The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 215, That's A Rap with Jason Pargin

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Seanbaby & Robert Brockway welcome back special guest, Jason Pargin to the DOGGZZONE! How do you save a dying town in the late 80's? Why, through cunning use of systemically racist hiphop! Join the DOGGZONE as they spit hot bars in the face of terrible white peoples' misguided desperation and soul crushing embarrassment!

1-900-HOT-DAUGHT 1-900-HOT-DAUGHT Our podcast slams with maximum hype! Say Hot Dog Podcast Word! Yeah! When you taste that nitrate power You're in the dog zone for an hour! Come on!

You know the number! 1-900 1-900-HOTDOG, America's last comedy website. Yeah, 9,000. Welcome to the Dog Zone 9000, the official podcast of 1-900-Hot Dog, America's last comedy website. We outlasted the other comedy websites. We're about to outlast America, baby. We're still here, we're still kicking. It's gonna be us. Well, I'm rapping Robert Rockway and I'm here to say,

I like to bust a rap in a major way. He's got the quickest jokes, he can sling them all day. It's my comedy partner, Sean Bae Bae. Yeah, all right. All right. We're in it now. And our guest today, his appearance piece of grand. And I think that's a bargain. It's award-winning author. See, you got to try to make me pronounce my own name wrong. I can see what you tried to do there. I paid you a thousand dollars. Almost got him. Almost got him. It's a thousand dollars. Hello everyone. I am award winning author Jason Pargin.

And yes, I was informed that Brockway has 114 minutes of 80s style rap prepared. This entire presentation will be done in that flow. It's all in verse, baby. From here on out. Oh, no, I fucked it up already. Let's take it from the top. I think you're going to hear a lot of that every time I fuck it up. You just go, verse baby, from here on out. Oh, no, I fucked it up already. Let's take it from the top. You're gonna hear a lot of that every time I fuck it up.

You just get, let's take it from the top. So where can people find more from you, Jason? I am Jason K. Pargin on TikTok as long as it lasts. It still seems to be there. I thought they banned it. I was kind of waiting for that weight to be lifted off my shoulders, but every day I open it up and it still works. But if not there, I'm also Jason K. Pargin on all of the alternatives on Blue Sky and all of those. And also I am celebrating the one year anniversary of me promoting my book.

of me promoting my book. Congratulations. It was in February of 2024 that the pre-orders for I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom went up and I have been promoting it on podcasts almost every week on one show or another for 53 consecutive weeks since then. So thank you everyone. And surely that's made you extra money. I literally think if I just put the book out there the way other authors are allowed to, it would sell 427 copies. I think it entirely is me just being relentless because to this day, if I do a Reddit AMA or something like that, people, by far the most common response is

people being surprised that I wrote another book after John dies at the end. Like, oh, did you write another one? It's like, yes, I've written eight more books since then. This media ecosystem, it's just hard to reach people. So yes, if I was even slightly less relentless with my promotion, I would not have a job. I see that a lot when it pops,

when we pop up in like discussions and the site pops up, people are like, especially with Sean, maybe they're like, what Sean, maybe still around? I haven't heard from that guy since like 1999. Yeah, sorry. All I did was have a very popular column at the number one comedy website for 10 years.

Literally billions of views, the number. Right. And they're still like, what? 20 years later, I didn't know he was still doing it. He hosted a TV show for a while. That's right. I don't go out of my way to put myself in your face, but it's weird that you didn't notice.

I think the funniest example is I ever saw I was at a screening of Poodie Tang with the star of Poodie Tang and They did a Q&A afterwards and some girl stands up and this was in like 2010 some girl stands up and says oh, I love the movie Poodie Tang. What's next for you Poodie Tang? And he got so visibly pissed off at her He's like I'm in a fucking working writer for 25 years. You think I didn't do anything since this movie came out. It was so funny to me.

This is one great thing about watching like a sporting event like the NFL playoffs. If you're forced to now watch like CBS, and you realize that an actor you thought was dead is actually the lead in a show called something like Chicago Detective or Chicago Investigation and it's in season 14. It is the number three show in America that you didn't know because you're so disconnected from network TV that your parents watch. They do like, they still on the broadcast model, so they do 24 hour long episodes a season like three times a year.

Yeah, they have 400 episodes if you want to catch up. He's like made a billion dollars since you last saw him. You're like, well, I didn't, I died after the one thing I saw him in. My favorite is when it comes to people like us who are famous on the internet and people are like, man, whatever happened to him? Use the internet. Yeah. You know us from the internet. You can just look it up. I also get like people will message my agent.

They're like, well, how would we contact the author of this? It's like I am the most contactable person in the world. You can message me. I have so many public inboxes. I am not hard to find. I am not like a famously reclusive. Oh, it's the dream though, isn't it? Reclusive author. Guy, can you imagine though, if you were like the guy that wrote the Hannibal Lecter books and like just once every 10 years, you put one out and then you just go back to your cabin or whatever and they sell 40 million copies and you just, you don't have to go

out and do, you don't have to be out and do you don't have to be on twitter you don't have to do any of that stuff that's the dream that's the dream in the meantime we are plugging our site chum what do you want to plug oh yeah let's plug this site 1900 hotdog.com contact us there you can that's where you can find shawn baby he's not dead we've got him we've still got him if i don't reply to your messages, it's because I didn't feel like it, not because I didn't get it. I'll plug the rest of our stuff. We've got a store now. We've been pretty good about updating that. Go to 1900hotdog.com, click shop. Yeah, subscribe to us on Patreon at patreon.com slash 1900hotdog. We're on YouTube at 1900hotdog. Use the fucking internet. Just type.

Nobody else is called 1900hotdog, type it in the internet. We're there, they'll find us. Anyway, today we are going to talk about what I think is one of the most darkly funny pieces of media ever created. It always makes me laugh and I just, I'm so in love with the story, I really genuinely have pitched it as like a movie I would like to write to Hollywood executives and they've all been like, what the fuck are you talking about? Of course I am talking about the prison rap and that of course

reminds me of these 10 prison puns from the from the broken pun robot at punsteria.com. Like okay see you said god damn it last time when I did it right at the end. I'm doing it right at the start. Which do you want? It's not like it makes me any happier. Which of the two options do you want? OK, let me clarify for people who are just listed first episode of The Dog Zone they've ever listened to. The site you got these puns from, do they say that it's AI generated?

Or have you just deduced that it's AI? I think they say. They say it's AI generated. I don't think they're hiding it. They're saying, like, hey, we have a computer. We're using the Earth's precious resources to make these puns. Yes, and every single site, I believe they've also put it in charge of calling the internet and determining what there should be puns about. And they use, they just let it loose to make its own art for all the pages.

I think it's as close as we have to a robot run amok. And here's the thing that I love about it I don't think it's like a one of the big LLMs I think it's because it's too bad it's too bad and broken to be like chat GPT or something this is this is my own yeah like this might be their AI we did an article talking about this site and I did some research and I I think I traced it to Icelandic LLC, but I couldn't find anyone who would claim credit for it. Even on the site itself says, we keep our name secret for, you know, like it wasn't a clear reason. So because this is probably evil.

We, yeah, I don't want to die for this. Yeah. I actually contacted someone through LinkedIn because I could only find one organic mention of the site anywhere on the internet and I contacted him through his LinkedIn to see like hey, do you have anything to do with this website? He goes no, I just really liked their AI generated art. Uh-huh. Yeah, so he might have been a robot too. That's all interesting So let's talk about this prison rap Brock way. What have you got to that LinkedIn guy? Did he then start saying things like why did the scarecrow go to prison?

He was outstanding in his field in prison. Yes. Fucking word for word. Because he was out. He didn't add in prison. He forgot to add the prison part. But because he was outstanding in his field, you go to prison for that, according to the robot. Yeah. Why was the math book in prison? It was classified as a common denominator. Ummm...

Did you think about that one? Figure that one out? But there's nothing to figure out on some of these, right? Like, you don't arrive at a chain of logic if you think long enough. It just... Very rarely. I was hoping maybe somebody else would, because I didn't crack that one. Maybe you'll get this one.

You're a math guy. Why do prisons not allow penguins? Because they always break out in excentors. Oh, shit. What's that last word? Excentors. Oh, I know what that is. That's when 12 penguins merge to form one big penguin.

They call that excentor. That's like half a guy and half a horse that used to be together. An excentor. Excentor, yeah. See, That's like half a guy and half a horse that used to be together? An excentor? Excentor, yeah. See, that's how you do it, robot! That's how you do it. Did you hear about the guy who broke out of prison using a chisel?

He's a master of escape saw! Wow. Prison is like a circus. It's full of con artists, clowns, and tightrope walkers. I think that was supposed to be about Congress or something maybe? It feels like a political one. I think it's about strangling your cellmate with a towel.

It's called the tightrope, probably. Yeah, I think it's about how many tightrope walkers are maybe sexual criminals. Like, I don't know. Oh yeah, that makes sense. That's probably what it is. It's a play on sex crime. I heard the inmates at the prison were running a bakery. It's a real confectionary crime

syndicate. I guess I don't understand how it works. Because I thought that AIs, when you asked them to write you a joke, it's like, oh, that's okay. We've scraped several jokes from other people. Here you go. We stole this joke from a a person. Right. And here it is. I don't understand what this one is trying to do. I will see. This one does that, too. It will scrape. Hence the scarecrow one we started with it.

It scraped because he was outstanding in his field. But then it has like a like a little panic program that runs at the very end of the program. That's like, oh, shit. Put the subject in there somewhere. And program that's like, oh shit, put the subject in there somewhere. Right. And the robots like, fuck, fuck.

And so it will just put the word prison in there somewhere or be like, just put the word prison at the end. So it'll be like outstanding in his field prison. Fucking I don't know. Maybe this one's insane. That's what I'm saying. I don't think this is like a real AI. I think this is something they built.

You think it's a real human trying to look like AI? No, no, I think it's something that they think is an AI. Maybe they stole an early framework and then tried to train it on just puns and it drove it completely mad. Head of inmates practice good hygiene. They always use soap or carefully. I't remember it making up words before. Aren't there a lot of like fake words in these? I don't remember that being a feature. Is it getting worse? That's why I love about it so much is that it breaks a different way each time. Yeah. And if you could probably put it together sequentially, I would bet yes, it gets worse with every single one of these it does. Because at some point there aren't that many pun sites.

I think we're already at the point where it's eating its own shit and it's coming up with. Yeah, I feel like I have I'm an above average like pattern recognition human brain thinker. So like, the fact that I can't even come close to predicting this robot, despite you bringing these goddamn robot puns to every podcast for like a year. It's, I don't know, it's kind of fascinating that like, it does break in a new way each time. And worse. Yes, that's right. It gets worse. I always, I also like that one. They always use soap very carefully because I think it's pulling from like a prison rape joke. Like, that's the only thing about soap in prisons. I think it's like dancing around it. It's not quite there Why was the computer stressed in prison? It had too many hard drives. See I think it's getting there. Yeah

Oh, oh Jesus. That's dark. Oh I mean, okay, we're we're reading into that surely the next one's not gonna be like, why are prisoners great at sewing? Because they know how to pin someone down. Jesus Christ. Ow. All right. We got there. Oh, the AI. That's genuinely like a successful pun. The only one it made, and it's about prison sexual assault. It's right up on the line. It's like the robot's like, oh, you don't want me to make any sex crime jokes?

Okay, I promise I won't. But then went right up to one and just like looked over the edge. And finally, what's a prisoner's favorite type of punctuation? The exconclamation mark. That's not bad. Solid writing. That could have come out of one of Sean's human written pun books. And I don't mean that as a compliment, but.

Yeah, that's one I would have looked at and said like, it's terrible, but is it funny terrible? Now that we've ground the podcast to an absolute halt, let's start the podcast. Fantastic. Jamie, leave all of it in. Why would she cut this? This is the best part of the podcast. You as Jimmy leave all of it in. Why would she cut this? This is the best part of the podcast. You're right.

Right in if you think this is the best part of the podcast. I'll make Sean read every single one of them. Just increasingly angry letters. So we're talking about the prison rap. And this requires, I wrote about it for the site a little bit ago. This requires a little bit of background before we actually get to the rap itself. So in the 1980s, Illinois Governor Jim Thompson called himself Big Jim. He ran as a tough on crime candidate, which was, I want to say, the only kind of candidate in the 1980s. He helped make a law called Class X that sent more people away to prison for longer sentences.

And there's not much funny about that except for what Thompson said in an interview when asked about the name. Big Jim says, well, I made up the name. I thought it had a ring to it. Movies can be X-rated. The X symbol was a powerful symbol in the American culture. You know, you X something out. Amazing. And this was pre-Elon trying to name everything X. We make fun of Elon for being a dipshit, but like, he's copying ancient dipshits. He made a law that destroyed an almost record number of lives, and it's like, yeah, X's are cool. I'm gonna name it law X. Hell yeah. I like the X-Men. So Thompson was then called out on how he made so many more prisons, and he says,

Well, if you're a law and order candidate and you have tough criminal laws and tough criminal enforcement, you're gonna put crooks in jail. And if you're doing that, you've got to build prisons to hold them. And he fucking did! Prisons more than doubled in Illinois under his watch. He more than doubled the amount of prisons in the state and filled them all up. And he was very proud of that, of turning so many of his citizens into prisoners. One of the problems with this was that nobody at the time wanted a dangerous prison in their backyard, understandably. So every time they'd come to a town and be like, we want to build a prison here, they would say, fuck no, go away. Right.

So one of his staff members came up with an idea. What if they turned the whole thing into like a fun carnival game? Instead of putting a prison up in a town that didn't want it, they just rephrased the whole thing and said, now it's a contest among the towns on who does the goofiest thing to win the right to have a prison. And somehow that fucking worked. When Brockway wrote about this for 1900HotDog, and we were discussing it, this is when Brockway wrote about this for 1900HotDog and we were discussing it. This is when Brockway found out that the people, the place we're about to talk about, I grew up about 45 minutes from that town. I've been to that town before. So, more context, beyond what even Brockway

has in his research, because I was born in Illinois in the rural part of it in 1975, half a century ago. So, Illinois, if you can mentally picture it, and most of you probably cannot, in the upper right is Chicago, and then everything else is cornfields. And that's an exaggeration. There's the capital, and there's like it's a medium-sized city, and there's a college town that has like 20,000 people in it. So when you say that Illinois had a crime issue, what you mean is Chicago. And so for the rest of the state, it's kind of weird because if you do like a voting heat map of like blue versus red, you've got Chicago is blue because it's a city and then the rest of the state is ruby red. So Trump won my hometown by 50 points in 2020,

the election he lost, it was like 72 to 20, and then some of those votes went to the libertarian. So it is like the city and then the rest of this rural area. And we all deeply, deeply resented Chicago because the entire state revolved around it, like all of the revenue, all the people lived there. So the dynamic was that all of these criminals they're talking about, you're not mentally picturing like a hillbilly out in farm country abusing his

wife. It is the crack epidemic, it's the 80s explosion of inner city violence, and they needed somewhere to put those criminals. And then down, as you go further down the state, you have a lot of small towns that were in desperate, desperate circumstances. Like the one I grew up in had an oil refinery that closed in, I think, 1982, and the town had nothing but that. So our unemployment rate, I think think was like 25% when I was growing up. Like it was these places are just crumbling. So that's the context for if you're

saying, well, why would you want a huge prison in your tiny little dinky town with a few thousand people? Because that prison would double the number of total jobs available, period. It would be everything. Yeah. Well, it's also more than that. So the town we're talking most about today is called Flora, Illinois. And in 1987, Flora, Illinois was, as a farming town, it's about 5,000 people. Their unemployment rate was over 18%, so not 25, but really high up there. And this was for a medium security, $41 million prison with 400 prospective jobs and an offered $10 million payroll. So like, yeah, it was like winning a prize of a sort to them. What's crazy is when they turned it into a fun raffle based on the insane whims of Big Jim Thompson, which is what they did.

So there were no like real solid rules to this. It was just whoever does the funniest thing that makes Big Jim giggle gets the prison. I don't think that's legal. That surely can't be the normal thing that makes Big Jim giggle gets the prison. I don't think that's legal. That surely can't be the normal way that's done. But everybody decided to roll with it. I like that system. I think I would do really well in that system.

Please understand. Okay, Illinois at one point, I think had like four straight governors go to prison in office. This is very typical of Illinois politics. It's just understood. This is why it was very funny when Barack Obama came out of Chicago and there's accusations that he had associated with some unsavory types. And those of us from Illinois were like, well, yeah, he's from Illinois. Yes, he did. You can't exist in politics in Illinois. Like, well, here's a photo of him with a known gangster. It was like, yeah, here's a photo of him with a known gangster.

It was like, yeah, that guy was part of the state legislature. Yes. So amongst all of this raffle, Flora got excited about the prison. I mean, understandably so, it's a lot of jobs for them. But they petitioned twice, two of the years they entered with a petition for the prison. And that doesn't make Big Jim giggle. So they didn't get it. The next time a raffle came up, most of the government, like really most of the local government of Florida, Illinois got together and they focused on coming up with an idea

to catch his attention. They figured they would serenade Governor Jim Thompson with like a really pleading, whiny country song, where they just debased themselves. Like, it's like Camp Granada with like that whiny little boy tone, too. And to do this, they enlisted the help of a local oil tycoon named Bill Snyder, who wanted to get into country music and thought this fucking insane prison raffle was a good way to do it? So he was he thought this was gonna be his break into the music industry So he went all out and financed it and he financed the town's former police chief a guy named Ed Giyot

And together they formed Chief Ed Giyot and the long arm of the Law Band, and they recorded a song called Oh We Want a Prison. I don't think anybody's gonna come after me for copyright, so I'm just gonna play the whole thing here. It's under three minutes, but it's not gonna feel that way. This is an open letter to the Honorable James R. Thompson, Governor of the great state of Illinois. Dear Gov, I'm writing you from Florida, a town you might enjoy But just to jog your memory For it is in Illinois

Now I know it's just a little place We've got ourselves some problems Though we never get much outside help You could do your part to solve them. Hard times are upon us, girl. Depression blues are visiting. We're not asking for a lot of help. All we want is a prison.

for a lot of help. Oh, and lots of prison. So that's the end of that song. So what happened after this? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I think it's still going. Certainly that's the end. He said everything that he's ever going to say about that, right? say about that right? You know we missed the auto plant and two other prison leaves. So we ought to have more coming than cheese and meals on wheels. If I'm lying girl, I'm dying So please, do more than listen Like Jack Patcher says, we love you girl And all we want is a prison If we're the beggars, you're the choosers Don't make us free time losers. Gee whiz guv.

All we want is a prison. So that's over. I think all the dignity is gone. No need to keep going. Gee whiz guv, all we want is a prison. Woof. So if the game is to base yourself in front of Big Jim, God, it's tough to beat that, right? I think he mentioned that he's like, thank you for the government cheese. We want more than government cheese. We could really use like a prison. It's just the wormiest,

saddest shit. Yeah, it's a it's real tough to listen to, especially the the tone the real like camp Granada. Yeah, like this is comev. Come on. Come on guv. This is the former police chief of the town. Go and watch sharks daddy. Just a little baby. Not to get political here, which is going to be difficult in this episode because there are some politics involved, but you have to understand these are Republicans for the most part in all of these places begging for this prison

because the context, and I was aware of this very much, like this prison sweepstakes, my town was not up for it, but we were close enough that if Flora had gotten the prison, people in my town could have gotten the job there. That's commuting distance and it would have been worth it. Those prison jobs pay more than anything else would have been available in that town pretty much to someone, you know, with that equivalent experience or whatever. So this kind of groveling for a government handout, the perverse thing is this is like the only context where that's okay because it's imprisoning

inner city by making air quotes with my fingers, inner city bad guys. We really wanna do it bad. This is the one kind of like pork barrel thing it's okay to beg for. This military base is that kind of thing where you are straight up saying, please pour tax dollars and government jobs

into our community because we're poor and we have no private industry. In any other context, that would be shameful for a Republican to do, but it's because it's a prison, that whole dynamic flipped on its head. And so they wind up our pleading with the governor, please send us money to save us because private industry is not doing it for us. Prisons are already pretty corrupt. I think Illinois prisons make about double what Apple does when you give money to someone who is in prison. They basically get 30% of it just because they're a prison and you are trying to give money to someone in there. If you imagine the most predatory corrupt nickel and diming fees that you see out here,

it's double or triple that in a prison setting. Not to mention all the items in the commissary are certainly overpriced. So even if you're not enslaving these men to make license plates, you're still squeezing them and everyone who cares about them for money. So I don't know what I'm,

I guess my point is no good person has ever wanted to run a prison. And I don't know, even one who has conscripted unwilling rappers for a grotesque minstrel talent show I would say even that person might be a bad person for wanting a prison yeah you're gonna want to sympathize but uh well no you aren't you heard the song that should have turned your stuff there's no sympathy left for the man who does the gee whiz come on no but it seems like it should have worked if the game was just, you know, really embarrassed

myself in front of Big Jim and make him feel like the big daddy of Illinois. Like that should have done it. It did not. It did not work. They didn't win that year. The president went to Brown County, who painted their football field for Big Jim, and they sent his secretary flowers, which doesn't... that feels like it has too much dignity.

Yeah. But like, I mean, maybe they had real like, ooh-ooh notes in the flowers, you know, like real just, we're so sorry, could you come down and give us a quiz? And like, I don't know. Maybe they just read it wrong and thought Big Jim wanted groveling, but really what he wanted was like a nice football field, some flowers. Feel like Big Jim was a friend. Well, we'll get to what Brown County really did. Oh, we're assuming there's not another element of their pitch here that maybe was not. Yeah, we'll get to that. I'll tell you what, we'll get to that in the bonus podcast. That's

going to be our bonus podcast is the real winners and what they want. I'm going to guess right now, they figured out a way to give Big Jim money. So they were preparing for the next, Flora was preparing for the next raffle and Jack Thatcher was owner of the local newspaper. He got the whole crew together again, just heist movie, you son of a bitch I'm in for another song for a private prison. So they planned something bigger, really just like an embarrassing song didn't work.

So they came up with an embarrassing rap. It seems like a fun idea on the surface. It really wasn't because before they even wrote the rap, they came up with this real cynical planned marketing blitz. The rap was kind of an afterthought gasp I know. Jack Thatcher was the owner of the newspaper. He said he had the media contacts to kind of get the ball rolling once they had something and then they determined that whatever they came up with not only did the song itself need to be really short

but it had to have like bite-sized hooks so that local color segments on the news could just play like a few seconds of it and then have a laugh. Smart. Yeah, it was then have a laugh. Smart. Yeah, it was, it was smart. They did their work. I mean, Jack Thatcher owned a newspaper. He had a bunch of the media contacts. They knew what they were doing.

They even started like, once they had it ready, they studied the media landscape, as they said, every day to try to like predict the news a few weeks out. So like, if it looked like some big news story was brewing, like, oh, there's going to be a war. We won't do the prison rap yet, because they don't want the war to overshadow their prison rap.

Like they want a dead news period. And this was in 1987? Yes, this was in 1987. It's just adorable that something this poorly executed, like they're trying to make it sound like, oh, we have this master plan, but it is a bunch of stupid assholes with a camcorder. Well, they came up with the master plan first, and then it got time to rap. Okay.

So when it came time to rap, Bill Snyder, he recruited, that's right, the local government of Fiora, Illinois again, into like a public enemy style rap super group. So the rappers are a local businessman named Frank Zimmerman. If you've seen the video, there's a video you can watch of this. He's the one who kind of looks like a gym teacher's mugshot. You know what I mean? Mike Springsteen, he's the editor of the local paper.

He's the guy in the red Long Johns who's doing the like, old-timey barrel with suspenders. Sure. Like, I'm so broke. Only he, I guess he's too broke for a barrel because he's wearing a trash can. And it says I need a job on it. It is so dystopic. It's like something Robocop would walk past if he had a rural mission. Like, it's just, it's so dystopic. It's like something Robocop would walk past if he had a rural mission.

Like it's just, it's so looking at it, you're like, God, this is so deep with meaning. Like, and these costumes, cause they do, they had the cop, the press reporter, they had a boss hog. Which one was the boss hog? The press reporter is Jack Thatcher. Okay.

Jack Thatcher is the press reporter. He was the guy, it's kind of his idea. And he said he has the media contacts to get it off the ground. He has the big press symbol on his hands that you know, he's press. Boss Hogg was Mayor Charlie Overstreet, the actual mayor. Right. And that's not it's not an embellishment. There's no way you go to like a tailor and say anything except for give me the boss.

Hogg, give me the boss hogg, the full boss. Full, full white suit cowboy hat. He even in his part, he even drives up in a white Cadillac with steer horns on the front, despite being from fucking Illinois. With a little paper sign taped to it that says Mayor and handwritten font. That says, a little paper sign.

He even does the hat womp. He womps his driver when he stops. These guys watched Dukes of Hazzard and said that boss hog, that's the hero of the show. Finally, some representation for me, the corrupt overweight mayor in a white suit. My notes only say, this rap crew looks like five guys at a costume lynching.

I'm just reading what it says in my notes. Not responsible for him. I think one of them is, I don't know if he's a biker or an Indian. I hope he's a biker. That's the former police chief, Ed. Yo, and he's doing I think he's trying to do Willie Nelson cosplay Okay, but it does come across as like the punk biker like the biker who punks right there's Bill Ridgeway He's the local parole officer. He's the one who looks like the local parole officer, right?

I put Robert Barron I think for him just Just in his little suit. They got their crew together and they pressured, I'm gonna say illegally again, they pressured a local TV station into shooting the video for them. And they gave the entire town like an unofficial day off. They canceled school, which again,

pretty sure that's illegal. But very Republican. I wanna talk about, this opens with a shot of the movie theater. It says, now showing, All We Want, S want as a prison, which to me was like our song. Yeah, that was like really high art to me because it's the idea of only wanting a prison is already so sad. But when you're begging is spelled wrong either because you're illiterate or your town's movie theater is down to its last two liter eyes. It's like there's so much tragedy in one image.

Right? Like, it's like a Russian's, Russia's most brilliant Cold War propaganda artist presenting their masterpiece. They're like, look at that. Look at the piece of shit that is America and just like, but we gave it to them. We're like here. It's more embarrassing than that because now you know it's a throwback to their first unsuccessful attempt at losing all of their dignity, the all we want a prison song. So it's a little Easter egg of sadness just for them. Just for them and the governor who denied them. Anyway, we're gonna listen to the prison rap. They're gonna love this. Here we go. Down here in Florida, Illinois, we still think that you're our boy, but is we is or is we isn't gonna get ourselves a prison. Is we is or is we isn't

gonna get ourselves a prison. This sounds like it's over. I'm sorry, mayor of the town people call from miles around is we is or is we is it gonna get ourselves a prison? Okay, that's right. I'm Jack, I represent the press. Got a question? I say yes. Is we, is or is we, is gonna get ourselves a prison?

Is we, is or is we, is gonna get ourselves a prison? I do like that bass solo. I'm Ed, I sang the prison song. God was that beat so long. I'm Willie, the Chief of SNU, my last name's Thompson, just like you, is we is or is we isn't, gonna get ourselves a privilege. Is we is or is we isn't. My last name's not Thompson, you stupid fuck. I'm Bill, I'm probation boss.

I hope we got our point across. Is we, is or is we isn't gonna get ourselves a prison. Is we, is or is we isn't gonna get ourselves a prison. Is we? We live in a dirty hovel. Come watch us fucking grovel. So I've got a few hundred things I want to note quickly on that. First of all, Sean said something that bothered me quite a bit a few minutes ago when he mentioned that it was like something that Robocop would walk past. So this, I personally think every Gen Z kid, there should be a moment in their life, I

don't know when they turn 12, when they should be sat down to watch the movie Robocop. And someone would explain the movie Robocopop. Yeah. And so it would explain the movie RoboCop is not about the future. The only difference between the movie RoboCop and real life 1987 is we did not have robots back then. All of the rest of it, all of it, the weird corny reality shows or borderline murderous and the dystopian crumbling cities, the privatization of all the services, that stuff was all real. It was a parody of what we were actually doing. So when you see something like these people doing a corny rap, try to get a prison built in their town.

That's like, wow, that's like something out of Robocop. It's like, no, that's something out of the actual 1980s. This song was a part of my childhood. This was on all of our local news. They played it on the radio. This was a known thing. And it was like a funny, like, ah, look, Flora's really going nuts.

But we were rooting for them to get to prison because we could have gotten some of those jobs. It's like, no, we would pass each other on the street and say, man, this is really like RoboCop, isn't it? It's like, yeah, I don't even know what that is because the movie hasn't come out yet, but you're right. I picture, I know you're using the collective way, but I picture like 11 year old Jason Parger being like, God, I hope we get that fucking prison.

I absolutely did. We all understood. Okay. I think people were you guys from small towns? I don't know where anything about either of you. Yes. My small town story is we lost our logging industry because of spotted owl environmental protection.

So everyone in my town hated environmental protection because everybody's dad lost their job. Okay, what happened to my part of the country is the type of coal we had, it's like a high sulfur coal and it got banned from, it created like smog or acid rain or something. Right. So that type of coal we had went out of fashion due to environmental regulations. So, but the thing you have to understand is if you're not from a small town, every small town or most small towns

have one thing. Yep. And you will say it's the Toyota plant or it's the refinery. It's you have one big business and half your employment comes from that one big thing and the town was built around that thing. There's a salt mine somewhere around here and a town was built around that salt mine and when that mine closes or when that refinery goes out of business or whatever, you just watch the town crumble and you watch it slowly die and you keep getting all of this little false hope.

There's always a rumor that, well, they're going to open up that auto parts plant. It's GM's got that, they may build the jeeps here. There's a couple and you have these rumors and then it invariably never shows up. It opens, you know, in another state or whatever, but the local towns always trying to make a pitch to give them these crazy tax breaks and land dirt cheap because they want these jobs. So the fact that everybody was like clawing for this prison, it did not, even as a child, I knew it was like, okay, this is pretty dark. Like we are, we are not, we are not living the way the people on TV live. But yeah, it was like, because it's like the prison will be your thing. Like that could be your, because you've got the prison, then you've got

all the businesses that will cater to the workers there. A bunch of restaurants roll up around there and hotels for the visiting families, people coming down from Chicago to visit the inmates and you've got like, it just, it ripples out the benefits of it. Now that we have the prison rap, it was time for Jack Thatcher to like make his, to come true on his word. He promised that he has a lot of media influence he has the right context he can get the ball rolling so they submitted it to dozens of places and they got rejected by every single one except for wgn chicago and that was more luck than anything but i just

love that jack thatcher got this all started he said let's come together let's shut the whole town down take kids take the fucking kids out of school. Jack Thatcher has this shit. All right, I can sell anything. I can get that on TV tomorrow. And then they all did the rap and he's like, well, they all said no, sorry. Why did they need to shut the town down?

They get like three pickup shots of outdoor place. They could have just stopped the sidewalk for five minutes and said, hey, we're shooting, can you wait? Like, it's just like a couple old ladies like mouthing the words like, this is a Super Bowl shuffle, but for like a going out of business bowling alley, there's not a ton of production behind it. I think that was the whole town. I think that was it. I think that was all of them. They were all in it. Some of those were apparently children, which I mean, they lived rough lives.

Doesn't look great. There was some scenes in this that like at one point a maniac jumps off an abandoned school bus with a shotgun, and I thought, that's a strange choice to make. Oh, that's why they had to shut school down. They needed the school bus for the maniacs. Yeah, I liked the sassy cop when he was twirling his nightstick.

That's the guy who said his last name's Thompson, just like you. I thought it was a weird choice to film him just strutting around like a dandy water sourdough starter. I thought maybe they should have had him beat the shit of somebody like he kind of clubbed the guy off a dirt bike and then held a gun to his head while he sang, is we is going to get to prison or am I going to have to shoot another one of these kids? Like that could have been like in the song, add some urgency to it. I get the sense they shot a lot of stuff they didn't wind up using.

Yeah, they probably did shoot that a few times. shot a lot of stuff they didn't wind up using. Yeah, they probably did shoot that a few times. There's two or three hundred hours of footage that they shot around town, and somebody came time to edit it all together. It's like, well, you can't use that either. All these kids have their asses out. I just can't use that. Chief Willie Thompson was the guy you were referring to, just like you. He in a later interview very proudly would say, I dreamed up that baton twirling move all by myself.

That feels like the first thing you do with a nightstick is twirl it like that. I'm pretty sure 1910s cartoons police invented that baton twirl. But he put a lot of hip into it. He got a lot of sass. I think he was wearing high heels when he did it. He had a lot of, you know, sashay to it. Also it may not be clear. It just now occurred to me that somebody out there is really young. I don't know how young your audience is. They're asking, well, what's wrong with the

rapping? Why were they rapping that way? You have to understand, as Sean mentioned, the Super Bowl Shuffle, there was a belief back in the mid 80s that because rapping was just talking, that anybody could do it. So like when a football team did a rap about how they were going to the Super Bowl before they actually went to the Super Bowl, it actually went to number one in the charts, the United States, because white people all over the country is like, oh, so this is rap. You can just get any group of dudes together

and just talk about, you know, and kind of boast about things. And there you go, that's rap. So for example, if you want to know what rap was like in the mid 80s, go look up a song called, I think it's the Rappin' Duke, or also the John Wayne rap would be another title. Wow, that sounds familiar.

Yeah. Yeah, and it was pretty dire, but that was the kind of thing that was on the radio all the time. So the old people, again, rap was brand spanking new to the mainstream back then. They were like, yeah, I could do this. Every average person thought, well, they're just talking. It doesn't have to rhyme, really,

because you may notice from this song, there are no actual, there's not like a rhyme scheme. So yeah, that was, this was the product of that delusion on top of all these other things. Jason, let me test your hip hop history. Can you finish this rap line? They call me sweetness, I love to dance. Cause running the balls like making romance. Fuck yes, exactly right.

See you're a true hip hop OG. Why don't the balls like making romance? Fuck yes, exactly right. You guys just rapped. That was rap. That's 1988 rap. Perfectly executed. So they sent this out, this horrible thing that they just did. They sent it out and everywhere it's like, no, I don't want anything to do with that except for WGN Chicago. They ran it once for local color.

That was apparently all it took because then ABC brought it national, like almost immediately just from that one showing. And eventually, as they called their group, the Barbed Wire Choir, they got booked on Good Morning America, where they sent Mayor Charlie Overstreet and Chief Willie Thompson, the the I guess sexiest and most relatable members of the band, a corrupt mayor and police chief, overweight middle aged corrupt mayor and police chief. That really is like the bad guys from Duke's a hazard. It was the

boss hog and Roscoe Pico train. They sent him around for a fucking media junket to fucking promote their goddamn anti-American tableau, just this nightmare thing. Dude, there's a scene in this where they go to the courthouse and 12 jurors like snap their heads to the camera and rap the song. It is like a scene from, they live if John Carpenter was black, it's just like 12 white people like staring into the camera and telling you they want a prison.

It is very much, I think that shot, the idea was this is the POV of a black person coming to Florida. We promise we'll convict them all. Yeah. It's like a Donald Sutherland from Bodysnatchers. It's like, I'll look at you and howl. It worked. Everybody apparently loved it. This went viral before it viral was a thing. It's true. See that doesn't just mean that doesn't mean fad to me because it wasn't like it wasn't like a fad. A fad is something even more lasting than viral. Viral is like it flashes out and then gets everywhere for a day and ultimately nothing ever comes of it and everyone kind of dies alone. I guess that's a spoiler alert.

Stay tuned for the rest of that. The town of Flora was so high off this that they landed a manager, like an actual record manager and a record deal. And they cut this into a wide release single for sale. They sold it. They sold t-shirts. They made t-shirts of this. They wrote a cookbook. I don't get that. What the fuck could that cookbook be about? I suspect that the readers of 1-900 hot hot dog are gonna find out at some point. Yeah.

I want it so bad. If you have it, you need to send it to me. Like, is it how to make prison food? It can't be anything else, right? It has to just be how to make prison food. Right. They eventually, they held an Is We Is parade. It was a town-wide celebration where they had the Flora High School marching band come out in black and white striped prison style pajamas, which, again, feels like a crime. Just I don't know that that's a crime, but it feels like it. and desperate, which I feel like doesn't get helped by the fact that they tried to turn this into a thing, that they tried to market this into cookbooks, doesn't help that desperation. If Elon Musk cut the program that paid you disability for your mangled penis,

and then you offered yourself to the first female voice you heard on Xbox Live, it could not be more hopeless and desperate. I'm just reading what it says in my notes. That's it. That's all I wrote down for the entire thing. Someday we're going to find the guy who writes your notes. That guy's in a lot of fucking trouble. And maybe it's too far into the podcast to be pointing out this very obvious thing, but at no point in this song or in the previous song

did they ever explain why their town would be a good location for the prison. At no point do they boast of the strong employer, employment base. We've got good, strong young men here ready to work and we've got good work ethic. We've got good infrastructure and the highway to get you people down here is in good shape and we've got... That's none of that.

At no point do they explain why it would be a good place to put a prison. It's all just, we're very poor. Are we getting the prison or not? We're starving. We're poor. Are we getting the prison? Please, please, please. We're so poor. Like, why would that sway anyone? That's the rules of the sweepstakes. The sweepstakes was not, tell me why you're a good fit for the prison. It was, tell me how fucking sad you are and if I laugh you might get a present So funny because I think they almost demonstrate the opposite of what Jason's mentioning because they they hold up a sign all handwritten That says flora prison site and then they they pan out and you can see that it's just a dirt field

Just there's nothing for my no infrastructures No roads electricity or plumbing. Like if you put a prison here, you're going to have to build a fucking town to support it. Like we probably don't have the power plant to run it. You're gonna have to build everything. Which again, if you embarrass yourself right for Big Jim, it's not a problem. Daddy Big Jim can make that happen for you. That's more jobs. So they they went nuts trying to market this just like everybody that's ever had a viral hit.

And just like everybody that's ever had a viral hit, they did the thing to get attention and forgot that they weren't actually good at the thing. So it did not work. The town's new manager tried to get them paid when People Magazine came by and said, we want to do like a puff piece on this. And People Magazine were like, oh, for dollars, for human dollars? No. Yeah.

And they just didn't. They just. They're like, you want to write about us? You need to give us money? Yes. And people is like, no, that's not, we're not doing that. Unusual. So they really shot themselves in the foot there.

And of course they did not get the prison. We already spoiled that part, Brown County got the prison. So the official story is that there were legal conflicts due to some kind of tax laws. But I found a ranting insane blog by a madman who was probably long dead, the best and most unbiased kind of source. It was for somebody, it was by somebody who worked at the Flora paper at the time, and he said somebody, it was by somebody who worked at the Flora paper at the time, and he said Governor Jim Thompson hated that Flora got more attention than him when this sweepstakes was supposed to be like You're all about me. You're all about tickling daddy's feet here. Everybody's supposed to make me feel special And he was so pissed off that Flora got the national attention that he thought he would get for his wacky sweepstakes idea

That's just according to this long dead maniac whose blog almost doesn't exist anymore. His reasoning was that Jim couldn't say no now in front of all this national attention because he'd look like the bad guy and we already have a guy dressed like a literal bad guy, boss hog, over here. So he blamed the complex tax laws and he just sort of waited for the clock to run out on Florida's media attention and then he suspended the entire prison sweepstakes concept. Amazing. And just like that was it. He didn't, he didn't, he took his ball and he went home. But it's not like Flora got nothing out of this. I feel like this story is going to only get sadder with the next thing you say.

I feel like this story is going to only get sadder with the next thing you say. They did get a platinum record from their producer, Martin Lewis of Rhino Records, who said he hoped it would sell a million copies, but if you don't, you've given America a million laughs. Okay, that is a lot less sad than I thought it'd be, but still pretty tragic. They didn't sell those million copies. And uh, yeah, we gave us, they gave America a million less. They remained destitute. And did not get to prison. And that's it for Flora, Illinois.

Stay tuned for the bonus podcast. We're gonna talk about the town who did win, Brown County. They won that first prison sweepstakes. That was all thanks to a gang of plucky teens and their prison sleepover that turned into a psychological experiment and possible war crime. Say Frankfurt Podcast? Correct! Yeah! The craft is not trapped, it's not without! Send it to the dog zone, for an hour! Come on, you know the number! 1900 1900 Frankfurt

1,900, 1,900 1900 Frankfurt 1900 1900 Frankfurt 1,900, Orlando, we celebrate the all-new 37th annual Circus of the Supremes with big top performances from Aaron Crosston. Spinning on a silvery web high above ring number two, our next star becomes the lovely spider goddess. It's Adrienne H. Aiden Mouette.

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Eden by Tigers, Craig Lemoine, a familiar face to Dynasty viewers. Quavis, Dan B, David Schull, Dean Costello, Sports Great, the star of TV's First and Ten and potential double murderer Delta Foxtrot, Devin the Rogue Supreme, Doug Redmond, Drayson, Dusty's Rad title, and now a magical duo, the entertaining co-host of Entertainment Tonight, Eric Christian Berg and that dancing fool and very funny gentleman, Eric Rion, Fancy Shark, Gareth, Jell-O-Ho, a very popular and young comedian, Good Satan and his Hot Witches, Greg Cunningham, Haraka, Harvey Penguini,

a new look for the actor who plays Bubba on Mama's Family, Hendrick Sorensen, Honk, Jaber Al Aiden, James Boyd, here tonight with a sword-swallowing act, the multi-talented singer, actor and hopefully sword swallower, Jared Clack.

Jared Mountain Man. Jared Ruiz. High above the Hot Dog Studios burrito cart, Jeff Araski. John Dean. John McCammon. Mr. Belvedere himself, the amusing John Minkoff. Joseph Searles, Josh S. from the mega hit series Dallas the Mega Beauty, Joshua Graves, Justin B, Ken Paisley, K&M, coming up, Arrows for Kamutsus, Puppies for Lane Haygood, Lisa, M. Jahee-Chapelle, Mark Mahoney, on

a trebuchet designed to kill specifically and only him, Matt Riley, Max Berroy, Moju, Mercenary Sissidman, the bright and beautiful co-star of Head of the class, Michael Leier, Mort, Mr. Bob Gray, with the same delightful humor he brings to Newhart, ND, Neil Schaeffer, Nicka104, the delightful co-star of Perfect Strangers, Nick Lovino, Orn Rewievel, Ozzy Olin, Patrick Herbst, the beautiful English actress who now co-stars on Dynasty, Rhiannon, Sarkovsky, Sean Chase, Cee-id, one of the brightest stars of Night Court, Space Jam fan, Spotty Reception, Super Knot, Tater's Tales, On the Trapeze and Presumably Flying Tonight, Co-Star of Out of This World 10H, Thomas Kavatsos, Timmy Lahey, From Guiding Light to Circus Light, Toasty God, Tommy G, Making Sweet Public Love to an Elephant, Please Welcome Velo, Booster, Waylon Russell, Zach and Ava and making

their spectacular big-top entrances, your ring masters, Neil Bailey and his partner, mentor, godmother, lover, co-pilot, tail gunner, occasional chauffeur, second for all duels in matters of both heart and honor, the lovely Bea Arthur.