Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: Wicked Pissah

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: Wicked Pissah · The Ben Maller Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Kubbooms.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: The clearing House of Hot takes break free for something special.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: In the air everywhere. The Fifth Hour with me, Ben
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Mallor and you. A very happy Saturday to you as
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: we hang out together here.
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: It's the eighth day of August and we are a
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: day closer to the start of the NFL. We had
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: that sampler game the other night, the Hall of Fame game,
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: and no exhibition football till Thursday. Bunch of games on Thursday,
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: and then it is on every week, just about every
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: week until February. We got football. Almost every week we
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: got football, which is very exciting. On this podcast, we
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: have Poltergeist call me maybe, and a bunch of fun.
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: I didn't want to get to the word of the week,
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: the word of the week. Here's the word of the
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: week to this week. It is wicked, wicked and This
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: is a very popular word in the New England states,
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: especially in Massachusetts. It has become the signature word of
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: that state. And what does the term wicked mean? In
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: the Commonwealth it is used as an intensifier meaning very
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: or extremely as in wicked good or wicked expensive, rather
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: than the meaning of evil. And the roots the expression
• 1:57
  Speaker 4: originated in New England in the early twentieth century. And
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: they think, they who follow this kind of stuff, they
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: think it evolved from the Puritan religion language before becoming
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: just part of everyday life, every day life, and by
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: the nineteen sixties and the nineteen seventies, wicked it became
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: the defining part, as we said, of the Boston lexicon,
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: with phrases.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Like wicked good and wicked pissa.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: That's a wicked pissa, yes, means very wet, very wet there,
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: and that is a regional marker as linguistic type. People say.
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: The Harvard there was a study done at Harvard that
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: noted that wicked remains a strong part of the identity
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: of New England across generations. This is a big part
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: of that and despite local dialect going away, that is
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: not the case.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: The term wicked and it got into pop culture.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: There's old movies like Goodwill Hunting that departed along with
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: a lot of the social media migration clips from those movies,
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: and so it has spread. There was a study done
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: by the University of Boston University.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: That said college students.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: Use wicked more frequently than their parents, meaning that this
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: is a symbol of regional pride, the term wicked, and
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: it's been embraced a bunch of businesses have embraced it
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: in marketing all that stuff, so it's actually considered not
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: just slang. It's higher level than slang. The term wicked
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: is a regional part of the dialect that has crossed
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: over from slaying to be part of the cultural roots
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: of the area. And it's evolved way more than it
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: was originally designed to be the word of the week,
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: the word of the week, wicked, wicked the word of
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: the week on this Saturday. Now you.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Remember me? You remember me?
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Those words simple, harmless, perfectly pleasant when you hear those words,
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: you remember me?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, you remember me?
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Also, for me, an introvert, the conversational equivalent of
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: hearing the emergency broadcast system, because now we have to
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: do small talk. Okay, if you say, hey, you remember me.
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: We have to do small talk, not real talk, like
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: the guy that used to call the show small talk,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: the kind of conversation where everyone asks questions they don't
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: actually give a rats ass about, they don't need answered.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: They pretend that this is not some kind of hostage situation.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: The other night, I was minding my own business. Actually
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: I was mining my own business. Digging through another overnight shift.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: I pulled up to the building. There in the malamobile
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: giant parking garage, right next to the iHeart Premiere Slash
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: Fox Sports Radio compound at the corner of some Pulvida
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: and Ventura in the oaks of Sherman Oaks. Now, if
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: you've never been there, and chances are you haven't, why
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: would you because you're not invited, you don't work there.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: Imagine a building where thousands of hours of radio music
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: and talk radio are created every single week. Yet somehow
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: the strongest aroma in the courtyard outside the building is
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: hot yoga. So I grabbed my bags out of the malamobile.
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: I walked through the courtyard out of the garage. Through
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: the courtyard passed the yoga studio. Aforementioned yoga studio where
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: several middle aged men and women, and these fitness warriors
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: had apparently he completed a successful class in competitive perspiration
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: hot sweating in the hot yoga studio there. Now good
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: for them, their cars probably appreciated that fresh air. Made
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: my way towards the proper entrance to my building that
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: I'm in, made a quick detour to the powder room
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: after the long drive on the winding road from the
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: north Woods, then passed the little kitchen, the smurf kitchen,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: past the editing rooms where all the sound comes from,
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: almost home free. And then as I remember, as I hear,
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: is that Ben Mallor that's what I heard? So I'm thinking, no, no,
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: it's not him, it's somebody that looks like him. It's
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: the other guy who's pretty tall, wandering the Fox Sports
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: Radio compound and looking sleep deprived, right going down those
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: hallways that have been haunted by legends of Fox Sports
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: Radio pass. So I had already walked past the editing room.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: So now I had to execute the awkward one hundred
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: and eighty degree pivot. And there is really no graceful
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: way to turn around after someone recognizes you from a distance.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: You either spin.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: Like you're an Olympic figure skater, or shuffle backward like
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: you've misplaced your dignity. Now standing, there was Garrett Writt.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: So unless you've spent an unhealthy amount of time around
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: sports radio and congratulations, if you have a way to go,
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: you loser. You probably have no idea who Garrett is.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: But behind the scenes, he is one of those guys
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: that everybody knows in sports radio. He's it's just about everything.
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: In his career, he has been a producer, a writer, editor, booker,
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: showrunner for TV on air guy occasionally. If sports media
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: had a utility infielder, a jack of all trades, Garrett
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: would have been playing every position except the mascot. So
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: the strange part was seeing the aforementioned Garrett. The strangest
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: part was also where we happened to run into each other.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: That would be Fox Sports Radio. Again, the guy hadn't
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: worked there in almost twenty years. Yeah, I know, twenty
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: years in radio, that's roughly six six generations and people
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: have come and gone, homesteads have come and gone.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Now we've had a bunch.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: Of producers leave recently for different jobs, which has turned
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: the building that I work in kind of like Grand
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: Central station in New York, or a Greyhound bus terminal.
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: People are consistently coming and going. At this point, I
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: don't even bother to introduce myself to some of these
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: people because I don't even think they're going to be
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: here that long, and they don't want to talk to me,
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: so we don't really talk to each other.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Every week, I'll.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: Pass someone in the hallway and the internal monologue in
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: my head I'm looking at these people and I'm wondering,
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: do they work here or are they just looking for
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: the free coffee in the blue smurf kitchen.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Well, apparently nobody sent me the memo.
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: Garrett, the old Fox Sports radio guy was back for
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: the second for the second time in a couple of weeks.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: It was an alumni associating a lumni association get together.
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: I talked about Craig Sheman, the great Fox Sports radio alumnus,
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: to somebody heard me mention his name. He gave me
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: a call. We were text We had a good conversation there.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: So on this one I didn't get the memo. Garrett
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: had returned, and it felt less like seeing an old
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: coworker and more like spotting Poultergeist and I'm talking about
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: like a scary poultergeist monster thingamajig with a big tongue
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: and fire, more like the ghost that shows up in
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: an old sitcom reunion special. Like you're surprised, you're happy,
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: and you're immediately reminded that everyone involved is older than
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: they'd like to admit. So we started talking and it
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: wasn't one of those marathon conversations. I do not do
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: marathon conversations. I did not try to solve the world
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: like weed Man does every week with world peace.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: It was a few enjoyable minutes of catching up. The
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: funny thing about work friendships is there, unlike almost any
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: other friendship, you spend thousands of hours together late nights,
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: early mornings, crazy deadlines, bad management decisions, incompetent management, equipment
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: going sideways, complete failures, inside jokes nobody else would understand
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: other than those in the building. And then something happens.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: Management decides to whack the person you're working with. They
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: decide to leave for more money, and the music stops,
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: and just like that poof, you never ever see them again.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: They're not your enemy. You're not upset that you don't
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: get to see them. You didn't hate them that they're
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: not even really forgotten. It's this weird bizarre it's this
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: weird bizarre world like they're just gone. I've dealt with
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: that with Eddie. Eddie Garcia was on the show for years.
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: He's been gone from the show for a couple of years,
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: and I I just he was my work friend. We
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: were you know, we text each other. Everyone wants so on,
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: not very much, but Eddie, you know, a guy that
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: was around for so many years and we both kind
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: of grew up as adults together and all that stuff,
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: and the company decided to get rid of him and
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: that was it. And then they's gone Gonzo the Muppet
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: and so a lot of this is like speed dating,
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: except instead of splitting the check after forty five minutes
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: and some bad some bad food, you split after four years.
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: Life moves on. Life moves on. Somebody else sits in
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: the chair, somebody else gets the.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Key card to the parking garage.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: Somebody else learns that, you know, the good snacks are
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: actually hidden. You gotta go find the good snacks. Now.
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: We started, me and Garrett started reminiscing about the early
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: Fox Sports radio days, which I spent a lot of
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: time doing. At the time, we didn't realize what was
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: going on, and we didn't really care. None of us
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: really figured that this thing would last, and we just
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: kind of faked it till we made it. That kind
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: of describes most of the things that have happened. The
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: difference was back then, nobody, nobody would admit that that
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: was the case. Right, this is the situation. It's not
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: looking great. You know, we're getting killed by five other networks.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: We talked about me and Garrett talked about the people
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: who were still around. There weren't many. There were a
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: handful of behind the scenes cockroaches or cockaroaches who survived
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: every single budget cut. There have been many, every management change,
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: every downsizing, every new corporate buzzword that they shove up.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: You tuck as you know the time now, the civilization
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: collapses every so often, if it collapses tomorrow. If a
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: civilization collapses tomorrow, they'll still be producing updates somewhere.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It was amazing how.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: Few names we could come up with who were still
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: in the building. And radio has always been always been
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: musical chairs. The host will leave, the producers leave, the
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: board ops leave, executives come in promising to reinvent everything,
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: before they also disappear eighteen months later, you know, eighteen
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: months later they go become consultants in Texas, shows get canceled,
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: shows launch, everybody's the next big thing. Then they're doing
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: mornings in Des Moines or Syracuse or timbuck to wondering
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: what the hell happened. Yet somehow the network just keeps
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: rolling on.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Rolling rod and Roland, rollin, Rollin, Rowland.
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: Just keeps rolling on and on. Different faces, same microphones,
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: same glowing on air light. And I remember I looked
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: at Garrett and I thought, man, you know, you look
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: pretty much the same. You're a little older, a little older,
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: you haven't gained much, weighed all, a little grayer. He
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: probably looked at me and thought the same exact thing,
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: except with more wrinkles, little actually a lot less hair,
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: and considerably more mileage on the odometer because of all
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: the stuff that we had to do for the last
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: couple of years with the you know, sit down interview
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: things and things like that. So times as a way
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: of sneaking up on you, it does. We talk about
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: this a lot, but I feel like in my profession
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: it's a little more than most professions in the radio business,
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: where every day feels exactly like the last until suddenly, poof,
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: you realize that you've been saying coming up next.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: You know, we'll get to it next for a quarter century.
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: Now. As we wrapped up this very brief conversation, it
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: hit me that this might be one of the longest
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: gaps I've ever seen in between someone leaving the company
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: and coming back almost twenty years. It still is insane
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: for this cat Garrett who's back at Fox Sports Radio.
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: That's practically a boomerang with jetlag. And Garrett had gone
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: off and worked for some big name people. He worked
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: with Jim Rome. He was one of Jim Rome's producers.
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: Done a million different things in media and sports media,
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: very impressive resume, and somehow ended up back in the
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: same hallway with my fat ass where we had crossed
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: paths decades earlier. Life yet again showing it has a
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: very odd sense of humor. You would think certain chapters
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: are permanently close, certainly after the statue of limitations has
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: run out. And then one random night, after a brief
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: bathroom break and a walk past a hot yoga studio
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: that smells like defeat and deodorant and perfume from women
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: and men of a middle aged vat. And then you
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: all of a sudden, you go down and you hear
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: someone say your name right, you turn around, and for
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: a few minutes the calendar disappears. It just goes. I
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: don't know where it went. It disappeared. The buildings older,
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: the people are older in the building. The network is
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: infinitely just massively bigger, infinitely bigger than the little operation
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: we all started out when we were in the old
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: Michael Reagan's studio at the Premiere Networks. But again, for
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: one hallway conversation, it felt like we had jumped into
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: the hot tub time machine. It felt exactly the same.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: Which in a business where almost nothing, almost nothing stays
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: the same, it's a pretty remarkable thing. So I look
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: forward to seeing Garrett more around.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Fox Sports Rada. Welcome back, Garrett, good to have me.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: Welcome back now, Welcome back now, now, turning the page
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: on that there are two kinds of people in the world,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: those who answer unknown phone calls and those who assume
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: anyone calling from an unfamiliar phone number is either selling
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: solar panels or announcing the death of a relative. Now
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: I aspire to be the second type. I fail with
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: alarming regularity. I do. The other afternoon, I was driving
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: home from the radio station, all the way back to
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: the north Woods, that familiar stretch of freeway where the
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: scenery changes from concrete trees and my personality changes from
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: public broadcasting man gashbagger to man trying to not make
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: eye contact with humanity. It is a drive I have enjoyed.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: I don't hate it anymore. Every once in a while
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: I hate it, But for the most part I don't.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: And nobody bothers me.
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: Nobody asks me anything. Usually the phone doesn't ring, the
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: dog isn't there, the microphone isn't there. Nobody wants an
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: opinion about the Dodgers, DDGs, Dodgers. It's just me a
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: cup of coffee that you know, I don't drink metaphorically,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: of course, and I had some ice water which was
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: actually lukewarm. I think it could have been soap, and
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: whatever decisions the people at Apple Music think I should
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: be listening to from like.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty seven.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: So then the phone rings and the screen says Brooklyn Comma,
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: New York, A color id has turned all of us
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: into amateur detectives. Forty years ago. You answered the phone
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: because it rang, You didn't do a bunch of psychobabble.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Well, who could it be?
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: Maybe it'll be my boss. I don't want to talk
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: to my boss. What if it's the person from work.
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: It's not my boss, but they want to bother me.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: You know that whole deal.
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: You know what if somebody wants me to send them
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: some money in the mail, well, okay, don't do that.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: But today you examined the area code the way a
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: jeweler kind of studies a diamond. Right, you get a
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: little thingamagig out and you're suspicious and the whole thing
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: you're suspicious of. The geography Brooklyn, not Manhattan, not Buffalo, Brooklyn,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: Brookland in the house now, my brother lives in New York.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: He lives in Manhattan, the borough of Manhattan, not Brooklyn.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: I have many cousins that are in the New York
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: area and Connecticut area.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And New Jersey, although not in the Borough of Brooklyn.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: I briefly wondered if Uncle Moe had finally upgraded from
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: whatever prehistoric flip phone he probably had carrying around since
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: the George W. Bush era as President perhaps someone had
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: borrowed a phone, Perhaps someone had been when arrested, Perhaps
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: someone needed bail money. Unknown numbers are incapable.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Of delivering ordinary news.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: Nobody calls unexpectedly to report that they had a pleasant lunch. Hey,
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: I just thought i'd drive up halfway through California because
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: I really do love that Chick fil a. Man, is
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: that a great restaurant? Big fan, big fan? Yeah. So anyway,
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: against every instinct in my body, in my bones, every
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: instinct I possess, I answered immediately. I regretted the phone call.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: Not because it was a telemarketer. Telemarketers at least have confidence.
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: They know why they're calling. They have a script that
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: they followed.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: This was not that.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: This was Marcel capital m Marcel. Now, anyone who has
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: spoken with Marcel knows there is often a translatetionation issue.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: There just is. Just as his words don't exactly arrive
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: in the chronological order, they travel in a loose convoy,
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: like grocery cards being pushed through a windy parking lot.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: Usually that's the part of the charm, that's the charm there.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: So this time, however, there was something else. Panic at
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: the disco. Yeah, panic at the disco. His voice, Marcel's voice,
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: had this unmistakable quality of someone trying very hard not
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: to cry, while simultaneously trying very hard to explain why
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: he may cry.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: All right, why he may cry? Now, I tighten my.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: Grip on the steering wheel, if you will. I just
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: grabbed onto that. Immediately, my imagination began spending money I
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: don't have. Did something happen to Uncle Dynamite? About carrot Top?
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: Did someone get hurt? Was there a fire? All of
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: these things are going through my head. Did the apartment
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: building he's in collapse? That would be terrible. Human beings
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: have remarkable imaginations, like we can turn six seconds of
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: a pause into a funeral, right, we traveled to the funeral.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Marcell continued talking bah.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Every third word landed, every third word landed.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: The rest dissolved somewhere between Brookland and the Pacific Coast Highway. Now,
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: finally I was able to piece meal this thing together.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: Marcelle was not calling because someone had died. He was
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: not calling because he just wanted to wish me a
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: nice day. He was calling because fifteen seconds of the
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: radio show he was part of accidentally became a station
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: identification for a TV station in Knoxville, Tennessee. That was
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: the emergency, I said, Marcell, you couldn't even write some
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: jokes or something like that. Come on, man, you got
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: to give me some jokes. Oh to get to it,
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: which means by next year he'll be able to write
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: a few jokes and that'll be that'll that'll be all
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: she wrote. So Pete Alonso having a big year in Baltimore,
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: not that it matters, and on and on and on again.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I felt this thing was like.
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: An injury emergency room punchline. There wasn't a punchline. So
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: apparently in the middle of the show, listeners suddenly heard
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: a station identification from again Knoxville, Tennessee. Then the broadcast
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: resumed as though nothing had happened, the radio equivalent of
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: waking up during surgery hearing somebody discussed weekend plants and
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: then immediately going back under the anesthesia. Just like that. Now,
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: Marcel again he was devastated, not annoyed, not slightly upset. No, no,
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: he was really bummed. He was really bummed, and he
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: just drive the event with the gravity usually reserved for
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: aviation disasters. For a brief moment, I wondered if perhaps
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: Knoxville had declared its independence. Maybe that's why, you know,
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: you know, thirty one past the hour, they're going for it, right,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: they're going for it. Instead, it was just a technical glitch.
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: And I don't know about you. I've always loved the
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: phrase technical glitch. I don't use it enough. It's a
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: good phrase because it sounds like an apology that refuses
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: to identify the quality or the quality of the apology,
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: the guilty party, all that, like all that stuff. You know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: nobody caused it, nothing failed. A glitch simply wandered in,
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: made itself comfortable, had a cigar, had to drink.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And that was that.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: It was wonderfully convenient. Imagine applying for you know that
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: standard we're talking about. Imagine I applying that elsewhere. I'm sorry,
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: I forgot your birthday technical glitch. I accidentally backed into
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: your mailbox. I apologize.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Don't worry. That's a minor software issue.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: We're going to upgrade that. Ate the last piece of pie,
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: Well you're not supposed to eat the last piece of pie,
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: but I wanted the last piece of pie Okay, you
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: can have the last piece of pie, but next time
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: the pie comes, I get the last piece of pie.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Also, you do the.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: Old firmware update and all that. Again, the point of
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: all this droning on, and we thank you for still
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: being here. The point of all this is rather obvious,
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: rather obvious if you've been paying any attention here to
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: what we're getting at. And that would be like, you know, listen,
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: life is shortse glitches happen and things like that.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: You don't get worked up into a tizzy.
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: And you know, radio stations are held together with enough
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: electronics to qualify as a small moon landing. And there's
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: wires that are like spaghetti and they fall, Computers freeze,
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: satellites occasionally develop personalities. The strange thing was Marcel. He
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: felt genuinely responsible. He apologized no less than like four
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: to ten times, and I kept saying, listen, Marcel, you
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: don't need to apologize. You didn't reroot or route the
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: signal to Tennessee. Though the more I thought about it,
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: the funnier Tennessee became. And why Knoxville? Why not Phoenix
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: or Fresno or San Antonio, and why not somewhere more glamorous.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Not that San Antonio is all that glamorous. You get
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the point. So no offense, no offense to Knoxville.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: But it felt oddly specific, like accidentally dialing the wrong
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: extension and ending up in someone's accounting department. Well that
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: was you know, it's a price you have to pay,
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: and and that's it. It's a price you have to pay,
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: and so pay it you do, and that's all all
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: right now. Meanwhile, turning the page, you if it wasn't
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: for you annoying radio kids, we would have gotten away
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: with it. So radio listeners notice everything. This has always
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: fascinated me. If I clear my throat, someone will email me.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: If I mispronounce a player's name, someone will say, oh, oh,
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: you didn't say that right. If I pause for three
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: and a half seconds because I'm trying to have a
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: simple water and some yawning and that kind of thing,
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: people think I've been kidnapped.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: Years ago, I mistakenly referred to a Wednesday as a Thursday,
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: and a listener was able to.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Correct me before the hour ended.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: Not because the calendar mattered, because accuracy mattered. You must
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: keep it right. I had a program director years ago
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: in radio, who said, Ben, you really work very hard
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: to try to get everything just perfect. I said, yes,
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: I do, boss, I want every take to be perfect,
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: and I work my ass off on this. And they
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: said that's great, that's really really good that you do.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: That means a lot. And then they pointed out that.
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: You really don't need to do that. There's no need
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: to have that happen, Like, what are you doing? Like
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: seriously right? And you know, these are the kind of
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: people that may or may not have a stick up
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: there tookis who hear a microphone at two in the
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: morning and decide the Republic may be in danger, And
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: part of me admires them. I'm also terrified by them.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: By the end of the conversation, Marcel had calmed down,
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: mostly because he realized that I wasn't angry that there
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: was something that annoyed me. I was not angry about
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: anything involving this particular chapter. So I found the whole
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: thing kind of comforting, not the glitch, the uninvited phone call.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: There's something sweet about a man like Marcel believing that
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: ten to fifteen seconds of an accidental Knoxville TV situation
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: getting on radio requires a personal apology so in an
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: age where corporations regularly lose medical records, airlines, strand your
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: overnight baggage, you know, they lock it up somewhere and say, well,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: you can't have that right now because we haven't gotten
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: it to where it needs to go. You've got that,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: you know, all kinds of crazy things happening out there.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: The we're experiencing higher than normal call volume when.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: You're trying to get something and you have to have
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the right zip code.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: Marcel still believes someone deserves an apology over the brief
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: radio hiccups, so I wanted to pass us on. Marcel
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: apologizes to you and to you and to you. It's
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: it's almost old fashioned, like I hung up, and I
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: kept driving. The freeway looked exactly the same. The trees
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: hadn't noticed, and my phone returned to its usual silence,
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: waiting for the next mysterious number to appear.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And that's it.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: And I know, I'll tell myself, you know, not to
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: answer the door. Just don't do it, you know, just
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: leave alone, and I'll probably answer anyway. I'll probably answer anyway,
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: because every unknown call carries the impossible promise that this
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: one might actually matter, all right, and no next time,
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: before allowing my imagination to stage an emotional catastrophe, I'm
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: going to ask one question and one question only. Is
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: this an actual emergency or is this a Knoxville TV station.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: The most amazing part is that Marcel was able to
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: find me and call me that blew me away because
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: he doesn't have my number. I've always called him a
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: block number. I'm like, how the hell did he get
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: my number? And it turns out that there are ways
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: on the social media platforms. I'm certainly not going to
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: give it away, but there are ways you can call
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: people on these different apps and for all the people
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: to talk about how messed up Marcell is and how
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: many issues he has. He was able to pull that off,
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: which is very impressive, very very impressive. Of Course, he's
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: got a lot of time as a Jets backer to
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: figure out what's going on and all that stuff. Meanwhile,
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: today you got a munch of holidays. It is the
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: eighth day of August. On this Saturday, it is Happiness
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: Happens Day. You can celebrate that International cat Day, Meow,
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: International Hangover Day, and my favorite the holiday that I
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: should celebrate make it all about.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Me, Middle child's day. What the f is that it's today?
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: From what I've been told, The term middle child syndrome
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: very popular in pop culture. However, the experts debate whether
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: it truly exists as a universal phenomena. Middle children are
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: supposed to be the negotiator of the family, the peacemaker,
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: the diplomat, departridge into paratry, that whole thing with your
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: own spin on it, your own spin on it. And
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: there's been plenty of research on these middle children. Some
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: studies have found middle children tend to have strong friendships,
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: often relying on friends as an extended family.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, check check check on that.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: That happens a lot. Middle children are frequently described as
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: more independent because parents' attention is naturally spread among multiple kids.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: I can go on on, I can go on and
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: on with this. There's a bunch of these things.
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: How about this most famous middle child? Is it Abraham
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: Lincoln or Martin Luther King Junior? Both middle children? How
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: about j Lo Jennifer Lopez. She's the middle of three sisters,
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: so she's Jenny in the middle. Britney Spears, the middle
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: child between her older brother and her younger sister. She
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: got that.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Madonna she's a material girl.
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: She grew up in a middle class childhood, in a
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: large family of six kids. Now in other departments like
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: pop culture, when you think middle child and you go
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: pop culture, that's got to be I know, it's an
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: old reference. Jan Brady, the Brady Bunch, The Brady Bunch,
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: middle child, she's the one. If you don't know, you
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: might have known about this phrase. You probably didn't watch
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: the show because it's been on and off the year
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: a million times. Marsha, Marsha and Marsha. That became a
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: moment we still talk about to this day. It's pretty
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: well she sent that out to Malcolm in the middle. Now.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Many sitcoms use the middle child as the character caught
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: between the overachieving older sibling and the spoiled younger one.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: That's pretty much in every movie.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: That's it now.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: Middle children invented whatever. I can entertain myself.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: I don't need you. I can do my own thing here.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: The middle child is too old to be cute and
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: too young to be in charge.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: So there it is.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: On that note, we are gonzo. We will have the
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: mail bag tomorrow. Tomorrow tomorrow, give me a spicy hot
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: mail bag.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: So check that out.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: I will not reveal who's in there. We have a
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: couple of feelers out for people for the mail bag.
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: I don't want to jinx either one of the people
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: that is a finalist for the mail bag. We'll let
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: you know someone will be there, come hell or high water.
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: And on that note, have a wonderful rest of your Saturday.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: And as Dick and Dayton says, bye, why why why?
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah right, Dick, go to bed. Dick, come on, go
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: to bed. I know you need my nuggets, but go
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: to bed, please,