The Eric Metaxas Show - Fish Out of Water (Encore)

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Eric takes a deep-dive into the strange-but-true tales found in his new memoir, "Fish Out of Water," where his immigrant parents, especially his father, emerge as towering inspirations to the author. (Encore Presentation)

Hey, folks, welcome back to the Eric Metaxis show. I'm Albin Seder, one of the producers. I'm joined here as well with the other producer, Chris Himes. And you know who our special guest is? You've been listening, so you've been knowing what we're talking about. It's Eric Metaxis himself because he's has a brand new book and it's out today. It's called Fish Out of Water. Wait a minute.

I'm the guest on my own show. That's preposterous. Oh, come on. Nobody would believe that, Albin. Nobody would believe that. But what choice do we have? We have no other guests. So I'll play the role of guests today.

I'm very happy to do that. And speaking as the guest, I hear that Mike Lindell is the main sponsor of your program. Is that true? That is probably true, yes. Is there a discount code people should use to support Mike Lindell and the Eric Mattaxas show? I'm just asking for a friend. I'm going to say Eric with a C, E-R-C-E-R-C, Eric. Oh, it's that simple, Eric?

Okay. Are people allowed to use that code if they don't listen to the program? Yeah, especially if they don't listen. It's going to help them. All right, that's enough for that. Thank you. Okay, here we go. Okay, so today, of course, is the big launch of fish out of water. It's a memoir. It's all about Eric's early life up until about the age of 25 when a golden fish changed everything. It's an exciting tale. And in fact, I have a copy here. The interesting thing, I'm going to ask Eric about this right now.

I have read the uncorrected page proof. Now, they were supposed to send it. me the actual book because of the snow and this is no kidding i have not been able to get the actual book in my my hot little hands but and i'm corrected page proof for those of you out there don't know much about publishing it's kind of like the dress rehearsal for the actual book so if they want to if you want to change things or add things or something this is your last chance so i want to ask eric because i've been an extra on saturday night live and on the dress rehearsal there are sketches that they cut in time for the regular show because they got too many sketches and they'll say, well, this one's not so funny. So they get rid of it. I want to ask Eric, were there any stories

that you either had to change dramatically or cut from the uncorrected page proof to the final, final, final book? That's my first question right now. No, no. It's virtually the same. The only difference is that the actual book is obviously much nicer because it's printed nicely and it's a hard cover and it's got color photographs of, you know, my early days as a, as the young man and as a child, pictures of my parents. So that's what you look. That's what you look like in color. Oh, that's one. And look and look at look at the end papers. It's like, it's a family tree of my Greek family. This is so people can track with the characters inside the book. And the last page, the last end papers are my German family. So it's kind of, uh,

It's just so you can kind of track because there's all these characters and stuff in it. But anyway, yeah, you know what? Here's the other end of that first question was, was there anything you left out? But I realized this when I finished reading the book, and this shows you how good the book is. When you finish it and wish there were more. Now, with that in mind, I want to ask the author, Eric Mattaxas, this question. When you finished writing it, you handed it in, they said, that's it. We're going to publish what you wrote right here.

Did you later say, a week later, a month later, oh, there's a great story. I forgot. I left out. This is key to my existence. Oh, I got to put this in in Fish Part 2, Part De. If not, not exactly, but yes, yes. I am, I'm going to write a sequel to this, which is called Pastures New, a Life in Miracles. Because after what happens to me at the end of this book, I began to experience what it is to walk with God. And I've experienced in numerous, bonafide miracles. And unless you read the stories, you know, I can't say I grew a, I grew a third arm or something like that. But I, when you read these stories, you know, they're kind of amazing. So I'm looking forward to telling a lot of them. But there's no doubt.

I didn't want the book to be too long because it's already a little long. But there's a lot of stuff that I had to take out. And it is frustrating because I wanted it to be, you know, I wanted everything to be in there. But let's be honest, not everybody's interested. in the minutia of my life. So I only put the stuff in that I thought was either funny or important. And I mean, look, when I flip through it, like, I just crack up because there's so much of this stuff, these are like sort of painful memories, but they're funny at the same time. Like the time my father gave me a haircut.

I mean, what the heck? Anyway, let's not, we won't go into the record. Let the reader have something, you know, to surprise. Yeah, I know. The bowl cut. My father did the bowl cut with me. as well. I mean, that's just the way it is. There was... Except we couldn't afford a ball. We were so poor.

That's right. You had to use a paper plate. We couldn't even afford paper. Get out of here, you kids. Hey, you had paper? What? You go play in your own yard. Okay. There are so many great chapter titles. I mentioned in the previous segment about Alex and Anna. They actually come from a funny chapter title, which it was, in fact, let me if I could read the chapter title, it's called in which the author is introduced to national socialism, right? So I thought that was rather funny. And that's part of the theme of the book, how your parents, your mother grew up behind the iron curtain, okay? And your father grew up in a war-torn Greece, right? Yes. And so the thing that hit me struck me very interesting was your time at Trinity College. Now, this was a, you spent

about a year and a half, I believe it was, a Trinity College before Yale. So it was a year and a half. And one of the evenings, you went with your friends to one of these poetry readings, of course, you know, where the poet is saying some really weird, strange stuff that doesn't really sound much like poetry. Actually, now, I don't want to give that story away. Do you mind? There's a couple of things that I feel like people have to read it. I can't, I don't want to talk about it. I'm afraid. Okay. Well, that actually might get people even more interested in picking up the book because there are some stuff that's, that really goes to the heart of who you are, how you changed, why you changed, what you thought, not so much of your friends, because we all have different,

you know, we have different times of our life where we think, oh, he's like this or he's like that, and then we suddenly decide, well, I didn't know he or she thought that way. It's just like when you became a Christian, a died in a whole, honest to goodness believer, people were like suddenly, well, I didn't know Eric was that. Now I can't really talk to him, which was- I'm sure. It was unpleasant for a lot of my friends. And I feel very bad because you put them in a tough spot. Like if you suddenly become somebody that you weren't, they kind of think like, well, now he's got these, you know, outdated views or whatever. And so I've managed to be friends with some of those folks, but you can't really blame them. I mean, Charis is one of the very, very few that,

you know, was still my friend and, um, and stuff. But yeah, it's, it's challenging, I think, for folks like that, you know. Yeah. And I, before we go to a break and we still have a couple minutes here, um, I thought this was funny. And, and I was going to say like, well, it's because I'm from Pittsburgh. I know this and you don't. But you actually spelled, you, you talk about the air, one of the airs to the Heinz ketchup fortune. and in the book, you actually spell ketchup wrong because ketchup can be spelled two ways. If you remember Montgomery Burns when he's trying to buy ketchup in the grocery store and he's like cats up, ketchup. You spelled it C-A-T-S-U-P, but if you look on the on the container of the Heinz ketchup, it's spelled K-E-T-C-H-U-P.

So I just wanted you to, in the second printing. That's what you picked up from the book. That's what I picked up. I said, how could Eric make such a huge... That is very careful reading, I have to tell you. Like, I didn't think there'd be anything like that in there. But thanks for clarifying that. I'll be sure to let my publisher know.

Second printing, get that right, okay? By the way, Chris Heimes is also here on the call with us. Chris, can you join us for a second and say hello and show your lovely favor? Yeah, no, I'm here. I'm just processing the ketchup quandary there. Yeah, and by the way, you probably spelled mustard wrong, but I didn't want to correct you on that. Yeah, my wife is reading the book right now, and she mentions a very funny, hilariously written tale of when you are nine.

And let's just say, Bradley's incident, we're not allowed to talk about that. No, not to take the reader by surprise. Not the Bradley's. By surprise, the Bradley's incident, chief among them. I know. When I read that, I said, T.M.I. That's the name of that chapter, TMI. But anyway, that's Bradley's.

Folks, we're going to be right back with. Eric Metaxus, the author of a brand new memoir called Fish Out of Water. Hang in there. Hey, folks, we are back with Eric Metaxus on his very own program. He likes to call it the Eric Metaxe show. And he's talking about his brand new book today. It's called Fish Out of Water. And you are going to love it, love it, love it.

Eric, I want to throw this over to you before I talk about one of my favorite chapters in the book called The Grand Tour, Part One or Part Two. Sorry. Well, I just want to be clear that doing this today was your idea. Uh-oh. You were the one that said that you really enjoyed the book and you gushed about it. And I'll be honest. I mean, you know, I'm not kidding. You know me. I'm surprised in a way because I don't know what I have. You know, you write something like this and I had no clue, will people like it, won't they like it, whatever. So when you were like raving about some of the things you found funny, I thought, okay. now I can get a good night's sleep because no joke. I wanted some of this stuff to be funny, but you just don't know, will people find it funny? So when you were telling me that you found the, okay, after I graduate from Yale,

my friend Chris Haynes and I, we were both editors on the Yale record, the Yale Humor magazine. We went on a trip to Europe and we traveled all around. And I wrote all about that. And some of that is like insane. Most of it is insane, actually. It was like one insane story after the other.

But the one that you brought up, should I explain this? Well, yeah, why don't you explain it? And I want to read a funny part because after I read it, I sent you a text and I quoted it. And I said, I can't read to the end of the chapter because there are tears in my eyes. Now, whenever you set something up like that, people. Please make sure that people understand, I didn't pay you to say this. Honestly, that thrills me, Alvin. Nothing could thrill me more that you found it that funny.

No joke. But let me say this, though, whenever you say that to somebody, you say like, this is the funniest joke I ever heard. And then you tell the joke, people are like, they're not, they're not going to laugh. Right. That's why you shouldn't do, you shouldn't do that. You should just let me tell roughly what we're talking about so people I understand. Okay. Okay.

No, what do you, I mean, what do you want to do? Go ahead. But it involves your show today, pal. But what's so funny about this, it involves two old, old actors, Claudette Colbert and Rex Harrison, Rex Harrison and Rex is like 76 and club he's like 80 yeah she's 80 something 82 a3 but anyway we want to know this was you got to understand this was chris haines uh who is still still a friend to this unto this day but he he kind of like he was the tour guide you know what i mean like he was thinking like okay eric you're an idiot you'll just come along for the ride and i'm going to like we're going to go to this

museum and do da da da da so he decides we've got to go to the theater in london and i really was kind of like, hey, whatever, Chris, like whatever you said. And he, he paid two pounds. Right. Like, that's so cheap. It's insane for theater tickets. And even then, this is 1984. Is that 30, that's 36 years ago, which makes no sense.

But I guess so. He paid two pounds. I thought two pounds. Like, what do you mean theater tickets for two pounds? That's like a few bucks. Like, that's not possible. And we, we, uh, and Chris, uh, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, He's kind of left wing, but he behaves like a fascist in, you know, in our friendship.

And he demands, like he says, like, you've got to wear, like, we're going to the theater. We've got to wear jackets and ties and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And of course, he's right about all these things. I don't disagree with him. He's right. So we get all dressed up, jacks and ties, whenever we go to the theater. And we give them our tickets. And we go and we start climbing stairs.

Yeah. We're at the Haymarket Theater. This was a, what do they call it in, in theater? I can't remember. I was going to say reprisal. No, revival of a revival, yeah. A 1920s comedy, okay,

and it was starring Claudette Colbert and Rex Harrison. Now, in the 80s, they were ancient figures from another era. Like, I kept thinking, like, Rex Harrison? Like, how old is he?

Claudette Colbert? I mean, you know, she was in Cecil Bita Mills. the Ten Commandments or, I mean, silent movies or something. She was, yes. So these two ancient actors were on the stage in this play. So we go and I think,

I'm going to get to see Rex Harrison in person. You know, he played Dr. Doolittle, you know, when I was the kid in the movies and he played, I mean, you know, he's famous, but like, so we start climbing stairs and we climb and climb and climb. Eventually we're passing like, like, gas gauges and pipes and things. And we're going so far up into the theater that I thought there's no way that there

could be seats up here. This is like higher than St. Paul's Cathedral by Christopher Wren. We're going up and up and up and up. And eventually we come out and we were like a thousand miles above the stage. I literally got scared because it was so high up. you look down between your feet. Yeah. The stage was the size of a postage stamp.

And like it was the most, the fact that they sold seats up there, like for two pounds. Like it was absolutely insane. I will never forget it. I mean, and it was incredibly hot. Incredibly hot. Well, you said something like you could touch the ceiling and then if the Nazis were dropping a bomb, you could hear the whistle as it came down. But here's what I wanted to read.

just a couple little phrases. And let me just read this. Rex and Claudeette were so small. It was like watching a flea circus. And then they didn't realize it, but they would have to talk louder. They'd have to talk almost vertically. Okay.

And then you said, and they were down there somewhere. They were still speaking their clever dialogue like insects. And I just thought that was so funny, like as if insects talk clever. Like when insects talk, they're very clever. They were still speaking their clever dialogue.

like insects. Nothing tickles me more than the fact that you enjoyed this. Like you have no idea. You're making my week. Anyway, maybe I'm just, anyway, funny, funny, funny stuff. We are running, oh, no, this is our long segment. Oh, this is great. Oh, no, we've got to fill time. I want to get back to another funny fellow, of course, who's key, of course, that novel. We talked about that novel. It reads like a novel. In fact, when I was reading it, it, the characters, the situations, it reminded me a little bit of John Kennedy Tools' Confederacy of Dunces. So that, you know, and that won the Pulitzer. It's another compliment. I better get out of here before things start going downhill.

You better than this. But I love your dad's stories. And the one thing I liked a lot about, he talked about fishing with dynamite and, you know, why you have to be careful. It's the Old World War II stories. Like, you could never top my father, you know, no matter what. he's like telling you some story about a kid whose family is starving and he caught fish by throwing dynamite into the water and then he lost a limb and then he would use his foot to throw the dynamite out. I mean, if there is a kid living in suburban Connecticut thinking, I can't really relate to this, but it's also giving me the idea that maybe I should shut up. Maybe my father's been through some experiences that kind of trump anything I've ever been through. Right. But the funny thing is he always said that catchphrase.

a guy from Technicon. Now, that's where your dad worked, but it's like a guy from Technicon. It's like, oh, yeah, this guy. He's the, they told me. And the fact that you appreciate this, you have no, I'm not, people think I'm just saying this, that thrills me because that's what cracked me up. My father would always say a guy from Technicon, and you could never argue with my father. It was like some guy that he worked with who spoke with this authority.

It was always a different guy who told this story or that story, whatever, but he kind of used It's like the Bible, the Bible says. And that's the end of that argument. Here's something else I must confess. You're throwing out all these books and I'm thinking, gosh, I went to college. I didn't read half of these books. Most of them, if I read them like Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky, I read them after college, okay, to impress a girl I was interested in.

But one of the books, Faulkner's Sound in the Fury, you know, I had the same kind of thing I'm reading it. And then like, what the heck am I reading here? And you were reading it on that train to Italy, which is very funny. But then, but then, then you mentioned a book that I read, and I couldn't believe you didn't read it. When you mentioned Ariana Falachi, I was like, I read a man. That was one of the most impressive. Oriana Falachi.

Yes, I read, that's about a Greek guy. Right. And I thought, my goodness, you didn't read Oriana Falci, a man? No. No. I don't think most people have. read that. But that, yeah, that's actually one of the creepiest, most insane stories in the whole book. And this is, trust me, folks, there's a few weird ones. I mean, seriously weird stories,

but I'm not even going to go into this. All I'm going to say is the chapter with the Italian guy on the train for sure. Oh my. One of the weirdest stories in the book. You won't believe it. I promise you, every syllable is true. And you know what? And when you said he's getting off, but not literally. Oh, boy. Thanks for telling the joke. Okay, seriously, though, there was, there's another story that I don't want,

oh, oh, about the, my encounter with the man I believed was the actual Antichrist. Oh, that, oh, that, now that's the creepiest one. And we are going to a break, and that's a good cliffhanger, right there. Well, no, we got 20 seconds, I think. But look, I'm just going to say,

I was 18 years old. Yeah. And I was scared out of my wits. I will never forget it. We don't need to talk about it, but it was, I was really, you know, you're so young. Anyway, all right, we'll be right back. Well, are you going to talk about it at the end on the underside of the break? Okay, maybe.

Okay. Folks, we'll be right back with Eric Metaxus himself. Hey, folks, we're back with the host of the show, Eric Metaxus. He's usually the host. I'm hosting today. I'm Albin Seder, one of the producers. Eric is here as well with Chris Hines, another producer. But we're talking about fish out of water, which just jumped out of the water today on Groundhog Day.

And Eric Metaxus, what do you have to say for yourself, big guy? Oh, nothing much. Actually, I'll tell you what I have to say, two things. This is in my job as host. I can't shut up about this, even though I'm not officially today's host. I want to remind people to please support us and Mike Lindell by going to my pillow.com and my store.com and using the code Eric, you can buy most of my books at my store. Dot com, but not this book. This book obviously is out today, and I hope people will buy it.

Oh, and tonight, I'm doing a special launch event. 20 people from around the country have paid money to ask me questions on a Zoom thing tonight at 8 p.m. It's going to be on our YouTube channel, and it's going to be on Facebook. I've sent out all the links. But that's, going to be kind of nuts. It's going to be like over an hour of people shooting these questions at me. And I hope everybody can join. Obviously, it's free. Please join because I know it'll, it'll be fun. And it is the launch event tonight. So because we're over it, we're doing it online. Okay. I've got a quarter. So I want to see if I can ask you one question, a small one for a quarter. You can ask me anything you want, my friend. Okay. Okay. Okay. You talk about your time at Yale and having a lot of fun,

obviously and hanging out with some really impressive people, Larry David among them, which is the Seinfeld creator, co-creator. But I wanted to ask you about one simple word, bladder ball. Yes. Oh, man. Actually, the bladder ball thing, I got to tell you, this is like, this is crazy. When I was at Yale, all my roommates told me, oh, we're going to do bladder ball. We're going to do bladder ball.

and I had just gotten to yell. I was like, what's bladder ball? And they started telling me it's this annual tradition that's been going on since time immemorial. And there's a gigantic ball. It's like a canvas ball that's literally like six or seven feet tall. Like it's the biggest thing you've ever seen. And everyone who wants on the whole campus participates.

There are 12 residential colleges. Every college used to participate on its own. and the goal was to get the ball into your residential college and then you'd win. But that would take place across the streets of New Haven where there's cars and people with baby carriages and stuff. And so eventually they moved it to old campus, which is this four-acre, you know, gigantic quadrangle. And so the game takes place in there.

And there are four teams, each one consisting of three residential colleges. So we're waiting in the Dwight arch until somebody shoots it off the starter's pistol. And everybody runs like drunken maniacs, and some people were drunk, to this ball to get it back to your wherever you started from. Can you describe the ball for everyone out there? Well, no, I was saying it was like six or seven feet tall.

It's made of canvas, and they roll it out. And it's filled with it. Yeah, it's just like blowing up the balloons at Macy's parade, right? They inflate this big time. It was a gigantic ball, but it was made of canvas so that you couldn't like pop it or anything. And somebody shoots off a pistol and hundreds and hundreds of students race from these four positions into the center toward the ball. Yeah. And what happens then?

You think, oh, it's going to be fun. The ball's going to go here. The ball's going to go there. No, everyone surrounds the ball and effectively achieves a point of total stasis, no movement, because everyone is pushing on the ball from every different direction. It's kind of the dumbest thing ever, and it's dangerous. And I was not one of the people who ran drunkenly toward the ball because it looked really dangerous because you've got literally hundreds of people running toward this thing.

and no joke, there was an ambulance perched nearby because I think they assumed there's going to be injury. Yeah. And the people on every one of the four teams, you wore a t-shirt of a certain color. So my buddy, Tom Fosbender, he was an artist, he is an artist. He made these t-shirts up. They were blue with white lettering. And that represented our team, which was Calhoun and two other residential colleges. So you have people in blue, people in yellow, people in green, people in red, racing to this ball.

And it really was scary because when you have hundreds of people pushing in the same direction. But what happened was I'm watching from a distance this like violent madness. And I had a good friend. In fact, I saw him a couple of years ago. He's a scientific genius, Ward Wheeler. I love Ward Wheeler. Like he's certain people you just love them. And I just love, I love Ward.

He was just one of these like true friends, just a great guy. And just brilliant. He works at the National Museum of a, what did I say, natural history museum here in New York City. But yeah, he's just a scientific genius. And he was always a wild man in a good sense. And he looks at me and he goes, metaxis, we're going in. And I thought, excuse me, like there's no way I'm going near that.

that that looks like a rugby crush times 50. Like there's no way. I'm going to, he goes, get on my shoulders. And there's something about the force of personality of word wheeler, which is why everybody loves him. He's like, come on, you trust him because he's such a good guy and he's kind of big. So I get on his shoulders. He weaves his way through the crowd.

Now, this was a crowd. When I say a crowd, I mean, it was like stacked lumber. You couldn't find an inch. He found his way in. And when we come back, I'll tell you what happened. and it was historic. We'll be right back with Eric Metaxus. Hey, folks, we're back on the Eric Metaxus show.

We have as a guest, Eric Metaxus. He's right here. He's written a book called Fish Out of Water. And he was just talking about a scene you might have seen in Animal House Part 2 if there was such a thing. Yeah, this should be in a movie, Alvin. This should be in a movie. Totally.

This is one of the craziest. Seriously, this is like insane. This, so I'm talking about the bladder ball thing. Bladder ball. So I, so Ward Wheeler, my, my dear friend, has me on his shoulders and he's moving in there like a, like a minotaur or some kind of like a bellowing animal. And it gets us to the center where this kind of like almost like a crop circle mashed down. The ball is in the middle. And there's a circle of people around it.

Very hard to describe. I describe it perfectly in the book because it took some time to get it just right. but it was like a scary place to be because you're on the edge of this incredibly tight circle with hundreds of people pushing behind you. So you have to kind of be leaning back. Otherwise, they'll push you into this hole beneath the giant ball bouncing up above. The whole thing was insane. So I'm on his shoulders at the edge of the circle.

And the bladder ball is bouncing around this circle. all around the circle are effectively pushing it, you know, across and where it was a kind of madness that's very tough to explain. But all I'll tell you is at some point, the bladder ball came to me. Wow. And I touched the bladder ball. And I felt like my life is over. I have just touched the bladder ball. And I don't want to give the whole thing away.

People have to read it. But after this, a woman got injured, broke. an arm, the ambulance took her away. The college decided no more bladder ball ever. It's too dangerous. So I not only did I touch the bladder ball, I touched the last bladder ball in the history of the world. If somebody doesn't make a movie of this, like it's so crazy. But Ward Wheeler, again, like just a hero, an amazing guy. And I just loved him. There's certain people you just love. I love Ward. And he made this possible for me. And so I wrote about it in the book. I won't tell.

Okay. I got Universal Studios on the phone. They want to make a movie about Blatterball. Yeah. Oh, it's very visual. I mean, I describe it in the book, like just the idea of all these hundreds of people in these different colors merging and stuff.

But another kind of historic thing happened that was around that time was we went to the Yale Harvard game up at Harvard because every year it's either in New Haven or it's up in Cambridge. And that year was the 99th game. Yeah. And we went up to Harvard. and that's a whole story. And it ends with me commandeering

some group of vandals from the Yale side tore down Harvard's goalpost, you know, the gigantic metal goalpost and dragged it out of the stadium. And in our drunken haze, we are wandering outside the stadium after the game, and I see the goalpost like they had dragged that. And I commandeered a group of guys to pick it up

and to carry it through the street. of Cambridge for about a half mile until we got to the Charles River and we threw it in the Charles River. I won't tell that story either, but it's kind of freaky. When you think back, like, did that really happen? It did happen. And no one was injured. But it's a little bit miraculous. Nobody was injured. Yeah. You know what I find very interesting too in this book. It's a little bit like a funny and exciting travel log and some of the crazy characters that you meet because after college, and this has happened to a bunch of people, I guess a little bit in my life too. I'm a little older than you are, but where you're out there really trying to find yourself and settle in and find, well,

you know, I went to college to be a writer, an actor, whatever, musician, but how do I get there? Where's the, you know, where's the starting point in my life? And you had some, some, some, mind-bending jobs, if you want to put it that way, one in particular at Union Carbide, where your whole life really started to turn around with Ed Tuttle. But maybe you want to talk a little bit about that? I definitely don't. It's so painful. That's the end of the book. Actually, I won't talk about that. I don't want to forget to say this. Okay. My friend John Tomanio, he's been my dearest friend since we were kids in sixth grade. And he figures in it. And his dad, Carl Tomanio, they were really like a second home to me. I would go there and do

homework with him often. And we, you know, we've just been friends all these years. But when I wrote about it, again, it was really moving to me to think about John's dad, the time he spent with us, taking us ice fishing and camping. And so I write about a lot of that. And it's, it's, it just, it's, it's, it's, it's moving to me. But I was going to say that the one thing I don't want to forget to mention is if you know anybody who's a Greek American, the stories of being in that world, to me, they're the funniest stories in the whole book, the stories of being in that Greek universe, because most people don't write about that. The only thing people think about is my big fact Greek writing, which really doesn't scratch

the surface. I mean, that's a very kind of cartoony version of it. But I write about, you know, being in the Greek church, in Greek church. parochial school and some of the experiences, I mean, seriously insane experiences. Like the priest we had who we had, there's a corrupt priest. And that's a whole story. And then the church burned down. And the priest had been accused by the parishioners of having set the fire. Right. And there was, and he gave a sermon where he was basically kind of screaming at the parish. It was like, it was like a nightmare before your eyes. It was like really crazy stories. But some of the,

them are really sweet. And I have to say that the stories of transfiguration, which is the church in Corona Queens, and we went to the Greek Orthodox parochial school there, Transfiguration, metamorphosis Christo. Those stories, I mean, I don't know if you remember, but the teacher, Mr. Siembas, who slapped everybody and it was like, he didn't know that in America, teachers aren't allowed to like, he slapped you, right? He slapped you. So he once, he slapped me once, but he was like, I mean, you can't make it up. He's like, smoke. smoking cigarettes spitting, like spitting in the lunchroom into the pay. Like, just stuff that my whole life I've been thinking about this and the fact that I finally

got to write these stories. Well, you know, I grew up Catholic and went to a Catholic school and there were nuns back then that would whack you with a ruler and slap you and stuff like that. That's the way it was back then. Exactly. Yeah. That's you and I, you tasted that, man. And it was just, it's just nuts.

But the Greek Orthodox thing, there's a, there's a, there's a, a lot of, I really do think that very few people have written about the Greek experience in America. You know, you hear the Italian experience and the Jewish experience, but the Greek thing, I hope that a lot of Greeks will get a kick out of this. Oh, we're done. We got to go to a commercial. And we're going to wrap it up. Hey, folks, we're back to the Eric Metaxus show. The special guest today is none other than Eric Metaxus, because today's the big day.

It's the launch of a fish out of water. Mr. Metaxus, how are you today? Oh, I'm fine. I can't believe that you are hosting the show. Like, this really feels so strange to me. I feel like I should be hosting it, but you're hosting it at Albans. And I want to point out this was your idea. So thank you very much. Because I don't think I would have proposed the idea of myself as a guest, but I'm going along with it. So thank you very much. No, it's great. I had a lot of fun reading a book, and I want to make sure our listeners and our viewers will pick up a copy because they're going to have a lot of fun. This is, this is a lot of For the book, I will say it again, it means more to me than I can never express, really, because you just don't know. Like, the fact that you found it funny and all this stuff thrills me because it means other people will too. And I didn't know. I mean, not everybody is, you know, you just think. We have a similar sense of humor, but in some ways there's a humor of bygone days, you know, where your parents said funny things without trying to be funny.

but they were funny because they were real people and real characters, right? Hey, my parents are still saying stuff like this. My father says, like the funny stuff he says in this book, which I find the funniest stuff ever. Yeah. He said something about, I don't know, like a year ago, we were in the dining room table and he came up with, what did he say?

He said something, my father has hated snakes his whole life. Like he'll kill him with the shovel. He hates snakes. Suddenly my father says, the snakes, the poor thing. Wait, what did he say? What do you say? he said this my father literally said this he said the snake the poor thing he i can't i can't even say this he says he has no parents to defend him or something like that i was like what he says

no and then he says he has no arms to defend himself like he he just comes up with stuff and i i was just speechless at how cookie it was but wait a minute uh since we've only got two minutes left i i don't want to forget to say this i think the fish had a water theme in the book is about me never really fitting in. And when I went with my dad to Greece in 1972, I felt like finally I'm back where I come from. And I made a connection that was really vital for me, like a connection to this Greek world. And I felt the same thing with my mom. We went to Germany in 1971. And I thought, this is what I've been hearing about my whole life because my parents are always

talking about growing up in this village in Greece and in this village in Germany. And to visit those places was a pilgrimage for me. It was like going back in time. And those are two of my favorite parts of the book is those trips as a kid going to the places that were like mythical and actually saying, now I'm here. Now I'm in the place where my mother came from and all the stories that my grandmother told from when she was a little kid. And I tell some of those stories in the book and the stories that my father told of losing his father and all that stuff is a part of me and it makes up who I am. And so I remember as a kid going to these places and really feeling like this is, this is important to connect, to connect with the people that they are sort of who I am.

And now I get to meet them. But in both those places. It's like, it's like you hit that DNA jackpot. You spit in the tube. You send it out a month later. they send you back to 345 page story of your life. Exactly. Well, I know we're out of time, so I got to tell people, please buy the book this week, if you can, please. And it is really a book that I wrote for everybody. It's the kind of thing you can share with somebody who's not on the same page, theologically or politically.

It's totally a political, thank the Lord. And I do want to remind folks, tonight, Facebook Live and on a YouTube channel, I'm doing a live event where people from around the country are going to ask me 20 questions. It's going to be insane. It's going to be like, this was kind of like the relaxed conversation. That's going to be like, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, like a hard-hitting, insane thing. Because otherwise, we're not going to make it through 20 questions. So I hope you can join us tonight at that.

And again, Albin and Chris, I just want to say thank you to you guys for everything, but particularly for being willing to do this today. And again, it was your idea. Thank you. You're welcome. See, everybody.