The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Postgame Show: Best Back In My Day

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

To wrap up the day, Greg Cote presents his favorite Suey category: Best Back in my Day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit mx.ca slash business platinum. And now the suey nominees for best back in my day. Packing. Unzipping a suitcase to a sea of packing cubes is as dispiriting as opening the fridge to find wall to wall Tupperware tubs. It's the illusion of efficiency. Somebody on a Get Rich Quick vendor invents something we don't need because they know that gullible trend-gobbling travelers would eat it up. So here come the packing cubes to my doorstep. The only zippered container I want in my suitcase is the oldfashioned friend with the charmingly unfortunate name the toiletry bag back in the suitcase does not require a science or a system folks i don't need a cute organized near

safe space i stopped three pair of underwear in one dress shoe and balls of socks and a world up belt in the other i'd probably under pack nobody packs light like me because nobody cares or knows if I wear the same pair of undies more than once. Nobody on the cruise ship is whispering disparaging, hey, didn't that man over there wear that same dress shirt four days earlier? And if I forget my belt, well, I bet those sell in Alaska, and if they don't, it wouldn't be the first time I cinched together two belt loops with a piece of twine and walked

Over there with a chin up strut. So here I am Just another lemming sliding to his airport gate with the unwanted convenience of telescoping handles and rolling wheels You can't even buy the suitcase you want nowadays I went into a luggage store and asked for a large leather valise with a strap handle didn't have it to a luggage store and asked for a large leather valise with a strap handle. Didn't have it. Carpet bags? He said no. I said can I get a wooden steamer trunk? Nope. Didn't have that either. I can't get the suitcase I want. At least let me pack it my way. No cubes allowed. I'm Greg Cody. Yeah. That's how it was back in my day. Hotel housekeeping. Maid service was a part of the deal. You expected it.

You returned to a welcoming, pillowy duvet. A neat stack of fresh towels standing sentry at the ready. The end of the toilet roll folded in a V for no apparent reason whatsoever other than to make me feel cared for. It was that little bit of uncommon luxury. Oh, you'd like an extra shampoo brought to your room? Right away, Mr. Coat. Hey, I'm easy to please.

Two mints on a pillow and I feel like a doggone king. Now you feel guilty even asking for housekeeping, like little Lord Fauntleroy demanding a pedicure. Some chains now recommend you leave trash outside your door for pickup. What? Marriott's policy varies by property but housekeeping is mostly by request now with rooms cleaned automatically only every sixth night. My hotel room after six days unattended

would look like a team of frat boys at sardined in and during Mardi Gras. In my room after six days without maid service you'd find bedding on the floor, towels scattered like shrapnel, pizza boxes in the bathtub, empty Miller Lite bottles arranged across the room in neat triangles like bowling pins, and a lamp inexplicably in the refrigerator. Hotels, if I'm paying you $429 to sleep in your room for a night, the least you can do, literally,

the least you can do is keep that room clean I'm Greg Cody and that's how it was back in my pre-boarding look I know you get what you pay for you pay for a first-class ticket and we folks who don't understand we have to do that walk of shame past the big spenders already quaffing red wine as we slogged past slump shoulder to the 38th row. We will now begin pre-boarding for people traveling with small children, active military with an ID or in uniform, and others who need extra time or assistance. The real loophole is that last part, others who need extra time or assistance. It's meant for the very elderly perhaps, but this is

where you see all manner of able-bodied solo travelers and people with imaginary anxieties and phobias all boarding for no good reason, ahead of the rules following cattle in the back. Yes, ma'am, I suffer from Lavabo-Tracero syndrome, related to a fear of being seated next to a rear cabin commode. I have a note from Dr. McGillicuddy. On Southwest, with no assigned seating, even if you pay extra to be in Group A, you're still watching the parade of the entitled flow into the cabin ahead of you. Half of any given flight is these pre-board scam artists. The pre-board message might as well just say,

anyone who feels they are intrinsically better than other people may board now. Airlines, let your first class money bags in first. Fine. But don't make wee proletariats suffer the added indignity of also waiting behind all of your club members and all those pathological fakers. Run a tighter ship. I'm Greg Cody and that's how it was back in my day. Briefcases. If you were carrying a briefcase, you were a man or a woman on a mission, sailing along city streets like the prow of a ship, walking cockshore as Tony Monero in the opening credits of Saturday Night Fever, and surely headed for a boardroom. Other pedestrians parted as you strode past and in your wake said to themselves with an admiring nod,

There goes a professional man. Now? Now someone seen carrying a briefcase is about as common as a man wearing a Lincoln stovepipe or a woman in a Carmen Miranda fruit hat. The briefcase is on the endangered list headed for extinction. Now all you see are people sloughing slump-shouldered from carrying slovenly backpacks, the very lowest rung on the luggage ladder. The only people who need to carry backpacks are students with textbooks in them, the original intended use, and folks ascending a trail on a hike. Why are you carrying a laptop in a backpack that's

beneath the laptop, demeaning? Not only the rising scourge of backpacks, soft shoulder bags and totes have killed the briefcase, the trend of more casual workplace environments has too. Save that staple of Americana, the briefcase, before it's too late. Enjoy again the delight of that simple sound as those twin latches snap shut and then open to reveal who you are. I'm Greg Cody and that's how it was back in my day. Clotheslines! Where'd they go? Gone with the wind or rather the gentle breeze that once caressed our washed garments to a state of sun-kissed dry. The clothesline was

nature's clothes dryer, efficient, cost-free, and noise-free, but for the soothing riffle or soft snap of a bedsheet as a mild gust passed by. Nowadays clothes are thrown into the behemoth maw of the electric dryer in the laundry room, your clothes in a sodden ball, a wet clump as the dryer lumbers to life. With great clatter and racket, the time-consuming dryer spends an hour banging and twisting and high heating and over time shrinking your garments. It's textile torture. Meantime, the sun winks and the breeze tickles in the backyard where the clothesline once stood. Beyond the cost-saving and the quiet, mechanical dryers emit greenhouse gas emissions and increase fabric wear and tear. The breeze doesn't.

The clothesline also produces no static cling or cloying perfume from fabric softeners and much less wrinkling as well. Make it a family project. Erect your own clothesline. The air fryer is all the rage, why not the air dryer? The one waiting for you in the fresh air out back. I'm Greg Cote and that's how it was back in my day. Water beds! At its peak almost 25% of all beds sold in America were floatation mattresses. Now it's barely 2% and most of those are related to medical rehab. What happened?

The waterbed was cool once, embraced first by hippies and the free-spirited free-love movement before it caught on in the suburbs. Bump, chicka, bump, bump, if you catch my drift. Or to be specific, baby! Unmistakably there was a sexual element. Hugh Hefner in the prime of Playboy famously had a waterbed. The waterbed boom was starting just as the bump chicka bump bump was dawning in Greg Coate's life. You made it a game show sound. And he tried one out in his friend's off-campus apartment. Hated it. Don't get

me wrong I can sleep on anything. I've slept on a bed of nails. I don't need any bells or whistles. Don't need a foam memory bed that outlines my body like a victim at a crime scene. Don't need sleep number bed. Certainly don't need a water bed that to me was like trying to fall asleep or do anything else, wink wink, on a raft in the middle of an ocean. For me, even the squishy sloshing sound they made was weird. To install one you had to run a hose into the bedroom. The whole thing was bizarre.

This is where I'd usually say bring back the waterbed. No, don't do it. You go ahead and ride the waves to sleep. I shall repose on the firm dry land. Thank you. I'm Greg Cody and that's how it was back in my day adultery by accident what just happened I think that's the record Roy for years has been counting the amount of time that he pregnant pauses there that was the record because he was looking for his

papers because we he was surprised that he has it back in my bag. I got a lot of papers here. I'm a busy man. Adultery! Okay, let's be honest about something inherently dishonest. Adultery, infidelity, cheating, whatever you want to call it, was so much easier back before technology came along and ruined everything. Or rather, so I'd imagine the clandestine Casanovas would lament cheating was easy once you just had to make sure you weren't doing it around friends neighbors or co-workers so if you lived in Mayberry the two of you drove up to Mount Pilate got a corner booth at the

bar then a room at the notel motel and called it a night you were blessedly in communicado there were no cell phones allowing any busybody's snoop to record or photograph you. You were completely out of touch until you dropped a dime in a payphone. Now, every text message and voicemail exchange is retrievable. You think delete search history actually does that? Ha ha! Your naivete is so cute. Back in my day you wrote a fake name in the motel guest book, the board clerk said you're in room 9 Dr. McGillicuddy, and you went on your merry way. Now there'd be an unblinking ring camera above the door ratting on you.

Modern day debauchers and letharios have only two choices. You either give up your cheating ways, or you hopelessly bemoan technology and understand that today today a smartphone would be pinging your exact location in that dark corner booth as you swing your third Manhattan. I'm Greg Cody and that's how it was back in my day. Vegas! I'm going to say it point blank.

The old Vegas was better. This used to be an exotic destination with a real mystique because it was the only place in America to legally bet on sports. You felt a little naughty coming here. Daring. I want to ride back to the Vegas of yore when Frank and Dean and Sammy played the smoke-filled Cobra Room at the Sands. Frank under a sharp creased fedora, Dino with a scotch

in one paw and a lit cigarette in the other, Sammy snapping his fingers even when there was no music, I wanted all you can eat buffet for $3.95, diverticulitis be damned! My own trio, the Hee Haw 3, we played Vegas concurrent with the Rat Pack, but we weren't as big, we were the Zagack Pack, but we had our following. We invented the Vegas residency back then. We were the opening act for a while for Saul Anka, Paul's bitter older brother. I want that Vegas back, the old Vegas with the wood-paneled room where octogenarian women in dolly parton wigs swooned to a 960 pound Elvis impersonator who never left his barco linger breathe

yes hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on that's it look hold on hold on this is a halftime halftime of the back of my day thank you okay that was I was legitimately scared there for a second. Look. I want the old school slot machines where all you needed was three sevens or cherries and you didn't push a button, you had tactile involvement pulling the black ball knob down so that it felt like you were losing money slower. The drive-through chapels. Speaking of marriage, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. It used to be true. It was the adulterer's capital. A man could bring his second family here. I

never had a problem. That was before smartphones made every guy two tables over a potential black male photographer. Bring back old, sad Vegas. Bring back the Copa Room at the Sands. Eschew the slots button for the black knob and get rid of smartphones and give me back my privacy. I'm Greg Cody and that's how it was back in my day.