The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 212: Michael Orkin—It's Better than Good. It's Done!

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

A high speed chase, followed by a low speed chase, followed by a candid conversation with the executive producer who first allowed Mike to artificially inseminate a cow on local television.

Hey guys, it's Mike. This is episode number 212 of the way I heard it. It's better than good. It's done. That's the title I'm going with. It's better than good. It's done. And it starts with a true story that takes place in the blink of an eye. It's the story of a daredevil on his deathbed who looks back at his remarkable life moments before shuffling off his mortal coil and recalls the many high-speed chases that defined his career. That's following. followed by another true story that features a series of low-speed chases starring yours truly. Those chases involve a Lincoln Navigator, the official car of Evening Magazine, which I had the pleasure of driving during my tenure as the co-host of one of the strangest jobs I've ever had, a job that allowed me to chase opportunity and freebies with reckless abandon all over San Francisco. Evening Magazine was one of those gigs that turned out to be way more important than I thought it would be. And the guy who hired me for that job is called Michael Orkin. And he's my guest on today's show.

Mike Orkin is without question the best boss that I've ever had. Why? Well, for starters, he hired me without an audition and allowed me to do things on local television that nobody's ever done before. I refer to the important business of collecting the sperm from bulls, artificially inseminating cows, crawling through sewers in prime time, and exploring feces from every species. It was Michael Orkin who allowed me, in spite of his boss's strenuous objections, to develop a segment called Somebody's Got to Do It, which of course went on to become dirty jobs. In short, I owe the guy a debt.

I can never repay. So I ask him to come on the podcast today. Just to catch up and recall a few of the moments that made my time at Evening Magazine. So memorable. I also wanted to thank him for summing up in just a few words, the challenge of producing a daily show, which he did succinctly one evening during a last-minute editing session when I asked him if he thought the first segment if somebody's got to do it was any good.

Good, he said. It's better than good. It's done. Such is the reality of delivery. a daily show day after day after day after day and such is the wisdom of my old friend who has forgotten more about local television than most people will ever know it's all right here in episode 212 it's better than good it's done and it all starts right now do do do do do do dumb 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 Claude 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, soul-deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn more at nettsweet.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 netsuite.com slash mike. That's netsuite.com. Chapter 34. Something unforgettable and real.

A high-performance convertible flies down a two-lane highway at speeds well in excess of the posted limits. In hot pursuit, a professional stuntman drives a Ford station wagon that's pulling an empty trailer. The scene couldn't be simpler. No special effects, no CGI, just a good old-fashioned Hollywood car chase. On his deathbed, 31 years later, Bill Hickman recalls the scene in vivid detail. In his mind's eye, he can still see the convertible

rounding the corner and disappearing from view. He can still feel the frustration at not being able to catch up. If he'd been driving his famous Dodge Charger that day, the muscle car he drove in Bullitt, things might have ended differently. Bill smiles at the memory. The Charger had been one hell of a car and Bullitt one hell of a movie. As the film's stunt coordinator, Bill had been asked to create the most realistic car chase ever filmed. By most accounts, he had done just that. With Steve McQueen in Hot Pursuit, driving a Ford Mustang 390, the two men turned the hills of San Francisco into their personal racetrack,

complete with hairpin turns and asphalt launching pads. Their muscle cars literally flew through the air. hubcaps exploded from their wheels and rolled crazily down the streets and the fiery explosion at the end when Bill's car crashes into the gas pumps at the filling station set a new standard on the big screen for vehicular verisimilitude. It was the mistakes, though, along with the actual stunts that brought a new sense of realism to every Bill Hickman sequence. In one shot, Bill sideswipes a parked car, with a camera affixed to it, knocking it sideways. Normally, footage like that would wind up on the cutting room floor,

but Bill argued that the mistake made the chase feel more real. And the director agreed. The shot stayed in, and Bullitt won an Oscar. After that, every director in Hollywood wanted a car chase with the Hickman touch. In the seven-ups, Bill drove his Pontiac Grandville so, aggressively that the actor in the passenger seat screamed in terror. That was not in the script, but the director kept it in because it was real. During the French connection, the door of a parked car opens seconds before Bill speeds by at 60 miles an hour, ripping the door off its hinges.

This too looks shockingly real, because it is real. So too was a severed door that went spiraling through the air like a giant ninja star, nearly decapitating the camera crew and sending passers by diving for cover. In that same sequence, Hickman, doubling Gene Hackman, chases down a bad guy who's commandeered an L-Train in Brooklyn. The stunt takes place 50 feet below the speeding train as Hickman's 1971 Pontiac Lamans tries to keep pace on a busy New York Street. It was a difficult scene to shoot, and the director hated the first take. He told Hickman that he wanted a car chase that would scare the hell out of audiences, something unforgettable and real. Bill smiles ruefully at the memory, recalling his exact conversation with the famous director.

You want real, he said. Meet me tomorrow morning at the corner of 86th and still well. Bring your camera. If you have the balls for it, I'll show you something real. The next morning, William Friedkin strapped himself and his camera into the backseat of Hickman's Le Mans and captured some of the most harrowing footage ever to make it onto the big screen. Why? Because Hickman exceeded speeds of 90 miles an hour in actual New York City traffic. No special effects, no CGI, and no permit. result, six Oscars for the French connection and to sequence Friedkin, the man who directed the exorcist, would call the scariest thing I've ever seen. Now, as he lays dying, Bill comes to realize the inescapable truth about his own identity.

His whole life has been one long car chase. In his final moments, he thinks about how far Hollywood has come from the day of in which actors sat behind fake windshields and fake steering wheels and pretended to drive as fake footage rolled by. He also thinks about how lucky he's been over the years. It's a miracle that no one has ever been hurt during any of his scenes. Unless, of course, you count that very first scene. 31 years ago, back when Bill was a young stuntman driving a station wagon, hauling an empty trailer, trying to keep up.

with that speeding convertible. Bill can still see the convertible, rounding the corner, and disappearing from view. He can still feel his frustration at not being able to catch up, and he can still see the sight that awaits him when he finally does round that corner. Slumped behind the wheel of the mangled sports car,

he sees the young driver who should have been sitting beside him, a young driver whose Porsche should have been secured on the empty train, behind his station wagon as they drove to the Salinas Speedway. Alas, the kid had insisted upon driving himself to warm up the car's engine for the race he was scheduled to run that afternoon. It was a scene, all right, but this was no movie, and with no director on hand to say,

cut, the action had unfolded in slow motion, as real life sometimes does. Bill had run to the wreck and pulled his young protege from the smoldering pile of twisted steel. There were no last words, no final close-ups, just the sound of one last breath, seconds before the driver died in Bill's arms and everything faded to black. That was the start of a legendary career, the career of a stuntman remembered for his obsession with making action movies feel unforgettable and real. Along with the start of a legend, the legend of a 24-year-old race car driver whose fleeting work on the big screen is still remembered as something real and unforgettable. A rebel without a cause named James Dean. How crazy is this? Just a few weeks before the

accident, James Dean recorded a public service announcement advising young drivers to slow down. He stared into the camera and said, quote, the life you save just might be mine. Then, just two hours before the crash that killed him, a cop pulled him over and gave him a speeding ticket. Do you think the universe was trying to tell him something? I don't know. I doubt that Bill Hickman knew. But what I can tell you is this. Back in 2002, I wasn't searching for signs from the universe. I was too busy impersonating a host every night on Evening Magazine.

Good evening, folks, I'm Mike Rowe, and tonight we're at the Mondevi Vineyard in beautiful Napa Valley, home to the finest wines in all the world. Good evening, folks, I'm Mike Rowe, and tonight we're at the Snodgrass Apple Orchard in Scenic Pescadero, home to the finest apples in all the world. Good evening, folks, I'm Mike Rowe, and tonight we're at Eddie's Electronic Emporium in beautiful downtown Burling Game, where you can save a bundle on your next big screen TV. Never mind Steve McQueen flying through the mean streets of San Francisco in his souped-up Mustang. Imagine instead a 42-year-old B-list celebrity racing along the same streets in a

Lincoln Navigator, the official SUV of Evening Magazine, stuffed with swag, free wine, free apples, free TVs, free whatever I could get my hands on. Good evening, folks. I'm Mike Rowe, and tonight we're coming to you from Fouton World in picturesque Alameda, home of the Bay Area's very best futons. Do you have any idea how hard it is to strap a free futon onto the roof of your free navigator? Fact is, for a guy who had lost all his money, starring in a show like Evening, was just what the doctor ordered. I got free tickets to every show in town. Free nights and fancy hotel. free meals and five-star restaurants and free clothes from Macy's, the official provider of Mike Rose wardrobe. It was like QVC, only this time I got to keep all the stuff I was hawking, including my aforementioned gigantic head cast in bronze. Not what you'd call a fulfilling time, but I wasn't searching for meaning.

I was just trying to get back on my feet, and all that free crap made me feel a lot better. until one day the universe did call. Luckily, I picked up the phone. Oh, hi, Mom. How's it going? Well, your father's up on the roof doing God knows what, and I'm afraid he's going to fall off, but I'm fine. Never once, as my mother answered this simple question without first telling me what my father was doing.

Then she got to the point. I'm calling about your grandfather. He's 90 years old, you know, and won't be around forever. I was thinking how nice it would be if just once he could turn on his television and see you doing something that looks like work. Mothers, they can be so cruel. Well, thanks, Mom. What'd you have in mind? Oh, I don't know, she said.

How about a logging camp or a dairy farm or maybe a coal mine? It's California, Mom. Coal's illegal out here. Well, I'm sure you'll come up with something, she said. Where are you shooting this evening? I believe tonight's episode will be coming to you from a tea room in Chinatown. Oh my, she said. Doesn't that sound exciting?

Your grandfather will be riveted. That night, I drove back from Chinatown with my navigator bursting with complimentary tins of Jasmine Dragon Pearls, the official tea of Evening Magazine. Along the way, I thought about our conversation. It had been a while since I'd talked to my pop, And I missed him. Surely, there was room in our show for a segment that he could relate to. Why not mix things up a bit? And so, the next morning, after a free haircut at DiPiatro Todd, the official hairstylist of Evening Magazine, I drove all around San Francisco, trying to see the town through my grandfather's eyes. There were no logging camps or dairy farms or mines of any kind, just boutiques and cafes and artisiness. but nots. But the answer to my mother's question was there all the same, right under my feet. I didn't know it, but it had been there all along.

Do do, do, do do do do do do. 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.

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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. Well, did you check it to see how it sounded? Did you check the recording? No. What was the point of your test?

Well, I gave up, but when you said it sounded great. That sounds great. Yeah, well, it sounds great. It's going to sound great. Well, that's the voice of Michael Orkin, today's special guest you're listening to you right now. And if there were any way that I could somehow play the last 45 minutes back so you, the gentle listener, could listen to what just happened between me and Chuck and my old boss, then I think we'd have something saleable, Mike. It was fun. It was just like the old times where, you know, I make things complicated.

They go considerably worse. But in the end, we end up right where we wanted to be. We always land the plane, but it is true. one of the first things I said to you, and I don't remember the date or the time, and of course, this is the way I heard it, so feel free to correct me on any detail. But didn't I accuse you at some point early in our relationship of waging a war on simplicity? Yeah, you did, and it stuck with me, that my default is to think of the way to make it more complicated. And then execute.

Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished 45 minutes later. What's 45 minutes among friends? Nothing. Nothing. It's fine. It's good. It's just I want people to understand. It's like a disaster scenario, right? It's never a whole bunch of things at once. It's one little thing. And then it builds up and it builds up and it builds up. And suddenly you're screwed. And this is one of Michael Orkin's special talents. We were ready to begin. Chuck and I had our old program in place. Right? We had our architecture worked out. And he says, hey, I've been using this great new program. It's called, whatever it's called. What's it called? Riverside. Riverside. Let's try Riverside. So we're trying to record it on this thing called Riverside now. Now, there's nothing wrong with Riverside. It's just that Michael's microphones weren't working. And then just, man, way leads on to way, as we love to say on this podcast. And now 45 minutes later, it sounds like it might be working. Are we all officially good? Check. We're good. Thumbs up. They can't hear. hear you say thumbs up, Michael. I'm not committing to using any of this video.

Okay, so a thumbs up without an audio, thumbs up is just the sound of silence, which is death and a podcast. Right. Anyway, it's great to see you. Good to see you, Mikey. Nice to meet you, Chuck. Thanks for dropping by. That's all the time we have.

This has been fun. Listen, I got to run. Michael, did you know that when I met you, I had already known Chuck 22 years? We met in Memphis, Tennessee in something like 1992. Maybe, yeah. Now, I told a version of this story, Chuck, and out of the blue, I had been talked to Michael in a while, but I got a text telling me how I got a whole list of things wrong, which I love, by the way. But what did I get wrong about our first? Oh, I told the story of the worst bit of TV I ever did, which you produced called Just What I Wanted.

Just What I Wanted, colon, a holiday gift giving guide. Why would you want a colon? Because if you've ever had a semi-colon, Chuck, you realize it's just not enough. Just not enough. You want the whole thing. How did you find me in the business of casting for that hot mess? What happened? I had just taken a job in Memphis, Tennessee, at the NBC affiliate WMC.

The boss has called me into a meeting. They go, we want to do this show. We want to record it once, but do different opens and closes for like 16 different malls around the south. And the guy whose idea with this was was Jim, Jim Lutton. First, the only time I ever met him. But in this meeting, he says, well, listen, I got this guy I know, done some stuff on QVC named Mike Rowe.

You should consider him. And I said, well, I just did and let's take him because I don't have anybody. I'm new in time. So a week or two later, we have set up to shoot. for about three days in Memphis. And they send me to go pick up Mike at the Memphis airport. And Mike told a story on another podcast about me picking him up with a 1976 Mustang 2 with Elvis Presley's portrait on the hood.

And that's true. You got that right. Yeah, thank you. I remember it. It made an impression. You also, in those days, had a ponytail like three feet long. And you really made an impression. your lanky frame out of that old Mustang with Elvis, the king, painted and what appeared to be like oil paint,

on the primer of the... The car didn't have any color, Chuck. It was just primer. It was just a beige Mustang with Elvis painted on it, and this character crawling out of the driver's side. It's shocking. Well, the car was named the Fleshmobile. It wasn't primer. It was just a tired, old, beige paint. And when I was moving to Memphis, I had a big party, and this guy had done a story on years ago named Donald Neal, who is an amazing artist, had put this incredible photo realistic portrait of Elvis on the hood. And on the back, on the trunklet, it said, and my mama cried. And Rob Mayberry saw it and said, that's wrong. It's, and his mama cried. His mama cried. And his mama cried. Chuck, Rob Mayberry, old friend of Michaels, who was also a cameraman on Evening Magazine,

which we'll get to momentarily. Rob, I mean, we could do a whole podcast on this character. Believe me, what a completely original dude he was. But, Mike, what I'm trying to get to is the time you and I spent together at evening. But because it's always impossible to know precisely where to begin, I wanted to start with that first meeting between you and I because I've introduced you already as the guy who knows more about local television, small market television.

I think than anybody else walking around on the planet. But I'm not sure it was true back in 1993 when you hired me to host just what I wanted, a holiday gift guide. I don't think you knew anything, in fact. Gift giving guide, Mike. A holiday gift giving guide. Well, you're right.

I was faking it. Faking it in Memphis, Tennessee at the Raleigh Springs Mall. But we made it work. And if you remember, we would have Mike walk out of the mall. and say, hey, everybody, I'm here at the Raleigh Springs Mall in Raleigh, Tennessee, and then he'd get that take. And then we'd say, okay, go back.

And he'd go, hey, everybody, I'm at the Shreveport Mall in Shreveport, Louisiana. And we do that 16 times. And I think we did a middle one. And then we did an ending. Well, thank you, everybody, from the Raleigh Springs Mall. And we just kept shooting over and over as you walked in the mall carrying a big box of wrapped packages. Yeah. You walked into the same mall the whole time.

just changed the name 17 times? Exactly right. Same mall, lots of stand-ups, and then cut it into 16 different shows to air in 16 different markets. So the goal of this thing, Chuck, was basically to create a weird chunk of nostalgia that would make people yearn for simple Christmases and times gone by. And to do that, I would interview people in the mall and try and engage them in conversation. And Michael, wasn't Rob Mayberry there? Rob Mayberry was sleeping on that sofa about a week where he talked about it, he was there shooting it. And when it came time, I wanted him to put on a Santa suit. And he's like, I'm not going to do it.

I'm here to shoot this. And we talked about it. He goes, I was an asshole. I shouldn't have been that. But he wouldn't put on the Santa suit. So I put on the Santa suit. Yes. So what we have in this mall is a man who drives an old Mustang with Elvis on it,

a long ponytail who looks, a lot like a scarecrow. It's the skinniest as Santa ever, an emaciated Santa walking around a mall that's going to close in the next couple of months for sure. These places were all largely condemned. And me tagging along, trying to coax frightened children to crawl onto his lap as they told me what they wanted for Christmas. It was horrifying. I think maybe you did a scene sitting in my lap. I did. Yeah. This piece of video, the last time I knew where it existed, probably the last place it does exist was in a Christmas wrapping that I gave to Mike Roe as a Christmas present. And Mike Roe does not keep up with shit. But if it exists, it's somewhere

within reaching distance of Mike Roe right now. I don't know. He's still got that bust of himself in the garage. That might be lying around there somewhere. Look, it's hard to misplace a 300-pound edifice of your own smiling visage. Yeah, that video is around. and I'm going to try and find it just so people can see what you look like as Santa, but also so they can see what you later told me was your finest moment in as a viewer, watching me interview that woman about her favorite Christmas movie. You told that story and you got it wrong. And what we'd said was, we got to get, you know, there's nothing, there's nobody here.

We got to get some moments, right? So I said, Mike, ask him about the last holiday movie they saw. Well, this nice woman walks up and it's the holiday season. So she takes it as, what's the last movie you saw in the holidays? And she says, I just saw seven. And Mike doesn't miss a beat. And he goes, oh, that musical comedy, I saw that. I laughed.

And her reaction is, what? What's in the box? Oh. What's in the box? All that is just a long way of saying that's how we met once upon a time down there at the, where did you put me? You put me in the Peabody Hotel. Correct. And we spent a super weird day in this mall in Raleigh Springs shooting this impossibly strange show.

And then that night, you remember what you did? What we did before. The first day you walked in, you're like the big shot from L.A., so Mason Granger, the GM of the TV station, walks in. introduces himself and you go, oh, nice meeting you. Hey, I hear REMs in town and dropped a little planted a seed and the two days later, there are two tickets to REM on my desk with the note for Mike Roe. I said, hey, dude, Mason came through for you. And Mike goes, well, I don't know about in town you want to go. And I'm like, hell yeah. So we went to an R&M concert. But on the way, we stopped by a bar called Automatic Slims outside the Peabody. And the bartender was this hot woman who hooked us up

with some drinks and later became my wife and got us hammered. Then we went to the R.E.M. concert and sat next to this beautiful girl who had a giant thing on her face. Do you remember that, Mike? You kept calling it a carbuncle. Absolutely beautiful, but this giant eraser on her face. Yeah. And then we went back to the bar and you disappeared. And it was like 4 o'clock in the morning. We would send you back to the Peabody. I think you had a 6 o'clock flight. I did.

There are some details in that little exchange that I really want clarified. So are you saying that you met your wife, the woman who would become your future wife, that night with Mike Rowe? Didn't meet her that night. Went there because I had been dating her. Okay. And she was the bartender and hooked us up. Great. Now that-

Why did she hook us up? Some hooked some up more than us. Others, you might say. I don't want to go any further down that rabbit hole. But now, tell me about this eraser again. What did you call it a carbuncle? I called it a carbuncle because I think it was. You know, it was bigger than a wart.

It seemed to have its own circulatory system. And it had a fair amount of hair grown out of it. And it was on the face of an otherwise beautiful woman. And she was friendly and she was there the whole time. We had a great chat. It is very distracting. It's hard to know where to look and where not to look. You know, you've had a few and the concerts there.

And there they are, Michael Stripes singing, losing my religion, and you look over to your left. And there's this thing with its own zip code and its own follicle group. And it was enormous. It was almost like a fist, like a fist-sized, like medieval growth. She was one trip to the dermatologist from a tin. Okay. We're never going to use any of this.

I understand. But we're going to cut it into the promo. Time now to talk briefly and, oh, so discreetly, about what happens to a camper who goes to bluechew.com and drops my last name. Without overstating things, suffice it to say that said camper will be pitching his tent in no time at all. I think you all know what I'm trying to say. When a camper goes to bluechew.com and enters promo code row, he's just a few days away from becoming a happy camper,

who I dare say could find himself up all night. You see, Blue Chew tablets contain the same active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis. And we all know what that means, right? That means happy campers are everywhere, because now the process of pitching a tent has just been made more convenient than ever. Try Blue Chew for free when you use promo code R-O-W-E at Blue Chew.com. Just pay $5 shipping and get a month supply for free. That's a whole month of improved tent pitching for free.

That's promo code R-O-W to receive your first month for free at bluchew.com where more details and safety information can be found. No, but that's the night I met Lisa, who went on to become affectionately known as Mother Fear to lots and lots of people. I didn't think I'd see her again. I didn't think I'd see you again. You gave me all kinds of grief over the years because I never responded to any of your Christmas cards. Michael sends out the most extraordinary Christmas cards, Chuck, very elaborate, very, very subversive and weird.

I didn't get them, you know, until years later, when they finally caught up with my address, I wasn't a living in a particular place. By the time we reconnected, it was something like 19, geez. 2001. That's where this story begins. That's right. And I'll tell you how this story begins because you screwed this one up. All right. Tell me again. It's the way you heard it.

I was the executive producer of Evening Magazine at KPIX, San Francisco, had a host to get himself into some trouble during his honeymoon. Actually, he got himself in trouble at his wedding. When he came back, we fired him. And so I needed a new host. So we put the call out that we need a host for Evening Magazine in San Francisco in 2001 and got about 600 tapes of which I watched every one. had a big barrel and would throw them in it. A barrel four feet tall, three feet wide, completely full of horrible videotapes. It was a rubber made trash can, Chuck.

I still remember he had it on wheels and was one of those giant industrial trash cans filled with people's demo tapes. So word gets out that we're trying to hire for this pretty cool gig, and two agents walk into my office, which in local TV doesn't happen often. and they were saying that they were from an agency in L.A. and they'd like to help us hire people whenever we need to. And that was about the end of the conversation. On the way out, they said, so who, where did you come from? And I gave them my history.

And I mentioned that I was in Memphis, Tennessee at one point. And I don't remember her name. Nicole. Nicole says Memphis, we sent one of our guys to Memphis. And I said, well, if an agency in L.A. sent anybody to Memphis, I can tell you exactly who it was. It was Mike Rowe, and you sent them to me. Because that doesn't happen every day in Memphis. and they go, yeah, it was Mike.

And I said, yeah, well, that son of a bitch hadn't returned my Christmas card, six years. Tell him to pound sand. They go, well, how about Mike for this job? And I said, Mike Rowe does not want this job. He already is the successful Tylenol guy. And I thought Mike was out of our league to get for this job. Well, they go, well, we'll tell him. I said, well, do you tell him this?

Tell him if he wants the job, it's his. And I figured that'd be the last I heard of it, and I'd keep sending Christmas cards to New York with no answer. But about three hours later, I get a call. I think it's from Nicole. She says, hey, talk to Mike. He's interested. I'm like, son of a bitch. I said, send him up here.

We'll have a good time. And a few days later, Mike shows up. I pick him up in the Elvis Mobile, the Flashmobile. And that's how we reconnected. That's what happened on your end. What you didn't know on my end was I just lost all my money. I was looking for the first time in my life for like an actual job and open to virtually anything. I was down in L.A. and Nicole called me.

What you also don't know is Chuck here. His first agent in this whole crazy business was a guy named Sean Perry. Sean Perry went on to briefly represent me on a couple of freelance gigs, but wound up marrying his assistant. His assistant was called Nicole Taylor. and Nicole Taylor became Nicole Perry reached back out to me randomly after she talked to you

and said there's this guy who you might remember he's a little quirky but he's working in San Francisco I said I don't know anybody in San Francisco and she says no no he was in Memphis years before and I said oh yeah I remember that guy drove a Mustang with Elvis on the on the hood long ponytail

he doesn't have a ponytail and I don't know about the car, but she went on to describe the gig, and I came up, reintroduced myself to you, met your now wife, and that was that. We lived in Oakland, had a nice old house, 1915 craftsman. We had two little kids, so we really couldn't take you to dinner. So I think we walked about 100 yards to an Italian place, got some food to go, ate, and then sat on my porch, watching people walk by and drank.

I don't know until about 3 o'clock in the morning, But at some point, we ran out of scotch. And I said, I'm going to walk 200 yards to the liquor store. And I got my drink in my hand. And I was sort of walking. I went, oh, I got my drink. I shouldn't take it with you. And Mike goes, take it with you.

Show them you're serious. So I did. I took my scotch in my scotch glass and walked into the liquor store with it. Bought another bottle. And I think we finished it before the night was over. We did. Hammered. Yeah.

And Chuck, that was the first. full-time job I had taken since I was fired from QVC for the third and final time. And if you would, Mike, the tape that you wound up looking at at evening, do you remember looking at that, or did you just hire me basically on what you remembered from that hot mess down there in Memphis? No, I hired you the minute Nicole said you were interested. That was done. Then you sent me a tape.

And then everybody on the show watched that tape about 30 times. They'd come into my office. Hey, let's see that tape again. Let's see that tape again. Everybody loved it. And that tape is how I got you hired to get my bosses to hire you. They had to be sold. And I'm like, look at this tape. And they're both like, boom, that's who we need. That guy was real. 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, pre-referable. requisite 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

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American Made. So this is the craziest part of our whole deal, in my opinion. That tape was basically an I dare you to hire me tape. Everything on that tape was an example of something that happened on QVC that either got me fired or generated an angry memo or put me on some kind of double secret probation. There was not one serious moment on that tape. Every single thing was a mistake. a misadventure, a blooper, something.

I guess it just didn't look like any of the other tapes in the garbage can. And now here we are. Well, yeah, and I'm not going to blow up your skirt, but you're pretty good at this TV thing. And you were real. You weren't a host. You were a guy having fun with being on camera. And that tape has to be somewhere.

It's all out there somewhere. But look, you don't need to suck up. I mean, I'm hopelessly indebted to you for hiring me. And then ultimately for green lighting, somebody's got to do it, which turned into dirty jobs. I mean, dude, what were you thinking? This is Evening Magazine. This is the heart-tugging show about the three-legged dog in Marin who's struggling with canine kidney failure. This is sweetness and nice and everything else.

You actually let me go into the sewers of San Francisco and do whatever I wanted. Yeah. And, well, remember, there was a fellow named Jerry Eaton who was the boss. And soon after I'd gotten the job as EP, he came in my office and said, man, shake it up. Let's see something. So that was the green light to do whatever. Now, before you did the infamous cow insemination, somebody's got to do it. Jerry Eaton had left.

And Ron Lauginati had come in. And Ron was more along the lines of warm fuzzy, you know, lost kitten stories. We put that story on the air with you talking pillow-tunated. talk with a cow after you had been shoulder deep in it. Smoking a cigar. Smoking a cigar. And Lajanati walks up to my office door and leans against him. He goes, did we just air a story with Mike Rose arm in a cow?

And I said, yeah. And here's what he did. He said, hmm. And walked away. And to this day, I don't know if that, hmm, was, I can't believe this idiot I'm talking to or maybe this guy's on to something. I never know, but that's what the reaction was. And then it was off and running. Well, it was never easy, though. You took a lot of heat because that franchise, I think we probably did 20 of them and we were crawling, I was crawling through sewers.

I was in fixed film reactors. I was, basically, we went back in the first season of dirty jobs and revisited three or four of the actual segments you let me do. And your boss was affirmatively opposed to all those segments. CBS didn't want any of that stuff on their air. In fact, when things got bad, and they never really got bad at evening, but it became pretty clear that we were singing out of different hymn books, me and management were. I don't remember what actually sent it off the rails. I think it was probably a lot of back and forth over the integration with that Ford Lincoln that they made me drive around. Remember in me arguing over, wait a second, that doesn't seem right. and one thing led to the next, and I made your life pretty miserable.

And in the end, they let me out of my deal. And they gave me the rights to somebody's got to do it if I just left without a stink. That's the way I remember it anyway. Must have been weird for you, though. Well, I can tell you one of the issues was that when you came in, you said, listen, I take this job, but I got this problem. See, I do this other show on the East Coast. And I need 10 weeks of vacation a year, which is only eight weeks more.

than they were willing to give. So John Corey, my right-hand man and I were in the room and we thought to each other, we'll make it work. We're not going to officially give him 10 weeks off, but we're going to get him out here for 10 weeks. And so we would shoot shows way ahead. Mike would shoot two weeks for the shows and then leave for a week all the time. And we made it work for like three years. Then Mike went to go be the rough and tumble host of a show called Deadliest Catch.

and the way I heard it, they had shot an entire season of Mike standing on tops of mountains with helicopters flying by being I'm the badass. I go out on the boats with the badasses. And got it all in the can, hadn't edited it yet,

but then he pitched him on the show of somebody's got to do it during production of Deadliest Catch, and before it was all sudden done, he had another show called Dirty Jobs. Well, the problem for, Discover was we can't have the tough guy be on and 20 minutes later be the goofy covered in shit guy talking sex talk to a cow so that's when he became the

voice only of Deadliest Catch did I get all that right Mike that's all accurate but the part where I feel bad and you know John Corey your right-hand man you know he fired me once and then realized I was gonna get to that okay he did fire you and I was in the room when they unfired you and you were in the room with all my bosses. You go, hey, I just got fired. And they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. You didn't get fired.

You didn't get fired. And you're like, I did get fired. And I'm not going to come back unless this happens. It was ugly. It was weird and ugly. It was terrible. Look, I'm sorry for that. I mean, I want to officially apologize for it.

But it was like the frog in the boiling water. You know, it wasn't deadly as catch that pushed this thing off the rails. It was, A, I'd lost all my money from a trusted financial advisor who turned out to be a big fat liarhead. I took the job you offered because I lost my safety net and I freaked out. As soon as I took that job, I got hired to host. Do you remember worst case scenario? I do. It was horrible.

It was terrible show. But they really paid me, you know, and it was super efficient. And they shot it in L.A., but they needed me right away. So the first thing I had to do after you hired me was go in your office and say, hey, man, I need a couple weeks off to go to L.A. to shoot worst case scenario. And you said, okay. And then I came back and I was like, hey, I do this show back east. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I really do need 10 weeks to do this.

And like, so, okay, we'll figure that out. And they spread it, Chuck. They spread it all over the year. Maloo. My co-host did like 90% of the work. All I did was fly back east to host your new home, then down to L.A. to do worst-case scenario. And then back to San Francisco to impersonate a host on Evening Magazine.

Meanwhile, John Corey and Michael are realizing this guy's really never here. We hired him, but he's very rarely here. And it was in the midst of all that that suddenly, deadliest catch pops up, and then Dirty Jobs becomes a thing. And then I was really, truly just absent. But it was still a great gig. And damn, we still had a lot of fun over that three-year period. I just can't believe it took you that long to fire me officially. Well, I never did fire you.

But although you weren't there, we made it look like you were there by shooting ahead, and it made the show work. So I was trying to keep you around as long as I could. And then I do remember one day I was like, well, the bosses kept going, where's Mike? And I'm like, didn't you just sit? He was sincere. We played that game for as long as we could. And then pretty soon it was like, they're starting to realize you're not here, dude.

And he's like, yeah, I need to go in there and finish this. That was the meeting where you and Ron were screen. Ron Langenetti, the GM and Mike were, you were screaming each. other and he was mad at you. Yeah, he was. In the middle of all that, you guys yawning at each other. Somehow, you walked out with the rights to the name, somebody's got to do it. Well, yeah, man, he was, he was delighted to get that thing off the air. This was the thing, people are sitting down to enjoy their meatloaf and suddenly a smart Alex crawling through a river of crap making a poop joke. He was happy to let me go. No hard feelings. I saw Ron years

later and thanked him for that as well. In fact, I think there was a point when Discovery put up a billboard outside of K-Pix. Had big dirty jobs billboard out there when he was still working there. I always wondered what that felt like. One of my favorite lines from Mike on Evening Magazine was we sent him out to Infinion Raceway to drive with Jamie McMurray, NASCAR Winston Cup, NASCAR driver. Started off with Mike was just going to be the scared host

driving in a car with the NASCAR guy. They do one lap, and then Mike makes him pull up. over and switch so that Mike is driving the NASCAR driver and we got it all recorded. So they come flying into turn eight. It's a hairpin turn. And Jamie McWary goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, as they're doing about 80 miles an hour in this rental car. And Mike goes, did you just say whoa, whoa, whoa. And Jamie McMurray says, you were accelerating when you're supposed to be breaking.

And Mike goes, well, it'll be fair. I was doing both. Mike scared the crap out of the NASCAR guy, which makes sense. Who's this idiot driving me around? And you know what? That video you can Google. My favorite moment, not my favorite moment, but I think one of the things that you greenlit that was every bit as interesting as somebody's got to do it was something called Pack Your Bags Friday.

Pack Your Bags Friday happened when it became clear that, the only way the show was going to continue to stay on the air is if we found a way to aggressively monetize the raps. So Maloo and I, we'd go out every night to do these wraps. And this is part of what actually led to my undoing, Chuck, at the station. The more the station realized they could sell our presence. And this is why the book is what it is. You know, suddenly this charming little show that allowed us to go to all these really interesting places in the Bay Area, became an opportunity for ad sales to charge Futon World, 20 grand, for us to show up for an evening and host the show from a Futon shop. And from there, it just got weirder and weirder and

weirder. And so finally, I think all of us sat down, me and John and Michael and Maloo. And I was like, look, if this is how it's going to be, let's make the most of it. Let's let's go. Let's go. to resorts around here and get money from spas and stuff and Maloo and I'll go and just hang out like a couple of tourists and get massages and drink nice wine and, you know, station will get paid. Everybody has fun. We did dozens of those, dudes. I'll give you some numbers. The show had a $1.6 million budget of which we always, I never spent more than $1.4 million.

Back when I was young and stupid and thought that somebody would care that I was saving the company 200 grand a year on my budget. but it was grossing $10 million. So we were making $10 million on $1.4 expense. Those are pretty good numbers. Well, here's where he screwed up, Chuck. He told me. He told the host what the margins were.

Now, remember why I took the job. I was scared. I lost my safety net, right? Well, I didn't have to go to court, but like I wrote, I settled the case, I got my money back. got hired in L.A. And now I'm doing these others.

I don't need to be working at Evening Magazine, but I love Michael. And Maloo is great. And it's kind of fun. And I figure, you know, I'll stay as long as I can. But over time, after Michael told me how much money this thing was generating, I'm like, wait a minute,

they're getting paid a lot of money for me to drive a Lincoln Navigator around town. I should get a Lincoln Navigator or at least get paid part of that action. Well, that's when the wheels went off the bus. And I never won that fight, but I did make the fight. And I became a giant pain in the neck around that issue to the point where Ron finally just said, enough. Just leave and take your stupid somebody's got to do it with you and get out of her hair. But man, when I think of pack your bags Friday, Michael, I mean, we went down the post ranch in. We went up to

Calistoga Ranch. We went to some of the best resorts in the world and actually got paid to do it. So thanks for that too. Well, also, you say you like me, but we had a great staff. We had 20 people that were all types of weirdos and fun. It was a good family. It was a great time. It really was. It's like QVC in the sense that, you know, it's easy to look back and poke fun at this, that, and the other. But when I think of like all the laughs we had, they were good times. Mike, I don't know if you remember this story or not, but I remember we had done something. We had done something. something, a story on veganism.

And there was a package. It was re-preedited before the show. And it ended on somebody sincerely saying, you know, we just want people to really put a face to the food. And then we cut to the wraps, which is shot at a completely different time. And the wraps is Mike's head in an oven pulling out a big rib roast. So it goes from a cow's face dissolves through to a rib roast. Do you remember that, Mike? I do.

We were at Purcell Murray, you know, another one of those deals where who would host a show at a place where they sell restaurant supplies? I'll tell you, a show that takes money from the place that sells restaurant supplies. And we went there, I was demonstrating an oven. And it just happened. Yeah, we were coming out of that story about the joys of being a vegan, just as I pulled a giant rib roast out of one of those big double-decker ovens. And a shot of a cow's face. A shot of a cow. Dissolve through to a rib roast coming out.

Couldn't have planned it better. Yeah. And then probably later in the show, back to me, artificially inseminating the cow that actually started this whole hot mess. It was a lot of Hakuna Matata, Circle of Life and all of that. Chuck, I'm not going to lie to you. You'll never be able to use this for what we're doing now. You'd be surprised.

So Mike and Maloo did their show, and every night they go, okay, well, you know, we'll see you next time. It was a Friday show. And so they do the old, what are you doing this weekend? Mike says, oh, you know, I'm probably going to hang out. Maybe go to a winery. And Lou goes, I'm going to Special Olympics. And Mike goes, I hope you win.

Good night, everybody. And you know what I did? I heard it. You heard it. You put that on the air. I put that on the air. You did. Oh my gosh.

Wow. Chuck, you have to imagine the shot, right? We were on a, I actually think it was, I remember it as a jib shot. Now, what we were doing with a jib, I don't know, but I think Bramson was shooting this. And he had rigged something in a way that he had a cool move and he was pulling away. And Maloo and I were standing in front of the evening magazine van, right? And you know it's the evening magazine van because it's a big van and it says, Evening Magazine on the side and it's got our pictures on it.

And there was also, you know, a musical sting that got us in and out of every break. Michael, I think it went something like Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-d-d-ram. Right? That's it. So this is the big goodbye. It's a Friday, and it's exactly as Michael said. What are you doing?

I just hanging out, going to read a book, maybe go to a winery. How about you? I'm going to the Special Olympics. Good luck, I said. I hope you win. And we're out. And of course, I know that was insensitive, rude of me, and completely inappropriate.

But Michael Orkin, cut it in and put it on the air. So Monday morning, there I am in my cubicle, 40 or 50 letters stacked up on the desk. Oh, boy. I mean, if they're going to put your arm up to the shoulder inside a cow's rectum on the air, yeah, the bar is pretty low. Yeah. I got one other thing to tell you about, Mike. Yeah. Carl Norberg, every week, Carl had to come by and hand out timesheets to people to be filled out. And Carl and Mike sat in cubicles next to each other, just a divider between them. Carl said every single week, he would walk up and hand Mike his time sheet to be filled out.

And then he would walk a couple steps and sit at his desk and wait and count to about four when the wadded up time sheet would be blotted into a ball and thrown over into his cubicle and hit him in the head. True? That's a scout's honor, man. I probably bounced 200 timesheet, saw off Carl Norberg's head over the course of three years. Yeah, I never filled one out. The second story he'll tell is that you came over to his cubicle,

sat down in his lap facing him, and farted on his leg. Come on. And looked at me as you're looking in the eyes. Look, folks, you have to realize, A, this is a long time ago. And B, there really is a jacked-up. Band of Brothers mentality among people, not just who make television, but who make daily television.

And this, Michael, really is what I want to ask you about, because there is nothing like a daily show. A daily show is a barking dog in the backyard. It never shuts up. Everything I've worked on before or since has been weekly, except, of course, for QVC, which is live and doesn't even count. but a daily show every night, Chuck, 7 o'clock, you got to be on the air. I mean, we've joked about this on the show before, but there were moments where, like, in broadcast news, somebody is running that tape from the edit to the control room last minute. And Michael, the story I still tell about you to this day is one of my favorite things you've ever said. I would call down to the edit bay sometimes at like, I don't know, 6.50 to see how we were doing

because maybe I had an episode on that night if somebody's got to do it, you know, and I was excited to see it. I want to make sure we make air. And I would call Michael and I'd say, how are we doing? Is it good? And he's like, good. It's better than good. It's done.

That's right. That's where our standards were. Better than good. Better than good. It's done. Nothing better than that. Because the next day, man, there we are again. There it is again.

And we did at least one time. you know, usually you hand a tape to a tape op who sticks it in and plays it for its 30 minutes. And there was at least one time we handed them a tape that was 15 minutes. And I ran back downstairs with Alex Van Dyne, aka Freak Show, and finished editing it. And had to take the second half of the show up while the first half of the show was there. They were not happy about that. Fun times. Did you actually listen to the chapter that everybody else just listened to?

I did. Tell me the truth. Did you like it? No, I liked it. I knew the story. I knew the payoff as soon as you started. Bill Hickman? Well, yeah, I knew it was James Dean that you were going to tell me about. How did you know? I think it doesn't know the story.

Somewhere in the last two or three years, I don't know why, but I was reading about how he died on the way to a racetrack. So I knew it. But a good story, I like that premise. This is when I was in third grade, my teacher would make us listen to Paul Harvey. the rest of the story. And it was very similar. I love it. We're trying to get Paul Harvey Jr. to come on here next week because we're really at the end of the book. Chuck, have you heard back

by any chance? No, no. Nothing yet. I'm going to send him another email today. You know what? Spoiler alert, but I'll tell you what happened. You know, I didn't make any secret of the fact that this podcast was really trading on the rest of the story. It's just my version of it. We'd had this thing up for probably a year and a half at this point. It was going really well, and I got a letter sent to my office from Paul Harvey Jr. And I thought, oh, crap, that's going to be a cease and desist, right? This is going to be bad, very bad, because we're way down the road with this podcast. Well, inside, this is just a beautiful letter thanking me for a sincere tribute to his dad.

You know, Jr. wrote most of what Paul Harvey read on the rest of the story. He wrote all those old stories. He said, yeah, my dad would be very, very proud of this. And inside as well was a check for the MicroWorks Foundation for a generous amount. And so, yeah, man, when you go from, okay, here comes the lawsuit to here's a check for your foundation. That's pretty great. That's fantastic to hear. So what's next?

You ever going to get back in TV? Would you do your time? I'm doing corporate TV right now. And I've kind of weaseled my way into a pretty good gig where the audience has gone from 60,000 a night to 60 over a month period. So, and the bars are a lot lower. But we're having fun. You know, I'm working with Carl Norberg every day. Well, I mean.

Carl Norberg was on our show with us. Tell him I'm sorry about that whole unpleasant sitting in his lap and farting thing. I was just trying to send a message. What about the throwing paper bowl? in his head. That I don't apologize for. I stand by that. Whatever happened the evening magazine? It turned into something. Was it eye on the bay or something? That is correct. Ron LaGenetti said, well, quit making $10 million a year after you left. And I don't know what happened. But, you know, that show, we were competing. We were number two in the time slot behind

Jeopardy, and nobody was going to ever beat Jeopardy in San Francisco. Yeah. So we were doing great, but the numbers, they changed the way they metered people at night, and the numbers dropped. We, overnight went from like second in the time slot to about fourth or fifth, and he said, we got to change this thing up. So we created a show called Eye on the Bay, which was kind of every night there'd be a topic, and we would go surround that topic from several different angles and make a half hour show out of it. So we created that, and I stuck around about two more years, and then I went off and did my own thing, which was actually doing a show that you created my version of it was called Dream Home.

You know it as your home. So that's what got me out of the corporate world for about seven, eight years, and then I went back to making corporate videos in Palo Alto at HP. You know, I mean, if there's a moral to all this, it just goes to show that it really doesn't matter how big the audience is.

I mean, I've been super lucky, obviously, and I've had some shows that have reached a lot of people, but I've never had really a better time than working in this weird local place, sometimes working for little shows like your new home, figuring things out with people that make you laugh and, you know, pushing the envelope and just seeing what comes out the other side.

There really is such a weird level of freedom and randomness in local TV. That's something I hope people realize. I don't think they think about it a lot, but we'd be hard-pressed to have a better time than we did back in the days of evening. Well, that night we were drinking on the porch. I said, Mike, here's the beauty.

It's an empty canvas. We can do whatever we want. And we did. You called it a dream job, and you said, every day you'll be home by one. You'll be home by 1 p.m. But you were right. It was a ball.

Hell, you weren't there most of the time. You were home by one. You weren't even there. Chuck just held up something to said one hour, Chuck. What are you telling us? Is this enough? I mean, you know, I think I'll edit a bit of it, you know, but yeah. You think?

Hey, you want me to record? Yeah, if you want to hit record, any time now would be good. Yeah, the only real reason to have you on here is to say thank you. It's incredible that you hired me the first time. It's super weird. You hired me the second time. It's beyond description that you allowed me to work for three years at CBS and make my own schedule. and, you know, what can I say? Thanks, you're the best.

Hey, man. Thank you. You helped me stay in a job for about eight years. Well, even after you left. You made it work. You're welcome. Well, there you go. Circle of Life. Hey, guys, thank you for listening. If you want to download the book, you know what to do. You download the book. You go to Audible. Or you just come back next week for the final chapter of this hot mess, where Chuck and I will find some way. What are you laughing, Chuck? Is that not the final chapter?

next week. Yes, it is the final chapter. I'm just, just laughing. Can a guy laugh? Can't a fellow laugh? Not when I'm looking at you. No, it's, it's, it's disconcerting. I can't hear Oregon. You're just laughing. I feel like the whole bus went off the rails. I'll see you guys tomorrow when we reshoot this. Oh yeah, that'll happen.

Hey man, in the words of one of the finest producers I ever met, it's better than good. It's done. See you guys. See you, gang. Bye now. I'm going to see if this works. Yeah.

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