube of me standing out in front of the quickie mart with the buy one get one free label behind me there.
That's my part in this movie.
Being interviewed there along with, what, two, three dozen other people.
And then, well, I guess start at the beginning.
You guys really did spend a year driving around in a Chevy Blazer, is that what it was?
I'm trying to remember.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, we decided, well, I guess there was a number of circumstances that led to it, but we just did to get in our our Chevy Blazer and drive around the country and the people of America, you know, just kind of find out what was going on.
It seemed like things were not at all like what we were seeing on the news.
So we decided to, I guess, do our own investigative journalism and we interviewed you.
We put up about 150 short videos on YouTube for free and then we started working on the book and movie which just finally came out.
Well, I mean, this book is a freaking masterpiece.
I, of course, haven't had time to read through the whole thing or anything, but I've been paging through it a bit and I can see why it took you so long to get it finished.
I mean, this thing is really something else.
Bang for your buck and all that.
Your ratio is satisfied for sure.
It's ridiculous to 531 pages.
Big pages.
Oh, 32.
532 pages.
It's really great.
Again, it's called the Suffering and Celebration of Life in America.
In fact, let's stop at this part and you tell the people all the different websites and where they can get it and pre-order and the hardback and the paperback and all that and then we'll get back into the story a little bit.
Okay.
Well, we have the website Essay Odd which is where you can get the limited edition book and movie set and then in January we'll have the regular edition out and the e-book and all of that jazz and it'll be available on Amazon because, of course, I guess everything has to be nowadays.
Then for the videos, if you want to see, I think we have like 188 videos up there now on YouTube and our channel is a year at the wheel.
Yeah.
In fact, Shane posted right before Election Day.
He posted the clip of me talking about voting and why I'm not voting anymore after this one.
All that.
I thought that was pretty funny.
I'd kind of forgotten about that.
Did you hold true to that?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm done.
That was my last one.
It was just in the primary and that was my last vote.
Although, I guess I should not 100% rule out the idea that I might show up to vote no on something really important if I thought it was going to be anything like close or something.
Maybe someday, but in principle, I'm pretty damn much opposed to it now.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Hey, that brings me to the substance of the movie.
Let me say I really liked it.
I really like how it's not fluff at all.
It's just, but it's not, you know, access channel overly simple either.
I mean, it's actually just perfect the way it came out.
Although, I was a little surprised that there's really no introduction of you and Shane and the dog and the turtle and the project in the movie.
It just goes straight to the montage of the different clips of the interviews of all the incredibly interesting and compelling people that you guys talked to on your trip.
So, why is that?
There's a specific reason for that, I guess, right?
Was it just time?
Well, yeah.
You know, in the movie, actually, Shane put together.
I think it's amazing, too.
I love the fact that there's not a bunch of b-roll garbage in it.
But, you know, maybe you should ask him about that.
All right.
Well, let me ask him.
Let him tell you about the film and then we'll talk more.
Okay, sure.
Hey, Scott.
Hey, how are you doing, man?
Pretty good, you know.
Yeah, pretty good.
I have a great memory of visiting you and having a gentleman sit next to me and tell me how he was going to stab me at your barbecue party.
Do you remember that, Scott?
Did someone threaten to stab you?
Yeah, remember, you guys, it was great.
Oh, yeah.
You had a party.
You had a party and you looked at me and you were like, you dicks.
Why would you bring this person to my place?
That's right.
Yeah, it was some crazy person just showed up, I think.
He was a friend of a friend of somebody.
I don't know who.
Yeah, he was a fan of some of our work prior to this road trip and some of our satanic dabbling.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and the guy was just, I don't know if he was on PCP or what, but he was just out of his mind, right?
Yeah, he sat next to me and goes, you know, it's so great to meet you and sit next to you, you know.
I could stab you right now.
And I was like, oh, my God.
And he goes, you look worried about it.
I'm thinking about actually stabbing you.
And I'm like, holy shit.
And I remember thinking, let's just leave me and Amy.
I look at Amy.
I'm like, let's just sneak out of here.
And I got to admit now, Amy's like, listen, we can't leave Scott here with a guy who's stabby.
And I'm like, well, what the fuck are we supposed to do?
She goes, I don't know.
Tell him.
I'm like, I guess so.
Damn, you know, I had completely forgotten about that.
And now I don't even remember how we got him out of there.
Well, you know, you guys, you just, you and a couple of chaos radio DJs surrounded him and said, dude, let's go.
Let me see what you got.
And he goes, I don't have a knife on me.
And he's like, get up against the car.
And you guys pushed him like a cop, like, you know, he's like, I don't have a ride.
You guys actually gave him a ride into town, which was amazing to me because it's like, you know, from Chicago, he would have got a beat down, but you guys were very kind.
You searched him.
He did not have a knife on his person, and you guys left him alone.
You didn't search his backpack.
Well, it wasn't me who gave him a ride.
I don't think.
I don't know who did.
One of the chaos DJs did, but it was just, you know, a very civil altercation.
Strange, man.
I had completely forgotten about that.
So now I'm trying to put the memories back together in little pieces from scratch.
Yeah, well, I'm sorry.
That's what I do when I want to talk about this trip.
I have all these weird memories that come to my head.
Yeah, no, I mean, hey, that's is that in the book?
That should have been in the book, man.
It is.
There's a little light in the book.
Did you run across the Adam Curry part of the book?
No, I didn't.
Are you on his radio station or something?
Yeah, yeah.
This is a no agenda radio.
Yeah, well, Adam Curry was a nice partner that talks about how he raped us literally.
Oh, yeah, the whole the whole trip.
We I came up with a domain name called Adam Curry is a douchebag dot com.
It's a it's a really a wonderful tale of treachery and treason and just being a fucking asshole.
But, you know, sorry about that, Scott.
Well, I don't know, man.
I'm flipping through the book and all I see is sexy pictures of your wife wrestling with this gnarly goth chick.
Well, that was a good time.
That was one of the high points of the trip.
That was a wonderful thing when Amy Russell was ugly.
Shyly.
Yeah, that was great.
Yeah, that's awesome, man.
And here you are with the General Lee.
Now, listen, all right.
So this is the part of the thing where.
Oh, yeah, I was going to ask you a question, which was in the movie.
I mean, not that I really care.
I think the movie is absolutely great.
But but you don't have even like, hi, I'm Shane.
This is the wife and the dog and the turtle.
And we went for a year at the wheel.
And we went for a year at the wheel.
And these are the people we talk to.
It just goes blam straight to the point.
Yeah, I guess so.
You know, it's very surreal moment for us when we landed on the beach.
Like the trip, we pitched that.
It's weird.
We pitched this.
I lost everything and ended up on a beach at the end.
So I had edited probably three or four different films.
And one was one had B-roll and was very typical, had narration.
And I just I didn't feel like putting something like that out.
It was it was very much more of an expression, I guess, a piece of art, which I hate that.
I hate to even use the word art or anything like that.
But it was very much an expression.
And that's how that's the film that comes with the book.
Yeah, very much that.
Well, yeah, I mean, I guess there's there's a lot of extra footage that yells YouTube, right?
Oh, yeah, well, yeah, if you go to a year at the wheel slash YouTube, you see, yeah, there's one hundred and fifty videos that that I edited from the from the dashboard of the truck on my laptop, on a Mac.
And what I really like that when I thought about our trip and, you know, I thought we were capturing the last moment of American interest that I understood where new media was going.
And I understood, like someone called us the Johnny Appletee of podcasting.
And when we were going out, we really wanted to empower people to say, hey, we have this great tool you should be using in the in the ghettos and in places where people just do not come to to film.
Newscasters do not care about your opinion, but you can have you can become a newscaster and you should be filming and audio, you know, doing podcasts and stuff like that.
So it was it was a really wild moment in American history.
And I feel like we caught that on film.
I live about two thousand hours of footage.
It's really amazing because it's when people still respected the camera.
There was a mystique to it.
There was a, you know, they would respond to the camera like, wow, this guy's from TV.
Now everyone has a camera.
Everyone has a TV station.
So it's not as cool, you know.
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
Times have changed that quickly as far as that goes.
Well, I got to say, you know, the idea of saying, well, for me, it's always been I always wanted to just do a skate trip, right, and go grind everything there is in the whole country to grind.
But but just the idea of of driving around for a year and going and seeing everything like that's the kind of thing that I guess a lot of people have thought of, but not very many people have ever done.
And and certainly I don't think anybody and I don't guess you guys really knew what you were in store for.
Right.
I mean, this was really the adventure of a lifetime that you guys were on.
Well, as a matter of fact, you know, it was a really scary distance to leave.
And, you know, we're from white trash, though, I guess, because none of our none of our family would know.
No one backed us.
So we left Chicago with one hundred and eighty dollars.
And when I brought Adam Curry before, we we originally pitched the idea probably six months prior to leaving to him.
And he he he accepted the idea and made a deal with us to back our our trip.
So when we when we were leaving, we thought we had a sponsor that was backing us when we left.
We left with one hundred and eighty dollars and nothing else because the dude literally lied.
I mean, and, you know, we did we decided to go for it anyway.
And I guess I'm sorry that it turned out really great.
I'm an atheist, but it's like it's almost in the spiritual sense.
Things really worked out on our trip.
But it was really hard to never have.
I mean, for a year, we didn't have a dollar in our pocket ever.
It always went in the gas tank and we'd show up at someone's doorstep like you bought you bought us lunch.
And that was part of the deal.
We say, we'll come visit.
Maybe you'll buy us lunch.
And I remember you buying us like this, these burgers.
Right, Amy?
Like we went out for fast food and that was all we ever ate.
We never had a dollar in our pocket.
And that was very strange to travel the country without a dollar.
You know, it became like when we got to the West Coast, it became so surreal.
It was like we were hallucinating when we ended up on the beach because I don't know.
It's so strange to not have a place to go to to scratch your balls or whatever.
I mean, we just had nowhere ever to go.
We always had to deal with the folks who are staying with and deal with their customs and their religion, whatever that was.
We, you know, take your shoes off at the door, whatever.
We just never had a moment of downtime or a lonely, you know, a spot to go and.
You know, be upset, you know what I'm saying, Scott?
Right.
And it became surreal.
And this sounds awesome, man.
I mean, when I went, hey, look, when you guys came to Austin and I got to spend whatever, you know, a little bit of time with you guys, it seemed like you were having a lot of fun to me.
I mean, not that it wasn't hard, but I kind of wished I could, you know, run along with you all.
But we, you know, throughout her life, we've taken those extreme, any kind of extreme and kind of negative extreme and ran with it and sort of had a good time.
We did have a good time on the trip, no doubt about it.
It was just when I think back, it was still a hard time.
It was like, I don't even know how we survived it.
I remember we had a Kentucky gun show and Amy was working the gun show and these guys wanted to give us a gun.
And they had like these containers, like these big Mac cups that they molded to hide guns in and shit like that.
And they told us everywhere we went, people would tell us to worry about the next location, which was wild.
Those are the couple of things that everyone in America, you got to worry about this town you're going through.
You got to worry about your next location.
And they would always say, oh, I'm so sorry.
My house isn't clean enough.
Even though it was, everyone would apologize for their house being messy and everyone would tell us to worry about the next location.
And we found that people are, you know, leaving from Chicago, having the horrible parents and horrible family we have and seem like we've seen like two dozen shootouts separately.
We've had a person murdered in our backyard.
We just thought people were intrinsically rotten people.
But I can't say that the people were just good.
People were decent everywhere we went.
And we were tested.
We didn't go stay with friends.
We put ads on Craigslist and stayed with absolutely complete strangers.
And everyone, everyone was good.
I mean, I wound up in a ghetto.
I was stoned out of my mind and I got lost and ended up in a ghetto in New Orleans and asked my truck to ask for directions.
Everyone there helped.
They're like, they just, they got us on the road.
They got me back on the highway.
I mean, it was, it gave me a lot of hope in humanity.
I wanted to leave the country.
I want to pay a damning document and leave the country.
Yeah.
And, you know, I really got that sense from the, from the video too, that, you know, these people that you're interviewing, you didn't have it all planned out that these were all the people you're going to be interviewing as you traveled around.
These are people that you just kind of stumbled across.
And it's something that I actually feel really lucky that I was a cab driver all those years because I was for like eight years or something like that.
And the movie really reminded me of that.
You know what?
It's really like to spend time meeting everybody in the whole damn world, every kind of person in the whole world, somebody from everywhere in the world.
And just see that, you know what?
People really are people, you know?
Yeah.
And then people were decent, you know, I mean, we got the, and we did just stumble on people.
I mean, we worked like I told you before, we worked like six months on a whole different plan.
I mean, we had a whole set of guests and we did stumble on by most of those people like, like John G.
Peeler.
I don't know if you saw him in the book, but he's a, he's a guy who claims to be a CIA assassin.
And, uh, we meet him in a West Memphis three rally in Arkansas and he brings us back to his house and he starts showing us, you know, cause I'm always a skeptic and he starts to pull out these news articles about him testifying in all these different court cases.
And he said, yeah, I lied in all these court cases just to get the guys in jail with the CIA.
And he starts pulling out more and more evidence.
And he looked like a Rambo.
He was like a Vietnam vet that used to look like Rambo, but now he looked like a little Santa Claus.
And he said, when people see me as I am now, they let me in and I'm able to do what I need to do.
Make it look like an accident.
And so that was really creepy to run into that guy and be standing overnight at his house.
I know Amy said she slept with one eye open.
The whole time.
I bet.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, hey, listen, so we got about six minutes left, so, um, I don't know exactly what my next question should be, but it sort of feels like maybe we should switch back to Amy, though.
You got it.
Thanks, Scott.
I love talking to you.
It was a pleasure.
I'm able to return the favor and you can visit us and we can host you.
Yeah.
Hey, I'd love that, man.
That'd be great.
It's great to talk to you, Shane.
So, yeah.
So, uh, tell me this.
How's the dog and the turtle?
They're doing great, actually.
You know, Cheyenne, our dog is, uh, she's like 15 now and she's still doing great.
I think that the trip really, uh, really gave her a whole lot of life.
I mean, she swam in two oceans, you know, she crossed mountains.
She did all kinds of stuff.
That's cool, man.
And I'm glad to know that the turtle is still doing well, too.
I was a little bit afraid to ask, but.
Oh, no, they're both still around.
It's amazing.
I know people said that, oh, I remember getting, I posted on some turtle board before we left looking for advice on traveling with a turtle.
And I must've got a dozen letters from people telling me I was a horrible person.
I was going to kill my turtle.
Yeah, well, shows what they know.
All right.
So now the big point of this whole thing, I'm actually, I was pleasantly surprised.
I don't know if it just came out this way in the movie.
It also seems like the book.
And again, I haven't had too much time to look through the book, but a little bit.
It doesn't seem like there's really very much about electoral politics in here, even though this was a 07, 08 campaign year and the whole big hope and change and this and that didn't seem certainly from the movie didn't seem like anybody was buying that or gave a crap about any of that at all, or they cared about, you know, how things are in the world.
But it didn't seem like anybody in the movie was buying into American democracy as a way to fix things.
You know, I guess there was a little bit of pro voter sentiment, but it wasn't really backed up with like, you know, and what change, what good that's going to do.
You know, right, right.
Well, people, you know, they like the idea of voting.
In fact, people convinced us that we should be voting, but it's about voting maybe for, you know, what's going to affect you personally, like local politics or or voter reform, you know, but like maybe if the book would have come out a few months after our trip ended, it would have been all, you know, Obama this and McCain that.
But because because we took our time with it, just none of that stuff seemed to fit anymore.
Right.
And we just felt like it was more about the future of America and the people of America and the situation, because it was funny.
You know, you listen to the news media and you think, oh, America is a bunch of bumbling idiots.
And when we went out into the country and talk to people, even people on the street, I mean, they were smart.
They were informed.
They weren't idiots.
They're with everyone.
We were amazed.
Even people we had a completely opposing point of view with, we agreed on certain things like, you know, like like freedom and and and, you know, just the situation with our country, free speech, you know, the rights of the people, things like that.
It seemed like that was universal, no matter if it was a conservative or a liberal or a religious kook or, you know, whatever.
Well, it seemed like, you know, everybody was pretty much agreed.
And I'm sure that at the time, you know, 708, this had a lot to do with why people were so into the Ron Paul thing, at least speaking for myself or so into Barack Obama.
So many millions were then is it was a measure of that same desperation that you guys have a great little montage really at the beginning of the movie.
It's just everybody saying we're screwed, man.
And they're identifying different things about, you know, income disparity and the death of the middle class or the end of the rule of law and and abuse by the state's enforcers and, you know, whatever different examples.
But it seemed like everybody agreed that America is lost.
They don't know, you know, and they're lost, too.
They don't know what to do either.
But something is really going wrong around here.
This is not the way it's supposed to be.
That was the universal kind of sentiment, especially those times.
Huh?
Absolutely.
And that was way before, you know, the Occupy thing or the Tea Party.
None of that stuff existed.
But people feel really disenfranchised.
I mean, right.
The crash didn't even happen till the end of 08.
So that was still during the bubble of the fake prosperity.
Oh, right.
The news was still saying everything was great.
Everything was fantastic, you know.
And meanwhile, we were watching people lose their homes, you know, but nobody was reporting on that stuff.
You know, when we went to Los Angeles, we were amazed how many people were living in their cars, like at grocery store parking lots and stuff.
And we just it was it was terrifying.
I mean, it seemed like the end of the world because how bad things were.
And well, I mean, of course, they still are.
But it seems like people are a lot more aware, I guess.
I don't know.
Maybe they're more unified in their awareness.
Maybe things like social media and stuff that have gotten progressed so much since then have made people more able to talk about what's happening and how I guess how screwed we all are.
But it seems like we have nothing to do with the powers that be.
The people of America have absolutely no say in government.
We have no no representation at all.
I mean, it's amazing.
Listen, this work is amazing.
Y'all, the two of you are amazing in this trip that you took is amazing.
And I'm so pleased to play my small part in it.
I got my little clips in the movie and my little interview in the book, which thank you for editing it so heavily.
I do talk on and on sometimes, but I really want people to check this thing out.
There's the super duper badass two hundred and fifty dollar hardback thing is coming out in the spring for people who can afford it.
You should get that.
If you can't, there's still this cheaper.
It's huge, though.
It's it's not some, you know, little Dean Koontz paperback thing, you know, dime store novel.
It's this huge, awesome, soft cover called The Suffering and Celebration of Life in America.
And it's companion DVD, politics, art, religion, revolution by Shane and Amy Bugbee.
And that's a year at the wheel dot com.
And then give me some more web addresses.
USA dot com and yeah, you're at the wheel on YouTube is the YouTube channel where you can see Scott and dozens of other people that we talk to.
And really, Scott, you know, thank you so much for being a part of it.
You were a big inspiration for us.
You know, all that you do.
Well, thanks.
I you know, I really appreciate that.
I just this is one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of.
So I'm really happy.
And wow, I'm sorry that I have to cut you off, but I got to interview Max Blumenthal.
Oh, that's right.
Hey, where can we download the show?
Go to Scott Horton dot org.
We got a live stream right there or no agenda stream dot com.
All right.
Excellent.
Thank you so much, Scott.
Thanks, Amy.
It's great to talk to you and tell Shane bye again for me.
And thanks a lot.
All right.
Well, thank you.
All right, everybody.
That is Shane and Amy Bugbee.
Again, it's the suffering and celebration of life in America.
I'm in there, you know, if you like that kind of thing.
And that's year a year at the wheel dot com.
Also on YouTube, a year at the wheel.
Shane and Amy Bugbee.
Hey, folks, Scott Horton here for Veterans for Peace at Veterans for Peace dot org.
I'm not a vet, but if you are, I'd like to ask you to consider joining Veterans for Peace.
As you know, in matters of foreign wars, a veteran's voice is given much more weight.
Well, Veterans for Peace is making veterans voices heard in ways and places where they can really make a difference.
There are more than 175 chapters of Veterans for Peace in all 50 states working hard to eliminate nuclear weapons, seek justice for veterans and victims of war and abolish war as an instrument of American national policy.
It's the peace vets versus the chicken hawks.
Join up the good fight at Veterans for Peace dot org.
Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here.
After the show, you should check out one of my sponsors, Wall Street Window dot com.
It's a financial blog written by Mike Swanson, a former hedge fund manager who's investing in commodities, mining stocks and European markets.
Mike's site, Wall Street Window dot com is unique in that he shows people what he's really investing in, updating you when he buys or sells in his main account.
Mike's betting his positions are going to go up due to the Federal Reserve printing all that money to finance the deficit.
See what happens at Wall Street Window dot com.
In an empire where Congress knows nothing, the ubiquitous D.C. think tank is all.
And the Israel lobby and their neocon allies must own a dozen.
Well, Americans have a lobby in Washington, too.
It's called the Council for the National Interest at Council for the National Interest dot org.
They advocate for us on Capitol Hill.
Join CNI to demand an end to the U.S. sponsored occupation of the Palestinians and an end to our government's destructive empire in the Middle East.
That's the Council for the National Interest at Council for the National Interest dot org.
Hey, ladies, Scott Horton here.
If you would like truly youthful, healthy and healthy looking skin, there is one very special company you need to visit.
Dagny and Lane at Dagny and Lane dot com.
Dagny Lane has revolutionized the industry with a full line of products made from organic and all natural ingredients that penetrate deeply with nutrient rich ionic minerals and antioxidants for healthy and beautiful skin.
That's Dagny and Lane at Dagny and Lane dot com.
And for a limited time, add promo code Scott 15 at checkout for a 15 percent discount.