Latest / Armstrong & Getty One More Thing / Nope, I'm Hangin' Around Til' the End
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: No, I'm hanging around to the end. It's one more thing.
- 0:03Speaker 1: I'm strong and getty. One more thing. A couple of
- 0:11Speaker 1: quick things from the most recent vacation, and then one
- 0:14Speaker 1: from a vacation many many years ago that I was
- 0:16Speaker 1: reminded of. So I went to Florida South Beach, Miami,
- 0:22Speaker 1: and then drove down to Key West and then went
- 0:24Speaker 1: up to New York. A couple of interesting things I saw.
- 0:26Speaker 1: One Did you check out the video yet of the
- 0:28Speaker 1: guy who riding his bike around with the tire on
- 0:30Speaker 1: his head?
- 0:31Speaker 2: I did. That is clearly as described.
- 0:34Speaker 1: It's a guy, a young guy, riding a bicycle around
- 0:37Speaker 1: with a giant truck tire. He's balancing on his head
- 0:40Speaker 1: while he rides it around.
- 0:43Speaker 3: Yeah, that video made my neck hurt.
- 0:44Speaker 1: I can't imagine the skill it would take to be
- 0:49Speaker 1: able to do.
- 0:50Speaker 4: That myself, wondering how he decided on that particular stuff.
- 0:56Speaker 1: That was my joke with my kids all along. I
- 0:58Speaker 1: kept saying to various people like that, We you know,
- 1:00Speaker 1: I was gonna go to law school, but I decided
- 1:02Speaker 1: I'll ride around the park with a tire on my head.
- 1:04Speaker 5: You know that's it would be a real show to
- 1:07Speaker 5: have that guy from the Davis Farmers Market that was
- 1:10Speaker 5: doing the splits eating canned eggs with this bike riding guy.
- 1:14Speaker 2: But did this.
- 1:15Speaker 4: Guy decide, you know what really interests me is balancing
- 1:18Speaker 4: truck tires on my head. Perhaps I'll walk, no jog,
- 1:22Speaker 4: no skip, no ride a bicycle with a truck tyra
- 1:28Speaker 4: or was it the opposite. I was like, you know what,
- 1:30Speaker 4: I'm really into riding my bike with something on my head.
- 1:34Speaker 4: Let's go with a potted plant. No, no, how about
- 1:38Speaker 4: my pets? Now, No, that's not good out about a
- 1:41Speaker 4: truck tire.
- 1:42Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even my kids and I talked
- 1:45Speaker 1: about this longer than you would you would expect. But
- 1:50Speaker 1: first of all, he most of people in the park.
- 1:52Speaker 1: This was Washington Square Park, New York, where all the
- 1:54Speaker 1: hippies hang out and there's all kinds of performance artists.
- 1:56Speaker 1: It's very, very cool, and it's that way all day,
- 1:59Speaker 1: every day for the past sixty years as far as
- 2:03Speaker 1: I know. Wow, now longer than that, because Kerouac was
- 2:07Speaker 1: writing about it in the forties, so yeah, more like
- 2:09Speaker 1: eighty ninety years. I mean, they're magicians and people with
- 2:15Speaker 1: their various poems and writings and stuff, all kinds of
- 2:19Speaker 1: stuff and uh, but most people have they're either selling
- 2:24Speaker 1: something or they got a you know, like a hat
- 2:26Speaker 1: there you can throw money into because they're singing and
- 2:28Speaker 1: playing the guitar. This guy never stopped like get money
- 2:32Speaker 1: or anything like that. He had a big smile on
- 2:33Speaker 1: his face. He seemed to be just doing it for
- 2:35Speaker 1: his own amusements. But I was wondering, how do you
- 2:40Speaker 1: get how do you start, even if you know how
- 2:42Speaker 1: to do it? How do you get on your bike?
- 2:45Speaker 1: Do you? I guess you hit on your bike with
- 2:48Speaker 1: the tire next to you, and then you have the
- 2:49Speaker 1: strength because as a big tire, you have the strength
- 2:52Speaker 1: to fling that thing up and bounce it on your
- 2:55Speaker 1: head before you take off on your bike. I don't
- 2:57Speaker 1: even know.
- 2:58Speaker 4: Well, right then you got a mount up on your bike,
- 3:00Speaker 4: I would think, and hold it with one hand till
- 3:02Speaker 4: you get a little momentum going Yeah, then the physics
- 3:05Speaker 4: kicks in and you can incline your head.
- 3:07Speaker 2: A such a way. Blah blah blah.
- 3:09Speaker 4: But yeah, what the trial and error had to be?
- 3:12Speaker 4: You know, days weeks long?
- 3:14Speaker 3: And how does this idea come to you? You know,
- 3:16Speaker 3: I bet I can take this wheel and stick it
- 3:18Speaker 3: on my head and balance it.
- 3:19Speaker 1: No you can't, Yes, I can. Next thing you know
- 3:22Speaker 1: you've got?
- 3:23Speaker 3: This is like this guy's thing.
- 3:24Speaker 5: I just looked him up and there's a video of
- 3:26Speaker 5: him balancing a forty five inch TV on his head
- 3:29Speaker 5: while riding a bicycle.
- 3:31Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, gotcha. Yeah, that's that's his jam. Balancing bigger
- 3:37Speaker 1: objects than you would expect on your head, bicycling, Yeah,
- 3:46Speaker 1: other things, so that I had to tell this story
- 3:47Speaker 1: in the podcast because it's one of those stories that
- 3:49Speaker 1: if you don't use the bad word, it's not as good.
- 3:52Speaker 1: So we're walking through Key West. We were there, we're
- 3:55Speaker 1: in a house. We were there for three days, and
- 3:58Speaker 1: have you ever been to Key West? Duval's the main dragon.
- 4:00Speaker 1: That's where all the cool stuff is and very very entertaining.
- 4:03Speaker 1: And so we're walking back from the restaurant. It's getting
- 4:05Speaker 1: a little later. And I didn't do this on purpose.
- 4:08Speaker 1: I would have crossed the street had I known otherwise,
- 4:11Speaker 1: just because my thirteen year old You don't need to
- 4:14Speaker 1: see this, But we walked by a bar where they
- 4:16Speaker 1: had drag queen shows going on, and there were two
- 4:21Speaker 1: enormous jet drag queens standing out front. I mean they
- 4:24Speaker 1: were in heels, but I mean without heels, they looked
- 4:27Speaker 1: like they were seven feet tall. I mean they were
- 4:29Speaker 1: like nine feet tall drag queens, and very attractive for
- 4:33Speaker 1: their height if you're into a nine foot tall woman.
- 4:35Speaker 1: But then handing out.
- 4:36Speaker 2: Little who's a dude?
- 4:39Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, handing out pieces of paper to
- 4:43Speaker 1: you know, come into the show. Anyway, we walked by
- 4:46Speaker 1: Henry's wide eyed. We get a little further away, he
- 4:48Speaker 1: saddles up next to me. He said three questions, what the.
- 4:52Speaker 3: Fuck gender bending madness?
- 5:01Speaker 1: And then finally this story, which didn't happen on this trip,
- 5:03Speaker 1: It had happened on a previous trip to Key West
- 5:06Speaker 1: Mallory Square, and Key West's on the very far side
- 5:10Speaker 1: where you get to see the sunset every night, and
- 5:12Speaker 1: they have a sunset festival. And this has been going
- 5:15Speaker 1: on since Hemingway was writing about it, when you had
- 5:17Speaker 1: to get there by boat, so this has been like
- 5:19Speaker 1: at least one hundred years. And they got all kinds
- 5:21Speaker 1: of performance artists there too, and it's very entertaining, jugglers
- 5:25Speaker 1: and music and frisbees and just all kinds of stuff
- 5:28Speaker 1: and food, and it's very cool and it's every night,
- 5:29Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five days a year, unless a
- 5:31Speaker 1: hurricane blows everybody away. But the last time, Joe's heard
- 5:35Speaker 1: this story numerous times, but you haven't heard this story, Katie's,
- 5:37Speaker 1: so I'll tell it again. My kids loved this story.
- 5:39Speaker 1: I saw an escape artist there thirty years ago, and gladys,
- 5:45Speaker 1: if you could play the art. He so it's crowded.
- 5:49Speaker 1: It's like probably like eight o'clock. The sun hasn't set yet,
- 5:53Speaker 1: but people are already gathered and he's gonna he has
- 5:57Speaker 1: people around chain him up where everybody's gathered around him,
- 6:01Speaker 1: and you know, you, you, young man, here is a
- 6:03Speaker 1: chain wrapping around me. However you want use this lock
- 6:06Speaker 1: to lock me up? And he does that with like
- 6:09Speaker 1: fifteen different people who chain him all up and all
- 6:11Speaker 1: these different chains, and people are wrapping it around his
- 6:13Speaker 1: legs and between his legs and around his arms and
- 6:15Speaker 1: his wrists, you know, trying to come up with a
- 6:17Speaker 1: difficult way for him to get out and u and
- 6:20Speaker 1: they do a pretty good job of it. So then
- 6:23Speaker 1: they get him all locked up. I will now escape
- 6:25Speaker 1: from this, you know from my chains, and he he
- 6:30Speaker 1: starts it and it is very slow moving, very slow
- 6:34Speaker 1: moving over time. I mean, he just he's like wriggling
- 6:38Speaker 1: his shoulders and like trying to move his legs and
- 6:41Speaker 1: just his head and he's got these chains all around
- 6:43Speaker 1: his neck in between his and and then he lays
- 6:46Speaker 1: down and he's trying to I mean, and this the
- 6:49Speaker 1: total time on this that I was there two and
- 6:51Speaker 1: a half hours. Oh my god. I stayed there for
- 6:54Speaker 1: two and a half hours, long after everybody else had left,
- 6:58Speaker 1: because people are like, there's no inner here, and there's
- 7:00Speaker 1: a guy juggling flaming axes over there, So I think
- 7:03Speaker 1: I'll go watch that. And the sun sets, you know,
- 7:06Speaker 1: So the sun is set, the other performance artists are
- 7:09Speaker 1: starting to go away, and he's laying there in his
- 7:12Speaker 1: chains on the ground, all sweaty, and I just, I mean,
- 7:16Speaker 1: this is back when I still drank too, and I
- 7:18Speaker 1: got a couple of beers, so I thought, I'm just
- 7:19Speaker 1: I want to see how this plays out. I mean,
- 7:21Speaker 1: does he just because most people would throw a few
- 7:23Speaker 1: bucks in the basket and I was kind of wondering,
- 7:26Speaker 1: does he just like not get out and a friend
- 7:28Speaker 1: has to come let him out? But he makes his money?
- 7:30Speaker 1: Is that the drink or no, he was getting some
- 7:33Speaker 1: of the chains off of him. He had this way
- 7:35Speaker 1: of wriggling and everything like that his body and like
- 7:38Speaker 1: he'd get a chain to drop and then another chain.
- 7:42Speaker 1: He tore the end at some point, and he's just
- 7:46Speaker 1: covered in sweat and he's making all these horrible noises
- 7:48Speaker 1: as he lays there trying to get the chains to
- 7:53Speaker 1: fall off of him. And he would stand for a while,
- 7:55Speaker 1: then he would sit and he'd get in a different possession.
- 7:57Speaker 1: He dislocated his show. Somehow he got his shoulder out
- 8:02Speaker 1: of the joint. You could see the ball slide down,
- 8:05Speaker 1: and then he was able to then he was able
- 8:07Speaker 1: to let the chains slide off of his shoulder, and
- 8:10Speaker 1: then he kind of ducked his head underneath one chain. Anyway,
- 8:13Speaker 1: at one point he starts vomiting. He's laying there on.
- 8:18Speaker 3: This Trust me, let's stick with it.
- 8:22Speaker 1: He's laying there on the hot asphalt in his shorts
- 8:26Speaker 1: and tank top, covered in chains and sweat, his shoulder
- 8:29Speaker 1: out of whack, and he's vomiting. He's just laying there.
- 8:36Speaker 1: I am not kidding at all. I'm the only person
- 8:39Speaker 1: left at this point. It's just me and some like
- 8:41Speaker 1: street people and he's vomiting, and then he gets the
- 8:44Speaker 1: other chain off his head, and then at some point
- 8:47Speaker 1: he gets them all to drop off, and then he
- 8:49Speaker 1: just sits there on the graud like breathing hard. He's
- 8:54Speaker 1: got vomiting his beard, and he's not looking at anybody.
- 8:58Speaker 1: He doesn't look pleased, he doesn't say, he doesn't even do.
- 9:01Speaker 2: None of that.
- 9:02Speaker 1: He just he looks miserable. And I put a ten
- 9:06Speaker 1: dollars bill in his basket, and I saw that was
- 9:08Speaker 1: really really amazing, dude, and I walk off, and that's wow. Wow.
- 9:15Speaker 4: I mean, it was as if he was actually abducted
- 9:18Speaker 4: and chained up, and his abductors had gone off to
- 9:21Speaker 4: do something else nefarious and while they were gone over
- 9:25Speaker 4: the course of hours blah blah blah. But indeed he
- 9:28Speaker 4: did all that voluntarily.
- 9:29Speaker 1: I don't know if that was the first time he'd
- 9:32Speaker 1: ever tried it and he thought that took longer than
- 9:34Speaker 1: I expected.
- 9:35Speaker 2: Or oh, that was really hard.
- 9:38Speaker 1: Or if people just did a better job of chaining
- 9:39Speaker 1: him up than usual. Surely every night, dude, you don't
- 9:43Speaker 1: lay there, dislocate body parts and vomit so that you
- 9:46Speaker 1: can make a couple hundred dollars. I don't know, maybe
- 9:50Speaker 1: go back and get a degree in something.
- 9:52Speaker 3: Were you flying solo on that vacation.
- 9:54Speaker 4: Yeah, you had to be, because I mean there's not
- 9:58Speaker 4: a woman I've ever known who would have stuck it out.
- 10:01Speaker 1: No, no, no, hell no, no, that's funny. I flew
- 10:03Speaker 1: in a girlfriend at the time, and she was coming
- 10:05Speaker 1: in the next night, and I remember thinking the same thing.
- 10:07Speaker 1: I would have missed that if I'd have been with
- 10:09Speaker 1: her she said, let's leave you. I wouldn't have been
- 10:11Speaker 1: able to stand there for two and a half hours.
- 10:13Speaker 1: And this is pre way pre cell phones and stuff,
- 10:15Speaker 1: or there would be you know, tons of videos of this.
- 10:18Speaker 1: God dang it, that was entertaining. You know, I've always
- 10:20Speaker 1: wondered whatever became of that guy, Like did he die
- 10:23Speaker 1: one night doing that or did he keep doing it?
- 10:25Speaker 1: Or did he have somewhere he decided to become a real.
- 10:28Speaker 3: Dream a system manager at the local Hurts reno car.
- 10:31Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 10:32Speaker 4: Right, Oh, my god, there's just some bones surrounded by chains,
- 10:36Speaker 4: you know, under a palm tree in the oh.
- 10:39Speaker 1: That was the most entertaining thing, very slowly unfolding slowly,
- 10:42Speaker 1: that I ever saw in my life.
- 10:43Speaker 5: I'm picturing you was standing up at the very end
- 10:45Speaker 5: and just giving him a slow clap, like, good job, dude.
- 10:48Speaker 1: He looked so despondent, like what if I decided to
- 10:51Speaker 1: do with my life?
- 10:53Speaker 4: You know, I hate to take this in a different
- 10:55Speaker 4: direction because it's been charming, but I've often reassured myself
- 11:01Speaker 4: or told other people that, you know, up to a
- 11:03Speaker 4: certain point, obviously, the worse the experience, the better of
- 11:06Speaker 4: the story. Yeah, I mean, all right, if you lose
- 11:09Speaker 4: a leg, then maybe not so much, right, but you
- 11:12Speaker 4: know what I mean. So if that guy had quickly
- 11:17Speaker 4: eluded his chains, or after an hour or so or
- 11:22Speaker 4: forty five minutes and there are five or six people clapping,
- 11:25Speaker 4: that would.
- 11:25Speaker 2: Be a very mundane story.
- 11:28Speaker 4: It was the very misery of it that made it
- 11:31Speaker 4: good for you too, I mean, because you had to
- 11:34Speaker 4: at some point be thinking I really ought to.
- 11:37Speaker 1: Go right right, I did have the is there gonna
- 11:40Speaker 1: be a payoff that's even close to worth how long
- 11:43Speaker 1: I've been standing here?
- 11:45Speaker 4: Like the opposite of the concept of some sunk costs,
- 11:49Speaker 4: Yeah you thought, No, No, I have sunk those costs.
- 11:53Speaker 2: I am going to sink more. I'm gonna sink as
- 11:55Speaker 2: much as it.
- 11:56Speaker 1: Takes a nebriation helped because I was able to keep
- 11:59Speaker 1: drinking because there's places selling beer, so I just hung
- 12:01Speaker 1: around watched. I mean, they're like some of the street performers.
- 12:08Speaker 1: This is a popular thing now. I talked about this
- 12:10Speaker 1: when I saw these in Vegas, the guys who jump
- 12:13Speaker 1: over people. They're like acrobats practically, and they get three
- 12:16Speaker 1: people in the middle, and then this guy comes running
- 12:18Speaker 1: really fast and he jumps and does a flip over
- 12:21Speaker 1: the top of him. And I've now seen it three
- 12:23Speaker 1: different places. I wouldn't have known there that many people
- 12:26Speaker 1: in the country that could even do that. Does every
- 12:28Speaker 1: town have a guy who can run and jump over
- 12:30Speaker 1: people and do a flip and land on his feet
- 12:32Speaker 1: on the pavement. Maybe, I don't know.
- 12:34Speaker 4: It's like American Idol showed us that there's like five
- 12:37Speaker 4: incredible singers in every talent in America apparently so right,
- 12:42Speaker 4: exactly so the same thing with leaping over people, as
- 12:45Speaker 4: it turns out, and you got just as much of
- 12:47Speaker 4: a prospect of making a living at it as does
- 12:50Speaker 4: the local singer.
- 12:51Speaker 3: Right, you're looking for some entertainment.
- 12:53Speaker 5: The video videos of them missing the jump over people
- 12:58Speaker 5: quite entertaining.
- 12:58Speaker 1: I was going to say, that's how that part of
- 13:00Speaker 1: the act Jack, I've never seen anybody miss no. But
- 13:05Speaker 1: it's it's extraordinary. I mean, it's it was impressive. I've
- 13:08Speaker 1: seen it a couple of times now. They run so
- 13:10Speaker 1: fast and the degree of difficulty because you're landing on
- 13:14Speaker 1: pavement at that speed.
- 13:16Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god.
- 13:16Speaker 1: If you don't time that right, I suppose you decide
- 13:18Speaker 1: you can't do that anymore the first time you crash
- 13:21Speaker 1: and think, well, I guess I'm done with this line
- 13:23Speaker 1: of work for now.
- 13:26Speaker 4: Wow, I could no more flap my wings and flyes
- 13:30Speaker 4: do that. At any point in my life.
- 13:32Speaker 1: I have not seen another person escape from chains while
- 13:36Speaker 1: vomiting and dislocating bones before, though that I've not seen
- 13:39Speaker 1: where else.
- 13:40Speaker 2: An innovator, a visionary
- 13:45Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's it.