The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 201: Everybody Pees in the Pool

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

A famous athlete takes great pains to conceal his true identity from millions of fans. Then, Mike welcomes Paul Kelley back to the podcast, to discuss a series of topics too disparate and strange to articulate in a two sentence description.

Start the spring season off right with a new pair of Toccova's Western boots. Hand-crafted and over 200 steps from genuine leather, they're built to last and feel broken in the moment you put them on. From cowhide to exotic leathers, Toccovus blends timeless style with all-day comfort. Pair them with premium denim, Western shirts, and accessories for an effortless, polished look. Shop quality Western goods in store or online at Toccovus.com. Hey guys, it's Mike Row and this is episode number 201 of the way I heard it. It's called Everybody Pees in the Pool. Everybody Peas in the Pool.

It features a conversation that goes completely off the rails in a totally delightful way. When my guest admits, proudly, in fact, to not even bothering to listen to the chapter that I invited him onto this podcast to discuss. Now, normally, I would take umbrage at such a wanton disson. display of unapologetic indifference to the task at hand. But when your guest is smarter than you and wiser than you, and considerably older than you, it's best just to roll with the punches. And nobody punches through the all-too-publicable tabulum of podcast landia, like my old friend Paul Kelly, who is back by popular demand to wax eloquent on all things wise and wonderful. Paul made an appearance here a few months ago when I invited him on to discuss our very unusual

and very instructive years on the graveyard shift at the QVC cable shopping channel. That conversation triggered thousands of requests for more of Paul Kelly's unique brand of folk wisdom and storytelling acumen. Well, since today's chapter also involves my halcyon days of shameless pluggery in the home shopping industry, I invited Paul back to continue our circuitous journey down memory lane while discussing the true story of a man who took great pains to hide his true identity, even as he revolutionized, America's favorite pastime. Paul Kelly, however, did not want to be bound by the details of the chapter

you're about to listen to, preferring instead to allow the conversation to go, in his words, wherever the conversation wanted to. And where it went is a weird mix of twists and turns that include a camel ride, an intimate swim with naked twins, a fight with a grizzly bear, the pros and cons of getting hit in the face with a pie, and the sad fact that everyone has probably peed in a swimming pool, including you, gentle listener. We conclude with a blast of Socratic wisdom and a bit of syllogistic analysis that leads us to the single most important cosmic truth that determines our ultimate happiness. It's the very same truth, coincidentally.

that informs the story you're about to hear, the very same story that Paul Kelly could not be bothered to listen to, but nevertheless, comments upon with serendipitous brilliance. This, of course, is precisely what you'd expect from a man with a Ph.D., an American vaudeville and burlesque comedy, one of several advanced degrees held by my old friend and my favorite polymath. It's true. So too is the story you're about to hear. And it all starts right now. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources?

If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do. It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse. and it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times over by helping countless employers get through the hiring process

faster and more effectively than ever before. And now they have a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, the most passionate, and the most qualified candidates first. This is a huge time saver, hours and hours of save time. and it helps people like me find the people who can function in a non-traditional work environment like microworks. In other words, ZipRecruiter works for me, and they'll probably work for you too. Post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash row.

And watch what happens. Odds are you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. Chapter 23, how the game was played. Saul Venzo had pitched himself into a jam. After eight scoreless innings, he'd begun the ninth by giving up two hits and a walk.

Now the bases were loaded with no outs, and Saul was cursing the umpire over a ball that should have been a strike. Putta Siega! In those days, you could call the umpire a blind, whore. That's how the game was played. Saul stepped off the mound, grabbed a handful of dirt, and twisted the baseball between his giant hands. In the stands, his handicapped nephew watched his every move. Saul caught his nephew's eye and gave him a wink. No problemo. Then he turned his attention

to the visitor's dugout, where the members of the opposing team were shouting encouragement at their batter. Wait for your pitch, Alejandro. He's got nothing. He's got nothing. little man, little arm. But there was nothing little about the six-foot-five-inch pitcher. Everything about Saul was big, including his ego. Ora, Saul yelled.

The umpire raised both hands and called time. Saul's nephew watched his uncle stroll toward the opposing dugout and address the now silent players. Five dollars says I end this game without giving up a single run. Any takers? In those days, in the minor leagues, you could make friendly wagers.

That's how the game was played. The men on the opposing team weren't flush with cash. Like Saul, they were all migrant workers, but the odds were too good to resist. They pulled their money. They made their wager, and then they watched in horror as Saul struck out the side. Final score, Santa Barbara Merchants won, Oxnard aces, nothing. It was one of the many moments that Saul's nephew would never forget, maybe not as dramatic as the exhibition game in which his uncle had struck out Babe Ruth, or the time he'd pitched 19 consecutive innings in a legendary duel against the minor league team from Los Angeles, but memorable, nonetheless, because the events of that day gave the boy a close look at the very qualities he'd need to shape his own career, a mix of raw talent, supreme confidence, and boundless machismo.

Many years later, after setting records that remain unbroken to this day, Saul's nephew would recall the long driveway on Chino Street, where his uncle had shown him his 90-mile-an-hour fastball, up close and personal. Saul was not the kind of uncle who'd let you win just to build up your confidence, nor was he inclined to cut you any slack just because you were born with certain disadvantages. No, Saul van Zor was the uncle who teased and taunted, the uncle who sent you home in tears and dared you to come back for more if you had the Cajonis. In those days, there were no participation trophies. That is how the game was played. Saul's nephew liked to come

to Chino Street because there no one cared about his hands. handicap. There, a kid like him could learn to hit a major league fastball. There, a kid like him could learn how to be a man. Thanks to the things that his uncle had taught him, Saul's nephew was drafted to a minor league team straight out of high school. By the time he was 21, he was playing in the majors. By the end of his rookie year, everyone was talking about the Latin legend, a baseball prodigy who'd hit 327 with 31 home runs and a league leading 145 RBIs. Well, sort of. The stats are correct.

The chatter was exceedingly complimentary, but nobody was talking about the Latin legend because no one knew that Saul's nephew was Hispanic. You see, the boy's mother had married a gringo. The boy had inherited his father's complexion along with his distinctly American name. And in 1939, eight years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, that was a very handy thing. Handy, because guys like Saul and his nephew were handicapped by their ethnicity. The Negro League was a thing in those days, and the Mexicans, they had a league of their own. as well. In those days, that's how the game was played. Make no mistake, Saul's nephew knew how to play

that game. He concealed his handicap for his entire career, and when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1966, he acknowledged all of his coaches from high school on up to the majors. He acknowledged his manager, along with the owner of the Red Sox. His teammates and all the sports writers who'd voted for him. The only name he didn't mention was the name of the man whose ethnicity would have revealed his own, that of his Mexican uncle, the man who had taught him how to play the game. It's hard to know how to feel about that. Some people say that if Saul's nephew had embraced his handicap, he might have paved the way for other Mexican-American players. Others say that doing so would have kept him out of the majors, dooming him to a career

as obscure as his uncles had been. I guess we'll never know. But this much we do know, 36 years after his election into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the 83-year-old left fielder, who'd kept his Mexican heritage a secret, became the first inductee into the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame, a 17-time All-Star, the last man to bat over 400, the greatest hitter of all time, in fact. That was Saul Van Zor's nephew, a devastating athlete with Mexican roots who'd concealed his true heritage throughout his career. The great baseball player you know as Ted Williams. I got to meet Ted Williams once the night before QVC fired me for the third and final time. I didn't actually interview him.

Dan Wheeler was the go-to host for anything baseball related. Celebrities didn't appear on the graveyard shift, but I came in early that night to watch from the green room and hopefully shake the man's hand after the show. It was a good show. Wheeler asked Williams how he'd do batting against modern-day pitching grates. I don't know, Williams said. Pitchers today are throwing at a whole other level. I guess maybe I'd hit 270? Maybe 275? Dan was aghast. Two-70? No way. You? The greatest hitter who ever lived? Well, William said, you got to remember. I'm 73 years old. Mickey Mantle called in. Just to chat. Ted talked to him as though they were on

opposite sides of a crowded bar. Hey, Mick, how they hanging? I stopped by your restaurant a few months ago. You weren't there. Had a pretty good steak, though. I could hear screams from the audio booth. Dan Wheeler fell off his chair as baseball fans across the nation lurched for the volume buttons on their remotes. Afterward, Ted came up to the green room. He looked tired, a bit pale. Nice job, Mr. Williams, I said. You're a natural. Ted Williams smiled, sort of. Then he glanced at the monitor where Dan Wheeler was segueing into his upcoming hour of plus-sized fashions. Hey, ladies, let's say you're going on a cruise. Thanks. William said, but there is nothing natural about any of this.

You want to see something unnatural? Stick around until three in the morning, I said. I've got an hour of collectible dolls coming up. You're shitting me, Williams said. No, sir, I don't joke about collectible dolls. Williams looked at me like I was an umpire who'd just blown a call. Seriously, he said, people really collect dolls? People collect everything, Mr. Williams.

Maybe I'll watch from my hotel room, he said. Nothing unnatural about that, I told him. Williams laughed, and in that instant, I saw the great athlete for who he was, a mortal man who had come to QVC for the same reason I had. He'd come for the money. This was back in 1993. I thought about money a lot in those days, specifically about how nice it was to finally have some. I'd always sensed that the I'd always sensed that the ice.

at QVC was thin beneath my feet, so I had saved every penny, knowing my next paycheck could be my last. Living rent-free at Georgia Farm had been a big help. My father's parsimony, which I had inherited, had instilled in me a pathological fear of debt, neither a borrower nor a lender be and all that. And so, with the help of my trusted financial advisor, a man I'd come to think of as my friend, I had managed to accumulate a tidy nest egg. But meeting Ted Williams made me wonder how big a nest egg I'd need. If the greatest hitter of all time had to drag his ass to Westchester, Pennsylvania, to hawk autographed baseballs on a home shopping network,

what would I be doing when I was his age? That troubling question became more acute the next day when I learned that QVC no longer required my services. Apparently, my interactions the night before with a shapely Victorian lady named Rebecca had crossed a line. When I got the news, I didn't panic or think about my future. I thought about Ted Williams. Had he watched my final moments on air from the comfort of his hotel room? Had he been sipping a brandy as I spilled my guts to that collectible doll,

sharing with her my disappointment with past girlfriends, along with the thousand natural shocks that flesh his heir to. Had he laughed when I wondered aloud if a guy like me would have a shot with a doll like her? I sure hope so. I hope Ted Williams doubled over when I held Rebecca like a microphone and sang I won't send roses into her pretty pinched porcelain face. I like to picture him laughing and snorting and wondering out loud to no one in particular.

Are you shitting me before settling back in bed to sleep and perchance to dream? Now that would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. Duh do do do do do do. Well, are 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. The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid. AI is here to stay. And every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at netseweet.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived. yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. With NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or CLAWD or chat, GPT, whatever else is out there, to connect to your actual business data,

all of it, and automate all of those tiresome, time-sucking, sole deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn more at netsuite.com slash Mike. 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.com slash mike. That's netsuite.com. NetSuite.

By the way, just one comment, Michael, I think you and I may be one of like two or three. people on this planet who even know who Max Senate or Mabel Norman is. This is a good place to start this conversation right now. Paul Kelly is back with me from parts unknown. Well, let's clear that up, first of all. Where are you exactly? I am in the thriving educational metropolis of Princeton, New Jersey. Ah, wow.

Is it still a bastion of the desperate and elite, or has it evolved into something different? in these. It has evolved actually into an incredibly international enclave. Really? Yeah. There are, especially in the graduate level, students that come in from all over the world. It's just, it's crazy. I mentioned this in the intro, but just in the interest of sucking up and sycophancy and all of that. You have generated a huge reaction in relative terms. We've had many guests on the podcast, and I've had the pleasure of free associating with all of the them, but what it, I don't know what it was. I think it might have been the epistemological jack in the box, that turn of phrase, which became the title of our profoundly unscripted conversation,

resonated with the proletariat and many of them have demanded a reprise. So here you are. Well, and that just goes to show you that there still exists in this country a certain degree of folk wisdom. I thought you were going to say that there's no accounting for taste, but either way. just did. That's what I said. Okay. You just made passing reference to Senate, Mac and Mabel. Yeah. And you did it because in 1992, what did we do, Paul? Tell the people what we did. In 1992, we went into a sound studio and we recorded songs from a variety of sources, actually, but I believe that the songs that you and I recorded were directly from the Broadway stage. We did.

Various times. One of the many extraordinary things that we happen to have a front row seat for at QVC was the introduction of the first truly consumer-based karaoke machine. And so we spent a lot of time on the air demonstrating this thing. And at some point, somebody somewhere said, hey, the host of QVC should do an album. And we did. It never sold much. I got to tell you.

You know, it never tracked in the top 50 or even the top 100. Undaunted, we pressed on, we kept doing the karaoke demonstrations on the air. We kept making fools of ourselves. And we kept, in fact, demonstrating why we were there and not on the Broadway stage. You're right. This did not make it to number one with a bullet. The QVC host sings, sing along with QVC. It's called, look, I've got the old cassette right here.

I saved it. Oh, how good is that? I mean, I wish I could play it. There's probably a copyright issue, but when they said you can sing anything you want, they gave me three songs on here. And the first one was from a little remembered Mac and Mabel, but a great, a great old, a great show, and the tune was, I won't send roses or hold the door.

I won't remember which dress you whore. And I don't remember which one you sang. Do you? On that one, I don't. We did a second one, which didn't sell half as well as the first one. And there may be a connection. I was not invited back for that. Yeah. I think you were gone at that point. I was totally gone. But yeah, I did something from, oh, what did I do?

It was a cold porter. I know. It was a cold porter. Yes. It should be on here. dream a little dream. Don't it make my brown eyes blue? You really had me going. I want to be around. Maybe it's on Side B. I don't know. That's where I belong on Side B. Folks, if you're listening to this and wondering what the hell we're talking about, Google, sing along with QVC. And you can hear some stuff that probably never should have aired, but absolutely positively did. You know, Michael, we had such fun because

we were really there at the beginning of a sea change in American commerce and in American media. This was a brand new thing, and we made it up as we went along, which at some points was painfully obvious, but at other points was surprising even to us how well it worked. It was a weird mix of not ever knowing what was going to happen next, juxtaposed with a level of immediate feedback, unlike anything ever seen in modern broadcasting. We didn't have to wait to get a rating. We didn't have to wait to get a review. We knew how we were doing, whether we were crushing it or absolutely crapping the bed, we knew in real time, all we had to do was look down at the monitor and see what was selling and what wasn't. That, I never appreciated that when it was happening,

but boy, having feedback today is rare. And even when it's bad news, it's nice to know where you stand in real time. And we did. We knew where we stood in real time. You and I started this discussion offline a few days ago. Later on, actually it started in 1995, we took the show on the road. And that was about the same time that you started laying the groundwork for dirty jobs. and we were both out there face to face with our customers, with our viewers, with our peeps, if you will.

And we got to know them. And we got to know in real time person to person what they liked and what they didn't and what they wanted and what they expected from us. And that kind of feedback is not something that anybody ever got. before. People should understand what Paul is referring to specifically was a brilliant notion. QVC, in spite of itself, couldn't have failed because the fundamental idea was so ingenious and it came along at such the right time that the execution didn't really matter. It was going to work. But the next level was not a guaranteed. The next level involved a giant mobile home, a huge vehicle.

And Paul was the guy who went to, what they call that tour? Was it 50 in 50? Yeah, 50 states and 50 weeks. Right. You saw the entire country in 50 weeks. You broadcast from main streets all over USA. And most importantly, you showed to the country all levels of entrepreneurship, innovation, and true American ingenuity.

I never thought about this until we talked about it the other day. I was gone from QVC by then, but as you said, laying the groundwork for an identical excursion. Mine went through sewers and across infrastructure and down toilets, but it was still the same celebration of Americana and entrepreneurship. And what a strange juxtaposition this is. strange and in its own way inspiring and wonderful. I learned so much, even in just that first year. I was blessed because as part of the shows, part of each three-hour show each week, we ran in conjunction with the State Department's of Tourism, anywhere between six and eight two to three-minute pieces focusing on people, places, and things that you never heard of, but you should have. And so I got to, A, decide what it was we were going to film.

B, do the research. C, write the scripts. And D, actually produced the spots. So my week before going was a full week of doing this for an upcoming show. You literally just described Charles Carralt on the road in an infomercial. Right? I mean, somehow the transactional reality of QVC got juxtaposed with this quest. And of the many questions I can think to ask, the one I want to ask is what did you learn about the country and the people in it that the people currently in the country might have forgotten? What I learned is that there isn't one America. There are many, many Americas.

But at base, we all have certain things in common. We all have a mythology in common. And how we interpret that mythology may differ from place to place, but the mythology is all there. That there's a certain worldview in this country. As naive sometimes as it may be, and you and I have traveled both extensively outside the country, And it is, in some cases, lovingly naive.

But it's common to all of us. And I think you and I have not talked about this, but I would hope at this point that we can begin to recover some of that commonality. All of us can recover some of that commonality. Because for better or for worse, we're all in this together. and nobody, nothing has ever brought that home to me more than the experiences that I had with the QVC local. I mean, I was on the road for five, six years doing that. Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, really, it's an overused word, but what a blessing.

What is serendipitous accidental pocket aces you picked up? Because very, very few people. I got the same great hand, Paul. and few people get to burn through somebody else's jet fuel and still write their own ticket. And that's what you did. You are absolutely spot on with that. And not a day goes by that I don't consider that a blessing. I mean, some of the stuff that I did, I still can't believe some of the things that I had an opportunity to do.

I'm out in the Gulf of Mexico, for example, and I'm swimming with, with, I'm swimming with, a pair of twins. They happen to be bottled-nosed dolphins. Oh. Okay? Just me and the two girls. Uh-huh. And wow, did we have fun?

For an hour and a half, I'm out there with these two incredible creatures playing. Just playing. I actually got to wrestle a grizzly bear. I lost, by the way. Oh. I got to ride in a camel race. I mean, who does this stuff? Come on.

I got to do so many things that nobody would even think of doing. There's one national park in this country, one that I have not been to, only one, and I will get to it before I take my last breath. Have you been to Bryce? I have. If that doesn't confirm what you were talking about before, our mythology, our, oftentimes unspoken connection, I've talked to so many people who have gone through Bryce and through that part of the country, and their first reaction is to weep because they realize they're seeing something that is truly magnificent that they didn't know was there. And when you're confronted with the undeniable

reality, the inescapable truth of a thing that was right under your nose the whole time, Grand Canyon. It happened to me at the Grand Canyon, Paul. I stood there on that invisible walk and cried like a 10-pound baby girl. And I couldn't really tell you why, except that maybe something happens when you come face to face with the incontrovertible truth of your own mythology. And there's something about those parks that make that real. There is something about them that is both physical and metaphysical at the same time. And no matter what your belief system is, you cannot be in a place like Bryce or Arches or the Grand Canyon, or Arcadia up in Maine, in the middle of that forest,

or in the middle of the sequoias in California, you can't be there without having your breath stop just momentarily, having your heart want to bust out of your chest and tears come to your eyes. Because it's palpable, Mike. It's one of the things, though, that I personally fear and feel that the current movement for environmentalism sometimes misses. We've come a long way from Teddy Roosevelt and his thoughts on conservation into wherever we are now. But it seems like the most relatable thing about the planet we share are those places that cause

those moments you just described. And until you feel those, whether it's watching the sun come up over the, the sun come up over the pyramids in Cairo, or riding a camel, which I assume you could do on the same day. Until you bear witness, then you're trying to describe a smell you've never actually sniffed. And that's hard to do. It's almost impossible to do. And that's the difference between having an experience which is purely intellectual and having an experience which is visceral. and having an experience which is visceral, which is soul-shattering.

It's a whole different thing, pal. You know that because you've had it. Do you... I want to ask you about something you said before. It's one of my favorite words, and it's naivete, and the fact that you kind of had it when you went out on the road, and it was suddenly revealed to you and that you kind of adapted in some way, course-corrected, maybe.

For me, it's the child. There's an eight-year-old in you, and he's never too far from the surface. In spite of all your degrees and in spite of all your accomplishments and all of your traveling, you're a child, right? And the thing that inspired me most that you did at QVC was you were always in touch with that precocious little brat that was always under the surface. And that's what Dirty Jobs was as well. What I'm getting at is maybe part of the way back for the country in some weird way is this Chuck and I ruminated on a podcast we called Smart Stupid where we tried to describe a week or two ago the impact of Mel Brooks and his movies where we tried to unpack the importance of the movies that you could not make now, that he could not make now. He couldn't. Exactly right.

So what's missing from so many things is the fart. It's the eight-year-old. It's the naivete that comes from being a curious child that is somehow juxtaposed with this ability to get out into the world and look under the rock and genuinely try and figure out what the world's connecting us. Somehow or another, those two things are two sides of the same coin, smart and silly. I think we've got to get silly back into the conversation. I think you just hit one of the most important nails on the head, the child within all of us. We all have to recover that child. It doesn't mean we have to be childish, but we have to be childlike, and we have to be willing to be childlike,

which means we have to be willing to be vulnerable. The other thing is, we have to recover our sense of humor, guys. Our sense of humor is what saves us 80% of the time. We've lost our sense of humor. As my pop used to say, if you're not laughing, the joke's on you. Exactly. Did you listen to the chapter that we're supposed to be talking about right now? I actually did not.

And I didn't do it on purpose because I wanted to let our conversation guide itself and let you guide me as opposed to trying to stick to some. Oh, no. Look, obviously, I'm not going to try. and foist a script upon you. Good God, I'm the last guy in the world to do it. But I wrote briefly about my encounter in the green room at QVC with Ted Williams, who is never thought of today as childlike, childish, or naive. But after I watched he and Dan Wheeler go through a sports memorabilia hour,

I was up in the green room and Ted came up and I introduced myself. And we had a chat. Long story short, he was looking at the screen as somebody was selling a doll and shaking his head. And I finally got a laugh out of him when he realized that, you know, moments ago, the greatest hitter of all time had been telling stories on the exact same screen as a young porcelain troll called Mary Sue was being violated by some other ham-fisted host. It's all part of the same thing. And he just laughed.

And that's what I'm talking about. In the end, he could laugh at himself, Paul. I'm going to sort of bring this full circle. We couldn't have worked at QBC without that ability, without the ability to laugh at ourselves. Because it was real time and nobody gets away with that without egg on their face, somehow, somewhere, sometime. I've got a whole bag full of those stories. Well, I'm going to ask you to pull one out in a second because, on a completely self-indulgent note, the reason I wanted to have you back was because the last time we chatted, right around the area where you hit me with the epistemological jack in the box, I said, you know what, I am going to write a book about QVC, or at least a book that has a lot of QVC in it, because not a day goes by where I'm not further convinced. Certainly everything I needed to know about this ridiculous industry I learned in the middle of the night.

under your gentle observations. But so much more. I can't speak to anything that's going on there today, but I wanted to pick your brain and literally ask you in front of half a million people what you think I should write about in this book that attempts to recapture some of these memory fragments that continue to haunt me.

Well, first of all, there was this old saw when we started QVC with. It's all about the product. The kind word for that is Balderdash. Basically, it's bullshit. It is not about the product. It's about the people. It's about human beings.

If it was all about the product, they would have figured out a way to sell it without the on-air host a long time. Dirty Jobs was not about the jobs. Wasn't even about the dirt. It was about the people. Yep. As is almost everything that we do in any kind of media. It's about the people.

And I think that should be your focus. and I think you should kind of canvas some of our fellows and see what kind of ridiculous memories can be brought forward. I'll give you one. And I'm going to, in fact, I'll give you a couple. The names will be left unsaid to protect the guilty in this case. Chuck does have the ability to bleep things. We typically don't, but in the interest, you know, when it comes to pronouns, we will. My guest today, Tom Albanyce, is an American Giant, and I'll tell you why.

Tom understands, on a fundamental level, that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it. They sourced locally grown cotton, and they built factories in towns across the nation where they could hire hardworking locals who cared about making a quality product. And then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American giant, you're not just buying a high-quality sweatshirt or T-shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain.

You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California. And you're getting a piece of clothing that won't just survive the wash. You're getting a garment that'll get better with age. Check out their high-quality staples, hoodies, teas, denim, built to be worn year after year at American-giant.com slash Mike. It's quality you can feel and a true American success story that you can be proud to support. Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at American-giant.

com slash mic. American giant American made. American giant American made. Well, you in fact mentioned a doll that Ted Williams was looking. At one time, I was just offstage and one of my fellow hostesses was presenting a porcelain doll, an oriental Asian doll in traditional costume. And she, God bless her, went on about the costume and was winding it up and suddenly couldn't remember what the doll's name was. So she said, if you call right now, you can have little Poon-Tang here for your own self.

You can have, come on. No. That's what she said. Yep. Yeah. Little Poon tank. That's tough. Yeah.

And three easy payments. And three, yeah, whatever. I can't tell you exactly what she said after that because I was on the floor and out of ear shot at that point. So, hey, America, what would you pay for a little Poon tank? I mean. How far can you take that one? I mean, come on. So, okay, there's, there's enough, we're in Michigan on a 50-50 tour.

It's, it's the first year of the tour. We're in Michigan. It's springtime. The tulips are in. And we're doing a morning show with a male and a female host. And I'm the third wheel there. One of the products on the morning show was a steamer for pants or clothing. And it looked like a kind of iron, but you hit the trigger and it spritz steam.

So the male in question is demonstrating this, and he decides he's going to demonstrate on himself. So he puts the iron against the front of his pants in the strategic place and pushes the trigger. Oh, dear. He went down like a shot. Like a cheap card table. He folded just like a cheap card table. And we were unable to get a breath to say anything for a good 30 seconds after that. He's writhing in pain, by the way, because he burned himself.

Yeah. He did. Yeah. But what does it take? Well, look, there's something, something happens to otherwise intelligent people when they see themselves in a monitor. It's the camera, right? And it does, I've seen this happen in a lot of different situations. But for me, it makes me braver than I actually am because I don't think I'm going to get hurt on camera,

whether it's jumping out of a plane, whether, I mean, any number of things. I would, on dirty jobs, I did a lot of things that I wasn't trying to be a stunt junkie about it. I was just trying to do my job. But the business of having a camera pointed at you. somehow disables the part in your brain that would normally hop up and say, hey, genius, that's steam. Steam is basically a byproduct of hot water. Those are your genitals. Before you put the hot water onto your genitals, you might want to run a very simple calculus and decide if this is a wise course of action. Just play that tape loop again before you do it. That's all.

The camera disables that part of the hypothalamus. And what follows. is some weird thing that Mel Brooks would describe as the promised land between tragedy and true comedy. And life is both. What's the quote, life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think. Hold on. Wait a tragedy to those who feel.

A tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think. Now, in another life, if I'm remembering. this right, you taught acting and directing at, where were you, Rutgers. Rutgers University, yep. Now, is that the kind of crap you were laying on your students back then 50 years ago? Oh, I laid so much crap on my students back then. But here's the secret to my crap laying, okay? I have an advanced degree, and it's the only one that I know of. It is a PhD from New York University, and it's an American vaudeville and burlesque comedy. So, you can understand that you can understand that my approach to most things in life is a little fractured.

It's just a little fractured. You see things through the bottom of a Coke bottle, right? I mean, the images are all recognizable. But it's like there's like a circus mirror somehow following you around that you occasionally. hold up to the people you look at. And it's all recognizable, but it's not quite right. Exactly. When a car pulls up in front of me, I expect a thousand clowns to get out of it. I expect that. So that's just the way the world works for me.

John D. McDonald, through the mouth of my favorite fictitional character. Mr. McGee. Yeah. That's him. He said the only sensible way to go through life was with the attitude of a vaudevillian clown, the good-natured soul who climbs out of the car, knowing that he will be chased and assaulted with bladders and ultimately accept a pie in the face. Knowing, and this is why the beauty of vaudeville and the beauty of that and the beauty of that trope is that they know they're going to get the pie in the face and they show up for work

anyway. Anyway, yep, because that's part of what life is about. You're going to get a pie in the face. One of my favorite gags, and this is a burlesque gag, is imagine a stage and there's a street light, there's a big hedge in the back of the stage, and there's a street light and a park bench over on stage left. Uh-huh. And there is the top banana, the number one comic, is down in his hands and knees with his butt toward the audience, and he's rummaging around under the park bench. And the straight man comes in and says, what are you doing? And the comic looks up and he says, I lost my watch. And the straight man says, well, where'd you lose it?

The comic says, I lost it over there. And he points over to stage right. Well, why are you looking over here? Because the light's better over here. The light's better. Of course. Of course. There is a certain sense to this stuff that makes no sense.

And life for me is like that. Not a certain sense. A childlike quality. Yes. A naivete that's rooted in a form of logic that doesn't quite track, but is nevertheless undeniable. We know that objects are easier to find in the light. and so even though we probably misplaced it in the dark,

well, it would be crazy to look over there because even though that's where it is, you're never going to see it. This is the child, grow out of that. This is the child, Michael. It's the child in all of us. And while it makes no sense to the adult, it makes perfect sense to the child.

And there's a balance there in all of us that is always trying to figure, where do I go here? Right. And it goes to sophistication. And like, some people can't laugh at a joke unless it's sophisticated. They've just decided that there are certain forms of humor that are beneath them. And those poor people will never really understand the three stooges. They'll never really understand pull my finger. They just won't get it.

But then there's another level of silliness that's rooted in the misdirect. And that's what you just hit me. me with. That was the vaudeville exchange that kills me. I don't know if you stumbled across this one, but it's just, it's so stupid. There's a guy, he's reading his newspaper, and he's lounging by the pool. And the lifeguard walks up to him and says, excuse me, Mr. Munger. And the guy pulls the newspaper aside and says, yeah, I'm Munger. And he says, Mr. Munger, I'm sorry to disturb you, but there have been some complaints from the other people at the pool. Complaints? What kind of complaints?

Well, apparently, Mr. Munger, some people have been urinating into the pool, and I just needed to bring this to your attention. Let me tell you something, son. Everybody urinates in the pool. I don't see what the big deal is. And then there's a pause, and the lifeguard says, from the high dive, Mr. Munger? from the high dive.

So suddenly the lifeguard goes from, you know, sort of obsequious and careful and, you know, to just outraged. And Mr. Munger goes from, you know, you have a good point. All right. So no more peeing from the high dive. And that one line coming as it does totally shatters every preconception

that you have had up to that point. for the simple reason that you have peed in a pool before. Absolutely. Everyone has peed in a pool before. Not the ocean where peeing is mandatory, but everybody at some point in their life, hopefully when they were a child and not fully continent. But let's face it, many adults have done it too. People pee in the pool.

And so when you start to hear the lifeguard and this character called Munger talk about this inescapable truth, this thing that we can all immediately relate to, you are suddenly waist deep in the shallow end, letting one go. You remember when you did that, but not Munger. He went to the high dive. Munger was special. He was special. What's really interesting about that is that probably 50% of the people are saying to themselves, I never did that. I never did that. I never did that. Not me. I wouldn't do that. Oh, man. Well, what you said earlier, we need to get our sense of humor back. And you can't do that if you're in denial. And we're in denial, it seems, about so many different things.

We're twisted up with so many different kinds of guilt, so much uncomfortableness. When did it, when did being uncomfortable become the enemy? When did we get so frightened of functioning outside of our comfort zone. When we became scared to death to reveal our real selves, our authentic selves, that's when it happened. Is it fair to say? Yes. But we kind of talked around this a little bit last time.

But if you're on the hero's journey, if you're the kind of person who really genuinely might want to come face to face with his or her authentic self. then talk to me about the role of the camera and how a camera can help facilitate or magnify the impact of that journey. The camera is, for me, it's always a matter of perspective. There's a whole different perspective between being in front of the camera or on the other end of the camera feed. What the audience sees is carefully curated. in our case, it wasn't all that careful because we just sort of went by the seat of our pants. But for me, and I'm going by my personal experience, Michael, for me, I dismissed the camera.

And I talked to the person on the other side, the person who was out there. I never used the camera at QVC. in other endeavors, I did. But at QVC, I never considered the camera was a medium to get to another person or people out there. And I tried to talk to people one person at a time. I would picture who it was that I was talking to. And yes, occasionally they were naked. I will admit that.

But that was part of, to the extent that I had an ability to, touch people through that means, through that media, that was part of it. It was essentially just ignoring the technology and letting the technology do its work, do what it does. But what did the technology do to you as a result of that? How did the camera force you into some new level of truth or credibility or engagement or authenticity or whatever the kids are calling. Okay. All right. I learned very early on to listen to myself before I opened my mouth. That's the big lesson that I learned. Always listen to what you're

going to say before you say it, you damn fool. And if you do that, you won't end up with your foot in your mouth. You'll end up with the words coming out that you want to come out. It is a matter of control, but it really has to do with listening to yourself before you open your mouth. 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 called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living. Trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped

thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants, thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend $100 and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's Code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old fashions every time.

It's my favorite way to support Microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirates.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirates.com. Soon may the nobleman come to bring a bottle for everyone. When the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. The way I thought about it, and that lesson landed for me too in a slightly different way, but the way it manifested was on Dirty Jobs and the Discovery Channel. It was saying, look, I don't think that the world needs another expert, and I don't think the world needs another host,

looting information over them and sprinkling their vast knowledge, right, on them in a controlled environment that ultimately elevates them and kind of diminishes the audience. The trick was, I have to know more than you do, but I don't need to know it so far in advance. In fact, if you see me learn it and then I pass it back to you, then you've got a much tighter feedback loop and a certain humility gets baked into it. You still need to know where you're going before you get there in the same way Grette's Knew where the puck was going to be a half a second before his competitors. He wasn't stronger or faster than anybody.

He just knew where the puck was going to go, right? And so that in some weird way, the camera forced me to do that. And I suspect the same is true of you. Yeah. It tinkers with time. It can slow it down, but it can also speed it up. If you let that control get away from you, you ain't getting it back. Once you get out of control in front of the camera, you're out of control.

You're not getting it back until somebody says, let's go to the commercial. You know, people used to ask me, what's it like, you know, working the overnight shift all the time? And I said, the truth is, in that studio, it's always 2.30 in the morning on a Tuesday, usually. It's kind of like over this last year with these lockdowns, it was always Wednesday. Around one in the afternoon, no matter what day it was. It does mess with time. You know, cameras and studios mess with time. COVID messed with time. Lockdowns mess with time. These artificial constructs, they force you to adapt in ways that, well, you either pivot or perish, right? Adapt or die. And you can pivot or perish in real time. I mean, I, we worked with,

some folks who we worked with one guy who had, that was a direct line between his ear and his mouth. Now, by that I mean, whatever went in the IFB, the interruptible feedback machine here in his little earbug, came out of his mouth. If the producer said yada yada, then he said yada yada. It's just what he did. and he didn't have that filter.

And by the way, he never really developed that filter to the point where he would take the earbug out and just not listen. But it was disastrous one time. And this is one of the funniest things that happened to me. And anyone who doesn't want to hear a dirty joke, just kind of turn your sound down. We had a game. We had a word game. I don't know. Did we have the word game when you were there? I think. Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So there was a scrambled word at the bottom of the screen.

And the caller who was queued to the word game was given a clue and had 20 seconds to figure it out. And if they did, they won so many QVC shopper dollars. Shopping done. Yeah. So this particular host is standing in front of the camera. He gets queued to the word game. He says, congratulations, Marshi. you've just been chosen to play our word game. Do you know how it works? And he explained it. And then he said, okay, here's the word.

And there's that little chime. And the word comes up in the bottom of the screen. And the host in question opens his mouth. And the producer says in his ear, it's a bird. And the host in question says, Marcia, it's a bird. And then the producer says, or something that special women sometimes do. And it came right out of his mouth.

Well, the word was swallow. And that's the end of that. Yeah. Yeah. But not the end of him. God bless him. No, he got another. He did.

He did learn that lesson. He did learn it. Meanwhile, I caught hell that same week. I remember how this all went down. You'll of course remember the QVC lucky number. Well, of course. Every hour, the stage would turn, you know, off to the stage left, and we'd go over and we'd pull a lucky number. And it was a four-digit number.

On ping-pong balls. That's right. On ping-pong balls. Like a lottery. And if it matched the last four digits of your QVC shopping number, congratulations, you win money. Shopper dollars, right? So I go over to the machine one day. This is prime time, actually.

This is probably four in the afternoon on a Sunday. And I go over there and the first number is six. And the second number is six. And the third number is seven. And the fourth number doesn't pop up. There's some malfunction. The air is not blowing right. And a couple of ping pong balls are grouped up in the shoot.

So the only thing on the screen in a tight shot is six, six, six, seven. So I say, well, congratulations. congratulations, it's the mark of the neighbor of the beast. Somebody's a big winner. Right? Holy crap. We got hundreds of letters. I mean, mostly the Bible Belt, I reckon, but people just were like, the mark of the half the people were upset that I would make a comment about old scratch. The others were genuinely interested because in spite of their voluminous knowledge of the New Testament, they didn't remember any reference to the neighbor of the beast. And they really really, wanted to know what that was all about.

John Eastman calls me in his office. He's like, hey, man, when possible, maybe less, you know, biblical references with regard to Satan. That sounds like, John. Yeah. I'm like, you know what? It's not an unreasonable thing, but when you're on live TV, and the only thing on the screen is 667,

you know, you have to say something. What are you going to do? What are you going to say? I'm going to say, the freaking machine's broke. Hold on. We'll fix it. Oh. Oh, God. Besides which, you know, neither you nor I are constitutionally capable of passing up a moment like that that the universe hands us on a plate. We're just not going to do it.

That's too good a gift. We're not going to pass it up. Because I choose to believe that there are people at home who are watching this right now, making a similar comment to whoever else is in the room. See, that for me was in the top three big lessons. Say the thing on camera that you would say to your best friend if you were both home having a beer watching the very show that you happen to be hosting. What would you say in that moment?

And for me, I would have said, oh, look, it's the mark of the neighbor of the beast. Now, to say it on air either means I have a bad judgment, no edit button, or I took a calculated risk because every now and then, Munger is pissing off the high dive. And attention must be paid. And attention must be paid. And attention will be paid. You and I were two of a number, a small number, but a number of people who never took the job seriously. It was playtime, gang. It was playtime. And... The audience was there to be entertained, to enjoy the moment, and to be a little startled, and to be a little surprised, and to laugh every once in a while, and to be educated now and

then, not with a hammer, but with a gentle spoon. It's what we were about. A gentle spoon. A gentle spoon. Sometimes, sometimes the guy has to be the little spoon. By the way, for people who don't know you, how tall are you these days? I'm 6.5. I've lost an inch. Paul Kelly is an impressive specimen of masculinity. He's an imposing figure.

And you're imposing in life and you were imposing on camera. And is it too personal to wonder how old you might be at this point in your journeys around the sun? Well, let us say that I am beyond my 70th birthday. It's unbelievable, man. What are you working on today? If people are half as fascinated by you as they were the last time, they're going to want to know where they can go get more Paul Kelly in the pick line. Is that even possible now? It is not right now, but it probably will be.

I wrote a book a long time ago. a book called Rules of the Cosmic Road, the 12 rules of how the universe works. And I'm revisiting that. And I may finally publish it. It's pretty much common sense, but I think we need a little common sense. Well, what is the most important rule of the 12 on the cosmic road?

Wow. No one has ever asked me that question. Well, as a fake journal, I'm here to ask the hard queries. The most important rule is to know who you are, is to know and enjoy yourself. That's the big, and that's the hardest one. Knowledge of things is easy. Knowledge of self is the hardest thing we can do in this life.

Wow. I mean, it's, it, I never know where we're going to go with this stuff, Paul. But if we're going to talk about an audience and if we're going to talk about the relationship with the audience and if we're going to talk about the way the camera bends and shapes that relationship, you know, I wanted to add that for me, you know, talking to the crew at QVC, talking directly to Craig Adler and Tommy Okineski and Pam Duckworth, talking directly to those producers during the show, talking to the stage. hands, Pete Kilcullen, right? Talking to the technical director, that, to me, that was the big lesson for me and the thing that I was able to take to the next level in dirty jobs, figuring out that if you take out the IFB, which you mentioned, as you're being screamed at by the director, if you take it out quickly and push it right against the microphone on your lapel, then the whole world can hear the director yelling at you. Yes. It's, we're always in more control than we think,

are and this business of figuring out who we are. I didn't know you wrote that book. Is it on Amazon or something? No, I haven't published it yet. Get out of here. Why are you going to publish? Oh, Paul, Kelly, you've got to get this book out. I will do whatever I can to help. Well, thank you, my friend. You're welcome. Because, gosh, who said first and above all things, know thyself? It was one of the Greeks. Yeah. Was it Socrates? It was either Plato or Aristotle or Socrates. I think it was Socrates. He said a lot of heavy stuff. He did and he was mostly right. Isn't it a shame, though, that we didn't figure that out until years after. Whatever happened to him, was that hemlock guy? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they killed him. Yeah, it happens to pretty much everybody who's, who wants to dispense wisdom.

You know, you'd figure with a brain like that, they should have seen it coming. actually is he didn't care he really didn't care oh man well look we've been at this a while i got nothing but gratitude and uh deep affection for you i'm serious about the book when you decide to do it come back on here and um and we'll talk it through i will do that um and i i want to thank you for giving me a chance to get my brain working a little bit too and for for giving me an opportunity to say to all the people who may be listening, all the people that I met at QVC through QVC and all those years on the road, it was not for nothing. Everyone has left an impression and I appreciate everything that everyone gave me. At a left field, do you remember

a janitor who worked at QVC named Norman? I do. Do you remember one afternoon we wound up over in his apartment and you introduced him to me. I knew of him. I saw him around. He was always, you know, emptying the waste baskets. Yeah. This guy, he sat there, the three of us in his apartment, and he came out with a binder filled with poetry. And it was amazing poetry. You were blown away by it. I was too young to fully appreciate the complexity of it. But this guy was a poet in real life. His entire identity was rooted in poetry. His an agneresis, his parapetia in life. Everything was through the dynamic aristotelian definition of a tragedy. And I had only ever known him as the janitor at QVC. And you introduced me to him.

And I don't think much about him. In fact, I haven't thought about him in years. I have no idea what's become of him, but the idea that a brilliant poet is emptying our wastebaskets, there's something in there about knowing yourself. There's something in there about knowing yourself and there's something in there about not judging others before you know them, because it's very easy to do. Lest we be confused with the mark of the neighbor of the beast. Indeed. I won't send roses.

You know what? I am going to send you roses. Give Chuck the address. You're my favorite guest of all time with the possible exception of my mother. And I love her. How is your mother, by the way? You know, she's great. And, you know, not to stretch this out even further, but she's going to be 84 this year.

She's working on her third book. And her first two have been bestsellers. So I can help, Paul, in some small way. But she's agonizing over what to write about. And she's trying to talk about this exact same thing we've just been talking about. about the audience. She's been writing all her life. She becomes a best-selling author at 80, and now everybody wants her to write how she did it and what the difference is to write for a couple million people instead of half a dozen. And she's coming to the realization that she

might have been having a better time when she was writing for half a dozen. And you can suggest to her for me that there really isn't any difference. There really isn't. Well, I'm glad you say that because recently the feedback on this podcast is shown roughly half a dozen people listen to it. So, and I've paid two of them. So. And the other four are Chuck. Exactly. Is that how many personalities he's up to now? Last time we checked, we got half a million people hanging on to every word. And your words are worth remembering. Thank you, Paul Kelly. As for the of you, if you're interested in this kind of thing, you can download the way I heard it, wherever people download books. And if you enjoy it, the way it's happening here, I'll be back

next week with another guest that I wish I could say will be every bit as memorable as Paul Kelly. But how's that even possible, Paul? I wouldn't go too far with that. But Michael, thank you so very much. And bless you, my friend, my dear friend. Bless you back. Adios. Hey, wait a minute. I'm not. the guest next week. Oh, you're right. Chuck is back next week for a very special. Isn't that special? That's just special.