The Commercial Break - Blue Moon Gumshoe!

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

EP928: Bryan has worn many hats in his short (long) life! He has been waiter, bartender, sales person, marketing director, commercial real estate mogul?, radio DJ and failed podcaster....but did you know he was once a P.I.? You learn something new every day! TCB is a The Commercial Break LLC production Visit: www.TCBpodcast.com Insta: @thecommercialbreakBryan Green on Insta: @BryanWGreen Hosts: Bryan Green & Krissy Hoadley Created by: Bryan Green Written by: Bryan Green, Krissy Hoadley Produced by: Astrid Green & Gustavo  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode of the commercial break. And I called down there, I called three separate times, three separate shifts, and just tried to get them to confirm that this human being was there, and none of them were playing along. I mean, none of them. It was such a tough job. So after that, I got a job at the restaurant. Yeah.

But for like two months of the three months, I was helping Cadillac Jack, and I was really good at writing down stuff. Right. Watching him. Or playing the other guy on the phone. I was good at that. I was really good at that. Oh, your old gumshoe days.

My old gumshoe days. You didn't know I was a private eye, did you? I did not? Private eye. We're watching you. The next episode of the commercial break starts now. As a Giddons, welcome back to another. episode of the commercial break. I'm Brian Green. This is my dear friend and the co-host of this show.

Chris and Joy, hopefully. Best to you, Brian. Best to you out there in the podcast universe. Thanks for joining us. We can, can, can you hear us? I don't know we can't see the chat. Oh, well, fuck that. You're always getting so technical with me. The mute button is off. The mute button is off. That's all I know. So I'm here. Here's to hoping. Everything's turning out okay out there. Welcome back, second edition, second episode today. You can stream us, YouTube.com slash the commercial break if you want to join in on the fun. And people are having a great deal of fun. As a matter of fact, yesterday's episode, which is the second episode we're doing today, yesterday's episode.

The entire first half an hour of the show wasn't even broadcasting audio and yet our wonderful listeners and viewers decided to stick around and have fun on their own. Yes, they're interpreting what we were saying. Just going to show how dispensable, Chris, and I really are. They determined that you could have a second career as a mime. Yes, I did. Oh, okay, people can't hear us. They're saying yes.

All right. Love you. Mina. Thank you. Okay. So, do you know who John Connolly is? John Connolly or John Donnelly? Hold on one second.

John Connolly. Do you know John Connolly is? Name sounds familiar. Okay. Let me see how I can connect these dots for you and see if we can make it make sense. back in 2000 and something, the aughts, back in the aughts. The early aughts. The early aughts.

It was a very famous case about Mel Gibson yelling and screaming at his wife on a audio tape that then got out. Do you remember that? The anti-Semitic things? Yeah. That was different. No, that was different. He did that too. Yeah, he did that too, I think with his wife.

But this was just one, I'm going to kill you, fuck you. You know, you're screaming and yelling at her. kind of took Mel down for a while. And the audio tapes got out there because they were sold or given to the press, specifically I think to TMZ. I think that's kind of what put TMZ on the map, if I'm not mistaken. And at the time, it became a big kerfuffle about how exactly did these tapes get made and how exactly did these tapes get out?

How was Mel Gibson being tracked in this way? and a lot of people had that answer. And the answer was John Connolly. John Connolly was a former New York police officer and detective who went to Hollywood many years ago. And he started working as a private eye for movie studios, tabloid rags, husbands and wives that were divorcing in big celebrity Hollywood type situations. He was a guy who knew how to get things. and get things done. And that's what he did.

He was really one of these, like, classic PI-type guys, like Blue Moon Investigations type shit. Gum shoes. Who would go out there and tap your phone and figure out how to get the dirt on you. And he would get the dirt. But a lot of times that dirt would never rise to the top because people would pay John Connolly

or the people John Connolly was working for in order to keep the story secret. So I can only imagine John made a lot of money. I can only imagine that there were a lot of secrets that just went undiscovered. He apparently has a lot of dirt on Michael Jackson. He apparently has a lot of dirt on Donald Trump. He wrote a book with Patterson on Jeffrey Epstein back in 2016, long before most of this drama had come out about Jeffrey Epstein. And on and on and on.

He was in Hollywood for years, snaking people around. He had an whole investigations team that was doing this. And apparently they were pretty good at it. If you want a dirt on somebody, John would fly. figured out because we all have secrets, right? And he would just, he's just a guy who knew how to do that kind of shit. And he made a great living doing this. John passed away. And John apparently has entire archives and whole storage units full of Rolodex's information documents, tapes that are now up for sale. Really? Up for grabs. Yes. Up for sale. They're just selling it. They're just selling it.

They're just selling it, right? Somebody's just selling it. I don't know who it is. I don't know if this is a state in order to make some money or I don't know if it's like some of this is owned by other people. But there is a big kerfuffle. By the way, John also worked for Vanity Fair. He also wrote articles for Vanity Fair too, kind of exposing Hollywood bullshit, right? And stuff I think he probably felt was worthy of a conversation.

He would throw it out there. So John Connelly's archives are for sale and many people. in Hollywood are running scared. I'm sure. Because you may not know that John Connolly has your shit, right, until it comes out. And it could blow up a lot of these Hollywood type, you know, Hollywood executive type's lives. Oh my God. I want to know everything.

Of course we do. Of course we do. Of course. That's the nature of us human beings. We want to know the dirty little secrets. Yeah. We love building people up. We love tearing them down.

We love seeing a comeback story. That's how it works. That's like the archetype since. Greek mythology, right? Icarus flies too close to the sun, falls down and breaks his wings and flies again. I don't need it. Is that the story? I'm not even sure if that's the story, but it sounds good, doesn't it? All right, okay. We'll go with it for now. Roll with it. All right. So there it is. There you have it. John Connelly's shit is up for saying. Like at Christie's or something? Like where is it being sold or it's just that it's being sold? I don't know. I actually, I just read an article about it, but it doesn't say specifically where it's being sold. It's probably being auctioned off on the private market. I would imagine. Here's the thing. It's never going to be seen because somebody's going to buy it. And someone's going to buy it for a lot, a lot of money. And I would imagine that one of the people who will be bidding on this is probably not Trump himself, but someone associated with Trump. This is like, do you remember this show, Blue Moon?

Moonlighting. Oh, Moonlighting, yeah, with Sybil Shepard, and Bruce Willis. Yeah, of course. What a great show. What a great show that at times went off the rails. They had a few musical episodes where they were like singing and dancing. Blue Moon or Moonlighting was about a Blue Moon Investigations agency that Sybil Sheppard owned.

And then she hired kind of this wily, handsome, you know, smart aleck, private eye. I forgot his name in the show, but he was, that was what the character that Bruce Willis played. There was always this will, they won't they, kind of sexual tension going on in the show. I remember that. I think it was only on for three or four seasons, but I do remember watching it and loving it. Couldn't tell you one episode. Now, I do remember them singing and dancing around some episodes. Those weren't my favorite. But okay, whatever. They were giving it a shot. They were breaking the mold. They were trying to make something out of it. Now, let me share with you something. I worked for Blue Moon Investigations.

Blue Moon investigation. You're an onion. Yes, I am. The layers. Peel it back. I'm going to tell you a story here. I did not know that you've worked for a PI. I worked for a PI.

I did. I worked for a PI for a period of time, probably about three months. Let me share with you that story now. How old were you? 20. Okay. No, I hadn't turned 21 yet. I was 20 years old.

So Blue Moon Investigations was an actual investigation. company based out of Miami. They also had offices in New York and I believe they had offices in L.A. It was run by one very New York characterish motherfucker and his wife. And they were well known for getting shit done. That's what they did. They specialized in divorce cases, husbands cheating stuff. They also did kidnappings and stuff like that. Like they did they did some like gritty type investigation work. The guy who started the agency with his wife, he was also a former police officer. And so they knew what they were doing. But this was a large operation.

This wasn't like one guy in a shop. They had multiple offices and multiple people working for them. So back when I was 20 years old, I had just left the band Chopper Johnson. And I didn't know what to do after I left the band, Chopper Johnson. So I ended up living at kind of what I would probably refer to what might be best described as a halfway house. Okay, a house with other people that were trying to get sober, even though I really wasn't trying to get sober, I just needed a place to stay. And I think I told the story about how I called my friend one day and said, I just, I want out. I don't know, you know, I don't like the situation that I'm in currently. I want out. And he, his first question was, do you admit you have a problem with drugs and alcohol? And I was like, sure. Okay. Yeah. Get me a reduced place to stay.

And he came and picked me up and took me, had pancakes. And then I had, like, this another older guy that was in AA asking me a bunch of pointed questions. And I just kept agreeing even though. Y'all went to the Waffle House. We went to IHOP. Our IHOP. Yeah. And I just kept on getting coffee and pancakes.

And he kept on saying, do you owe any drug, do you any cartel members money? And I'd be, yeah, lots. Can I have another cup of coffee? Lots. Bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. Lots of money. It's dramatic. It's everything's dramatic.

And so they sent me over to this place. It was a halfway house where I'm, there was no structure to it whatsoever. You lived in this building. You weren't supposed to do drugs and alcohol. And then you gave your rent money to these other guys who were renting out all of these apartments in the shittiest part of Atlanta. I mean, this was like Beaufort Highway. Okay.

Right? The worst part of Atlanta. But as part of the program there, the only thing that was required was that after four weeks, you had to be gainfully employed because they wanted your money. That's what the whole gig was. They didn't care if you went to meetings. They didn't give a shit if you were sober. They didn't give a shit about anything.

They just wanted your money. It was a non-profit organization that I think was making a lot of profit, if you know what I mean. And he had to give them your rent money and cash. It was all fucked up. And I didn't know anything from anything. But anyway, there was a guy in another apartment that had been a former radio disc jockey down in Jacksonville, Florida, and he had the deepest of deep voices. Hey, it's me. Yes.

And his name was Cadillac. Jack. Cadillac Jack. Not the real Cadillac Jack. Oh, okay. I was going to say. There was the other Cadillac Jack. That was his nickname was Cadillac Jack. But I think Cadillac Jack is not a particularly unique nickname.

There's been like, like, you can Google it. There's like five different DJs that use that name in the last 30 years. And I think he, I don't think he was a particularly successful DJ, but man, did he have a voice? And so anyway, he was an older man. He was probably in his 50s. He had the mustache. He looked like that guy. Who's the dude who's in?

not to catch a rising star, but Star is born. Oh. The brother. Sam. Oh, Sam Elliott. Sam Elliott. He looked like Sam Elliott. And I mean, like, really looked like Sam Elliott. wore a cowboy hat the whole thing, right?

So we buddyed up a few times. He actually got me high a couple times. We went drinking a couple times. You know, the kind of thing you do at a half house. And a half a house. Okay. All right. And my four weeks was coming close.

And I had only been able to pick up some, like, labor jobs, like painting houses. And I picked up a job one time with a guy. A guy would like come drive to the to the apartment in the morning, right? He drove this like weird van. He was like this short little black guy who spoke like a white guy who was very friendly. And he'd be like, I pay cash for the day. I pay cash for the day. I want to come work, jump in the van. And really what we did was we went to this one apartment building down on MLK and we went to the top floor and he was building an apartment on the roof of this building. It was like the weird. set up. He was building it, but we really weren't doing anything. Do you know what I'm saying? We'd go and we'd like, tighten a couple screws and it'd be like, all right, that's your 50 bucks. All right, let's, uh, uh, drinks on me. And he, I can remember at least five occasions where we went straight down to Magic City or one of those places on Cheshire Bridge, like the seedier of strip clubs. And we would waste the rest of the afternoon. And he would just buy lap dances and drinks. I don't know where this guy got all this money. Yeah, it was like a weird.

This, it was weird. Building an apartment on top of a building. And when I drive down to the airport, every time I still see that apartment, it's still there. Like, it's still there. The apartment is still in top of the building. I'll show you. Yeah. It's right in front of Grady.

Like, it's not in front of Grady, but as you're driving down south on the right, there's a building and it's got like a brown like box sitting on top of it. And it's an apartment. And this guy built it. He said he did anyway. By the time I got there, I was already built. We were just screwing things in. And he'd give me 50 bucks and then we'd go drink all day. I think he just wanted company, if I'm just being honest.

You know, it'd be like me and three other guys. So, but that's the only work that I had gotten. And then the guy stopped coming for a couple of weeks. He didn't need any more work. So I was talking to this Cadillac Jack one day. And he said, well, you seem to be able to talk. And I was like, I can talk. And he's like, yeah, better than most of the people around here.

Tell you what, once you come tomorrow, 9 a.m. And I'm going to show you. how to make a living with your voice. And I thought, oh, is he going to, I'm a radio disc jockey now? So. This story is already. I know. So I show up and I remember that like all the other, like every apartment had like four

or five guys and they had cleared out. My, the guys in my apartment had cleared out. And he was sitting there at a little kitchen table in this tiny little apartment. And there was a phone there. And there was another phone there. There were two separate phones, two separate lines. Okay. And he said, and he had a piece of paper in front of me.

He's like, all right. Now, listen. Watch what I do. Just don't say a fucking word. Just watch what I do. Listen. You'd be able to keep up. You'd be able to make a living.

And rest of your life, this is going to be able to make a living doing this. Now, watch. Okay. Now, I'm going to let you know what happened after this break. Nice. That's called pulling you through the break for all your radio people out there. All right. Let's take a break.

I can tune to you and I'll tell you about Cadillacic. Hey, it's Rachel, your new voice of God here on TCB. And just like you, I'm wondering just how much longer this podcast can continue. Let's all rejoice that another episode has made it to your ears, and I'll rejoice that my check is in the mail. Speak in a mail, get your free TCB sticker in the mail by going to TCB Podcast.com and visiting the contact us page. You can also find the entire commercial break library, audio and video,

just in case you want to look at Chrissy at TCB Podcast.com. Want your voice to be on an episode of the show? Leave us a message at 212-433-3-3-T-CB. That's 212-433-3822. Tell us how much you love us, and we'll be sure to let the world know on a future episode. Or you can make fun of us. That'd be fine, too.

We might not air that, but maybe. Oh, and if you're shy, that's okay. Just send a text. We'll respond. Now, I'm going to go check the mailbox for payment while you check out our sponsors, and then we'll return to this episode of the commercial break. All right, a private law firm is selling his archives.

I just read, a private law firm is selling his, of course they are, because it's all going to go secretive and undercover and stuff like that. All right. So it's me and Cadillac Jack, early in the morning, probably earlier than I had woken up in the last seven years. At a table with two phones. Two phones, red one and a white one. I remember like two just old handheld phones sitting on the table. And this is what he did. You ready?

Yeah. Okay. Now, first you call the office. operator. Yeah, this is Michael down on the third floor. Who is this? Who am I speaking to? This is Betty. Hi, Betty. Yep, and that's what happens. The cop show up. This is Betty. Oh, Betty, are you down on the third floor? Uh, no, I'm on the sixth floor. Who is this? This is David from TTS. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm up on the seventh floor now. Now, here's the thing. I got a customer, the TTS. machine is not working. I'm unable to pull through the actual TTS, but what I do understand from her

daughter, she's ailing, is that she needs to get a copy of every phone number that she has dialed, or that that phone number has dialed in the last three months. Okay, so her TTS machine is not working. It is, but I've got her daughter here on the other line, and so if you just hold on, hold on a second, I'll see if I can connect it. So then he picked up the other phone. And he picked up the other phone, put it on speaker, dialed another number, boop, poop, bo, poop, bo, bo, bo, with the numbers dialing. And someone answered.

Hi, this is John from AT&T, TTS services. I'm here. I'm connected with our account services representative. And they just want to confirm that your mother, in fact, does need this information. and then he would go through this until he convinced the lady to read off three months worth of information about the phone calls that were made back and forth from a particular phone number. And he wrote them all down by hand. It took like a half an hour to go through this. And I just was there like.

What? So think about this. You and Jeff are married. Jeff suspects you're cheating on him. He calls Blue Moon Investigations. Blue Moon Investigation says, we'll get to the bottom of it. How do you think that's happening? And Jeff says, well, I don't know, but I'm suspicious that she's calling someone while I'm at work.

But she's got a work phone number, and I'm not sure, you know, she might, I don't know how to get that information. It doesn't come in our bill. That's okay. We'll figure it out. Give us the phone number. And then they hired this guy. Actually, the way that it worked was this guy got paid $0.25 for every single entry into the journey. that he made.

Like every phone number? Every phone number. Okay. Right? And sometimes he would be able to convince them to fax the information to a fax machine that he had in the bedroom. And then he would do this day in, day out in different ways, shapes or forms. Well, then did he have somebody that he was like in and cahoots with that was the

one on the other line? Yes. He had a girlfriend that he was in cahoots with. And he would set her up. He would, she would know what the game plan was. And so this all sounded like essentially that John, the Cadillac Jack, or John, he was playing it, was upstairs on the seventh floor where these people were downstairs on the sixth floor and he was just having a problem with a customer with a TTS machine or one of these

hearing impaired machines, right? And that was broken. And that's why he had to call on their behalf. Yeah. And it was fascinating. He did this with hotel rooms. He did this with cabs, taxi cab companies. He did this with restaurants. He would call and get information by pretending and heneigling and heneigling and being nice and being mean and all this other stuff and you get all this information and then he would call john at blue moon investigations i think the guy's name was john he called john at blue moon investigation he'd fax all that information into him right they would i believe that how this worked was they would get a second person to to also do this to verify that that information was correct and they'd end up paying him hundreds of dollars for a couple of hours worth of work

Because he'd get like, you know, 50 different entries, 80 different entries, 25 cents an entry. It was fascinating, fascinating stuff. Or if he could confirm someone who was at a restaurant, he could confirm they're in a hotel right now, whatever it was. As well as the information, I'm sure, private eyes following people around, they were backing that information up with other information. It was not very hard. Now, he said you could do this for the rest of your life and make money. I don't think he saw cell phones coming or, you know, fingerprint or face identification or any of that shit. Now can you imagine even pretending to try and do that?

You just would never get away with it. But they must have their sources and methods now. They must pay people inside a Verizon to grab phone numbers. Okay. So I go and now I'm fascinated by this, right? My mind was spinning when I left that day. I was like, I could do that. I could probably do that.

I could figure that out. Now I'm a 20-year-old kid. And I don't know shit from Shinola about anything. And I don't have the worldly experience that John does. I don't have the person that's in caho. hoots with me. I don't even know what number to call in AT&T. But over the next couple of weeks, he would give me that information. He was training you. Yes. And I would start to help him. I was like writing down the phone numbers. I would play the second person on another phone and

another place, like, you know, all this other stuff. Did I feel great about it? No, but I needed to be working, right? And it ended up that he was paying me a little bit of money. I was paid, paid my rent and I had a little bit of money. It actually allowed me to go get, to go move in somewhere else. Okay, good. And when I did, I had to pay. I had to pay me. part ways with John who was going to stay there. But a part, Cadillac Jack who was going to stay there. But John and his wife liked me. They had been introduced to me. They liked me. So they gave me a job just like they gave Cadillac Jack a job. But it's pay for play. Got to figure it out on your own, right? You got to do this. You got to do it. If you do it and you can get the information, then you can do it.

All right. So I move into this apartment with this girl who I fucking hate. I mean, I just hated her. We just hated each other. But anyway, regardless, I was happy to have a place to start. day. So we, I move into this apartment and there's only one phone there. And I ask if we can get a second phone line and the answer is no, not unless you're going to pay for it all by yourself. I didn't have much money. I just paid her everything I had to own. So I said, that's okay. I can do it on my own for a little while, right? So she would go to work and then I at a legit job. At a legit job. I think she worked at a bank, right? And I, she would do a legit job. She might have been a help to you. Yeah, that's true.

She could have been a help to me at some point. I didn't even think about that. I hated her so much I didn't even want to talk to her. But I just disliked her altogether. She was not like a terrible roommate. Anyway, so here I am, right? And, you know, Cadillac Jack would get up at 9 in the morning, fresh as a daisy, get a cup of coffee and start doing his work. When I moved in by myself and I didn't have the, you know, Cadillac Jack to push me around, I was waking up at 4 in the afternoon.

Right. You didn't have the discipline. I didn't have the discipline. So I got up at 4 in the afternoon I'd call in to John John say okay here it is here's the target phone number Let's start there right And they're like okay I got it

I'm your man Yeah and I'm your guy Ryan Green Fastest talker in the Southwest Or southeast Where are we? I'm sorry, a little hungover She got out of the halfway

I just got smashed at the halfway house I was supposed to be working I was at Magic City Clappers, wherever the fuck I was. Clappers. Clappers. So I just will never forget. This memory will stay with me for the rest of my life.

So he gave me this target phone number. And I'm really excited because he's giving me a job by myself. Yeah, I could make $400, right? If I can just get one good, solid phone call. And the thing was, if you didn't get it on the first operator, the first operator got suspicious, you hung up and you called again. Okay. And you get a different operator.

right? And you were calling the corporate hotline, not like, you know, you weren't dialing zero. You were calling like a corporate phone number that Cadillac Jack had found over the, over his years of experience. And I had that phone number too. And so here I am, ready? I'm hyping myself up. I'm like, okay. Yeah, you can do it. AT&T customer service. This is Brian. Operator 1-200-0-0-0-0. I got a TTT TTS customer. Shit's all broken.

I got to have all the phone numbers. I'm sorry? Are you on the sixth floor? No. What floor are you on? What floor are you on? Five? I'm on five, too.

What did you say your name was? Hang up. Click. Okay. Dialing in, you know. AT&T, customer relations. How can I help you? Yeah, this is Brian in the building,

and I got a TTS customer here. Phone number 444-6217, and shit's all fucked up, and they need a... Shit, I need a phone number. I need phone numbers. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Who did you say you were with? TTS services.

Did you say driver services? I said TTS services. I didn't know he had a TTS services. We do. It's on the 12th floor. It's only six floors on the building. Well, there's a new addition. See that apartment on top.

There's the one of the apartment on top. Okay. And what's a phone number I can call you back at? What's your extension? Click hang up. Call again. It took me another hour to get the courage to call again. I'm like, fuck, I'm fucking this up, Brian.

You've got to get it right. Like cold calling. So find like the third or fourth time, you know. Yeah, this is Brian with. TTS services directory. And I got a customer here as TTS machine is broken and they need to get a copy of their bill, either faxed or we can read it over the line. And then I can confirm with the customer that this is the information that they, in fact, need. What's the phone number?

555-4-2-46. What information they need? May and June of this year. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and what do you want me to do. You want me to read off those phone numbers?

You want me to fax them? Because I don't know if I have time to read them off, but I could probably fax them if you give me your extension. And I'm like, uh, uh, seems like our fax machine is broken up here on the floor. Would it be possible to read it?

Uh, no, but, uh, let me get my manager on the phone. And I'm like, uh, fuck. No, I don't click.

I stay, right? Takes forever. 18T customers, Rans. Angela, the manager. I'm sorry. Bill's filled me in on the situation. What did you, who did you say you were with? I'm with AT&T. And which department are you in? The fourth department? Uh-huh. And you need some information? I tell you what, what we can do here is if you give me your internal employee ID number, then I would be able to fax it to someone who can deliver it to you on your floor over the next two or three business day. And I'm like, yeah, that's, that's, we need it now. That's not going to work for me.

I got a deaf customer here. Really needs to figure out what numbers they were dialing. You see, the thing is, I don't see a TTS associated with this phone number. Well, see, this is exactly the reason we need to get to the bottom of this. It's broken. I tell you what, even though your customer has a TTS system that's broken, what I can do is I can send a technician out there if you want to get your customer online, we can connect them with a technician

who can help them with that, and then at the appropriate time, mail them that information. And I'm like, yeah, that's, I don't know, we're just, I think we're complicating this for the customer here. We do want to keep the customer. So, of course we do.

We want to keep the customer. What did you say your name was? Brian. Brian Rine, Brian Rine from TTS. Brian Rine from TTS. Just give me a moment here. Let me verify.

this information in our directory. I'll be right back with you. Click. I'm like, ah. Abort. Yes, abort. Okay. This went on for like three or four straight nights. I tried every which way to Sunday to get in there. I even remember calling Cadillac Jack and asking for some advice. And he was like, you just ain't doing it right, bro. You're just getting people all suspicious right from the git. You got to act like you know exactly what you're talking about. Even if you don't, don't give them any information they don't need. All you're looking to do is get those phone number. You've got to him quick, you got to help the customer. That's it. And I'm like, I think I'm saying the right thing. He's like, you sound like a bumbling idiot is what you sound like. A bumbling idiot. You sound nervous.

That's why they're suspicious. If you didn't sound nervous, they wouldn't be suspicious. I'm telling you. This is, and I go, but how many times does someone get this request in the course of their employment? Like, how many TTS machines can be broken? And he's like, well, shit, Brian. Are you auditioning for a movie? Do you have to get in the head of the character? Who cares? If you can't get them with the TTS machine, get them with the, I don't know, need a copy of the bill tomorrow. I don't know what it is, but you got to find that way in there, slither your way in. And I'm like, that's exactly it. I tried and I tried and I tried.

And what ended up happening was I managed to get like a half a month's worth of phone numbers from one particular operator before their manager got involved because now I had alerted the entire floor to the bullshit that was going on. I think he even ruined it for Cadillac Jack, if I'm being honest. All right. So I got half a month's phone number. So, but I needed money. So what I did was I just copied those phone numbers down four or five times and faxed it into Blue Moon investigation. And I remember John calling me specifically and being like, well, good news and bad news. Good news is you do have a few phone numbers I was able to confirm.

Bad news is there's like half of this stuff is. not correct. Do you sure you got the right phone? And I'm like, listen, John, I got to be honest with you. This is a little harder than I thought. But give me another chance. Give me another chance. I was like, listen, I, I don't know. I got hung up on. And he's like, listen, I understand. This is not an easy job. It's not for everyone. So let me do this. I'm going to give you an easy one. I need you to call a hotel and I need you to verify that they had a particular customer there on a particular night, right? And I said, okay. And he's like, if you can do that, if you can get confirmation of what time they checked in and what time they checked out because back then you would

have to check in and check out physically yeah you didn't leave just leave and they check you out on your own and he said if you can do that if you can get me times in and times out and confirm that they were there and confirmed that they had their name on the register if you can do that I got 150 bucks for you and I was like okay great wonderful some hotel and Miami somewhere and I called down there I called three separate times three separate shifts and just tried to get them to confirm that this human being was there and none of them were playing along. I mean, none of them. It was such a tough job.

So after that, I went and got a job at a restaurant. Yeah. But for like two months of the three months, I was helping Cadillac Jack and I was really good at writing down stuff. Watching him. Or playing the other guy on the phone. I was good at that. I was really good at that. Oh, your old gum shoo days.

My old gumshoe days. You didn't know I was a private eye, did you? I did not. Private eye. We're watching you. It's in your every moon. Watching you, watching you. Well, here it is.

John Connolly was like the best of the best at these guys. That's what they did, right? Yeah. Like I got a little peek in the window of what a private eye might do in order to investigate stuff. You know, back then, I think there was a lot of gray space. You know, I don't know. And now all this information is like publicly available. It's like you could Google that shit. If you know how to program a computer or code, you can probably string in and find that information. So I imagine that most of this now was done electronically. But back then there was real gum-shoeing. Like they had people all over the country that were just doing this for them. And imagine, Cadillac Jack was probably, I had to imagine the way that he was talked about was one of the best they had ever met at doing this. sounds like it. A phone operator is what they called him, right? An operator. And he was probably one of the best operators that ever existed. And poor Cadillac Jack doesn't have a job anymore because there's no need

for it. No. But John Connolly was probably also had a team of operators just like that. Oh, had to. That were digging around finding the dirt. And by the way, I never knew who I was digging up dirt for or about. Never. I mean, I had a phone number and that was it. That was the other thing. is that we couldn't say the name of the client because they wouldn't give us the name of the client. That was it. Phone number was it. So that was also part of the rub when you were trying to get in.

What about the hotel guest? I had the name there. You didn't have that thing. Yeah. But for the phone operator, I didn't have the name there. No, I just had the numbers. That was it. I just had to find those phone numbers.

Because a lot of times it would be like the lover of the spouse. Yeah, sure. And you wouldn't get that information, partly because John wanted you to go figure it out into like a double blind study, right? Let's confirm what we don't know. And then part of it was because they may not even have that information. I think my spouse is cheating on me. Here's a phone number that they've been, that I see on my bill. It's weird. Can you, and then we would, then we would go on the other end and see if we could figure out if they were calling in or if they

were at hotels or if they were making reservations to fly places. So it was a wild world. It was a wild world. I think I'm much better as a podcaster than I was. that's not saying much. But here I am. All right, we'll take a break. We'll be back. Let me do something Brian has never done. Be brief.

Follow us on Instagram at the commercial break. Text or call us. 212-4333-TCB. That's 212-4333822. Visit our website, TCB Podcast.com for all the audio, video, and your free sticker. Then watch all the videos at YouTube.com slash the commercial. break. And finally, share the show. It's the best gift you could give a few aging podcasters. See, Brian? That really wasn't that difficult. Now was it? You're welcome.

Yeah. I see you, Jenny. I see you. I'll get back to you. The truth is like, you know, it's been so crazy around here that I have had very, it's part of the reason why I stopped, why we stopped saying the phone number is because I love talking to people and if you've got the phone number, you've got the phone number. And it runs inside of the commercials too. So I guess I'm not really doing that good of a job. I'm taking the phone number out. But things got so crazy there for a while. It was like I just didn't have time to pick up the phone. So I'll get back to everybody at some point. Maybe I'll have some time over the next couple of weeks to decompress and take a look. Maybe we could do a show too where we answer some questions. Absolutely. Christy. Absolutely. I would just love that. So what do you think about my Blue Moon Investigations thing? I'm very, I would say impressed, but... No. I'm picturing a young 20-year-old Brian sitting at a table with some phone. Smoking cigarettes, yeah.

At four in the afternoon. Drinking sludgy coffee, trying to, like, Sanka, trying to just make a dollar. I was so desperate to... I can imagine. That roommate that I had was the same... Did you keep in touch with Cadillac Jack? No, I didn't. No. No. No. I mean, you know, he was so much older to me in the first place.

The only reason I needed to talk to him was for advice on how to do all this. And he was helpful where he could be, but, you know, he was kind of also one of those guys like, if you got it, you got it. If you don't, you don't. You either figure it out. I think he felt like I figured it out on my own. You got to figure it on your own. He was willing to give me some tips and tricks, but he wasn't going to do the job for me. And so he had his own fish to fry. But also, then, you know, I think shortly after that was, I think I told you the one time my friend had the genius idea that he heard that you could huff Freon. Did I tell you this? Probably.

You could huff Freon like you huffed nitrous oxide. Oh, God. And it has the same effect. Oh, it does times a thousand. So if you'd like to go black out after you get the wah-waws, wah-waw-wa. If you want to black out, huff-fri-on. Like, Freon that you put in your car? Yes.

The kind you put in air conditioners. Yeah. Oh. So my friend, Eduardo, comes over one day. This guy is wild. I mean, he's like, let's have some turpentine kind of guy. He's like a Hunter S. Thompson of my friends. And that's saying something.

Yes. Because you're the Hunterst Thompson of my friend. So he's like, we're on our way to a concert. I can't remember. I think it was Blues Traveler. I could be mistaken. I don't know what it was. It's the dead hot.

hot of the summer. Paul Popper. John Paul, Paul, Popper. We got a Mountain Monsters and a Frankie on Friday. We're going to do both of those on Friday streaming here, so stay tuned. Okay. So he comes over one afternoon, and he is hell-bent on this idea that he heard from one of his friends that Fri-on was like Nitris, and that Fri-on basically lived in every air-conditioning unit

in the entire apartment building. Now, you know, the apartments, they have the air-conditioning units on the... This is like a three-story apartment. All the air conditioning units were on the ground floor, outside, outback, whatever. Well, Eduardo had figured out that you could take a screwdriver and get a grocery, like a hefty bag. And you could put the hefty bag around the Freon nozzle, and you could take the screwdriver and press it on top of the bag and get the Freon to shoot backwards into it. What a thing to figure out. So here him and I are.

2 o'clock in the afternoon, 98 degrees outside. Everybody needs their air conditioning. And we're moving from air conditioner to air conditioner to find one that works, right? Find one that's loose enough where we could like, you know, do this. And he finally gets it. He sticks it in there. And the bag, he's holding the bag and he goes like this. He yanks the bag up and it goes fom. Fump. It's like he had a bowling ball in the bag. Because the Frion is so much more dense than oxygen that it's like fomp, fom. And I'm like, holy shit. And he's like, see, I told you. And I'm like, you can tell me anything. You didn't tell me it was going to go fomb?

We're supposed to be putting that in our brains? Really? So this is the same girl that I lived with is this girl. She's out for the afternoon. We're going to the concert. We're upstairs. We're pre-gaming it. Now we have a bag, a hefty bag of Frion.

and David is like, here, man, you know, and I'm like, no, here, man, nothing. You'd do it first. Eduardo. Yeah, Eduardo. Sorry. So he says, hey, you do it first. And I'm like, no, you do it first. I don't want to do it.

I don't even know what this shit is. I didn't know Freon existed until you walked in my apartment this afternoon. I had no idea. So he goes like that. And I watch him as he turns 15, different colors in like 10 seconds. And he's standing in front of a TV. It's like playing MTV.

And he just went right into the TV. Face and shoulder first. TV cracked, fell down. It's back when the TVs were glass. It shattered. It's like spidered. Dave was on the floor. Eduardo was on the floor.

Whatever. Keros. He doesn't listen. He's on the floor flopping around like a fish. Right? And he's, He got the bag in his hand like this, and he's like, oh my God. And I was like, oh, my God.

I'm shaking him. I'm like, hey, Edmardo, wake up. And so finally, after like five long seconds, you know, he's got a big thing on a nod on his head. And he's like, that was awesome. Here. And he hands the bag toward me. I'm like, the fuck I'm going to do that. Standing up, I'm going to do it sitting down.

I just learned my lesson from you. Yes. We do this sitting down now. That's how we do it. That's the rules. Sitting down on a soft couch. No word, nothing in front of us. I took the littlest bet.

And it was like, oh, God. And I also just fell over on the couch. So him and I, an hour and a half later. Him and I an hour and a half later went to the show with a terrible headache looking pale and gigaunt. Like, the worst headache.

I mean, the worst headache. Why? Because it's depriving your brain of oxygen. It's closing up those. Oh, God. God damn, dude. Honestly, it was the dumbest thing that we had ever. I mean, we'd done a lot of dumb shit up until then, but it was really the dumbest thing

that we had ever done. Have you kept in touch with Eduardo? Is he still with us? He is. Okay. But it's a complicated relationship. And he moves in and out of my life. I think that he is, he played such a big role in my life for about two or three years. We were like inseparable. The two of us were. We lived together. That's we lived on a porch together. Oh, though he was the porch. Eduardo is the porch guy. Right. Yes. Okay. We lived together. We got in so much trouble together. We went on so many misadventures together. I mean, it just went on and on with him and I. We have a long, deep, competition. complicated relationship and history.

And we probably should be dead many times over. The stupid shit that we got into and the things that we did and the places we snuck into and got out of and got out of. He's the same guy that I went down to the bar with him when the Olympics were coming into town. And we had shaved our heads and we managed to belly up to two older girls. We weren't even supposed to be in the bar. We weren't even 21 yet.

Maybe he was 21. I wasn't. And we were sitting there talking to these girls, telling them that we were backup swimmers for the U.S. Olympic swim team because we had both shaved our heads. Backup swimmers. Until one of the girls starts to recognize me. And it's because I had dated her sister. And we had all been at a birthday party a couple of months earlier. She had pictures from the birthday party in the back of her car.

Blew our cover. But moral of the story, I still got late. So there you go. Yeah. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Ding! Oh, it's so much fun. Oh, Eduardo.

Oh, Eduardo. We could do a whole episode about Eduardo. My relationship with Eduardo. I could go through so many stories. Honestly, we have scratched the surface. I'm sure. Yeah. We have scratched the surface on the stories with him.

About the time that we went and bought. He's the same guy that was at my house when the guys were robbing the cars next door and him and I were all hopped up on fucking blow up and they had helicopters and cops and I had to write a, I had to give a statement to the cops

and I took a break every five minutes to go do another line and come back down. It's wild, wild. Oh my God, wild. Wild. That cop, he knew, he had my number. He was like, yeah.

You okay, I'm going to go pee. Again? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it hot? Are you hot? I'm hot. Are you sweating? I'm sweating.

Do you have another pen? I don't think this one works. I have a pen. It's right up there. I'll be right back. Oh, God. We were local heroes. We were in the paper. No shit. In the paper. It came time to go to court. We got subpoenaed to go to court. Oh, my God. Dave and I, Eduardo and I, whatever. Dave Eduardo, Dave Eduardo.

We were like, no, that we were so screwed up that night. We don't know what we were thinking. We don't want to ever talk about this again. Meanwhile, there's like a write-up in the paper. And then a year later, we end up getting subpoenaed. The sheriff's officer came to my house and was like, you are hereby ordered to show up to court. Right.

And my dad was all freaking out. He's like, you better show up at that court date. They're going to put you in jail. And I'm like, I'm a witness. He's like, no, you're the guy who caused all. this drama. You dumb shit. Oh, God. And we showed up at that courthouse. We got up David, Eduardo and I went off the elevator.

And we entered into the fourth floor where the courtroom was. There was like 40 people who had been burglarized by these kids. And they started clapping. It was crazy. For you? Yes. DCB Podcast.com at the commercial break. YouTube.com slash the commercial break. We'll see you tomorrow on the stream or on your favorite podcast. player okay chrissy that's all i can do for today i think so i'll tell you that i love you and i love i'll say best to you best to you best to you out there on the podcast and streaming audience thanks

for sticking with us today until next time we will say we do say and we must say goodbye