Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Greatest Beer Run Ever

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

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Hey everyone, what you're about to listen to is a preview of a bonus episode that is available on our Patreon. If you like this clip, you can grab the whole episode, as well as years of other bonus content, at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. I feel like we need you to be our cultural interpreter here for this kind of guy. I mean, this is a man named Chicky Donahue. Like, what the fuck is that nickname? How the fuck you end up with Chicky as a nickname? That feels like something from your neck of the woods that you might be able to tell us about. I mean, it's one of those things I feel like...

Is it an old-timey thing? Well, in a way, it's an old-timey thing. Because I feel like it's part of that... All the accents that used to exist... Or all the nicknames that used to exist that don't anymore, where you would just get a guy who's just named something absolutely inscrutable just because they didn't want to use their actual name. But I feel like part of that is because in the Northeast, in particular, you have five different guys all named Kevin.

They all come from the same neighborhood. You got to differentiate them somehow. They all look the same. They all sound the same. They all do this. They all work at the docks. They all have a last name that starts with MC or O apostrophe. So there's not a lot of different... You can't just call him... I've definitely known a lot of people where they move out of Massachusetts and they move to Greater Megachusets. And they end up being the only person that someone has ever met from Boston. So they just became like Boston Steve or like whatever the fuck it is. But you can't really do that if you're all actually still in Boston. So you got to be named something.

So it's like, and you can do like Big Kev, Little Kev. Actually those were... Did you know a Big Kev and a Little Kev? Yeah, I know a Big Kev and a Little Kev. But eventually, you just run out of good nicknames. And so you're just like, yeah, you're a chicky. You're like... His name is John. Yeah. So I imagine there's a million Johns in Boston. Well, because his name is John Donahue. So it's like, that's like an entire fucking page

and a half out of the goddamn phone book. You can't really like... Like I was actually... There's a plaque in the bottom of the district court in Boston that actually lists all... I never knew what it was before, but I learned recently. And it's a list of all of the workers who worked when they built the federal courthouse back in the early 90s. And I shit you not, the MCs on The Last Names, that's an entire column on that fucking plaque. There's just a column of Irish. Yeah, it's a designated Irish zone. A place every country needs. That's the answer that I would give here. My translating to the Midwest cohort of the podcast is that it's just like, I don't

know, you just end up with... Everyone has basically the same name and you got to have some sort of... Some sort of delineation. This is my neighbor, John Donahue. This is my dad, John Donahue. This is my grandfather, Big John Donahue. Yeah. There's old John and there's young John and then there's just regular John. And big John will be a small guy and little John will be a huge guy. Every Polynesian that's in the military being nicknamed Tiny.

Well, I currently work with... I do a lot of work with the carpenters and six different guys I deal with on a regular basis are Jim. When I used to work with electricians, six different guys I used to have to deal with on a regular basis were named Tom. It's just one of those things. When I worked with the linemen, I knew there were four different guys I was dealing with all named Brian. And one guy's name was Brian Sr. And I thought that actually meant he was the oldest one. It turned out his last name was just S-E-N-I-E-R. But I just like did it. I was like, oh yeah, do you know Brian? Yeah, fuck it. Brian Jr., Brian Sr. Yeah, you know, Brian the third.

It's like the guy in the army named Sergeant Major. I met one of those. It was never not funny. I also knew a Captain Morgan and we're all very sad when he finally made Major. We had a Sergeant Slaughter, and it was a female too. And she was a master sergeant. So she got to be sergeant slaughter for a long period of her military career. I also, my personal favorite was my outgoing basic training class got to see the new coming one, like the last week or whatever.

And there was a private pussy. It was like spelled like P-U-S-S-I. But I'm like, you better change your name, man. You're going to have a rough goddamn career. Your career should have turned you away on day one. It's like private parts that we had in our basic training. In my bootcamp company, we had a semen flow. Thankfully, she got married immediately after graduating. I think I've said this before on the pod, but-

Thankfully, she changed her last name to Shots. Was it the class behind me at law school, and I did not go to the school. This must have been a massive disappointment for his family, but there was a guy named Stanford Law. He did not go to Stanford Law. He shot a lot lower than that. I mean, respect. If my last name was Harvard, I would say the same thing. But also like, turning to get back to the thing, I would say that Chicky Donahue in this is just, he is very much like a type of guy. He seems very Boston-coded to me.

I mean, he's like, his name is Chicky Donahue. He hangs out with a whole bunch of other Irish dudes on the block and he works in the merchant Marines. And he has to go to church multiple times on the weekend. Like that is pure Boston Irish-coded right there. I went to five o'clock mass. Your mother and I were at five o'clock mass. We didn't see you there, get out of bed. Your mother and I were at five o'clock mass. We didn't see it. Get out of bed.

Yeah. And he's like, you know, I'm I'm I'm out of work six months out of the year. Well, I mean, it seems to me that you can go down to the merch. I have no idea how the Merchant Marines work, but it seems to me that you can go to the Merchant Marine office and get a job within three hours if you want it. Yeah. But it's it's kind of like a sailor thing, right? Not so much of a military sailor thing, but it's like, get a job, drink through your paycheck, and only get your next job when you're out of money from the last paycheck, the last job.

And it kind of like, I don't know how every union works, but I used to work with a lot of electrical unionists here, the IBEW, and they had a union hall that they're like, look, when you don't have a job, you go to the union hall, you hang out, you ask for jobs, and then you get assigned to a job and you work that job. Like you have a contract, like I'm gonna do this thing for like four weeks, five weeks. A lot of them, like they're getting married.

Merchant Marine seems to be a little bit different because it's like a kind of like a government agency. Kind of, right? Did you see the guy who was claiming that it was a branch of the military? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That rules. They do have... They were during World War II. There's actually... So the big... So where he signed... It's called signing the book when you're out of work. So you come in and you sign the book and like that, they put you on the out of work list. signing the book when you're out of work. So you come in and you sign the book and like that,

they put you on the out of work list. This is where he is. It's literally just called a hiring hall. It's not an exclusive hiring hall. That's something that was made illegal. It's a poly hiring hall. Yeah. It's an open hiring hall. It requires a lot of communication to get a job there.

Right. Very open, honest communication. A lot of open, get a job there. Right. Very open, honest communication. Open, honest communication. And lube. Well, he was an oiler. Yeah. Yeah.

But he's... So he signs the book and it's the... There were two nautical unions at this point. There is the Seafarers International Union, SIU, which still exists. And then the National Maritime Union, the NMU, which still exists. And then the National Maritime Union, the NMU, which no longer does. It got folded into it. The NMU no longer exists because a little bit of administrative corruption by its longtime president. And then also because it was the stridently communist union during the 30s and 40s for

seafarers. Yeah. I could see how that one ends up collapsing of collapsing as the 40s turn into the 50s. And they got a pretty heavily persecuted post-war. Which is interesting because like, you know, Chicky Donahue in this movie and in real life might because this is all based on a true story because it wasn't based on a true story. We think it's the most ridiculous fucking thing ever put the film and it still kind of is. So it's happening during the Vietnam War and Chickie Donahue's friends and everything are

getting drafted. He's exempt from the draft because he's in the Merchant Marine. He's already served. He already served. He did like, you know, three years as a, four years as a Marine up at Fort Devon or something. If he hadn't done his time in the Army already in Massachusetts, as he likes to remind people, he would still be exempt from the draft as a member of the Merchant Marine. That's considered a draft protected crew. But he is very pro-war in the very beginning, as is his family outside of his sister.

His sister goes to like anti-war rallies. And it has one of my in the early part of the film, it's one of my in the in the early part of the film it's one of my favorite scenes where the guy like him and his bar friends go to the Vietnam protest shortly after one their neighbors is killed in combat and They start shit talking like blowing out candles. It's like those are candles for soldiers who died in Vietnam. He's like, oh shit. They are Fucking peace candles. They's like, they are. We don't want any more soldiers. That's what the fuck he's really his brain is like a golden retriever. It can't comprehend two things at the same time.