Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 247: The Lobster Boy Murders

Episode Date: November 11, 2016

Join us today as we explore the world of the American carnival through the lens of the murder by and the murder of the 20th century's most famous sideshow act: Grady Stiles Jr, the Lobster Boy! Ossuary 5 - Rest Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Waltz of the Carnies Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Um, are we good to go, Marcus? I think we're okay, yeah. Do we feel like we can do this?

I think we can do this. Do we have the strength to do this? I think we have the strength. It's our duties. Isn't it weird that it's come to last podcast on the left to be rational? Yeah, that's how crazy the world's gone. We have to make a sane choice. That's it. Alright, welcome to the last podcast on the left, everybody.

I am Ben Kissel. That's Marcus Parks. Hey, he's all the way out in Los Angeles. I am sitting on a dog bed in a tiny little closet next to my bedroom. But the dog bed is fun because I feel like a big dog also because I'm not wearing any clothes. And you are extremely hairy. It's 95 degrees in here. I've been drunk for two days, like the rest of the country.

Natalie said, your body smells like whiskey. She said it in a funny way. She was like, it's just funny how the body just smells like whiskey. If you've been doing nothing but drinking whiskey and eating vegetables on you, because I made a big one. Are you Garfield? Yes, I did. No, I am Garfield.

And your Heathcliff Garfield nonsense is a big sack of shit. Well, that's not true at all. Heathcliff for life. We all know that. I'm not going to talk about that. Also, in a blackout, I let Natalie paint all my toenails on election night. That's fun. You know, Henry, it sounds like you're just having fun with it.

It sounds like you're having fun with it. You have to have fun with it. All right, well, speaking of no choice. Yes, well, let's move on to today's topic and let's move out of the real world. I guess we're still in the real world. Technically. This is very much so the real world. All right, this story is called The Lobster Boy Murders.

Now, what a better way to leave the circus of politics. I'm going to fucking kill myself. Don't do that. It's funny to leave the circus of politics and talk about the real circus. Now, this is a fun Florida story. Yes. Which is great. And I think of all the things we could talk about right now in this state of America is

how this shit happens in Florida 24-7. Not stunned at all that this takes place in Florida, right? No. No, no, no. It might be the quintessential Florida tale. I think if you wanted space aliens to know exactly what Florida is all about, we would give them the story of Grady Franklin Styles Jr., The Lobster Boy. And a lot of our story comes from the book Lobster Boy by Fred Rosen.

Now, the problem is that also with the name Lobster Boy, what do you imagine? A cute boy with a hat on, slowly being lowered into a pot. There's a famous picture of a little baby dressed as a lobster in a crockpot on the internet that I look at when I want to smile. So it's kind of like that. It's really, really cute. But in actuality, it was a 300-pound perpetually drunk man with no hands or legs who beat his family with his stumps and eventually was murdered himself.

That's the lobster boy, huh? It's not a cute baby in a crockpot on Google Images? Oh, he was in a shade over 200. What are you talking about, Henry? I don't know. I guess if he had legs, he'd be pumped up. If he was a real lobster, he'd be expensive. Ooh, ooh, you're so delicious if he was a real lobster.

Well, Grady Franklin Styles Jr., a.k.a. The Lobster Boy, was born in Pittsburgh on July 18, 1937. Styles was born with a condition known as ectrodactyly, more commonly known as lobster claw syndrome. I'm really glad they didn't call it flippy flappy hand syndrome because that would be insensitive. That would be insensitive. He sounds like the world's dumbest dinosaur. Doesn't it sound like a dinosaur name? Ectrodactyly. What is that?

It's a 200-pound carnival freak. Wasn't it the simple dinosaur friend in the movie Land Before Time? I think it was. Yeah, Petrie. That thing. Well, ectrodactyly is a combination of the Greek words dactylos and extroma and literally translates to finger abortion. Fuck.

He did not have it going in his direction when that birth did. He had it rough the whole time. Other famous people with ectrodactyly are Soviet chess player Mikhail Tol. Honestly, perfect job for someone with that deformity because the pinch in hands great for chess pieces. But you know what it's bad for? The piano. Yes, that's true. Actually, there was a famous pianist.

She was South Korean and she did have ectrodactyly and she was quite famous. I guess maybe you use bigger keys. Everyone, ladies and gentlemen, this song is called Elephants Going Down the Stairs. Blink, blink, blink. Blink, blink, blink, blink, blink. Powerful, powerful. And the other famous person with ectrodactyly, actually a guitarist and lead vocalist of the French black metal band Nocturnal Depression.

His name is Cedric Gregore, a.k.a. Lord Lockrade. You girls want to come backstage and have some beers after the show? Where are you going? I love my music. They hate my hands. You know, and I don't want to necessarily make fun of people with ectrodactyly. It's called ectrodactyly. All at what it is.

It was electro. Please refer to it as a medical name, it's finger abortion. Finger abortion, yes. Finger abortion. I don't want to make fun of people with finger abortions because it seems like that's a very difficult way to walk around, but specifically Grady Styles was a piece of shit. Terrible person. Absolutely.

So it's a rare congenital deformity. What is the exact thing that happens to the hands and to the feet? Well, the middle digit is missing, there's no middle finger, and the remaining fingers, the index finger and the pinky and the pointer finger and the thumb are fused together, giving them the appearance of lobster claws. So they can't flip you the bird, but it is like life telling them to fuck off. It's like, yeah, interesting. Yeah.

Now Grady was by no means the first Styles to be born with this condition. The first was William Styles, born in 1840, but it wasn't until Grady Styles Sr. came to the stage in the early 1900s that the family entered the sideshow business. Now Grady Sr., aka the Lobster Man, traveled across the country and charged a nickel agander, but his home base was in Pittsburgh, where Grady Styles Jr. was born. I mean, I do love that this guy did what Henry often talks about, flips it and reverses it. He's looking at his hands, he's like, with any luck they'll pay money to look at me. They'll stare at me.

I mean, what a genius idea. Think about how easy show business used to be. You didn't even have to have skills. At least now Lobster Man would at least have to be funny or have a cooking show, which would also be very funny. He'm inside a giant pot, but cooking outside the pot. But if I was a freak, like if I was in a freak show, I could literally be dog screaming man.

Henry's just like, oh, look at the walrus man. He'll yell at you about a countless topics. He'll just be going, oh, it's been rigged, it's rigged, like screaming. It's rigged over and over again inside of a little box. Right. Well, I mean, the sideshow tradition by this point was centuries long. Myself, I am a bit of a sideshow freak scholar. Congratulations.

Congratulations. Self-described, by the way. I've been interested in the phenomenon of the sideshow freak since I was a kid. I love this stuff. These people, actually, this is that it was absolutely a flip it and reverse the type of thing because a lot of these people didn't really have a hell of a whole lot going on in normal life. Like Grady Style Senior couldn't really get a job.

People didn't want them around. They didn't want these people around in everyday life. So what they did is they joined the circus. They joined the carnival. And a lot of these people, granted, some of them had absolutely terrible lives. There were some people who were paraded around their entire lives. Then after they died, their owners, pretty much their owners, there's this woman, the ugliest woman in the world, her name was Julia, her owner after she died.

Beautiful. Yeah, the man who married her, but pretty much owned her. He stuffed her and the baby that she died giving childbirth to because the baby was just as ugly as she was. And he paraded her corpse around for decades after she died. But there were some people like the elephant man, Joseph Merrick, who, after having a particularly terrible childhood, eventually grew up to live a fairly, I wouldn't say wonderful life, but he did okay.

Also, the circus business was a really all-inclusive kind of family. Eventually, like these people created, created little societies of acceptance where it's like, yes, people were paying money to come and gawk at them, but then they get to own the power of, we own our appearance, we are using it for cash, we're using it to provide for our families. It just so happens to be, you know, you're just also a social pariah, which is why you have to fuck within the world, which is awesome because carnies also have strippers in there. So there's like hot women and freaks, but they're all fucking each other.

That's awesome. Well, I don't necessarily think strippers have to be hot. I've been to some places in Florida. They're fun. They're fun women. It's fun women, guys with tiny hands, little people, big fat guys. Everybody's eating each other out, tall people. Kissel, you would have been in a freak show in a hot second.

You would have been the world's longest match. Oh, it'd been great. Yep. Do I have to let my head on fire again? Do you want to get paid? I do. Well, early life growing up in Pittsburgh before he truly got into the carny business was pretty tough for Grady. His father was on the road with the carnival most of the year.

Kids constantly called him a freak, and superstitious women would often spit in his presence to ward off the possibility of the lobster curse following them into their wombs. Now, eventually the Stiles family moved from Pittsburgh down to Gibsonton, Florida, which was a wintering town for sideshow folk where they would spend the off season. It was said to have the only post office in the nation with a counter just for dwarfs. Oh, and that wasn't until Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman purchased their own post office and refitted to themselves. Yeah, that's adorable.

I feel like the mice talk and the cheese squeaks. It's a very beauty in the beast lifestyle over there. But also what is very sweet about Gibsonton is that they said that they had special licenses where they were allowed to bring all of their circus equipment back to their homes. And so you would walk through this weird trailer park in Florida and there'd be like zebras and like weird like cows with five legs and like all these like crazy shit just like out in front of the trailer. It must have been a blast if it wasn't for all the unrepentant alcoholism.

My friend, that is not a cow with five legs if you know what I mean. That's big dick Tony the cow. He's one of our number one attractions. So what does it do with the big dick? Nothing. Wow. Wow. That's a show.

That's your show right there. I don't need anything else with that. Yeah. It's the only trailer park in the nation where there are chimps swinging around 24 hours a day. It could have been a lot of fun. Yeah. It does also then as you say that again makes me sort of sick and afraid.

I mean also like the idea of many wild monkeys also being taught to smoke and to drink because it's for show business. So you've got hammered monkeys. People also just shooting off guns because they're having fun because it's just how they party in Florida at the time. Oh God. I can just imagine what their fucking bank was like. I'm kind of sold.

It seems fun to me. Me too man. Now it wasn't long before Grady Junior was forced to quit school and joined the family business as the lobster boy, a name he would keep until the day he died. And the lobster family went on tour as a popular part of the ten and one. Think about this. He was made to quit school. So he could join the carnival. Now yes, they were treated like monsters.

Like people were screaming at them in the street afraid of them. But think about that as a boy. You're a fat little boy. You don't got any legs. You're horny. Horny is a little chestnut. You got big flippy flappy hands and you just get to do get a job for it. I feel like your job.

If your parents shove you into the carnival though as opposed to you like escaping to join the carnival, those are two different things. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I think he actually, he definitely preferred the carnival to like being, you know, spit on in Pittsburgh. That's a good one. I mean, everyone's going to appreciate it. Put me in the carnival.

If I was a little boy, I would have been what, the whole day? Mama, daddy, put me in the carnival. Don't you think I belong in the carnival? Hey, you know what they could call me? Well, little pimple boy. Now, the 10 and one that Grady was a part of was an old carnival tradition in which people would pay a dime to see 10 sideshow acts under one tent and each act usually had something to sell, which is where the acts actually made most of their money on merch.

For example, the pecus giant might sell oversized rings that fit his fingers. Oh. Yeah, Freddie the Frog Boy would sell a small book with his life story. Oh. If you're a frog boy, what deformity is that? Frog boys are, they have nothing below the waist. Usually, yeah, it's also known as the half man or half woman. Turk man.

Yeah, Gibsonton had a pretty famous half woman. Well, I think you got to have webbed fingers if you want to be the frog boy. I don't know. Well, they were being a very exacting manager. Yeah, well, he wouldn't be a frog boy without the webbed fingers. Do they still have cocks? Yeah. Wow.

You know what? That was actually the most important question that's ever been asked on this show. Yeah, you could have the pecus giant with the ring, Freddie the frog boy with his life story, or major dinks, the smallest man in the world might even sell a tracing of his tiny hand. And was he a major? I read it. I read it.

I read it. I read it. Okay. I like the strong of a hand. But for $10, you cut off one of your feet. All right, mister. Customer's always right. $10.

That's almost worth it. $10. I bet you you could pay major dinks to shove his fucking whole face in your asshole for $3. Oh, three bucks back then. You can get anyone to do basically anything for that. I show up to this time period in a time machine. I just want to do that.

Get a time machine. I can use it in one go. Go to Gibson in Florida for fucking two days in 1942. Whenever this was, what is this time period? This is in the 50s around the 50s because this is like the boom time. 40s, 50s. I mean, no, actually, by this time, it was already on decline. I bring a hundred dollar bill in there.

I show it to all of them. I bet you I can have a totem pole of freaks fucking each other. Ask them out and just and also sing in the McDonald's scene. I will teach them Katy Perry's roar. All of them singing it. Man, you king. This seems like a waste of a time machine to me. Yeah.

And every single one of these people in the 10 and one, they all had a spiel that they did and we've actually got lobster boy spiel right here. Henry's going to recite it for us. Ladies and gentlemen, I am Grady Styles the Lobster Man. I am a product of a genetic condition, yes, which has run in the Styles family since 1840. And scientific circles that is known as extra dactyly. Extra dactyly is a genetic condition affecting one in 90,000 at birth. So I'm lucky.

A baby is born with the absence of the third digit and the fusing together of the remaining fingers and toes into claws. Sometimes it affects all four limbs. Sometimes they have normal legs. I thought they were called finger abortions. That's the fun name. Probably an extra nickel for me to call, for me to name each one of my finger abortions. Making money.

Grady, besides being a popular part of that 10 and one, he fit in much better in Gibsonton, Florida than in Pittsburgh, but that wouldn't do much to alleviate the burning rage and resentment that had settled in during his childhood years. Grady had huge anger issues because, you know, of course, when he was abused as a younger kid from everybody else, he had this inferiority complex that settled deep, deep within him. But Grady, despite having his legs in at the knee, was by no means helpless. He could play baseball, he could write, and he was said to be faster on his hands than

most people were on their feet. And as we'll see later, he could even use a gun. And he also became Hank Hill's father on King of the Hill, which is so exciting. And it also seems like he was really practicing on the gun part. He practiced the gun a lot. How did he get his finger? Because they are big. How did he get it into the place to pull the trigger?

Practice. Just practice? A lot of practice, yeah. It also just shows how much you can do with rage, which we now learned as a country, right? With rage and feeling small and degraded, you can do a lot of horrible shit. Making that money. That's my social commentary for the day. And that's part of a new segment we'll be doing on every last podcast on the left, Henry's

Social Commentary Corner. And that was just wonderful. I call it dog bed philosophy. Oh, I see. I think you're literally slimy with sweat in baseball shorts, screaming about the rage of the country. Do you have to be in a dog bed? Yes.

No, because Grady depended completely on his upper body for movement. He was extremely strong. And just because he couldn't make a fist didn't mean he couldn't knock the fuck out of someone. He could make a six inch vagina of meat attached to his hand. I don't know if anybody has accidentally been smacked in the face by a woman's vagina in the middle of sex. Like, lady, if she's getting up and you're going down and you hit that vagina face first, that hurts because it's bone and everything.

I don't know if that's an MMA move or a sanction. Honestly, it just happened to me. It's literally just happened to me. It's a long story. It's a long story. We'll save it for another time. It was said that being hit by one of Grady's claws was like being hit by a two by four. And he always insisted on a formal handshake when he met anyone so he could use his claws

to crush the other person's hand. That's cool, though. Yeah. I like that. It is a pretty good power move, I guess. Now, his favorite move was to slap people to the ground, crawl over as quickly as he could, and headbutt the person in the stomach over and over and over again. I mean, I could just, your reaction, if that is happening, you're just like, oh, what's

it? Oh! Oh! Oh! You then wrap his claws around the victim's throat and choke him out. This guy was brutal. This is how I fight, because I have a low center of gravity. If you have a low center of gravity, me and Jackie are like that.

I squat down. You can't fucking knock me over. I get you down on the ground to take you to a ground game. Pinch you. Pinch at you. Pinch at you. Pinch at you. And grab your parts.

Grab your balls. That's a big thing of bigging fights nobody wants to talk about. How many fights have you been in, Henry, would you say? Three. That's a good number. The last time you were in a fight. Oh, man. In Atlanta, when a dude grabbed Natalie and I grabbed him by the lapel and I pulled him

through the bar, calling him an old man. I was hammered, though. I'm not sure if that was a fight. Yeah, it's not really that. It's a tuggy. Dude, it was. It doesn't seem as dramatic as The Lobster Boy here, but that's fine. Nevertheless, even though he was a total and complete bastard, it was also said that Grady

could be extremely charming. And in 1959, Grady met Mary Teresa Herzog, a runaway who would join the carnival at 18 to escape an abusive and incestuous stepfather. You know who would also be a good move for Lobster Boy? And I wish he did. Lying on the ground crying like a baby saying, come pick me up. Come pick me up. I can't get it.

I can't get it. And when they get close, then you choke them. I was thinking about that. That's a good trap. That's a pretty good trap. That'll work. That'll work. Now, before Teresa got with Grady, she was married to a rast about named Jerry Plummer,

rast about being the term for the guys who built up and tore down the carnival as they traveled from town to town. And Teresa soon divorced Jerry and caught the attention of Lobster Boy while both were working at a carnival called The World of Merth. What the hell does that mean? They had to change it from bucket of horror. What does World of Merth mean? That means we're Merth.

Happiness. Jet Levity. Joy. Merth, we feel... So it's the World of Joy and then it's just like, I got no middle finger. I got lobster hands. You give me money. This is a World of Joy.

I am the world's most crooked man. My bones are fused together. This is the World of Joy. Wow, I am smiling. But this relationship was a bit of a star crossed lover affair as Teresa was only a lowly ticket seller while Grady was a carnival star. Yeah. High above her station.

You can't fuck some... Yeah, you can't fuck some ticket seller. No. Telling her you're the star. Absolutely not. So Teresa had to work her way up in order to be worthy of Grady's affections. She worked from ticket seller to ballet girl, meaning she stood outside tense and hollered about what was inside.

Step right up. Step right up. Hey, y'all. What you doing? You wanna see something big fat? I'm in here. Hey, you wanna see something? I'm...

Hey, y'all. Come over here. Y'all wanna see something unfortunate? Oh, good. It's here right here in this tent, and it doesn't smell good, and when you pay the nickel out of your heart and money to go stare at this unfortunate human, you will smile for a second, but only out of Scheutenfreude. Scheutenfreude.

And after she was a ballet girl, she worked her way up to Bladebox Girl, Dodge and Knives. Wow. So, she worked her way up to having to Dodge Knives? What kind of world is this? The carnival's a strange place. I don't fully understand their politics. And she peaked as the electrified girl, an act where a woman is strapped to an electric chair and using a special transformer that produces electrical current that is high in

voltage but low in amperage, which results in a lot of show, but no risk of shock to the performer. Now, there'd be a whole lot of sparks, there'd be a lot of electricity flying around, and she could even put a light bulb, that's the cool thing about the electrified girl act, is that she can put a light bulb up to her skin, especially made light bulb, and that light bulb would actually light up. It's a cool act. You know who was the next big hit electrified girl?

Eileen Warnos. Really? Did they do the light bulb bit? All in Florida. Man, what is, well I guess your adopted home state of Florida is, it's something special. It really is. Now that Teresa was indeed worthy enough for Lobster Boy's affections after her electrified girl act took off, the two moved in together into a trailer in Gibsonton with Teresa working

at a shrimp factory in Tampa during the off season, living the true carny life. Do you think when she went home after working at the shrimp factory, she just felt she was right back at work, you know, it's just like shrimp and now I got a lobster boy, can I get a break? No, no, you go from just kind of a shrimp cocktail to nothing but fine lobster at home, just oh, the most luxurious meats. Two questions, what is a shrimp factory? It's the best place to work in Florida.

It's like, I would guess a shrimp factory, that's where they can them, or that's maybe maybe it's where they peel off all the crap for cocktail shrimp. I'm not really sure what a shrimp factory does, all I know is Tampa is full of them. Yeah, and also I know this area of Florida. This is 10 miles south, I believe south of Florida, of south of Tampa. And this is a no man's land, especially at the time, this is a rough swamp like part of America that is like hidden from normal society because she was normal, right, like she had a normal body, quote unquote normal.

You're telling me the trailer park wife of the lobster boy who works at a shrimp factory is in sort of an isolated area. They're not downtown Manhattan. I don't understand too, what I do like is this is also a common thing over the way she was described, it's like she had a fine figure at how hot she was at the time, she was not. We are talking lobster boy's wife. Yes, the paramour of lobster boy. So after nine years of living together, the two got married, but life was awful with lobster

boy. He was an alcoholic and a mean drunk, his drink of choice being a seven and seven and he made sure to only hit her body so people on the midway wouldn't see the bruises on her face. Their first child, Margaret, died from pneumonia after 26 days. The second, David, made about two days longer before also dying of pneumonia, presumably due to the constant travel and drafty trailers that they all lived in during the carnival season.

His third child, Donna, survived and was born without the lobster condition, which made Grady resent her even more. And Grady would stay away on drinking benches for days at a time to one of the two bars in the Gibsonton area, Harry's or Showtown USA, out by the highway. Of course he was a highway bar drunk, that's a specific kind of drunk that is, it is definitely a carnival, it is a carnival workers style of drinking. Showtown USA sounds like it was owned by Captain Spalding, these sounds like Captain Spalding bars.

He does. I mean this is sort of a house of a thousand corpses type character here. Yeah. Oh yeah, lobster boy is a, yeah, he's a horrific character, he's actually, I would say lobster boy is a truly American character and specifically a truly Florida character. He literally made his fortune by being gross and then beat everyone around him. Crazy. Now when Grady did finally show up back at home, he'd usually pass out in a pool of

his own vomit in the hallway before making it to the bedroom. And in 1969, the first lobster of that generation, Kathy, was born, but it wouldn't be enough to keep Teresa around who left Grady soon after. Teresa had caught the attention of Harry Glenn Newman, aka Midget Man. Oh, Newman was a welder by trade, but his height at a little under three feet meant that he regularly inhaled much of the metal fillings that flew off whatever project he was working on. He developed respiratory.

That's so sad, that's so unbelievably sad, but you just can't even, you have a skill. Being a welder is a hard job. Yeah, it's well done stuff. Yeah, but I mean, and he was good at it too, but you know, because all the metal fillings, you know, flew into his lungs constantly. He got respiratory problems and decided that the carnival was a better life, which it kind of was. I don't know.

It'd be like if you're a little person and then all day long, you're like poisoned by farts because your butt height, you know, no, he was poisoned by tiny pieces of metal. If you worked at the shrimp factory, he would be poisoned by farts. I don't know if they're, if they're eating the shrimp, after Grady threw out Teresa and the kids one night, Harry, who had developed a friendship with Teresa, moved them to Ohio to live with his mother. Courage followed and Teresa fell in love with Newman, but in her absence, Grady had filed for divorce and since Teresa knew nothing about the proceedings and therefore didn't

show up to any of the court dates, Grady got full custody of the kids despite being a horrific drunk and abusive father. I mean, he did that on purpose. He did that to hurt her. He did that. He knew that he would do, he was a very bad human being and Harry was actually really good to her. Yeah, Harry was a great guy.

Harry took care of her. He supported her. He, you know, he wanted to, he was taking care of their kids up until Grady went through with the divorce without letting her know about the court hearings and then he just showed up and put the kids in the car and the way that it was described in the book is really very sad and also very intense because Grady is a wild drunk and very, very physical and they were talking about how he would pinch with his claws and he just came and just grabbed his daughter by the hair with the claws and just tossed her in the back of a pickup truck

and he's also doing it all just his hands, no likes. This is how strong he is, is that he could remove an entire family from a house with just his hands and then drive away. Could have been a good fireman, but I guess he's not though. He's more of an abusive drunk. I mean, the judge should probably have to step down, you know, at this point, usually custody cases go to the mother and then this judge was like, he's an exceptionally bad father.

He gets him. You know what, it's almost like we should do the opposite of what's right just because it's so, so, so opposite and then it becomes kind of ironic. I think that's good. Now when the family returned to Gibsonton, they found that Grady had already remarried to a hard-drinking skinny woman with a sunken face and stringy hair named Barbara, just your typical Florida carny. I mean, this woman through and through, typical, they said that she was very ugly and very

stupid. What? You didn't describe her as ugly, you said sunken face. I love a sunken face. But you know when you hear that first description of someone, because they all said that about this woman, Barbara Laseel, is that all they could say is sunken face, stringy hair. And that's rough. Yeah.

If there's nothing in your personality, you can at least be like, she has wonderful taste in shoes. Like that would be great, at least something positive. Now, even though it was said that Grady was even crueler to Barbara than he was to Teresa, Barbara gave birth to another lobster, Grady's styles the third on July 26, 1976, shortly after Grady had moved the entire family back to Grady's hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For Teresa's part, she was actually doing relatively well back in Ohio, as Harry Glenn Newman had opened up a successful tire business and was actually doing pretty good with it.

She'd also given birth to a son, Harry Glenn Newman Jr, aka Glennie, but she still of course missed her other kids. Her only attempt at seeing them came Christmas time in the early 80s when she called up Grady and asked if she could have the kids for Christmas. Grady said, sure, come on over, but meet me at the bar for a few drinks beforehand. God, which is just like, he said, you know the bar we go to, we always go to, like he was trying to like, the way he was trying to charm her is such a classless, no-handed Florida way.

What do you mean? It's just like, ugh. He's going to bring her to show tunes. It's ping pong out of the pussy night. Over here at show tunes. Grady agreed and showed up with her husband and after five or so seven and sevens, Teresa and Harry followed Grady back to his trailer. She went to the kitchen to make some coffee and when she came out, Grady was pointing

a revolver at her and her husband. As Grady put his other claw in his mouth and whistled, the back door opened and in-walked Grady's hired help, Paul Fishbaugh, aka the Fat Man and his hired hand was the Fat Man. The Fat Man was holding a shotgun. Grady called Teresa over to him, slapped her with a claw and said, don't you bother me anymore? Next time I'm going to kill you, Glenn, your tiny future husband of my ex-wife and your son.

Let's do it. I ain't got any legs. I feel like he just slowly revolved and just screaming. Yeah, they're like Dick Tracy villains, but if there's no fluoride in the water, they are just like dumpy villains. It feels like a cinemax show. Yeah. Like with him, because the Fat Man comes out of the back with the shotgun and then he's

being there and the way they described it is that Glenn was holding her baby and they're all screaming. He's like, well, he's punching her on the floor and the Fat Man's going, I'm glad I'm going to shotgun. This is real. Yeah, I can't. I mean, if you're the Fat Man, okay, so you got this girl, she gets electrocuted. You know, she knew the whole light bulb thing.

If you're the Fat Man, isn't everyone just jealous that you don't do anything? Yeah, Fat Man just sits there. They just sit there. That's all he does. Yeah, Fat Man, yeah, he doesn't even, yeah, the Fat Man doesn't, and by the way, we saw a video of the Fat Man. He's not that fat. Not by today's standards.

Today's standards. He's just a man. Yeah, by today. He's just a guy. Yeah. He could still fit in an airplane seat. He'd have to buy two tickets. You'd have to maybe buy two.

He'd be uncomfortable. You know what's best about all of this is that they could all vote. Isn't that great? I mean, I've got to give Fat Man a lot of credit though. Yeah. What are you? What do you do? I'm Fat Man.

Okay. Just improvise that. I live in the dream, buddy. You, sir, where's that? You know what? I just quit my job. Now I'm a Fat Man too. Did he even eat a copious amount of food like during the show?

Did he do anything special? I mean, usually the Fat Man, well, it all depended. Sometimes the Fat Ladies, a lot of times they sang, that was part of their act because a lot of times they didn't just sit there. They had to have that extra little thing, like Siamese twins. Some Siamese twins, I can't remember what their names were, but they used to both play the saxophone. They'd play two different instruments.

So a lot of them, like Grady Styles, was actually somewhat peculiar in that he didn't really do much. He just kind of sat there. Most of these people, most of these sideshow performers, they did have like an extra bit of zazz to them besides just their deformity. They had a show. They had to put on a show. When I saw a little bit of Grady Styles' show, it's literally him just going, look

at my hands. Look at my hands. And that's really all it is. Some people just going, oh, my word, and that's it, where it's just like, he just has, like, you've never seen a person with disabilities before, you literally have never seen a person with disabilities before. And he's just like, Flippy Flappy, Flippy Flappy, don't come near anywhere near me unless you've got an envelope.

I can open it up, see what he's got. Well, that's worth five cents. Now, a couple of years after the Fat Man Shock Unincident, Donna, the eldest of the Styles children, decided that she couldn't take living with Grady anymore and started looking for a way out. She was about 15 years old. She thought that she'd found that way out in Jack Lane Jr., 18 years old, and ready to fuck.

Donna ran away from home, and after Grady found her, he called her up and told her he had sent detectives out to find her and bring her home. And if they found her before he did, he was going to send her to juvie and kill Jack in the meantime. Oh, well. Donna, thinking she was clever, told Grady that she was pregnant and that Jack wanted to make an honest woman out of her. In reality, she was a virgin, but it was the only car that she had to play.

So Grady relented, signed the paperwork necessary for the 15-year-old girl to get married, and the wedding date was set for September 28th. But thanks to Grady, that wedding date would never be met. All of this is sort of like a Nick Cave song if it was played on a jug. It really is. Now, the day before the wedding was to take place, Grady went to Harry's bar and down a dozen whiskey doubles before wheeling himself home and starting in on a gallon jug of whiskey he had lying around the house.

If he doesn't have any legs, are whiskey doubles like quadruples? I think so. I think so. They turned into dog beers. He also was, he had a wheelchair that he would use to get around in public because he stopped walking around his hands, but they would say in the house, he'd wear nothing but tidy whiteies and flop around on just his hand and scream and hammered all covered in sweat. Oh, goodness.

Now Donna, Barbara, and Jack showed up after going to Zale's department store to buy Donna's wedding dress to see that Grady's wheelchair had gone missing as it was apt to do from time to time. And when the trio volunteered to go outside and look for it, Grady told Jack, stay behind, stay with me for a second, I got something I want to talk to you about, and as Donna and Barbara were outside looking for the chair, they heard two gunshots ring out from the trailer. When they got back to the front door, they found Jack stumbling out, bleeding and holding

his chest. He collapsed into Donna's arms and died. Donna looked up to see her father standing on his knees in the doorway wearing only briefs and smiling at her. When she asked him why he did it, Grady said, because I said I would, and the one thing I am is completely trustworthy. There's no denying that. Grady charged with first degree murder, facing the electric chair, and obviously extremely

guilty, hired a slick lawyer named Anthony DeSello as his attorney. DeSello planned to try a self-defense case and played up Grady's disability, painting him as a poor downtrodden soul who was baited into murder by an uncaring future son-in-law who is going to take his innocent 15-year-old daughter away from him. As a boy, I looked at the shoe store, and all I would do is cry, thinking of how I wish I could have a wingtip, have a Velcro shoe, and then as an older man, I'd go to the knee store and look at people staring into it. There's no knee stores, I would go to the leg store, I would look at these hands, look

at my hands. People just tossing dimes at them. Yeah, the jurors are just like, man, that was a hell of a show. Yeah, that's actually what happened, is that he put on one hell of a show, but that was only after DeSello brought in character witnesses for Grady, including Priscilla Borgorno, the bearded lady, and Paul Fishbaugh, the aforementioned town fat man. Yeah, and Grady's performance was of course the best of all after a rousing testimony in which Grady used every show biz trick he'd learned from decades in the side shows.

He garnered enough sympathy from the jury to get his charge reduced to voluntary manslaughter. And if none of this works on you, I can tell you one thing, I'm the only guy in this room who could suck his own dick. Oh, that is a talent. Wow. I do think the judge of this courtroom would be Dan Ackroyd's character from Nothing But Trouble. Nothing But Trouble.

That is for sure. Now, not only did the charges get reduced to voluntary manslaughter, but the judge looking at the logistics of imprisoning the lobster boy and taking into account Grady's cirrhosis from heavy, heavy drinking and his emphysema from a 60 Paul Molladay habit, judge sentenced Grady to only 15 years probation and no restrictions to move about the country. So because he was a chain-smoking alcoholic, they took time off of his sentence. I don't understand anything that's happened so far. This country, in America, if you just lean into your vices, we will take care of you.

Just really choose it. If you're going to be a fat man, be a real big fat man, because now you got an act. I do want to try to think, okay, so if you're the judge, you're like, if he was a totally capable person who was extremely healthy, we'd put him away for 25 years. Life. If he helped out society in any way, we'd put him in prison. He's a total scumbag, complete degenerate. Let's go easy on the guy.

15 years probation. I just don't understand. Well, they said, well, there's no way that we'll be able to incarcerate him in Florida State Prison. If he didn't have his own guard the entire time, it was pretty much just laziness. It was just too lazy to actually put him in prison. Also, it's the same circus trick. It's the same exact, I'm going to use my disability to get things from what I want from people,

to use their hatred, their weird fucking judgment of me against them, where now I'm playing the sympathy card. So now what I'm doing is that I'm showing you I have this deformity that I have this disability and what I'm going to do then is you're going to feel bad for me because at this time, he literally also thought he was like mentally defective. They see somebody with no hands and they assume he is less understanding. He obviously is really fucked up. He had a hard childhood and they're just going to be really easy on him too.

And that's another trick where he's just like, actually, he's very cunning. He's a very cunning, horrible little man. Yeah. And so Grady seizing the opportunity to go wherever he wanted in the country, he took the $14,000 he had raised to pay for his legal defense, divorced the sunken face, stringing haired Barbara, skipped town and started a 10-in-1 of his own with him as the star. And when you say skip town, you mean literally, hopped over the state line of Florida. Technically he hopped on a skateboard and grabbed in the back of a pickup truck.

Very cool. Cubs win. Cubs win. And this is when Teresa comes back into the picture to see Harry Newman, a.k.a. Medget Man, had fallen 15 feet to the ground on a welding job and had hurt his back. Why do they have him all the way up there? How did they even get him up there? Why is he doing the work on the, he's a downstairs worker.

I don't understand anymore. I don't understand anymore. It obviously started as a joke. It obviously started as a cruel joke. Throw him up there. You're working on the roof. Seriously? Yeah.

He fell 15 feet, hurt his back, and that put him in a wheelchair most of the time. And with no way to do any sort of welding work whatsoever, he lost his tire business and had to get back into the carnival game. So Teresa, Donna, who had moved in with her mother after the whole murder business with her fiance and her father, Harry Sr. and Harry Jr., a.k.a. Glennie, went out on the road. And this is when Glennie becomes a larger part of this tale. Thing is to know about Glennie, little slow, had an IQ of 79, hovered just above that mentally challenged line, but that did not stop him from coming up with his own sideshow act.

Glenn became a blockhead. You know what a blockhead is? Mmm, I know it's a good burrito restaurant. Let's see. What else could it be? Maybe he uses his... He hammer nails into his face. Oh, I thought he read Socrates and tried to inform the people of philosophy.

No. That's not what a blockhead is. No. It's like a very bad, stereotype version of what a mentally challenged person would do as a job. Kind of a Homer Simpson type, huh, just jabbed stuff into his face. Into his face, yeah. It's not coming up with an act that's literally smashed into his face into a wall.

Somebody laughs and he's like, Eureka! No, blockheads hammer nails into their nasal sinuses without ever drawing any blood. That's the whole act. That's a tough thing to do. It's, I mean, really, it's not that tough. You just have to find the right spot. But people do it all the time. People did all...

But normally it's a part of your act. Yeah. Right? Like, I've seen people do modern circus acts which are really cool and they do really intense blockhead stuff where they, you know, they nail into their face, but it's oftentimes mixed with a lot of things because they want to show crap. The whole point is that they learn how to do this. He just did this out of pure, just dumb luck that he's just got nose holes big enough.

And also, Glennie is sort of the Brendon Dassie of this whole scenario. Brendon Dassie? From Making a Murder. Making a Murder. Where he is the... He's an unfortunate that gets dragged into this whole scenario. You're telling me that blockhead's the unfortunate one? Yes.

Well, actually, I would argue against that. Glennie is the engine that drives this entire thing. I guess it's true. Yeah. Glennie is definitely... He didn't get dragged into this. Glennie put himself right in the middle of it. And eventually, the whole Newman family moved back to Smok, Pennsylvania, where Grady was

close by in Pittsburgh. And there, Teresa started getting tired of taking care of her wheelchair-bound husband. And despite having a relatively stable life, started thinking about her ex-husband once again, Grady had sobered up and had pledged to make himself a better man, saying he's not going to drink anymore. He wasn't going to waste this second chance at life. Teresa believed it wholeheartedly, remarried the lobster boy, and moved back down to Florida with him, outside of Okichobi.

If you break up with somebody, delete the number, don't talk to them again. No, they can change. No, they never change. Yes. If you don't want to move to Okichobi, you don't believe in love. This is such a Florida thing. All right. This is such a Florida thing.

I don't know why. I don't know why people divorce somebody and then marry their cousin and then marry their ex-husband's cousin. And then they divorce the cousin and they go back. It's all this drama. It's like Facebook without Facebook. It's them all still flirting with each other. And it's like, get out of Okichobi!

Go anywhere else! Just get out of here! Why would you get out of Okichobi? I love Okichobi. I mean, it seems like a fun place. Yeah. I mean, it's almost like they just kind of forget about what had happened about five or ten years earlier.

Even Donna, whose fiance was murdered by this man, murdered your fiance the day before your wedding. She forgave Grady after he gave his blessing for her to marry a different dude from Okichobi. This dude named Joe Miles. He said like, yeah, he gave her 300 bucks and said, sure, marry this asshole and that's it. That's it. That's good money.

That's everything. I'm so pro-love. You know, Joe from Okichobi is a great guy. I'm happy Lobster Boy gave this weird stamp of approval. Christianity is bullshit. Oh, I don't think Christianity has touched any of these people. And so the family was back together again with Donna married, Teresa living with Grady and no booze in sight, which lasted about three months.

It lasted three months. Yeah. Yeah. Before Grady was back on the sauce harder than ever and just as violent, if not more so. I mean, it's it's when your addiction is seven and sevens, every time you see the number seven, you think about booze and then how many times you see it. It's tough.

And it's also the lucky numbers because for them it was very unlucky numbers. Right. Yeah. Now in 1992, Grady at 54 years old decided to take the show back out on the road with himself as Carnival Impressario. He never should have been any job title called Impressario. Definitely not. Now, daughter Kathy and her husband ran the animal oddities exhibit, which featured a two

headed raccoon in different types of shrunken animal heads. Science. I like that. Donna and Joe ran the gorilla show, which is when you get a beautiful lady to dress up as a jungle woman, a wild woman of the woods. Have your talker, that's the guy that step right up, come see the gorilla woman. He would lull her into a trance and then they pull a big switcheroo and a guy dressed up as a gorilla would appear in the woman's place.

And that was the whole, that was the whole thing. Is that like, see us turn a beautiful woman into a gorilla alive. Do we know that they didn't do that? Do we do that? We do know that. And I think that's one beautiful thing is that when they shot poor unfortunate Harambe, he also turned back into the beautiful woman that he started as. Hmm.

Isn't that interesting. And Professor Mortay, who opened for us in Atlanta, my good friend Shane Morton did the same trick for us. Yeah. Remember that? That's right. Yeah. The gorilla.

That was a trick, huh? This one gets me. I'm not sure about this. Now Grady ran the 10 in one, which featured a human pen cushion, glinny as the blockhead, satina the snake queen, a sword swaller and Grady the third as a second lobster boy with Kathy being the third lobster girl and Grady himself as the drunken star of the lobster family. And he was horrific with him.

What he would do is all day before the show, he would make Grady the third and his daughter wear these big mittens so nobody would actually see their lobster claws because he'd yell, you're giving it away for free, you're giving it away, wear the mittens until you go on stage. He saw money everywhere he looked. And I will say not much has changed about show business. No. Very little.

It's just like this. My big question is, do we really need two lobster boys? I think we do. Yeah. Yeah. There's lobster boy, little Grady, and then Kathy. So actually there were three lobster people, the lobster family. Do we know if the human pincushion was a descendant of Albert Fish because I think that would

put him over the edge. That makes this ten for one. I'm having fun. You all view this as torture, but I know it is only the most succulent attempt for pleasures. Give him more nickels. Definitely. Give him more nickels.

I'm sick of the monologue. So many nickels. Now their ballet man for this ten in one was a young performer who called himself Merman the Magician. He was good looking, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a mustache. He was a fire eater. He was a magic man. He was well spoken.

Everything you'd want in a good ballet man, Merman was. The Grady's operation was sloppy one as Merman and Joe of the Gorilla Show would often butt heads. And it all came to a night. And it all came to a head one night in Brockton, Massachusetts. A town so tough, a Carney got stabbed that night for not putting enough mustard on a guy's hot dog. I swear to Christ, you don't put enough mustard on my hot dog.

I swear to Christ. You gonna stab somebody for that? Yeah. Seems like a lot. I'm on a hair trigger right now. All right. I swear to God, someone spells my name wrong in a Starbucks cup. I'm gonna bring a crossbow in there.

I'm gonna light up the room. All right. Well, I don't know if you can say that publicly, but I don't understand, the Carney was making the hot dogs too. So this was not a performer, Carney, this was a hot dog. Yeah. This is a hot dog, Carney. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You forget that there are hot dog, Carney's. Yeah. You know, there's a whole Carney infrastructure. Yeah. All right.

There's a lot of jobs. There's job creators. When you see, again, a year from now, when half this country is Carney's, you will see, I'm gonna be, I'm sure, I can't wait to be dog boy. Marcus is also gonna be a certain a dog boy. And Kissel, you're gonna be a great human table. We're just gonna lie down on two, like, you know, what are those like the horse with the horsey things?

Like the triangles? Yes. Oh yeah. Pumble. Pumble. Saw horse. Saw horses. There we go.

Kissel lies down. I'm the table. You're, yes. Well, what do I do? You put food on him. You put like food, like trays, like a big feast, like an hook, but you put the food actually on it and then people pay to eat while you go, I'm just a table. I'm not a man.

She goes, you're degrading me quite a bit here. I'm gonna degrade myself. I'm gonna be a geek. Um, it's circus. You are a geek. Yeah. You're like a nerd. Yeah.

No, a circus geek is someone who sits in a pit and they throw down chickens and snakes and frogs and I just rip them apart with my bare hands. And then you eat them and then you just, you pour blood all over yourself and you just throw them and you snarl and all the normies up, up top, the normies, the normies. That's gonna be me. In a year, I'm going to be in a pit eating the heads off of live chickens. You mark my words. Okay.

You want this too much. Yeah. I have come to terms with being the human table because then I can have the joke, well, that's not guacamole. And you can imagine what it would be while you shit, you shit your own pants. I don't know, well, that'll take a few extra nickels. They want to see that kind of action. I'm going to be the tiniest spider man.

Well this whole feud between Murman and Joe, the gorilla show came to a head one night when some perform, when some promoter put the gorilla show and the 10 and one right next to each other, which is a bad move in the carnival business because you got Joe out front yelling for people to come in and see the gorilla show, you've got Murman, the magician sitting right next to him, telling them to come in and come into the 10 and one. The money's both going to the same place, but it's all about pride. So that night it did actually come to blows and Joe almost killed Murman, but Murman did survive and it was Murman who noticed that Teresa every night was skimming money

from the cash drawer, double counting cash from a 50 or 100 so she could short change the marks wherever she could because Teresa was saving up and this is where the plot to murder Grady began. That started off as an almost casual conversation between Teresa and Kathy Lobster Girl in July of 1992 and it escalated from there. The first person they asked was a rostabout named Marco Eno who had a tattoo on his upper left arm that said, Carney Power. It's like girl power, but it smells more like body odor.

I mean, what a tattoo. Eno. It's an awesome tattoo, I really want, I want, if I were to have one that sounds incredible. Yeah, it's a pretty great tattoo. It's not Carney Asada power, human table tell joke. No, Eno actually did think it was a joke and he refused, he's like ha ha ha, yeah sure whatever and so the Lobster family had to wait until they got back to Gibsonton, Florida to find their man.

Their man was Chris Wyatt. He was a 17 year old juvenile delinquent who liked to tell all of his friends that he'd already murdered a whole bunch of people and drive by shootings and word of this tough guy got around to Glenny and remember, 79 IQ on this guy. Yeah, so he's not necessarily got a brain like a steel trap there. No, he's a blockhead. Now, if you listen to Grady Styles III, who came out publicly about the murders just a couple of years ago, the whole murder for hire thing was just a misunderstanding.

He says that the casual conversation between Teresa and Kathy was just that talk and Glen took that conversation, that casual conversation over to Chris Wyatt who misunderstood Glen when Glen said something's got to be done. Yeah, and that is when Chris Wyatt unfortunately went and took a gun to Lobster Boy, but Glen's later confession told a very different story after a little haggling and without the knowledge of Teresa, Chris Wyatt agreed to murder Lobster Boy for either $1,500 or $300 depending on who you listen to. It's a big difference.

It's $300, just like a million dollars in carny bucks. Yeah, I think their eyes just go crazy like a cartoon rabbit seen a woman that he likes. You know, they're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, 300 bucks. Now weeks went by without Chris doing the deed, but on November 29th, 1992, Glen Newman went over to Chris's house and told him that if he didn't kill Grady that very night, Teresa was going to go to the cops and say that Wyatt had broken into their trailer and stolen the $1,500. Thing was, Gleny didn't actually tell his mother about the murder for hire plot until

about 8 p.m. the night of, but Teresa all on board for the plan once he told her about it. They left the house at 11 p.m. that night, leaving Grady drunk in his recliner watching a video of the 1992 Jack Ruby biopic, Ruby. Yes. And you know, and apparently they just, it's so dumb, they're literally like, we got to go see about a baby. We're talking about the, yes, they were literally, we're going to go walk out, we're going to

go check on a baby. It's 11 o'clock at night. They were like, we're just going to step out. But apparently Grady was so enraptured by the movie Ruby. He was drunk. That he kissed, he was hammered. Oh yeah, he was hammered out of his mind. But that's what he said, but that's what he does, right, is that apparently his favorite

thing in the world was to sit in his underwear and his chair watching TV all night because it was so high. He had, because Teresa said he had high blood pressure so he'd get overheated so he couldn't wear clothes. And so they didn't believe the door open and a little breeze would come in and comfort him in the night. Oh, nice. Yeah.

And before you take the Teresa and Glenny or the heroes of this tale taken down a horribly abusive husband, just remember they left Grady the third. Who was a teenager at that time. They left him sleeping in the other room because Grady was Barbara's son, not Teresa's son. Because if little Grady had woken up right after the gunshots had rung out, Chris Wyatt probably would have murdered him as well. Because of course little Grady was a witness, but thankfully when the shots happened, Grady opened his eyes for a second, figured it was just another violent mishap between his stepmother

and his father and he went back to sleep. He just went back to sleep. He just went back to sleep. There were only gunshots in the living room of his trailer. And he said, fuck it, I'm going to get an extra 10. This is how it happened. Chris Wyatt walked through the back door, walked up to Grady as he sat in his recliner, shot Grady three times in the back of the head, killing him instantly and putting an

end to the life and career of Lobster Boy. Now Cops, first on the scene, treated it as a fairly routine robbery, but quickly noticed that nothing had actually gone missing, including Grady's wallet that was overflowing with cash. Nothing at all was gone. He took no measures whatsoever to try to cover up his crime. He did not do a good job. They did not do. $300 not well spent.

Nope. And also when Cops interviewed the family, they found that not a single one of them seemed particularly upset that Grady was dead. They also found it suspicious that Glenny and Teresa had left the house moments before the murderer arrived. Cops figured with good reason that Glenny the blockhead would be the tree to shake on this one. Yes.

Cops hauled. Very big talker. If you saw him immediately, he's just like, I can't believe the horrible tragedy that happened. I certainly am not party to it. Maybe I could be though. Did old Glenny say it out loud? Did he say it out loud?

Cops hauled the man and gave him a lie detector test. And when they told Glen that he lied about the questions regarding Lobster Boy's death, Glen folded faster in a circus tent after a kid gets killed on a ride. Cops brought in Teresa next, who just as quickly confessed to having prior knowledge of the murder, and Chris Wyant was arrested soon after. All three were charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit first degree murder, and all three were convicted. Teresa got 12 years for manslaughter, but was later freed on appeals.

Chris Wyant got 27 years for second degree murder. And Harry Glen Newman Jr., the human blockhead, got life in prison where he still sits to this day. God. Just being a blockhead. I mean, the Lobster Man only got 15 months or 15 years probation for his kill. I guess these guys weren't quite as sad as Lobster Man. Well, they weren't quite as sad as Lobster Man, and the people of Gibsonton didn't take

too kindly to them murdering one of their own. Oh. Yeah. I mean, it was also said that if Teresa had done it herself, then they might have gone a little easier on her, but because she got her blockhead son to hire some 17-year-old kid to do it, there was no real sympathy for them. When you hear the word conspiracy, oftentimes you think of an elaborate scheme concocted in a basement with very intelligent minds, but this was more, we're going to go check

on a baby. That was pretty much the plan, and it seemed to work. It does seem, startlingly, probably very similar to 9-Eleven, how it was put together. We're going to go check on a baby. Okay, Mr. Chaney. Oh my gosh. So that's it, that is the tale of the Lobster Boy murders. This, I want to join the carnival.

Carnival sounds like a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun. I don't think there's any difference between levels of show business. I think that carnivals are the same as us, as the same as people on television. It's like it's all just, we got the bug, and so I like that about carnival life, but Florida never got any better. No. Absolutely not.

No. I mean, and there's a couple more sources for this, there's one called, there's one book that I absolutely love. If you can find it, it's called The Big Book of Freaks. It's a part of the Factoid series. It's by this guy, Gahan Wilson. It's a big anthology of pretty much just sideshow freak stories, and it's all like little short, like three or four page comic books about all of these wonderful sideshow freaks throughout

the years, and I'm a big fan of it. I really enjoyed this one. This was cool. I'm going to read books that are authored by a man named Gahan. That's what I've said before, and I'll say it again, and it will continue, it will continue to say it. Wow, everyone. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode.

It's been an interesting week, so this was a fun departure from the reality. Yeah. This is nice. I mean, it's still reality, and that's also something to remember here, is that when everyone's feeling all worried about what's coming up next, just remember, America's always been fucked up. Yes. We've always been fucked up, and it's always, and the very core is fucked up.

Yeah. This whole country's built on the graveyards of a million Native Americans, so it started there. Yeah. So remember that. Every day. And if you were really, really upset, a thing that really helped me, and I know that there are a lot of people that listen to this show are afraid of things that may change over

the next couple of years, which I understand. If you really want to feel better, and the thing that I did to make myself feel better is I donated to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. And if you were there, other places like the Human Rights Campaign, a place like that, where if you want to fund something or donate your time to something that will help a issue that will be directly affected by the future presidency, then you should probably go ahead and do that. Or we're still fucked.

So. Thank you, Henry, for that strange, rambling, bizarre statement. And for more on what me and Kissel think about what the fuck happened this week. Check out this week's episode of Able and Stop At. Yes. We'll talk about it. We'll definitely talk about it. Thank you guys so much for supporting all the shows here on CCR, Able and Stop At, Round

Table, the Gentlemen, let's see, Sex and Other Human Activities, The Lucky Bone Show, Wizard and the Bruiser. Check out that show if you are into video games, Holden desperately needs you to listen to that. So I guess he is hanging on a, hanging by a thread. No, he's doing great. I would also say, yeah man, this morning when I woke up to, I was so hungovered, I looked at her and I thought I was going to lose my toes.

I can't believe I had forgotten I had gotten them painted. I don't know why you're so, I don't know why you're acting like painting your toenails is like this, like amazingly debauchery thing. No, it was just a weird thing. It's not that weird. It was just a weird choice. No. I just think they're all, they're all swollen.

I've done it all. I've done it many, many times. I spray painted my entire body gold for fun. I found out you could die if you do that, by the way. You actually can. Do not do that. You're not going to survive, but that's my, that would be my carnival trick. He paints himself gold.

That's not guacamole. Oh, and I got to say, I got to say, thank you to the people of Seattle. We sold out Numos. We're going to be coming here in just about a month. We're going to be coming to Seattle. There is our only Pacific Northwest show that still has tickets is the early show in Portland. Go to cavecomedyradio.com slash live to get tickets for that. We've also added an early show for Boston because we sold out the first one pretty quickly.

Again, cavecomedyradio.com slash live is where you get tickets to that. All these shows are going to sell out. So if you want to come and see us live here very soon, don't sit on your hands. It's we're coming to your town soon, man. We're coming to a whole bunch of places in 2017. It's going to be a weird, things are going to get weird. It's going to get really weird. Everybody.

If greedy styles can learn how to shoot a gun with his lobster hands, we can make it through the next four years. I think we can be inspired by that. All right. So find Marcus Parks on Twitter at Marcus Parks Instagram the same. Henry loves you on Twitter and Dr. Fan Tasty on Instagram. I am at Ben Kissel on Twitter and I still don't know how to use Instagram, but I'm at Ben Kissel one.

Oh, and I also have to thank all of our friends at Midtown Scholar who sent us a gigantic new shipment of books that are very cool. They sent me something, a special book to open on air. Uh-oh. It's got to be drum roll, please. The diary of the DC Sniper. All right. I think it's funny.

Yeah. I think it's so funny. Yes. I remember I looked at Tom in class and he looked at me and I was like, I knew we were going to kiss. We were caught one day in the auditorium's restroom. Our pockets ransacked and all our lunch money sold. This is going to be really fun.

All right. Yeah. This is going to be fun. Yeah. Thank you Midtown Scholar. Thank you everyone there for sending us our books. We love you guys. We love you guys, everyone.

Yeah. And Hal and Helguin. Helguin. Helmi. I'm sitting on a dog bed. I'm covered in dog air. MAH GUZ TE LEJUSE Z