The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 207: That Time I Knocked a Famous Movie Star on His Ass

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

A hashtag and a me-too on steroids, followed by a series of digressions too voluminous to list, concluding with the true story of the time Mike knocked a famous movie star on his ass.

Hey guys, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. Episode number 207. This one's called That Time I Knocked a Famous Movie Star on His Ass. The episode starts with a true story of a very talented actress who found herself at the mercy of the biggest name in town. Now, if you thought Harvey Weinstein was a powerful pig, as so many people so logically do, wait until you get a load of this character. And wait till you see what this particular woman did to settle the score. It's a hashtag and a Me Too on steroids, and it's also a story I think every aspiring actress ought to listen to with both ears wide open. After that, I pontificate on my own brush with the biggest name in town, and talk to Chuck about a great many related topics,

including the enduring charm of a good shaggy dog story, the unique joys of hosting a game show in the late 90s and the many temptations in this place we call Tinsletown. Then, apropos of nothing, it's a fond recollection of the time I knocked a famous movie star on his ass. In hindsight, full disclosure, I don't think he deserved it, but it happened. And judging from Chuck's reaction to that story, it's a tale I think you might enjoy hearing. It's all right here in episode number 207, a cautionary tale. if there ever was one, filled with life lessons and moments of uncharacteristic drama and earnestness. And yet, and yet, bulging with more than a few meaningless digressions, including

but not limited to the transformational impact of a hideous blue blazer that changed the course of my career, a filthy limerick that I started last week but failed to finish, and the true story of that time that I knocked a famous movie star on his ass. It all starts right now. 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 a rotary phone?

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Learn more at netsuite.com slash Mike. And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information, and again, it's free at netseweet.com slash mike. That's netsuite.com. NetSweet. Chapter 29, the biggest name in town. High in the hills of a town without pity, a stubborn sun slowly set on a warm September evening, even as a young starlet walked up the shoulder of some canyon road,

and out onto the property of the city of the... biggest name in town. She was apprehensive, understandably so, partly because it was getting dark, partly because she was trespassing, and partly because she was about to kill someone. For the record, the starlet was not violent by nature, but desperate times called for desperate measures. The studio head, a big man in town, was also a feckless fool without taste or common sense. He had all but cut her out of the film that would have made her famous. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, her long-anticipated debut on the silver screen had been reduced to a pile of celluloid on the cutting-room floor.

Could she have called HR? Could she have lodged a formal complaint with the studio? No, this betrayal would not be remedied with a hashtag and a Me Too. This was personal. The Starlet steeled herself, for the task at hand, double-checked the contents of her purse, and approached the sprawling property of the biggest name in town. Five stories above her, the legendary icon looked down as the Starlet approached. Her appearance was not exactly a surprise.

Beautiful girls often came to this very spot. Usually, they came around sunset. This girl, however, was a real long. looker. She was 24, flaxen hair, alabaster skin, eyes bluer than a Montana sky. Oh yes, girls like her were always welcome here. Pretty young things with stars in their eyes, happy to barter everything they had for the one thing they didn't. Five stories below, the starlet was smiling, smiling in spite of her dark purpose. It felt good to fight back. She recalled the role that launched her career, a small but essential part and a Broadway production

of Hamlet. At the King's Command in a pivotal scene in Act 5, her uncredited character introduced an all-important poisoned cup, one intended for Hamlet, but consumed accidentally by the King's wife and Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. The Starlet recalled that performance so clearly. It was more than worthy of an encore. Of that, she was sure. But enough with the memories. Back to the task at hand. She knew the way in. She knew that her target was on the top floor. In her mind's eye, she saw herself ascending each step carefully, one at a time. Up at the top, the view was sure to be breathtaking. The sun was now beneath the horizon. The lights of Tinseltown would be twinkling all the way out to the Pacific. But she would not be distracted. The role she was playing tonight was that of a cold-blooded

killer, and she would play it to the best of her ability. She would betray nothing of her true intentions. She would simply wait till the moment was right, and then she would show the biggest name in town what real power looked like. The Starlet checked the contents of her purse. one last time. She made sure that everything was exactly where it should be. Then she began her careful climb up to the fifth story, where she delivered a truly Oscar-worthy performance. A hiker found the corpse three days later, a mangled body in a nearby ravine. Detectives were called, but you didn't have to be a hard-boiled gumshoe or a sunset boulevard Seamus to figure out who done it.

cops knew all about the Starlet's abrupt removal from thirteen women, her first and last major motion picture. They knew all about the financial difficulties that followed, along with the nude photographs for which she had been paid to pose. But it was the contents of her purse that closed the case just moments after it had been opened, specifically a short note that read, I'm afraid I am a coward. I'm sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. And that's how the curtain fell on the final act of Peg and Whistle, a gifted actress who left a promising career on the stage to try her luck in Los Angeles. Alas, the only performance for which she's remembered today is the one she delivered on that warm September evening

back in 1932 at a famous address on the rocky slopes of Mount Lee, high in the hills of a town without pity. It was there at the end of a canyon road called Beachwood that poor Peg, her spirit broken by empty promises and shattered dreams, made good on her promise to kill someone by climbing the rungs of a rickety ladder, scrambling onto the top of a giant H. and throwing herself off the Hollywood sign. It was, after all, the biggest name in town.

You want to hear a host story? I don't blame you. As the host of cultural touchstones like Worst Case Scenario and Hal Booz Built America, I'm partial to them myself. But my favorite host story is the one I experienced firsthand at a production company in Burbank back in 1997. Like Peg Entwistle's tale, mine is full of hope and ambition. It too involves one of the biggest names in town. Unlike Peg's story, mine has a happy ending, thanks to an excellent piece of advice I still try to follow whenever I'm in front of the camera. I want to share that advice with you because writing about Peg made me wonder where I'd be without the many words of wisdom I've received over the years. Maybe if someone had pulled Peg aside at just the right moment and said,

just the right thing she would have gone on to her own long career. Maybe she'd have a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Maybe she'd have written her own book about it. We'll never know, sadly, but what I do know is that way back in 1997, a producer named Tom Frank was looking for a game show host, and my tape must have made an impression. This is the worst tape I've ever seen, he said. There's nothing on here but mistakes and outtakes. Thanks, I said. I try to manage expectations. Mission accomplished, he replied. It made me wonder if you were stable. You'll have to hire me to find out, I said.

Would you like to hear about the project first, he asked? Please, I said, the anticipation is killing me. Tom Frank talked fast, sounding like all producers do when they explain an idea they've explained a thousand times to a thousand people they'll never talk to again. The show's called No Relation, he said. The FX Channel has just bought 40 episodes. What's the FX channel? I asked. Did Fox lose a vowel?

Tom Frank ignored the question. The show works like this. On each episode, a celebrity panel attempts to determine which member of a family of five is not related to the other four. In round one, celebrities question the contestants individually. In round two, they question the family together. and compare their notes. They make their best guess. Then the imposter reveals him or herself, and we bring out the actual family member that they've been impersonating. Are there fabulous prizes, I ask? Depends on how many celebrities are fooled. If none of them guessed correctly,

the imposter gets a thousand bucks and the family gets an all-expenses-paid trip to Mexico. What do you think? To tell you the truth, I said. It sounds like to tell the truth. Yeah, well, there's no such thing as a new idea. But this is a very big deal for the network. It sounded like a guaranteed failure, which was precisely what I was looking for. It's what I always looked for in those days. A few months of steady work, followed by a quick cancellation, followed by a few months of premature retirement.

Perfect. Travis McGee, 101. I'm your man, I said. When do I start? I'm not offering you the job, Tom Frank said. I'm offering you an audition tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Great. What do game show hosts wear nowadays, I ask? Wear a sport coat, slacks, buttoned down shirt, no tie.

Wouldn't it be easier if you just gave me the job now, I ask? Honestly, I'm not even sure I should give you the address. He did, though, and I arrived 10 minutes early the next morning at an office building in Burbank. A pretty receptionist handed me a script and led me to a conference room where a dozen other guys were pacing around memorizing the same words, muttering to themselves in the same practice baritones. Button-down shirts, slacks, and sport coats. No ties. We looked like mannequins recently escaped from the same habadashery. One guy, in particular, was a composite of every game show host I'd ever seen. He had white tithe. He had white tics.

teeth and a suspicious tan and seemed so supremely confident that I wondered if he had already gotten a gig. He reminded me of a very young Dick Clark, who was, for my money, the best game show host ever. I love the way Clark leaned against the podium while explaining the rules on the $25,000 pyramid, not a care in the world. As the stakes increased, he didn't get ramped up. He got more laid back. Dick Clark hosted like Perry Como sang, warm, genuine, with a touch of insouciance. How would Dick Clark have handled no relation? I was the last to be called. On a mock stage, three celebrities sat on a sofa.

Their name tags read Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Shelley Long. Five production assistants, who also had name tags, were sitting in folding chairs across from them. They were the Johnsons. At the far end of the room, there was a video camera, a large monitor, and a partition. Behind the camera, in front of the partition, a small group of people huddled and conferred. The suits. Tom Frank was among them. We bantered for a moment. Then Frank said, action, and I immediately went off script, channeling my inner Dick Clark. Hello, everyone, and welcome to No Relation. It's nice to see you all again. I'm Mike Rowe, and these are the Johnsons. Well, at least four of them are. One of them is actually an imposter, who has assumed the identity of the missing Johnson, who is bound and gagged in the trunk of my car. I'm kidding. The missing Johnson is backstage, and will remain there, as our celebrity judges question the real Johnsons and find out which one of them is no relation. Before we begin, let's meet our celebrity judges. We pretended to play for 20 minutes or so. At first, I was put off by the fact that

Tom Hanks had a Mohawk, and Julia Roberts looked like my grandmother. The Johnson family was also confusing. The parents were white, the daughter was Asian, the son was black, and the grandmother appeared to be Hispanic, a configuration that added new layers of complexity to the show's central question, but spoke well of the production company's commitment to diversity in the workplace. Nevertheless, I worked through guiding the conversation, making mild, mostly tasteful jokes, and trying not to look too hard at Shelley Long, who looked and sounded just like Shelley Long,

which I found to be doubly distracting. We were rolling along pretty well when Tom Frank said, Cut, and walked toward me. Tell me, he said, is that your lucky jacket? Don't know yet, I said. I borrowed it from a friend. The coat I was wearing belonged to my high school friend Chuck, on whose couch I'd been crashing in Hollywood. It was electric blue with a slight bias toward periwinkle. Does your friend work for the circus? Worse, I said. He sings barbershop, at which point a really weird thing happened, a shocking thing. Dick Clark stepped out from behind a

partition and said, Hello. Every so often the universe behaves in ways that leave me mute. This was one such occasion. Had I just conjured Dick Clark out of thin air? Was I seeing some sort of phantom? A ghost? It sure felt that way.

One minute, I had been channeling Dick Clark. Now, here he was, and I couldn't quite square it. That was great. Really nice work. I was speechless. gobsmacked, flabbergasted. By the way, the ghost said, I'm Dick Clark. That is correct, I replied, as if I were hosting a game show. It really was him. Dick Clark laughed in a completely warm and genuine way. Welcome to my production company.

Thanks for coming by. You're a natural. I've seen some of your work. But tell me, have you hosted a game show before? No, I haven't, I said, but I've done lots of live time. television. I was hoping he didn't know that I'd been thrown out of the home shopping industry. Tom tells me you were thrown out of the home shopping industry, Dick Clark said. What happened? I cleared my throat and glanced at Tom, who was clearly enjoying the moment. There was a mutual consensus that my skills were inconsistent with the expectations of that particular genre, I said. Dick Clark laughed again. I bet you have some great stories. One or two, I said, as another suit stepped out from behind the partition. Mike, this is Rich Ross. He calls the

shots over at FX. Rich Ross looked a lot younger than I would have expected. Hi, Mike, he said. We're big fans over at the network. We'd love to see you again. Dick Clark nodded in agreement. Can you come back in a few days, Ross asked? Sure, I said. Then Dick Clark stepped closer to me and lowered to his voice. Can I give you some advice? he asked. I thought he was going to comment on Chuck's jacket, that or tell me to stick to the script. But he didn't. Instead, he imparted a secret, a treasured bit of advice that was so obvious and so good, I was certain the moment I heard it, I'd never forget it. I was wrong about that, of course, but it's nice to feel certain every now and again.

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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. Wait a minute. You're not Tom Frank. Were you expecting Tom Frank? I kind of was. I thought you said you were going to reach out to him. Well, I mean, I have. And, you know, but no, he's, he's not here today. Well, you know what? It's just as well because people who have read the book know he, he appears again in the following chapter. And if he's available, probably better to talk to him next week and probably better to talk to you now, partly because he's not available, but mostly because you're here.

I mean, that's what I was thinking as you were going through this kind of ridiculous cheroon. here I am, you know. Congratulations. Every single week on my Facebook now. More and more questions about Chuck. Who is Chuck? What makes him tick? Are you guys really friends? How long have you known him? Is he well? He sure does urinate a lot. He worries a lot about things like leaf blowers and external sounds. Is he really that uptight in person? Would you call him more of a pedant, a worrywort, or a nudge? These are just a few of the questions I get regarding you. What did you go with of those three choices. Oh, thankfully there was a D, all of the above. So we checked a lot of boxes. Well, you know, that's funny. Listen, let me just say that in the reviews that I read,

people are very concerned about my prostate. And I just want to say it's fine, okay? Bigger than ever. No, no, it's not. It's a normal size. I had this confirmed, I don't know, maybe five years ago. No, just, I think it was in March, actually. Well, good. Good, I'm glad. But look, you actually got up in the middle of last week's conversation, excused yourself for a two-minute bladder evacuation. And you got to know that these are the things that people pay attention to. Yes. I've always argued this and you pushed back for a time, but hopefully you're getting to the point where you see that it's the small things that people love to treat as though they're large, like your prostate. Like my prostate. And the large things that people tend to. ignore in these uncertain times. I don't even want to know what they are. Anyway, where should we begin? Why don't we begin with this tale, the biggest name in town? And what type of story is this?

Well, as you may recall, when this first came to me, it was in a slightly different form, and I reshaped it into what I referred to as a shaggy dog story. Shaggy? And I think at that point in time, you said, what's a shaggy dog story? Yes. And I did my best to explain. It's essentially a long run for a short slide. Yeah. Right.

A needlessly detailed story or anecdote that concludes with a punchline out of nowhere. Most shaggy dog stories are considered to be a waste of time. But I like them in this format because they're actually not a waste of time. You can still learn a lot about a biographical figure or, whatever your subject is. And at the same time, hopefully with a smile and a wink, land the plane on the shaggy dog, as it were. Yes. And this is a great example of the Shaggy Dog story, the long drive to find out that the diner is closed. That's how I highlight the Shaggy Dog story. But this subject matter, though, is dark. This is a dark story. Yeah. And look, I can't tell you why

I, why I've written so many grim tales. I'm a funny person. I'm a lighthearted guy. How many times did we, when we were talking about, so you'd say, oh, gosh, I really just, I really, we got to, we got to do funnier stories. We need, I got, we got to do funnier stories. I'm like, dude, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're the guy who's writing them. Why are you? I know, I don't know what happened to me. Part of it is because Paul Harvey, by and large, you know, his default topics were generally heroes. and oftentimes military. So there are a lot of military stories in this collection. There are a lot of cautionary tales. And I think because they're also mysteries, you know, mysterious tales kind of lend themselves to a certain darkness. But I'm so glad to be doing what we're doing right now

because it gives me a chance to talk more like a human about something that was, you know, really presentational. Whether they're funny or not, all the stories in the book, all the tile pieces anyway, and in the library for the podcast itself, they're all super presentational, they're all very, very carefully written, and they're all kind of presented in a almost stilted, superintentional way. What we're doing now is kind of the opposite, and hopefully that's why we have, what were you saying before? Is it 30,000 five-star reviews now? I forget, I lose count. It's not quite that much. It's about 29,000, something like that, 28.

It's disgusting. It's disgusting. Here I am talking about the importance of reviews and ratings, something I swore I'd never do, writing grim stories in many cases for reasons I don't understand, many of which are uncharacteristically earnest, another quality I try hard to avoid. But for whatever reason, I got sucked in with this whole project. I wrote serious, mysterious, and sometimes earnest tales. And I think maybe to answer the question you didn't quite get around opposing,

this one turned into a shaggy dog story because I was just trying to take the piss out of it a little bit. I wanted it to land in a way that didn't detract from the obvious tragic story of Pagent Whistle, but also acknowledged that that town has chewed up and sped out so many people over the years. And that's why the Hollywood sign itself to me is the biggest name in town. It's the biggest, most uncaring. most unsympathetic, most brutal name in town, literally and figuratively. And poor Pague learned it the hard way. Yes, she did. And I was surprised to just recently, like in preparation for this, because you know I do voluminous amounts of preparation for these podcasts. Literally, minutes.

If you were to add up all the minutes you spent, you would have literal minutes. There would be, there would be, dare I say, a dozen or more. And, and, and, Anyway, so I went to the wiki page of Begant Whistle. And I was really surprised that, like, first of all, she was 24 when she took this leave. Just a kid. And she had a career. She had been on Broadway in like 10 different shows. But there were a couple of things that got me.

And let me just, I don't want to get this wrong because, you know, how pedantic I am. I did. She did a production of Henrik Ipsons, The Wild Duck, okay? when she was 17. And a certain someone went to see this and saw her, Peg Entwistle, play this and told her mother, I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle. I can tell you who that was.

You know who this is? Yeah. Yeah. She was in the original version of the story. It was Betty Davis. Yes. I didn't know that. Betty Davis, arguably,

one of the greatest actresses of her generation, maybe of all time, was deeply inspired by Peg Entwistle. That's the tragedy of this story. Yes. It's not some bumpkin from Iowa with stars in her eyes and a completely diluted sense of her own talent or potential celebrity. This kid had the goods. Right.

She had the chops. And she came out and like so many of those sad old songs say, the place just chewed her up. Shoot her up. She worked. with a bunch of really big stars, too. George M. Cohen, William Gillette, Robert Cummings, Dorothy Gish, Hugh Senglare, Henry Travers. Do you know who Henry Travers is? No. He was Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life. Oh, the angel, of course. Yes, right? The angel who gets his wings. Yes, exactly. Now,

here's another trivia question that you knew about Betty Davis. But do you know that Pagan, Entwistle was married. She was divorced at the time of her death, but do you know who she married? No. A guy by the name of Robert Keith, and according to the WikiPage, they divorced because in addition to some charges of cruelty, she claimed that Robert Keith did not tell her that he'd been married before and was father to a six-year-old boy named. Oh, Brian.

Keith. Right. family affair. Right. Isn't that crazy? Unbelievable. Wow. Why, as the producer of this podcast, why weren't you around to fill my head with these amazing tidbits that could have dramatically enhanced the shaggy dog nature of this story? I got to tell you, that all doesn't, that that all doesn't belong in the story. I mean, I know that I've, I've forgotten all this information, but I'm sure I looked at it back, way back when, when this story came about. But yeah, yeah, I mean, the story that you told is the story that needed to be told. And I think, you know, you wrote this at a time

when I think the hashtag Me Too movement was just underway. Just getting going. That's right. And that was basically sort of the red herring, you know, to make us think it's today. Well, Weinstein had just gone down and virtually everybody everywhere, you know, the accusations were flying. And so the original question was, well, who is the biggest pig in town? Who's the biggest cad? Are we ever going to get a cad bigger than Harvey? And opinions vary, obviously. But at that point, there seemed to be so many bad actors, pardon the pun, abusing their power, that we needed to come up with an amalgam, some sort of character who was so craven,

so wicked, and so nevertheless charismatic. And I went looking for that guy. And of course, he doesn't exist. It's the amalgam of all those crows. creeps who are Hollywood and the heart of the city that has no heart. That's where they meet and that's where they part. The current of life had proved too strong and the poor little girlie just drifted along. Oh, I love that song. Nobody cared if she laughed or cried. Nobody cared if she lived or died. She's just a lost sister and nobody's missed her. She's there in the city where

there's no pity in the city that has no heart. That's Hollywood. Or New York, if you prefer. What is the name of that song? In the heart of the city. In the heart of the city? Remember? Yeah, well, no, I remember that, yeah, we used to sing that all the time. Love that song.

She wanted to roam, but she left the old home. The old people's hearts were sore. Right. Yeah. She longed for the sights and the bright city lights where hundreds had gone before. She went to the heart of the city and mingled with strange. there, but nobody said, you're being misled. For what would the strangers care? What did they care? And that's just the, that's just the verse, right? There are so many songs about Peg Entwistle that aren't

really about Peg Entwistle, but rather about every single trope she came to represent. Well, you know, on the Wiki page, it says in popular culture, and there are a bunch of things on there about Peg Entwistle. And one of the things that got me was it said that it was, some of speculated that the 1977 song, or 1977 Steely Dan recording, Pegg, is about Entwistle. But they disputed that later. But that was, well, I came across an old chestnut years ago that our friend Michael Gellert told me was about Pegg Entwistle.

And that was one of the first times her name was in my head. And I couldn't find this anywhere. But that was a song called Stay Home Little Girl. This is how overt Wow I mean there were so many tales like this Like a moth to the flame In fact this song has it

It goes Have you heard the story of heartache and pain Remember the moth and the flame It's the same old story A girl leaving home A stranger outside by the gate A mother who cries Don't you realize You'll be sorry when it's too late

And then it goes stay home little girl stay home don't roam little girl don't roam the ones who would take you from those you love so they really don't want you and soon let you go don't go you'll be left all alone stay home little girl don't go away little girl stay home little girl stay home i mean you could never get that song on the airwaves today but back then there were thousands of them and everybody was singing them on the street corners because daughters, poor daughters all over the country were headed off to the biggest name in town. I guess they still are when you think about it. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, people land here every day, pull up here in a Greyhound every day, get off the bus.

I mean, look, I stepped off a plane in 1987 and never went back to New York. I remember that. You were in the midst of a Broadway show. Yes. You had a lead role on a Broadway show. And you came out to L.A. for what pilot season or something? Yeah, I came out for eight weeks. And when I left New York, I was wearing my John Cusack overcoat because it was 1987. It was February. It had snowed two days earlier. But today it was raining. And so the streets were filled with a gray slush. And when you stepped off the curb, you were lucky if you didn't go down like eight inches and get chilling ice cold water in your boots. which happened all the time. Well, that's full on Groundhog Day.

Remember when Bill Murray comes around the corner? Right? And Ned Ryerson, right? Yeah, man. Yeah. I remember you called me from L.A. and said, that's it. It's 72 and Sunny. All the time.

And I had no prospects. You quit a Broadway show to come out to try your hand in front of the biggest name in town. I'm glad you didn't jump. Good for you. Yes, that was a good good thing that I didn't do. that, yes. Hey, I feel compelled to spill the beans right now. Well, I was going to ask you, you know, a question that would let you spill the beans because I know the beans of which you're referring. Well, I don't feel like waiting for your question. Here's the thing. This, I find this

really fun. Now, part, talking about the story of Pagan Whistle, right? And I find it fun because we can learn all kinds of things as we discuss it. I also find it fun because you're an old friend of mine and we have the basis for a ton of different kinds of conversations, plus you produce the podcast. But what if you were an expert on Peg and Whistle? What if after each week on this podcast, an expert on the subject came in who, unlike you, didn't have to go to the Wikipedia page like all our better listeners can. Or to the bathroom every 30 minutes. Right. Somebody with a functional prostate and a brain large enough to contain a lot of new information about the subject that I wrote about. This conversation with an expert in that world, I think would be interesting.

And I think it would be more interesting if it were on camera. And I think it would be doubly interesting if the conversation I just described with the expert that is currently not on hand were to follow a reenactment of the story I just told you. What? In other words, in other words, I walk on stage and sit down, not unlike the late great Spalding Gray. and I tell you the story you just heard, the biggest name in town. And as I tell you that story, tens of thousands of dollars of money are thrown toward a production budget that allow us to bring that story to life. And we cut back and forth between the story of Pegg and me telling you the story. And in this way, we captivate the viewer with what you call optics and visuals congruent with a televised endeavor.

And then the conversation continues with the aforementioned expert. And now we have a half hour show. Don't know what it's called. Could be called the way I talked about the way I heard it. Could be called any number of things. But as you know, that story or that concept has been floated around. And last week, we actually got a dozen of them in the can. We did?

You were there, Chuck. It happened. Oh, right. It happened. We have some remarkable footage. put together. I went on stage and I told these stories and this story is one of the ones we're going to bring to life for TV. And I'm really excited by it because these are the stories that keep on giving. I mean, it's really gratifying to know that people will not only listen to them

twice, they'll listen to the likes of you and me talk about them. And a publisher had the good sense to put them in a book, giving us another opportunity to talk about them. And now a TV producer and a platform as yet to be named is going to put these on the air. And so it just reminds me of two things, Chuck. First of all, good stories about real people that are emblematic of more subjects than just themselves are still very much for sale, especially when told through the lens of a mystery. And shaggy dog stories are still fun. Shaggy? And this particular episode, this Peg Entwistle, recreation. Yeah. Is really good. It's good. It's good, right? I still, you know. So anyway, I don't want to say

too much gentle listeners, but because, you know, you're the podcast audience, I feel, I feel duty-bound to let you know what we're, what we're trying to do with this format. Obviously, it's a work in progress, and it's going in a lot of different directions. But I'm super excited to say that we're in the early stages of bringing lots of these stories to life for TV. And I think they're going to be a kick. I think you're right, Mike. And that was a great what we like to call in the biz a tease, but to nothing in particular because we don't know where or when. And which is what we call in the business a mistake. Or waste of time, if you prefer. Yes, yes, yes. I'm just looking through the chapter here because I'm thinking I want to ask you something about the the grout.

I was going to say I wish you would. 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. 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

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American Giant American Made. American Giant American Made. As the host of cultural touchstones like Worst Case Scenario and How Boo's Built America, I'm partial to host stories you say in your book. That chapter in the book, you remember the old worst case scenario survival handbook? It was that little yellow handbook. Oh, yeah. That was brought to life by Sony Pictures and TNT and a guy named Craig Peligian who owned a company called Pilgrim Films and Television. Pilgrim films and Craig, of course, went on to produce dirty jobs years later.

But I met Craig on Worst Case Scenario, which is a show. that light dirty jobs lived up to its title in every way imaginable. This was such a good idea. The worst case scenario of survival handbook was kind of like the Boy Scout handbook on steroids. You know, it really could save your life. And I wanted to do a show that gave people really useful information and a fun way around these really elaborate reenactments. You know, a car goes off a bridge and you got a stunt person in the backseat and they're locked in and they show you how to get out. you know well the network wanted it you know with a lot of boobs and a lot of hot women and that

kind of made it i thought silly and and and the production guys sony they wanted more of a like a cartoon approach and craig and i wanted a literal real life survival guide well everybody got what they wanted to a point and nobody got what they wanted for as much as they wanted it and so what we wound up with was what they call a a camel Right, right. What you want in TV is a horse. Something that runs straight and fast because it knows what it is. But we had this dromedary.

Not something full of water that'll spit at you from time to time. Right. And foam at the mouth whose dula will come tumbling out of their faces. And, oh, God. So it was a terrible show. But the moral of the story was, Craig said to me, like in the first episode, he's like, I want you in a Zenga suit. I want you looking as good as you can look. No, I want you looking better than you've ever looked. I want you with good makeup and a nice haircut. And I want you to hit that mark. And I want you to say lines that make people believe you. And I really think a Zenghis suit will help. So there I am, like a $1,200 Zenga suit, just reading copy. On a shiny floor. On a shiny floor. In the worst case scenario institute, right, which is this giant warehouse.

full of actors and busty scientists walking around in super tight white lab coats, bending down unnecessarily over microscopes as they investigate various scenarios that could lead to a worse case. I'm like, guys, let me get this straight, okay? You say you want to bring a manual to life that's bulging with life-saving information. And what's most important, I ask, in a situation like that. And they said, well, credibility, obviously. People need to believe you, Mike. Like, well, why am I wearing a Zanga suit surrounded by women in plunging necklines in a fictitious

institute dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of worst case? It's such, it's doomed, guys. It's doomed. Anyway, so I had just done worst case scenario. Yeah, so what happened to that show? Believe it or not, we got picked up for an extra for an extra 13. They ordered 13. And then they ordered 13 more.

We delivered 26 one-hour episodes to TBS. If I said TNT before I was wrong, it was TBS. Turner Broadcasting System. And, yeah, people tuned in by the dozens. But it was so expensive. We spent so much money the network had to see it through. So it was doomed, but it took 26 episodes to become doomed. Well, like so many hits in Hollywood, like so.

so many stories from the biggest name in town, a thing doesn't necessarily have to be good to make money, right? Blossom. In a world where Blossom goes into syndication. I love Blossom. Opinions vary. I'm kidding. I've never seen Blossom. Boy meets world goes into syndication, right? I mean, there are endless examples enough to drive an otherwise sane, healthy person off the H in the Hollywood sign. And, you know, this was one of them. It was a completely bad. show that I wound up making a decent paycheck from. And I'll tell you honestly, that was that was right around the time when I was developing my Travis McGee model in earnest and realizing that,

you know, something, you can make a living in this town by touching everything like it's very hot. And if you don't swing for the fences, and if you don't mind being associated with projects like worst-case scenario, or any number of infomercials, or the game show we're about to talk about, or really any number of projects so completely ill-conceived, so doomed to failure, that no amount of luck or talent could possibly save them. If you realize that those turds offered an opportunity to actually make money, you might have a different way of looking at the business. And as you know, you had a front row seat to me in those days.

Worst case scenario, even though it was a failure by all critical standards, it made money. I made a chunk of money doing that show. It was a national show. I promoted it in earnest. It only took up three months of my life. But it was a failure and a success at the same time. And so why is it mentioned in the chapter?

I don't know, just because I did it right around the same time. It was a cultural touchstone. Now, here's what's interesting is that of all the cultural touchstones that you could muster up, you chose worst case scenario and then followed it with how Booz built America, which is like these two things couldn't be further apart and the time in between them is tremendous. Yeah, it's a decade. That's right. Ten years later, I did How Boo's Built America.

And I somewhat dismissively and maybe self-deprecatingly call it a cultural touchstone because very few people saw it. However, unlike Worst Case scenario, How Boo's Built America was a great show. Yeah. It was a great show. And it didn't get the love it deserved on Discovery because I was still delivering dirty jobs and they didn't want to split the baby. But it was my first attempt to do my version of connections, the famous James Burke nonfiction show that really kind of launched nonfiction shows. Right. And the idea for how booze built America was to make a case for the fact that our country wouldn't exist without booze and that every major decision from the way the colonies formed to the wars that we fought, to the Declaration of Independence, to Lexington and Concord, to the Pilgrim's Journey.

everything was informed to some degree by the presence of booze in the room. So I thought if we could make a case for history through the lens of a pub crawl, we might get people watching history shows who otherwise wouldn't give it down. Well, as you know, how Booze Built America led to six degrees. Yes. And six degrees gave us a much better bite at that apple. And that show is still on the Discovery Channel. So good for us.

So I'm still trying to unravel that particular mystery or that challenge, making history shows for people who don't watch history shows. But how Booze Built America was my first attempt to do that. I was proud of that one, even though it failed, just as I was kind of ashamed of worst case scenario, even though I was glad to have the work and proud of taking it in spite of the fact that it failed. two very different shows that check different boxes and nevertheless occupy real estate in the same sentence. And are both clearly cultural touchstones. So speaking of cultural touchstones, there is a sentence in this chapter where Tom Frank says, cuts and he says, tell me, is that your lucky jacket? And you say, don't know yet. I borrowed it from a friend. The coat I was wearing belonged to my high school friend Chuck on whose couch I'd been crashing in Hollywood.

It was electric blue with a slight bias-toried periwinkle. That was a good-looking jacket, man. Dude, first of all, yes, gentle listener. The Chuck you're listening to now was the same Chuck. This is back in 1997 probably. Yeah. And yep, I was couch surfing. I had no fixed address at the time.

That's not to say I was homeless. I was just really digging into the hotel lifestyle, shall we see? embracing the Bedouin lifestyle, I would say. I was, and as funds ran low, I would throw myself on the kindness of old friends. And of course, there you were. And while I was in L.A., I got this audition. And as I explained in the chapter, yeah, you know, they don't tell you much. It's a game show.

They describe it. They tell you what to wear, and they give you an address. And so I was living out of a knapsack at the time. And I didn't have any clothes. And you were living to Vita Loco. man, you were in a totally different life back then in a beautiful home up in the hills in Burbank. Yeah. And you had a closet full of clothes.

And you handed me this thing that, look, it was a good looking blazer. Yeah. If you're a ringmaster at Barnum and Bailey. Well, that was just it. I mean, the lapels were thinner than they should have been. And they were black. And the color blue was, I was trying to find the color, because that's, that, jacket is long gone now to goodwill. But I believe I spelled it out exactly as it was.

Really? Perry Winkle. And it was, it was sort of a cornflower, robins egg blue shot through with Perry Winkle with a desperate attempt at relevance vis-a-vis the aforementioned narrow lapels and black piping. Not unlike, not unlike the jacket I wore to my senior prom, if I'm being honest about it. Well, it looks like it could have been a barbershop quartets jacket in the 60s. Right? The point is, I show up for this audition, dressed like a carnival barker. And I don't even know if I want the job. I don't know what it is. All I know is I'm grateful to have a jacket to wear. And that's what Tom Frank was greeted with when I walked into his office.

And you know, Tom. I mean, you've met Tom. I really am looking forward to having him on the podcast next week because he is, he is an original. But yeah, I think the first words out of his mouth in real life were, get a load of you. Would you lose a bet? But, you know, he was, he was such an ass. You know, he was so. Tom Frank.

I'm sure he still is. He is, man. And you'll hear it next week. He's, I mean, he got out of the industry. Do you know what he's doing now, Tom? I don't. Like for money? Mm-mm.

He's a life coach. Come on. I swear to God. O.M.G. Next week on the podcast, I'm going to pick the brain of an old friend of mine who's an actual life coach today who hired me to host a show. Oh, my. Wow.

Called no relation, which you've just heard about. But it's the true story. You know, I conflate some of the events in the chapter that happened over a two-day period, kind of put them all together. But I did, it's true. I did not know that Dick Clark was Tom Frank. Frank's boss. Right. And it's equally true that I always held Dick Clark in the highest esteem, right up there with Alan Ludden and Gene Rayburn and Peter Marshall. I mean, he was a great host,

but he just did it in such a relaxed way. And so I did that audition literally asking myself, what would Dick Clark do? How would Dick Clark do this? Right. And out of the ether walks Dick Clark, right in the middle of this audition. I can't, I can't overstated. But there, you know, I tried to write it as best I could. But to capture that weird moment of synchronicity in the universe when things, it's kind of like, have you ever been reading something? And maybe there's a radio on in the background and you come to a word, say sofa.

And as you read the word to yourself, sofa, there's an ad on the radio. and a guy says sofa, just as you see it. It's like in those moments, for me anyway, something in my brain goes like, wow, that lined up in a weird way. And it was that to the hundredth power because it wasn't hearing a word simply at the same time you were seeing a word.

I was conjuring up Dick Clark's visage, his entire body as he was leaning against the podium in the $10,000 pyramid and trying to do it exactly like that. And I think in my memory anyway, he was dressed exactly as I was picturing him in my mind's eye too. Like I literally conjured this guy out of the ether.

I thought you were going to say he was also wearing my jacket. That would have been horrifying. But unlike Tom Frank, Dick at least had the courtesy, you know, to ignore my wardrobe. But he was worn and friendly and nice. And you know what? I don't want to talk too much more about this because it's really, it's really Tom Frank's story to tell.

Right. But how I wound up getting that job and the person that Tom Frank had to ignore whose audition he had to ignore in order to hire me. Yes. That's, you know. Yeah. That's one of my finest moments. Save that for next week for sure. did you ever meet with work with a producer named Eddie Foy the third at Dick Clark?

Eddie Foy. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't he like the great great grandson of the famous? Just grandson. Just grandson. He was the grandson of the famous silent screen actor. Of Eddie Foy.

Yeah. Of Eddie Foy the third. I did, honestly, dude, I can't even remember what I did for Dick Clark Productions. But he was the producer that. I worked with. I don't even remember what show it was, but it was, it didn't get as many as anything that you did. Well, you know what? How many, how many game shows did you audition for? Either as contestants or as host. Well, it's funny. I used to work for, I had a friend who ran a company where they would get the people who would pretend to play the game, you know?

Right. That's what I want to talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to do that all the time. Right. For, gosh, I forget what the show. where mainly they were like brand new shows. You know, I was nearly on the match game as a contestant for real. Right. And I was up, you know, I was there. And, you know, you never know who's going to go on. They have a pool of people that they're going to pull from.

And, you know, and I showed up and I didn't get on the first day. And then I show up the second day. And like, the producer kind of leans into me and says, hey, you know, you better be ready. I'm like, okay, all right, good. I'm very excited to be on the match game. I watched it as a kid. I love Gene Rayburn and everything, you know. Right.

And then they bring out the celebrities, and one of the celebrities is Marsha Wallace, who was Mrs. Craboppel on The Simpsons most recently, but more famously, you know. Bob Newhart's like secretary, right? That's right. Bob Newhart's secretary. She also, what was the other show that she did? Squirrel. Yeah.

Anyway. So I see that it's someone that I know, and I know that these game shows have all these rules about, you know, fair practices and whatnot. And like a total idiot, like a total, total idiot. I said, hey, um, um, you know, I did a series with Marsha Wallace. We, we did a pilot. It never went anywhere, but I worked with her. And, uh, and they were like, what? Are you kidding me? And I was like out the door. Yeah. It was, it was ridiculous. No, they don't score around. That, of course, thanks to that movie, you know, the famous, oh, what was the movie, but the $64,000 question, but not that one. It was the one with the cheating, the scandal.

Yes, yes. Quiz show, I believe, was the name of the movie. Yeah, but ever since then, I mean, Hollywood doesn't screw around with that because when it comes to contest, raffles, award shows, all that stuff. All of it matters. But I just, as you were telling that story, I wrote down the name Katie. Okay. Okay, all right. I can't wait to hear how this fits in.

Katie was an old girlfriend of mine. Wonderful woman. I met her at QVC all those years ago. She was a hand model when I met her. And she modeled all sorts of things. But the night I met her, she was modeling rings. So it was all these tight shots of her hands, you know. But I wasn't looking at her hands.

Anyway, Katie was a lot of fun. and really beautiful and really talented. And she decided to move to L.A. Like Peg Entwistle, to try her luck. This sweet kid from Michigan, who I met in Westchester, Pennsylvania, she goes out there to Los Angeles to see what the town holds for. Now, here's a difference between Katie. Peg Hent Whistle.

On her first day in Hollywood, Katie goes to watch her favorite game show of all time. And it happens to be the price is right. Oh, no. And she, and she, and they let her in, and she sits down and she's in the audience. And sure enough, right out of the gate, Katie, come on down. Unbelievable, right? Yeah, right.

So first day in L.A. goes to watch her favorite game show and is suddenly a contestant. And how much did she win? She not only won her round. she gets invited back to the showcase showdown. She not only wins the showcase showdown, she gets within like $200 and wins both. Oh, multiple cars, jacuzzis, a pony, a jet. I mean, it was just, she's literally not out there 24 hours.

And she's up to her neck and fabulous prizes. So I guess maybe, you know, for every Pag and whistle, there is a Katie out there, you know, keeping things even. 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-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. All right. Well, listen, I would like to start to land the plane. I have two questions for the lightning rounds, which I think are interesting. And then I have one other question that comes from listeners. Before you do that, do you think, because I'm desperate to leave the viewer with something besides a shaggy dog thing, I've... No one can see us. I felt like in this... In this chapter, I get the advice from Dick Clark, right?

Yeah, but you only tease what it is. You don't tell us what the advice is. Oh, I don't tell you what the advice is. No, it's for next week, Mike. Well, I'm just saying the advice, the lessons folks are starting to stack up like cordwood. If you go back to the beat. Right, QVC was about the submissive posture and Fred King was about what, not how, but next week's the biggie.

Dick Clark gives me the big advice. I'm cutting everything. It's a tease. That's a tease. You're right. I'm not giving the advice. I'm just saying stay tuned for more advice that changed my life. and who knows, maybe it'll change yours.

Chuck, if you dare listen to it, it's not too late for you. I'll never remember it. That's the problem. Just ask your questions and let's get on with our lives. CRS bad. Okay, so were you ever starstruck by meeting a celebrity? And if so, who? No, I was never starstruck, but I was confused on a couple of occasions and almost always for the same reason.

I saw Dustin Hoffman once in New York. And I saw Tom Cruise once in Los Angeles. And I was confused in both cases by their stature. Because they're not big guys. I just couldn't believe how tiny they were. Just couldn't believe it. They were like lily putts. And I had another encounter.

This is, I don't know if I ever told you this. I was living down in, in Greenwich, well, the West Village in New York. And I was headed to a place called Boxers. Okay. A local bar. And I was late. And you know how, I mean, you live plenty of years in New York, but you know how you walk faster in New York than you do anywhere?

Yeah. I don't know why that is. You know, I stroll in L.A. I stroll around the country in New York. I'm literally elbows pumping, taking large steps, moving with purpose. I'm walking as fast as a man can walk who isn't running. Okay? And I'm going down 4th Street and I come up on a Hudson and I make a left-hand turn on the sidewalk.

And coming the other way is another man who's walking at about the exact same speed. He clearly is late for something. I'm late for something. And we collide. Now, I hit him with the left part of my upper body, which is moving at between four and five miles an hour. He hits me with the upper right part of his body, which is moving at roughly the same speed. So now we have 10 to 11 miles of combined impact, which, you know, if you were to walk into a wall at 10 miles an hour, you'd break something, right? cars hitting each other 10 miles.

It's in there. It was a collision. Happily, it wasn't head on face to face, but it was with the meaty part of our chests and our arms were moving. Well, I figured I probably had maybe 30 pounds on this guy. Thank God, because he went down and I didn't. But he spun me around even as he flew to the sidewalk. And I could hear the sound of the air rushing out of both of us.

And he was probably slightly more alarmed. than I was because he was on the ground. But I was stunned because it felt like a bowling ball had been like thrown into my chest. But I immediately reached down and this guy immediately reached up and I pulled William Defoe to his feet. Willem. Willem DeFoe.

And he looked at me and he said, I'm sorry. And I said, I'm sorry too. And then it was, it was. just like a four second pause as we looked at each other and we realized it's not like we're going to fill out an accident report. There's really nothing left to say. I'm clearly late headed to wherever I'm going and he's clearly late. So we kind of looked at each other and he kind of shrugged it off and I and I thought about saying you've had a hell of a career. Do you have any advice for God like me? But I didn't. I just looked at.

You didn't even ask him like, are you okay? No, because he popped up like a jack in the box, you know, and I pulled him up too. And he, you know, he's a, he's a rangy, springy kind of guy. He kind of looked at me. And I, it's just an awful confusion reigns in the immediate wake of a collision like that. And when you combine the confusion of running into a stranger with the sudden realization that you've seen him on the big screen, well, the same thing happens in your brain that I talked about. about earlier when you see a word and you hear the word at the same time. It goes click. But rather than opening up a portal to enlightenment, it just shuts you down because you just don't quite know

what to try and get your head around first. That hurt. Holy crap, that's Willem Defoe. I just knocked a movie star over. I'm going to have a great story from my friends at Boxers. And then conversely, I wonder if this guy's going to tell a story when he gets to wherever he's going. And of course not. Just some random Joe he didn't. In my heart of hearts, Chuck, if there's any justice in this crazy world,

I hope that William Defoe over the years has seen me on dirty jobs and maybe other things and said to himself, you know what? I think that big son of a bitch knocked me down and Gratrow. And if I ever see him again, I'm going to tell him he still. Good work.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I almost choked. You know that's happened. Or he's seen you on TV and go, where do I know that guy from? Hey, man. I just thank God it wasn't Tyrus, right? Oh, my gosh.

Some 300-pounder would come around. I'd still be flying through the air. Do you remember a time? Remember we used to play Frisbee golf at Golden Ring Park, across the street from Golden Ring. I remember one time we were running down this hill. And it was at the bottom of the hill, there was like a fence, but it wasn't really a fence. It was a post every 20 feet that had a very thin piece of wire going through it.

So it's like just one piece of wire. I mean, it's not a fence. It's not going to stop anybody. It just basically says, don't drive here, you know, don't drive off the parking lot in here. And we were running down this hill to beat the band. And I thought I was just running between these two posts. And I saw it at the very last second. But I was running, I mean, at a really good clip.

And like instincts, I just couldn't jump over it. And so I tried to slip underneath of it. And so I just kind of put my feet in front. And it caught me right across my hips. And it was like a boomerang or a sling shing. shot. I just went like forward and then immediately backward. And then I was lying on the ground looking up going, what just happened? I couldn't understand. Those, I mean, honestly, it's, I think they're the greatest, among the greatest moments of life. I don't mean to say that falling

down is necessarily a great moment. But you know that feeling you get when you're, When you're sitting in your chair and you lean back a little too far and you catch yourself at the last minute and you like teeter, right? As Stephen Wright said, I feel that way all the time. No, it's precisely the fact that if you felt that way all the time, your, your heart would explode. Yeah. It's because it's, it's that level of surprise, uncertainty, and straight up befuddlement, right? It's like you hadn't seen that wire.

All you knew was that the cosmos had somehow conspired to fling you backwards, right? In a way that was completely impossible to ignore. And so as your brain rushes to make sense of the invisible force that laid you prostrate on the ground or prostate in your case, you know, that to me is like the perfect blending of curiosity, vulnerability and wonder. and that's what I felt when Willem Defoe went spinning off me like a top, you know, not right away, but when I saw his face. Yeah, when you knew who it was, right. Exactly. That's so funny. That's good one. You know, it's also funny. This happened to me yesterday. I was in the streets of San Francisco going wherever I was going. And I tripped over a piece of the sidewalk that buckled. Right? And I did the thing that everybody. does. You turned around and looked. I turned around and looked at it.

And I waited. Like I waited for an explanation. I waited for somebody to explain why the sidewalk was buckled or maybe for the sidewalk itself to say, sorry, my bad. Or watch where you're going or something. It's just that it's hard to articulate, but the degree to which you're rendered stupid in the immediate aftermath of an inexplicable collision is somehow poetic. Oh, pardon me.

It's got any more questions. Ask them otherwise. Well, yeah, I want to just ask one question. A lot of people, this was one of the reviews from Fuel is God. Interesting, interesting moniker. I'd say God is Fuel, maybe. Chuck, I have to know the St. Cloud Limerick. Oh.

And so if you want, I'll beep you out. I know a bit of it. Well, you know what? It's worth repeating because on Facebook, like 100 people ask for it, too. You should never start a limerick you don't finish, folks. I apologize. I did that last week. We were talking about Fred King.

They're not a ton of rules on this podcast, but it's still family friendly. And so, Chuck, you're going to have to decide, because I'm not going to bleep myself, but you're going to have to bleep out the offending word. Yeah, I'll do it. The lyric. No. What makes this limerick funny, kind of like a shaggy dog. You know what? This is kind of a shaggy limerick.

It's kind of a shaggy limerick, and I think you'll understand why. As told to me by Fred King, originally, in a crowded restaurant. Okay? This is a filthy limerick, but he told it in a crowded restaurant, and that's what makes it so funny. Okay, it goes like this. There once was a man from St. Cloud who liked to say, in a crowd.

He'd pull them in near, whisper in their ear. Not soft like this. But real loud! When he screamed, but real loud, and a hundred heads snapped around in the restaurant, the beer flew out of my mouth once again. And Fred King's legendary status rose yet another click.

Oh, my gosh. Oh, that is just a lot. awful. Okay. One last thing, you know, we played Sean McCourt's song last week. Oh, yeah. And I got a text today from one Sean McCourt this morning. And he said, hilarious and ever so slightly humiliating. I listened with Charlotte, who loved it too. Now, of course, we mentioned Charlotte in the episode, but you know what else we mentioned in the episode. Yes, the incredible amount of money that was raised when I auctioned off my cock. Yes.

That's rooster, of course. Yes, a rooster. Well, you know what, good. I'm sure Sean had a good time explaining to his teenage daughter, the various nuances of poultry designation. You know what we ought to do? He, it's such a, again, on Facebook, too, a lot of people want to know if, if River of Blood is ever going to be re-recorded properly.

With apologies, Sean. But the hook is really great. And I don't know. I mean, if we took the time to actually get that thing out there, I'd put the considerable weight of this podcast behind it and see if perhaps it could enter the charts with a bullet on the way. And number one, Sean McCourt, moving up a notch in the countdown with River of Blood, inspired by Mike Rowe.

You know, Mike Rowe from cultural touchstones. such as worst case scenario and how booze built America. See the way I call them back, Chuck? Do you see the way that happens? You know, that's why you are who you are, buddy. That's why you are who you are. And that's why I'm the guy over here. I'm Ed McMahon.

All I'm doing is laughing. All I'm doing is laughing. Hey, man, this is becoming increasingly fun. Next week, if all goes is plan, Tom Frank will join me, who you just met in the chapter. And I promise you, you know what? I'm not making any promises.

but I will say that if Tom actually shows up, there'll be a conversation that is worth quoting. Hope you learned a thing or two about shaggy dog stories and the perils of Hollywood, whether or not your Pagent Whistle, or one of my old girlfriends, who just happens to Forrest Gump her way into her favorite game show. If you like the book and you want to hear it officially,

it's available over on Audible or wherever people download books, or if you're cheap and would prefer to enjoy it for free. We'll be back next week with another chapter, assuming, of course, you go and give us another five-star review on where is it, Apple? Five-star review. I'm working on a theme song for the five-star review. Maybe Sean will write one. Yeah, God, that'd be great. People, I just read two comments saying, no offense, Mike, but the reason I listen to your podcast and the reason I've given it five-star reviews thus far is because from time to time,

breaks into a Baltimore accent, which makes us laugh. Oh, you know, I saw, I saw one like that, too. Somebody else wrote something like that on Apple. I was reading an Apple review, and a guy said, well, I, I only like it when Chuck, you know, talks in a Baltimore accent. And I got to believe that guy's from Baltimore, too, because I don't know why, you know, I mean, I think maybe he was eating some crab cakes when he wrote it. Final thought, and apropos of nothing.

Are you watching mayor of East Town? I'm sorry, did you say mayor? Mayor? Mayor? You want me to lasso the moon for you, Mayor? No, not. What is that accent? Well, it's part Western Pennsylvania, which has a lot in common.

with Baltimore, you know, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, like we say use. Yeah, in Baltimore, we say, you guys, use guys going down at a game. In Pittsburgh, they say youens, Y-O-U-N-S. Anyway, it's beside the point. The story takes place off the Concha Hocken, where I used to live when I worked at QVC in Pennsylvania. It's called Mayor of East Town, M-A-R-E. Okay. But it's how the woman spells her name.

All right. So she's a detective on the police force and her name is mayor. And it's kind of like these podcasts, surprisingly dark. And it's a mystery. But I just watched the last episode last night. And it is freaking terrific. It's really great. You'll love it, Chuck. Kate Winslet is the star. And the reason I bring it up is she's come very close to mastering the Baltimore West. Pennsylvania accent. No. Yes. And the reviews are really great. And they all talk about the dialect coach that she got. Obviously, she's one of the greatest actresses, sorry, actor of all time. But I've never heard anybody, except for that guy in the seven-ups with Roy Scheider years ago.

Yes. Really take on the Baltimore accent. You know who did a reasonably good job was John Travolta in Hairspray? Oh, really? Did you never see Hairspray, the musical? The movie musical. You know, I never saw, I never saw that movie. Oh, no.

It's great. Yeah. And John Travolta plays the, um, the Harvey White, not Harvey Weinstein. Oh my gosh, what was his name? Harvey, uh, well, come on, Firestone, Firestein. I are, Harvey Firestein. I just want to be loved. Is that so wrong?

Remember that? Anyway. I do remember that. Yeah, he played What's Her Name's Mom? I can't remember any of the characters' names. Squirrel. Yes.

Okay, well, the Baltimore accent, John Travolta had a great Baltimore accent. Pretty good one. His first line in the movie is, Tracy Turned That, Turn That Music Down. I'm trying to aarn here. His first line in the movie. Oh, God, that's great, man.

That is great. Geez, do you remember going down to the Charles Theater? Love the Charles Theater. And watching John Waters' name. movies. This beautiful theater and the most horrifying images on its screen. Yes. Pink flamingos. Desperate living. Remember the opening of desperate living? They sit down on that fine china and they're eating a rat. They're carving up a rat and eating it. And Edith Massey and Pink Flamingos, I think it was Pink Flamingos. She played a... The Egg Lady. Babs, the Egg Lady.

Yeah. This woman, this very, very heavy Baltimore woman with only... a few teeth in her head and a couple hundred extra pounds sat in a diaper in a crib waiting for the egg man to come. And I remember you and I sitting in this theater in high school just thinking, I don't know, A, if we should be here, B, if we should be watching this, or where to put the image of Babs the Egg Lady in our heads. But, you know, days gone by. You know, she ran a thrift shop in Fells Point right on South Broadway. I walked into a place and saw her. I was like, you're, you're It's messy. You're a badsy egg lady.

Oh, my God. What a small world. Hey, it's been swell. See you. We done? Hey, I thought you were going to ask me to tell you a shaggy dog story because I got a couple of great ones, but actually none that beat Pegg and Whistle. Modesty aside, so I'll just go with the original.

I was just asking you to explain what a shaggy dog story is because a lot of people didn't know. I didn't know what it was until you told it to me. But now you know, we're flat on that? I mean, pretty much, yeah. It's a long run and a short slide. It's a long drive and the diner's closed. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that's really the best metaphor for it.

That's what you say when somebody tells you a joke that takes a shaggy dog joke and you get to the punchline and you roll your eyes. That was a long drive to find out the diner was closed. Oh, I see what you're doing. Okay. Yeah. Well, like the greatest shaggy dog stories, people forget the story, but if the, if the last line is so solid, then it just becomes its own thing, its own quotable thing. And you can attach it to all sorts of other things, right? This, you know what? I'm just going to tell you because I, because I wanted, it's, it's, it's, it's the greatest shaggy. You don't know how the end of this works, do you? I do now. I wasn't satisfied with the three or four potential endings that we queued up. I started with a shaggy dog story.

I think we should end with one. You know, I've got a pee. You'll wait for it, damn it. You'll wait for it. Go ahead. Let me just clean this up. So this horse decides his life is kind of empty and not what he had hoped it could be. And he wants to take up a hobby.

he wants to play the guitar, right? So he calls the guitar center and says, hey, I want to learn to play the guitar. Can you help me? And the guy says, yeah, no problem. We teach people all the time. He goes, well, here's the thing. I'm a horse.

He says, it's no problem. We can teach you how to play. So the horse goes down the guitar center. Learns to play the guitar. He's pretty good at it. I mean, no opposable thumb, but after a couple of weeks, the guy's a natural, right? So he's a guitar playing horse, you know,

and he's back at the stable. And one day a cow walks over, and she's like, hey, I can't help but notice you're playing a guitar. You think I could learn? And he said, yeah, look, it's not that difficult. I called the guitar center. And they hooked me up. So the cow calls a guitar center and says, look, I like to learn how to play the guitar. And the guy's like, well, it shouldn't be a problem. We teach people all the time. She said, well, here's the thing. I'm a cow. And he says, that's no problem. I just taught a horse how to play the guitar last week, you know, come on in.

So the cow goes in and decides to learn how to play the bass. So she can generally, with the horse. And a couple weeks later, this cow turns out to be pretty good on the bass guitar. So she and the horse are having a hell of a time jamming in the barn, you know, and the chicken comes over. And he's like, hey, you guys sound pretty good. And the cow says, well, thanks. And the chicken says, you think maybe I could learn how to play the guitar too? And the horse goes, look, it's really not that hard. Just call the guitar center. Guy there'll hook you up. So a chicken calls a guitar center. Listen, man, I really want to learn to play the guitar or you know, maybe the violin, the mandolin, something, you know.

And he said, well, the mandolin would be good. You know, not a lot of people to play the mandolin, but, you know, it's definitely an option. And the chicken says, look, here's the thing. I'm not a person. I'm a chicken. The guy says, listen, I had a horse in here a couple weeks ago and a cow. You're going to be fine. So the chicken goes to the guitar center.

Learns how to play the mandolin. It's pretty good. It's pretty good at it. So a month later, these three, this one, horse, this cow, and this chicken are jamming out in the barn. And the farmers listen to him. He goes, I got to say, these guys are not bad. The farmer calls a buddy his from high school who happens to be a talent agent. The agent comes by and they're like, like, I think I can get this show on the road. So one thing leads to the next. They sign a contract. And these three are tearing it up on the

circuit. And unfortunately, a phone call comes in one day. And the horse's mother is ill. So the horse says, look, fellas, I got a split. I'll be back. And the horse goes off to see his mom. And while he's away, tragedy strikes. The chicken and the cow go down in a plane and they don't make it. And the horse gets back and learns the news and is devastated. So he takes his guitar and just tosses it to the side.

He's bereft and he walks into a bar to drown his sorrows. and the bartender says, why the long face? Boy. Now, that's a shaggy dog story. And it's so shaggy that you've probably heard, horse walks into a bar, and the bartender says, why the long face? That's just the punchline.

Now you know the rest of the story. The rest of the story. Edit that out if you want. I don't care anymore. No. You know what? I'm just going to let it record. I'm going to go bake a cake, do something. You do whatever you want. I'll talk to you next week. Call Tom Frank. Don't forget. He's going to be great. As for the rest of you, don't be Peg and Whistle. Be careful out here in this town without pity. I do. If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right, Granger knows you need to understand what's wrong as soon as possible. possible. So when a conveyor motor falters, Granger offers diagnostic tools like calibration kits and

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