Endless Thread - MEMES, Part 9: I'm Not Done Yet

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Anybody old enough to remember life before cutting the cord has probably seen the work of TV pitchman Billy Mays. But people much younger still know his face and squeaky OxiClean personality. While Mays died years ago, he’s lived on in meme form, from the famous product launches of Apple to more obvious image macros with Impact font. Why? We ask his son Billy Mays III, his biggest frenemy, and a host of others to explain why someone who was squarely in the age of television continues to appear online in strange and provocative ways. It’s the story of an American staple whose consumerist existence belies a personality that, in the end, was surprisingly wholesome.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. This is a story about two men. Friends, rivals.

One is no longer with us, but still around in his own way. The other one, the rival, is definitely still with us. And he won't shut up. I was told as a kid that I had to give him. gift of the gab and verbal diarrhea. I think verbal diarrhea was when people didn't like what I had to say, and the gift of the gab was when I was saying something that people actually thought was somewhat, you know, worth listening to. We'll say Anthony Sullivan has the gift of gab. Former, you're welcome to call me Mr. Sullivan. Most people, it ends out being Sully or Anthony.

In the early 90s, when Sully was 20 years old, he was trying to figure out how to move from his Salad days to adulthood. He'd just landed home in the rainy UK after spending a few years in Hawaii. And I was just dashing, is an English word. I was just flailing in the wind, rudderless, at 20 years old, like really actually thinking, what am I going to do with myself? A friend of mine got a speeding ticket. And he asked me to take care of his market stall.

This is a stall in an outdoor market, where all kinds of people sell all kinds of stuff. Not hugely interesting to Sully. But I went to this market to help him out, and opposite my friend's stand was this guy selling this car wash called The Amazing Washmatic. And he's doing this speech, which I later found out was a pitch. And I'm watching, I'm counting how many he's selling because he's right opposite me. And he's doing the same thing. And every time he finished his speech, people were giving him 10 pound notes.

And I was like, gee, this guy's making a lot of money. So I walk over to him and I just, you know, I just walk up to him. And I say, hey, I said, you know, Mr. I said, you know, I think I would be good at this. could you teach me to do it? And maybe I could come and work for you. Where he literally flicked me off, but he didn't want anything to do with me. So I went home, told my friend,

I said, that guy needs to hire me. I will be really good at what he does. Turns out, outdoor market product pitching is a pretty insular scene, sort of like magicians or something. A seasoned pitcher isn't going to just give up their secrets to some rando. But Sully wears the washmatic guy down. So the guy gives him an old tape recorder and says,

record my pitch, learn it word for word, and when you've done that, come back. So I showed up and I was nervous because this is a performance and I had never really performed in my life and I have to stand up in front of this crowd of people. How am I going to do this? Well, the thing I didn't figure out was I hadn't really worked with the product that much. I knew the words but I didn't know the how to. So anyway, I stand there and he just throws the car wash at me. It's a bucket with a nine foot piece of hose in it. with a check valve on one end and a brush on the other end, and I'm sitting there holding it,

and I have this out-of-body experience. I don't, what do I do now? How do I, how do I, how do I, ballet a tip? Balleting a tip means drawing a crowd. Part of this whole lingo the pitchmen use. You usually bally a tip by using the product, which Sully doesn't know how to do. But then he gets lucky.

Somebody walks up and asks, how does this thing work? So Sully launches into the script. I wish I had it on tape. It was awful. It was probably the most awful pitch of my life, but I sold one. And that was it. I'm like, oh, my God.

It was like this magical, I spoke, and the guy gave me 10 pounds. Then Sully sells another watchmatic and another. In a little while, his new skeptical boss comes back. And he says, how many did you sell? And he's kind of belligerent and just looking at me. And I pulled like 70 pounds out of my pocket. And he's like, holy moly, he's never done this before. So the next day he sends me off and I come back.

He gives me like a 50-60 car washes. It expected me to sell 30. And I sold them all by lunchtime. I just loved it. Something is unlocked in 20-year-old Sully. It was a physical thing for me. I found that if I could move and move my hands and engage with the eye contact, I could have the crowd under a spell called it.

We call it under the ether. in the business when you have the crowd under the ether. And I could do it. It was like a magical thing. And I could extract money out of people. I mean, there was people who had no intention of buying a car wash. And within five minutes, they would give me money. Sully starts to study everyone in his outdoor market.

And he gets so good that he goes pro on the product hawking circuit. Makes it far enough he decides to sell his belongings and go across the pond to the real mecca of perfect product material. The place where anything is possible in five easy payments of 1999. America. In America, Sully starts trying to get on television, infomercials. He's working his way up to the big leagues. But even in the big leagues of pitching products, you still have to do the traveling shows in all the major cities.

And one day, he's in Pittsburgh, where in the early 1990s, Sully meets his match. The guy who would become Sully's nemesis. the guy who our story is really about, who at the time was doing the same thing Sully was. He also sold the Amazing Washmatic. And there wasn't very many people in the world that I've met to this day

who know how to sell the Amazing Wash Maddick. And I heard about this guy called Bucket Billy. Bucket Billy had made his own way up the product pitching ladder, far from England. He'd made it on the Atlantic City Boardwalk where thousands of pedestrians ambal past open-air stalls and people try to get them to buy knife sets, stain removers, and wash Maddox.

And I was really excited to meet him because here's a guy from what I say is my tribe. And there's not very many of us. But Bucket Billy has one thing to say to Sully when they meet. And Billy, Billy says, you're not in England anymore. This is Pittsburgh. Bucket Billy and Sully are not quite fast friends, but they're cut from the same cloth. And to this day, Sully is still in awe. I never forget watching him go to work with OxyClean and coming out with all the one-liners.

And it was literally like watching it as a pitch. It was like watching a master. It was like watching Mr. Miyagi. He just got it. Mr. Miyagi, Bucket Billy. But most of us, whether it's from the memes or from him being as seen on TV, most of us know this other man by his rich dark beard, his button-down blue shirt. and a different name.

Hi, Billy Mays here for OxyClean, the Stained Specialist, powered by the Air You're Green. I would watch him in the green room and my jaw would hit the ground. I'm like, it's just the things he would come out with on live TV. And we just, then that's when our friendship kind of started

and he kicked my ass. There would be like 2,000 people calling in, a thousand people on hold. The computers would be like smoke coming out of him because they couldn't handle the call volume. There was more operators. and Billy, you could hear him. He would wear a microphone, but he'd be shouting like...

Wow. I used to say to him, my buddy, why are you shouting? You've got a microphone on. But that was part of his charm, right? Hi, Billy May's here. Your dog would turn around. If, you know, if that happened, your dog would, like, look at the TV. He just had a way of getting people's attention.

Hi, Ben Johnson here. Hi, Emery Severson here, and this is Endless Thread. The show featuring stories found online that tell us more about who we are, IRL. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station, and oh my God, how did Billy Mays keep that up for so long? We will get to that, Amory. But also, we'll talk about how Billy Mays couldn't keep going as long as he wanted. At just 50 years old, his death came as a shock to many, including us, just over 24 hours. Today, the story of a larger-than-life infomercial star.

who positioned himself perfectly for a larger-than-life legacy online. There's one of the Obama art that everybody knows that says hope, and it's my dad, and it says soap under it instead. Remember our meme chorus, the group of experts we talk to about memes? Something they mentioned often was the idea that with some memes, it's all about context. Get the context, get the joke. A lot of times people will start treating memes as these kind of cultural currencies, right?

To me, I see memes as a more inclusive in-joke. If you are of a certain age, Billy Mays is hilarious. His message is clear. His image is clear. He is the perfect meme for people who understand what he was about. Capitalism. It'll make your whites whiter. It'll make your brights brighter.

As a stain remover, it's the best. Grass stains, clay stains, long live your laundry. OxyClean, the stained specialist. Then if I had been old enough to buy something over the phone when this commercial launched, I just might have purchased that whopping six-pound bucket of OxyClean. Here was this enthusiastic guy, not quite yelling at me, but projecting and gesticulating and making me feel like this product was the solution to problems I didn't even know I had. Yeah, like clay stains?

What are even clay stains and who gets clay stains? Those pesky clay stains. But yeah, I didn't know why here. He had this effect on me at the time. He was intense, but there was also something kind of familiar and relatable about him. I love beautiful wood, don't you? Well, let me show you how to take care of all your wood with orange glow, wood cleaner and polished. And clearly, Emery, you were not the only person under Billy Mays's spell.

In his breakout pitch on the home shopping network in the mid-90s, he sold 6,000 units of orange glow at 18 bucks a pop in. just 11 minutes. Billy Mays became a household name in the early aughts, and not just because he was selling household products, but because he made sure you knew his name. Hi, Billy Mays here for the original Quick Chop. Hi, Billy Mays here for the Crockettor. Hi, Billy Mays here for the big city slider.

Billy became the home shopping network's It Guy. If a product wasn't hitting its numbers, a producer from the network would call it Billy and ask him to come down to the studio. He could sell tens of thousands of dollars worth of cleaning products in a single day. If you have a boat, the best, that white sock is not hurt by the reds. Look at this. The colors didn't run. But Billy's success as a pitch man.

It's actually pitchman. I'm going to say pitchman for the sake of this episode. Billy's success is a pitch man. It didn't happen overnight. He had hustle. You kind of want to say pitchman, though, now that we've talked about it. I can't. Don't you kind of part of you is like halting you now?

You're like, oh, shit, is it pitchman or pitchman? It's, yeah, it's funny, but I'm just, it's just going to make me laugh if I say pitchman. Pitchman. There are actually three Billy Mays, Billy Mays senior, who has a full-on white beard, Billy Mays Jr., the maze in the middle. And Billy Mays the third. I think it was more, I was, there's probably a term for it, but I was like a carny kid,

I think, that I would walk around the convention. Center, and it'd be like fun for me because everyone knew who I was and they all knew to keep an eye on me because I was young. And at this point, my dad, he was, like, legendary. Billy Mays III didn't know his dad all that well when he was a kid. My dad and my mom got divorced when I was three. And I lived with my mom from that point on until I was about 18. But for one or two weeks every year, Billy Mays the second would come back through the family hometown of Pittsburgh for the home and garden show to sell products. And he brought his son along.

My time was spent directly underneath the booth. Like, I could see his legs. And he's up on a little booster. And I'm underneath the booth with a whole batch of toys, like X-Men toys or Star Wars or wrestling figures, whatever I was into at the time. And so I remember that being like my little playroom at these long days at the convention centers.

Billy knew his dad was a big deal, long before he really knew why. was a big deal. But he got a better sense of it when he started seeing his dad on TV. I do remember always tuning in live because that would be the only time that you could watch it. I mean, I guess that was true for commercials at that point too. But I remember like there would be a scheduled time where he's going to be on the 7 o'clock hour and we would put a VHS tape in to try to capture it. It's powered by the air you breathe activated by the water that you and I drink. In your laundry, the power of bleach, but it's safe. Watch this. The maze in the middle hadn't had an easy rise to television, though.

Billy grew up outside of Pittsburgh. His dad ran a hazardous waste trucking company. Billy played football in high school and then at West Virginia University. But he dropped out, went back home to work for his dad's company. My dad worked for him for a few years, and I think they didn't get along doing that because he would just be like a hard, he would work you so hard and he would try to instill this like work ethic in you. So that's probably where the working every day. day, like, on something comes from.

Billy was in his early 20s, breastless, and ready for a change of scenery. Hmm, shades of a young Sully. And then one day, one of his old football buddies told him he was going to Atlantic City to sell ginsu knives on the boardwalk. It's actually pronounced ginsu. Fuck you. Want to come? The friend asked.

Billy packed a suitcase. Billy didn't just find work in Atlantic City. He found a calling, and it didn't take long for the big wig of the boardwalk to find him. Is it true that you discovered Billy Mays? Well, Billy started working for me, and if you want to get into it, Billy, let's give you a quick history of the pitch business. This is Chris Morris, former president of the professional pitch person group International Housewheres, Inc. And the history Chris is referring to goes back to the 1940s.

Suffice it to say, a bunch of guys started selling home goods on the boardwalks in Asbury Park and Atlantic City in New Jersey because beachgoers were perfect for ballying a tip. Relaxed people, mildly interested in something entertaining, money in the pocket. One of those pitchmen was the grandfather of Chris Morris. All the greatest pitchmen started there in Atlantic City. In 1983, a 25-year-old Billy Mays joined them. The first hit product he pitched was that nifty car washing hose, the Washmatic. It's the only washing system in the world that works direct from a bucket. Billy Mays III doesn't remember everything his dad pitched in the early days,

but someone saw to it that the Washmatic would not be forgotten in May's family history. And there's actually photos of me, of him holding me as a baby and with the product on the booth. And they called him Bucket Billy at this time, and I was Little Bucket Billy. Little Bucket Billy. We had like matching T-shirts and stuff like that. Bucket Billy did well for himself on the boardwalk. And pretty soon, he was taking his show on the road to home shows, auto shows, and state fairs. He became a full-time traveling pitchman, going from state to state, in a car piled high with products,

working long days and sleeping who knows where. It was hard. work. And Billy the third and his mom experienced the personal toll it took. The reason they got divorced was that my dad had a dream of like being this big pitchman. And once I was born, my mom like couldn't take the travel lifestyle and was just like, this isn't going to work. I don't see where this is going. And my dad just like followed that instead. So he had been a pitchman for maybe 15 years, 12 to 15 years before TV. Chris Morris says Billy got noticed at one of these home shows by the founder of Orange Glow International, the company behind the product that

catapulted his career, OxyClean. When he was asked in interviews over the years where he learned and honed his craft, he'd credit his buddies on the boardwalk. Most of these pitchmen were tremendous, you know, could sell anything. So why do you think Billy became such an icon himself? Well, Billy had a good look, and he had the talent to really make a pitch. out of any product. And he used the same format. You know, pitches like a song. So, fun fact about Chris,

he also had a career as a music producer. He worked with the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder. He knows a hit when he hears one, be it a song or a pitch. It's about three minutes long. It has a hook, you know. It's got a couple verses,

and it's got a good chorus hook. And it's got the end, which we call the turn. Take Billy's famous OxyClean commercial, for example. Let's break it down. It's an efficient two minutes long, and I think you could argue there's a couple of hooks in there. Don't just get it clean. Get it OxyClean.

Long live your laundry. There's also just some honest-to-goodness poetry. Pet stains, food stains, they get down into the matting, into the padding. And after a couple hits of the hook, Chris says there's something called The Load Up. Well, you get one knife, then you get another knife. knife, then here's a pairing knife, here's a spiral slicer. You'll also receive a squirt bottle and a super shammy absolutely free.

If you call during this show, you'll receive a bottle of our world famous orange clean, made with pure orange oil. This is the classic, but wait, there's more, trick. Or in the words of Billy. But I'm not done yet. But I'm not done. But I'm still not done. Call right now.

But I'm just getting started. I'll double it. And then comes the turn. The moment Billy turns. from entertainer to the guy who takes your money. But you got to call now. Here's how to order. Now, for some of you, this kind of full throttle in-your-face style of advertising probably feels light years away from the way you're used to having products pitched to you

in mostly silent, impersonal ads that you scroll past on your phone. But for people who grew up before phones were smart and TV was streamed, Billy Mays was a cultural touchstone. Comfortingly distinct and familiar in a truly memetic kind of way. The big smile, the ageless, rich black beard, the thumbs up, the blue button downs and khakis that you can almost picture lined up in a row in his closet,

like a cartoon character or something. His approach was distinct too, simultaneously over the top, yet down to earth. And he was talking right to you, making you feel like he really could make your home cleaner, your work simpler. your life easier. In bite-sized memorable phrases

that you can almost hear in impact font. Oh man, they were made for impact font. Or maybe impact font was made for Billy. John Lucas Strangini from our meme chorus talk to us about what gives an image, a video, or in this case, a person, viral memetic potential. Does this meme contain a character? Is the character well-framed in the image?

maybe it takes most of a frame. Is the character showing a funny pose, maybe a facial expression? Do we see movement in the image? I mean, check, check, check, check. Bucket Billy was ahead of the meme curve. And you know what else was ahead of the meme curve? Billy's main medium, television,

where he and Sully, the Pitchman Roadshow rivals, discovered they had compatible strengths. Guess this is like Elton John. Bernie Taubin of the pitchman. He's going to be Elton and I'll be Bernie. I was going to say, who's who? Yeah, he's definitely Elton without the sunglasses and he's straight. Right.

And I was more of the writer. The owners of OxyClean must have recognized this because they suggested the two team up for a commercial. But in this case, again, Sully would be the writer and Billy, the performer. The only question was, would it work? And I said, there's no way Billy and I ever. be able to work together in that capacity. And they said, well, you're going to do it.

And I said, well, I'll try. Billy brought his boundless energy and classic turns of phrase, but it was Sully who helped call his wealth of one-liners into the pithy pitch that made OxyClean a hit. And this is where I think the High Billy Mays line came from because I said, we've got to open this commercial up. What are we going to say? He goes, hi Billy May's here.

I said, right, great. Hi, Billy May's hit. Their writer's room, first class on a United Flight from Vegas to Tampa, two bottles of Chardonnay Deep. I said, Billy, what are your seven demos that you would do on HSA? And let's condense them down into, you know, 10 words. Billy May is here for OxyClean, the Stained Specialist, powered by the air you breathe, activated by the water you and I drink. It's Mother Nature approved and it's safe on color fabrics. I can remember this script to this day, and I wrote it 21 years ago with him.

Wow. And I didn't know at the time, but it was literary. It was like, this is going to make you laugh. It's like Shakespeare of pitching. And for the first time, the bards of pitching and this leading man were about to have an audience beyond just the home shopping crowd, because this was the OxyClean commercial they had just penned. Two minutes of copy that added rocket fuel to Billy's upward trajectory. In the early 2000s, Bucket Billy from the Boardwalk became the syndicated Stain Specialist spokesman,

on more networks reaching millions more viewers and pocketbooks than this hard-scrabble homegrown pitchman had probably ever imagined. All of a sudden, he became probably one of the most watched people on TV. No TV training, no theatrical background, and all of a sudden he's on TV, like he's an authority. You know, Billy Ames here, you better be paid. attention to what he was selling. And pretty soon, Billy was selling just about everything. Hi, Billy Mays here for Flies away. Here for the gopher. Here for the handy switch. Zorbis. Kaboom, porcelain, tiling, ground restore. For Simonized liquid diamond, the awesome auger. That mighty putty, fix it for you. That mighty tape save you dough.

Billy was everywhere on TV and IRL. If he wasn't filming a commercial, he was at a home show, or doing press or signing autographs or taking the field? Billy was a legit star. I remember sitting and skiing in Colorado, turned on the TV one day, and there was a college football game, one of the big college games, and I turned the TV on,

and Billy is running around the field with his blue oxyclean shirt on, like a high-fiving the quarterback. There's 80,000 people there. I'm like, what the hell is he doing? What he was doing was riding the wave, saying yes to everything. every product, every opportunity, until pretty soon.

Billy wasn't just pitching products. He was the product, the in-demand brand. The guy was a moment in time. You know, when you hear Billy, you remember that was the 2000s. But there was only so much Billy to go around. Eventually, all those yeses caught up with him. But he's not done yet. And neither are we.

But wait, there's more. In a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced

audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. By the mid-2000s, Billy Mays had earned himself a reputation as a prolific pitchman and a workaholic. We ran pretty hard, but we were always focused eye on the prize and trying to do the right thing for the people we work with. His collaborator, Anthony Sullivan, was right there with him. And they kept each other going on long days of filming.

If they were taking themselves too seriously or they just got a little loopy. Here's how to order. But wait, there's four. Here's how to order. But wait, we'll give you a dirtball. Absolutely free. Call on the next 20 minutes. Billy and Sully's playful frenemy dynamic turned out to be a pitchable product all its own.

Hi, I'm Billy Maze. And I'm Anthony Sullivan. And we're here to tell you about our new show, Pitchman. For years, we've taken. your design? And turn them into gold mines. This is my one shot. It works.

The show debuted on the Discovery Channel in April of 2009. It was like Shark Tank on steroids. Inventors would pitch their products, but instead of investing their money, Billy and Sully would put in their time and energy, writing and starring in commercials for them. Like one for a shock-absorbent gel that involved a 6,000-pound van driving over Billy's hand, which he was not thrilled about. Action. Talk about shock absorbency.

I'm going to let this six... Let's Billy, just relax. Back it up. No, no, not to relax. Come on. Are you going to do this or not? Give me one more chance. Pitchman had all the drama and shenanigans you'd want from a reality show.

And it propelled Billy to a new tier of fame and recognition. He was a reality TV star now, more quotable and imitable than ever. That year, the number one Halloween costume was Billy Mays after Elvis, maybe before Elvis. Like, he hit a chord with the American, with kids and everyone. But with reality show stardom came the grueling reality show filming schedule, on top of Billy's already grueling schedule. Here's a guy that's representing OxyClean, Orange Glow, Mighty Puddy, Mighty Mendit.

So he had a stable of products that he represented that required him to be shooting somewhere for someone at any one time. And he was shooting a 13-part reality show that took a. all over the country. And Billy had just signed a deal to shoot commercials for Taco Bell. Billy was peaking, and he was only 50 years old. But while his career was reaching new heights, his health was nosediving. So by this time, he's living in constant pain. This is Billy Mays the Third again, who had been living with his dad at the time, and working on pitchman as a production assistant. You could ask Sully this or anyone that was around him on

these shoots. He was a little bit different. Billy had two hip surgeries in and around the time that we were shooting. And they both gone bad. And the second hip surgery was bothering him a lot during the shoot schedule. He was taking a lot of painkillers. And I'll just be completely candid. Billy was taking some pretty serious pain meds. And it was very difficult.

And anyone who struggled with any opioids of any kind will know that it is hard to manage. There's millions and millions of people who've struggled with it. And it's been openly talked about since then. Billy was in the eye of that storm. He basically had to decide, and this is what he would tell me, is either he takes painkillers and he's a little out of it, but he could still get his job done, or he doesn't take the painkillers,

and he just can't even stand up, and especially stand up for eight hours for these shoots, doing all the voiceovers and everything like that. So between his work schedule, press schedule, his bad hip, and everything that was going on, he loved RebMe, and he loved red wine. He didn't exercise because he couldn't.

And both Sully and Billy the third say, Billy Mays never said no. Not even to swarms of fans wanting autographs when he was just trying to get through an airport. Fundamentally, Billy was a giver. He just buttoned up that blue shirt, turn on that salesman grin, and power through.

We were so go, go, go. And looking back, that was probably a huge mistake. Like, we should have rested. He could have took time off. I just think he didn't want to let go of it now that he had it, the success. But eventually, the pain Billy was in would make the choice for him. At the end of June 2009, he was supposed to go in for a third hip surgery, which would force him to take it easy, at least for a little bit.

But then, two weeks before the surgery, Billy got a call from The Tonight Show. Conan O'Brien was filling in for Jay Leno, and he wanted the pitchman on the show. Billy called Sully to tell him the good news and the bad news. And he goes, the only problem is it's on the day of my surgery, the 22nd of June, and they won't move it. Now, the Tonight Show wasn't exactly a big deal for Billy at this point. He had just been on a few months before. But for Sully, this was a real, I have made it kind of opportunity. And we all know Billy couldn't say no.

So he moved his surgery back a week. Like the last thing we ever did together in public was that, was the Tonight Show with Conan. And he actually said to me, like, when he was doing Leno, he asked Jay if I could be on the Tonight Show with him. And Jay said to Billy, he said, Sully will get his time. And his parting gift to me was, I do get emotional when I talk about this,

because it was like he, before he went, he made sure that I got to experience, you know, being on the Tonight Show with him. And that was the kind of guy that he was. Billy the Third was there too. And that night, we're all at the hotel kind of just celebrating that milestone. And we were just having the best time ever. But that night ended up being the last time that I saw him.

Two days before his surgery, Billy was flying home to Tampa after two weeks on the road. His second wife and three-year-old daughter were waiting for him. The flight home had a rough landing, rough enough to get on the evening. news. Right after getting off the plane, Billy told the local Fox affiliate that something hit him on the head pretty hard. That interview would be his last. I've been, geez, I've been going for two weeks straight. I just came from the Conan O'Brien show. Just did an OxyClean commercial up in Philly and on my way back home. To have surgery on my hip, Monday. So that's the, if that's the toughest part of He had just gotten home to my stepmom and his daughter.

And so they were all in bed together. And they woke up the next morning and he was dead. It didn't seem to be any traumatic thing that happened. It just looked like he was dead. And so as far as I know, he went out pretty peacefully. Did your dad OD? No. Well, I don't think so.

It's, it actually doesn't bother me if people look at the situation and, and note all the different prescription drugs that he was abusing at the time, you know, with the pain he was living, and I totally understand where he was at. According to a toxicology report released about a month later, the cause of death was hypertensive heart disease. But there was also cocaine found in his system. which the medical examiner listed as a contributing factor to his death. The Mays family contested it, but the celebrity news circuit ran with it.

TMZ had to highlight that one little part of the story, and then now the legend is that he overdosed on cocaine, and that must have been why he had so much energy and blah, blah, blah. So it really is kind of, especially the cocaine contributing to his death, really did come from out of the blue. Frankly, we thought this was just a tragic case. of a natural cause death way, way too early, but there may be more to this and that story is developing.

For me, it illuminated a lot of how our society views people who are addicts and how we just sort of like lose respect for them or, and no one, not a lot of people really try to understand the circumstances or what that person is trying to run from. So I got to experience quite a bit of unfortunate mistreatment online just from people who have that weird perspective that like it makes him a bad person. But there is more to the legacy of Billy Mays, a lot more. In the 12 years since his death, the tabloid narrative has been mostly drowned out by a veritable ocean of Billy May's memes.

One of them is, it's the three wise men from like a Christmas movie. It's something like we've brought gifts for you. I'm looking at it right now. I'm looking at it right now. It's so good. We brought golden frankincense for you, Jesus. And then your dad pops up and he says. He says, but wait, there's mer.

So when did you start to realize that your dad was being memed? From my perspective, I would say that without knowing what he was doing, I think that he sort of memed himself into a meme. So he memed, he memed. his own memes into being? I think to a degree, I think that at some point he caught wind

or he understood what was happening and that there was this sort of like joke to be made about what his character was in the public's eye. And instead of like trying to keep it as like to hold on to the artistic side or the, you know, he started embracing it and being in on the jokes.

So even though Billy didn't live to see most of the memes made about him, it's comforting to feel like he'd get the joke, like we're laughing with him, which isn't to say he'd necessarily find them all funny. There's one showing Billy in front of the Twin Towers. The first tower has just been hit, and the caption reads, but wait, there's more. His son had a good laugh at one that was going around last year, though.

It started off as just when you think 2020 can't get any worse. It shows my dad's saying, wait, there's more. And then now it's like, you thought 2021 was going to be better than 2020, but then, but wait, there's more. And it's like we just keep going. So I feel like that's just going to be a thing now. We often think of memes as meteoric and ephemeral. They capture a moment, they have their moment, and then they're gone. But in the case of Billy Mays, the opposite is happening. It is the way that he lives on. It's the way that people discuss. him and learn about him.

Not ephemeral. Eternal. Memorialized, if you will. And there are other ways that Billy lives on. On the internet, in the media, there are impersonators. Hi, Billy Mays here for Capriotti's Big Box Lunch. And the timing's off for me. But there was a great impersonation in an episode of South Park,

where the ghosts of dead celebrities are haunting Kyle's baby brothers. Hi, Billy Mays here for Mega Scrub Clemsonzer. Are you tired of your kitchen counters getting those nasty stains? Don't just rub them, mega scrub them. Billy the Third is catalogued the memes, the fan art, and the references and tributes to his dad on the page Billy Maze.org. I call it the museum. I call it a digital museum. There is a sort of separation in my mind of the person and the meme,

but there also isn't. It's also, I recognize that as his energy. sort of still out in the world. So to me, I'm just, like, proud of that. I'm proud that he made enough of an impact to even be considered a meme. And he'd be proud of it, too, I think. He might also be proud of the comparisons

made to another legend of the industry. Someone you might not have thought of as a pitchman, but whose techniques echoed or maybe even deliberately emulated billies. We think we've got the strongest product lineup that Apple's ever had. This is the late Steve Jobs, the former Apple CEO, giving a keynote speech in 1999 with his classic line. There is one more thing.

There is one more thing that I want to show you. Good pitchmen borrow, great pitchmen steel. So much of what happens with pitching is the constant evolution of tricks, references, which is exactly how memes work. If you see a way to evolve the thing, you do it. make it better. And if you make it better, sometimes you make it big time. Billy was like our steep jobs. You know, like here he made it. Lindsay Brooks is a former pitch woman whom Billy took under his wing back in his Atlantic City days. And she has no doubt that Billy's success as a pitch man invigorated the industry as a whole.

It's one of those things that I think really propelled, you know, just some of the entrepreneurship that we've seen now in the last, you know, 10 years and 15 years maybe in the inventor world and and things is knowing that, right? Because it's all in the pitch, right? And that was something that Billy used to always say, you know, life's a pitch and then you buy, right? Some people might hear that line, life's a pitch and then you buy,

and get those kind of sleazy businessman vibes. Billy was in the consumerism industry after all. There is and always will be more. But people in his circle say he saw it differently. Billy pitched products that he believed in, products that he himself used. And he never stopped driving around with a car full of them. Even after he became successful enough that that car was a Rolls-Royce.

And the way Billy sold those everyday products, with his one-liners, his look, his voice, it's a master class for the modern-day influencer. Billy became the brand. It didn't matter what he was selling. It's that he was selling it. And he'll be remembered long after his products are gone from the shelves. Yeah, well, he instead of making a spy thinks he made us love him.

And he was really easy to love. The people who knew Billy Best say there was a side to him that was not as seen on TV. One you won't find articulated online or memorialized. He was a really quiet guy. He was sort of reserved in his friendships and stuff like that. Behind that facade of him being this just loud, abrasive. Some people would say obnoxious pitching was this gentle, caring, giving, quiet, beautiful human being. Oh my God, it's Billy Mays.

And he stops and I'm like, oh, Lord, because I know Billy, he'll talk to anybody for an hour. I found him to be someone that was extremely generous, sometimes to a fault. When people would get excited about his nice car that he was driving at the time, they would say, oh man, that car is awesome. Can I check it out? And he would basically just throw them the keys and say, yeah, let's go. You want to drive? He was a man of the people, you know, and he really cared about people's dreams and goals. And, you know, if you didn't met him, I mean, he was somebody that could make you feel like you were the only person in the room.

And it didn't matter who you were, what you were like, how much money you had, you know. He was just a real light. I think Billy would maybe still be with us today if he'd said no a couple times. And, you know, Billy is an example of you have to be good to yourself, you know. And it, yeah, just, I think, slow it down. I do think we do live an exhausting pace right now. And, you know, even when I look back now, but, you know, this was pre-internet, pre-in Instagram, pre-Facebook really was early in the days. And we were living in probably, you know, what would be considered, you know, archaic media communication times.

But there is an element of, like, slow it down. Billy the Third is a dad himself now. And he's picked up the torch professionally, too. But not in the way he might expect. As much as I tried to distance myself from being a pitchman or in that business at all, As the years have gone on, I've realized I'm essentially doing the same thing he did. The younger Billy grew up making music, but his father's death really reignited that part of himself. He started performing under the moniker Infinite Third, and a few years ago, he left the TV business to pursue music full time.

I find myself in these cities by myself playing a festival, and my goal is to attract people's attention, give them a good show, and then sell them merch so that I can get to the next city. And I realized, like, he was doing that for, like, 15 years or 20 years maybe. And so it's a way that I feel close with my dad in a lot of ways to where I now feel that a lot of him is in me. You might even say, in a way, Billy Mays is not done yet. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. Want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, pictures of Amory's Fire Pit or My Woodpile? Join our email list.

You can find it at WBUR.org.org slash endless thread. Also, we want to know what you think is the most underrated meme. So call us 857-244-0338. Or better yet, record a voice memo on your phone and email it to Endless Thread at WBUR.org. We just might feature your voice memo or your voicemail and your meme suggestion on the show. For example. Hey, y'all. I'm Liz. And I am from Albuhr.

side of arena. I don't know if this is just a meme that's popular with my friend group, but it's this little boy that if you're on Twitter and you do a gift and you type in, hell yeah, it's this little boy who's about 10 years old. He's in front of a backdrop of New York City. It looks like one of those things that was like popular in the early 90s that was like, make your own music video. And this little kid has so much passion and joy. And enjoy. And joy and just like pizzazz in this one little dance move. It's like, ha, ha, ha, arm in the air. Hell yeah. Big thanks to our meme chorus. Sarah Laola teaches about digital culture and design at Coastal Carolina

University. Joan Donovan is research director at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center. John Lucas Strangini studies online security disinformation and hate speech at Boston University. Amanda Brennan has the extremely cool title of Internet. librarian, Kenyatta Cheese co-founded the site Know Your Mem and Don Caldwell is its editor-in-chief. Please go find their work and benefit from their meme genius. Our series and our show is made by producers Nora Sacks, Dean Russell, and Quincy Walters. We're co-hosted by us, Amory Severson. And Ben Brock Johnson, this episode was edited by Maureen McMurray.

Mix and sound design by Matt Reed. But that last song you heard was called Rounded Corners, and it was by none other than Billy Mays the Third, who performs as Infinite Third. You can find more of his music on our website, wbUR.org slash endless thread. Special thanks to an additional production work from Josh Crane, Frank Hernandez, Kristen Torres, Sophie Codner, and Rachel Carlson. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and the grime of a million llamas. That's a lot of grime.

If you've got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the internet, or some grime from llamas that you want us to talk about, hit us up. Email endless thread at wbUR.org. Keep it grimy.