Latest / Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People / From Mayberry to Matlock - What You Don't Know About Andy Griffith
Transcript
- 0:07SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Dirt Nap City, the podcast about interesting dead people.
- 0:15SPEAKER_02: Um, I've got two of my favorite people in the world coming from all over the world, actually, today.
- 0:20SPEAKER_02: This is an international episode, although I don't know that the topic is necessarily international.
- 0:26SPEAKER_02: But of course, Alex is here coming from the great state of Texas.
- 0:29SPEAKER_02: Alex, you doing all right today?
- 0:31SPEAKER_02: Hey, Kelly, what's up, man?
- 0:33SPEAKER_02: Good to see you.
- 0:34SPEAKER_02: And then uh I've got my buddy Chris who is coming to us all the way from Portugal.
- 0:39SPEAKER_02: Now, he may not sound like a native of Portugal, um, but he has lived there for a while.
- 0:44SPEAKER_02: This guy is a globetrotter.
- 0:46SPEAKER_02: I've been to several other countries with him, including going to Oktoberfest in 2014, one of the best trips I ever had.
- 0:53SPEAKER_02: Chris, welcome to Dirt Nap City.
- 0:55SPEAKER_03: Hey, thank you so much for having me on the show.
- 0:58SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
- 0:59SPEAKER_02: And actually, I should say, this isn't actually Dirt Knap City.
- 1:02SPEAKER_02: We just talk about Dirt Nap City.
- 1:04SPEAKER_02: Right.
- 1:04SPEAKER_01: Let's be clear about that.
- 1:05SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you'll get a little, you'll get a little different entry when you go to Dirt Nap City, but we're all gonna end up there at some point.
- 1:11SPEAKER_02: And so we might as well embrace it and get to know people.
- 1:13SPEAKER_02: And Chris, I know you and I have talked about this a couple of times, and Alex is sort of aware of this, but I want to tell a quick story about Chris's father, uh, Mr.
- 1:23SPEAKER_02: Justice, as I like to call him.
- 1:25SPEAKER_02: Um, he he's been a friend of our family's for years.
- 1:29SPEAKER_02: He used to um he like he knew our kids really well, he was around a lot, and I I hadn't seen him in a while because you, Chris, you guys had moved to Florida.
- 1:38SPEAKER_02: Your dad moved there too, right?
- 1:40SPEAKER_02: What 2018, 2019?
- 1:43SPEAKER_03: 2019, right before the pandemic.
- 1:45SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 1:45SPEAKER_02: So they're in Florida, and I go out to visit, and I say to Chris's dad, and I have to say, I had been working that week, and Chris and I decided to have a little fun.
- 1:55SPEAKER_02: I stayed at his house.
- 1:56SPEAKER_02: He had a nice swimming pool.
- 1:57SPEAKER_02: We would go swimming.
- 1:58SPEAKER_02: He had alligators or were they crocodiles?
- 2:01SPEAKER_02: Alligators.
- 2:01SPEAKER_02: Alligators.
- 2:02SPEAKER_02: Alligators uh in a pond behind his house.
- 2:05SPEAKER_02: Two kids.
- 2:05SPEAKER_02: The kids never got too close to the alligators.
- 2:08SPEAKER_02: Chris and I tried to, but um, that was with a lot of modello.
- 2:12SPEAKER_02: We had been drinking some modello, and I said, Chris's dad shows up for dinner and I said, Hey, Mr.
- 2:16SPEAKER_02: Just, it's great to see you.
- 2:18SPEAKER_02: You've been playing any golf.
- 2:19SPEAKER_02: I don't know why I said that.
- 2:20SPEAKER_02: He's in Florida.
- 2:21SPEAKER_02: I think maybe.
- 2:22SPEAKER_01: That's where I got the golf thing from.
- 2:23SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I knew it had something to do with golf.
- 2:25SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
- 2:25SPEAKER_02: And he said, Kelly, I don't play golf anymore because all my friends are in dirt nap city.
- 2:31SPEAKER_02: And I think, Chris, I must have bugged you 50 times that night to re-What was it your dad said?
- 2:36SPEAKER_02: What was that thing your dad said?
- 2:38SPEAKER_02: You remember that?
- 2:39SPEAKER_02: Yep.
- 2:39SPEAKER_02: We're we're playing Chris has several pinball machines, and we're playing Iron Maiden pinball or Simpsons pinball or something.
- 2:46SPEAKER_02: And I kept saying that, and I finally wrote it down, and then about a year and a half later, two years later, got got back to uh Austin and was like, I gotta do something with this, and that's how this podcast was born.
- 2:59SPEAKER_03: Oh, fantastic.
- 2:59SPEAKER_03: It's a great story.
- 3:00SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm so glad that uh my dad was an inspiration for it.
- 3:05SPEAKER_03: He's been an inspiration for a lot of good things and a lot of bad things.
- 3:09SPEAKER_03: Does your dad know about the podcast?
- 3:12SPEAKER_03: He does, he does.
- 3:13SPEAKER_03: Um uh, you know, um, maybe we'll have him on the show.
- 3:16SPEAKER_03: Hopefully, it's another 10 years from now, though.
- 3:18SPEAKER_03: Has he has he ever listened?
- 3:22SPEAKER_03: Has he ever listened?
- 3:24SPEAKER_03: He has, he has.
- 3:25SPEAKER_03: Uh really.
- 3:25SPEAKER_03: I sent him uh very specific episodes of people that he would be interested in.
- 3:30SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
- 3:31SPEAKER_02: And and Chris's dad is pretty cool.
- 3:33SPEAKER_02: Like he's been to ACDC concerts with you, and and uh he likes good music, he likes to hang out.
- 3:39SPEAKER_02: I I I enjoy your dad's always fun.
- 3:41SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's a fun guy.
- 3:43SPEAKER_02: Well, uh, speaking of fun guys or gals, Chris, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself and then who you want to talk about today.
- 3:51SPEAKER_03: All right.
- 3:51SPEAKER_03: Well, um, first and foremost, I'm kind of a retired software executive.
- 3:56SPEAKER_03: Um retired meaning, you know, Kelly and I started uh a company together.
- 4:02SPEAKER_03: And if you are an entrepreneur, you never really retire.
- 4:05SPEAKER_03: You're always thinking about something.
- 4:07SPEAKER_03: And I think that's um the inspiration I try to get up with every day.
- 4:11SPEAKER_03: You know, what can I accomplish?
- 4:13SPEAKER_03: And Kelly in my career taught me so very much.
- 4:17SPEAKER_03: Um, and I won't uh gush on him too much, but he taught me to always be on time, and I think time is one of the things that um you start to respect when you work around Kelly.
- 4:31SPEAKER_03: And the person that I'm gonna talk about today has been one of those people that respects time.
- 4:37SPEAKER_03: Um and the person has won a Grammy, they're a singer, um they uh have been an actor, they've been a writer and a producer, um, they've done so many different things.
- 4:52SPEAKER_03: Time.
- 4:53SPEAKER_03: So the immediate um time.
- 4:58SPEAKER_01: Bob Seiko.
- 5:00SPEAKER_01: It's a good guess.
- 5:02SPEAKER_01: Well, he won a Grammy for what?
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: And was his name Bob?
- 5:05SPEAKER_01: I thought that was a Japanese name.
- 5:08SPEAKER_01: I think Kelly's lying to us.
- 5:10SPEAKER_02: It's Seiko, it's the first time thing I could come up with.
- 5:13SPEAKER_01: Did he want a Grant?
- 5:14SPEAKER_01: It was a it's a man.
- 5:15SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it it okay.
- 5:17SPEAKER_03: You've got that part.
- 5:18SPEAKER_03: You had a 50% chance.
- 5:19SPEAKER_03: Well right.
- 5:20SPEAKER_01: Is that a 20th century white guy?
- 5:22SPEAKER_03: Uh it is.
- 5:23SPEAKER_03: It is.
- 5:24SPEAKER_01: That's my specialty.
- 5:25SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Alex is good at those.
- 5:27SPEAKER_03: And he started his career in music to be an opera singer.
- 5:34SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
- 5:35SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but that might be a red herring there.
- 5:37SPEAKER_01: Pavarotti?
- 5:39SPEAKER_01: Probably not an opera singer, though.
- 5:41SPEAKER_02: Oh, didn't end up that way.
- 5:43SPEAKER_02: Time ended up a watchmaker.
- 5:46SPEAKER_01: What would the time part?
- 5:47SPEAKER_02: Well, did he did he stick with music?
- 5:49SPEAKER_03: Was that a long-term thing, or did he transition to that's how he won the Grammy, but he won the Grammy in the 90s.
- 5:56SPEAKER_03: Oh for singing?
- 5:58SPEAKER_02: For singing.
- 5:59SPEAKER_02: What year was he born?
- 6:01SPEAKER_03: 1926.
- 6:02SPEAKER_02: That's actually that's funny.
- 6:04SPEAKER_02: That's the year my grandmother was born, and she is turning a hundred in about two weeks.
- 6:09SPEAKER_02: Chris Chris has met my grandmother.
- 6:11SPEAKER_02: Alex, I don't know if you ever met my grandmother, but she's turning a hundred in two weeks.
- 6:15SPEAKER_02: So she was also born in 1926.
- 6:17SPEAKER_02: Would she know the answer to this?
- 6:18SPEAKER_02: Do you think?
- 6:20SPEAKER_03: I think so.
- 6:22SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 6:23SPEAKER_02: They they were probably in school together or something.
- 6:26SPEAKER_02: Uh any any more hints, Chris?
- 6:29SPEAKER_03: If you listen to my accent, you'll know exactly the state in which he was born.
- 6:37SPEAKER_02: Well, I know you're from North Carolina.
- 6:41SPEAKER_02: Am I onto that?
- 6:43SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're close.
- 6:45SPEAKER_03: South Carolina?
- 6:46SPEAKER_03: No, no.
- 6:47SPEAKER_03: Well, you're you're in the right state.
- 6:51SPEAKER_02: Uh and and did he do what else did he do besides music?
- 6:57SPEAKER_03: Um, he acted and produced most of his life.
- 7:00SPEAKER_03: I will tell you that he was on television.
- 7:05SPEAKER_03: He was uh he funded a space company.
- 7:09SPEAKER_03: Um that was one of the characters that he played.
- 7:11SPEAKER_03: He put together this ragtag bunch of people that decided to go salvage the um leftover equipment on the moon.
- 7:21SPEAKER_02: Oh.
- 7:22SPEAKER_02: Um like a like a sci-fi kind of thing.
- 7:24SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like a sci-fi in 1978.
- 7:27SPEAKER_03: Um he also, I think he played an attorney at one point in time.
- 7:32SPEAKER_03: And if you look at my office and you look at all the color here, um his outfits are inspired by my office and my my my desire for a very clean looking environment.
- 7:45SPEAKER_03: Man, I am so stumped.
- 7:47SPEAKER_03: Is he in the picture behind you?
- 7:50SPEAKER_02: He certainly is.
- 7:52SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
- 7:53SPEAKER_02: That's that was the all right.
- 7:57SPEAKER_02: So he's either Ron Howard, who's still alive, or um Don Knotts, who I don't know if he is Don Knott's still alive.
- 8:05SPEAKER_03: No, he's not.
- 8:06SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I think um, whatever that lady's name, what's that lady's name?
- 8:10SPEAKER_03: Uh oh, what's her name?
- 8:12SPEAKER_03: Frances Bouvier, I think.
- 8:13SPEAKER_03: Yeah, France, yeah, yeah.
- 8:14SPEAKER_03: So that's B.
- 8:15SPEAKER_03: Taylor.
- 8:15SPEAKER_02: B.
- 8:16SPEAKER_02: Taylor.
- 8:16SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say B.
- 8:18SPEAKER_02: So all right, it's gotta be Andy Griffith.
- 8:21SPEAKER_03: It's gotta be Andy Griffith.
- 8:23SPEAKER_03: And this individual singer.
- 8:26SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
- 8:26SPEAKER_02: That is that is news to me.
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: And it was the time.
- 8:29SPEAKER_01: Well, I I don't understand the time part.
- 8:32SPEAKER_03: Well, you see, my cadence in the way that I speak and really, really good comedy is all around timing and saying something in such a way that you captivate and you pull that audience in.
- 8:49SPEAKER_03: And the reason that he was selected for so many roles is the way that he phrased things.
- 8:55SPEAKER_03: He was a storyteller.
- 8:57SPEAKER_03: So one of the things the greatest stories ever told, or I think that's one of his the one of the the uh the songs he won a Grammy for, but the reason he was selected for so many roles was his timing.
- 9:09SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 9:10SPEAKER_01: I love Andy Griffith.
- 9:12SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of the best things you can hear if you if you've never heard it, Kelly, is his talking about um football.
- 9:20SPEAKER_03: That's that exactly.
- 9:21SPEAKER_03: That was one of the things when he talks about describing football to a stranger, uh about two people on or two two groups of people on either side, and they run after this this ball and that the way I don't know what all that that's that it gets me rolling every time.
- 9:38SPEAKER_01: That description of of when he came up on a on a pasture and a bunch of bunch of boys were throwing a football around or throwing a pumpkin around, I think he says.
- 9:48SPEAKER_01: I've never heard of screen football to someone who's never heard football before.
- 9:53SPEAKER_01: Maybe um maybe you tag that at the end of this episode.
- 9:57SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know, it's probably five, five or six minutes, but it is the best.
- 10:01SPEAKER_03: It it is worth it.
- 10:02SPEAKER_03: But that that role where he described that was the intro to all of the other roles that he had: No Time for Sargents, the Andy Griffith show, and the show that I was talking about previously, where he was a um he he kind of funded this astronaut program, was called uh show called Salvage One.
- 10:21SPEAKER_03: And it was one of the reasons that I wanted to be an astronaut.
- 10:24SPEAKER_03: Andy Griffith was also a reason that I never wanted to kill anything.
- 10:30SPEAKER_03: So you see, there was an episode where Opie has a uh slingshot and he kills this bird, and this bird had these baby chicks.
- 10:39SPEAKER_03: Now, the the crushing, soul crushing, like realization that this bird is now uh a mother, and it and those children are not gonna have a mother.
- 10:51SPEAKER_03: They're orphans, they're orphans, and then Opie has to raise them and take care of them and feed them.
- 10:57SPEAKER_03: I never wanted to hunt, I never wanted to kill anything.
- 11:00SPEAKER_03: I saw weapons and and and um and and things like guns as tools.
- 11:06SPEAKER_03: And if you remember from the show, Andy led with this very silent and quiet authority.
- 11:13SPEAKER_03: I never had a gun.
- 11:14SPEAKER_03: And I never really wanted a gun.
- 11:16SPEAKER_03: He even went into this whole big shootout situation where these two families are up in the mountains, they were fighting against each other, and he went in there with no guns.
- 11:25SPEAKER_03: And another element of this that this show that made it so iconic was his bumbling um deputy, which was Barney Fife, right?
- 11:36SPEAKER_03: Now, Barney was given a gun, he was allowed to have a gun.
- 11:40SPEAKER_02: I remember that episode.
- 11:41SPEAKER_02: I remember Barney holding a gun in an episode.
- 11:44SPEAKER_03: He was allowed to have a gun and he had a and he had a revolver, but Andy only let him have one bullet.
- 11:51SPEAKER_03: He kept it in his shirt pocket, right?
- 11:53SPEAKER_03: Kept it in his shirt pocket, so it had to be a situation where he needed to use that bullet.
- 11:59SPEAKER_03: He had to have that in the chamber.
- 12:01SPEAKER_03: And that whole philosophy of the show taught me a respect for guns and violence that defined me as a person.
- 12:11SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's great.
- 12:12SPEAKER_01: And and you know, it's such a stark contrast to the the shows that were popular at the time were mostly westerns, right?
- 12:19SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
- 12:19SPEAKER_02: And and a lot of cop shows too, right?
- 12:22SPEAKER_02: I mean, weren't there or I'm thinking later, maybe 70s and 80s.
- 12:28SPEAKER_01: So let's establish what years, what years were the Andy was the Andy Griffith show on from I think 1960 to 68.
- 12:35SPEAKER_03: So it ran eight years.
- 12:37SPEAKER_03: Okay.
- 12:37unknown: Okay.
- 12:38SPEAKER_02: And I also have a question because I should know this, but I don't.
- 12:41SPEAKER_02: What was Opie's relationship to Andy?
- 12:43SPEAKER_02: Was Andy his father?
- 12:45SPEAKER_03: In the show, Andy was his father.
- 12:47SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
- 12:48SPEAKER_03: Um, and the his mother had died, and so uh now you had this what was unvery uh very uncommon at the time, you had a single father's father taking care of a child, and there were so many life lessons that he tried to uh impart upon Opie about about uh respect for other people and respect for boundaries and and life and and fights and situations like that.
- 13:12SPEAKER_03: And it was always contrast with all the other characters in and in the show.
- 13:16SPEAKER_03: And if you remember, Barney was a bad influence, right?
- 13:19SPEAKER_03: You know, you've got to go fight those boys and show them who's boss.
- 13:22SPEAKER_03: And then you had Floyd the Barber that was like, hey, hey, yeah, and then you then you had high all the time, and then the boys were always encountering drunks.
- 13:33SPEAKER_03: Remember Otis, right?
- 13:35SPEAKER_03: You know, these children would encounter people that were substance abuse people, and it made me one of the it was one another one of the reasons that I was like, wait a second, I don't want to be that.
- 13:48SPEAKER_03: You know, it's an example of excess that was unnecessary.
- 13:53SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and as you described that, umpie always ended up figuring it out for himself based on like all the input he was getting from all those different areas.
- 14:05SPEAKER_01: It was never a hard uh you should do this, kid.
- 14:09SPEAKER_01: It was it was um it was always available, everything was available for him to kind of figure out stuff out for himself in contrast to like different strokes, which would, you know, in some of those shows from the 80s.
- 14:21SPEAKER_01: Where they just totally just tell you what's right and what's wrong, and it was black and white, and um, and Opie would always kind of figure stuff out for himself based on uh what was going around.
- 14:31SPEAKER_01: And the show was kind of seen through Opie's eyes, I think.
- 14:35SPEAKER_03: It was.
- 14:36SPEAKER_03: Um, what's really fascinating is the connection that Ron Howard had to the show and how it influenced a lot of the other things that he did in his life.
- 14:45SPEAKER_03: Um, because Ron Howard now, today, is a very, very soft-spoken person.
- 14:50SPEAKER_03: Um, and he leads with this quiet authority that he got from Andy Griffith.
- 14:55SPEAKER_03: Uh Andy Griffith um, he also took that same uh quiet authority into the the show Matlock.
- 15:02SPEAKER_03: Um, and that ran for you know a number of years.
- 15:04SPEAKER_03: I think it ended in sometime in the 90s.
- 15:07SPEAKER_03: Abe Simpson's favorite show.
- 15:08SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
- 15:10SPEAKER_03: It's it's it is a classic, but he but Matlock always wore those white suits, right?
- 15:14SPEAKER_03: And I swear I've got the same kind of white sweatsuit, and and it captures your attention.
- 15:20SPEAKER_03: When you see Mattlock in that white suit, it's it's like he's on another whole plane of of uh existence.
- 15:29SPEAKER_02: Well, you think you see in Harlan Sanders, yeah.
- 15:31SPEAKER_03: Harlan Sanders.
- 15:32SPEAKER_03: Colonel Sanders.
- 15:33SPEAKER_03: Colonel Sanders.
- 15:35SPEAKER_02: Same thing.
- 15:36SPEAKER_02: Southern gentleman.
- 15:37SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so when when the Andy Griffith show started in 1960, Andy Griffith was already very, very famous, right?
- 15:45SPEAKER_01: As a comedian and singer.
- 15:48SPEAKER_03: He was not that famous.
- 15:50SPEAKER_03: He so he there's there's a couple of things that he did.
- 15:53SPEAKER_03: So he did um, so he started with his football sketch, and then in 1957, he did this um this movie called Facing the Crowd.
- 16:00SPEAKER_03: And it was a very dramatic role.
- 16:03SPEAKER_03: Um, I encourage you to watch it.
- 16:05SPEAKER_03: Um, and then it it flipped over and he did um some other stage work, and then um through his relationship with some of the writers and producers, they they specifically wrote the Andy Griffith show with him in mind.
- 16:20SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't like it was a pilot that they were gonna produce and see if it was gonna be accepted, they wrote it for him specifically.
- 16:27SPEAKER_01: So he was famous enough where he had name recognition, and he had good relationships.
- 16:32SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think that's you know what you could see on the show.
- 16:36SPEAKER_03: He created this calm uh serenity with every uncomfortable situation, no matter what it was, he was able to sort it out.
- 16:45SPEAKER_03: Um, and that's one of the reasons that um I went back to the show and kind of went back to to see what his personality is all about because as I I've evolved, you know, Andy Griffith's show was syndicated um in a very unique way, and it was on all of these local stations.
- 17:01SPEAKER_03: So at any point in time, you could watch this at three, four, five, six o'clock in the afternoon.
- 17:07SPEAKER_03: Um, and as a kid, that was the thing that I watched.
- 17:09SPEAKER_02: It was always on UHF, right?
- 17:11SPEAKER_02: It was it was on the channel 20, channel 26, channel 39.
- 17:15SPEAKER_01: I loved it too.
- 17:16SPEAKER_01: And a great thing uh um was watching it with your grandparents.
- 17:21SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it it reflected kind of uh uh an old in fact.
- 17:25SPEAKER_01: If you go to any nursing home in the country right now and turn on the Andy Griffith show, you see a lot of people just smiling, right?
- 17:32SPEAKER_01: It reminds them of a different time.
- 17:34SPEAKER_01: Life was a little slower, a little simpler.
- 17:37SPEAKER_01: Uh um, yeah, it now it it it doesn't seem like the 60s though, does it when you watch it?
- 17:44SPEAKER_01: It does it could have been taking place in the 30s 40s.
- 17:48SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so that's that's kind of uh it too.
- 17:50SPEAKER_03: And um no hippies in that show.
- 17:52SPEAKER_03: No, no, but kind of a sidebar.
- 17:54SPEAKER_03: One of the reasons that I I kind of uh pinged um Kelly on this show is that I live in a place, even though it's Portugal, very much like the Andy Griffith show.
- 18:05SPEAKER_03: Um so I wanted to kind of go back to something a bit smaller.
- 18:09SPEAKER_03: Now I live about north, uh I guess 15, 20 minutes north of Porto.
- 18:14SPEAKER_03: But if you walk down the street, now I've only been here, I guess uh it's coming up on a year.
- 18:20SPEAKER_03: People know my name.
- 18:21SPEAKER_03: I did the website for the my favorite restaurant across the street.
- 18:24SPEAKER_03: I shop at the same fruit market, I go to the same barber, and it's literally 50 feet from my front door.
- 18:32SPEAKER_03: Um my dentist is in the bottom floor of my building.
- 18:37SPEAKER_03: We only have two giant apartments in this place, but my dentist is there.
- 18:40SPEAKER_03: Everybody knows my name.
- 18:42SPEAKER_03: And that's one of the reasons that I kind of now have affinity toward this place is that it kind of reminds me of that North Carolina hometown Mayberry film.
- 18:51SPEAKER_01: You know, it's funny.
- 18:52SPEAKER_01: Mayberry is like a synonym for easy.
- 18:55SPEAKER_01: Um, our the school that I teach at has um a uh police force that kind of reminds me of uh you know Mayberry.
- 19:04SPEAKER_01: It's just not a lot going on, there's not any crime.
- 19:07SPEAKER_01: Um, and we we always refer to it as kind of Mayberry University sometimes.
- 19:13SPEAKER_01: Um and and so Mayberry, yeah, synonymous for kind of no no trouble, everybody knows each other, keep your doors unlocked.
- 19:22SPEAKER_01: The the town drunk lets himself in the jail at the end of the night.
- 19:27SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you know, I think part of what you're talking about, Chris, um, comes down to walkability of where you live.
- 19:35SPEAKER_02: I think so many times when you're in the suburbs, and you know, I live in the suburbs, you end up getting in your car and driving places and you don't have that contact with people.
- 19:45SPEAKER_02: You don't go to the same places because you do drive and you go to bigger places.
- 19:49SPEAKER_02: Um, we have been renting a house.
- 19:51SPEAKER_02: So we sold our house last May.
- 19:53SPEAKER_02: We've been renting a house, same neighborhood, but much closer to um several, several stores and restaurants.
- 20:01SPEAKER_02: And we have gotten to where Jody knows the people.
- 20:04SPEAKER_02: My wife knows the people at the Trader Joe's around the corner.
- 20:07SPEAKER_02: Like she'll say hi to people because we walk up there three or four times a week to get things, it's just part of our routine.
- 20:14SPEAKER_02: Whereas I feel like driving places, I'm not I'm not down on driving places because you have to, but if you have that walkability that you have, and you it reminds me also, Chris, when you were in Basel, Switzerland, coming to visit you.
- 20:26SPEAKER_02: We got on, we went and got on the tram and rode the tram to your office, and you saw the same people and you went to the same coffee stand every morning.
- 20:35SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit of a routine that I think Americans, because of the way our country is built and it's so big.
- 20:41SPEAKER_02: I mean, physically, it's harder for us to have those connections unless you live in a small town where you walk places.
- 20:47SPEAKER_02: Sure.
- 20:47SPEAKER_02: Now, Chris, you you used to live in Florida, right?
- 20:50SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 20:50SPEAKER_03: So we were we lived in the suburbs, and and last year we um we looked at the way that um our kids were growing up in in this suburban kind of environment and the pressure of school, right?
- 21:03SPEAKER_03: Because our kids would go to school and they would go to school and come home at four o'clock and have two or three hours of homework.
- 21:10SPEAKER_03: And um everything was a drive.
- 21:12SPEAKER_03: It was a 30-minute drive to get to their school and drop them off 30 minutes back, so you lose a whole hour of the day.
- 21:18SPEAKER_03: Now our kids get on the tram.
- 21:20SPEAKER_03: They take the tram to school, they take the tram home.
- 21:24SPEAKER_03: Um, they have this level of independence.
- 21:26SPEAKER_03: You saw this with Opie Taylor, right, on the show, right?
- 21:29SPEAKER_03: He walked to school, he walked to this to saw uh to see his father.
- 21:33SPEAKER_03: Um, my parents, uh my my kids have tracking on my phone.
- 21:37SPEAKER_03: They know exactly if I'm in the barbershop or the restaurant, and they come right there and they join me for uh uh food or they they get a haircut just because they're there.
- 21:47SPEAKER_03: And I honestly wanted my kids to grow up in that familiar environment where everybody knew them.
- 21:53SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's and it's uh it's different, right?
- 21:56SPEAKER_03: I love the suburbs, it was great.
- 21:58SPEAKER_03: I loved Florida, regardless of what other.
- 22:00SPEAKER_03: People think it was a great place to grow up, but my kids are at such a pivotal age that kind of wanted them to be Opie.
- 22:07SPEAKER_01: Well, what I was what I was gonna ask is I'm sure you're familiar with Celebration Florida.
- 22:11SPEAKER_01: Yes, I am the this is the town that um the the kind of Disney built to to be uh Mayberry where people are walking places.
- 22:21SPEAKER_01: And do you think that's been a successful project?
- 22:24SPEAKER_03: Uh I do.
- 22:24SPEAKER_03: Um my wife is a very famous award-winning Disney travel agent.
- 22:30SPEAKER_03: Um and uh so she and I are actually gonna do the next uh the new ship that's in Singapore.
- 22:37SPEAKER_03: We're doing that in the in a few months here.
- 22:39SPEAKER_03: Um, but we've been to Celebration many times, and when you go there and you don't have to pay for parking, and you walk down the street and there's a shop, and there's is celebration a theme park or an actual town?
- 22:52SPEAKER_03: Celebration is a city that's I've never heard of it outside of Orlando that will remind you of a town of the 50s.
- 23:01SPEAKER_03: Now it was built for Disney employees to give them uh something like a community, right?
- 23:06SPEAKER_03: But now it's gone into to something uh a whole lot bigger.
- 23:10SPEAKER_03: But when you walk into the city, the way that you feel, and I think that's the that's the it was like a movie set.
- 23:16SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
- 23:17SPEAKER_03: It looks like a movie set.
- 23:18SPEAKER_03: Wow.
- 23:18SPEAKER_03: Have you been there, Alex?
- 23:20SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 23:21SPEAKER_01: Was it been there?
- 23:22SPEAKER_01: Was it cool?
- 23:23SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's a little um jarring because it does feel like you've been in a time machine and um it's were there soda jerks?
- 23:32SPEAKER_01: There I think there are actually.
- 23:33SPEAKER_01: There are it kind of reminds me of like uh yeah, a movie set or like when you go back to the future with the oh yeah, yeah, it's just kind of like that.
- 23:41SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 23:42SPEAKER_03: The houses are painted impeccably, they're organized, the streets are organized, everything's very, very clean.
- 23:48SPEAKER_03: You think there's an HOA?
- 23:50SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sure.
- 23:51SPEAKER_01: Probably a very strict one.
- 23:52SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's probably a very strict one.
- 23:54SPEAKER_02: You can't you can't park your uh you can't park your three junkers out in the yard.
- 23:58SPEAKER_02: No, not in celebration.
- 24:01SPEAKER_02: Well, so going back for a moment to uh Ron Howard, because you mentioned about his sort of chill nature and how maybe that was inspired a little bit by Andy Griffith.
- 24:11SPEAKER_02: Have either of you seen the show called Um The Studio?
- 24:16SPEAKER_02: I've seen that with Seth Rogan.
- 24:19SPEAKER_02: So so it's a great show, Chris.
- 24:21SPEAKER_02: I I would recommend watching it.
- 24:23SPEAKER_02: Um it's only like nine episodes or something, or maybe there's two seasons, but it's all about this reluctant.
- 24:28SPEAKER_02: Well, a guy who ends up taking over a major movie studio that's Seth Rogan, and sort of the foibles that happen as the head of it, he wants to make high art films, and uh his boss, who is played by Brian Cranston, uh wants to make sh schlocky stuff um to make money.
- 24:48SPEAKER_02: Well, the reason that I'm bringing this up is there is an episode where uh Seth Rogan's character really ticks off Ron Howard, like in real life.
- 24:58SPEAKER_02: And Ron Howard goes off.
- 25:00SPEAKER_02: I mean, like full on F-bombs and throwing stuff.
- 25:04SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
- 25:04SPEAKER_02: I think that was the the comedy, the the bit.
- 25:07SPEAKER_02: So you have to see it and know that Ron Howard is a chill guy to appreciate how violent like that scene turns.
- 25:14SPEAKER_03: Well, it's funny that you mentioned that because Ron Howard is is also a director that I love.
- 25:19SPEAKER_03: But here's an interesting tidbit for you on Ron Howard.
- 25:22SPEAKER_03: Obviously, the show Andy Griffiths kind of got him into that mode.
- 25:27SPEAKER_03: Um, but back in 2019, um, you know, Vance, our current vice president, he wasn't always a senator.
- 25:35SPEAKER_03: He wrote a book.
- 25:36SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
- 25:37SPEAKER_03: Um he wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy.
- 25:39SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've heard of that.
- 25:40SPEAKER_03: And and Ron Howard produced the movie and a lot of time in this.
- 25:45SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 25:46SPEAKER_03: And um, and I I it's it's on my list, right?
- 25:50SPEAKER_03: I I'm gonna uh watch this in the in the next couple of weeks because I just now discovered it as I dug deep.
- 25:56SPEAKER_03: And since that time, him and Vance haven't spoken because Vance kind of went down a different direction with his political career and some of his other beliefs.
- 26:05SPEAKER_03: And but had that movie never been made, Vance.
- 26:09SPEAKER_03: He might not be vice president.
- 26:10SPEAKER_03: He would never been vice president.
- 26:12SPEAKER_02: Huh.
- 26:12SPEAKER_02: I I've heard of the book.
- 26:14SPEAKER_02: I actually didn't know there was a movie, and I didn't know Ron Howard was involved in making the movie.
- 26:18SPEAKER_02: That's that's uh something and and honestly, you know, from the book's perspective, I've not read it, but just what I've heard about it, it sounds like a very caring and sort of look at what you know what can go wrong in parts of America when they're neglected.
- 26:35SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 26:35SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of ironic, you know, that that now the stance is, yeah, let's keep neglecting those parts of America.
- 26:41SPEAKER_03: Well, and I see that happening because I visit North Carolina.
- 26:44SPEAKER_03: I I did uh I went back and um uh I go every year to this annual camping trip with my fraternity brothers in North Carolina, and it's the place that we go has no electricity, no cell phone access.
- 26:57SPEAKER_03: I mean, literally we're in the woods trying to text our wives when the satellite passes over.
- 27:02SPEAKER_03: Um, these towns are old.
- 27:04SPEAKER_03: They have, you know, 20,000 people, and if you're new there, they know it.
- 27:09SPEAKER_03: Uh, and then they call their friends to let them know that that you're there and that we, you know, there's people camping up in this particular place.
- 27:17SPEAKER_03: But that back um, that mountain living is what I grew up with.
- 27:22SPEAKER_03: It's why I love the show, it's why I love Andy Griffith.
- 27:26SPEAKER_03: But it comes down to the cadence of which he talks and the details that he gives in the stories.
- 27:31SPEAKER_03: Kelly, you we've worked together for 20 years.
- 27:34SPEAKER_03: If you take one thing away from this podcast, you know that that show in itself framed the way that I've communicated for the rest of my life.
- 27:44SPEAKER_02: I have a question about Mayberry.
- 27:46SPEAKER_02: So, you know, famously the Simpsons Springfield is never identified what what state it's in, right?
- 27:53SPEAKER_02: It it could be, and there's a Springfield in every state.
- 27:56SPEAKER_02: Is is Mayberry ever identified within a state, or is it just Mayberry, USA?
- 28:01SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
- 28:02SPEAKER_03: It's it's Mount Erie, North Carolina.
- 28:04SPEAKER_03: That's where it was based off of.
- 28:06SPEAKER_03: Okay, okay.
- 28:07SPEAKER_03: So there's it's actually a place they celebrate with um costumes and symbolism from the Andy Griffith show.
- 28:13SPEAKER_03: So Mount Airy is where it's based.
- 28:15SPEAKER_03: Um uh Andy Griffith died in North Carolina.
- 28:20SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, at the end of his career, he was kind of uh quiet.
- 28:22SPEAKER_03: He wasn't fentanyl overdose.
- 28:24SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
- 28:24SPEAKER_03: Well, nothing like that.
- 28:26SPEAKER_03: He never he never had any drug abuse issues, no substance.
- 28:30SPEAKER_03: No, it's it's very, you know, a lot of actors do, but he he was a very strong religious and Christian man.
- 28:37SPEAKER_03: Um the uh Oscar or the uh Grammy that he won was for a religious album.
- 28:44SPEAKER_02: Um and well, talk about that for a minute because I didn't know I didn't know anything.
- 28:47SPEAKER_02: And you said he won that in the 90s?
- 28:49SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it was 96 or something like that.
- 28:52SPEAKER_03: Uh I have to go back and pull a bit more information on it, but I was listening to it right before the show.
- 28:57SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 28:57SPEAKER_02: Um I think of him more as like a I I mean, it seems like he would either be a country singer or maybe um like Christmas songs.
- 29:07SPEAKER_03: Well, I think he was a religious man, and um the way that he sings, if you listen to it, you know, it is all about telling a story in in the way that he he he describes and sings into this story.
- 29:22SPEAKER_03: It's not typical two, three cadence or something like that.
- 29:26SPEAKER_03: It it is a story.
- 29:29SPEAKER_01: The funny part about you mentioned uh how that show is kind of a love letter to North Carolina, right?
- 29:34SPEAKER_01: And and it was important for him to set that show in North Carolina.
- 29:38SPEAKER_01: I love his accent, I love your accent.
- 29:40SPEAKER_01: Kind of remind me of Roy Williams, basketball coach.
- 29:43SPEAKER_01: Um, but the funny part about the show that I always thought was funny is that he's the only one in the show with the North Carolina accent.
- 29:52SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh Don Knott certainly doesn't have a North Carolina accent.
- 29:57SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Opie sometimes has it, he sometimes affects it, but but not really.
- 30:03SPEAKER_01: And uh I don't know what's going on with Anne B.
- 30:05SPEAKER_01: Her accent is she sounds almost English, right?
- 30:08SPEAKER_01: Like a Julia Child kind of uh indeed.
- 30:11SPEAKER_03: Well, you know what's interesting about Anne B is she was a very um popular uh performance and and dramatic um actress.
- 30:20SPEAKER_03: And she felt that, or at least what I've read, she felt the show was kind of beneath her.
- 30:24SPEAKER_03: She was never able to spread her wings.
- 30:26SPEAKER_03: But more interestingly, is she was very distant from the cast.
- 30:31SPEAKER_03: And she did not like Andy Griffith, and she treated him very poorly.
- 30:36SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 30:36SPEAKER_03: Look, her persona on the show was so sweet, but she was a true performer and she didn't interact with the clo with the rest of the cast.
- 30:45SPEAKER_03: And in fact, Andy Griffith, when when he found out that she had uh had some uh terminal um disease and she was gonna die, went to her house, she wouldn't open the door.
- 30:55SPEAKER_03: Whoa.
- 30:56SPEAKER_03: And then right before she was about to die, she called Andy Griffith and she apologized for never being so close to everybody on the set.
- 31:04SPEAKER_03: She always kept her distance, she did her role, she performed as an actress, and you felt that there was a connection.
- 31:11SPEAKER_03: But even Ron Howard will tell you that he was afraid of her, and there was a distance between them that they could never really close.
- 31:20SPEAKER_02: Wow.
- 31:20SPEAKER_02: Maybe now we know what B stands for.
- 31:24SPEAKER_02: And there it is.
- 31:26SPEAKER_02: Well, she probably she had a sting.
- 31:28SPEAKER_02: What was her relation to Andy?
- 31:30SPEAKER_02: Was it Andy's sister?
- 31:32SPEAKER_02: Or or she was just Aunt B, like Andy's aunt.
- 31:35SPEAKER_02: Uh Andy, it was Andy's aunt, not Opie's aunt.
- 31:39SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
- 31:40SPEAKER_02: Andy's aunt.
- 31:40SPEAKER_02: Wow.
- 31:41SPEAKER_02: She was quite a bit older, yeah.
- 31:42SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 31:43SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I think I had heard, I had never heard about her being standoffish, but I had heard that she was a classically, you know, a stage actress.
- 31:51SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, and that and that they did turn their nose down.
- 31:55SPEAKER_02: Now, Tim Timothy Chalamet just said something that was pretty controversial.
- 31:59SPEAKER_02: Have you guys heard about this?
- 32:01SPEAKER_02: No, tell us.
- 32:01SPEAKER_02: It's about the the ballet?
- 32:03SPEAKER_02: About the ballet and the opera.
- 32:05SPEAKER_02: So he's you know, he's kind of riding high with several good movies.
- 32:09SPEAKER_02: And um Alex and I actually both went to see his his portrayal of Willie Wonka in Wonka, which have you seen that, Chris?
- 32:16SPEAKER_02: I have.
- 32:17SPEAKER_02: It's great.
- 32:17SPEAKER_02: I loved that movie.
- 32:19SPEAKER_02: I actually didn't think I would like it at all, but I really liked it.
- 32:22SPEAKER_02: I didn't know who he was before that.
- 32:23SPEAKER_02: Now he's in um, you know, this ping pong movie, and and he's he's become very popular.
- 32:28SPEAKER_02: Well, he said something to the effect of we don't want the uh theaters to become like the ballet or the opera where people just don't care or don't want to go.
- 32:39SPEAKER_02: He said something like that.
- 32:40SPEAKER_02: And then I think he did actually say, because I read a transcript of it, he did actually say this was to Matthew McConaughey, and I think it was at UT.
- 32:47SPEAKER_02: I think he was being interviewed at the University of Texas here in Austin.
- 32:50SPEAKER_02: He then said, No disrespect to ballet or opera performers.
- 32:55SPEAKER_02: I just think their relevance has gone down, and I don't want theaters to have the same fate.
- 33:00SPEAKER_02: That was I'm paraphrasing.
- 33:01SPEAKER_02: But but you know, you can kind of see where those people are naturally talented with their voices and with their ability to dance for ballet.
- 33:11SPEAKER_02: And and maybe they feel like acting is sort of something that anybody can do.
- 33:15SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
- 33:16SPEAKER_02: That that might might have been Aunt B's perspective on especially TV, which was a newfangled thing.
- 33:22SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 33:23SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, I'm gonna circle back and go back to timing.
- 33:26SPEAKER_03: The reason that Anne B um was a nice balance in that show, she was high energy against all of this kind of slow melodical stuff, and she would quickly escalate situations.
- 33:40SPEAKER_03: Um that's that's my role on the show.
- 33:42SPEAKER_03: Yeah, of course.
- 33:43SPEAKER_03: Um, Matthew McConaughey, again, the same sort of actor that has this impeccable timing.
- 33:50SPEAKER_03: And if you listen to his book, or if you listen to Green Lights, great book.
- 33:54SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
- 33:56SPEAKER_03: Those are stories that can't be copied so easily by every voice actor.
- 34:02SPEAKER_03: Um, and I think that's one of the things that you know I go back to.
- 34:05SPEAKER_03: The great actors that I like to listen to, both um, you know, if you look at um uh Patrick Stewart, he's actually reciting all the the Shakespearean sonnets on an audiobook.
- 34:18SPEAKER_03: Um he has impeccable timing and a great accent.
- 34:22SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's impeccable.
- 34:24SPEAKER_03: Um, and those are the actors that really captivate me as a person.
- 34:28SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's timing.
- 34:30SPEAKER_03: You know, comedy is timing, but a good voice actor, it's all timing.
- 34:36SPEAKER_02: Now I've never seen an episode of Matlock in my life.
- 34:39SPEAKER_02: I have seen the Andy Griffith of the show, lots of episodes of that.
- 34:42SPEAKER_02: Alex, have you ever seen an episode of Matlock?
- 34:44SPEAKER_02: Never.
- 34:45SPEAKER_03: No.
- 34:46SPEAKER_03: I highly recommend it because once you see Matlock, it actually set a cadence for a lot of the things like Boston Legal and and uh there's a whole series of murder she wrote.
- 34:57SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
- 34:58SPEAKER_03: Well, not necessarily murder she wrote, because that's that's more of an Aunt B portrayal.
- 35:02SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
- 35:04SPEAKER_03: But if you look at the cadence and the way that they build up the show and the way that they pull evidence into the case and they kind of assemble everything at the end, and those epic deliveries and and um at the end of uh the trials or whatever, you know, Andy Griffith had it.
- 35:19SPEAKER_02: So Matlock was not a not a cop or an investigator, he was a lawyer, right?
- 35:24SPEAKER_02: He was a lawyer.
- 35:24SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 35:25SPEAKER_02: So more Alex.
- 35:26SPEAKER_01: The Southern lawyer, though, with the Seersucker suit.
- 35:29SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's uh that's as old as to kill a mockingbird, right?
- 35:32SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's just what we we love.
- 35:34SPEAKER_01: The we love that guy.
- 35:36SPEAKER_01: Atticus Finch.
- 35:37SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Fitch.
- 35:39SPEAKER_03: If you're looking for a last-minute birthday gift for me, Kelly, a white suit, uh size 42 regular would be fantastic.
- 35:46SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay, I'll get on that.
- 35:47SPEAKER_02: Silk or uh no no.
- 35:49SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm I'm simple, just anything white.
- 35:51SPEAKER_02: Amazon?
- 35:52SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
- 35:53SPEAKER_02: Matlock.
- 35:54SPEAKER_02: Um I'm Googling Matlock costume.
- 35:56SPEAKER_02: Matlock costume for 42 regular.
- 35:59SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
- 35:59SPEAKER_02: Well, well, so um, so he did he did Matlock, he did um this the Salvage One show, which I you sent that to me, or we talked about that last time, and I looked at some clips of that.
- 36:11SPEAKER_02: It was an interesting show for its time because it had this almost futuristic cyberpunk kind of vibe.
- 36:20SPEAKER_02: Um, like it looked retro, but it was a sci-fi show, which was a weird, weird thing.
- 36:25SPEAKER_02: Um, and then of course he was uh a singer.
- 36:29SPEAKER_02: What else?
- 36:30SPEAKER_02: Any other big accomplishments from him as far as uh shows we would recognize or anything like that or wouldn't recognize?
- 36:37SPEAKER_03: I wish I could um give you a whole repertoire of his IMDB profile, but um, those are the things that he's notable for.
- 36:45SPEAKER_03: But you have to understand that when he did Madlock, I mean, he he's getting kind of getting up there.
- 36:50SPEAKER_03: He died in 2012.
- 36:53SPEAKER_03: Um, but the latter part of his career was very, very quiet because you know he was he was a relatively old guy.
- 37:00SPEAKER_03: Well, No Time for Sgt is a great film.
- 37:03SPEAKER_03: Oh, it is.
- 37:04SPEAKER_02: And and have you ever seen that one, Kelly?
- 37:06SPEAKER_02: I have you know, my my parents talked about that movie.
- 37:09SPEAKER_02: Like that was one that they thought was a classic, so I should watch that.
- 37:12SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a great one.
- 37:14SPEAKER_02: And is it a military thing?
- 37:16SPEAKER_02: I mean, is that the context of sergeants?
- 37:18SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's his it's it's the contrast of his perspective, again, getting back to the football story, right?
- 37:25SPEAKER_03: Imagine the same kind of persona and and the uh separation between actually what is happening and his perspective of what's happening.
- 37:33SPEAKER_03: Same thing happens in that military.
- 37:35SPEAKER_03: You know, why are these guys marching around?
- 37:38SPEAKER_03: What are they doing?
- 37:38SPEAKER_03: Why do we have to eat this food?
- 37:40SPEAKER_03: And and it's all of those sorts of uh the contrast between reality and a perspective of reality.
- 37:46SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the same thing that Nate Bergetsky kind of brings now.
- 37:50SPEAKER_01: If you're familiar with Nate Bargetsky, the comedian.
- 37:53SPEAKER_01: If you're not, you would you would love him, Chris.
- 37:55SPEAKER_01: Do you know are you familiar with Nate Berghetzi?
- 37:57SPEAKER_02: Nate Bargetsky, I don't know him.
- 37:59SPEAKER_02: He's a he's a stand-up comedian, does kind of like the you know the jokes about uh middle-aged dads and life and weird stuff going on and his perspective on it.
- 38:09SPEAKER_02: He's like, here's what the world sees, but here's what I see.
- 38:18SPEAKER_01: He comes across as the average Joe, but kind of explaining life to the rest of us.
- 38:22SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and he's he's got that same Andy Griffith appeal, I think.
- 38:25SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
- 38:27SPEAKER_03: One of the favorite movies of my life is a movie called uh from Leslie Nielsen.
- 38:35SPEAKER_03: It's called Spy Hard.
- 38:38SPEAKER_03: All right, so great name.
- 38:40SPEAKER_03: Never heard of it.
- 38:41SPEAKER_03: So I really this is your homework, guys.
- 38:43SPEAKER_03: I want you to go back, look on IMDB, and and find the movie Spy Hard with Leslie Nielsen, and I want you to watch that and uh as a as a secondary character and star in that movie is Andy Griffith.
- 38:59SPEAKER_03: And he's the enemy in this show, and it's absolutely off the freaking couch, hilarious.
- 39:06SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say, because Leslie Nielsen was airplane, right?
- 39:09SPEAKER_02: Yes, he was naked gun, naked gun, yeah, yeah.
- 39:12SPEAKER_02: Kind of ridiculous comedy kind of stuff.
- 39:15SPEAKER_03: But it's but he plays this character called General Rancor, and it is absolutely fall off the couch funny.
- 39:22SPEAKER_02: Okay, all right.
- 39:23SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, one thing I I know about Chris, uh, after having been to his house with his children, especially when we were in Florida when I visited Florida, he makes them watch all these old shows.
- 39:33SPEAKER_02: It's it's like it's like a homework assignment for his kids.
- 39:36SPEAKER_02: You know, they've got to watch uh and then they've got to listen to 80s hairbands too.
- 39:41SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like if if they if they're not listening to Iron Maiden, then they're not then they're not performing.
- 39:46SPEAKER_02: But it it is interesting because it seems like so many times when my kids have seen an old movie or heard an old song, they'll relate it to something that happened that's going on today, like, oh, I know this song, so and so samples it, you know, and it's it's like, yeah, well, this is the original, this is where that came from.
- 40:04SPEAKER_01: I'm not that way with music with my son, but I'm that way with comedy.
- 40:08SPEAKER_01: So, you know, who's on first, this Andy Griffith football thing.
- 40:12SPEAKER_01: I mean, those are things that I introduced to my son when he could understand what was going on and just would have him roll.
- 40:18SPEAKER_01: And that's a great clip for kids, that football one is as soon as they because it's a lot of the same stuff that they probably wonder about football.
- 40:25SPEAKER_01: You know, it looks crazy when you first watch football, American football.
- 40:29SPEAKER_03: Well, I don't know if you know this, but one of the reasons I can whistle is the Andy Griffith show.
- 40:35SPEAKER_03: And the reason that my son can whistle so well is that he started listening to some of the songs that I did.
- 40:42SPEAKER_03: So he whistles constantly.
- 40:44SPEAKER_03: It drives me bonkers, like because it echoes through the entire house.
- 40:48SPEAKER_03: Um, so if you're beginning of Andy Griffith show, sure.
- 40:53SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna do this because it it's terrible.
- 40:57SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
- 41:00SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
- 41:00SPEAKER_03: Is that it?
- 41:01SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's it.
- 41:02SPEAKER_02: Sort of um it's a classic intro, too, and it is a show that from the beginning, if I was just thinking about the opening credits, the opening credits are very peaceful, right?
- 41:14SPEAKER_02: They're very calming, they're very um like just there, there's not any shooting going on.
- 41:20SPEAKER_02: There's not any crazy, you know, so many, like if you think about the A-Team in contrast, you know, you've got things exploding and guns going off and helicopters flying.
- 41:28SPEAKER_02: This is just a dad and his kid walking to go fishing or something, right?
- 41:33SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they're going to go fishing, but I gotta I gotta blow the illusion for you, okay?
- 41:37SPEAKER_04: Okay.
- 41:38SPEAKER_03: So at the beginning, you remember they're walking down, it's the Andy Griffith show, and they're whistling and they get to the lake, right?
- 41:45SPEAKER_03: And they get to the lake, and and Opie's been taught how to throw a rock, and he picks up the rock and he tosses it into the lake and it skips off, and it's perfectly skipping, right?
- 41:55SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
- 41:56SPEAKER_03: There was a stunt man in the woods throwing the rock.
- 42:00SPEAKER_02: So they faked the skipping.
- 42:02SPEAKER_03: They faked the skipping.
- 42:04SPEAKER_03: Typical TV, they fake the skipping, but then when uh Opie grew up, uh, and this is the piece I can't really find confirmation on.
- 42:13SPEAKER_03: When when Opie grew up, there was this this this need to redo the rock scene.
- 42:20SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 42:20SPEAKER_03: So when they redid, and Opie had grown up a few years, Opie actually threw the rock.
- 42:25SPEAKER_03: But for the first season or whatever, it was done by a stunt person or a prop guy or whatever.
- 42:31SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you don't you I mean, an uncredited prop guy.
- 42:34SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
- 42:35SPEAKER_02: That guy's famous.
- 42:37SPEAKER_02: So we're sitting in a we're sitting in a uh uh ramen noodle place the other night.
- 42:42SPEAKER_02: I'm there with the family, and they've got all the TVs on, and it's weird because they have sports on, but the sports are not regular sports.
- 42:50SPEAKER_02: They had world championship rock skipping on on TV, and I could not take my eyes off of it.
- 42:56SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, everybody's like, Dad, why are you so distracted?
- 43:00SPEAKER_02: I'm like, look at this, look at these people.
- 43:02SPEAKER_02: They're skipping it like 49 times in one shot.
- 43:06SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm fascinated with rock skipping.
- 43:08SPEAKER_03: Well, it is it it is something that unifies parents and children because we we were in Switzerland um, you know, just a couple weeks ago, and you know, it there's beautiful lakes in Switzerland, they're all crystal, you know, you can see all the way to the bottom of them, but there's you know, glacial rocks that are just right there on the perfectly shaped for rock skipping.
- 43:30SPEAKER_03: You can really connect with your kids just skipping rocks.
- 43:33SPEAKER_02: Well, I used to tell, I used to tell you know, I was a camp counselor for a few years, and I would tell the kids, um, if you throw too many in, you're gonna fill up the lake.
- 43:41SPEAKER_02: So stop.
- 43:41SPEAKER_02: Oh, fantastic.
- 43:42SPEAKER_02: So you you're the typical antagonist.
- 43:45SPEAKER_02: I guess so.
- 43:46SPEAKER_02: And I also I had another little gag.
- 43:48SPEAKER_02: We would go into this cave and turn off the lights, and we would say the Lord's Prayer.
- 43:52SPEAKER_02: It was kind of this holy moment.
- 43:54SPEAKER_02: And while we were doing that, I would open up a watermelon jolly rancher and I'd put it in my mouth.
- 44:00SPEAKER_02: Quietly, nobody can see this.
- 44:01SPEAKER_02: It's dark.
- 44:02SPEAKER_02: They're all saying the Lord's Prayer.
- 44:03SPEAKER_02: And then I'd say, Now listen, boys, take a deep breath with your nose.
- 44:07SPEAKER_02: You smell that?
- 44:08SPEAKER_02: Ooh, yeah, yeah.
- 44:09SPEAKER_02: What is it?
- 44:09SPEAKER_02: I smell watermelon.
- 44:11SPEAKER_02: We're right under a giant watermelon patch.
- 44:14SPEAKER_02: And once we come out of the cave, you can go find it and you can have as many watermelons as you want.
- 44:19SPEAKER_02: And they would spend the next two hours looking for that watermelon patch while I took a nap.
- 44:25SPEAKER_02: That's incredible.
- 44:26SPEAKER_03: Well, I can teach my kids what a panty raid was.
- 44:31SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, so uh can't do those nowadays, but uh you know, at this morning for school, uh that's what that's how I got emotional.
- 44:39SPEAKER_03: Panty raid.
- 44:41SPEAKER_03: That's that's a term I haven't heard in a long time.
- 44:43SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that'll date me, right?
- 44:44SPEAKER_03: You know, that's dead in for you.
- 44:46SPEAKER_03: This is what we did in North Carolina, right?
- 44:48SPEAKER_03: There was a lot of very innocent sort of things that we did that now could be looked at in a very poor manner.
- 44:55SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that probably happened in Maybury too, panty raid.
- 44:58SPEAKER_02: Uh in the mountains.
- 45:00SPEAKER_02: Ant Aunt B's panties were uh were a parachute for Opie.
- 45:05SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 45:06SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a lot of jumping off a cliff and just floating down.
- 45:10SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 45:12SPEAKER_02: Well, Chris, thank you.
- 45:14SPEAKER_02: That was that was great.
- 45:15SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
- 45:16SPEAKER_02: I'm uh sorry that we missed the clue.
- 45:19SPEAKER_01: Hey, you didn't miss anything.
- 45:21SPEAKER_01: You we well for those of you listening, it's embarrassing that we missed the clue because behind Chris is a giant picture of the cast of the Andrew Griffith show.
- 45:32SPEAKER_01: Is that always there or just for just I'll let that be a mystery.
- 45:38SPEAKER_01: See, I mean we he put it right there in front of our eyes.
- 45:42SPEAKER_01: It's actually just a Zoom background.
- 45:44SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I actually no this this is the real office, and I change my background depending on the meetings that I have.
- 45:50SPEAKER_03: So if I'm stressed, you'll see red fire.
- 45:53SPEAKER_03: If I'm I'm calm and I'm I I want your money, there'll be green fire.
- 45:57SPEAKER_03: Um, I just change it up.
- 45:58SPEAKER_03: And and today I decided to give you an Easter egg and um missed it.
- 46:02SPEAKER_03: That's great.
- 46:05SPEAKER_03: But um, thank you so much for having me here.
- 46:07SPEAKER_03: I'm so proud that I could talk about a very famous person, good Christian man, and uh that you uh enjoyed discovering what I have.
- 46:16SPEAKER_02: And thank you for uh once again uh inviting me to your house in Florida where your dad had this brilliant turn of phrase that that has turned into a major phenomenon.
- 46:27SPEAKER_02: And by the way, people out there, if you aren't already a Patreon supporter or a subscriber on Apple Music or um Spotify for podcasts, you know, you just all you gotta do.
- 46:39SPEAKER_02: And you know what happens every so often that's amazing?
- 46:42SPEAKER_02: Every so often, I'll look at the stats, right?
- 46:44SPEAKER_02: So you go onto this thing called Buzz Sprout, and you can look at the stat stats and see your downloads for the week and for the month and you know, all that.
- 46:52SPEAKER_02: Every so often somebody goes in and downloads every episode because we have like 150 episodes now, and you'll just see this huge spike one day, you know, and it's like so.
- 47:02SPEAKER_02: For those of you that even if you listen to them all, just download them all again on a different device.
- 47:07SPEAKER_02: It just it it helps, right?
- 47:09SPEAKER_03: Sure, every little bit helps.
- 47:11SPEAKER_03: But listen to them too.
- 47:12SPEAKER_03: And you both are welcome to come visit Mayber, Portugal.
- 47:18SPEAKER_03: Oh, nice.
- 47:18SPEAKER_03: Is it a city called Pova de Varzem?
- 47:21SPEAKER_03: Okay, just north of Porto, and I'll show you my new Mayberry.
- 47:25SPEAKER_03: I'm on my way.
- 47:27SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
- 47:28SPEAKER_03: All right, thanks, Chris.
- 47:29SPEAKER_02: Good one.
- 47:30SPEAKER_00: It was back last October, I believe it was.
- 47:33SPEAKER_00: We is gonna hold a tent service off at this college town, and we got there about dinner time on Saturday.
- 47:41SPEAKER_00: And uh different ones of us thought that we ought to get us a mouthful to eat before that we set up the tent.
- 47:47SPEAKER_00: And so we got off of the truck and followed this little bunch of people through this small little bitty patch of woods there.
- 47:55SPEAKER_00: And we come up on a big sign, it says, Get something to eat here.
- 48:00SPEAKER_00: And uh, I went up and got me two hot dogs and a big orange drink.
- 48:05SPEAKER_00: And before that I could take every mouthful of that food, this whole raft of people come up around me and got me to where I couldn't eat nothing, up like, and I dropped my big orange drink.
- 48:18SPEAKER_00: I did.
- 48:19SPEAKER_00: Well, friends, they come in to move, and they won't so much that I could do but move with them.
- 48:25SPEAKER_00: Well, we commenced to go through all kinds of doors and gates, and I don't know what all, and I looked up over one of them and it says North Gate.
- 48:33SPEAKER_00: And we kept on a going through there, and pretty soon we come up on a young boy, and he says, Ticket, please.
- 48:40SPEAKER_00: And I says, Friend, I don't have a ticket, I don't even know where it is that I'm a going.
- 48:46SPEAKER_00: I did.
- 48:47SPEAKER_00: Well, he says, Come out as quick as you can.
- 48:51SPEAKER_00: And I says, I'll do her, I'll turn right around the first chance I get.
- 48:57SPEAKER_00: Well, we kept on a moving through there, and pretty soon everybody got where it was that they was a going, because they parted, and I could see pretty good.
- 49:08SPEAKER_00: I could.
- 49:09SPEAKER_00: And what I seen was this whole raft of people are setting on these two banks and a looking at one another across this pretty little green cow pasture.
- 49:21SPEAKER_00: Well, they was.
- 49:22SPEAKER_00: And somebody had tuck and drove white lines all over it and drove posties in it, and I don't know what hall.
- 49:29SPEAKER_00: And I looked down there and I seen five or six convicts are running up and down and are blowing whistles.
- 49:36SPEAKER_00: They was.
- 49:37SPEAKER_00: And then I looked down there and I seen these pretty girls are wearing these little bitty short dresses and are dancing around.
- 49:45SPEAKER_00: And so I sat down and thought I'd see what it was that was gonna happen.
- 49:50SPEAKER_00: I did.
- 49:51SPEAKER_00: And about the time I got set down good, I looked down there and I seen 30 or 40 men come running out of one end of a great big outhouse down there.
- 50:04SPEAKER_00: They did.
- 50:06SPEAKER_00: And everybody where I was a setting got up and hollered.
- 50:10SPEAKER_00: And about that time, 30 or 40 come running out of the other end of that outhouse, and the other bank full, they got up and hollered.
- 50:18SPEAKER_00: And I asked this fellow that was besetting beside of me, I says, friend, what is it that they're a hollering for?
- 50:24SPEAKER_00: Well, he whopped me on the back and he says, buddy, have a drink.
- 50:30SPEAKER_00: Well, I says, I believe I will have another big orange.
- 50:38SPEAKER_00: And I got it and sat back down.
- 50:40SPEAKER_00: And when I got down there again, I seen that them men had got in two little bitty bunches down there.
- 50:47SPEAKER_00: They had rail close together, and they voted.
- 50:53SPEAKER_00: They did, they voted and elected one man apiece.
- 50:57SPEAKER_00: And them two men come out in the middle of that cow pasture and shook hands like they hadn't seen one another in a long time.
- 51:04SPEAKER_00: And then a convict came over to where there was a standing, and he took out a quarter, and they commenced to odd man right there.
- 51:13SPEAKER_00: They did.
- 51:15SPEAKER_00: Well, after a while, I seen what it was that there's odd man in for.
- 51:22SPEAKER_00: It was that both bunches full of them men wanted this funny-looking little pumpkin to play with.
- 51:29SPEAKER_00: They did, and I know friends, that they couldn't eat it because they kicked it the whole evening and it never busted.
- 51:37SPEAKER_00: But uh, anyhow, what I was telling was that both bunches full wanted that thing.
- 51:43SPEAKER_00: And one bunch got it, and it made the other bunch just as mad as they could be.
- 51:48SPEAKER_00: And friends, I seen that evening the awfulest fight that I have ever seen in my life.
- 51:54SPEAKER_00: I did.
- 51:55SPEAKER_00: They would run at one another and kick one another and throw one another down and stomp on one another and grind their feet in one another, and I don't know what hall, and just as fast as one of them would get hurt, they'd tote him off and run another no.
- 52:16SPEAKER_00: Well, they'd done that as long as I sat there.
- 52:21SPEAKER_00: But pretty soon this boy that's had said, ticket, please, he came up to me and he says, Friends, you're gonna have to leave because it is that you don't have a ticket.
- 52:31SPEAKER_00: And I says, Well, all right.
- 52:33SPEAKER_00: And I got up and left.
- 52:35SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, friends, to this day what it was that there's a doing down there, but I have studied about it.
- 52:42SPEAKER_00: And I think that it's some kindly of a contest where they see which bunchful of them men can take that pumpkin and run from one end of that cow pasture to the other without either getting knocked down or stepping in something.