Shutdown Fullcast - SHUTDOWN FULLCAST LIVE! LAWNCARE DISASTERS, PART 3

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

For the holiday week, we bring you a treat: the unearthed recording of our summer 2024 live show in Raleigh, North Carolina, featuring the third installment of our most popular running disaster theme: lawns and the calamities that befall themFullcast theme song arranged and performed by Russell PowellCheck out Surber’s band, Killer Antz: https://linktr.ee/killerantzListen to Phantom Island, Ryan’s new show with Godfrey, which is not a college football show because a second simply cannot exist, at falconscottproductions.comCheck out Jason's free CFB Watch Grid newsletter and other work: https://www.jasonkirk.fyi/DID YOU KNOW: Holly and Spencer write a year-round newsletter, featuring football and also unfootball things, at https://channel-6.ghost.io/

Thank you. Welcome to the shutdown fullcast, live from the Rialto Theater. Okay, I'm done with that far. So speaking of the NOLs. Right. And now you say, oh, to my left here. We've done this for a decade You know, every day You got to pay rent Didn't tell you say something to the effect of like

When you make bad decisions for a long time And that was the first thing I thought of Oh, we did this show for a decade Yeah A decade for like nothing That's the best part All right, well you're going to screw up the intro So I'm just going to cut you off

Okay, I'm Spencer Hall No, stop No, stop We're done We're going to start with a game we're going to start with the is this a real or fake Broadway show game Spencer and I have two special guests who are going to help me and Holly with this game Lauren and Hayes if you could please come to the stage to assist

oh Lord all right I'm going to ask Wait, how many of you have heard this game before? Okay. That's like half. The rules are simple. We have at least four fake musicals, and we have one real Broadway show. We are going to read you short descriptions of all of them, and your job is to identify which one is real of the choices before you.

Audience, please try not to help him because it's much funnier when he fails. That's my opinion. Can they try to. directly into that light because I don't want to see anything. Give Spencer disinfo. Let's, Hayes, can we start with your proposed maybe real musical? I would love to, but can I first just say what an honor it is to have you guys at the Rialto Theater?

Thank you. On behalf of Raleigh, New York, Carolina. Give it up for the Rialto. These people were faceless names on an email thread back in the day when we produced some web series. I had a good pleasure of working with Bimani. and then they've been faceless names on my Twitter feed for some time. Without further ado, after investing his life savings in a resort hotel in West Virginia

that promptly burns down, Lou Austin begins to think the natural spring water on the property actually has healing powers. In reality, his friends are just trying to support his new, much, much humbler resort property, but unable to come up with a good reason for why they continue to visit, they just tell Lou there really must be something in the water, and he earnestly, stupidly believes them. Featuring the musical numbers, The Water Runs Deep, but Not So Cheap,

and John Brill's Baby, come take a tall drink of the best musical to hit Broadway in years, Hope Springs. Okay. Come on, Hope Springs. That's your first option. Lauren, can we hear your real or fake musical? Sadly, I don't have as much detail as Hayes did,

but that's okay. Mine is called Give Your Body Joy. It's about Los Del Rio, the band, became famous for their 1997 hit song, Macarena. It was the band's only hit song. It's a line from that song. Apparently they have a lot of lines in their songs that don't translate very well from Spanish into English,

but that was the first song that no one really gave a shit if translated from Spanish into English because that song gave people's body joy until it made everyone want to die. because we kept hearing it over and over. Anyway, they were making music actually since 1967. They had been plugging away that long, this duo, and they just kind of start to get tired of the macarena,

and they want people to appreciate their old hits, and it's kind of just about that journey for them and how you can appreciate all of their music, not just the macarena, even their hits going back 30 years. That's what this musical is about. Give your body joy. Holly, can I do one and then pass it to you? Yes.

Okay. Spencer, this show is set in the days leading up to Abraham Lincoln's assassination. It's a comedic spoof that portrays Mary Todd Lincoln as someone who longs to live a life away from politics and be a vaudeville performer. While Abe uses her as a beard to hide his sex. sexuality. The name of my show is Oh, Mary. Okay. Holly?

We have a third surprise special guest tonight, somebody who's a long-time friend of the program, because you may not know this. There are five people in the college football universe who can throw serious Broadway game. Four of them are on this stage right now. The fifth one is Tom

McGrath in Chicago, who could not be here tonight, so I asked him to submit our final musical, real or fake. That's our Dick, a variety show attempting to build. Come on. Let it out, let it out, clowns. Come on.

That's our dick, a variety show attempting to build on the success of the Dick Van Dyke show. See? 1960s closed after six weeks. And I have a bonus entry for you. Again, might be the real one. Who's to say? Who's going to say?

Kindergarten cop, the musical. Shut up. Please be real. Set after the events of the 1990 American action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, this musical depicts the further misadventures of John Kimball, cop-slash-kindergarten teacher, this time undercover in an exclusive private South Florida elementary school that the FBI believes to be a drug front.

So it's a sequel, but it's not first-grade cop? Damn. Oh. That's Detective First It'd be Detective First Grade, right? All right. Which of these musicals? One of these is a real musical.

Which one? Boy, they all sound stupid enough to be real musicals. But the one that I'm going to pick is probably the one that was put out there like is the shiniest candy for me. So I'll take it. Oh, Mary.

How do you keep doing this? Oh, Mary is the real musical. Yes! Yes! Do you know what gave it away? I'll tell you what gave it. He's so good at this. It's awful. I'll tell you what gave it away.

A musical always tells the audience exactly what they want to hear, and it always tells everyone on stage what they want to hear. And the idea that somebody is like, do you know what would make me really happy? Being a Vonville performer. Do you know what the greatest city in the world is? New York, the one where you're sitting right now. It's always a New York sock, like in every musical.

Oklahoma probably has one. I've never seen it. If anyone wants to finance any of our other four fake musicals, we are taking offers. Yeah. We're going to talk about kindergarten cop after the show. Thank you. You have some North Carolina opinions.

I do. I have one more person intro before we do that, okay, which is this special guest tonight, someone very appreciated, long-time full-cast supporter. He's wearing a Tennessee fishing shirt. Listen, that's not why he's special. That's not why he's special, no. What happens? Yeah.

Do you guys remember the origin story of the first long-care disasters episode, which is that Jason and Ryan were on vacation and Spencer forgot? And I wasn't on the show yet, but I'm the only person he can call. And he calls him, I said, what are we going to talk about? And I said, well, my dad just got a power washer. And he severed the phone and internet lines going into our house. Legend. And that's how the first lawn care disastrous episode was born.

My dad is here tonight. Yeah! He maintains, by the way, that this is not his worst lawn care disaster, but I will get to that. But thanks for being here, big guy. Yes, in a way, the father of the disaster series, which is maybe... Don't put that on him. I did want to go ahead and open the show before we did this, take care of some business. It's very important that you know that when we love the state of North Carolina, we love your FBS schools as well,

college football, North Carolina. though you may not have given a whole lot to college football as a whole. There's a whole lot of college football in North Carolina. It should give you an indication of how this discussion's going to go. Are you going to do world religions ranked? Basically doing world religions ranked, but for the state of North Carolina. It's a quantity state. It's going to get us canceled in the triangle.

So I wanted to go ahead and do something totally non-controversial and rank all of the FBS programs in the state of North Carolina. Before the show, he was like, I want to do this. I was like, great, you can. There are seven of them, and number seven is UNC. Now, listen, hear me out. Now, that is how you do cheap pop in Raleigh. First of all, great cheap pop.

Thank you. cheap heat great heat UNC I put him at seven because if you're an out-of-stater and you apply to UNC they're like you can't go here we're too good

and you're like I've seen who you accept from in-state come on I'm over it yeah we're all over it but come on come on y'all

it ain't that great a club number six is Duke if you have any objections to this this is not a federalist society meeting so you don't get to talk you don't know no I'm sorry no go get you J.D

go go go you've had enough attention to night yeah yeah yeah number five number five is Charlotte because I don't know I had no good

I was just like five seems right yeah I think if you're a Charlotte fan you're going like Charlotte mentioned yeah ahead of UNC

and Duke Charlotte getting an FBS team is when like Crystal is like we should get into the chicken sandwich wars you're like how's their chicken sandwich and you're like Crystal's a burger place certainly there it's certainly qualifies we'll thaw one out for you number four this is very difficult I have Wake Forest I think at a strong four now don't take this as a total dis placing it four because one Dave Willis attended Wake Forest he created Aquitaine Humbley I owe him like 30% of my brain and squid billies.

That's a substantial contribution to culture, if not football. Additionally, you have the only head coach who actually lists talking heads as his favorite band, which means he's a big old nerd. And we have to respect that. Number three, App State. Yeah. If you just say Upstate anywhere, do you have to do that? Like in court?

Woo! Is that contempt? You're like, no, he went to Appstate. It's fine. It's fine. You'll know contempt of court from an Appstate grad if you see it. But I have them at three because Boone's great. Boone's awesome.

And one time in college, I bought a jar full of weed and a mason jar full of weed for like $9 there. So shouts out to Appstate. eight. Number two, we've only got two left here, so you've got to know. This is a very, very hard decision, especially because this is in Raleigh. NC State is second, which is higher than NC State is used to placing. So you should be very, because I had to put ECU at one. I don't think, yeah, go ahead. Boomie, I'm right. Because you don't get more college football than East Carolina. Because East Carolina is the only thing I've ever seen on TikTok

where somebody put their rejection letter to East Carolina. And people are like, bro, what did you do? What did you do? Other people, and they list their famous alumni, you can get kind of, you know, you can kind of get kind of reachy. Like, we're at Florida, and you name like, Dan Bill Zarian. Yeah, yeah.

You name like 30 of the worst politicians ever. Ryan Loxy. He was behind the every child left behind act. He's very important. You know, that's Florida, right? Like, we should be able to sell organs on the open market. You're like, thank you, Senator. Thank you.

But I put ECU at one because when you reach for theirs, they're like, who's your famous alumni? They're like, Vince McMahon. And Sandy Bullock, yeah. And Sandra Bullock. See, sold. There, number one. You're just proven my point.

I think she's the one to emphasize. Yeah. Also, I love it. So Cookout, you know, strongly associated with NC State. like it's in North Carolina in general when they opened a cookout in Atlanta you went to the parking lot and I was like I'm going to see a lot of wolf pack shit here I didn't see one

do you know what the whole fucking parking lot was filled with pirates baby pirates they heard hush puppies and they're like we gotta so those are my complete considered and totally right ranking of every FBS program in North Carolina thank you Okay, should we jump right into some backyard disasters?

Yeah, let's get it moving. I'm sure we have some of our own to share, but just to emphasize, like we try to tell people when they submit these, shorter is usually better. Y'all don't listen. And sometimes that's not true, but I do want, I do want... The ones that aren't true are extraordinary. I do want to use one shining example of this role.

being correct. This is from P. My uncle decided it would be too hard to move his lawn furniture to his new house so he decided to light it all on fire. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It has a cliff. Like, it's perfect storytelling. A lesson? Maybe. Unclear what that lesson is. He didn't have to move the furniture. Okay, I was worried. That was the and you were taking credit.

I love that his solutions harkened back to, like, Paleolithic man. Like, you know what? I know how to do this. We're going to burn everything. Jason could go. Okay, so let's go this way and then back around. All right.

Serpentine. We planned. Additionally, an example of a shorter one. When we do these, once we put them all in a spreadsheet or whatever, I just sort of like scan for the ones that are like two lines, and I'm like, oh, there's a candidate. This is from Lauren. I know we have at least one Lauren here.

This might be you. I don't know. This isn't you? Okay. That's good. This one was nothing but a subject line. Ready? Dog.

In the septic tank. Now that's a story. See, that's the world's worst game of clue, isn't it? There wasn't a murder committed, but God, you wish there was, because who wants to be alive after witnessing that? What did you learn in there? What did you see? Tell us.

I will tell you, there's no worse noise than being in your house hearing a dog bark and not knowing where it's coming from. Because I have lost a dog not in a car. ball space, but in like a spot underneath the stairs, right, where the drywall was, and the stairs are here, and there's a little door. And I left the door open. I'm like, ah, nobody will get in there. And I shut it, and I go up for the night, and I hear this like, and you go downstairs, you're like, well, maybe someone's at the door. There's nobody at the door. I bet that's where Edgar Allen Poe got the idea.

Bird in the septic tank. Heart beating in the septic tank. I bet he was just, I bet he was just chilling with his. a Montiato, and be like, what the fuck is that behind the... Oh. So this asshole wouldn't show up, so I locked him in the septic tank. The question is, did Edgar Allan Poe get drunk enough to lock a dog inside a wall? And the answer

is undoubtedly. They're fine in there. It's good. I'll write a story about it. Holly. Sir. I got a long one. Hamilton. When my parents bought our house, the house had a backyard full of grass.

But when the sprinkler system got installed, the pine trees took off, blocked the sun, and the grass died. Now, this is a lot of information, but you'll find it all comes to bear. My dad was a professor at Alabama, and his office was across the street from Bryant-Denny Stadium. And one summer, he walks out of his office to see they're doing the annual swap of stadium grass, and there are stacks of sod just sitting outside. So he loads up the trunk of his Hyundai Sonata with grass. and brings a load home, and then does it again, and again, and again, like eight more times, then borrows his brother's pickup truck for another load, then spends the next few weeks

laying out the sod in the backyard, and it looks gorgeous, and he spends the month following that doing a one-man grounds crew, fertilizing it, watering it obsessively, treating it with all the love than care he can, and it's all sand by September because Bryant-Denny doesn't have any pine trees blocking out the summer sun. Roll tide. I'm hearing here a metaphor for all of Nick Saban's assistants

who went elsewhere. Sour ground. Is that grass going to live? I don't know. It's Jimbo fescue. There's no tell of what's going to happen with it. It's expensive, though. I would like, John John to know that we were about to share his glorious story. Growing up,

my neighbors had a creek in the very back of their property. My friends and I spent five days damning it up in the summer. I'm going to pause. That's five goddamn days. That meant one day you were like, let's damn it.

That's cool. Maybe you had something else to do. Nope, Tuesday. Back to the dam. Wednesday, got to freak that damn. Thursday, back to the damn, baby. And Friday, Let's roll it up.

Dude's rock. Because you know at one point you had to call someone on the phone and be like, we're going damn in today? Hey man, I got to work. No, you don't. You're calling in today. It's a damn day. So evidently it got real good to them and they decided to damn it up.

And they did a real good job. Turns out, always a good story when it says turns out. Turns out it led to someone's pond, which they stocked with fish. A couple of weeks go by, pond empty fish dead. neighbor's dad had to get a backhoe to destroy the dam I just imagine the dude's crying as they're like no it's so beautiful don't do it we can rebuild it all right this is from Jake from Ohio when I was 16 about a dozen of us had a bonfire in a buddy's backyard. We burned everything we could find, old mattresses,

a couch, anything. I was having a fight with my girlfriend on the phone, pacing around the fire. My friends grabbed a fully inflated truck tire and put it in the flames when I was not paying attention. They backed away about 40 feet, but no one told me. I eventually look up and see them all in the distance. Before I can ask anything, the tire explodes and I feel the flames wrap around me. I dropped my cell phone, shit my pants

and ran away half a mile down the road. It scared me so badly. I walked to my truck and drove home. I never told anyone I shit my pants until this email. This is a safe place. That sounds like the Hulk's origin story, right? Like, I looked out, there wasn't anybody out there.

All of a sudden, boom, now I'm a Hulk. Yeah, it's also Dr. Manhattan, but if it took place in Akron instead. Dr. Manhattan, Kansas. I tried to think of my own backyard disasters, and there was one I told on the program of a wild pack where I was a younger person and I was attempting to jump a power wheel across a creek that it was considerable distance maybe from here to that home field table buy some home field merch before you leave tonight. Exclusive hoodie that will be destroyed in a tire explosion immediately afterward. It's going to be awesome. But a power wheel, it's not very fast.

So, you know, went down the hill and just sort of like a nose dive straight into the mud. There is that and there's also a circle in our backyard grass where the previous owner was attempting to burn something. I don't know why. And like the burned the grass. So there's new grass there. Those are the only ones I could think of. So it's the best I got. I'm sorry. This did most of my dirt in the front yard, right? We're very proud of a stupid shit. We want everyone to see. This one comes to us from Tom. When I was eight, great start. My dad made me tunnel a hole under our pool deck to replace the supply hose for the in-ground pool.

you've turned a child into a badger 10-year-old sister filled the tunnel entrance back in according to Tom according to Tom so allegedly on purpose while Tom was still in it

parents dug me out just before I ran out of air Tom made it out of the tunnel. Hey. Huh? The boy who lived. Tiny Tim, who is not dead. Maybe Tom's sister was trying to make a forceful, if inelegant, statement about child labor laws and why they're important. Maybe she saw the hole and she was like, oh, no, someone might fall in it.

Sure. Did dad go to nam? get the kid make him tunnel it'll be good it'll be fine you know that was great for her though because like you know when you're that old wait wait you think it was great that she almost killed her brother for her I think that was a great moment she's like finally

he's gone and so you're saying then it became a bad moment once her brother lived because I don't know if you remember like when you're seven you really fucking hate your siblings you're like yeah I'd like them dead like when you're mad at them you're like I will throw them off of something but then she got to see the badass side of her brother like emerging from the dirt

So it was a really a win-win for her. No, she's like next time I'm putting more dirt down there. Thank God the pool tunnel got dug or whatever. Man, what a tragedy it would have been if that hadn't happened. Well, you know, that's a dad thing there. I was wearing a hose. Like, oh, you don't have to do that. Well, it'd look ugly.

Well, look, I think... Ugly is my dead son. I suspect... Jesus Christ! He's fine. How am I in trouble? This is how I'm in trouble. This is how a Stephen King's short story begins, right?

I think part of what this story reveals is that maybe a little less so now, but certainly when a lot of us were children, some of how our parents coped with being parents was to say, well, I must put them to work. It need not be work that they are qualified to do. It need not be work that it is safe for them to do. But I will feel better about all of their bullshit if I can say, at least

you put some goddamn mulch in the backyard. In this country, we used to send kids to factories, and now you can't. So you've got to dig a hole in the backyard, throw the kid in it. Like our own, Oshabiley. Children crave the tunnels, is what you're saying. That's not true.

Aliens is not a documentary. Disagree. My son, Gimli, was out in the backyard. Let's send our children to the minds of Moria. Why am I teaching My son Siege Works. They have tunnel too deep.

You never know when you have a backyard ball rock. Yeah, I found a dog and a septic tank down here. There's all kinds of treasure. It's very friendly. We've allied against my sister. We're going to retake the surface. You ever tried to wake up your sister for school? Like, the smog wake-up scene is not actually that far.

off. No. You're up. Me? Yeah. Do we do, are we doing real life? You can do whatever you like. My dad maintains to this day that severing the power line into the house was not a disaster because it also had the Comcast phone line attached to it so no one could call him. The perfect crime.

He maintains that his favorite backyard disaster was when he, on the right, lawnmower and going at a pretty good clip, decided to shoot the gap between the swings on the swing set. Somehow, in Palpatine returned voice, somehow caught the front fender of the mower under the chain and just flipped it straight over backwards with the mower still running as it landed on him and just spinning in the mid-air. just turned it into like a poultry shredder he's fine he's fine I would like to read another very short one

from user Eric this is also power washing themed near and dear to my heart power washed my parents deck barefoot pause I think my toe would still be intact if I hadn't done the stairs too RIP nine-toed Eric. I want to share this one from Jacob.

Content warning, someone getting their ass beat. I was hanging out with my dirtbag neighbor who was showing off his new airsoft rifle. He saw a cyclist driving by. And you know, in his mind, it's like, oh, it's like the carnival game. Boom! And this gun isn't real. This photo-realistic gun isn't real.

There's just a David Attenborough moment here where you were like, the IBEX approaches the loon. It doesn't suspect there's a crocodile in there. And the crocodile's like, it's go time. Chad has already spotted his prey. shot the cyclist in the leg the cyclist turned around I hid in the woods

Jacob great call because you don't want to back up your boy like yeah he shot you what there's a soft rifle for no fucking reason and watch the cyclist beat my neighbor's ass wait my neighbor was 12

the cyclist was in his 40s it takes a village the part that got me here when I was reading it and I was like here's the genius behind this story is that odds are if you're a cyclist and you're in your 40s you're a recreational cyclist and you probably have like a $9,000 bike or something. So this dude probably at the age of 12 got his ass wore out by an orthodontist. Right?

Like a pretty prestigious urologist was like, not today. I had a rough day in the pea house and I need to beat some ass. Either that or it was a 40-year-old guy on a bike who might have a DUI and that's how he's getting to work. and he's already sweating and pissed off at the world and he's like, ah, one night of Benegans and you're on a bike, fuck. And this would have been a guy went to Benegans, go Knowles.

So, and then he was like Billy Bob Thornton and Bad Santa, right? He's like, yeah, I'm going to beat a kid's ass. This is happening for a really good reason. Either way, thank you, Jacob. I like that it sort of ends with an unspoken, like, oh, we're both the asshole here. neither one of us can only Jacob can tell this story

hiding in the woods Jacob learned a real important lesson too which is you don't have to back your boy up you don't like if he's out of pocket he's like you got my back you're like nope woods let's take this one from Bob no I've changed my mind wow fuck off Bob no we'll get to Bob I just want to do Dexter's instead

on my younger brother's 8th or 9th birthday, my parents had a moon bounce in the front yard. We will allow this clear violation of our policy here. After the other kids left, my brother thought it would be a good idea to deflate the moon bounce. How thoughtful. Plug it back in. Wait, what? Jump on the top and ride the re-inflating roof all the way up. To the moon. The dangers of playing Super Nintendo reared their ugly head. I don't know what his exit strategy was, but I do know that he still has the scars on his wrist from where they put the pins in his broken arm. The thing is, for a minute, this fucking rules. For a minute, this was so great. And then the moonbound said, hey, kids don't go there and

tossed his ass off. Hopefully in his head he's hearing the whole time, like, do, do, do, do, do, do. This is how I get up to the next mushroom. I like, I like a disaster where a kid is like, okay, so I have a plan. I've thought this through, and it can

only be fun. And then next thing, you know they're in the hospital. It makes it really fun to be a parent. This one comes to us from Reese. six buddies of mine decided to sex tuple bounce a seventh friend on a trampoline Okay, can we lay out some terminology here?

Okay, for those of you're familiar, he's referring to a derivation of the double bounce which is where you're on the trampoline, right? It's so Florida that you're like, I've got this. No, no, no, I do. Hold on, let an expert speak. These North Carolinians don't know about dumb shit in the yard. This is fat kid privilege.

We're like, we double-bounce some people. That's your superpower when you're on the trample. The double-bounce is the reason my brother can't fully extend his right arm. So that's how deadly a double-bounces is. That's two. We're going to triple that, and then some, roughly. No, just triple. My kid's the math expert here.

Not that she's here, which is why I'm saying these bad math things. His femur snapped. That's not the one you want to snap. I love that his femur is the action. is like the thing performing me. It's very passive. Whatever happened next, who's to say? There's a femur involved snapping.

Asked the EMT if he'd be able to surf in six weeks. Priorities. Never stopped dreaming. This is going to ruin the beach trip. Cage has put his femur back together? Yeah. I have too.

Yeah, so you know every now and then somebody like will tie balloons to a chair and like enter actual federal airspace, right? They'll be like, yeah, we saw a guy in a chair and a balloon at like 12,000 feet. Yeah, it was called balloon guy. Yeah, it was a balloon guy. That's how high up he went, right? Like he had to be like up here on radar. Worth it, man.

The coolest way to go is up. It's that thing when, and I have done this, where you're falling long enough to realize something is wrong. It's much nicer when you just. fall quickly and you're like, oh, that hurt. It's like, when you have time to stop and assess? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What led me to this moment? When you have time to ponder the fall,

time to think about, I wish I was up there instead. But back up the ledge I jumped from. I fell once when I was climbing long enough to get something out of my pocket. What did you retrieve? What did you dig in your inventory for? Twitter? I have.

I don't know why, but I was falling and I was like, oh, it's going to hurt. I should probably get my keys out of pocket. Damn. How far were you falling? It was a long enough whipper. I took like a 40 foot whipper. Like, it was in North Carolina.

Yay. Yeah, because North Carolina climbers are like, we're going to put the bolts 120 feet apart from each other because you know what you're doing, right? Yeah. I had time to get out my keys part out of my pocket. And then when I hit the wall, of course, warped them so I couldn't turn my car on. I need you guys to listen very carefully here. Just hang on, all right. My ninja neighbor was in his backyard firing a revolver.

The classic ninja weapon. They say ninjas have the sharpest revolvers. You remember how Donatello had a gun, right? There was nothing behind his target to stop the bullets. We live next to a middle school. My favorite part is that you could put that sentence anywhere in this story and it has the same purpose. How about this day was an election day

and the middle school was a polling site? The polling site was placed on lockdown. The police arrived, arrested the ninja, and took away his revolver, and sword in his waistband. Now, the sword didn't do anything. Andrew, with copious good sense, knew that we would read, My Ninja Neighbor, as though this is some sort of commonplace, as though he is Lutheran, or something. And say what? And he provided a link to the news story.

that result from this. This is, thank you WPDE. Does anybody I'll let one person shout it out. What state do you think this happened in? I haven't heard it yet. Take turn. South Carolina is right.

All right. Okay. For double your points, or Cousie, what, this man does indeed have three names. If you can guess, his first or his middle name, I will give you a coozy. I heard one.

Wait, wait. I heard it back there, one. Wayne is his middle name. The full name you will not be shocked to learn is Cody Wayne Aikins. That's what the C.W. stands for. This is a visual medium, but please enjoy his mug shut. God damn it, Cody Wayne, the ninja. I love the idea, by the way, that a ninja in a film would take, like, two minutes to sneak in, infiltrate a place,

he'd be super quiet. He'd be creeping down the silk of his robes, just barely jingling, right? And he gets in there, and he hits his prey, and there's a guy in, like, a silk bed. He's, like, in a villain lair, right? You never knew Cody was here. You never knew Cody was here. You get there, and the guy, like, stirs in bed and goes, huh? And the guy goes, wha!

Ha! Ha! Pop, ba, pa, pa, pa, pop, pa. My last thought would be, did that ninja have a cat? I'm only going to make this the second time since the Maritime Disasters episode that we have openly sided with law enforcement. But if you're a cop, is this not the best day ever? Like, you go home and say you've got a five-year-old and you go home.

And instead of like, what did you do today, Sheriff's Deputy Dad? Oh, I kick some poor people out of their homes. And instead, today you get to tell him, you know how you're always talking about how who could win in a fight, a cop, or a ninja? Well, the ninja had a gun. And they, well, no, the little Reddit snod is like, what if the ninja had a gun? Dad's like, he did. The kid's like, oh.

I feel like what if a ninja had a gun is like every final fantasy character. I want to share this for the character in it, really Ryan M. If you're right here, I'm about to share your story. Different Ryan. Neighbor and I decide to split the cost to remove a tree that's hanging over my house. And the neighbor just wants gone off his property, call in local tree service. And they come in with a bucket truck and a crew to cut it down. Bucket truck can't reach the top third of the tree.

But they try to cut it down anyway. Bucket truck operator cuts a massive limb that comes down, sweeps the neighbor's deck, and knocks off his big green egg. deck is two stories tall so this completely shatters the grill and breaks part of the deck at this point they call in a wiry good old boy wearing an

Alabama baseball cap and chain smoking marble reds to climb the tree and finish it the right way the man is a savant and drops every large limbs straight down repeatedly yelling it's better to be lucky than good if I were on that kind of a win streak

I'm not sure that I'm not sure I would like I'm earning a lot of confidence here and I'm not sure I would keep undermining myself like that. I assume this is during the Mike Shula year so I get it. I also assume without looking that this man is named Cody Wayne.

I bought him another pack of cigarettes as a thank you for putting on good show and not destroying any more property. That's a Charles Portis character, right? Just this lunatic who's climbing up a tree unbidden, they just found him, and he's like, it's better to be looking good, swan. Okay, this is from Phil.

Grandparents' neighbors in rural Appalachia decided they could build a pool for cheap. Raise your hand if you've ever tried to build a pool for cheap. Anybody? And something, oh. By cutting into the side of the hill and using cheap cinder block, Papa worked for the rescue squad, so he was able to get the fire department to bring a tanker truck

to fill it up for the grand opening. The whole neighborhood watched while the cinder block on the downhill side failed and cascaded down the hill. Like, most of these disasters, it's like, this is what happened to me and my dad was there, or my friend was there, or a cyclist beat one of us half to death. Rarely do you get a back-yard disaster

that was like, the whole town came. Are cinder blocks also not visibly porous? Like, that might not have been the first problem if it had held. I appreciate that I suspect somebody in this fire department looked at this, said, Nope, but Science demands testing Or I said I'm not getting out of the truck but I will hold the hose

The pool has since been converted to a carport I'm going to build a pool for cheap I'm going to build a pool for cheap And you built a cave Yeah Just an upside down pool. I'm just, I'm going to blast that hill with a bomb. Now it's a pool.

This one comes to us from Robbie. Also, how miserable would it be to climb in and out of a cinder block pool repeatedly? Just relaxing in the... This makes less sense than like Philly dumpster pools, you know, when they get a dumpster in Philly's line up. I'm like, yeah, that's structurally sound. That'll be fine. Go birds.

So now this one comes to us from Robbie. I'm going to get to a spot, and I'm going to leave a little blank, okay? Then we'll go back and we'll fill in the blank. Lawn mower wouldn't start. Father-in-law came by to show the old blank trick. The words that go in that blank are, gas on the carburetor. that's the end of it

I'll leave the resolution to the imagination but it's called Fury Road I'm sure it worked yeah you know when they're spitting gas directly into the intake of the road yeah yeah dad was a war boy gas makes shit go does it not

I love that I love that Sturgel song yeah dad was a war boy no nobody all right no it's good Chris cousin and I were fishing down at the cattle pond. See if you can catch

all the warnings in this sentence. Long-time listeners will know that there are three. Hold up one finger when you spot the first warning, two, when you spot the second warning, and three, when you spot the third warning. It's a short sentence. Uncle. Let the listener

understand every hand has a finger raised. Pulls up on a four-wheeler and says, y'all check this shit out very good I'm very proud of all of you

he then sky hooks Kareem style this is one of the greatest what turned out we've ever had if you've been listening to this for any length of time you know the love we have for the phrase it turns out he then skyhooks

Kareem style what turned out to be a live grenade into the pond the pond is go ahead there's a lot more please go this is a man who looks at a madlib and says I will live that life

noun verb yes me today the pond is probably a yards from my grandfather's house, a war veteran. Oh, you see the real turn here. Granddad covered that hundred yards at about a 4.340 clip and proceeded to whoop my 40-year-old uncle's ass. Right in front of me and my cousin.

Chris signs off in the following fashion Didn't catch shit, go dogs So I only have one question Is this uncle a father and if so If we found dad C? So Chris is with his cousin And that's my question Is this cousin's dad

Or is this mutual uncle? No, no, no Because if this is the dad of the cousin We have found Dad C Oh yeah This is science I got chills I just like that

I just like that the grandfather runs out there and he's like Take that Tojo Like he's totally PTSDed out right He's not there He's in Korea The absolute only way this gets better

Is if his uncle is a Marine Yeah You see why we had to attack all this fish In the Koi Pond Why was he calling me Ho Chi Minh this comes from Alex when I was 12 I lost trajectory control on a bow

That's another very passive sentence This is NASA telling us those astronauts aren't coming It was trajectory control not me Yeah And put an arrow through the pool screen of a neighbor Three houses down on Easter Sunday Went over to apologize and get the arrow back okay

can you spot the problem with this strategy I like it was apologize and we'll get that arrow back that was 475 only to find it embedded had embedded itself in a pool chair okay listen Alex it did not embed itself in a pool chair

no sure didn't you embedded it in a pool chair right next to where the entire extended family was having post Church ham. Flight ham. Seems people have, like, just sit there and all of something

it's like, it's the cartoon, right? It just goes, it's an archery term. That was really funny. The grandmother of the family wanted to call the cops. The dad couldn't stop laughing in the background

and was repeatedly getting elbowed by his wife for laughing. I did not get the arrow back. Aw. I just can't imagine the dad being like, we almost died. It was awesome. Also, at what point if you're Alex, do you, like, remove yourself from the situation?

At what point do you realize that it's not happening for you? Oh, the dad just bailed you out. The dad's like, I'm the bad guy now because I think it's funny we almost got shot with an arrow. Which to be funny is exactly what I would have done. And also doesn't mention which grandmother this was, which makes me guess this was the wife's mom. Oh, yeah. This dad was like, I'm so miserable. I absolutely hate this.

It's so hot. It's Easter, right? You're eating ham and your clothes don't fit. It's hot. You're eating ham and you really don't want the ham, you know? you want night ham the problem with getting shot by an arrow on Easter is like

this should have happened on Friday this is just all out of order and you need two more right do you want to read Bob I'll read Bob I'll read Bob okay yeah

come back to Bob this is from Bob when we were in middle school my brother and I used to take batting practice with tennis balls in the backyard. Our parents didn't mind because a tennis ball projected by a baseball bat won't damage much of anything

of value. No, no. We can dispute whether or not that's true. Not all parents are smart. We can dispute whether or not that's true, but that is the understanding that Bob had and his brother and their parents. So Bob says that he believes that statement is true

because when they tried their hand at golf ball, baseball. After just one pitch, their parents had to replace the family van's windshield. But I think you're right. I think tennis ball, baseball is a gateway drug of sorts. This comes to us from April. The summer before my freshman year of high school, I hurt my collarbone at football camp doing a running flip over a tall stack of tackling dummies. Why wouldn't you do that. It's called football practice. Doctor told me I had a bone bruise. Dad made me pushmoe the backyard that day.

And I ended up having to save a bunny from being mulled by our dog by tackling the dog to the ground onto my hurt shoulder. This is a busy fucking day. Doctor finally gave me an x-ray. My left collarbone was in fact cleanly broken in half. That's called playing fucking through it, man.

this is the busiest day I've ever heard of well this is the dangerous side of touching grass I think it touches back you got do you have any personal backyard disaster that you want to share yeah one time we thought who's we

so we that would be me my father a guy named Robert Taylor Robert Taylor absolute legend Tennessee fan, I never held that against him. One time when I was living on the other side of the world in Tennessee beat Florida, he mailed me a $48 package. So $48 back in the day, a shit ton of heavy stuff, and it was nothing but clipping from the game.

He took every single newspaper thing, and he sent me a good 20 pounds of newspaper, 20 pounds of newspaper that was about how Doug Johnson had eaten shit in Knoxville and we had lost. Do you still have these? No. I threw them in a Taiwanese dumpster. Where they belong. So we were out doing bottle rockets, right? Like it was a fireworks night. Fireworks night did not coincide with any known federal or state holiday.

How many nights per week were fireworks night? In the summer, too. And he had a bunch of... All things in moderation. He had a bunch of bottle rockets and we're like, well, how are we going to fire off all these bottle rockets at once? because who wants to light them off one at a time. And we stuffed them in and he goes, well, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to take a coffee can and we're going to stuff them all in just like a hive, right? We're just going to pack him in like a charge. The famously safe thing. Famously safe thing, right? You know, some guy, 3,000 years, some ghost from 3,000 years ago in China is like,

no, no, and we're like, I don't speak Chinese, sorry. And anyway, we go, okay, we're going to put it in the bottom. and Robert goes, hold on, let's spice it up a little bit. This guy once leaned his head out to a power walker in Destin, Florida, like out of the car window, he sees him, this power walker's going, he's taken care of himself, he's good, but to be honest, body composition, pretty fat, but healthy.

And he's doing this, he's all greased up. Robert just leans his head out of the window and goes, Good morning, fat ass! This kind of guy. He liked to spice things up a little. So he goes, hold on, I got this. And he goes over and he gets a can of kerosene and he puts about a quarter inch of kerosene in the back of this coffee mug and then gets his cigarette, which he is not taken out of his mouth this entire time. Did he die of lung cancer?

No. No, he didn't. It was a heart attack and totally unrelated. So he took his cigarette and he goes, all right, y'all, you'd better run and just throws it in. And at that point, I don't know if you've ever been stung by 500 bees at once. While also having a dragon just tear your eyebrows off, it was exactly like that. And it went on for so much longer than I thought. I was like, oh, it's three seconds.

This should be, no, 10, 15. They're still going off. Oh, God. Yeah. So that was, that was, there was a, there was a crater, like a little crater that it carved down. A great battle was fought. A great battle. And Robert afterwards goes, that was cool.

Robert was fucking cool, man. No, he was not wrong. No, Robert's awesome. Actually, I found one. Okay. Josh. My high school friends and I would often have bonfires. Which generally consisted of about five to ten teenage boys

throwing shit on a flaming pyre that we definitely should not. And otherwise just dicking around. That's bonfire. One night, our buddy Rafe, who was built like a linebacker, decided to roid rage. Activated roid rage. I guess. And Chase's our other friend, Kevin, this is classic Kevin behavior,

around the yard, about an acre of land while I filmed it. It was hilarious for everyone except Kevin. At some point, Rave got tired of running, picked up a tree branch from the ground and hurled it, Kevin, like a tomahawk. The branch flew about 15 yards. Rave, do you have eligibility left? And hit Kevin, who was still running right in the head.

Kevin dropped like a sack of potatoes, and the laughter stopped. Terrified that he'd killed Kevin, Raph immediately ran over and cradled the lifeless body in his arms like a dead war buddy. Kevin came to very confused Rath is a cop now And that's a

Disaster's episode That is a disaster's episode Yay