The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 200: Smart Stupid – Now With Slightly More Stupid

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

What do you get when you cross the most beautiful girl in the world with the funniest man on the planet?  Something smart and something stupid.

Hey guys, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. Episode number 200. Yep, feels like a milestone. Nice round number, 200 episodes. This one is called Smart Stupid. Now with slightly more stupid. And in this episode, I share with you the true story of an aspiring actress who went on to become the most beautiful woman in the world. A woman so gorgeous that moviegoers reportedly gasped when they saw her on the beautiful. big screen for the first time many years ago. Unfortunately, we didn't know how smart she was, or we would have gasped at her intellect as well, because her impact on the world we live in really is unexampled. So too was her impact on Mel Brooks, the subject of Chapter 1 in this book, and a guy who reappears here in Chapter 22, a guy who many people have called the funniest man

in the world. And when I say many, I include myself. And Chuck Klaus Meyer, the producer of this podcast, who helps me unpack the very serious question, what makes a funny thing funny? And with respect to comedy, where exactly is the line between smart and stupid? No one drew that line more deftly or more often than Mel Brooks, who understood that some weird combination of both, some combination of intelligence and silliness is almost always required to get the big laughs. What is that combination exactly? I have no idea. Why do some people hate the three stooges and other people love them? I don't know. Why are some people delighted by potty humor and some people deeply offended? It's beyond me. But I will say this. If you ever found yourself laughing

hysterically at the campfire scene in blazing saddles. You know the one, where the cowboys eat too many beans and fill the air with an unexpected symphony of flatulence. Well, you'll understand where I'm coming from. Yes, full disclosure, there is some farting in episode 200 and some singing and a lot of silliness and the kind of laughter that leads to weeping and snot bubbles and gasping and overall, an overall tone. and tenor, I think that some of you might dismiss as juvenile. I hope not, because there's also, I hope, a whiff of something else on the breeze, something intelligent, blowing ever so gently in your general direction.

That's what happens sometimes when old friends sit down to discuss the moments that made them laugh the hardest. It's episode 200, Smart Stupid, now with slightly more stupid, and it all starts right now. Do you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle.

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And while you're there, pick up their free business guide, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at NetSuite. dot com slash mike that's net sweet dot com net sweet dot slash chapter 22 the 25 million dollar kiss headwig was beautiful and married to a man she didn't love fritz was an arms merchant and deeply possessive of his trophy wife at their home in austria headwig was a fly on the wall at more than a few dinner parties listening quietly as important men discussed with her husband evolving technologies that would change the

complexion of modern warfare. Fritz's guest were intelligent and influential. Some were physicists, some were inventors, many were fascists, many were Nazis. Hedwig didn't care for fascists or Nazis. She didn't like them in her house or at her table, and she hated the fact that her husband was selling them weapons. And so, as one more dinner party approached, headwigs selected from her vast wardrobe the most glamorous evening gown that she could find. She adorned herself with every piece of expensive jewelry she owned. She smiled sweetly during the appetizer and listened attentively during the main course. Just before dessert, she went off to powder her nose. She never returned.

The next morning, a stunning woman arrived in Paris by train. After that, it was your basic Hollywood fairy tale. Hedwig, Ava Maria Keisler was discovered by the movie mogul Louis B. Mayor. A year later, she was starring opposite Clark Gable. By then, she had a new name to go with her new address in Hollywood. By 1941, she was widely regarded as the most beautiful woman in the woman in the world. the world. In fact, Hedwig was so gorgeous that she was deemed too beautiful to speak and was given very little dialogue on the big screen. Once, when asked to explain the secret of being glamorous,

Headwig said, that's easy. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid. But Hedwig wasn't stupid. Far from it. Among other things, she was an amateur inventor, a woman who spent most of her free time at home hunched over her drafting table. Her big idea was a thing she'd been tinkering with in response to the Germans who were targeting cruise ships in the Atlantic, murdering hundreds of civilians. Hedwig had read that the Allies were unable to sink German U-boats because the Germans had figured out how to jam the torpedoes radio frequencies. She recalled a scientist at one of those dinner parties in Vienna. He had been talking to Fritz about the untapped potential of radio waves in the context of modern warfare.

Now, Hedwig wondered, what if a single radio signal could hop randomly from one frequency to another? How would the Nazis block that? The question was ingenious, and so was the answer. She developed the technology, patented it, and offered it to the Navy free of charge. But the U.S. military had a hard time believing the most beautiful woman in the world had come up with the solution to a problem that they themselves had not been able to solve. The Navy wasn't interested in her idea. In fact, Hedwig was told that if she really wanted to help the war effort, she would need to use the assets for which she was best known. Headwig was disappointed, but she knew that she did have the assets in question, and she was eager to contribute to help in any way to win the war. So, to raise money for war bonds, she began selling kisses. In a single night, she raised $7 million, just by standing still and looking stupid.

Over time, she raised $25 million. In today's money, she raised $7 million. In today's money, she raised $7 million, just by standing still, just by standing still and looking stupid. that's more than $220 million. If the story had ended right there, it would still have made a good headline. The most beautiful girl in the world fights off Nazis with kisses. But Hedwig's story was far from over. During a very anxious week in 1962, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, her technology was finally employed, and it worked big time. headwig was given, no thanks or acknowledgement, nor did she ask for any. But let's be absolutely

clear about the enormity of the idea she had patented. Not only did radio hopping change the face of national security, it led directly to the development of our modern-day satellite communication system, and a handy bit of technology we know as Wi-Fi. Without her invention, I could have never researched her life at 37,000 feet and shared her story with you. The story of a beautiful girl who knew which assets mattered most. A movie star named Hetty Lamar. I'm 12 years old, sitting in a darkened theater with my 18-year-old cousin who has smuggled me into my first R-rated movie. On the screen, a group of cowboys are huddled around a campfire. They're finishing their evening meal when one of them farts.

I'm not sure how to react, and neither, it seems, are the adults around me. That sort of thing happened in the Boy Scouts all the time, but uninhibited farting on the big screen? It was so unexpected. Moments after the first fart,

another fart follows, and then another fart after that. Soon, all of the men around the campfire are farting, and I'm dying, laughing nervously at first, and then so much that it hurts. As the grown-ups around me begin to laugh too, my mirth escalates even further.

So does my cousins. The more the men fart, the harder we laugh. And the men don't stop farting. Soon, tears run down our faces, and I can feel the junior mince in my belly threatening a hasty exit. Grown-ups laughing at the sound of other grown-ups farting? This is simply unprecedented.

The movie was Blazing Saddles, and the first time I saw it, I laughed through the entire thing. I laughed when Alex Karras punched the horse. I laughed when Cleveon Little said, Where are all the white women at? I even laughed at jokes I didn't get. I very nearly peed myself when Headley Lamar, played to perfection by Harvey Corman, became more and more exasperated over people's tendency to call him Hetty. headly, he said, over and over again. Not Hetty. Headly. Why is this so funny? I have no idea. It just is. I ask my cousin, who Hetty Lamar is, but he's laughing too hard to answer. He laughs so hard, a snot bubble explodes from his left nostril, and that sends me into another spasm of uncontrollable

giggling. Before long, we're both on our hands and knees, gasping for breath, laughing ourselves sick for reasons we can't even articulate. And every time that we think we've recovered, Harvey Corman says the magic words that set us off again. Not Hedy. Headly. When I got home, I tell my father about this hysterical character, Hedley Lamar. Not Hedley, he says, Hedy. Wait, what? There's a real person called Hedy Lamar? Sure, he says. Hedy Lamar is the most beautiful woman in the world. Really, I said. Do you have a picture? No, my mother yells from the kitchen. Your father doesn't have a picture of Hetty Lamar.

My father turns back to his newspaper, neither confirming nor denying. What does she look like, I ask? She looks like your mother, he says, a little louder than necessary. Now go split some wood. You'll feel better. Out in the garden, axe in hand, I still have questions. Why don't I know who the most beautiful girl in the world is? How can I be 12 years old and still be so uninformed? Today, I'd Google her and see for myself,

but back then, Hetty's ingenious invention had not yet led to the development of Wi-Fi. So I had to wait until Monday when I could avail myself of the services of our county library. There, under a fog of disapproval emanating from the librarian who assisted me, I perused a stack of books about Hollywood starlets from days gone by. There she was, Hetty Lamar. Wow, she was indeed a looker, as my grandfather would say. Sure enough, the caption identified Hetty as the most beautiful woman in the world. It gave the date and the place of her birth.

But there was no mention of anything else, except for lists of the films she had appeared in, and the men she had dated. And so, aside from that random reference in blazing saddles, that was the only thing that I'd know about Hedy Lamar until I did Google her, 45 years later, at 37,000 feet. Only then did I learn about the person she'd really been, or at least the person the Internet says she was. Quick digression. My friend Alex is a wreck of a man, but one heck of a writer. the other day to see how this book was coming along. You tell me, I said, handing him a stack of pages. Alex claims to know what he's doing, and there's evidence to suggest he might be right. After reading

a couple of chapters, he stopped. If you do this right, he said, they'll come a time when your book starts talking to you. When that happens, you should listen. I didn't know what he was talking about. Fish don't fly. Books don't talk. Then again, maybe they do. So, I'm beginning to wonder if any of these stories are all the way finished. Consider the very first one in the book, the one about Mel Brooks. When I started it, I wanted to pay tribute to the man who'd made me laugh harder than I'd ever laughed before. With the help of Hetty Lamar's invention, I googled him and learned that once upon a time,

the man who wrote, directed, and starred in the funniest movie I'd ever seen, had climbed a utility pole in the Ardan, hooked up a loudspeaker, and played a song by a Jewish singer to a forest filled with Nazis. That struck me as a story worth sharing. Picture him up there, up at the top of that pole. The moon is out. The woods are full of Nazi sharpshooters, and there's Brooks. He might as well have a bull's eye on his back, and he's doing it all for a joke.

That's brave and brilliant and also dumb. Smart, stupid, like most of his movies. As I pictured the scene, I saw the same sensibility that informed every frame of blazing saddles, the movie that led me to Hetty Lamar. Googling her, thanks to Mel Brooks, I learned that this most beautiful woman in the world was also a brilliant inventor. That struck me as a story worth sharing. For a number of reasons, chief among them the undeniable fact that I wouldn't have been able

to write these stories without her invention. Maybe this was what Alex was talking about. Maybe here the book was talking back, and what it was telling me sounded a lot like, Keep Digging. And so I did. And late last night, I learned that Hetty Lamar sued Mel Brooks when Blazing Saddles came out.

She was upset that her name, or something close to it, was being used without her permission. I guess I can't really blame her. Heddy's first husband treated her like an object. The studios treated her like horse flesh. The U.S. government treated her like a punk. Maybe she'd had enough. Maybe the thought of people laughing at the mention of her name

or something close to it was too much to bear. Here's the kicker, though. Mel Brooks would have prevailed in court. In fact, he could have countersued Hetty and won. But guess what he did instead? He paid her. The funniest man in the world wrote a check to the most beautiful woman in the world because, as he put it, she's given us so much.

Pay her whatever she needs, Brooks said. Send her my love and tell her where I live. The interview is out there online. You can see it for yourself. Go ahead. Google it. I'll wait. Do do do do do do do.

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and it's a very interesting chapter because the Hedy Lamar episode is in fact episode number one. Correct. It's not the first one I wrote, but it was in the first tranche of stories that I wrote. and we decided, maybe you decided for whatever reason, that that should be episode zero zero one. Yeah. Do you remember why? Yes, because the story is slightly different in the podcast episode than it is in your chapter. I feel like you made some edits to the story, but the way it ended before was you mentioned

the fact that without Hedy Lamar, you wouldn't be able to use the device you're probably using right now to listen to this podcast. Correct. And I thought, oh, isn't that a clever way to start this thing off? You know, because we were new to the podcast world. We really hadn't no idea what we were doing. Correct. And I thought, oh, yeah, this is a good one to start with. Plus, it's just a, it's a great story, you know. But the idea that it was connected to Wi-Fi is what drew me to make it number one. Yeah. And you're right. Clever is the word we should ruminate on because really this was the part in the book where I was starting to feel terribly clever. You know, go ahead, Google it. I'll wait. I realized, you know what, I wasn't trying to be clever, but I was trying to acknowledge the reality of the two-screen experience that everybody has today, not just when they're watching TV, but when they're reading. I mean, I don't know about you, but people can sit there and read a book, you know, their smartphone is a foot away. And whether it's a word they haven't heard before or a set of facts they might want to confirm, it can all happen now in real time. And so, you know, I'm trying to sketch out the makings of another book and realizing that so much of what I think I might want to write about is motivated by video or footage or something that exists out there in the ether. And so the idea that anybody at any time can go look at a piece of video that's now a shared source material is a really fun way to think about how to write in terms of maybe providing a caption.

to that footage, right? So it all just, to me anyway, made perfect sense that the most beautiful woman in the world is somehow surprisingly linked to the funniest man in the world. Both of these people had such a huge impact on my life from a technical standpoint and just a joyful standpoint. And now here they are serendipitously and accidentally colliding with each other in a book that I couldn't decide whether would be an autobiography, or a biography, but turned out to be an accidental memoir.

So it all just suddenly felt like, oh, you know, click, click, click. A bunch of crap just lined up, and I thought that was cool. I think that should be the title of your next book, Accidental Memoir by Mike Rowe. I thought you were going to say click, click, click, which is just stupid. Yeah, no, I was veering off of the stupid answers and to one that I thought was terribly clever. But that'll learn me. But as we say in the chapter regarding Mel Brooks, stupid is a big part of this. Smart stupid, right?

The kind of movies he does. I wrote that down. I wanted to ask you about that because that's the first time that I have heard the term smart, stupid. It seems like a term that makes sense. I know exactly what it means. And in relation to Mel Brooks, it's like, wow, spot on because it is smart, but it's also stupid eighth grade smart. Well, for me, right? And I'm sure everybody is, everybody approaches comedy differently. And this isn't really so much an approach to comedy as it is an approach to balance. So like on dirty jobs, I never wanted it to be too earnest, even though I have some deeply held beliefs about the importance of work. And that show had a very real mission. I always tried to take the piss out of it when I could by being silly. And silly is just another word for stupid. And so, you know, channeling my inner eighth grader while at the same time trying to pay an honest tribute to people doing real work, that to me was the trick.

And so, you know, Brooks did it better than anybody because no matter how silly his comedies got, there was always just a big giant message just under the surface. And, you know, I had hoped in some way to do something similar with dirty jobs. And now, just to bring it back even to another level, Hedy Lamar was the first story we started to chunk out in six degrees, which if people don't know is a show on Discovery right now. So it just keeps coming back to underappreciated innovative talent, in this case, overshadowed by preternatural beauty, and juxtaposed with my own desire to be smart and silly at the same time, whether it's in dirty jobs, or six degrees or the way I heard it. In the end, Chuck, you're either laughing or you're not. And if you're not laughing, the chokes probably on you. Well, let me ask you about that expression, smart, stupid.

Did you, was that something that you had heard before? Or is that just, are those two words that you grouped up together? Honestly, as much as I'd like to say, I grouped them up. I think Alex did. Oh, really? Yeah. Alex, we've mentioned before. He helped assemble this book and was one of the early voices to point out the fact that if I did it right, we might actually be able to write a memoir that's also a mystery and a biography that's also an autobiography. And he was saying, when I read this to him the first time, he said, no, no, Brooks was always smart, but always stupid. And I was like, oh, well, those two things do actually kind of rhyme. Two sides of the same coin, maybe? So that's all I was, that's all I meant to say.

It's absolutely accurate in describing his sense of humor. But that's interesting about Alex. Alex also was the one who said that eventually the book would start to talk back to you, which you mentioned in this chapter. So how did the book start to talk back to you, particularly around here? Well, in every way. It made me remember the conversation with my dad after I had seen Blazing Saddles. Like when I wrote about Hedy Lamar, I wasn't in any way thinking about Mel Brooks.

And when I wrote the story about Mel Brooks, I wasn't in any way thinking about Hedy Lamar. But then when I got to chapter 22, I tell the story of Hedy and I realize, wait a minute, I've already told the story of Mel Brooks. And he's got this running gag through blazing saddles where Harvey Corman is constantly mistaken as Hedley. or he's head he's headly. Yeah. And everybody called it. Whatever it was. It was so conflated.

I was like, wait a second, that I think I'm supposed to say something about that. And what would I say about it? And then, of course, the big fat autobiographical beat hit me in the head, which was, I remember sitting in the Rosdale Public Library when I was 12 years old, looking through a big, thick picture book of famous Hollywood starlets and seeing Hedy Lamar described. as the most beautiful girl in the world, not a week after learning that this person existed through the character of Harvey Corman in blazing saddles written by Mel Brooks, who went by the name of Headley. And so, I mean, it's impossible to answer that question other than to say

that suddenly there are a bunch of dots on a table in front of you and somebody hands you a sharpie and says, connect them. What's really interesting to me, and, you know, kids can't appreciate this, But what you did in order to look her up. And in fact, the information that you got was so limited required you either getting on your bike and pedaling to, I don't know how you got to the road. I know where the Rosedale Library was. You know, and it was a heck of a walk from your house. So I would imagine you either got dropped off or you or you peddled over there. But it took a lot of effort to find something as opposed to just typing, who is Hetty Lamar into a device and hitting.

Enter. Which brings us back to go ahead, Google it. I'll wait. I'm not saying go ahead, get on your bike, ride into town, talk to a librarian, take the quasi-dirty soft porn book that you need to look at behind the stacks, open it up, look over your shoulder, make sure you're alone, and then cast your eyes upon what many believed was the most beautiful girl in the world. No, you can do it right now. Yes, you can. Yes, and she was a looker for sure. She was, though, but it's funny, isn't it? How tastes have changed a little. I mean, she's still staggering by any measure, but she was, what was the word they used to use back then?

Zoftig. Zoftig. Yes. Right? I used that word recently in San Diego, I believe, just to you. Yes, you did. Referring to a certain someone in the restaurant. But let's not talk about that.

Why did I bring that up? Well, I'll tell you why. because even though she was Zoftig by those Rubin-esque standards, we learned something in six degrees about Hetty Lamar that we don't learn in this book or in the podcast, which is that she was on a quest to augment her breasts. Right. And I was so surprised to learn that because she didn't seem to be lacking in that department in any of the photos that I saw. She was, as Hammerstein said, so famously broad, where abroad should be broad. And yet, also not mentioned in the story, but a huge part of the Six Degrees episode is her partner, George Antile. Yeah.

A musician who composed the ballet machinique, whose basic those player pianos that he used helped Hedy design the contraption that allowed the radar jamming to happen. So, you know, I mean, I don't know if it's interesting to people, but when we started this, I really wanted to keep each of these podcasts under six minutes. And this one was five minutes and 25 seconds. And so we had to leave some things out, but we don't do that in six degrees. And so what that means for the purpose is this conversation. I don't really know. It's just that we have to constantly decide. Look, we're deciding right now.

What goes in? What comes out? Do we really need to know that Hedy Lamar was insecure? about her breasts, no, but it is interesting that the most beautiful girl in the world would have that same concern, one shared by millions of women today, who weren't considered to be the most beautiful women in the world necessarily. Funny how it all goes around. Interesting. Yes. I remember when we shot six degrees and there's a scene where Algiers is playing in a movie theater and we see her, you know, and you mentioned that when audiences saw her for the first time, they gasped because she

is so beautiful. And in seeing her up on the big screen, because keep in mind, that's the first time I'd ever seen Hetty Lamar on a big screen because, well, I'm not a hundred years old. And I'm getting there, but I'm not there yet. And so I had never seen her on a big screen. I'd only seen her on a television. But my God, in Algiers in particular, that movie, wow, staggeringly beautiful. Right. I don't think anyone compares. I mean, certainly at the time, but I mean today, Hetty Lamar, to this day, you can look at her and just go, good God. But back to smart, stupid for a minute.

The U.S. Navy. All right. Now, the U.S. Navy is very smart. And they're engaged in the greatest conflict to ever be waged in the world. It's the Second World War and they've got a massive problem. But how stupid could they be to sit there and have Hetty Lamar. Mars, she, she and George Antile handed them, handed them the key to solving one of the greatest wartime challenges of all time.

And I simply couldn't process it. I believe the Navy's direct response was, and I quote, nope. If you haven't seen six degrees, folks, you need to watch this episode because Chuck plays the commander in the Navy who officially passes on the tech. that would have solved the radar jamming problem and ultimately led to Wi-Fi. It's one of your finest performances, Chuck, and you brought it all to life with just one word. Yeah, thank you. I was 30 pounds heavier then, so they had to cram me into that jacket like a Christmas ham. I was stuffed in there. You know what you were. You were zoffed.

I was zonting. Broad in all the places that a man can be, but shouldn't be broad. So, I mean, having just listened to it again, that whole Tile Grout chapter, to me, my favorite moment in it is just a selfish personal recollection, but it really was sitting in the theater laughing at that fart scene in Blazing Saddles. Smart, stupid, again, what grown man would put a scene like that in a movie? A movie, which, by the way, at the same time, took on race, racial overtones. Wow. I mean, you couldn't make blazing saddles today, period. That was one of the questions I was going to ask you. Well, I couldn't have made it ever.

But if Mel Brooks were still making movies today, there's not. I've heard him say it in half a dozen different interviews. Yeah, he's been saying it for years, actually. So, and it's only getting, he's only getting further and further away from a time when that movie could be made. But that, that was a, I mean, it was a, it was a funny movie. I think everybody found that movie funny. I don't think today's generation necessarily finds that movie funny.

I think you have to appreciate it in the time it was made. What do you think? I think today's generation, much of them would literally gasp. And not for the reasons people gasped when they saw Hedy Lamar. When Cleveon, little? Cleveland? When he yells, where all the white women at? Yeah.

I'm down for the count. Yeah. I mean, Brooks just didn't care. He was so honest about prejudice that he reduced it from evil to silly. He reduced it to stupid. That's what he did. He made prejudice stupid. Yes.

And that's why it was so good because it's not like you looked at the people who were using these prejudiced words as the smart people in the room. No, the heroes weren't using those words. It was the stupid people around them. And they were to be mocked. We knew they were stupid. He was telling us that. It's the same thing he did in the producers. No, no, no.

No, he wasn't telling us that. He was showing us that. Yes, yes. That's what made it. I mean, in the same way, Clevon Little is impeccably handsome. Oh, yeah. Well-dressed. It's like a Gucci saddlebag.

He's sophisticated. He's world-weary, right? You don't have to say anything. He just did so much optically with that. Oh, his eyebrows, you know, where he was commenting on the racists around him with just a raised eyebrow. And Gene Wilder, too. That's right. I mean, Brooks gives a hopeless drunk, essentially, the sophistication and the understanding and the only one in the movie who's truly colorblind.

Yeah. Right? Is the Waco kid. You know, he was so good and it is still. so good at at making heroes giving heroes feet of clay and giving villains something charming right and just never never making one thing the only thing smart and stupid all of the time in all ways and of course back to the book that that's why man i'd like to take credit for it i was about to say that's why i wanted to write the story that i wrote about mel brooks and the ardan but it wasn't i just

wanted to write that story because I like Mel Brooks. But when later, really later you think about, what does that act really mean? That business of climbing a utility pole in a forest filled with Nazis, knowing you're a target, just to Jerry Rigg, a loudspeaker to play an Al Jolson song for a laugh. Just for a laugh. He just wanted to get a laugh out of his buddies and maybe raise their spirits. And he risked everything to do it. I mean, if that's not heroic, what is? Do do do do do do do do do. My guest today, Tom Albanyce, is an American giant, and I'll tell you why.

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You know, when I think of Mel Brooks, of course, I also think of when you and I worked at the United Artist movie theaters in Golden Ring Mall and the movie that played there, what was that movie called, Mike. Oh, well, one of the first ones we saw would have been the history of the world, part one. Part one. There was never a part two, but I swear. And you're right, man. There were moments in that movie where I lost it just as surely as I did when I was 12 around that fart scene with the campfire in Blazing Saddles. You remember the Inquisition? Oh, yeah. I could sing it right now. Do it. The Inquisition. Let's begin. The Inquisition. Look out Sin. We've got a mission to convert the Jews.

We're going to teach them wrong from right. We're going to make them see the light. We've got an offer that they can't refuse, that the Jews just can't refuse. Confess, don't be boring. Say yes, don't be dull. What about the hate Torquemata? What do you say?

I just got back from the Olad de Fay. The Orlando Defei, what's the order to say? It's what you shouldn't to do, but you do anyway. Jesus, man. I mean, just. I had never heard of the Spanish Inquisition at that point in my life. Gasson, Gasson. Pardon me, you're pissing on my shoe.

Remember? The piss boy? You look like the piss boy. Yeah? And you look like a buggin' a shit. Oh, man. And then we were still working there when the history of the world part two came out. No, that never came out. There was no history of the world part two. Are you sure? Because I remember it vividly.

No. Google it. I'll wait. Oh, no. There's no history of the world part two. It never came out. There was no history of the world part two. It was only history of the world part one. That was part one. That was part one. That was part one. That was part one. I thought it was just so funny that they ultimately went back and said, you know what? We might as well make one. That was hysterical. Well, let me, I'm Googling it right now. I'll Google it right now. I'll hold on a second. I'll get Siri. History of the World Part 2.

Mm-hmm. No. History of the World Part 1. When I Google History of the World Part 2, it doesn't come up. Only part 1. Oh, God, so good. Isn't that funny? I completely forgot about that.

You thought there was a part 2. I really did because part 1 just went on and on and on. Jesus, that was funny. What else was in there? Well, Jews in space was brilliant. We're Jews out in space. Flying along, protecting the Hebrew rays. Yes.

Right? Yes. Well, you know, for me, the hardest I've ever laughed in my life has been with you. Now, it's tough to be 12 years old with my cousin in that dark in theater. but the feeling of really losing control, right? I mean, I want to talk about two moments, you know, when you lose it, right? It's right before you cross the line and right after you cross the line.

And in that moment, there's still hope to try and get your crap together and not lose it. But of course, it, you know, it's hopeless. It's gone. Do you remember the Mary Tyler Moore episode when Chuckles the clown dies? Oh, yeah. And they all, and they can't. It's a forbidden laughter. Yeah.

Right. Right. Everyone's laughing through the whole thing except Mary Tyler Moore, who's appalled by everyone's terrible behavior. And then they finally get to the funeral during the eulogy and everybody else has it together. And Mary loses it. Right.

Right. And that, when I saw that episode of Mary Tyler Moore, that made me think, too, of the time I lost it in the theater. Now, there was nothing inappropriate about laughing hard at a comedy. I had just never laughed that hard up until that point in my life. And I had never been to a place before where I couldn't stop laughing, you know, like long after the farting scene ended and the movie just kept playing, everything was as funny as that. I just literally laughed through the whole movie because I crossed into that weird space, that delirium and you can't breathe. and your stomach hurts. Yeah, I know. I know that. Can you think of an example of a time when the two of us,

because I remember laughing hysterically with you many times, but can you think of a specific circumstance and what we laughed at? Yeah, too. Oh. One super recent. Yes. I know that. Actually, that didn't involve you. That involved me and some vodka. And it was the last scene we shot in an episode of Six Degrees where you were playing Richard Nixon. Yes. And in fact, it struck me as so funny. I posted it on Facebook a couple months ago when the series premiered. But yeah, we replaced your drink with real vodka. And the most clever thing, the reason that that ruse worked so well is that we had shot two takes with water in the martini glass. I'm literally chewing a dog biscuit as well. And so, I do need a bit of water. It's a literal, it's a literal dog biscuit. They were not prop. They were not prop dog biscuits, you know. We're on a green screen. Chuck's in the Oval Office. He's playing Richard Nixon, full makeup, hair slicked back and doing a pretty good impersonation. Sock it to me.

And we're doing a beat where we point out that Nixon kept dog biscuits on his desk and from time to time ate them, apparently, according to some sources. And we're trying to shoot this scene. And I'm, I also point out that Nixon enjoyed a martini or two, typically later in the day. So Chuck is drinking the martini and eating dog biscuits as I'm in the foreground talking. And on the third take, Adam swapped out the water with vodka. You took a big slug, and I thought your head was going to come off. Yeah. And the greatest thing he did, too, was like, hey, Chuck, when you on this take, really sell that, man, really down that martini, you know. I'm like, I got it. I got it. No problem.

Well, see, but what killed me wasn't just your reaction to it. It was the five or ten minutes leading up to it. I knew it was coming. And it was very, very late in the day. And I've been sipping real vodka for the last half hour because I had a very difficult day. I had a lot of stuff I had to memorize in that show and my brain was fried. But I knew that you were going to throw all that back down your well-muscled throat completely unawares. And it was already funny before it happened. And I think that's what happens with some, you know, like when I go see a Mel Brooks movie today,

I know it's going to be funny before I even see it. So I'm ready to laugh. I was ready to laugh in that moment. And I laughed for maybe 10 minutes afterwards. Didn't think I was going to get it back. I didn't completely cross the line. But that's what I meant before. I came right up to it and I teetered on it.

Right. And I had to get it back. Otherwise, it would have been Tim Conway and Harvey Corman in the Carol Burnett show. Yeah. And, you know, that stuff's fun to watch. But it's really scary as a performer when you really, really truly lose it. Yeah. It doesn't matter how professional you want to be.

You can't get that back. Yeah. Well, that whole clip that we put over the credits, I think is about a minute long. But as I recall, it was a good eight or ten minutes that I just would. was riffing and that you were laughing. I was fans of knees. You were, you, you were just knee slapping and just could not, could not reel it in. And of course, you know what this is like, because I've seen you do this to other people.

You've done it to my sister, my, my mother, you've done it to me where you don't let up on a joke. You keep, you keep pushing those buttons because you see, it's just, it's like hitting the guy when he's down, you know, you just keep pummeling with the comedy. And, you know, and somebody's going to either pee their pants or throw up. Which are both good goals and great reactions. But, you know, since you brought her up, your mother, rest her soul, and your sister, both. Those women, they're, I never enjoyed making anybody laugh more than Agnes and Terry. They were, I mean, they were funny people in their own right, but their, their brand of genius was they, they were the perfect audience.

Always. You know, they just appreciated humor. You know, even it was ham-fisted and juvenile and stupid sometimes. You and I crack them up all the time. And I do remember, I remember snot bubbles coming out of your sister's nose. I remember your mom making snorting sounds and rolling around and holding her belly. Tears, tears, just tears. Just weird, like, real tears, like, not just rolling down her face, but like springing out of her eyes.

That woman laughed so hard, she wept. And not just, you're right, it just makes you want to just keep it going. Yeah, and you did. Yeah. The other one I remember, dude, was in a nursing home. Oh, yes. And this is more like the chuckles, the clown thing, because this was not cool. It was me and you and Bobby and Mike Price.

And we were singing in a barbershop quartet. We were just barely out of high. I don't even know that we were at a high school. I don't think we were. We were 17 and 18 years old, respectively. We were in a barbershop quartet called the Clipper 4. And we were at that point in our life where we thought we were just so charming and delightful that anybody would be thrilled to listen to us seeing anything anywhere.

So, you know, we would burst in a song and restaurants, stairwells. It didn't matter. And we finally got a paying gig. I think they paid us 10 or 20 bucks. to come to, do you remember where it was? Was it Stella Maris by any chance? No, I have no recollection of the nursing home, but it was, it was God's waiting room and it was, it was weird. I almost hesitate to tell the story because it is inappropriate, but we come this far. We're singing in a common room in a nursing home. And Chuck's right, it was God's waiting

room. There were probably 30 or 40 people in there. And they were all somewhere between 80 and 150. And they were sitting there. Some of them were, you know, present and watching and smiling. Some of them would sing along. And we were singing old songs like, my mother's pearls. My little Margie. Does your mother know you're out, Cecilia? Remember that one? Fairly. Does your mother know you're out, Cecilia? Yeah, does she know that I'm about to steal you? Oh my, when I look into your eyes, something tells me you and I should get together.

Yeah, I know this. Yeah, I thought that was the chorus song. I don't remember us singing it in the court. No, we sang that. We sang, yes, we have no bananas. Oh, my gosh, did we ever? Yes, okay. We basically knew eight songs, you know, eight or nine songs.

and we would go sing these songs for anybody, whether you paid us or not, but the nursing home paid us. And they brought in, God bless them, these sweet old people, and they loved us. They couldn't clap a lot because they were arthritic and their hands were gnarled and old, but they loved it. I'd say probably around the fourth or fifth song, a nurse pushed an elderly gentleman who Mel Brooks would describe probably as the oldest man in the world, right? to a thousand-year-old man.

A thousand-year-old man, yeah. Impossible to know how old this gentleman was, but he was ancient, and he was either asleep or in a coma. Or, yeah, just frozen. He was just absolutely still, didn't move a lick through the whole thing. Right. Eyes weren't open. Also, of note, an IV that was next to his wheelchair

and some other devices that involve tubes that went into the opening of his pajamas, into parts unknown. He was hooked up to machines, devices, and tubes. He was very old, and he was about three feet in front of us, where he sat for about three or four more songs. And when we got to the encore, which of course, you remember the song, of course,

but why on earth would you sing this song in a nursing home? Because it's the only song we knew that we hadn't sung. And every Tuesday night at the course of the Chesape, where we spent huge chunks of our misspent youth, they concluded by singing this song, which was, Nearer My God to Thee. Nearer My God to Thee. Was ever a title more accurate than in that nursing home? Yeah.

Now, do you remember if we sang two or three verses? I think only two, but I don't remember. So the first verse, I mean, you all know the song, Nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee, even though it be across that raises thee. still all my song shall be near my God to thee. Nearer my God to thee. So it occurs to us, Chuck and I'm sure Mike and Bobby too, about halfway through, we're singing nearer my God to a room full of people who are truly nearer to their God

than they've ever been. I mean, it really was Heaven's waiting room. And no one nearer, of course, than the man who has been unconscious in front of us for the last 10, 15 minutes. Well, we get to the second verse, which goes, There, Let My Way appear, steps unto heaven. And you were singing a solo.

You were singing that, and the rest of us were going, ooh, behind you. And it goes, There, let my way appear, steps unto heaven. And right there, during the breath, the old man in the wheelchair exploded. And when I say exploded, I'm overstating it just a little bit. Technically, what he did was he sneezed. He snapped out of his unconscious state and he sneezed. And Chuck, when you sneeze, the sound you make, I mean, anybody who works in our office with-

Yeah, scare the hell out of them. It's a loud, so go ahead and imitate. the sound you make sneezes. Right, it's that. Now, imagine that sound coming out of that old man with something about the size of a large Chesapeake Bay oyster. Yeah. Flying out of his mouth. Yeah. And landing maybe a foot from your patent leather loafers. Correct. To call this thing phleg or snot, it just doesn't do the job. Like, I'm pretty sure it hit the floor and slid a little bit. Yeah, it rolled. I mean, if you took like a, the biggest oyster you've ever seen, literally, and,

and threw it on the ground, it would move after it hit. It would slide. And that's what this did. A frisbee-sized chunk of gray mucus that appeared to have its own circulatory system, slid across the floor, into your shoes, man. And it's just impossible to know where to put that. Now, within a second after the old man exploded, sending this projectile flying up from his lungs, he went back to sleep. Exact same position. Yeah. Just like, like, he, he seemed like he might have died as a result

of this explosion. While we're singing near my God to thee, Now, that brings us to the moment, to the point of no return. We all reacted to it, but quickly recovered and kept singing. And we might have gotten through the song, except for the fact that the inescapable, unavoidable, incontrovertible truth of the moment was right in front of us on the floor, this gray mass of just awful stuff. And so I started to laugh and, you know, I'm singing the bass part, ooh, you're right? Like you're making that ooh sound, like my lips are pursed.

And Bobby and Mike are doing the same thing. And it's very hard to make a make an ooh sound when you're singing while you're laughing. In fact, it's impossible. So we just started to laugh and snort and giggle and you were out there trying to sing that solo. So hard. I don't. I was going to say I don't know how you did it but I actually don't remember if you did it

I didn't do it I mean I would it was more like Even though in me It was you know That raised I mean that's the way it was dude And if look the way I remember it I think it happened at the end of the first verse

Because the way I recall it was You know with this big crescendo Still all my songs shall be needs are my God to thee. And in that moment, well, we took an extra long beat because in that moment we had choreography where we lifted our hands and put them on the shoulder of the next guy next to us. So it was like this, and then there's this slow raise and touched the hand. And then it was near.

Oh, my God. And what we normally. did was like look at each other when we did that and that was the worst. Yeah, you can. Yeah, I felt ashamed at the same time as I've just exhausted by that level of laughter. They just wheeled him out. Everybody kind of smiled and nodded and we just left. We couldn't get out of their fast enough. That was our last song. We're not going to sing another one. We're gone. I don't even think we collected the 20 bucks. Keep you 30 bucks. All right. Exactly. You're lousy 20 bucks,

give it to the janitor or who's ever got to clean this mess up. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show

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Oh, it was so horrible. Oh, my gosh. No, that's a good one. The one that I remember, too, was when my uncle Harold died. And we went to, now see, I was raised Catholic. You were raised Protestant. So the Lord's Prayer for me ended, you know, a little bit before it ended for you. Right?

Like the whole for thine is the kingdom and the glory forever and ever. Amen. We never, we never learned that part in the Catholic church. And so we were at a Catholic funeral at the gravesite standing there. And the priest, you know, says, you know, for the prayer, our father, who art in heaven. And of course, we're, you know, we're not shy. Who art in heaven? Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's daily bread. forgive us our trespasses and those trespass again lead us not a temptation, deliverers from evil. And that's where it ends. And you and I, yeah, well, but I was so used to

us performing in Protestant churches, I knew the rest as well. So the two of us just for thine is the kingdom and the power and the priest has now gone on. And we just sort of realized that we were like a half a sentence in forever and ever. And we just kind of looked down and I was like, oh, gosh, how did that happen?

You know, and of course, I look over at you and I see both of your shoulders just going up and down because you're laughing so hard. And my uncle Walter, God bless his soul, man. He came over and I'm pretty sure he whacked us both. He did. But he was like, what is wrong with you guy? Because he's crying. It's our uncle Harold. I was like, I couldn't stop it.

I didn't want to laugh, but I just couldn't stop it. Yeah. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the, never mind. Oh, yeah. Sorry. You were saying. Go on, father. Yes. So what's it all mean, man? I mean, it's, what did I say earlier? If you're not laughing the jokes on you, I guess like anything else, you can go too far with it. And God knows we have. But looking back, that's the kind of crap we'll be laughing about. hopefully in 30 years if we make it. I'll never forget them.

Yeah. And hopefully there'll be more. I mean, look, that Nixon thing, that was just not even a year ago. Hopefully there will be more. If you haven't seen six degrees, it is out there. I think it's airing now Sunday nights on the Discovery Channel. And of course, it's on Discovery Plus. If you're all pissed off about the fact that Discovery Plus costs $4,000, 99 with ads or 699 without ads. Look, it's not really up to me. I've got your emails. I've

got your posts on Facebook. The world's changing, folks. You know, three, four years from now, man, I think it's, I think it's all going to be over the top. Honestly, I don't have the answers for you, but the world is changing and content's changing. Six degrees and this podcast and just about everything else, you know. I mean, go ahead, Google it. I'll wait. but I don't know what you're going to find. I just think it's going to be a totally different world in three or four years. And, you know, I'm just happy to be a part of it now where we can still get content out there. You know, dirty jobs still in production right now.

You didn't ask me about that. What a week I had this week, dude. Oh, my God. Tell me about your week. Well, you were there at the first one. You were in San Diego. You saw it. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, I was there. I was there in San Diego. Yeah. I might even make the cut. Who knows? You might. We did a story in San Diego about a thing called a cut suit, which is basically picture of fat suit, except it's filled with all the organs in a body. Fake organs, but they look real and they function. They bleed and they're the same shape and size and stuff. Yeah, special

operations. They make organs that go inside suits and the suits have their own blood supply. And it's a very realistic thing designed to help train medics in combat situations with how to deal with catastrophic injuries. Anyway, I went into an operating room and took a spleen out of a guy with a real doctor using one of these cut suits. And I posted the picture on Facebook. And for the first time, I got censored by Facebook. Yes. Yes. It was amazing. They blurred the picture. It was so horrible. But of course it wasn't real, but man, it looked real. You were there. How real did it look to you?

It looked incredibly real. I was actually up above you. They had like an observation deck that you could look down on it. And it was fascinating. I mean, I really was. That doctor was awesome. He was a good teacher. And, you know, this is going to change modern medicine.

This is going to make people better doctors before they start cutting people up. it's probably even better than working on a cadaver. Oh, it's much better. You know, because cadavers don't bleed. And once things start bleeding, right? Yeah. That's when it gets real. And that's when the clock starts ticking and the pressure really kicks in.

Yeah. They say the guy who invented this, the doctor said he believes that this cut suit could have the same impact on the medical community as the flight simulators had on. training pilots, which is transformational, you know. But I mentioned it's so real. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, I insist. Go ahead. I think you did. Well, you know what I did. Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry that I lied to you just now. I totally meant to interrupt you. Of course you did. Because I wanted to say that what's what makes it amazing is that it's not just a blob of organs on a table. It's strapped to a real live living person.

Ricky was the guy who was there, right? He was a guy and he's lying there. And one of the things I noticed is that, of course, he's breathing. So it's moving up and down. Yeah. Like it would if a real person were there, because Ricky, in fact, is a real person. Right. But you're working on organs that are moving with his breath.

And that to me was like, wow, this is so realistic. That's why they blurred it. Well, the reason I brought it up is because from your vantage point, you didn't you didn't see quite what I saw and you didn't hear quite what I heard but you know dirty jobs is a lighthearted show anybody who watches it knows if there's an opportunity for a laugh or a joke I'll I'll make one usually at my own expense but we were learning something really important and you know I've got this fake spleen in one hand and I'm trying to stop you know blood bleeding from the other and the doctor is making a really important point when Ricky farts.

I did not hear that. It wasn't a loud fart, but it was a fart, right? And, you know, like there's a, Fred King was our teacher, you know, we've talked about him on the podcast, but Fres had a whole category of farts, remember? Yeah, the different kinds, yeah. Fizz, Fazz, putt, anti-poot. Like the poop was a The anti-poop was a You know

Fizz was a FAS And then there was just a fart Which is straight up And then there was a A squeeze through Like the squeeze through was Right Kind of wound up on you

And then ultimately It was the tear ass And the tear ass was that Just whammo Well Ricky Ricky laid out a classic somewhere between a poop and a fart. It was just a quick, like that. And so I've got, you know, I've got a busted aorta in one hand and a spleen in the other

and a very earnest doctor telling me how we're going to change lives. And this guy just quietly lets one go. And so I couldn't acknowledge it. I couldn't do anything. I just had to sit there, you know, and let the scene play out. And, you know, I didn't get close to the point of no return. I didn't even acknowledge it because I knew if I would have. I probably would have looked up and seen you.

Crazy laughter would have happened. And it just, I just never would have got it back. But the point is, dirty jobs is back. I don't know when it's going to debut. That's the point. That's the point. Okay. It was kind of a long run for a short slide.

Look, there is no point, people. All right? I'm just trying to do a podcast for an hour now. Talk with my old buddy about some of the hardest types you ever laughed. I'll tell you what's funny when you're conducting surgery in the patient farts and you laugh so hard you have to leave the operating. I nearly dropped a spleen. Tell them where they can get the book. Let's end this thing.

The book can be got or downloaded, I think, is the official term, Chuck. No, got, you can go either or it's downloaded or got. You can go got my book wherever you download books or listen to the audio version. That'll cost you money. On the other hand, if you like to listen to it for free, this is the place to come. Every week, we unpack a chapter just as we have done. Six degrees we mentioned available on Discovery Plus and the Discovery Channel. Dirty jobs I mentioned going to be coming back in the next couple of months.

Good, clean fun for the whole family. Now with farting in it, but not as. much as there has been in the past. You remember the old episode in the Wenatchie Dam when Doug farted? I was there. I wasn't in the dam, but that's the episode that I came up there. Actually, as I recall, I was with the B team and we were getting, I was in a helicopter getting a B-roll. Yeah, yep. Yeah. We were in a turbine, me and Doug and Barski and the whole gang, Troy, all of us jammed up like pretzels. We had been down there for a half hour. And this is smart, stupid. This is where we land the plane. It was a smart, stupid moment. I'm listening to an engineer

describe the basics of hydroelectric power as we are facilitating a repair on a critical piece of machinery when my cameraman farts. Now, we're sitting in the mud, and it was loud enough to hear, and you just have to decide in that moment, are you going to acknowledge it or not? And of course, I acknowledge it, at which point, Barski farted. And then I farted. And then the whole thing, suddenly the whole, it's the campfire scene in blazing saddles, just like that. Good grief. Now that I think about it, man, maybe that's what this whole life is about. Maybe I'm just constantly trying to find a moment.

To fart? Well, I can do that anytime. Almost at will. Let's leave Will out of it. Yes. But I mean, no, no, those moments where you're just confronted with something important. and something silly, something big and something small, a little micro, a little macro, and you get to walk the knife's edge of teetering and either falling into the abysive delirium

or saving yourself and keeping the train on the rails and not quite ever knowing which one it's going to be. That's the fun of it, man. Well, listen, I think that's a good place to leave it. And I would say that as a listener, if you have enjoyed Mike's description of all the various kinds of farts, please. And you enjoyed the serenading from History of the World Part 1. Please go to wherever you download your podcasts and give us a five-star review. Tell us what you think. We'd really appreciate it.

Even if we don't deserve it, folks. Especially if we don't deserve it. Anything else, Mike? No, I'll talk at you next week.