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Selects: Flagpole Sitting: A Real Fad · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. It's July 14th, 2020. And we're all rolling
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: through COVID pretty well by this point. We're all pretty
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: drunk most of the time and gaining weight. But that's okay.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: We're going to let each other up because it's a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: global pandemic. This episode is called Flagpole Sitting, colon, a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: real fad. And it was. People would sit at the
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: top of flagpoles for as long as they could. And
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: it was a part of a weird time in American history.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: So check out this episode, not on Harvey Danger, the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: band who sang the song Flagpole Sitta, as did my
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: cover band, but Flagpole Sitting for real. Check it out
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right over there. Jerry's out
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: there somewhere, and this is Stuff You Should Know. You know, Chuck,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I have to say, every once in a while, the
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: amazing theme song from our short-lived television show comes into
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: my head. And it's just a complete earworm.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Because I just hear the end of it over and
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: over and over again. And it's actually pretty pleasant. It
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: doesn't bother me.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I love it. I haven't heard that song in a while.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Well, you need to go listen. That was the Henry
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Clay people, right?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, our buddies Joey and Andy Sierra, California boys, Southern
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: California boys, men.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Didn't they go to like Harvard or something crazy like that?
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Joey ended up going to Harvard, and then I think
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Andy went to AFI, and then Joey, I think, went
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: back to film school, and they're both writing, you know, screenwriting.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Man, that's great.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Andy's got a— he wrote this Andy Samberg movie that's coming
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: out soon.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Really? Which one? What's it called?
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: It is called Palm Springs, I think.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Wow, and he wrote it? Yeah, dude. That's fantastic. Congratulations.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And he wrote on the TV show Lodge 49. Yeah,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Palm Springs.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen that. But that guy, Kurt Russell and
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Goldie Hawn's son— I love that guy.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I think he's one of the coolest people walking around
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: on the planet today.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I haven't seen Lodge 49. It's supposed to be awesome.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And Andy was a writer's assistant and then ended up
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: on the staff. And they're both doing great.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Man, that's great. Congratulations to both of you guys.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: He's got a little baby now. They're both married.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Nice, man. That's nice.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And that's an update on the Sierra Club, as.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: I call them. Yeah. Let's see. What else? I guess
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: that was it.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: How did that come into your head, though, the song? Like,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: what made you think of that?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Nothing. I was just out back, like, mowing the lawn
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: with my big old lawnmower, and it just popped in
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: my head. I was probably thinking of something I had
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: to do that had to do with Stuff You Should Know,
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: and I thought Stuff You Should Know, and when I
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: thought it, I thought it as Stuff You Should Know,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: didn't it? And then it just played on a loop.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: This is the second time you mention the size of
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: your lawnmower.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: And now you just got to send me a picture.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Is this one of these things that you stand?
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: No.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And it wheels you around like some weird land speeder?
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: You mean like a skag or something? No. This is
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: just a good old-fashioned Toro that is, because it's gas-powered,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: I got it like on super discount because everybody's making
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: like really good electric lawnmowers.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: But this one was, you know, it was on discount,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: and I like the look of it.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good-looking mower, huh?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was like, I like your style. Come on
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: with me.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Is it red?
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's red Toros.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: It's nice.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Takes you back to days of paper routes and stuff
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: like that, doesn't it?
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I thought you were mentioning the song because you were
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: thinking of the song Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: No, I wasn't at all.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: But that's a great segue, Chuck, because it just so happens—
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: And you may be aware of this. We're talking about
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: flagpole sitting today in this episode.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: That's right. And I've been singing that song in my
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: head all day.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Now, I don't know that song.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: You know it. It was a, well, maybe not. It
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: was a top 40 hit in the 90s, kind of
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: during the grunge era. It was a power pop hit
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: that kind of. Oh. From Hardy Danger.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> No. Wait.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Is that it?
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: That's not it.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: No.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: My band actually covers Flagpole City. It's a fun song. Okay.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: That's great. I'm going to have to go listen to
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: it because I feel like I'm missing out. But is
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: that song about Flagpole City? Is it about Shipwreck Kelly
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: in particular?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: No, it's not. But it does have one line that says,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Run it up the flagpole and see. And that's the
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: only time it references flagpoles at all.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Sees what?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Uh, who salutes, but no one ever does. I think
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: is the next line. Hmm.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: That rings a bell.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I was looking into the mirror. A little bit clearer.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes, but
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: no one ever does.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm not sick, but I'm not well. Who is that?
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Harvey danger.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: That's a great song. I love it.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Who fellow podcasting friend, John Roderick actually, uh, Sean
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Nelson was a friend of his in Seattle, and he
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: played bass for a little while in Harvey Danger.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, very. Wow, man. This is all coming for so good.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: I got one more for you. What you got? I
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: used to have that song, and I don't know where
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: I downloaded it from. This would have been probably back
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: in the Napster days or something.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Whoa.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: And it was mislabeled as Brian Jonestown Massacre. And I
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: was always like, this does not sound like Brian Jonestown Massacre.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Now I know it most definitely wasn't Brian Jonestown Massacre.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Wow. All right. We haven't even talked about flagpole sitting yet.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: No, we haven't, which is a crime because it's actually
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: one of the more interesting weirdo fads that's ever come
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: this way in America. And it was in the 20s.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: It started— we actually— we know who Patient Zero was of flagpole sitting.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: And it's easy to tell because it is such a
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: bizarre thing to do.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: That if you can find the person who did it first,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: who claims to have done it first, they're probably correct.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: And in this case, you can trace it back to
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: sometime around January of 1924, supposedly, potentially, in Hollywood, California,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: part of Los Angeles, and there was a man named
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Alvin Shipwreck Kelly who supposedly climbed up on a flagpole
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: as part of a promotion for a movie and sat
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: there for a full 13 hours and 13 minutes. to
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: help draw a crowd, and boy did he ever.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which, you know, it sounds like a long time
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: to sit on a flagpole, but that is kid stuff.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Compared to where this is headed.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: That's an aperitif.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: But it's a good first attempt, you know?
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so, you know, it sounds strange because when
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: you think of a flagpole, you're like, what are they
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: sitting on? It's a modified flagpole that basically, there are
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: different kinds, but Um, usually it's sort of like a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: bar stool at the top of a flagpole and it's
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: that lo-fi and you climb up there and you sit
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: and that's all you do.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: That's it. I mean, whatever else you want to do.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Well, sure. You do other stuff.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Use yourself or whatever. Yeah. That's up to you. But
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: as far as being considered a flagpole sitter, that's it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: You sit on top of a flagpole for as long
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: as you can.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: All right. So let's talk about this guy because Shipwreck
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Kelly was a pretty interesting character.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: And I have to say there's a Memory Palace episode
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: about him that I specifically didn't listen to beforehand because
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to unconsciously rip it off.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: But go listen to that.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or old buddy Nate. I'm going to check that
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: out for sure. So Alvin Kelly, he was born Aloysius
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Anthony Kelly in New York City in Hell's Kitchen in
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: a tenement in 1893 and had a very sad start
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: to his life in that his father had already passed
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: before he was born. His mother passed in childbirth, and
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: that basically meant he was shuttled around to relatives and
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: orphanages from, you know, the minute he took his first breath.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And apparently from a pretty early age, he would
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: do things like climb flagpoles and other tall stuff. And
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: like working at heights became a kind of a recurring
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: theme in his life. supposedly by age seven he was
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: climbing flagpoles. Within a few years after that, he was
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: starting to scale the facades of some of the buildings
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: in his neighborhood. And by the time he was 13,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: and bear in mind if this guy's biography seems a
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: little thin, he just came out of nowhere in 1924
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: for sitting on a flagpole. So all of the info
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: about him came from him to reporters who were reporting
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: in the 1920s. So just fabrications are flying around left
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: and right. Sure. But supposedly he ran away at age
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: 13 and ran off to join the crew of a
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: cargo ship and start his life sailing the seas.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he did a lot of kind of odd jobs,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: or maybe not odd jobs, but just jobs that didn't
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: have anything to do with one another over the next
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: couple of decades. He was in the movies as a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: stand-in and a double. He was a stunt person, a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: stunt pilot, a high diver, a boxer. This part I love.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: There's actually a name for people that repair church steeples
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Steeplejack.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: He was a steeplejack.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: That is definitely a band name for sure.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Steeplejack? Oh, yeah.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: It sounds like maybe an industrial band, but like on
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: the light side, like the Like they're technically too melodic
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: to actually be considered industrial, but they still call themselves industrial.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: That's become my favorite part of this whole band name thing.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Is you describing what kind of band it is.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks, man. That makes me feel warm and pleasant.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: So World War I comes along, and he was in
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the Naval Auxiliary Reserve as an ensign and served on
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the USS Edgar F. Luckenbach during that war.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Yep. So he did have some sort of, well, I
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: should say, I don't know if anybody's corroborated that. But
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: we'll just take all that at face value because it
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: doesn't really matter at this point. But he eventually picked
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: up the nickname Shipwreck. And there's a lot of different
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: explanations for this. And he's given or he gave multiple
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: different explanations depending on what reporter he was talking to.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: But one of the numbers that gets bandied about pretty
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: frequently is, is that Shipwreck Kelly was so named because
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: he survived 32 different shipwrecks at sea, which is where
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: shipwrecks tend to happen.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Those were the good old days. Yeah. You just make
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: up stories about yourself.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Do you remember when we talked about– we did an
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: episode on the world's either luckiest or unluckiest people?
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And do you remember that one guy who was like,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: I survived– car that fell off a cliff and I
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: survived a train wreck and all that. He was doing
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: his jam in like 2005, remember?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, was he?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He was pretty, pretty recent if I remember correctly.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: You remember his son came out and was like, everybody,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: this is not true. Right. Like none of what you're
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: talking about is true.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Well, we don't.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: My dad just fooled you all.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: We don't know if Shipwreck Kelly actually survived the Titanic
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: like he claimed, but we do know that he was
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: not on the roster on the Titanic. So I am
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: going to venture to say that he made that one up.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: And there were three Kellys on board who were survivors,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: but all three of them were women. So, yeah, he
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: probably wasn't on the Titanic. Maybe he did survive from shipwrecks.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: He was at sea, most likely. But the point is,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: is they called him Shipwreck Kelly. And I guess somebody
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: went to the trouble of digging up that some reporters
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: who covered his boxing career are probably the likeliest source
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: for where he got his nickname Shipwreck, right?
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which I love. Because I guess he wasn't a
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: great boxer because they said that he was often adrift
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: and ready to sink.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Isn't that great?
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Shipwreck Kelly.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: It's a great nickname and an even better origin story
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: than surviving 32 shipwrecks, if you ask me.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the other thing we don't know for sure
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: is even if that Hollywood movie premiere story is correct
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: in his first major outing as a flagpole sitter because
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: yet another story says, no, this is actually in Philadelphia–
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: at a department store and he just did it on
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a dare. And the department store got a lot of
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: business because people were standing around looking and then doing
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: some shopping. So they were like, hey, stay up there
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: and I'll give you some extra dough. Yeah.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: So either way, it's pretty widely held that Shipwreck Kelly
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: was the guy who started the flagpole sitting craze.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: And it was a craze because This is a time
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: where you could go sit on a flagpole for 13
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: hours and 13 minutes and newspapers around the country would
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: pick up the story and write about it. And you
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: would suddenly become famous overnight. And that's exactly what happened
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: to Shipwreck Kelly. So that's prong one toward this becoming
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: a fad in the 1920s. The other criteria is that
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: people have to want to topple that record. And that
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: was very widespread at the time too because the 1920s
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: were actually really big into fads. Like people would take
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: up weird fads and just go nuts over them for
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: basically the whole decade.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, people had time and they had fewer distractions.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no TV.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: So like someone doing a dance-a-thon for 28 hours or
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: sitting on a flagpole for a day, You know, it's
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: an interesting story back then. It's sad that that was interesting,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: but it was.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Right. So we'll talk about dance marathons, and then we'll
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: take a break, okay? Okay. Okay.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Okay. Oh, wait.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: I got that backwards, Chuck, I just realized. Hopefully Jerry
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: figured it out and there was an ad in there somewhere.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I think we should just leave it just like that, though.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: That'll be fun. Okay.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: So... We're going to talk about dance marathons now, after
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: the ad break, despite what I said before. And dance
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: marathons are a super 20s example of a crazy fad
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: that kind of came along and got everybody by the hackles.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: And people across the country started entering basically dance marathon competitions.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: All because of one person, one woman, a dance instructor
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: named Alma Cummings.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: That's right. 32 years old. She danced for 27 hours.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: at the Audubon Ballroom in New York in 1923 with
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: six different dance partners. And it was a weird time
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: because it wasn't just dancing. It was endurance challenges as
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: a whole were just all the rage and punishing your
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: bodies and all these weird random ways from yo-yoing to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: hula hooping to rocking in a rocking chair or skipping rope.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: to dancing. Dancing was the big one. That's where you,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: you know, if you see these videos of these marathon
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: dance competitions, it's just, it looks like hell on earth.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: It looks awful.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh yeah. They didn't seem very fun at all,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: but Alma Cummings just kicked the whole thing off. And again,
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: just like Shipwreck Kelly, who would follow, I guess, a
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: year later, or even, yeah, about a year later, she
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: got a lot of publicity. There's like a famous photo
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: of her Yeah. Yeah.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: For celebrity, however you can get it. And that seemed
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: to really drive people who wanted to be like, well,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: if this lady got this much attention for dancing 27
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: straight hours, maybe I can get even more attention for
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: dancing 30 straight hours. And so within just, I think,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: three weeks of Alma Cummings setting this record for dancing,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: it had been broken nine times, at least, from people
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: trying to seek the same kind of publicity she got.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and, you know, it's funny. It really, like, we
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: talk about these days how everyone wants their 10 minutes
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: or they want to be reality show famous or whatever.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Has it been whittled down to 10 now? I thought
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: it was, like, 15.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Well, like, that's something new, and it's really not. Like,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: this is sort of the version of that back then
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: was I want to be famous, I want my names
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: in the papers, but I'm not particularly skilled enough to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: do anything to do that, so I'll rock in a
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: rocking chair for three days. Yeah. You know?
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: And hopefully they will come. If I rock, they will come.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: That was a pity laugh at best, but I appreciate it.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Well, it was a bad joke.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Admittedly.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: But it would, and we should shout out a bunch
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: of great websites here because this next bit came from
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Atlas Obscura, one of our favorite sites, and also our
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: dearest of old sites that we always have loved, Mental Floss, Ripley's.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: History Daily, J. Mark Powell, and Historic Pelham, which is great.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: But Atlas Obscura talks about in the 30s, and this
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: is really kind of depressing, during the Depression.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: It's very appropriate.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Is that sometimes people would enter these dance marathons because
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: it would be somewhere they could sleep and eat for
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a week at a time when they didn't necessarily have
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a home or food.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is extremely depressing. Or just the prize money
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: that was offered in the depression might be enough to
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: keep your house from being foreclosed on. So, yeah, the
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: thing is, you know, you can blame promoters for continuing
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: this long beyond the fad, but the promoters wouldn't have
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: been putting these on and offering this prize money were
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: it not for all the crowds that would show up
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: every day to watch these people get increasingly closer to,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: you know, catastrophic exhaustion from, from dance marathons because like
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: there were, there were rules where, you know, probably early
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: on in the dance marathon, um, you could sleep or
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: rest for 15 minutes of every hour. Yeah. And then
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: after like a week, a week of this dance marathon
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: going on, the promoter might be like, oh, okay, well,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: you know, we need to step things up a little bit.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: And you will now have three minutes per hour of
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: every 24-hour period in a day to where you can rest.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: And then toward the end, they'd be like, no rest.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: I think I read about one where the last 57
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: hours of a multi-week dance marathon was like had no rest.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: So these people dance for more than two straight days constantly.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: You had to constantly be in motion and your knees
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: couldn't touch the ground or else you'd be disqualified. Yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And if you look at footage of this stuff, I mean,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: it's charitable to recall what they're doing is dancing toward
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the end. It's just hanging. It looks like two corpses
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: hanging on each other, sort of swaying back and forth.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I don't get, I mean, any of these things, even
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: the modern day versions of like these contests where you
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: have to keep your hand on a car or whatever.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: And on hard body.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. Or sit in the car. I knew a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: guy that did one of those where he tried to
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: win a Volkswagen Beetle by sitting in it with four
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: other people in a mall. I'm just like. Oh, yeah.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: You told us that story before. Did he win or not?
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I think he did. But there's just no way. Kill me.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be really awful for sure. Because let's say.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: For one of those contests, let's say you don't win.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Then you've just sat in a car with three strangers
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: for a week and you didn't even get the car.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: But even if you did get the car, imagine yourself
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: five years on and that car is like there's tears
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: in the seats or something like that, you know, like
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: the glove compartment won't close. It's, you know. I mean,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: I guess you've got a story to tell at cocktail parties,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: but even that would wear thin after a while.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: But Chuck, we need people to do stuff like that
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: because there's something about contests like this. There's something about
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: fads like flagpole sitting that keep humanity from becoming too cerebral.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? From just becoming like. Computers, basically.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: We need people that do stuff like this because it
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: brings out some juvenile something in us that makes us
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: want to find out about it or learn about it
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: or talk about it. And I think that's good. I
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: think that's healthy for our species. All right. It's my take.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: It's genuinely off the cuff. I'm actually just surprised at
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: myself that I just said that out loud.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: You're just riffing.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: So Shipwreck Kelly, back to flagpole sitting. That initial 13-hour,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: 13-minute sit, like you said, inspired so many others to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: break it. And it was getting broken in pretty short order,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: kind of like the dance-a-thons. There was a woman named
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Bobby Mack from L.A. who did it, a guy named
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Joe Holdom Powers who did this in Chicago for 16 days,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: another guy for 51 days named Bill Penfield.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's point this out. Take a second here.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Shipwreck Kelly did 13 hours and kicked off a national fad.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: These people are now into weeks at a time. 51
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: days is more than seven weeks up there. Yeah.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It's pretty impressive. That's a long time.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I'm impressed at least.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Are you bucking the cerebral?
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, right now. Can you tell?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Let me see here. In the 20s, there was a
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: 15-year-old boy who set the kid record. For 10 days,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: 10 hours, 10 minutes, and 10 seconds. I think that
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: was planned.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if not, then. But see, there you go, Chuck.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: We're thinking about that. It's making us think. This little
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: kid is making us think. We've got to avoid that.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: It needs to be random combinations of numbers so we
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: don't start thinking about it.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: We should also point out that not everyone was like, oh,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: this is the best thing ever. In Cosmopolitan magazine, Cosmo
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: called it competitive imbecility. Yeah.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: This is fine. We need that, too. I have to say,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I want to say something here. It's a little PSA.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: This might not even ever make it in the final edit.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: So I'll just say it to you. How about that?
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: I would say the last, like, few weeks of episodes,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: there's been, like, some good ones here or there. But overall,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I find that they've been less good because I am
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: so sick of myself. Because we've been so... entrenched in
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: the book right now. So it's like living, breathing S-Y-S-K,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: which is us, and having to confront and like myself
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: and my own personality and sense of humor and whether
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: that's actually funny and just constantly thinking about this on
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: top of doing the podcast on top of the other
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: stuff we're trying to do now too and I am
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: so sick of myself I can barely tolerate listening to
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: myself talk so if anyone's picked up on the last
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: few episodes like in the last few weeks just being
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: a little ho-hum that's why and I apologize maybe we'll
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: go back and redo them one day wow.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: News to me. I think you've been great.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Hey, thanks a lot, man. That's ultimately what I was
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: fishing for.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, if you want to cut that part out,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: let me pick this up by saying, and I'm sure
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: you've made a great point, Josh.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: So, so back to Kelly, right? You've got all these,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: what I'm sure Shipwreck Kelly deemed slack-jawed yokels, ho-hums, that
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. Um, Who were out there trying to
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: topple his record.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: And they did.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Some of them did topple his record. But nobody had
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: turned this into a business like Shipwreck Kelly had. He
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: was a one-man money-making machine who made his money just
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: by sitting on top of a flagpole.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Good money.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Because he was really good at self-promoting. Like there wasn't
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: a reporter whose ear he wouldn't bend if he got
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: the chance. And in these reports or these articles, he
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: would say things like, yeah, I'm in town for this,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: but if anybody has any other offers, I'm wide open
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: and I'm staying at, you know, the Cambridge Arms itinerant
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: hotel for the next few days if somebody wants to
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: get in touch with me there with a job offer.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Like he was really good at attracting job offers specifically
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: for flagpole sitting.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he made good dough. I mean, this is
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: good money any time. if he made $ 100 an hour
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: like he claimed to, other people said, no, it really
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: wasn't that much. It was probably closer to anywhere between
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: $ 100 and $ 500 a day. Still a lot of money.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And like you said, it was like, he was almost
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: like a celebrity version of a sign spinner. Like if
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: you could pay George Clooney to sign spin in front
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: of your mobile phone store, that was sort of what
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Shipwreck Kelly was.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: That's a great one. I got one too. It's almost
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: like if there was a cult of personality built up
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: around like the flapping dancing wind sock guy that they
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: put out in front of like mattress stores in like 2005. Yeah.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I love those dudes. Okay.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Those are fun.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: I think both of those are high quality analogies.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll see which one Jerry uses in the edit.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let me see here. Here are some of his
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: longer sits. He did 146 hours at the Old West
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Gate Hotel in Kansas City. Not bad. 312 hours in Newark,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: New Jersey atop the St. Francis Hotel. That's pretty good. Sure.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that is in days, but... 312 hours?
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Let's see. If you divided that by 24, as you should...
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: You would come up with something along the lines of
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: 13 days on the nose.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Hmm. All right. Well, how about 22 days? And this
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: was in conjunction with the dance marathon at none other
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: than Madison Square Garden.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I don't know if we said it or not,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: but there was a dance marathon at Madison Square Gardens
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: that was actually shut down by the health department because
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: they decided it had gone on too long, 10 days,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: and that it deemed a threat to the health of
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: the participants. That wasn't the one that he sat in,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: but there was one the following year where for, what
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: was it, 22 days?
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: That means that the dance marathon went on for 22 days.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: But imagine that. So you've got these two endurance fads
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: just interweaved in this way that the universe almost like
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: collapses in on itself because they're put together too close together,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's how he would do it. He would
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: sit on that bar stool-like thing And it was padded
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: and he would, um, you know, eat and smoke cigarettes
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and shave apparently. And they would send this stuff, stuff
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: up in like a, with a bucket and a rope
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and tell him how he would sleep. Cause this is
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: what I really kind of wanted to know.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: So, so you said his, his seat was like a
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: bar stool around bar stool basically. Right. And, um, It
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: was on a pole, a flagpole appropriately. And then in
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: the flagpole, you'd have two holes drilled just beneath the seat.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: And now that I'm doing it, I'm like, that's really
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: hard to reach. So now I'm questioning whether this is
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: true or not.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: He might have long arms.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Maybe so.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Long thumbs.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: So he would plug his thumbs into those holes. drilled
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: into each side of the flagpole so that when he
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: started to lean forward, the pressure from the flagpole on
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: his thumbs would kind of cut into his skin and
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: wake him up just enough that he would adjust himself.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: And apparently he got so good at this that he
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: would adjust himself to sit back up so he wouldn't
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: fall over off of the flagpole while he was still sleeping.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Like he wouldn't wake up. He could just adjust himself
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: in his sleep.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: That's right. And he'd have his little, I don't know
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: if they're little, but he would have his ankles locked
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: around the pole and apparently would tether a leg to
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: keep him from catastrophe. But I think it's very dubious
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: that that was a solid life-saving rig.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: And I mean, like some of these flagpoles, he's sitting
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: on 30 feet, 50 feet. One of them, I guess
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: the impression I had, the one that you mentioned on
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Kansas City's Westgate Hotel, that that flagpole was on the
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: top roof of the hotel. So, I mean, he was
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: up there for sure. And if something had gone wrong,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: he would have, yeah, that tether probably would not have
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: done terribly much. Or it would have done a lot
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: to keep his leg hanging up there, but the rest
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: of them would have kept going to the ground, you know?
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: How did he pee-pee and poo-poo?
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: He had a little contraption for that with the tube
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: that went down. Okay. But here's the thing. So you're
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: a traveling flagpole sitter. You're relying on the help of
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: other people on the ground. You need food. When you
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: pee and poop into that contraption that leads to a
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: tube that goes down to the ground— You don't want
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: that just leaking out for the spectators to see and
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: smell and experience. You need it to go into a
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: bucket that somebody is going to go take away and dump.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: So you're relying on this kind of group of assistants
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: and hands that probably the promoter maybe helped hire for you.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Maybe you make a friend along the way who just
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: kind of travels from town to town with you for
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: a little while.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: That's what I think. Shipwreck Kelly had an assistant.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: He had a boy.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: That was the worst job in show business.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Right. He had a lad who would help him.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, but it would be a pretty bad job.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: But anyway, so he had to, I mean, he had
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: to eat and he didn't eat much. He would apparently
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: just kind of almost do a broth fast, augmented with
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: cigarettes and coffee. He would stay up for four days
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: at a time because like living on a flagpole is
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: not exactly like the most comfortable place you can exist for.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: you know, 22 days or 13 days or however long. No.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: And it eventually turned against him in that the money
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: dried up after he did this sort of big Atlantic
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: City stunt that we talked about. And it was the
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Great Depression. And eventually people were kind of like, I
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: don't really care so much about this dumb stunt because
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I'm starving and I'm broke and I'm homeless.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: And the kind of tide of public opinion turned such
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: that In 1935, he went to do this in the Bronx,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and he was actually arrested for public nuisance.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure he was like, but I'm Shipwreck Kelly. Right.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: But, I mean, think about it. That's like everybody's sick
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: of you now, Kelly, and your schtick. We're all just
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: depressed in the Depression, so maybe we'll do a dance marathon,
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: but we're not going to watch you sit around in
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: a flagpole anymore. And there was a contemporary article that
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: was written at the time that said that he– attributed
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: the decline of flagpole sitting directly to the stock market crash.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: And he said that people didn't want to see anything
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: higher than their securities, stock securities at the time, which
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: were not very high.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: And everyone went, that's just not even a joke in
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: good taste. And he punches human familiar in the mouth
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and say, you told me to tell that joke.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Man, that was gangbusters, Chuck.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Do you watch that show?
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: You got me.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: What we do in the shadows?
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: I've seen some episodes of it. You know, we were
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: talking about it, and one of the PAs, I think,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: wrote in to say that they were just blown away
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: that we were giving such big ups to their show.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: I think I remember that. If you talk to Matt Berry,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: tell him he's a comedy genius. I never heard anything back. Oh,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: have you seen An Evening with Beverly Loughlin?
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: No. How do I know that name?
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: So it's a Craig.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Robinson?
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Yes. From The Office, right?
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: He plays a guy named Beverly Loughlin. And Aubrey Meadows?
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Aubrey Plaza?
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Aubrey Meadows. Plaza. That's right. Man, I'm really screwing this up.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: You're great with first names, though.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: And then.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Okay. So she's the main character. Jemaine Clement. I know him.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: You got that.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: He plays... Well, you just have to see it.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Well, he was in What We Do in the Shadows,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the movie.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Right, right. So I think he co-created it too. This
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: is what all ties into this. He and Matt Berry
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: are also in this too. Matt Berry is in the
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: TV version of What We Do in the Shadows.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, Clement helped create it. But it's definitely worth watching.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: It's purposefully very bizarre, which can get really annoying really easily.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: But this movie pulls it off very well, like purposeful
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: bizarreness for humor. And it's a good movie. It's worth watching. Okay,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: it's worth watching. I'll leave it to you to decide
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: whether it's a good movie or not.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I love everybody in it. That's a great cast.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's worth watching. How about that?
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: All right. Should we take our second break here? Can
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: you believe we haven't?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, I can.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's do our other break, and then we're
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: going to talk about, we're going to wind up this
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: flagpole sitting thing right after this. Okay, so Kelly, when
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: we left off, the public turns on him. They don't
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: care about him anymore. He's probably drunk in some hotel
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: room somewhere with his human familiar, talking about the good
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: old days at this point.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is kind of sad. I get the
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: impression that the Memory Palace episode really focuses on the
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: sad decline of Shipwreck Kelly because, I mean, he was
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: a celebrity, a national, probably international celebrity for like a decade.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: a decade for sitting on flagpoles. And then all of
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: a sudden he's just done. Like society drops him like
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: a hot potato and he's penniless and on public assistance basically.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he died a very sad death. He did.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: And I think his final flagpole sit was all the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: way in the 1950s in Orange, Texas in 1952. He
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: was almost 60 years old at this point. And he had,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: during the publicity run-up to this, had two heart attacks. Well,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: was he sitting on his pole for publicity or was
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: this part of the pole sitting when he had the
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: heart attacks?
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: He had the heart attacks on the pole during the publicity.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, so the actual sit was another publicity stunt for
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: some place.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah. I don't know what business it was for.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: I didn't see that. But I did see that the
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: promoters were like, come down right now. We don't think
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: you're going to survive a third heart attack, so stop.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Which is crazy. I mean, there was only 59 at
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but 59 in the 1950s.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: I guess so. When your name was shipwrecked. Yeah.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: But he did die of that third heart attack like
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: a week after that, right?
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was walking around New York on 51st Street.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: And he dropped dead on the sidewalk from a heart attack.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: And he was found holding a scrapbook of all, like,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: clippings of newspaper articles about him during his heyday.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Isn't that sad?
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: That's like a movie.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't believe this is a movie. He's, I mean,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: he's a gold mine just waiting to be, well, mined.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: There's one other thing about him before we move on.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: What do you got?
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: After he was done with his flagpole sitting career, the
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: heyday of it, one of the jobs he had was
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: as a gigolo, a male escort who would dance with
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: whoever wanted him to dance at the Roseland Ballroom near
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Times Square.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: He was a private dancer.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: A dancer for money.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: I've been to Roseland. Seen some good shows there.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well. You were where Shipwreck Kelly danced for a
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: dime a dance. Because he was a gigolo.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I would have paid for that dance. Sure. Tell him
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to sit on my head.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: Hey, he'll do what you want him to do. Oh, boy.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: So we looked, or rather you looked, because you put
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: this one together, and you found one death from flagpole sitting.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Isn't that right?
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: That's all I could turn up. Surely, surely there were more,
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: but I could really only find one. And this guy
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: was wonderful in every way.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Dick Blandy?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Dixie Blandy. Richard Dixie. D-I-X-I-E. Blandy.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Dick Dixie Blandy.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Sure. So, Dixie Blandy. He was a flagpole sitter who
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: was contemporaneous to Shipwreck Kelly.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: A little bit.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Like during, surely he was directly inspired by Shipwreck Kelly.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: He came along and started in 1929, which is almost
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: the worst year you could join the flagpole sitting movement
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: because just the next year, Shipwreck Kelly had his triumphant
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: sit aboard like a, or above a two, what?
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Triumphant sit. It's just great. Yeah.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it was triumphant for a couple of reasons. One,
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: it was his longest sit, I believe, 22 days, 23 days,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: something like that. And secondly, it was above a top,
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: a 200-foot flagpole. For weeks, he sat up there. That's triumphant,
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: if you ask me. But he did his in 1930,
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: and everybody dropped him right after. Dixie Blandy just started
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: in 1929. But even though people said flagpole sitting is
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: so out, we're not going to bother even looking up
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: when we see somebody on a flagpole. Dixie Blandy said,
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: you know what, I'm not giving up on this. And
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: he continued to make a career out of it wherever
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: he could.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, until he died from flagpole sitting at the age
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of 71. In 1974, he fell off of his flagpole.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: It was a 50-foot pole. And where was this? In Harvey? Harvey.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I get the impression in Pennsylvania.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Harvey, Pennsylvania?
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because the article that reported on it as if
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: it were something of a nearby event was called the
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Reading Eagle. And Reading is in Pennsylvania, right?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Is it Reading?
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Whatever. I can't tell you how many times I've been
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: told that since I was a child playing Monopoly. And
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: it's just never stuck for some reason.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, is that the titular railroad? Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. The
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Reading Railroad. We said Reading.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's right. That's what I said too, but apparently
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: it's Reading.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know it was the same thing.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: But either way, this is where Harvey, and of course
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: it's always like the grand opening of a shopping center
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. And that's what was going on here.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: It's a four-day promotion, and he basically said, I think
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: this pole is attached to a trailer, and the trailer moved.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Well, he asked a security guard to move the trailer
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: so they could make room for what I took to
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: be a cherry picker that could go up and get them.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: This is hours before the end of his four-day sit.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And when the security guard, I guess who had never
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: tried this before, moved the trailer, a guy wire that
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: was stabilizing the pole became taut and actually pulled the pole,
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: snapped the pole in two with Dixie still on top
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: of this 50-foot pole, and he landed safely. Skull first,
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: from what I can tell, onto the asphalt below. That
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: is not what you want to open your grocery store with.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: No, or to close your flagpole sit with.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: No, either way, it's a bad jam.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: If you're going to fall, fall early.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: This was not his only accident, too. This was the
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: one that got him, but he had fractured his skull
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: before when he was thrown off a pole in a
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: storm in 1955. And then there was... This is heartwarming.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: In 1961... he was doing a pole sit for a
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: promotion dressed as Santa Claus. And he was shouting, Merry Christmas.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: That was his job. Sit on the top of the
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: flagpole and shout Merry Christmas. And apparently it got to
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: the point where he finally yelled down that he was
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: getting numb and he had to be taken to the hospital.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Which is, this is what I'm talking about, man. Just
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: no thought. It doesn't take thought to just think about
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: flagpole sitting. And I love that about it. Yeah.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Merry Christmas.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: Merry Christmas. I think, I think there's something wrong up here.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: I got to go to the hospital cause I'm sitting
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: on top of a flagpole dressed as Santa Claus shouting
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Merry Christmas for three days. And it's December in Pennsylvania.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: In Reading. It's reading. Uh, this was, you know, these
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: were definitely the waning days. This was in the 1970s.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: There were some other stunts throughout the years here and there.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: A couple got married atop a flagpole. Um, Let me
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: see here. A 17-year-old in 1963 named Peggy Townsend spent
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: 217 days on a pole for a contest for a
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: radio station. And then the granddaddy of them all, this
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: guy Kenneth Gidge, Ken Gidge, 248 days in 1971. This
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: guy would later on be a state rep for New Hampshire.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: And he, I mean, reading his account... He was basically like,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: it was terrible.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: And I hated it every.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Second of it. He had a parakeet. He had his
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: parakeet with him named Nixon. And he said that his
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: parakeet came to hate him, like despise him. He said
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: he didn't think any animals ever hated somebody more than
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: that parakeet hated him. probably because he made them stay
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: up there in this little tiny house on top of
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: a fiberglass pole that would sway back and forth. He
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: couldn't lay down straight in it because of the pole,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: so he had to lay wrapped around the pole. It
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: sounds really horrible and terrible. And he did it to
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: get publicity because he was an out-of-work actor, I guess.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: At the time. Yeah, like I said, to call the
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: thing a house is generous. It's this little, I mean,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: you can see a picture of it, but it was
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: some sort of shelter, at least. He wasn't just sitting
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: like on a bar stool, like Shipwreck Kelly for 248 days.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: But it was bad. And it's just funny reading these
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: quotes from him. He did not have a good time.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: And he just basically kind of talked about how awful
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they said that he lost 15 pounds, three inches
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: from his waist and 13 days of sleep just within
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: the first three months. And that when people would come out,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: like when the weather was nice, people would come out
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: and shout questions up to him and he talked to him.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: And he said, the men usually asked, if he sleeps
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: and how he goes to the bathroom. And then women
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: asked if he was lonely, which I find very sweet.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: But I mean, remember, we started out here at 13
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: hours is what kicked this off. And this guy, Kenneth Gidge,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: has brought it up to 248 days. But Chuck, that
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: does not seem to be the record any longer. In fact,
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: the record may never be broken ever. What do you think?
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, H. David Werder. Of Weeki Wachee, Florida. Man, this
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: is unbelievable. Sat for 439 days, 11 hours, 6 minutes. Yeah.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: His sit went from 1982 to 1984. That's amazing. Yeah,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: and it was outside of an appliance center in Clearwater.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: And he didn't do this as like a publicity stunt
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: for that appliance center. He did it to protest gas
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: prices at the time.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's how you see these days sometimes is protests.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Sure. But gas at the time was 99 cents a gallon.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: That's cute.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: So his protest didn't work at all. But he spent
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: 439 days of his life on a flagpole because he
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: was mad about the price of gas.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: No thought whatsoever to a zen-like beautiful state is what
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: this man achieved.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Is that the overarching theme?
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Yep, I think so, man.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: All righty.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: You got anything else?
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we should mention David Blaine. He very
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: famously did this standing in 2002. Remember that?
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: For how long? No, I don't remember that at all.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: He stood atop a 90-foot pole for 35 hours in
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Bryant Park in New York.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: And this is when he was doing those. I love
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the guy as a street magician and give me a
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: little levitation trick, but when he was like, I'm going
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: to hold my breath or I'm going to be encased
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: in ice or stand on this thing. That's when I
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: lost interest.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I like street magic, too. It's pretty
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: great stuff. Yeah.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: But, yeah, he stood. It's tough to stand. I mean,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: sitting is hard, but standing is a whole different deal.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't want to do it.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Nope.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: So you got anything else about flagpole sitting?
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: Well, then, Chuck, that means, of course, it's time for.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Listener mail.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: This is, oh, this is just funny. Remember in Bruxism,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: I talked about my Dr. Tuggle. This comes from Joe
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He said, hey guys, thanks for the
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: entertainment knowledge. Your discussion of doctor names at the end
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: of the Bruxism podcast reminded me of two anecdotes. My
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: ex-wife had a dentist in San Francisco named Dr. Drilling.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: No.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Pretty good, huh? Sure. And this is even better. He said, second,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: this one never gets appreciated as much by others for
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: some reason. It must just hit me the right way,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: but I'm with you, Joe. It hits me too. She
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: worked in medical administration, and her boss at one point
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: was named Dr. Wachter. W-A-C-H-T-E-R, pronounced Wachter. And he said,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: I could just imagine her submitting daily reports using BabyTalk going, here, Dr. Wachter,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: here are your reports for the day.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Man, this guy is our new mascot here on the show.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: I think we need to actually get him on here.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: What's his name?
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Joe in Gettysburg. I love it.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Joe, way to go. This is one of the
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: best listener mails I think I've ever heard, Chuck.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: Wachter. Well, if you want to be like Joe and
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: try to topple his record as the greatest email listener
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: mail writer of all time, take your best shot. You
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, run
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: it up the flagpole and see who salutes it at
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 50:05
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• 50:09
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.