Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Ask friends what they called the jet stream before the advent of jets.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: They won't know.
Tell them the answer is they called it wind.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Chris Rodell, and welcome to season two, episode three of use all the Crayons, the podcast that tells you how we're always keeping it colorful, right here in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, the vibrant heart of the lovely Laurel highlands and thus one of the most vibrant places in all America.
Do you think I can put it better in just 14 words? You better believe I can. Those 14 words are les trobe. So special, it's like it's make believe. So real. It's really special. Believe it. If I could put it into just one word. Hmm. How about home?
I've, over the past 40 years, spent my days chasing more than 3200 of the most compelling human interest stories on the planet. I guess that means I know a thing or two about what interests humans. Today we'll be talking about parking tickets, selling hurricane naming rights, and overweight watermelon trucks. And how, if you ignore them, you do so at your own career peril.
But first, who here remembers the first rule of podcasting? That's right. If things ever begin to get boring, just add monkey. So here's a 2020 story about how America needs a giant roofie.
In these times of tumult and vitriol, it's worth considering the problem solving traditions of the bonabeau monkey, the closest animal relation to me and you.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Yes, you.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: In light of that kinship, I request you to join me in reading the rest of today's blog with your clothes shucked and tossed in the corner. Not wearing clothes, or, one would assume, condoms, is an evolutionary efficiency for animals that couldn't keep their pants on even if pants made sense. And pants don't make sense until you start kneading pockets.
That's something the bonobo won't need, until the bonobo begin to need vapes.
Researchers say the monkeys, which are ruled by old females, are too busy having polygamist group sex to seek the stress release of a toke. They have sex to celebrate. They have sex to console. They have sex to reconcile, to heal, to exercise. I figure they must have sex to kill time until it's time to have sex again. So where's all this monkey sex taking place?
The central west african nation called Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Actually, it's unlikely these most contented primates give a hoot about politics or nationalities. What would it take to get you to not give a hoot to monkey? See, monkey don't to go bonobo. I'm thanking. Five milligrams of flanuzetrazepan ought to do it. Never heard of it. It's aka Rohypnol, with the street names of forget me drug, pingus, lunch money, drug, mind eraser, and roofie.
It has a dark reputation for its use in date rape, which is a shame because it's beneficial in treating the scourge of insomnia. But that a few miscreants can misuse pharmaceuticals for illicit purposes outside prescription instructions is a lament for another day. This is about how America could use one great big roofie. See, I was a reporter back in the nineties when roofies first hit the street. Back then, they were known as hug drugs.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: We could always use a lot less.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Hate and a few more hugs.
Side effects include heavy petting and could lead to metaphorical monkey sex.
Our curse is to live at a time when many people aren't truly happy unless they're truly angry.
So we take the easy way out and fixate on drugs.
One is killing Americans, the other is killing America.
Most of us have allowed serious policy differences to usurp our common humanity. We say things on social media that on the playground would earn a punch.
When even the mundane are deemed worthy of demonization, hell itself becomes pedestrian. I'm loathe to be one of that of goose step with so many of my fellow Americans, but I declare myself a conscientious objector.
I object to so much unconscionable behavior you can find me strolling through the woods and climbing out the highest trees in search of the perfect banana. My fear is that more of you don't join me in this monkey business. We're all screwed.
I scoffed when I read a watermelon is 93% water.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: No way.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: So I decided to conduct a little test. I figured anything with that much water is certainly flushable. Wrong. I left that big old gourd in the bowl all morning and it still wouldn't flush. And oh my, where the picnickers pissed at me when I told them why the watermelon tasted like the tidybell smells. Tidy bowl smells. But I will tell you this, youll never see a more compelling seed spinning contest.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Ill be signing books at second chapter.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Bookstore in Fort Ligoniere for fort Ligonier days, October 11 through 13th. I plan on signing just my own books, but sometimes I like to sneak in some grishams just to try them out and see if my name looks better on his books than it does on mine.
Ligonier is a wonderful little town with lots of quaint shops, lively taverns, and restaurants. Of course, the town is not without flaws, and one of the most notable flaws is, at least to those of us who do not pay taxes there, that they employ a very aggressive meter mate.
Now, I'm not sure she's even called a meter maid. For all I know, the position might not be even held by a so called maid. It may be a dude, maybe they call him maid man, which is different from what you see on goodfellows.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: But I got a ticket up there.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: The other week and I vowed to fight it. I get the same kick out of fighting tickets that old Oliver Wendell Douglas used to get in green acres from being a farmer.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: This has been the dream of my.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Life, to buy a farm, move away from the city, plow my own fields, plant my own soil to get my hands dirty.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: It was a ten dollar ticket for parking outside of the lines. My wife was going to be in Ligonier, and I asked her if she.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Would drop it off at the police.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Station to secure me a trial date or whatever I would need for that.
Here's what I wrote to her when she asked for an explanation.
On August 30 at 130, I received a text message from Laurie McGinnis requesting I bring ten copies of my books to her second chapter bookstore on Main street. And when any ligonier business says they need me, I drop whatever I'm doing right away. A little butt kissing there.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: I saw all the spots in front.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Of her store were occupied, so I made the first right. The very top space on the right was open, but the space below had some men removing goods from the hatchback of a white discovery, and they were taking the boxes into the VFW, where I can only assume our thirsty heroes were eager for their delivery.
I saw no safety benefit to crowding the men as they performed their holiday weekend duties.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: In fact, I thought I was acting.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Like mannered leaders of Ligonier would ask me to do. I did everything but offer to carry the boxes myself. I was less than 2ft over the line and back.
I'm seeking a hearing to have the ticket dismissed because I behaved in a way where other viro visitors will say, let's go spend our money in Ligonier, folks there are just so nice.
[00:08:08] Speaker C: Get my hands dirty.
[00:08:12] Speaker D: Hey, this is Scott Lavin from Youngstown grill, and in my opinion, this is the funniest line that Chris has ever written.
If most men are being honest, a big if, we'd admit to seeing a lot of ourselves in Ken, while aspiring to see just a little of ourselves in Barbie.
[00:08:33] Speaker E: That's your favorite?
[00:08:34] Speaker D: That is my favorite.
[00:08:35] Speaker E: What about the line, if fans of the band the Grateful Dead are called Deadheads, what does that make those of us who revere the book Moby Dick?
[00:08:44] Speaker D: Also, good one.
[00:08:46] Speaker E: How about this one as a riddle?
If the invisible man eats a visible hoagie, how far into the digestive system does it go before it disappears?
[00:08:56] Speaker D: That's not funny. But clever. It makes you think.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: My hands dirty.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: I almost walked away from the biggest story of my young career because I didn't want to miss a Friday happy hour.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Understand?
[00:09:18] Speaker A: At that point in my life, I was about 26 at the time and had experienced my share of Friday happy hours. I think I went to my first one when I was. Gee, it must have been the fourth grade.
What's funny is, even after all these years, one Friday happy hour is indistinguishable from the rest, almost like a truckload of watermelons. This is bound to sound prejudicial, but when it comes to one on watermelon, you've seen them all.
But it becomes newsworthy when you put them all together on a bed of a Kentucky truck bound for a destination that's just 15 miles away. And when you have the poor driver make a wrong turn in Ligonier diamond and find him owes something like $20,000 for being overweight on a narrow street.
And just for a good measure, give the poor bastard just $15 to get through the day.
Obviously, the guy didn't have a prayer. What did he have?
He had me. Oh, and he had all those watermelons. I remember starting to blow him off because I wanted to get to my happy hour. He came up and started telling me his story, and I was trying to tune him out. It was all, blah, blah, blah, blah, watermelons, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, watermelons, blah, blah, watermelons. Blah, blah, watermelons, watermelons, watermelons. I just wanted to get through the crap fest of a day and blah, blah, blah, happy hour.
But watermelons is a powerful hook. It snagged my attention. After about two minutes of earnest pleadings, I could tell he was sincere and had lots and lots of blah, blah, watermelons. Blah, blah.
He told me he was delivering about two tons of watermelons from a Kentucky farm near his home. He was taking them to Johnstown distributor. He made a wrong term at the diamond, the town square, and was pulled over, going out into a residential area.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Rather than help a lost out of towner.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: The officer chose to play it by the book.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: He assessed the maximum fine and impounded the truck and let all those watermelons left to rot in the July heat. Given those factors in Gee, the guy seemed like to be such a swell guy.
I chose to make the supreme sacrifice and skip the traditional Friday happy hour. Beer would be guzzled, waitresses would be ogled over and jokes told over and over and over, but would all happen without me.
In fact, those blabbity blobbity blah watermelons would occupy me for the better part of the next month.
Public opinion was firmly on the side of the trucker. I wrote a series of page one stories and for the rest of the summer it was all anyone wanted to talk about. He got a slick attorney who wound up getting the case dismissed.
I can't recall any compensation for the lost produce, but I think it was substantial. What's surprising to me is how many of the details I've forgotten. I do remember my stories were awarded the prestigious Golden Quill award for outstanding breaking news.
And what did I learn from the story of the wayward watermelon truck? That there's always another happy hour.
Oh, and I wound up paying my $10 fine for my parking ticket. I should have fought it, but I didn't have the time because I enjoy those type of things.
[00:12:32] Speaker C: Plant my own soil to get my hands dirty.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: In 2011, I was arguing that we should be able to sell hurricane naming rights to corporations to pay down money on the federal deficit.
I think it's high time huge corporations are allowed to bid for hurricane naming rights the way they do for football stadiums that would generate millions to reduce the federal deficit and give corporate branding mavens more muscular platforms than, say, a 32nd commercial. Bumping up against Hawaii Five O plus consumers often abandoned by shifty insurance policies could save time if we could say we got screwed by, say, Hurricane Affleck or Hurricane State Farm instead of saying we got screwed by Hurricane Katrina and then screwed all over again by Affleck or state Farm. Blame or deny global warming, but we can all agree the weather is becoming more wildly chaotic.
We need to seize this opportunity before even conservatives understand earth is becoming kindling. They've been naming hurricanes since 1953, which strikes me as odd because there have been hurricanes throughout history right up until 1953. It's not like naming things was unfashionable prior to the Eisenhower administration.
We've been naming children for thousands of years, and they can turn out to be just as destructive as your typical cat four.
Initially, weather systems that reached tropical storm intensity were given exclusively female names. That must have made for some interesting cocktail chatter at the US weather Bureau.
The competition must have been fierce among the male and meteorologists deeming wives and girlfriends worthy of being associated with a really big and messy blow. Of course, that kind of blatant misogyny could not endure. Who did these petty weathermen think they were? Members of Augusta national?
So the naming system became gender neutral. Now the World Meteorological Organization creates and maintains the annual listing of names.
The names are used on a six year rotation, with the deadliest or most notable storms having their names retired. So this year's list may look familiar to hurricane buffs.
The first tropical storm or hurricane of the year has a name that begins with the letter a and the second begins with the letter b. And so on. For reasons I could not detect, the letters Q and, uh, I are left unused. So drum roll, please.
Here are the names for the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Arlene, Brett, Cindy, Don, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katia. Subbing for the now retired Katrina, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Renae, Sean, Tammy, Vince, and Whitney.
For a list like that that is likely to cause multi billion dollars in damage, the names are a rather tame bunch. Don, Cindy, Irene. Those don't sound like hurricanes. They sound like characters from Brady Bunch reruns. It's all one big bore. If we weren't so darn PC these days, I'd suggest we name all hurricanes after popular males, names from countries with which we're at war.
I think it would inspire a sense of national unity and purpose. If the country new hurricane Mahmoud was about to slam into Galveston, it would certainly provoke more conspiratorial frenzy around Fox News than Hurricane Gert will.
How about allowing the sitting president to name the big nasties? You think that maybe some political commentators might temper their criticisms if they knew years from now their grandchildren would hear the in school about how one of the most destructive hurricanes and natural disasters was Hurricane Rachel Maddow.
But that might be unduly harsh. That's why, as with everything else in America, I say we leave it to our wisdom of our mightiest corporations.
When hurricane begins roiling the waters off the Virgin Islands, the Weather Channel can host a gala where bids are taken to earn hurricane naming rights.
He'd be as ballyhooed as the NFL draft might be on ESPNA.
Of course, insurance companies and big drug manufacturers will swamp the proceedings, but Hurricane Hallmark would lend itself a great opportunity for commercials. And what would it be without a little whimsy? Can you imagine the trending boost flexifoil would get by sponsoring a hurricane with wind gusts of over 155 miles an hour? Never heard of flexifoil? They make kites.
And getting a storm of publicity for any kite manufacturer, sponsoring a hurricane is bound to be a real breeze.
Here's the audio for a promotional video I did for my Fred Rogers book back in 2018 or 2019.
Oh, and at the end where I start yelling, stuck, stuck, stuck. It's where I'm kissing the top of Fred Rogers head, the statue, in a very cold winter day. And I wanted viewers to think that I got my lips stuck to Fred's head.
[00:17:47] Speaker E: There are a lot of crazy rumors about Mister Rogers. He was a Navy SEAL. He was an army hitman. He was a tattooed killer. Fred Rogers was none of those things. Let me tell you what Fred Rogers was. Fred Rogers was a real weirdo. He wasn't the first, but on some days, we wonder if maybe he's the last. Who, besides Mister Rogers, seemed capable of making kindness contagious? He's the man who said, there are three keys to success. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third, I forget. But I think it has something to do with kindness.
I talked to a woman who described Fred as christlike. He was her boss. Ever work for a boss you'd describe as christlike? How about you? Ever done anything christlike? Those are some big shoes to fill. Well, sandals. How about this? When was the last time you did something that could be described as Fred like? Seems less daunting, doesn't it? I'm friends with a guy who woke up one day feeling entitled to surliness, dental appointment, traffic sucked, weather miserable. Who wouldn't be in such a sour state on a day when he sought to wallow in his misery? Fate brought him into the sidewalk orbit of Fred Rogers. Turns out they both wound up in the same waiting room.
Maybe you could sense my friend was in a bad mood because Fred proceeded to do everything to bring some sunshine to this stranger. He kept making eye contact. He was polite. He was cheerful. It was all very suspicious.
Call it defiant kindness, my friend said, if it had been anyone but Mister Rogers, it would have been really, really weird. He's right. The pity is, most of us would rather have stoically ignored or been alarmed, even by anyone but Fred Rogers. Ask yourself, who's the weirdo? The guy who recognizes a pain soul and works to heal it, or the one who refuses the therapy? It's a mindset we must overcome. Join me. Let's make the world a better place by being really weird. Weird like Fred. Because we need to make being really, really nice really, really normal.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: Stuck, stuck, stuck.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Stop.
I'm Chris Rodell, and this has been your use all the Crayons podcast. We touch on Latrobe, but we embrace the whole damn planet.
I vowed to get better and better at this technologically and spiritually each and every week. I believe that to be the case so far. What do you think? Would you prefer a ten minute, 30 minutes or hour long podcast? And how's the content good enough to share with friends? What do you think of all those sound effects? Too many? Do they add or detract interest from our storyteller purposes? You may discuss this.
Thanks for checking in. Hope you'll be back next week.
If you enjoy the podcast, we urge you to compete the podcast road to successful triathlon of share rate and review. Be sure to tell all your friends and urge them to tell all their friends.
Thanks to rob and dale energy for their gracious and essential support.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: John Jamison, retired sheep farmer Crabtree, Pennsylvania what's your colorful living tip of the day? My colorful living tip of the day is learn the fine art of knowing.
[00:21:40] Speaker D: Precisely when to quit.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Thank you. Yes.
