Daily Podcast (02.18.25)
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Acme is making your grocery shopping easier than ever. Download the Acme mobile app to find digital deals, earn reward points, or shop for delivery or pickup. Acme, fresh foods, local flavors. 93.3 WMMR, audio on demand, presents the Preston and Steve Show podcast. Everybody. WMMR, Philadelphia. I think you're sleeping.

Housekeeping, you want towels? More towels. Need sleepy. Housekeeping, you want mint for pillow? Please go away. Let me sleep for the love of... You're listening to Preston and Steve on 93.3 WMMR with Preston Elliott. You will listen to every damn word I have to say! And Steve Morrison. Words are like bullets lost. Casey Boy. They all can't starve it. Kathy Romano. I'm going to destroy

Nick McElwain. I'm just not the hero type. And Marissa Magnata. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. And now, Preston and Steve on 93.3 WM. So, got an email the other day from somebody who was not happy about something that we spoke about on our show. Nice person. Yeah. Mind you. But I would like to read their message.

And I've edited down some of this because it was a pretty lengthy email. They've been a long-time listener to the show. One person on this show pissed them off. Kind of so. Okay. Well, no, a couple of people did. All right. A couple of things that were said. It says Preston had a story about string pins in bowling alleys. Right. Okay. And Kathy spoke about bowling alleys. And by the way, alleys is in...

quotations because Allie is not a word. This the author of this, she said, Allie is not a word I use to describe our bowling centers.

So Kathy spoke about bowling alleys. Except they're called bowling alleys on the sign. She says, my bowling center is neither dark nor dingy. You are welcome anytime to either of our locations. And I'll tell you where this is in a moment. She said, Preston said, I know what you're talking about, Kathy. Carpets are dirty. That was a direct hit. We had to do it.

We have completely remodeled the center in Northeast Philadelphia over the last nine years. The owners I work for are two of the best guys you could ever work for. They care about the center and care about their employees. Casey stating that the seats are from the 1970s is not true at all. And then Steve's comment about the guy with the glass eye behind the shoe counter was the cherry on top. I like that one.

She said, we are in the entertainment industry. We also have a full-service bar and grill. Our food and beverages are five stars. Our pizza is in the top three of the best pizzas around. You should try it, Casey. Our centers are packed at a consistent basis, not only on league nights, and yes, it is profitable, Casey. I am a manager, event coordinator, and youth bowling league director amongst a million other titles.

And she says, my invitation extends to all of you. Anytime you'd like to bring your family bowling, reach out to me. I'd be glad to show off our bowling centers. I still love all of you and will still listen to the show every day. That is from Dee Campbell, the district manager of Thunderbird Lanes, which you can find at 3075 Holm Avenue in Philadelphia and also 1475 West Street Road in Warminster. Thunderbird Lanes. Thunderbird Lanes. So this led me to a thought.

to pose to the listeners of the show that, and the conceit is, my...

My job or my industry gets a bad rap. It's not as bad as you think it is. And I would like you to go ahead and tell us why. 215-263-WMMR. Whatever it is you do, whatever industry you work in has some stereotypes that just either aren't true or are blown out of proportion. And you would like to tell us why. Try to clean the slate a little bit on that. I'd like to hear about that. All right. Yeah. Because, I mean, I don't, you know, I was saying yes. Not.

All bowling alleys are dumps. That's definitely. That's what you said off air. I did not. Yeah. Did not say that off air. But I have been to bowling alleys that are dumps in my time. Listen, there are places for the while. All the rage was the upscale meeting place. The Lucky Strikes and all that. Yes, of course. Yes. I have news for you, though.

I think like the place that we went and had the little bowling party with the station when that time Bill Weston hooked that up.

You know, that was a little rundown. I like that too. You like the dingy ones. Yeah, I like the character. I agree, Steve. Well, listen, I don't think that we said... And I know we're going with this topic, but I don't think we said that your job was terrible. No, you said that off air. No, stop. For me and that email, I understand it. And that person is, you know, defending where they work and their business and all of that. And listen, some of them might be nice. When Lucky Strike first opened and that was gorgeous...

I'll be honest. I hated that too. There you go. You don't like bowling. I don't like bowling alleys. I don't like bowling centers. I don't like bowling. Okay. And yes, I'm sure it is packed. And that's part of the reason I don't like it. You're going to go and you- All those gross people. There are a lot of people in a place I think sucks. No, no, no.

Listen, no, I'm saying the lanes are taken. People? Yes, they are booked. I'm not saying that people don't like it. I just don't like it. Right. Yeah, exactly. We weren't taking aim at your industry, Dee. I mean, we're having a little fun conversation about it, and Kathy's not into bowling alleys, and she was telling us why, and not everybody is going to love it, but we were just pointing, listen, almost any place is going to have some...

unattractive attributes to it. But, yeah. So, don't worry about it. I'm sure it's... Thunderbird Lanes is probably awesome. I'm sure it's fantastic. Kathy will take us there for a party. What I do like hearing is that she takes pride in the place. Yes. And that's pretty cool. A lot of times, your particular occupation, even your business, is besmirched, you know, by the general public. And you...

Listen, if you can be proud of or say my occupation is better than you think, that's something good. If you enjoy where you work, we've all had jobs where, like, if somebody said, you know, you were going to dump, you'd say, yeah, you're right, I hate it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, without question. All right. Some calls, 215-263-WMMR is the number. We will go to Richard first. Hi, Richard. Good morning. Hey, Gadzooks. Gadzooks, buddy, what's up?

Hey, so I work in the automotive industry, and people are always saying, oh, you have to know everything about your car. You don't really need to. It's a lot easier than people think. To work in the automotive industry, you're saying you don't have to know a lot.

I mean, you do have to know some stuff. You could be virtually brain dead and do what I do for a living. Well, let me ask you, Richard, now with all the computer systems, I think, listen, I think it's a highly skilled, you know, occupation. I think especially now with the computer systems and stuff like that, you're saying that the common misconception, though, is that you have to basically be able to dismantle and rebuild a car completely. Yes. Well, wait a minute. The automotive industry has a lot of different jobs. What job are you referring to?

Well, I do automotive painting. Okay. I'm actually...

I'm working on some stuff right now myself. Okay. All right. So, yeah. That's specified. That's very specific. I was thinking you were talking about automotive repair. Right. Yeah. I was thinking maybe sales. That's the main area that everyone gets all upset about is, like, you don't need to know everything. You can be really good at engines and follow through on just engines. There's people that get paid to do just engines. That can specify. Okay. You know, he brings up a good point. Thanks, Richard. You know what's surprisingly easier than you might think? Carjacking. Carjacking.

Oh, yeah. Is it easier? It really is. You just walk up and say, give me your car? A lot of people exploring the job opportunities in Philadelphia now with carjacking. Sure, we've seen a lot of amateurs out there trying it out. I'm going to go to Christian. Hi, Christian. Good morning.

Hey, good morning, guys. I'm really sorry Casey's not in today because I really wanted to let him know that I do, in fact, have a sister. Oh! Sister Christian. And damn it, Casey would know whether it is. I don't know. It's okay. It's okay. Don't worry about it. Oh, wait. Hold on. Give me one second here. We are going to honor your request, sir, and we are going to do that right now. Motorhead!

Thank you, Marissa. Nice work. Marissa's filling in for Casey today. All right, Christian, what do you do for a living, man? All right, so I'm a tax accountant. So there's a couple... Oh, we're losing you, man. Can you repeat that? Say that again. Your signal's breaking up. Nope. I was going to say, Steve makes fun of us all the time for being accountants. So I'm a tax accountant. Okay. And, yeah, so Steve makes fun of us all the time. And, yeah, it's not as boring as people think it is.

numbers or anything like that. I'm not dorky. You know, I'm a big guy. I played ice hockey my entire life. And yeah, so it's just, you know, it's a completely different profession. People think we just look at Excel spreadsheets all day, but it's not truly what we do. You're saying the common perception of the of the bespectacled sort of, you know, sitting over crunching numbers kind of guy is is not true or girl. And that would you consider it an exciting profession?

Absolutely. So I'm in client services. So I'm at client sites all the time and we sell work a lot. Really? Yeah, it's really not just I work for a big company called PricewaterhouseCoopers. Oh, yes, of course. Yeah. So every time you bring up auditing the Oscars, we get a good chuckle. So because they messed it up a couple of years back. Yeah. I said the wrong name. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, no, it's a completely different profession that folks, you know, really don't truly understand. Yeah. And just, you know, I hear Jackie Bam Bam saying crunching the numbers all the time. Let me ask you, Christian, like, for example, one of the big things we hear about now a lot is forensic accounting. Oh, yeah. Is that something you engage in? Absolutely.

Absolutely. We have an entire forensic accounting practice within the firm who basically go in and investigate things. We also have a cybersecurity practice that has to do with accounting. And they go in and they basically try to break into companies' firewalls, et cetera, and get paid a lot of money to do that stuff. Well, I would assume like people that handle computer tech problems,

for you, it might be similar in that those guys love fixing a problem. Yes. Yeah. Like me, it's a nightmare, but they see it as a challenge and almost like a puzzle that they need to work out and are not going to stop until they fix the problem. They once, they once made a movie of my mind. It was called an unattractive mind. There you go. But Christian, is it, is it kind of similar with you? You like to, you like to figure this, this thing out.

100% press. So it's essentially we get client calls. I get client calls all day long saying, I have an issue with this. I have a problem with this. I don't know what to do with this. And it's really just professional problem solving. It's not necessarily sitting in front of your computer all day crunching the numbers. It's really client interaction. It's fun. It's exciting. So yeah. Christian, you need a shirt that says just crunching the numbers. Yeah.

You know what? Get Greg Monahan to make me something. All right. Thanks, Christian. Appreciate it, man. We'll see you. I have a friend. Now, this is a more exotic profession, but he's a surgeon. He's an

a neurosurgeon. And like that, it's, you know, he's presented with a problem and the enticement, the excitement is to figure out how to fix this problem. You know what I mean? Will he ever leave something in a body just for kicks? Just for fun. Maybe they won't notice. I left a poop knife in there.

I'm glad you brought up surgeon. I have a friend that is a surgeon as well. She's a bariatric surgeon at the VA hospital. And I thought she was all serious and whatever. And then she told me recently, no, we tell fart jokes all the time to each other because that's just part of the... It can be more casual. Do you think that the work, obviously, is this person engaged by the work and finds it exciting or, you know... Steve, I was just talking about her last night to my husband saying she has a work ethic like me where she takes on other projects. Okay.

Works all the time. Loves it so much. But she's like, we're in surgery and there's a lot of poop going on. Oh, okay. Well, here's an email that says, I'm a librarian. Yes.

You'd be surprised how many people assume that I volunteer there. No, I get paid. And many people think that libraries are irrelevant. Quite the contrary. The library is a bustling place. People still read books, believe it or not. Additionally, there are computers and free programs like yoga. So don't diss the library, they said. I love my library. Bitch.

I haven't been to a library in ages. You know why you should go, Preston? Why? You can get e-books for free. Okay. I mean, the program that you pay for, which is fine and obviously a good one, but you don't have to do that. You can get an e-book. And my fiancé read the entire or listened to the entire Dune series from the library. I was talking to a friend of mine. This is years and years ago. And we were talking about the books that we were reading. We just got things. And he goes, oh, God, dude, I found this place. Yes.

You actually can go there. They will lend you the books. And when you're done, you just take it back. It doesn't cost you anything. It's called the library. To that point, what exactly is a free library?

I think it's just the name they gave it. If I recall, I think it's just the name they gave it, Steve. I don't know. That used to be a weekend. Honestly, my dad would take us every Sunday afternoon, obviously more in the colder months, to the library and we would spend time in there. We'd take out books and loved it. It was a great experience. Was there originally, when you got a library card, like a nominal fee? For some, yes. Maybe this one has no fee.

Steve, guess where the free library began? Philadelphia. Right here in Philadelphia. Yeah. And so they used to have a subscription fee for wealthy residents to join libraries. And then in 1887, a guy named William Pepper, I just looked this up, was the provost of the University of Pennsylvania, set out to create a system of free libraries publicly available to all residents of Philadelphia. So it was Dr. Pepper that did that. That's right. Yes. Yes.

It was indeed, Dr. Pepper. And he was very proud. Let's see who we can go to next. You know, your job either gets a bad rap or, you know, your industry. I'm going to go to Beth. Hi, Beth. Good morning.

Hi. Hey, what's up, Beth? I work in dentistry, and we completely, except maybe from Kathy, we completely get a bad rap. People think we are just here to torture. Every time I go to grab a patient, I ask them, hi, how are you? They say, oh, God, I'm here. Oh, I hate it. I almost never bring back a happy patient. Mm-hmm.

So do people sort of avoid you or do they think that you sort of get off like it's a little shop of horrors on making people uncomfortable? 100%. 100%. And I just work at the most lovely practice in Pops Town and my lead practitioner is just

So kind and so caring. And we use computer-assisted design technology. Yeah. And that helps us fabricate same-day crowns so you don't have to request multiple days off of work even. That's awesome. Not only are we kind and happy and we love our jobs,

Uh, we want to keep you going to work, unfortunately. No, no. Over and over again. That sounds really good. I'd rather go to the dentist than a bowling alley. Wow. What have you, Beth, have you guys ever considered putting a lane in your, uh, practice?

For people, for the bowlers with bad teeth. No, you know, I go to, my dentist is Dr. Petula, and the whole collective of people working there, the professionals, it's always up. It's always a great atmosphere. You enjoy going. So I can believe you, Beth, that you have a very upbeat, very positive dental practice. Yeah, it's just, it's the best. If anybody is in Potsdam. All right. All right. What's the name of your practice?

Pats Town Family and Cosmetic Dentistry. All right. Thank you. Good for you. No, I was just going to say, so the dentist never bothered me. I was fine growing up, and I recently changed, but the dentist that I go to now, she's actually considered a dental spa dentist.

A dental spa. Shut up. Yeah. If you were ever going and find like you had a real cavity going on, would you just want to off yourself because you got the perfect choppers there? No, but I mean, I do have a cavity. Do you? Yeah. What? I had to get

the nova candy if it listen that was not fun but i took care of it as soon as i had it so that how did that not make it worse well so it didn't it didn't get worse yes remember we talked about actually um for the the the one it was so small that they didn't even give me the nova cane yeah that i was like wait are we sure about this like this is not bowling uh all right i want to go next to kevin hi kevin morning bud

Good morning. First time COVID time. Nice. All right. Kevin, what's your industry, dude?

I work in the insurance industry. I work for a claims department. We sell disability policies to people. And insurance companies always get a bad rap that we don't pay claims, we don't want to pay claims, we just take their money. And that is so far from the truth. Listen, every time I've had the best service, every time I have swindled or done any sort of insurance fraud, I've gotten such prompt service. You get a good payment. Yeah, you get a great payment.

That's when you get a visit from me. I go out and I interview our insurers. Hey. And make sure that we pay compensable claims. Okay. Kevin, have you ever caught someone? Have you ever caught someone, you know, obviously just a blatant fraud where they've claimed some sort of injury and they're putting a dormer on the house? Oh, yes. Yes, we have. As a matter of fact, I won't name the company, but we've had three investigations on 2020. Really? Okay. Yes.

Where they've caught these people and they've done a lot of bad stuff. So, yes, but that is not the norm. We mostly pay out our insurance claims. So is... Because that's what we get insurance for. Is the general vibe, do you feel... So let me ask you, I think this is our perception, maybe you can help us. Is there a general... Obviously, to us, it sort of appears like gambling and the house always wins. But do you legitimately...

From your perspective, is it good? Do you feel like you're helping people who need that money in that time? Is that your general vibe? Yes. Okay. So you want to get them as much help as they can get?

Yes. We actually, you know, people might not send in paperwork and we actually go out and try to help them fill it out to see what's going on. All right. You know, we're there to pay the claims. And most of the time when people have problems with us, it's just a different interpretation of the policy language. Yeah. But for the most part, we're paying our claims. And it is very satisfying when you when you do help people. And Kevin, do you like your job?

I love it. There you go. Okay. All right. I mean, it could be worse. You'd be working in a bowling alley. Dude. That's what Kathy said. Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate it, man. Oh, my God. Hang on a second here. All right. I wanted to go to this call. I want to go to Jackie. Hi, Jackie. Good morning. Good morning. I love you guys so much. I love you so much, too. You're going to be a regular Saturday night thing, Jackie. All right. So what do you do? What industry are you in that gets you feel a bad rap?

Well, I used to be a corporate recruiter for like 10 years, and now I'm a stonemason. Oh, cool. Yeah. Hold a left turn on that one. It wasn't the easiest to get into because of my body parts, honestly. It's a total boys club, but...

We can do it. I've been doing it for about two years now, and I'm kicking some ass. I'm not going to lie to you. Well, Jackie, it says here on my screen here that you feel that some people believe that any idiot can be a stonemason, and that's part of the thing you want to defend. Oh, yeah.

Of course. That was part of the argument I was getting from friends and family. Like, really, you're going from corporate to throwing around rocks? Right. What are you doing? And actually, it takes a whole lot of precision and timing and a lot of brain power. You really have to know what you're doing. And what I do, it's not something you're going to do annually. It's going to last for like a decade at least. Hey, Jackie, how often, like how many times a week do you have to deal with gender issues?

At least once. It's usually from customers. The company I work at is great, and I inherited a dozen big brothers. But I usually get asked...

Are you, you know, is this your dad's company or is that your brother? You know, like, what are you doing? And they'll say, like, how long have you been doing this? I'm like, well, a few years. And I'm 38. So they're like, okay, what have you been doing? I was like, I was a corporate recruiter. And they're like, oh, and now you're doing this? They can't understand. Yeah. Well, now you're breaking through that stone ceiling.

Yeah. No, that's cool, man. I think the actual occupation itself is kind of cool. And so what you're saying is you're... Thank you. Yeah. It sounds cool to me. So, but you're saying people just kind of, A, they don't believe you, and B, they don't think it's... that you've made a bad decision in where you are, correct? Exactly. Until I'm done what I'm doing, and they're like, oh, that looks great. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Hey, what's the name of the...

Jackie, what's the name of the company? I work for Jameson Home Services. Okay. Cool. Yeah. That's cool. And clearly you enjoy what you do, right? I love it. I love it. Yeah, absolutely. She spends all day stoned. Thank you, Jackie. Appreciate you checking in. We got to take a break in just a second, but I want to code to Jay because he has an interesting occupation. Jay, morning, bud. Morning, guys. How are you? Good, man. What's going on?

So I run the Exotica Expo. We're the largest adult entertainment event in the country. Right. And as you can imagine, you know, probably the thing that we hear the most is it's got to be a bunch of single dudes in sweatpants coming out of their parents' basement and coming into the show.

So what is it primarily? Stone masons? Yeah, stone masons and bowling experts. How long have you been doing this, Jay? We've been doing it 15, 16 years. Actually, we were in studio with you guys way back when we started this thing. So we do a show up in Jersey and then also all over the country. So is it to the point, and I know that the actual adult film industry is run by...

majority-wise by women now, I think, at this point, or at least 50-50. So is this... What do you think is the one message you'd want to get out about what you do? Well, you know, we do a thing called Ladies Free Friday, and we have...

About 50 percent of our attendees now are female based. And so, as you can imagine, like post-COVID with only fans and with kind of the rise of that side of it, you know, it is definitely not just single dudes from their parents' basement. Right. Although there's a few of them. There's a few of those in there. But I mean, they're definitely outnumbered at this point by, you know, women, couples,

You know, and kind of, you know, the average person that you would see walking down the street. Okay. All right. I believe it. Yeah. I mean, there's all kinds of people that work in all kinds of industries that might surprise you. And that's why we took the phone call.

Some of the people you wouldn't even, you would never guess. They are, you know, completely inconspicuous during the day. And then, you know, you put them on a webcam. Right. Jay, when and where is your next expo? So we do the show up in Jersey every year in Edison. We do it in November. Well, we also do it in D.C., Miami and Chicago throughout the year.

Wow. Excellent. So maybe you can help Kathy with her OnlyFans foot page. Yes. Absolutely. I'm open to suggestions. All right, Jay, thanks for checking in, man. We appreciate it. Good luck with everything. All right, interesting. Just thought this would be an opportunity with this email that came in from Thunderbird Lanes. Yes. That says, you know, bowling alleys don't fall into the stereotypes that some people might hold. I actually really enjoy bowling. Yeah, it is fun. I want to get better at it.

All right. Well, thank you for your calls, gang. We appreciate that. We're coming back and going live on Fox Good Day when we return. Stay with us.

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Totally Presbo. Hi, Presbo. Sorry. Excuse me. That's okay. Let's just do this again. Totally Presbo. There you go. Hi, Presbo. All right. I found an article that was 2,000 adults were surveyed, and they have come up with the most common things that couples fight about. The most common things couples fight about. Yeah. Before I give you those things, there are a couple other little bit of tidbits that were found. The most common time...

for couples to argue is between 6 and 8 p.m. in the afternoon, the evening. 6 and 8 p.m. Couples who live together fight frequently, with 41% admitting that they argue with their partner at least five times a week. Wow, no. We're ahead of the curve on that. Is that like fighting or bickering? I think it might include bickering as well, Case, but maybe a notch up from a bicker. What's your bicker parameters?

A couple of, well, you should put the bag there. Is that a bicker or is that just a terse exchange? I don't know. Yeah. Do you have to have your hands on her throat? No. I think that there needs to be a little bit of a back and forth. Yeah. Not just like, I'm annoyed, don't put that there. Right. And then you don't put that there. Right. There's got to be a little bit of a back and forth and then... Otherwise, it's just someone being annoyed. I will tell you this. We don't end up...

Our fights are probably or are exchanges that might be considered on the bigger scale. Um...

More in, say, like the afternoon. Okay. Early afternoon? Yeah. Not in the evening? Yeah, by the time we chill out. Like, we've had a wonderful dinner and I've regaled her with my stories of the world of entertainment. Right. It's always bad when you're getting ready for bed, though. Right, Press? See, we avoid that. Well, I had to put the hammer down on that because Rochelle used to do it all the time. I'm...

walking up to go to bed. I go to bed much earlier than everyone in the house. And I'd been getting the silent treatment all day and then I would get literally the words, we need to talk. And I'd be like, it would just drive me crazy. And eventually I'm like, when we were having a civil conversation, because you can't do it right then and there, I'm like, you can't do that to me anymore. We don't need to talk. If you have something that you want to discuss or confront me about, it's got to be

An hour or two before I'm heading up to bed. We might need to talk, but we are not going to at bedtime. And nothing is helped by the declaration. No. Revisit it when you can do it. Yeah. That's, but also. So all it took was for me to declare that and it never happened. And you guys sleep separate times, separate beds. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Exactly.

So when they need a break from the bickering, people tend to hide out in the bathroom with their phone, take a bath or a shower, or make up an excuse to run an errand or go somewhere alone. I go into my pottery studio in the basement. Fire up the kiln and get started. Exactly. Making garden gnomes. No, getting out of the house is definitely a good one. So here are the top ten reasons live-in couples argue.

And we'll start with number 10. Turning on big lights instead of lamps. Turning on big lights instead of lamps. You whore! What's with the big lights? I hate you! Have you never heard of a lamp? That is so stupid. I hate you. I hate you more than anything in this damn world.

Yes, 911. My husband just put on a big lamp and I wanted a big light. I never really thought about it, but we do... My wife and I, we have different lighting preferences. So you have a lot of overhead lights or do you have a lot of lamps? I actually... So at night...

And when I'm in the back room, I just like the lights off and I like the room only lit up by the TV. That's it. You know? And then like, they'll come back there and be like, it's so dark back here. I'm like, yeah. And just flip on the light. Yeah. I'm like, no, turn it that way. My pants are down. Yeah.

So, yes, turning on big lights instead of lamps. If this is an issue you have in your household, please call us right now. I wouldn't mind hearing from you. 215-263-WM1. I never heard of that one. Neither did I. Also, if that's your biggest issue. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's number 10 on the list. That was one of OJ and Nicole's biggest great. Number nine on the list is sleeping with the TV on. We both do that. You both do that? Okay, so you're in the clear there. Yeah, I can't handle that. That's why we sleep. That's bad.

One of the big reasons we sleep in different rooms. Rochelle's a TV on kind of gal. All night long. Claire is absolutely. When we go away on vacation, she'll have her little iPad there. And we've worked it out. She'll have it right next to her. I can't hear it. And she will fall asleep with that on.

Changing the thermostat temperature is number eight on this list of reasons. Now we're getting into the temperature thing. Uh-huh. Yep. Yeah. Number seven is what to watch on TV. We're pretty good about that. Number six is constantly being on the phone.

Number five is who left the lights on? The lights are an issue. Yeah. I'm turning the lights off in all the rooms that aren't being used, Dad. You know what I mean? So I'll get up to go to the bathroom. You're turning into that now? Yeah. Man, I've been that way for a while. You've been that way for a while? My whole damn life. Same.

Do you need these lights on? No. But I don't bitch about it. I just turn them off. No, that's part of your dad job is to go into the rooms with the lights on and turn them off. I'm starting to be that way too, Case. That did not used to bother me as much, but now it's like we have a pantry. Yeah. And sometimes you'll see the door is closed and the light is on in the pantry. And I'm like, no. No, that's not right. What is that all about? Would that be similar to a closet light on with the door closed?

door. Yeah, exactly the same. Exactly the same. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You too. Yep. I also... I just was talking about this last week. I've been a homeowner when I buy my first home. 2003. I don't think I've ever owned a home where every single light bulb in the house worked. Ever. Like, you go into my house... Go? You go into my home right now and there's at least one light bulb that is... And it's...

That's been the way since I've owned a home. I don't know if you guys are the same way. Probably. I mean, there are a lot of lights in your home. So you probably have, I don't know.

Mansion people. They have people to replace their light bulbs. The other things that the top reasons that living couples argue, number four, is what to eat for dinner. What to eat for dinner. So lights are big. I never knew growing up that what are we having for dinner was going to be a topic of conversation every single day for the rest of my life. Dude, okay. So there was a different, wholly different article.

of things, adulting things that people hate. And one of the top ones was having to figure out what the F we're going to have for dinner every single night of the week. It was so much better as a kid just showing up and sitting down at the table. It was made for you. I did this yesterday. I asked my son what he wanted for dinner and he had a specific answer. And so I knew what I wanted to get. His decision made it easy for everybody. Yeah, we...

We cook dinner for the kids. And there are times when I've made food and maybe they don't eat what I've made. And I consider, man, you have no idea how good you have it. You've got a live-in chef who's serving up a piping hot meal every night for you. You don't know. Someday you'll learn. Someday. And then you leave the lights on. And then...

How often will you all get your different things to eat for dinner? In other words, how often will you and Rochelle have different things to eat for dinner? A decent amount. Yeah, it happens with Claire. But we've got our kids also are coming in and out of the house at different times. So sometimes it's like you're on your own. Figure out what you got, Rochelle and I. Rochelle and I will generally eat the same thing every night.

But the kids kind of figure out what they're going to have. The best is, Steve, as you're preparing dinner, when your child walks into the kitchen, you're preparing dinner and they go into the fridge or the freezer and they pour themselves a bowl of ice cream. You're like, I'm making dinner! Oh no, I'll

No, you won't. You son of a bitch. All right, we're going to go to some calls because I don't want to lose these people. Every single phone line is jammed up with people who have issues with the lights. So let me go to Alicia. Hi, Alicia. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Good. Alicia, so how long have you and your husband been married? We've only been married for four years. We've been together for going on nothing. Did you while dating know you had light differences? No.

I mean, we moved in together probably within the first year of us being together. All right. So I'd have to say the dimmer is our number one fan. The dimmer. Explain. A dimmer on the lights is amazing. I mean, I used to work later hours, but I would come home and all the lights would be on in my house, and my eyes just would burn. I'd be like, nope. What are we doing? Turn these down. I'm dying. So we wouldn't fight.

But definitely the bicker, like we were talking about earlier. We would definitely have moments where we'd... Let me ask you, Alicia. So do you both go around? This is what my wife and I tend to do. We don't confront each other. I'll just go in and dim the lights. Oh, yeah. So you just go do it. You don't make a big thing about it, but you tailor it to what you want. And I fully assume that she may go in and raise the light level.

Definitely. Okay. I mean, the coming one also our mood. But before, Alicia, but before the dimmer, did it get ugly? No, I wouldn't say ugly. I would also say candles. Candles are also really help us too. I don't know. It's something about the light with my eyes. I don't know if I'm probably being dramatic, but...

But I would come home and they would just all be on. And also, I'm from a town family. My dad, turn the lights off, turn the lights off, turn the lights off. It's spinning green, didn't they? Yeah. No, I hear you. That was something, too. Yeah, no, I'm the same. Yeah, my dad constantly, I mean, you would be sitting in a room and he would come in and turn the lights off. And you're like, oh, I'm still here. So I'm the same. I don't do it while people are sitting in the room. But yes, I will walk around the house and turn all lights off. Thank you, Alicia. Is it about money?

No. Okay. Was it for your dad? Was it about money? I don't even pay the electric bills. Okay. For my dad, probably. Yeah. Everything was about money with him. But I just, like to me, if you're not in the room, the light should be off. Okay. Let me go to, yeah, we got to do this one. Kelly looks like she was pretty serious about it. Hi, Kelly. Good morning. Good morning. How are you guys? Good. Kelly, it says here something kind of interesting about you and your husband and the lights. Yeah.

Yeah, we would have like a little bit of a bicker in the dark and he turned on the light and like it was like triggering a rabid animal. I remember flying, literally flying out of bed, reaching for his neck. And then I don't remember really how he stopped me, but it was just a trigger. It was like something of a movie. You were going to strangle your husband? Yeah, I like went right for his neck. I don't know why. So that completely triggered you. Went right for the neck.

Oh, my God. It was like the exorcist, everything all at once. Wow. Wow, man. So does he ever even touch a light switch at all to this day? Well, we're divorced now. Oh, there it is. Divorced or is he dead? No, he's alive. Okay. All right. He's alive. Thank you. We appreciate it. I'm going to go to Ian. Hi, Ian. Morning, bud.

Good morning. How are you? Good, man. All right. So what's your situation with the lights and your significant other? So listen, me and my wife have been married four years, been together for 10 years. I like sitting in the dark. She calls me a psychopath. Is that your little pet name, psychopath? Yeah, that's it. She calls me her little serial killer. Okay.

She'll come in, and the only light I have in my living room is an overhead dome light, and it is abrasive. It's like being struck by the light of a thousand suns. You're not overstating it. And she comes in, and she turns on this lamp or this light, and I go blind for five minutes, and then we just scream at each other.

So I'm going to, and I hear what you're saying. I tend to not like the overhead ceiling lights. I prefer lamps and things of that nature. So, yeah. So have you been able to work this out or do you just square off all the time over the lights? Listen, my wife is the most beautiful person in my world.

She's also Puerto Rican, and I don't want that smoke. There you go, Ben. You don't want to get that going. Yeah. All right. Well, have you since bought lamps instead of just having the big overhead light?

You know what? We haven't because I feel like she just enjoys the torture. You're letting her have that little thing. She enjoys torturing you and you wouldn't want to rob her of that. But there are little things that can solve these issues with many people, by the way, if you just look into it and have a conversation about finding a solution. There are solutions, yes. And a dimmer switch would be one of them, too. You can get that done.

Let me see here. Let me go to Pam next. Hi, Pam. Good morning. Morning. Hey, what's up, Pam? Yeah. So I specifically call my husband KB short for caveman because he lives in the dark and sleeps on the floor. What? Yeah. So when we first, when he first moved in with me, um,

That's freaky. Yeah.

And there was one day when I came home and all the lights were on and the doors were open and I thought I had been robbed. No, there's a bat in the house. So I got hit on the bat and got rid of that. But now to this day, also, I'm a vegetarian and he obviously is not. And

So we have to eat in the dark because he doesn't allow any lights on. So wait a second. You would come home to a pitch black house. He would be sitting in a chair in the dark. Yes.

Nothing? Not reading? Nothing? Just sitting there in the dark? In the dark. No TV? No TV. No phone? Where were you? Caveman. Whose death is he plotting? Yes! Interesting. To the point where we're actually having our 10-year anniversary in three weeks, and my friends didn't know what his name was. They only knew him as Cavey. Cavey. Uh...

So you guys have dinner in the dark, no light at all? So, no, no. Because I'm a vegetarian, and he eats cheesesteaks. So there was one night when we were sitting there in the dark, pitch black, and...

And I accidentally bit into his cheesecake. So now he allows me to have a light on when I eat dinner. How the hell did you go on like complete opposite Tinder? How did you? And can I touch on this word allows you just used? Yes. I own the house. I own everything in the house. Are you a submissive of some type? No.

No, he's an asshole. Oh my God. There you go. That's a technical matrimonial term. All right, Pam. Wow. We have a 10-year anniversary in three weeks. Bet you it's going to be a hoot. Yeah. If it happens, because... Because now you're on the radio and you just call him an a-hole.

It doesn't matter. He probably doesn't turn on the lights to find the radio. He doesn't listen to the radio at all, ever. Yeah. He's like hardcore Amish. Good luck, Pam. Thank you. Thank you. You should get him light bulbs for the anniversary present. That's a bit much. What if it was the 10-year anniversary where it was the light bulb anniversary? And by the way, he's going to look at it and go, what the hell is this? Yeah, I don't know what the... What is this? These little collectibles? That's a light bulb. Oh, Christmas war nights. No, no. Uh,

Let me go to... These are the things Uncle Fester eats. I'm going to go to Kathy. Hi, Kathy, you're on the air. Good morning. Gadzooks, guys. Gadzooks, Kathy. All right, so are you light or anti-light?

I am the anti-light. Okay. My husband and I, we are going to be married 37 years. Wow. That's set in September. It has taken that long for us to compromise our light differences. And mostly it's from the morning, in the mornings, and then like at dinnertime in the evenings.

And, of course, because that's when you use light. But he is an overhead, super bright, spotlight kind of a guy. Don't like it. I'm like Steve. You know, I prefer lamps, something a little more subtle. But in the morning, when I get up to shower, I shower by the nightlight in the bathroom. It's dark. That's a little dark. Yeah, see, I need more light. In the bathroom, I need light.

Then not in the shower. It takes me a really long time to wake up. I'm not a morning person. I kind of like to take my time in the shower and like, you know, wake up.

You know, with some time. And he comes in and snaps on super bright light overhead. And I'm like a vampire. And I just said, oh, turn that off. Turn that off. But so what we've what we've come to do is now with our work schedules before, when we were younger, our work schedules were the same. So it was a it was a constant shift.

And so now that our work schedules are different, I get up much earlier. So now I have my time and he waits until I'm done. Then he can go in and he can...

click on his real super bright light. I come out of the bathroom. I turn off the overhead super bright light, turn on my lamp next to the bed, and it's like back and forth. All right. So you just roll with it. You keep adapting to each room because you're on different schedules. Exactly. All right. Well, then it works out. You're not going to kill each other.

Exactly. But, you know, luckily because of our work schedules now, but before when we were on the same work schedule... Right, it wasn't working. Yeah, it was crazy. And it's like... And when Preston said it was the number one reason, I'm like, oh my God, yes, that's us. We had no idea. That light... I mean... It's not number one, but it's on the list. It's on the list. It's in the top ten. And then it floats out a little bit later on, yeah. But it was like totally us. And we don't...

We really don't bicker about, like, anything else. It's like, that's it. Life. Wow. It seems stupid, but it's so true. During the course of the day, Preston, when you wake up... Thanks, Kathy. So you wake up. Do you...

lights come on in the room? No, I make my way out of the room dark and then I walk down the hallway dark. I go into the bedroom where Shell sleeps and the TV is on. So that's my first light of the day, which is a little more subtle light. It's not like a bright, bright. And then I go into the bathroom and flip the bright light on and I'm good to go. So I do like...

If I'm waking up in the dark, which we do, most people wake up when the sun is already coming up, that I need a step up in light. I don't want to wake up to bright, bright light. You know what I mean? So my lamp comes on.

Lights out the room. Nice. Mid-level. Yeah. Turn on the hall light. Go into the bathroom. The lights are on. Because if I'm brushing teeth, if I'm shaving nuts, I'm doing the whole thing. I want light. And so that's nuts. Those are the only two rooms. Kitchen and bathroom. You can have all the lights on every single time.

You know, everything else needs to be... When you watch TV in the evening, when you're in the living room... Just the TV's on. Just the TV? What about you? TV and a lamp. A lamp. I agree with that. Is it an old wives' tale that watching TV in the dark is bad for your eyes?

I remember hearing that when I was a kid. I've heard that. I don't know if there's any legitimacy to it or not. I'm not sure. Yeah, that was an old wife's tale. It may have some legitimacy to it, but I'm not sure. Gave you a goiter. It says there's no evidence. No evidence. Well, there you go. Paid for by the TV industry. A couple of other things to mention because we do have to wrap this up. But besides leaving the light on, I still have the top ten reasons. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Argue. Argue.

What to eat for dinner was the last one I mentioned at number four. Number three, and these are more obvious. Number three is money. Right. What couples will argue over. I'm surprised that wasn't number one. Yeah. Number two, no, the top two, Kathy, you'll understand. Okay. Number two, partner not doing their share of household chores. And number one, not keeping the house clean.

Clean. Clean and organized. Just put it back where you got it and then it stays organized. Who is the biggest perpetrator in your house? Oh my God. I'll go like this. I'm like, Jace. And he's like, he just knows. He's like, what did I not

put away? What did I not clean up? And he's like, what? What? I'm like, why are your shoes here? And he's like, oh, I know. I know. I know. What's wrong with that kid? No, but he's just a kid. You know what I mean? So he leaves. Of course he's there. I think we're all pretty good at just walking over a mess, you know, myself included. Yeah.

And you said, speaking of shoes, I did some cleaning up yesterday and there were so many shoes on our steps going up to the second floor. I hate it. Me too. I hate it. I got rid of all of them. I left one pair of shoes on the steps and it was symbolic. It was Casey's shoes. So I'm like, I'm just going to leave those there. Because she's away at school. Yeah. And your favorite. And yeah, I'm not going to say that. Yeah.

As he's not. If you want to get the kids to do that, have them wear clown shoes because it'll make it harder to go up the steps if they're leaving them on the steps. Nothing works. Nothing works. You can put grenades on the steps. Nothing ever works. They'll go right over them. So we have this giant

wicker laundry basket. It's giant. It's like a huge drum. And so I put that, I did the laundry yesterday and I brought that whole thing down and then when it was done, it was empty and I left it at the foot of the steps and I'm like, I wonder how long this will sit here. I wonder how many times people will walk past this thing and not think, hey, maybe I should bring this upstairs for good old dad. No.

That's like when I left the trash can overflow and saw where everybody else put the garbage. I think about that a lot. Rather than actually taking it out to the garage to the trash can. And I mean this huge pile of garbage just started building up. And then it moved. You see how hoarders start. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to empty this. Preston, there are two things that happen in your household that I think about fairly frequently. And that's one and Rochelle going on strike is the other.

And, like, they both had an impact, you know? Oh, yeah. So maybe they're effective when it reaches that point, you know? The whole garbage thing and that. Casey, I told you guys about it before. It's an Australian comedy bit where the guy goes, you know, his wife is like, what happened to the laundry? He's like, listen, I just set it out here, and it gets...

It disappears, and when it's done, it's folded and finished. It happens every time. She's like, you're an idiot. She's like, no, it really happened. It's magic. That's unbelievable. All right, so yeah, the number one is not keeping the house clean. So interesting thing, but the light issue, I was not aware. I had no idea. I could see that, but I never really considered it as a real problem.

legit issue that couples would have pretty regularly. It's number 10 on this list. Do you notice what was obvious? The way they describe it is turning on big lights instead of lamps.

What blew my mind is one of the obvious ones is not on the list of making sex videos with Hulk Hogan. Oh, yeah. You would think that would be an issue, but with as many as there are out there. So, all right. Anyhow, that's it. We were doing Totally Presbo, weren't we? So we're done. Totally Presbo. Bye, Presbo. All right. Let's take a break and come back in a second and get you those bizarre file stories that you so richly deserve. Stay there. We'll be right back. It's a scientific fact.

People like free shoes. And at WMMR.com, you can find out how to score yourself some of that, like concert tickets, autographed gear, and even cash. Become an MMR VIP to get extra chances to enter online at WMMR.com.

Now, back with more of the Preston and Steve Show podcast. The next guest in the studio is here to talk about his next project, which is called Task. And it stars Mark Ruffalo, amongst other awesome names, and was shot right here in our area earlier this year. You know him as a creator of Mayor of Easttown and The Way Back. And we've had him on a program. He is a Berwyn, Pennsylvania native. Yeah. Brandon!

The man who's got the most singles, dude, is here with us this morning. How you doing, Brad? I'm doing wonderful. Appreciate you guys having me back on the show. Of course, man. Absolutely. I was thinking about Mare of Easttown because lately I've been going back and re-watching some things that I really enjoyed the first time around. And Mare of Easttown, when that hit, it was one of those where we were all talking to each other. Well, I think it was the boyfriend. Yeah. I think blah, blah, blah, this and that. And it would change per episode. Yeah.

And the interesting thing about a storyline like that, a whodunit, is once you already know who did it, it's kind of tough to go back and be completely surprised by it. But it is interesting to go back and see what you may have missed out along the way to pick up on. Is task... Now, it's...

It's written here on my sheet of information as the kind of non-sequel to Mare of Easttown. How is that description correct? Yeah, it's not a sequel. It's definitely not related. The narrative isn't tied in any way to Mare or any of the characters, but it is set here again. So the show takes place...

Kind of more outside one community, I would say. If Mare was the story of one community, Task is a bit more of a sprawling story all around Delco. So we're sort of in rural communities. We're in Delco. We're in the city. So it's a bit more of a sprawling show. But I think it still speaks to the area in the same way Mare did. Yeah. I am, you know, I'm a Delco native, born and raised, and I'm, you know,

I don't know if I'll ever leave. So when this was shooting and filming around town, I was getting messages and, you know, texts and DMs all the time. Was this, were you guys doing stuff at Our Lady of Peace? Yep. Okay, that's what I thought. You guys were there. We have a couple scenes we shot there. We were there a bunch, actually. We were actually on Mulchworks. Okay.

And they're wonderful over there. And some of the movie was shot there as well. That's right. It's very exciting. You write what you know. Yes. And so you mine your experience. You talk about community. You talk about Delco. And that's the thing with Mayor of Easttown that I thought was so great. I love stories that are rich in rich characters. Yes. And your script, amazing. Because everyone...

You didn't have to be from Delco. You didn't have to be from the area to know this is this kind of person or this is... And then you also do the smart thing that smart writers do is they...

your expectations of a character get inverted. It's like, oh, he's this person. I love that. Who were some of your creative influences with script writing when you were starting the craft? Yeah, I think, Steve, that's a... Well, first of all, I really appreciate you saying that because I think that's kind of the one thing I can do is write characters. The plot stuff is not my strong suit. I'll argue that. I like to write characters. That's really...

what I was raised watching. And so the movies of the 70s, the Scorsese movies and the Coppola movies and the crime movies, those are the movies that I really grew up watching. I want to ask about, because you're saying write what you know, who in your life

hid ice cream and frozen vegetables. That was genius. No, I actually conjured that one. I made that one up. I can't point to one person who did that. That was pretty good. That was good. That was in Mare of Easttown. That was awesome. I'm amazed by people who can write characters.

How deep do you go into people's lives of these characters that you create out of thin air? Backstory. Do you go back to their childhood with each and every one of them and say that they were raised in this environment? Here are the things they learned along the way. And you may not convey that completely in the storyline, but it influences who they are. I mean, 100%. I think that's a really smart observation is that even if you don't see...

Even if you don't see the details in the show, all of that history informs the dialogue and the way that these characters look at each other and the nicknames they use. And I think when you start a story, what you want to do is go really into the background of each character, understand the how and why of how they talk to one another, why they talk to one another, all of their beliefs.

And then once you have a foundation, it informs the way all the scenes are played. And, oh, this thing happened in this person's childhood, so it's going to inform a scene about this. Or they've experienced a trauma, so when they see something like this, it's going to inform how they react to that situation. So it's really important to get into the background.

And you as the writer, as you're writing, have to say, and I'm sure you've encountered points where you've written something down and you say, no, that's not true to this. Yes. They would never do that. 100%. Yeah. And how do you know that? You got to set up guide rails. Yes. Well, exactly right. And I think the guide rails are the backstory. This is what's happened to them. This is where they grew up. These were their parents. How would they react in these situations? And I always feel like if I'm able to do my homework correctly,

You know, that at the time we're doing the filming, I could put these characters in any situation and know how they would react and what they would say. But that's because I've spent so much time with them in my head that it informs all their decisions within the scenes of the story. Which makes sense. When you're on, so a lot of times we hear, again, there's the multiple steps. We're all fans of the process of filmmaking. And then you get an actor, actress like Kate Winslet,

who can do things that I'm sure that you, I mean, are you on set punching up script? She just did something I have to incorporate. Yes. Well, I think what you said, Steve, is important. It's the guardrail. So if an actor has an idea that is inside those guardrails that makes it richer or deeper or more complex, then it's something that we can incorporate. If it's outside of the guardrails, then you say, listen, I don't think this is the character.

We got to lose the unicycle. So as Steven mentioned, Kate Winslet, obviously an absolute home run as mayor. And so I'm sure once you heard that that's who was being cast, you're like, yeah. How about Mark Ruffalo in Task? Is he the perfect person to play the character? He's such a – listen, his career –

he's been able to play so many incredible parts, but also just such a lovely, lovely person to work with. Well, give us what, who his character is, what the story is about. Let's find out what Task is. And so Task, and so Task is a crime story that, uh,

is about an FBI agent who is played by Mark Ruffalo, who's sort of kind of outside the front lines, I would say. He's taken a back seat in his career for reasons that kind of gradually reveal themselves over the course of the series. And his boss in the FBI calls him into her office one day and says, listen, I need to get you back into the field.

um is he in is he in like the philadelphia field office yeah he's he's in newtown square office okay and and he's actually working uh at the career expos he's handing out flyers to kids who are interested in the area so he's in that part of his he's in that part of his okay i love this i love that kind of character and um and so she says listen i need you to look into something i need you to head up a task force and task force is really just a collection of you know law enforcement officers in the area so he gets partnered with uh

a detective from the county, a Chester officer, and a state trooper. And she says there's a group of guys who are going into these area drug houses and they're robbing them. And we don't really know why, but because these area drug houses are getting robbed, all these bodies are starting to turn up and the gangs in the area are starting to blame each other. And so we need to figure out who these guys are.

And then we cut to the other side of the law, and we are with the, I guess, bad guys, although I use that term loosely. I don't think this is a show with the bad guys and good guys. Is it more like a Rashomon kind of feel? It's not Rashomon. I would equate it to like Heat. Oh, okay. It's Al Pacino. It's Robert De Niro. Now, I would say Heat was L.A., really high-end, high-line crews. This is like a working-class –

story of heat. It's an FBI agent and a robber and we gradually understand the how and why of each of these characters. But if Mare was a whodunit, I would say Task is a collision course. In each episode, we bring these guys a little closer together. Okay. A little closer together and...

If we've done our job right, we like each of these guys in such a way that the collision is really scary because we're scared as to what's going to happen to these guys and these characters. I think a villain, quote unquote, that you can understand. Yes.

So, again, you don't have to approve. But if you see – to me, the mustache twirler is easily dismissible. But somebody who's got – oh, well, I can kind of see. I don't like it, but I can kind of see. But I understand it. Exactly right. And so that becomes what happens in the show is it's a collision course.

I love how Mare of Easttown has become this cultural touchstone. I mean, it was, you know, there was a murder dirter skit on SNL. It was also not, lampooned isn't the right word, but sort of showed up in Agatha all along. The opening scenes of that were basically a direct ripoff of Mare of Easttown. What does that mean to you to have like these cultural moments that are out? That's something you created. Yeah.

Yeah, listen, I think it's something that as a writer, I think you always want, Nick, right? It's like, I think when I started writing, what was appealing to me is to be able to touch people emotionally or to write a character or a world or a group of characters that were able to

uh, illuminate people's lives in a way and make a connection. And it seems like mayor has done that. So I, I'm just incredibly happy and grateful. Did you start doing that in little league when you were playing? I was on the bench a lot. Yeah, I think I did. It's funny for me to have you here and to, I applaud all your success because I've known Brad since he was a little kid. He played baseball with my, my middle brother, Adam, and, uh, you played with Connick, Walanti and blaze to Santo. And your older brother, uh, is now the, uh, head basketball coach at, um,

university of delaware your dad played at um villanova university so you know you you your history is fascinating but so is your family's yeah exactly a lot of sports history in the family i grew up that way i didn't get the jeans guys i wish i did i didn't get the sports jeans but um but i you know i still watch a ton of basketball i still love basketball and uh it's a big part of how i grew up wanted to ask a

There's a young lady named Amelia Jones who plays the character Maeve. I've watched the movie Coda, I kid you not, at least 10 times. She is the lead in Coda and blew me away in that. Is she Irish or English? She's English. Wait until you see her in this. I think she's an absolute...

She's an incredible actress. I'm really, I think, you know, I'm in the edit now and I'm watching the episodes and every time I watch her act, I think she's absolutely incredible. Can you reveal a little bit about her character? Yeah, and so Maeve is the name of her character and she plays the niece of one of the

one of the burglars, the guy who's robbing the house, actually the lead guy, and they live together. And so she gets kind of unexpectedly swept up in this situation and has to deal with the

the repercussions of what happens in the opening episode and kind of has to pick up the pieces. But Amelia is an absolutely incredible actress. Can we watch it all now? It sounds terrific. I wanted to ask you about your writing about, again, what you know, and I, I, um, seeing the way back and, and, you know, uh, peripherally, those are things that exist within your, in your world. Um, uh,

is the notion of a samurai movie in feudal Japan or anything on your radar, because I think...

something like that eventually as you, you know, put more and more things under your belt. Um, you know, how, I'm always fascinated with someone who has not lived anywhere in a particular world, but, but can embrace it and then do something like James Michener was legendary for, you talk about the research for each character. Not only did you have the characters history, the history back to primitive man, you know, he writes these, these long things. Do,

Is that something that appeals to you or are you going to kind of stay in this lane for a while? I think that's a good question, Steve. I like to write about home, but every now and then there comes a story or an idea that comes my way that I think, you know what, I can attach to that or I can access that emotionally. I wrote a movie for Apple that's called The Lost Bus, which was about the fire and

uh, the, the Paradise, California, um, uh, it ravaged the town in 2018 or 2019. And I wrote that movie, you know, an area I, I really didn't know about, about a bus driver, but I, you know, I could access that story emotionally because really it was about a dad and his son and a relationship. Do you read, do you, so are you,

How are your research chops? Or do you have people research for you? No, I give it to the place. That's my question because it seems like such a daunting thing. Yeah. No, it is. To get that together and you seem – you're committed to being correct.

It seems a lot of work. It is a lot of work. I'm too lazy. No, I mean, on that one, I went to California. I sat with the bus driver. I spent a lot of time in the town. So, you know, you commit to doing it and then we, you know, on the shows like task, I have lots of tech advisors who are available to me and I can chat with them anytime, which is lovely. I'm glad Steve brought up the way back. You know, Ben Affleck is the star of that and Gavin O'Connor's the director and it's a basketball movie, but it's really about, you know, an alcoholic and, and his struggles with it. And, um,

you've worked with Gavin a few times. We had him in studio to promote that movie. How do relationships like that begin? Because we're really fascinated in sort of the behind-the-scenes stuff. So how long have you known Gavin? And he's involved in Task as well. Isn't he one of the producers? He's not involved in Task, but we worked together on Mare. He was a...

he was involved in that and then we did The Way Back together. It really is just like you have to search out people who think the same way you do, who come from the same place you do. And listen, at times it's really nice to work with someone who is completely outside of your zone. And so I think with Gavin though, as soon as we met, we just had a connection that we

He grew up the same way. He was a sports player. He played at Penn. And so we shared a lot of ideas about writing a sports movie that wasn't really a sports movie. And I think that's really what I like about this business is over time I've been able to have these relationships.

that i've been able to come back to time and time again you know i work with the same group of people over and over again and i'm really happy that i kind of have a core group that i can go back to when i have a story uh if you're just tuning in it's uh brad engelsman that we're talking to is a writer and creator of mayor of easttown his next project is called task uh they're in the editing stages of this is going to be hbo max when is this uh scheduled to be out i think

I think it's going to be September, so we have a little bit of a wait, guys. Okay, that's all right. That's when those screener copies are going to come in. Like Nick said, we're fascinated by the behind-the-scenes stuff, and I'm curious about what it's like on set for a writer, because the only thing I really know about writers on set is, have you ever seen the movie, for your consideration, the Christopher Guest film?

Oh, I've seen his other mockumentary. Yeah, well, there's one about movie making and Bob Balaban and Michael McKeon are the writers and they're on stage or they're on set and they're watching their movie, what they've written, just be contorted and switched and destroyed into something else. And they're just sitting there going, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God.

What is it like for you? Are you actively contributing with the director, with the actors? Are you in there as part of that creative process while it's happening? Especially in TV. In movies, it's a little bit different because the director is the boss in movies. And if you think about movies, it's the Spielbergs that you know. But in TV, the writer is the boss. Okay. And so when you're on set, look, I like to be a collaborator.

But I also like to have, I like to be vigilant about the emotion of the story. This is your story. Yeah. And I know where it ends. I know where it has to end. It's like you said, Steve, if you have the guardrails in place, then I know when an idea is outside of the guardrail, hey, I don't think that's going to help us achieve what

And you're the keeper of that. I mean, that's you. Well, exactly right. And you have to be vigilant. I think sometimes it's hard because actors have ideas and you want to be supportive. You want to be a collaborator. But you ultimately know where the story has to go. It's interesting you say TV because I don't think of this as TV. It's more film-like. What it has become now with the streaming and with these big budget platforms.

studios on board, you're watching a very long segmented film. You remember years ago, it was the pariah. I don't want to do TV. And now, everyone flocks, you know, to get the real deal. But I mean, that's

It speaks to the – it's something we've said for years. Why? Take some time with this story. Yeah. Let it breathe. Let it breathe. We don't need nine years of the story, 35 episodes a year. No. Just do it right. Yeah. We don't want to spend three hours in a movie theater. We want to spend 10 hours on our couch. Right. Speaking of that, when you go to the Max or whatever and you say, okay, I have this –

Eight episode series that I'm working on. Do they go, man, we need 10? They, I would say the sweet spot is eight. And so if you could give them eight, I think they would be happy. And you know when you're watching, like, you know, you could have taken some stuff out. This didn't need to be 10. You made it drag on a little bit too long. That's my greatest. That's the fear of mine. I never want to have a show that drags. I really want every episode to have a lot of incidents.

That's a big thing as a writer that I have. I really want each episode to have momentum and have an audience go, wow, that was worth watching. If I tuned in for one minute of the show, I would have gotten the one piece of information that was vital. I want you to have to feel like, man, if I miss a minute of this show, I'm going to miss it. So I really don't want it to sag. I would rather have seven really good episodes than ten

Right, right, yeah. Yeah, I thought there were some good ones, but I want them all to be really rich and complex. I know what you mean. If you go into the kitchen to grab something, like Rochelle will still be watching, like, what did they say? What happened? Why is she on a unicycle? Like literally one line. Right, yeah.

You can miss out on something big. Yes. So, Brad, Tom Pelfrey's in this as well, in Task. And Casey and I were huge fans, I think Kathy as well, of Ozark. He's so good in that show. He's the brother. And he's just a sad character, but he's excellent in it. I heard, Tael, from the set of Task that Kaley Cuoco was on set quite a bit, and they have a little baby daughter together. And so the people that I know that were working with you on Task, they were saying that, like,

Tom and Kaylee just could not be nicer people, which like, just, it makes us feel good. Like we don't know them at all, but I love her. Yeah. And we hear these stories and we're like, Oh, that's, that's heartwarming. You know? No, he's really the second lead of the show. Tom, he, he plays the lead kind of robber in the show. Um, uh,

And he's just such a wonderful guy. I've met Kaylee a bunch now. She's equally wonderful. I really think that just from all the footage I've seen, the episodes we've edited, that Tom will have a huge pop on this one.

He's already a great actor. He's been in a ton of stuff, but I really think he crushes this performance. I think audiences will love him. Well, I mean, the reality is his story arc on Ozark, I think it is an absolute travesty that he was not only not nominated for an Emmy, but I mean, he really should have won the Emmy for that one. I know. Well, I hope we can make it up to him here. I hope we can give him some.

No, listen, the odds are pretty good with you. I wanted to ask you as you're writing out a story and as you're parsing out a mystery or whatever, as with Mayor of Easttown, a whodunit, in the pacing, I assume there must be a lot of hand-wringing about, did I give too much? Yes. Because you've got to throw in your MacGuffins and you've got to –

How is that process executed? Index cards and this and that? Torturous process. Torturous, yeah. I think that's a lot of notebooks and throwing away notebooks. And I mean, this is less a whodunit. So it was less about are we leaning into this character too much or too little? But it was about...

trying to preserve the momentum and have each episode, have that kind of engine that would keep an audience around? And also, what are the surprises? Audiences are so smart these days. When they come to a show, they're ahead of you. So how do you take that expectation of an audience and subvert it? How do you expect what they expect and go, all right, so listen, we'll keep you in the genre, but we'll do something different. What are those choices you make that an audience can go,

well, that was different. That was unique. Oh, that deepened my relationship to the characters. How do you use what you know about the genre? And that's important, I think, nowadays with so much content available. How do you separate yourself? I was talking about that. I did my horror movie list a little while ago and we were talking about it. And to me,

if you try, just try. Yes. To the creative team, I'll always give you credit for that. Don't be lazy. That's the one sin. I totally agree, Steve. And there is a lot of laziness out there. And I think if you can just look at each scene and go, how do we make it a little better? Yeah. How do we deepen our relationship with the characters? What's a look we can steal here and there to make the relationships stronger? And I think...

that's what that's what i'm constantly trying to do in the edit is just make it a little better a little better a little better and if i can do that i feel like i've done my work you know well i'm excited uh for for task we could uh use another great show to watch and uh we've only got 11 months until we'll be able to see it are you before we wrap brad is there anything else that you're working on that uh maybe you can nod to a little bit or um so i wrote two movies for apple uh

I did The Lost Bus, which is – I think it's called Paradise now actually. Okay. They're changing the title. And that will – so that's a movie with Matthew McConaughey that will come out I think in the spring, although a release date hasn't been officially announced. And then I wrote another movie for Apple that I think is going to be called Echo Valley and that is with –

Julianne Moore and Sidney Sweeney. And I think that'll be... She's the hit girl right now. Look at you throwing these names around. Hey, listen, you know... Is that a crime? It's a crime thriller. And it all takes place on a farm and it's about a mother-daughter relationship. How about...

How many of those scenes require a radio station for them to film? Sydney Sweeney scenes. Yeah, yes. I mean, thank you for making these locally, by the way. Like, it's really cool to have the jobs locally, to be shot locally, for us to watch these scenes and say, oh, that's Mulchworks, you know? That's where I get my mulch! Listen, I'd love to do everything locally if I could, really. I mean, it would make my life a lot easier. I love shooting around here. I love giving the jobs to people around here. How about Mulch the movie? Yeah.

Come on. I know. Never been dubbed before. Talk about doing something new. Yeah. Taking a chance. Mulched movie. Oh, my God. All right, Brad. Exciting news. I'm sure we'll chat again down the road as we get a little bit closer to this, but it is great to see you. Thanks for being here. Of course, guys. Of course. Appreciate you having me on. We will remind you about TASC when it's coming out. Let's give some love to Mr. Brad Eggers. Yeah! Yay!

We'll take a break. We'll come back in a second. And David Cross will be joining us. He's going to be in town in a couple of weeks at the Keswick. Stay put. We'll be right back. MMRBQ 2025. Saturday, May 10th at Freedom Mortgage Pavilion. Allison Chains. Three Days Grace. With both Matt Walsh and Adam Gontier. Mammoth WVH. Hey, hey!

Dorothy, plus Dead Poets Society. Philadelphia Hard Rockers, Octane, Return to Dust, plus local shots opener Fat Mess. And of course, the Preston and Steve side stage with live band karaoke featuring Sidearm.

Keep it on MMR this weekend for your chance to score tickets and hear blocks of MMRBQ artists. It's always an all-day party, so don't miss out. Buy your tickets Friday at 10 a.m. at Ticketmaster.com from 93.3 WMMR. Everything that rocks.

It was a big day in the foster household yesterday. Busy day yesterday. I picked my son up from school and I took him to the orthodontist to have his braces removed. So there you go. That's the home run moment, right? It is. All three of my children had braces and...

He was the last to get them off. And I think he was the toughest one of the three. Did he react to them the worst when he got them? No, no, no, no. Nobody reacted bad to them. But, you know, I think my daughters were more fastidious with, you know, the upkeep and putting the, you know, the rubber bands. And when I had braces, I didn't have to put rubber bands in or anything like that. But eventually, I think he got tired of it and left.

that caused him to like really start to like hunker down. Okay. I'll do it because I just want these things off. Right. He started, uh, you know, listening closer to the orthodontist and, and, and sticking to the regiment wanted them off. I mean, he's a junior in high school. How many years with them on? Oh, geez. Longer than I think they should have. But I mean, his teeth look great. Oh, good. And so I just, and I don't, I, you know, with, with, with a teenager, you don't know if they're listening to you or if they're tuning you out or, or whatever. But, uh,

So I wanted to offer a piece of advice to today's youth. And I'm sure their parents tell them the same thing. To the youths. To the youths. And if you're not going to listen to your parents, listen to Uncle Casey. It's a simple message.

Wear your retainer. Wear your retainer. Wear your retainer. I'm going to do this for our YouTube audience, all right? Because I had braces. I had them put on in eighth grade. I got them off my sophomore year of high school, and I never wore my retainer. And this, if you want to describe it, Preston, to our listening audience, this is the result of not wearing your retainer. All right, Casey's pulling down his bottom lip, and he's got a big old snaggle tooth on the bottom. It stands out all by itself in front of the line of the other teeth. I never knew you had a snaggle tooth.

I've never had that. Yeah. A lot of people. I see it every time, Kathy. Every time it pops itself up in a video, I'm like, oh, you should have worn your retainer. So a lot of people don't do that, right? Oh, yeah. And. Dude, yes. Okay. You're talking to somebody who's done it with three kids as well. Yeah. Two of them did not wear their retainers. And so what happened? I've decided that actually I can predict the future. Yeah. Because.

Because I knew this was going to happen. Right. I knew it was going to happen. And as a parent, you try to. You can only do so much to remind them to do what they need to do. There was another moment where I think I could tell the future. And that's when they brought two dogs to the house. Two new puppies for us to have. And I said, okay. And they were going to take care of them? If you make sure you walk the dogs...

Do we all agree on this? Right, yeah. We all agree on this. You walk the dogs, we can have the dogs, okay? And in my mind, I knew, guess who walks the dogs? Yeah, you do. Me. Yeah. I'm the only one who does it. The only time anybody else does it is when I tell them to do it. All right, so anyway, besides all of that, yes, I wholeheartedly agree. And what we wanted to turn this into was...

A small piece of advice that you... And there's a line from a Billy Joel song where he says, Listen, boys, good information from a man who's made mistakes. Someone like yourself, Casey, who made the mistake sharing that information. Uh-huh. Don't do the same thing I did. A small piece of advice. It doesn't have to be life-changing advice, but...

Here's a little nugget for you. And it's not coming from your parent. And it's not coming from your parent. It's coming from a stupid show you're listening to. And we would like to know what you would like to add to that. 215-263-WMMR. I have a little piece of advice I will offer you as well in just a second here. So just yesterday, I got the first dose of like...

Oh my God, he didn't listen to what I said, to the advice that I had given him. This was just yesterday. So when Casey said this on the call last night, I was like, oh my God. So they can choose in middle school which language they want to take. And Jace had the choice between Latin, French, and Spanish. And

over and over and over again. I said, you're going to get the most out of learning Spanish. It is our second language. There are a lot of people in this country that speak Spanish. Maybe you could be bilingual someday. Spanish is the way to go. He comes home and goes, I pick French. I was like,

All right. And I can't help you with French because I don't speak a word of it. I could help you a little bit with Spanish. I know some Spanish, but you're on your own, buddy. I pick French, too, in school because Etienne sounded good. That's my name. Well, the hot chicks take French, too. Yeah. But you're right. Technically, you're right. But these are little things like it's like I think it falls under the category of, yeah, that's what the parents are going to tell you. That's what they say all the time. It's like, not really French.

It's really kind of good for you if you do this, like with the retainer, which you won't have to put up with what the reason like a non subjective point of view. Someone who does not know you is saying I've gone through it. And yet it turns out what they're saying is right. Yeah, I do have a question, though, about the retainer.

Is it something that you have to wear for like ever and ever? Or do you wear them for a certain amount of time and then your teeth are locked into place? Valerie works for an orthodontist. Oh, good. So we'll go to her and then we'll come back with some more. You know, it doesn't have to be all about teeth, but different advice. Little nuggets of advice that you highly recommend for the youth of today. Valerie, good morning. Good morning. All right. So you want to second Casey's urging to wear your retainer. And then I can give a piece of advice too. Oh, good. Okay.

So, yeah, retainers are a lifelong thing. It is a lifelong thing. Okay. Oh, come on. Your teeth can move at any point in your life. So, honestly, we stress to our kids so much, wear your retainer, your teeth will move. And then when you're an adult, you're going to have to pay for braces all over again. And they're very expensive. So you can, like, alternate. Some people can alternate, like, the top retainer one night.

the lower retainer, the next, like, you know, after you've had your braces off for a few years. But yeah, they're for life. Valerie, I can offer an alternative piece of advice, which is have a substandard dentist as a child and then you don't have to worry about that forever because your bad Irish teeth will be so irrevocably effed up that it won't matter. What was your piece of advice you wanted to offer besides the retainer?

Go to class in college. Oh, my God, yes. Just go to class. Go to class. There might be somebody else here who could give that advice. Excellent advice, Valerie. Also, real quick, why is it an orthodontist and not an orthodentist? Well, dentists just...

They go to school for, you know, cleaning, restoration, cleaning teeth, doing implants. He's saying why the actual name is dentist and dentist. Yeah, why do you not say orthodentist? And why is it a donkey and not a denkey? I think orthodentist sounds cooler. Okay. There you go. I think we decided it sounded cooler. I don't know.

Donor surfer guy who came. He's like orthodontist now. My mom. My dad's a dentist. My mom stopped wearing her retainer when she was a kid, when she was a teenager. And she's in her 70s now. And she did Invisalign because, Steve, to your point earlier, like this gap in between her middle teeth, her front middle teeth grew. And so now she wanted to fix it and she did Invisalign. But had she worn her retainer her whole life, she wouldn't have had to do that. All right. I'll give you a little piece of advice. All right.

And this is mainly for guys, for teenagers, young guys. Listen, when it comes to fashion sense, listen to the women in your life.

Simple as that. They know better. Especially if you're heterosexual and you're interested in attracting another woman. Listen to the women when it comes to fashion advice. They know what they would like to see on a man. Were you proffered fashion advice that you passed on? No, no. I was just terrible at it. I went out on my own. And eventually I kind of figured out

where my lane was and stopped trying to be something I wasn't. Right. And, uh, and it makes a difference and kept things a little more simple. And also we dress you the way we would like to see you. Exactly. That's what I mean. What we like. Yeah. Um, and also, um, uh, LaFootnote to that, just because it's trendy and stylish doesn't mean that it looks good on you. Thank you. It does not look good on everyone. You're right. It's okay. Listen, for some people, shorts in the winter is a perfect expression of who you are. Yeah.

I'm not saying anybody in particular, but people who wear shorts. People who perhaps in absurd temperatures wear shorts. All right. Little nugget of advice. Let me go to, we'll go to Lou on the line here. Hi, Lou. You're on the air. Good morning. Yay! Been away from a while. Have not heard from Lou in a while. Welcome back from Florida. Thank you. Appreciate it, buddy. All right. So you have some advice, Lou?

Yes, I do. All right. When you're walking anywhere, whether it's in a crowd or never let anyone get your attention. Never. Don't stop to you. You don't have a match. You don't have time. You don't have a do never let walk like you have a purpose. Let anyone in your circle.

Okay, I understand you on a level, which is don't be distracted by people who may have nefarious...

And if you walk with purpose, you are going to be less likely made a mark. Am I correctly stating that? That's correct. Okay. All right. I believe that. You're not saying be immune to the world around you and be antisocial, but project confidence and you will be less likely to be made a mark.

That's it. The hard part about that, Lou, is if, say, you're on vacation and you're a tourist and tourists get victimized without question, they get targeted, and you are legitimately just enjoying your sights around you, that's what you don't want. Don't act like you're enjoying it. I hate this place. This place stinks. The Parthenon? I'm just saying that. Yeah.

Now, my kids repeat it back to me all the time. I'm in their head. Yeah. When you're walking in a crowd, you hear my voice. And that is what I want. Because I've been in the world, and when people come up, hey, you got a light? You got a match? Yeah. Sure. Now they got you. Yeah. Yeah, your wallet's gone. Lou, would you recommend smearing fake blood on your face when you're walking around? Just people are likely to leave you alone, right? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. It's funny. I put my headphones in a lot, and that kind of keeps me focused. And if somebody is saying something to me, I don't hear them. I'm sorry. I'm deaf. They come up to attack from behind. Lou, thanks for the advice, brother.

All right, you got it. It's almost golf when we're heading out. We'll see you soon. We're going to be playing golf. Absolutely, buddy. We'll see you. See you. All right. As Lou was talking, I was just thinking of like, you know, advice from my parents. And I'm like, most of it, I'm like, God, they were insane. Yeah.

Well, your mom has been known to have some creative ways to approach life. You know, we're talking about your adopted mother, not Janis Joplin. Right. But, yeah. What was the best, again...

It's one of those things that falls on that. How many times are parents going to tell their kids, wear your retainer, and they just don't? I didn't really listen to my parents until I was in my 20s. I occasionally listened to my mom, but my dad and I had a fairly contentious relationship in my late teens and early 20s. And so it took until I was mature enough to understand he had my best interests at heart.

When I was a teenager, and Casey, I think this probably goes with you and Seamus, like, I didn't want to listen to a damn word they had to say. You know, I just wanted to be with my own friends and Steve kind of like figure it out on my own. I wish I'd listened to my parents more back then. I wonder, I mean, statistically in the broad scheme of the...

Isn't that part of the rite of passage is to ignore the advice you're given in life so that you can painfully learn it yourself? That's true. There was a text that was up a moment ago, Nick, that said somebody, their father told them to always have a...

a blanket in their car. Here we go. Yeah. It says, uh, in case you need a loose chick. Here's all my dad told me to keep a blanket in my car. And if I ever felt like I was too impaired after a high school party to sleep in the car that saved me from countless DUIs, uh, were where others were, uh,

others' kids felt pressure to go home. Okay. That was probably pre-Uber days. And that's another thing. Get a ride. The availability of rides are unbelievably convenient. The advice that's timeless is if you're ever in trouble, call me. It doesn't matter how bad things are, what you need. If you've been drinking, don't get behind the wheel. Call your parents. One of us will come get you. The downside of that is

I've probably been drinking and they call me and I'm like, I'm with the Hulk. I'm drunk right now. I'm with the prostitute. That goes all the way back on the weekend. There was a leave it to beaver episode with that same thing about convincing the kids. Just tell us, you know, like, like if you're in trouble, tell us it's better than not. All right. Here's a little pieces of advice. We're going to go to Josh next. Hi, Josh. Good morning.

All right. Josh, what is your bit of advice to offer? Don't quit your instrument. I started piano when I was seven years old, took it all the way up until I was about 14, 15, and I lost interest. My uncles, my mom, everybody said, don't quit. It's something you can do at a party. It's the coolest thing.

And now I'm 32 and I hate myself for it. Yeah, no, I completely hear that. Now, mind you, Josh, you're only 32. You can pick it up again. Everybody feels bad. Actually, my first lesson is on Thursday. You're not going to be good at it. That's not true.

You know what? You won't be. Don't be discouraged by not being good at it. You're going to suck when you start playing it again. But the way you get better is by understanding that you can suck and improve with time. Practice will get you there. But Steve's absolutely right. You're going to be bad. But don't be discouraged by the fact that you're bad.

Yeah, but I just always constantly... My mind just goes back to if I would have stuck with it at this point, I could do whatever I wanted to do. Yeah, I wish I had stuck... I wish I had learned an instrument fully. I was talking earlier, my...

father's mother, my grandmother was very musically inclined and could play many instruments and I wish I could play one instrument and that, yes, I would have loved to have done that. And Josh, by the way, I just want to say that, flush that thought of I wish I'd never stopped because that might actually impede you and hold you back, right? The better way is I wish I'd never started. Where

Wish I never would have started that, so now I wouldn't regret the fact that I stopped that. Now I have to start over again. Why do I do things? Let me go to Lucas. Hi, Lucas. Morning. Good morning. Gadzook. Gadzook, sir. All right, so what is your advice you want to pass along?

Assume good intentions. A lot of people, I think especially, I'm 24, so I think a lot of people in my generation are really, really anxious that everybody hates them all the time. Oh, yeah. And for me, something that I found that's really helped me mentally is to assume that people are okay with me until they directly tell me that they're not. And of course, you can pick up on social cues and stuff. If somebody is very clearly not okay with you, then obviously take the cue. I think that also goes, and I think what you're saying is very important, learn...

And it's by no fault of a lot of the kids now, no fault of theirs.

Learn social cues. Learn what, you know, and learn how to look someone in the eyes when you talk to them. Learn how to project. Learn how to be there and be present in a conversation. Yeah, but Lucas, it's funny because I have all these in my Instagram feed, all these like inspirational things to tell your children. One of those things is exactly what you're talking about. Assume good intentions? Well, no, no. The fact that like, don't worry about what people are thinking about you because that's

They're not thinking about you, right? They're worried about what you think about them. That's that Ellen DeGeneres quote. People don't think about you as often as you think they think about you. Yeah. Exactly. And that's what it's been for me. You know, like, I don't, when I'm passing by somebody down the street, I see their outfit and I move on. And that's pretty much it most of the time. Like, I'm not passing these judgments thinking that everybody hates me. So if I'm not passing these judgments, then why would I assume that somebody else is?

All right. It's good. Sage advice. Thank you, Lucas. Appreciate it. If you're just tuning in, Casey's advice to his son, Seamus, who just got his braces off, is wear your retainer. A little bit of advice that you can pass along. Did you ever get financial advice when you were younger? You wish you'd stuck with? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. From my dad. I just didn't understand it. Same thing. My dad introduced me to mutual funds and things like that when I was like...

19, 20 years old, long those eyes. And it didn't really sink in, but I married someone who knew what they were doing. That's funny.

That's the advice my dad never – he says marry someone who will handle all your accounting, which is what Claire does. But I tried and my dad was much better at it than was I. And so, yeah, I wish I had a better command of it. I didn't. And so when you're being told now, pay attention, learn how to manage your money, learn how to – a credit card or save your money, it really is important.

My wife just texted me. She says, and I trust her wholeheartedly when it comes to finances. She says, open a Roth IRA with your very first paycheck. That's a good idea. Yeah, because you can get tax-free down the road. Yeah, yeah. And as a matter of fact, when I went on my first Grand Canyon trip, there was a guy that was on our trip. I just met him. I never knew this guy. He was in his early 50s, and he was retired. And I just, for the first part of the trip, I just thought he was like a...

hedge fund you know guy or whatever no he was a roofer he went to work like at 18 years old right after graduation and just invested his money early and wisely and and you know his money made money for him if you find out how to have your money work for you yeah you've you've nailed it also don't rack up credit card debt it can be crippling and if you can avoid it and i know a lot of people find that they need to live a life a certain way but a credit card debt

really can hamper your lifestyle later on. I fell in that trap briefly when I had no, what I thought was no option because I was trying to get a business going and yeah, it's a quagmire. Alright, I'm going to go to Megan next with a little piece of advice. Megan, good morning.

Yoo-hoo! Oh, you're so... Yoo-hoo! What's up, Megan? Hi, guys. So, my father was kind of an old-fashioned guy. Like, I'm... Like, my parents had me at 35. So, they had a lot of, like, older advice than, like, the new stuff. Like, they didn't quite get computers and stuff like that. Right. Always respect the Pony Express. Right. So, my father said, you need to carry cash.

you need to at least carry $20 on you at all times and cash. And I got a card when I started driving. So I was like, why? Everywhere takes a card. He said, no, they don't. No, they don't. You need cash. And I did. I did desperately need cash. I needed to get into a cab and they were like, okay, $14. And I was like, okay, I have a card. And they're like, you need

You need cash. Yeah. I've done that all my life. I have cash on me right now. Preston, I know you do as well, right? You carry cash. My mom and dad both. You should always have some walking around money because not only to pay for something like that, but you might need to

bribe somebody. You didn't see this. They don't take Venmo or credit cards sometimes when you need to throw somebody a seat, you know, 20 bucks or something. 20 at least. And to that point, I actually, like, I got a nickname in college as, like, the group dad. The dad. Because when people were traveling, I was like, do you have any cash on you? And they're like, no. And I'm like, okay, here's 20 bucks. If you don't use it, you can give it back to me. They never gave it back

Well, that pairs actually, Megan, with another thing. Always have ID on you. Thank you. Always have ID on you. Sometimes I'll be with people and they, I don't have any ID on. How do you? Always. No, I go for long bike rides and I always make sure that I have ID.

an ID on me and I have cash on me. And my cousin was done cause he's a big time cyclist. Like you might need in a cash to buy something. Like if you run out of water, Gatorade or whatever, but also if you get a hole in your tire, sometimes you fold up that, that money and you put it into the, the whole of the actual tire. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let me go to Vanessa. Hi there, Vanessa. Hi, good morning. Hey, what's up, Vanessa?

Hey, so I just, my little piece of advice, like a lot of my friends, I'm 30 or totally in debt, not doing what they said they wanted to do in college. And I chose to be a nanny in New Zealand when I was 18. I was an au pair. And I feel like it changed my life, like traveling when I had an opportunity to travel and not have a ton of debt and responsibility. And I came back and now I'm a teacher.

And I went back to college and everything. I just feel like not too many people do that. And I wish more people did. That's what I always tell people. You're exactly right. So my father, you know, he had recorded a whole bunch of stuff about life observations before he passed away. And the thing that he really emphasized right at the wrap-up of the seven hours of audio that he recorded is travel.

Yeah. And do it as often as you can. Live while you're young. Yeah. And while you're young, you really have like this open mind and you meet all these people. And I feel like that influenced my journey instead of just going to college for something I didn't even want to do, wasting all my money and being in debt, not doing what I want to do. The last thing you want to do is hear like a cool story about how your friend stayed at the Econolodge. Yeah. And...

Hey, but here's the text. It says, I got this advice yesterday, actually. Don't stay at a Days Inn in Florida. Thank you, Vanessa. Appreciate it. Let's see. We've had Nick on hold for a while, so let me go to him. Hi, Nick. Good morning, bud. Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, what's your advice, my man?

College isn't the only answer. There's trade schools. There's other options out there. So leaving high school, don't think you have to go to college or you're going to fail. No, that's absolutely right. And, Nick, listen, I have a junior and a senior in high school right now, and so all of their friends are either –

Going like a trade. Well, no, no. They already know where they're going to college. And so then the next one, well, what's your major? What are you going to be? And and I tell these guys this all the time. You don't have to have it all figured out right now. Like, you know, God bless you. If you're 16 or 17 years old and you know what you want to do for the rest of your life, that's great. But don't let people pressure you into having an answer as to what you're going to do for the next 60 years. You don't have to have that answer right now, but have a direction.

I was told out of high school, if you went to trade school, you're either dumb or a bad person. Oh, yeah. Exact thing. We used to have that. I did. Go ahead. I did college. I have an associate's in business administration, and I was miserable. Got laid off one day, got into the trades. The best thing that ever happened to me. I made more money than I thought I would do in management.

There was a trade school that was adjacent to my high school. And I always noticed that the kids that were going there were more focused, seemed to know what they wanted. Now, I always knew I wanted to do something comedy-based, and that was always part of the deal. But, I mean, they could walk right out of there and start working. And it was an amazing thing. So, yeah, I agree. Don't just assume that you have to incinerate cash to get a degree you don't want. Right.

Right. If you want to be a doctor, you have to go to school. But if you don't know, go to a community college, take a couple courses, engineering courses. They're going to point you in the right direction. Follow your passion. See what, you know, and hopefully your passion is one that can be profitable and dance. No, but I mean, you know, my dad gave me advice through the years and a lot of it I didn't listen to, but the one that settled in with me was whatever you do for a living, make sure it's something you enjoy.

enjoy. Right. Make sure you really like it because my dad hated his job. And he would come home after a crappy day of work. He was an accountant? Yeah, he was an accountant. He was successful at it, but he just, I could tell it was the grind. Yeah. It was just the grind, you know, and eventually you resent that. Yes. You hate it.

So hopefully you can find something you actually like. And if you can't, cope as best you can, I guess. Narcotics. Then there's always narcotics. Speaking of that, let me go to... I just hung up on him. Damn it! Hang on a second. It was Steve and he wanted to say that his dad always told him not to carry booze or drugs for someone else. Yes! And apparently he did. Sage advice. And he got in trouble, so I apologize. I apologize.

Don't, yeah. Because I just hung up on him. Don't be a mule. Don't be a drug mule. Never be a drug mule. I'd like to apologize. Yeah. There's probably good money in it, though. Let me go to Shed next. Hey, Shed, you're on the air. Is your name Shed? S-H-E-D? Buy into your 401k? Do you own a shed? Okay. Doesn't sound like anyone's there. I don't think the guy's name is Shed, but anyhow. Maybe it's an actual shed. That's an unfortunate... Ascension Shed. Oh, this is a shed. Restore things. Yes.

you can live in the world of the humans. If you are a thinking shed, he was saying to buy into your 401k. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Never pass up. If your job offers a 401k and especially if they match it, if they do the matching donations. And to that point, if someone offers you the opportunity to be, to bust some drugs out of South America. Yes. Do it. Do it. It can make you a lot of money. Yes. All you have, those balloons do not dissolve in your stomach acid. If the flight is short enough. All right.

I'm going to go to Peter. He's been on hold for a while. I wasn't sure if he's quoting the song or not, but we'll go to Peter. Hi, Peter. Good morning. Hey, good morning to see you. Good morning, bud. What's up? So I was actually quoting the song, although I do believe in wearing sunscreen. I did want to tell everybody to listen to that song because it is beautiful. It's like a commencement speech, and it's full of the best advice I've ever heard.

It is a great song. He said Baz Luhrmann, yeah. So, Peter, I listened to that song, I want to say about a year ago. And obviously we played it on Y100 when it first came out. And it didn't hit me the way it did 20 years later. What is the title of that song? Wear Sunscreen. No, it's not. Nope, that's the first line in it. Marissa, what's it called? I've forgotten. I had to look it up. It's called Everybody's Free. Everybody's Free. We should play that because it is...

It's great. You know, it's another one like that case. The Leanne Womack song. Same sort of like general life advice. Yeah. And dance, I think, is one of the refrains. But it's a similar sort of. Dance is one of the refrains. Right. And I dispensed it. And then I listened to it. And I went, wait a second. She's kind of right. Yeah. I think it's called Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen. Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen. Okay. You know, I have advice to Baz Luhrmann. Pick a title. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

No, Peter, you're right. That is a great source of little pieces of sage advice. It is. And it's worth listening to. Yeah, one of the ones I really like, I'll keep it short, but it's forget the insults and remember the compliments. Yeah. I mean, that is so hard to do, but... It is.

Holding grudges does not help you. What is it? Remind yourself of that. You know, I'm going to have a brain fart. Is it? Thanks, Pete. Does it do Rata? Um, go placidly amidst the noise and ways, you know, the, you know, that, that, that, um, is it a poem? God almighty. Uh, it is. It's basically, um, it was it in a song? No, it's, it's a poem that was, that was made into a song. Oh, um, yeah. Got him. I'm going to look for it right now. Okay. Um,

I will go next to... Note, vice to myself, be smarter. Let me go to Marty. Hi, Marty. Good morning. Hey, good morning, guys. Great show. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Number one is stay on retired law enforcement. Number one, stay alert. So many kids and people just wander through life. All the kids work on their mom, preoccupied, and they go on their phone. I see people walk across the street with their head down on their phone. Yeah.

And then they wonder what to get hit or they get mugged. We're losing a little bit, but yes, stay alert is a great piece of advice. That's what my mother would have. My mother was big on security and being aware of your surroundings. Yeah, they wander through life and they don't understand why when something happens. Well, why did that happen to me? Right. Well, let's see, what were you doing? Right. The other thing is love yourself.

Don't think that just because the world— Try to do that every night. But I'm just—good advice my grandmother gave me a long time ago. She said, Jesus wasn't liked everywhere he went.

Right. Love yourself. Know that you're right. Just because the world around you may not be right where you're at, that might not be your environment. Love yourself. Be smart. God gave you two ears and one mouth. No. More than you talk. Yeah, no. That's great advice. Thanks, Marty. It is Desiderata. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. It goes...

I won't read the whole thing, but go placidly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant. They, too, have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons. They are vexatious, treacherous.

To the spirit, if you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter. For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. And it goes on and on. But it's really well written. It's like a long list of good advice. Yeah. Okay.

And it was written by Ron Polillo. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. I didn't realize he was still there. I guess now we're getting into philosophical things, which would be... A little more impactful than wear your retainer. Right. Well, I guess so. But, you know, be in the moment if you can. A lot of people let the moment get by. And, you know, you have...

you know, things that are happening around you and you're looking at your phone. Well, the philosophy of wearing your retainer is, you know, plan now, do something now to take care of yourself for later. And all of this can be applied to most of the things we're talking about. The 401k is planning your, you know, wearing your retainer when you get a paycheck. You know, not getting credit card debt is wearing your retainer and being financially responsible. Play the long game. Yeah, exactly. And that's something that you're exactly right. And Nick, there are countless times in my life where I...

did not play the long game and ended up paying for it. Retainer. We used to have that clip. Did we? Yeah. I isolated that. I forgot about that. All right. Let me see. Here's financial advice. Let me go to Ryan. We got to wrap this up here in a second. Hey, Ryan, good morning. What's up? You guys rock. Thank you, man. All right, Ryan, you got a little piece of advice?

I got a great piece of advice. The number one tip, I have a credit class that's called I Teach Credit. What I teach people is use your credit card like a debit card for every single purchase possible. Just get into the habit of paying it to zero every seven days. Yes. Oh, my God. I don't care how much you spend. Every seven days, pay that thing to zero. You'll never miss a payment. You'll never have your debt run away from you, and you can earn free travel to go see that world. There you go. I love it. My sister had this bizarre misconception that she needed to keep, like,

some money in debt through a credit card or they would cancel the card or something like that. And she'd lived under this misconception, which I didn't know about, apparently for decades. And I'm like, are you out of your mind? Yeah.

pay it. And you know what happens? People will, okay, this credit card is becoming a little difficult. I'm going to open up another credit card. And so, and then, before you know it, they're in this pit. What is the average amount of credit card debt being held by the average American these days? It's ridiculous. This could be a whole other conversation about credit cards, and I don't remember if it was someone in this room or not, but somebody recently told me that you shouldn't

close out a credit card. Like if you have a credit card that you're not using anymore, just leave it. You shouldn't close it out that that affects your credit.

I don't know. I was like, I don't like that. I don't want that under, like, do you know what I mean? I don't want that under my name if I'm not using it. Why would I not close it? All right. And here's my piece of advice on top of that. What Kathy just said. If you hear something in hearsay that somebody says like that, check and see if it's legit or not. Don't go passing it around. You know, I heard blah, blah, blah. Do your own checking. I'm guilty of that. I'm totally guilty of that. Deers don't have sphincters. Yeah.

I heard that one time and made an ass out of myself. Hey, listen, we've all done that. Marissa, can we post this on social media so that people can... Okay, cool. Add to it? Yeah. Okay, yeah, because there's obviously a lot. We're just scratching the surface.

But it all boils down to... Retainers. Wear your retainer. Retainer. Retainer. So, well, I wish you luck, sir. Yeah. And your kids. Oh, wait. Marissa has advice. Well, I was going to say, if you're ever listening to the Preston and Steve show and hear something great and you missed it, go to PrestonandSteve.com and you can find it on YouTube, on podcasts. We put it out there all the time. We do all this work for you guys to make your days better. There you go. Boom.

That's your advice. All right. Very good. Thank you for the calls. We appreciate it. And contribute via our social media like Casey and Marissa said. We'll post something a little bit later on about that. But thank you. We do appreciate the calls. We'll come back in a second. And Bizarre Files, another thing. Learn from the Bizarre Files what not to do in life. We'll come back with those in a moment.

Is your phone an app hole? You know, full of useless apps taking up space. Well, get rid of them and get the WMMR app. You can listen to us wherever you go, get important alerts and so much more. Because, after all, the world needs less app holes. Now, back with more of the Preston and Steve Show podcast. Bizarre. WMMR presents Preston and Steve's Bizarre File. Bizarre.

Well, we were just talking about margaritas. Why don't we kick off the Bizarre File with this? A small town of Waycross, Georgia.

has been rocked by the quote, margarita butt funnel controversy. Okay. A video showing a man trying to put a funnel in a girl's butt and pouring a margarita into the funnel. Oh, righty-do. When the funnel strategy didn't work out so well, the guy then reverted to just pouring the beverage down her butt crack.

Eventually, a restaurant employee saw what was happening, put a stop to it. As it happens in a small town, it didn't take long for the story to spread and outrage itself. Andy, did you hear? What?

Rodeo's management later put out a statement on social media saying that they are aware of the incident and it does not reflect the values held by the restaurant. There'll be a meeting at the school later. What's more, they are cooperating with authorities in an investigation into what happened and they say that they'll hold any employees found to be involved accountable. So I don't know if there were employees... It appears he wanted to drink the margarita out of her butthole. ...that were involved in that, but they are going to get to the...

Bottom of it, so to speak. Yeah. Listen, you want to do that in the privacy of your own home, that's fine. But when you start doing it in a Mexican restaurant... It's a problem. That's going a little over the line.

When a snake wakes you up with a bite, there's only one logical way to react. Santosh Loar was asleep in his laborer's camp in India when a snake crawled into his bed and bit him. So he grabbed the snake and bit it back, killing it. Wow. Loar was rushed to the hospital.

given anti-venom and was released the following day, by the way. But why did he bite it back? Well, Laura told India Today that in my village, there's a belief that if a snake bites you, you must bite it back twice to neutralize the venom. I don't think that was the case, but he tried it anyway, and he's alive to tell the tale. Hey, he made the news. But he did. He bit it twice and then got some anti-venom, and that killed the venom. There you go. Um.

Well, this is disturbing. While visiting South Africa, tourists from Spain learn the hard way you do not mess with nature because nature will usually find a way to win was while on a vehicle tour of Pentecost.

Pillensburg National Park. The unnamed man decided to get out of the vehicle. He was told to stay in so he could get a better view and pictures of a herd of elephants. No. Despite warnings from fellow passengers and guides, the man got closer and an adult elephant cow was apparently unamused. The elephant charged and then the man was trampled by the entire herd of elephants. And obviously he didn't make it.

It's a vacation he'll never forget. I watch the... I follow the Instagram account of Torons of Yellowstone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are just constantly people just...

not understanding what they're getting into when you're dealing with wild animals. I just watched a video yesterday of an elephant with an itchy belly. You know how he scratched his belly? This was insane, Preston. It's super, super huge. He literally uses his own penis to scratch his belly. I mean, I knew an elephant dong was going to be big. But they can move it like that. I'm glad you told me this story. I

I thought I was the only one. No, you're not. You and Eddie the Elephant. You and the Elephant. What's wrong with me? All right. In British Columbia, a Kelowna household, that's the name of a town. This is a cute story. All right. Okay. Was the latest subject of a covert restoration project undertaken by an unknown organization. The group calls himself the Gnome Restoration Society. And a resident...

And gnome owner Kelly Blair has no idea who or how many people may be involved in the secretive organization. In late June, Blair said that he was sad to discover that his beloved, albeit weathered and worn gnomes, were missing from his front lawn. Having already had a few items, including a canoe, go missing from his property over the last few weeks.

He assumed the thieves had snatched his gnomes and accepted the fact that they were gone and he wouldn't see them again. And on July 3rd, he curiously heard a knock at his back door. There stood an elderly woman who presented a perplexed Blair with a blank envelope addressed to the homeowner. Inside the envelope was a cutout image of a gnome with the words, the Gnome Restoration Society inscribed on the back. The woman would not answer any questions.

and instructed him to follow her to the vehicle. He said, the lady wouldn't tell me anything. The woman told him that she was simply delivering the gnomes. It was unable to answer any questions about them and who was involved in the secret society. He said, these folks want to remain anonymous.

Uh, then she opened the back of her car and there they were all of his gnomes in pristine condition. Every single gnome that had gone missing from his lawn plus two extra had been cleaned, painted, and we're smiling up at him from boxes in the back of the mysterious woman's vehicle. He said, it totally made my day. Blair said his gnomes have never looked better. Noting that the attention to detail, creativity and craftsmanship, the paint job on every single one of the 10 little men was perfect.

So this was their whole goal. They kidnap them, clean them up, and return them. And they send them back.

One gnome had been left behind, though, either intentionally or by mistake, and its weathered appearance serves as a reminder of just how much work went into the restoration of the ten other lawn ornaments. Bizarre. I thought that was cool. It's like the Umbrella Academy. Yep. All right, and then one last story, and we will wrap it up. And this is from a few days back. Sometimes I don't have time to fit in all the stories in a timely manner, but...

A participant at the Nathan's Lemonade Drinking Contest, which is an appetizer for the annual hot dog eating extravaganza on Coney Island, let a rip on Thursday. Projectile vomiting on the stage as four-time winner Eric Badlands Booker consoled him on his way out.

Really? Really?

I think your son could probably beat him, Russ. You think? Yeah, Carter, maybe. Oh, really? Guzzle that? Yeah. Yeah. The event also saw a new Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest winner, Chicago's Patrick Bertoletti, captured the mustard belt by barreling through 58 franks and buns in the competition's self-described 10 minutes of glory. But this dude puked all over the place. That's insane, though I'd love to see it. Yep. All right, and that is what I have in the Bizarre File for you. Take a break, and we'll be right back. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

93.3 WMMR brings you Preston and Steve's Cardboard Classic. Friday, February 28th at Montage Mountain. It's free, so be there for all the cardboard craziness and see who scores the big cash prizes. And when the sledding ends...

Mountain Fest at Montage begins. Two days of snowy fun and live music. Kicking off with free admission to a massive 80s party featuring the M80s. Then get your tickets for a Saturday double bill. Tonic and Better Than Ezra. All capped off with a massive fireworks show.

Find Mountain Fest tickets, VIP packages, and all things Cardboard Classic now at WMMR.com. 93.3 WMMR. Everything that rocks.

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I'm going to do a lengthy setup for our next guest here because there's a lot to talk about. Number one, he's a Philly native. Yes. Temple grad. And is an Oscar winner in the world of editing. And that was for the film Argo. But listen to the...

The list here of credits, Pleasantville, Alive, Ali, Seabiscuit, National Treasure, Zero Dark Thirty, The Imitation Game, Air, some of the Transformers films, Heat. I'm only touching on a few of these. And now his directorial debut, which actually debuted last night at Philadelphia Film Festival. It'll be in theaters in December. It is called Unstoppable and it stars the likes of Jharrel Jerome.

Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena, Don Cheadle, Jennifer Lopez is produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. And that is the end of my introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, William Goldenberg is here this morning. Thank you. Thanks for being here, William. It's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you guys as well.

I said a lot of stuff there at the beginning. Your credits. How long have you been at this movie game in one way or another now? Since about 1985. We're going to move this mic. 1985. Okay. Your work in editing alone is amazing. And the fact that you're now just getting around to directing is pretty cool. In the world of editing, I think all of us here have just the slightest...

taste of idea of what that is about. We've all done our own home editing, iMovie, stuff like that. And the amount of hours that you can spend on just a little bitty piece of video is unbelievable. And you're doing this with major motion pictures with thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of filmed material. It's an amazing undertaking. And what made you want to segue over and try directing?

Well, after I won an Oscar for Argo, I hate saying that. You legitimately won. It is not bragging. Yes.

A lot of people approached me, you know, do you want to direct? Do you ever think about directing? And I did, but I never felt like I was ready for it. And finally, about that time in my career, I felt like I knew enough and I had enough confidence in myself to do it. But then I realized editing full-time and trying to find something to direct is really not possible. It's just too much time. So a friend of mine who is a producer brought me to this project because he knew I was looking for something to direct.

And just, you know, the story was so incredible. And I met Anthony and, you know, who's the subject of the film. Yeah. Anthony Robles. And he's an extraordinary human being. And once I met him and saw how he interacted with people and saw what he meant to people, I just was like, I'm on. The story is amazing. So it is, you know, a gentleman born without a leg who became a wrestling champion, still with us, participates in the movie. And, you know, I'm.

What I wanted to ask you, coming from the world of editing and being a director, you've got to do two things with a movie like this. You've got to satisfy some of the quote-unquote sports movie tropes, but you also want to avoid some of the sports movie tropes. So when you're approaching this, was that weighing on your mind? Because the story is so pure and amazing, but I assume there are common pitfalls one could fall into while doing a movie of this nature. Very much so. We tried to...

Shake it up, I guess. Make it different than other sports movies. So I shot the whole movie handheld, so it's got a very... Verite? Put you in the room kind of feeling. And it's all from Jarrell, who's our lead actor, but from his point of view. So a lot of it just sort of always following him. So we tried to do that a little differently and tried to film the wrestling in a way that was really intimate and people could really see what these guys are going through emotionally. But like you say, there are...

sports tropes that, you know, are unavoidable, but that's a good thing. Yeah, because people will be disappointed if they don't see them sometimes. Yeah. But if you put your own stamp on it, like you're talking about with the wrestling where...

you can feel it's more visceral. It's, it's, and you had Anthony himself, obviously it was, who's a better source of information on how to do it. Uh, and so you're, you're getting down and dirty. I remember like the difference between seeing the, the, you know, the initial Rocky films or Cinderella man, where they're, you know, there's like, Oh, or raging bull where, you know, anything that sports or, or, or where,

people boxing or wrestling, you can tell when, okay, they really went for something here to really put you in it. And was that weighing on your mind or that was that informing your decisions? Yeah. I mean, I've watched, you know, I got to work on some of these sports films. I worked on Ali and Seabiscuit and Concussion and things like that. So I had a sort of familiarity with it.

I just felt like I did what I felt like was the kind of coolest way to film it. Yeah. Where people, you know, put them in, you know, there's been some wrestling films, not that many. And I never thought the wrestling was that done that well. So I just tried to do it in a way that was fresh. And it felt like, again, very visceral. And you feel like, you know, you see every drop of sweat and feel every strain and every muscle strain. And we actually built a...

an 8x4 piece of glass platform. So we were able to put the camera underneath it and shoot up through the glass. Because, you know, wrestling, sometimes their faces are down. You don't want to be able to see them. And so we did a bunch of stuff like that just to, you know, have that perspective that nobody's ever seen. It's brilliant because you're right. He's exactly right with wrestling. I think that's what's made it hard to capture because every...

The real emotion is pointed down, you know, in the combat. So that's very cool. Yeah, we also had guys like cameramen were on the mat, like a foot away from them with the camera down on the mat so you could really see, you know, get a real close view of what's happening and everything.

And, you know, you were talking about Anthony being involved. Anthony did a lot of his own wrestling in the film. Ah. Yeah, so Jarrell and Anthony both did all the wrestling, and then in the editing room we cut it together the best way possible, and through visual effects we were able to make it look like one person. Oh, that's awesome. Did you also edit the film? I did not. I co-edit. Well, I didn't really co-edit. I edited a little. Well, that was my question. So not being the editor then, were you sort of, you know, trying to...

step in and, you know, do what you normally do, your editing job? Well, I mean, look, directors, all directors are editors. I mean, you're sitting there with the director, when you're the editor, you're sitting there and he's saying, you know, let's try this, let's try that. So it's, they all have that skill. So, but the editor who did the film, Brett Reed, he,

He was my assistant for almost 20 years. So he knows you. Yeah, we know each other really well. And he's gone on to become a really fine editor. And I wanted somebody who wouldn't lie to me. I wanted somebody who would, if something was bad, he would say, this is bad. I don't want somebody to go, no, it's great, everything's great. So I knew we could have an open and honest relationship about it. So I trusted him. And he did a phenomenal job. I actually was expecting to edit more than I did. I edited just a little bit. And he did such a good job that I...

didn't need to. The director and the editor are always together when editing? Like the director is always there for that part of it? Well, every director is different. You know, some show up just for screenings. They want to keep a distance. Some are there every day, every minute of every day. Some screen the movie every day. Some screen the movie once a month. It runs the gamut. So everybody does it a little bit differently. But the way I like to do it is the director is there every day. But

you know, they do what they do. For speaking from a, uh, an editor's point of view and, and where your, uh, role comes in. And I'm, I'm curious about both directing and editing. Um, when, uh, the editor's role comes in, is everything in the can, is everything done? And then they hand it all over to you. And that's when you start the work or is there still shooting that's happening? No, the editor starts the first day of shooting. No kidding. Yeah. So he shoots something on Monday. The editor gets a daily, all the film they shot on Monday, or in this case, digital material. Um,

On Tuesday, and the editor's usually cutting that on Wednesday. So you're doing scene by scene by scene. Okay. So you cut, like, all these little movies, like, each scene is a little movie, and then when it's all done, you get to put it together. And as a director, will that sometimes inform the next few steps in the filming process?

Very much so. And how those turned, how those scenes turned out. Yeah, I mean, it's good to be able to show the director how it's going. You know, like, this is what you did and this is what, you know, because it's never exactly like you think it's going to be. Yeah. And also, it's like if you're shooting scene 70 and I have scene 69 already shot, it's good to see what scene 69 looks like before you shoot. Yeah. You hear people having to reshoot and stuff like that and I guess, you know, if you can have an immediate...

You immediately know, okay, this didn't work or this is not going to work. We have to reshoot that. It's better to know that sooner rather than later, correct? Very much so, yeah. When I did Air with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, we were editing in the building we were shooting at. And they would...

you know they would come in in the middle of the day the two of them and look at stuff and say wait a second we need a shot here where you know we need a transition or shot here and within the set was live so like everything was lit so they would just go we'll be right back and they would go literally run out and that's so cool that's so cool so it was that immediate so that yeah that was a real extreme example of why they need to see cut footage so obviously you've been at this for a long long time before you stepped in with in the uh director's uh shoes um

That first day on set, were there nerves, even though you've been in this business for a long time? I was petrified. Yeah. And I had to work with Bobby Cannavale, who is a lovely guy. He's just a great actor and a lovely guy. And he didn't even have any dialogue. So...

It kind of eased myself into it, but I took the attitude that I could either be petrified and, like, froze, you know, freeze with fear, or I could just do it. And we had such a tight schedule. It was only a 33-day shoot and a lot to do. That's short. Yeah. No, I just...

said, let's just do this and not be nervous. And I don't know, I just talked myself into it. So give everybody an idea of what the movie is about. It is inspirational. But again, it transcends in certain ways. But give the thumbnail of what the story is about.

It's about a gentleman named Anthony Robles who was born with missing his right leg and right hip, so there's nothing on that right side. Nothing that a really viable prosthetic is going to be able to address. He has a really elaborate prosthetic that he never uses because you have to strap something onto his waist to have something to stick the prosthetic onto. So he's been on crutches his whole life. Right.

they're a part of him. I mean, he just moves in a way with crutches. It's like ballet. He's so good at it. Anyway, Anthony was born to his mother who was 15 at the time. Didn't really know the father. She had the baby. Parents wanted to give him up for adoption and she insisted on keeping it. And anyway, so the story is about how he overcame this incredible challenge to become a wrestling champion. But the other challenges he faced were a really difficult home life, a very difficult

abusive stepfather and lack of money. But in classic fashion, in real authentic fashion, he turns all of these negatives. For example, the crutches thing. He develops strength and control in ways that other wrestlers don't have. He also has a different higher center of gravity which works to his advantage with wrestling at some level. So...

In every step, it seems his story is taking the bad cards you've been dealt and making it a positive. Right, learning how to adapt your life and make a great thing out of it. And his mom always said to him, you're no different than anybody else. You never treated him like somebody with a disability. Always treated him just like everybody else. So he...

He played football in high school, which I don't know how. It's insane. But he just never – he doesn't look at himself like somebody with a disability. He's just a regular person who happens to have crutches. Reading how he won a – or said like an elementary school push-up record. Wow. Yeah. He actually had the world record for pull-ups in one minute and then I think it was 60 or 61. Oh, my God. And then somebody beat him and then he was trying –

He was trying to do the world record for pull-ups in 24 hours, and he was really far ahead of the, I think it was like 7,500, and he was on track to do 10,000. Jesus. But then he took a break, and then when he got back up on the bar, his arm got cold, and he tore his bicep. But I think he's going to try it again. He's always looking for something to push him, another challenge physically, because he can't wrestle. I mean, he could.

could wrestle actually but there's no place for him to do it he's in unbelievable shape I mean it's a little scary Michael T. Williamson is in the movie and for those who aren't familiar he played Bubba in Forrest Gump he was also in the movie Heat which you were the editor for and Heat is one of my all time favorite movies I love every second of it

and there are a lot of seconds. It's two hours and 50 minutes long, and you were the editor on that movie. Did you actually edit anything on Heat because it's so damn long? Oh, yeah, a lot of editing. You know, actually, there's only one scene taken out of that movie that was shot, and that's unusual. I mean, there were shorter versions of it while we were doing it, but it was just like, what makes that different from just a normal crime film is you get to live with these people and see what their family lives are like, and I think Michael didn't want to. Michael Mann, the director, didn't want to

have it fall into like a strict genre movie. He wanted it to be a little more than that. So he wanted, we ended up keeping all these like family backstories and I think it makes it a better film. It's character driven. I mean, you know, it's, it's sort of an action heist movie, but you, you care about all of the characters in the movie. And I'm sure that's in part because you get to learn their stories because the movie is so long. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and there's, you know, there's a lot of storylines and you know, you know, uh, it's amazing how that film, certain films just live on, you know, and, um, and that, that is, that is a great,

The great thing about so many great things, and Michael Mann is known for his fastidious sort of, you know, very attention to detail, but there is one of the great, if not the greatest shootout in film history. I think it is. But also one of the greatest across-the-table shoots.

Titans of acting interaction. And so I wanted to ask you, when you're editing, editing is, I think Steven Spielberg was Vera Fields, directed Jaws. Verna. Verna. And so he credits her with the success of the movie because knowing...

The little extra second here, a little extra second there. You know, is that something you were you were imbued with from the get go? Do you pick up those chops as you're going along? Because I don't think a lot of people understand that you don't see the strings to a great scene. It just affects you the right way. And how does that come to you?

Well, some of it's practice. Yeah. And I think a lot of it is instinctual. Like you just, like you, for me anyway, it's like, there's no way to like put that on paper, how to do like feel something emotionally, you know? So you have to, you just have to have like a preordained talent for it. But then you develop it over the years, you know, you get, you get fat, you get faster at it because you get to recognize things and how things are going to work more quickly. But, you know, ultimately it's just like,

if it's a comedy does it make me laugh is it if it's supposed to be a sad scene does it make me cry i mean right because i'm the i'm the first audience for the scene so right i just go by what it makes me feel do you sometimes get a uh a kind of a a sadist sense when you are working on building tension in a scene and you're doing it because sometimes uh time uh dragged out will cause tension in the scene

and you're editing this and going, oh, I'm going to kill them on this one. Oh, this is going to be great. They're going to be going crazy in the seats. It's got to feel kind of satisfying. You know, it's more satisfying when I actually see somebody doing it. Really? Yeah, I mean, while you're doing it, it's just like you get into this headspace where you start working at 8 o'clock in the morning and then you sort of

All of a sudden, it's like, oh, it's 10 o'clock at night. How'd that happen? So you get into losing your forebrain kind of headspace. So you just start doing it and you don't really think too much. Or if you're thinking, it's sort of all happening consciously. To me, it would be similar to a stand-up comedian. I mean, you don't know until you get in front of the audience. You don't know until that movie is presented to an audience. And the relationship between a director and an editor is...

It's one of the most personal, I think, because you talk about the gentleman who edited this film. You've got to be able to sort of read each other and know what you want. And to me, it's an amazing partnership, you know? It really is incredible. And that's why I like having the director in the room all the time because I feel like, you know, some of the parts, you know, that expression, you know, it's just –

And it's just something like a synergy that happens, especially when it's going well. Like I've worked with Michael Mann four times and Ben Affleck four times. And we have, you know, it's like you get to have this sort of shorthand with each other where you can read each other's mind practically. And we all, we had all the same sensibility. So it's, you know, somehow the combination of the two of us is so much better than it would ever be just two of us by ourselves. It's a fascinating dynamic. It really is.

Now that you've had directing, and you've done editing for so long, is this now like, I could get used to this? I like this. No, I like it a lot, actually. And I'm going to direct another film, hopefully, in the spring. But my plan is to go back and forth, because I have these relationships with directors that I just love. And I love editing. It wasn't like, oh, I'm tired of this. I want to direct. Right.

but it's so different because when you're editing, I'm by myself most of the time in a room, dark room. So on set, there's hundreds of people and it's like a family and it's fun to be around people and especially in a happy set like we had.

When I've done some editing myself at home, I used to, I was making this, I played drums and I'd make little videos of me playing drums and, you know, different camera angles and so forth. And I, while editing together a video, I will realize, oh my God, I've been doing this for three hours or something like that. You do get lost. Well, that was going to ask, do you set, do you set a timer or anything like that? Because I'm sure like seven or eight hours can pass by and you don't even realize it.

No, I don't set a timer, but it does go by like that. I usually just get hungry. When you become woozy from a lack of eating. I wanted to ask you because some of the great directors, Robert Weiss, Hal Ashby, David Lean, were all film editors. And do you think having that editing background...

It would be self-serving to say just to make a better director. But I have to assume that you go in with an arsenal of things you've seen in the remember to do this and remember not to do this list. Very much so, yeah. I think, I mean, being an editor, and that's what I mean by like having the confidence to – I waited until I had the confidence to do it or felt like I was ready to do it because I got to the point where now –

I can know how to cover a scene, know what angles to shoot, know what I need to make a scene work in a way that I didn't before I, before that and before I thought I was ready. So it helped incredibly. What I didn't have the experience with was working with actors. So that was the part that made me more nervous. Yes. The rest of it, where to put the, and I had a phenomenal director of photography, uh, Salvatore Totino. And, um,

And a great cast. Yeah, so it wasn't like I had to tell Don Cheadle how to act. But at the same time, you know, you have to make sure everybody's working on the same movie. You don't want somebody playing it this one way and playing somebody else playing it in a crazy different direction. So we had a lot of discussions about what the film was and the tone of the film, what the characters were and their backstories. And, you know, we got everybody on the same page that way. And then once we got on set...

I just tried to create a safe place for them to try things and do stuff. And they were all unbelievable. It was a blessing to have them because with lesser actors, maybe it would have been a worse director. If you're just tuning in, we're talking to William Goldenberg. The new film is called Unstoppable. It will be in theaters in December. Casey, you had a question?

Well, yeah, the Philadelphia Film Festival is going on right now, and you guys had a viewing of this, or screening of it last night, and then there was a Q&A. So how was it received, and how was the Q&A? I think it was received really, really well. I mean, it seemed, we had the Drexel Wrestling team was there. They seemed to like it. Oh, that's terrific. It was awesome, and yeah, it seemed to play really well. I mean, I got the good vibe from it. You know, sometimes it's a little hard to tell, but, and the Q&A was great. People asked smart questions, and you know. What was the best question? Oh, that's tough. Yeah.

Wasn't the question Casey just asked of you right now? Yeah, that was the toughest question. Was it the peanut chew thing? Yes, Casey immediately asked, are you with the Goldenberg's peanut chew family? No, but when we were in pre-production, actually, I...

in the middle of the night, you know, you get up and buy things on Amazon, you know, out of boredom. So I saw Goldenberg's peanut cheese and I said, oh, they have milk chocolate now. So I ordered two big bags of them and my wife was like, what? I was like, I don't know. I was half asleep. And so I took it into work and into the production office and just put them on the counter and hoped that people ate them and they were like,

I think they all thought it was my company or something. I like the sweeter chocolate than the originals. I haven't tried the milk chocolate. I'm going to have to try that. I think it would have a nice mitigating aspect to it. A quick question because I just watched it again for the 450th time. Seabiscuit to me is just such a sensational movie. It captures a time. It is done so well.

The sequences of themselves of depicting taking horses and adding spirit and competitiveness and that, you know, the second that Seabiscuit needs to, you know, he needs to compete against another horse.

What was any memories, specific special memories from that film? Because it just never fails to turn me into a blubbering mess. Yeah, that was a really fun film to work on. My most vivid memory of that film, because I'm not on set all that much, but when they went to Kentucky...

to film certain sequences, you know, but they filmed the match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral in Kentucky at the racetrack there. And it was an old racetrack that looked like it did in the 30s. It was standing in for, I'm blanking on the name of it, but it was standing in for Pimlico. Pimlico, yeah. Was it Keeneland?

It was King Lyndon. Okay, thank you. And we had 8,000 extras all in period costume. Wow. I mean, it didn't fill the bleachers, but we had to do a lot of that digitally. But 8,000 people in period costumes and the horses. And Chris McCarron, who's a really famous jockey, who was riding War Admiral and blank on his name now, who played...

Don't we require? Don Wolf. No, the guy who sat in for him. Oh, right, right. I'm just blanking on his name. He was a great actor. Yeah. No, he's actually not an actor. He's a jockey. He's also a professional jockey. I'm thinking of the other guy. Okay. Because Kobe's character was hurt. So being out there and watching these two guys with one of those horses and the way they controlled them and the way... I mean, it was just...

Yeah.

But Seabiscuit kept losing. At the end, they controlled them to a certain point, but then at the end of the day, they're horses. They do what they do. So Seabiscuit kept losing, and it's like it's getting dark. And finally, for the War Admiral, they put a lead pony in, which is not really even a full thoroughbred, so that Seabiscuit could win. Oh, no.

They changed horses? Yeah, they changed horses and put a slow horse in there. Because for some reason, Seabiscuit did not want to win that thing. Wow, that is hilarious. Steve, the moment where the Iceman turns and he goes, so long, Charlie. See you later, Charlie. I'm like, that's my cry moment in that movie. Oh, you know what does it to me as well? When the trainer's describing the first time I saw Seabiscuit coming through the mist. The editing, everything is so...

Amazing. Yeah, that's his name, David McCullough, who was doing the voiceover. And it was so, he was, his voice is so... It's perfect, perfect. It's so emotional and it just feels like it puts you into place. And that, because she was shot, that was shot inside in a soundstage. Was it? Yeah, because they wanted, it was all foggy and they wanted to be able to control the smoke and the light. So they shot, it was like this filled the soundstage with, you know, fog and smoke and just so it looked very, like, you know, mystical and...

Mission accomplished. Yeah, it worked out. William, what was your degree at Temple? Did you study film? Yeah, I went to the film school there, yeah. Do you get back from time to time? I would imagine they would want to show you off. I do, actually. I'm technically a visiting professor at Temple. I sign paperwork.

And I go like once a semester I go back or I do it on Zoom sometimes if I'm too busy. I go back and teach a master class and watch student films and give them notes and work with the graduate students and things like that. Temple has a study away program in LA that I go and speak once a semester. They bring like a

a couple hundred kids there, find them all internships, and they do their class work like in the night, so I go and speak to them. Oh, that's great. When you think back as a student who you were then, any idea that you would get to this level in your career? God, no. No, I mean, it...

I mean, nobody in my family ever did anything in the arts. My father had a delicatessen here. Oh, where? On Fifth Street between Spruce and Pine. Wow. Yeah. He sold it like in the...

I think in the mid-80s. But it stayed a deli for a long time. I think it's a gourmet shop now. I go back and see if this stuff's still on the menu. It was a sandwich named after me. He could have had a Seabiscuit sandwich. You won the Oscar for Argo, and that was such a great Seabiscuit story. Are there any similar stories from Argo? Anything, like the lasting memories or stories you could share with us? Well, my most favorite night on that movie was we were shooting a scene...

and I went to the set that they were shooting and I went to the set that night and, and there was a long break and I was sat with Ben and Alan Arkin in the room, just the three of us and Alan Arkin was telling stories about, Oh my God. I was just like, I was just like, can I make this last forever? Yeah. You know, uh,

I love that man. I mean, it was nothing to do with the shooting of the movie. It was just getting to spend time with Ben. I mean, I see Ben all the time, but, but, uh, spending time with Alan Arkin was really a thrill, you know, a massive fan of the movie. The heart is a lonely hunter, which he does. Yeah. One word in the Carson McCullough story. And then he, the same guys cat in catch 22. I mean, the versatility is amazing. I mean,

We always talk about this, and you're obviously a fan of film. How often do you find yourself having to fight the urge to fanboy? Oh, um...

A lot. I mean, you know, I've known Ben Affleck for 18 years at this point, but I barely knew Matt, you know. I met him a couple of times, but very briefly. And then on air, he did a rewrite on the script. He was a producer. He was the and Ben are obviously best friends. And so I spent a lot of time with him. And at the beginning, it was hard not to be fanboy. Yeah. And for air, you were talking about that. I was reading that you guys –

basically everything was in one building. All the sets, you could walk down, as you said before, and ask questions.

Both of them? What was going... I mean, that's not usually the norm in film production, correct? No, it's a very... Because a lot of the movies take place in the Nike offices. We were able to do that. And we weren't going to cut it there originally, but then Ben had the idea to just put the editing room right there. I mean, I'd walk out of my door sometimes and they'd be like, oh, the wardrobe department. Or they're shooting in the hallway. That is so cool. Yeah, it made it really fun. I mean, Ben would... He'll probably kill me for saying this, but he would see a cut scene and he...

fortunately for me, he usually liked them and he would literally airdrop it to his iPhone and like run upstairs and show the crew the scenes on the iPhone. Wow. Like,

the studio would be so mad. Because you're going to hack in. Yeah, yeah. We're not going to tell anyone. It's like very immediate. But he was so proud of what was happening. He's like, take a look at what we're doing. I mean, it's like the scenes are well cut or whatever, but it's all sort of a magic thing. Like when they're acting and the writing and the directing all comes together in the cinematography. You know, it's like

you know, it's hard to make good stuff. So when it's good, you really, you kind of know. It is. Yeah. We're always fascinated by the amount of time it takes for projects to go from concept to consumer. How long has this film, Unstoppable, been in the works with you? Oh, gosh. About seven years. Wow. Yeah. We finished the script about seven years ago. We shopped around. It was hard to sell it. Then the pandemic happened and

And that put things back. And then we finally, I, that was before Ben and Matt were involved. And then while we were on air in October of 22, I think it was, I, um, you know, it was sort of the film. We're still trying to get the film off the ground. And I said, ask Ben to read it because I sort of lost perspective at that point. And I said, look, I'm not asking you to make this because they just started this new company, uh,

I just want to know your opinion. And he read it and he loved it and gave it to Matt. And Matt loved it. He said, we'll make it. And I was like, oh, wow. Great. Wow. And so we started shooting in May of 23. And then 11 days into shooting, we got shut down by the writers and Actors Strike. Yeah. And Actors Strike. Yep. We shut down for six months.

And then we got back up and shot the remaining 22 days. So it was a long... Oh, man. We finished the movie in June, but the visual effects took until, gosh, like September to finish. I can say this. We're fans of your editing work, fans of your directing work. You're a brand-new directing...

quote unquote. And so what you will be producing in the future, we are definitely tied into. So please make sure you apprise us of it when you have new projects coming out. Yeah. Yeah. We'll help get the word out for sure. Thank you. Well, welcome back to Philadelphia and thank you for stopping by WMMR, which by the way, William leaned into me. He's like,

I remember this station way back when. Oh, my God. It's so surreal to be in the MMR. I saw all my friends last night. They were all jealous. Excellent. Well, it's wonderful to meet you. Congratulations. And good luck with this film. We appreciate it. It's called Unstoppable. Out in December. William Goldenberg, everybody. We're going to take a quick break. We'll come back in just a moment. Stay with us.

Hey, it's Kathy Romano. This month on Her Story, you'll hear from a Chilean-born adoptee who uncovered the truth about her illegal adoption and a postpartum health coach who breaks down exactly what postpartum means and how we should be supporting new moms. Tune into Her Story with me, Kathy Romano, every Sunday morning at 7 a.m. on 93.3 WMMR because every woman has a story worth sharing.

Russell Simmons. Yes. The entrepreneur. He and his wife, they have a daughter. She is 21 years old. And apparently she has started dating a guy who is 60? 65. What? 65 years old. Her name is Aoki. She's 21. And his name is Vittorio Asaf. He is a restaurateur. He's wealthy. Yeah.

But what made it so interesting is that the mom and dad, Kimora Simmons, posted a picture of a panda bear pulling her cub back, and it says, on my last nerve, like, she could not, like, I can't believe this is a thing. Wow. So suffice it to say, they are not thrilled with what's going on. Wow.

Okay. I'm texting my mom right now. I hope that she will get back to me because I'm meeting for the first time in two weeks my cousin who I think that she... I want to say she's maybe like 25. Her boyfriend who is... All we know is he's over 70. What? Yeah. That's all you know? That's all we know. Wealthy? I...

You don't know? Listen, she's... Because that's an obvious question, right? She's traveling and going on trips, so maybe, but he's not like... But he's not like wealthy where you, you know what I mean, where he has millions or billions of dollars. Maybe he, I think he has money for a 70-year-old man who's...

gone to work his entire life. He's got a very full piggy bank. Right, and is now in retirement or whatever. Yeah, because that usually is the question. Okay, what's the impetus for this? Steven mentioned a scenario off air which I thought might be kind of fun and interesting to pose to the audience is that what do you do if you're a parent, and maybe it's not necessarily just an age thing, but it can be, and one of your kids is dating somebody and...

You're just not having it. You know what I mean? That is a delicate position to be in because you don't want to ruin the relationship with your child, obviously, but you also don't want your child to do something really stupid. Well, here's the thing. So not having kids but having maybe have been the object of never had an age difference like this, but sometimes you're not the guy that they want for their daughter or vice versa.

And there is that dynamic that just to me seems to be a tinderbox if you're a parent. Like, how do you play this? Because...

if you act all pissed off, that may be what they're looking for. And now you've sent the daughter or son that much further into the arms of this other person. And you're talking about an adult child, by the way. She's 21. Somebody who's 21. But you're still, you're the parents. Right. You know what I mean? So, I mean, to me, it has to be like, what the hell do I do? I don't know. Um,

Listen, my mom did a lot of crazy things or made me think a lot of crazy things growing up. But the one thing she did right, I think, was this. So when I dated somebody that she didn't like or didn't approve of or just didn't think it was, you know, the right thing, she kept her mouth shut. She kept her mouth shut. She kept her mouth shut and like some of them for like a couple of years because she said, I knew eventually you would see it.

You know, like you had to see it. I couldn't tell you no, because the second you tell them no, they're going to run closer to what you're saying, you know, no to. Right. And it worked. By the way, feel free to call in 215-263-WMMR. Kathy, about that though, your mom...

keeping her mouth shut. Was it obvious? No. Okay. No, because you know what? It's not like I dated people who were like, you know, these nasty humans. They were, you know, very nice people. It's just it wasn't, you know, what she...

I guess had hope for me. So how's the slug? Yeah. No, so she would... How's the deadbeat? She would... No, she was very nice to them. And like I said, they were nice guys. Right. They weren't for you. Right. She didn't think they were for me. Yeah. All right. So did you ever date anybody that was...

uh like too old for you at the time like fonzie no it was an age case that wasn't it all right because i worry about you know because i have daughters and um doctors and for the most part they are only um exposed to people their age you know what i mean and so i worry that you know they'll be put in a situation let's say they go and find a job somewhere yeah where and they meet one of these working with somebody who's

older than or you know what i mean like i think i'd go nuts and i don't even have this scenario it's not like one of my cats is going to come home with an older cat right you know uh but but i mean on that level it's like to me it just seems like you're playing with nitroglycerin here's a text that says russell was 35 when he met a 17 year old camora yes the apple doesn't far too fall from the tree far from the tree this person says i know a woman who dated tom jones yes that tom jones

Pretty sure she was 18 and he was 60. Yeah!

So let me ask you then, Kathy, while you're looking this up. Okay. Have you ever, or do you know of anyone, because I've heard this happen, where they'll date someone just to piss off the parents. Well, yeah, I think. Just to piss off the parents. And I also don't think a lot of times it's done intentionally. Yeah. I think it's just, like, I had a friend who, she also, she dated somebody that was much older than her. Parents did not approve, and there was. How much older?

20 years? Yeah, at least 20 years. And it may have even been like 25. Now, he was very young for his age. He looked young. He acted young. He was in shape. So they didn't look super odd together, but their backgrounds were much different. And her background included some money and things that were being passed down to her. Oh. And they were like, uh-uh, no way. Freaked the hell out.

Yeah. Here's a text that says, my sister-in-law was in her late 20s dating a man at the time in his late 60s. He was older than her father. The money was certainly a reason why they dated. It was always awkward. They broke up, and she is now married with two kids with a great guy about 10 years older. But I would like to have seen what dad thought about, you know, a guy calling him Junior. Hey, Junior. Hey, son. Yeah.

Hey, son. So this is like almost a 45-year difference between these two. I mean that. And they were posting pictures, I guess, wherever they were, St. Barts or whatever. And he's got his shirt off. She is a model at 21. And he's got his shirt off. And listen, God bless, you know, whatever. But I mean, it's, I'll use the appropriate word, disgusting. Disgusting.

No, it's not Norm. All right. And then we were also just asking about parents not approving of who their kids are dating. I'm going to go to Virginia. Hi, Virginia. Good morning. Hey, Gadzooks. Gadzooks. Virginia, what's up? Well, I have a son who is 23, and he is dating a woman who's about 55. Okay. Okay.

Picture a nice, young, good-looking dude with Camilla Parker Bowles. That's not good. That's not good. So how are you handling this? Have you piped up or do you just call her your majesty? They've been dating for a year and a half now. Okay. When it first happened, I was like, oh, my God, dude, you're getting a grain of goodies. I can't take it. So...

I met her. We went to dinner. And when we walked back in the house, he goes, well, what do you think? And I said, I think she's a nice person. And he said, are you still skeeved out by it? And I'm like, oh, hell yeah. She's a nice person. I can't tell him who to love. If they want to put up with each other, whatever. I get that, but I mean...

So your thing is just to get a hint. You don't like it. Yeah, you just don't like it. Something feels wrong about it, even though she seems to be a decent person, right? There's pros and cons. Yes, she's a very decent person. I don't know how she puts up with his little spicy ass. Let me ask you something. When you guys went out to dinner... I love this guy. Virginia, I love you. Was it the earlier bird special? Was it like 2 o'clock in the afternoon?

No, we went out to real dinner. Okay, all right. Wow. Okay, there's pros and cons. Okay, con, I don't see a long-term end for this relationship. Right. Pro, he can't knock her up. Okay. All right, Virginia, may I ask, if you don't mind, how old are you? I'm 56. Okay. You're 56? Yeah. And she is 50-something? 55-ish. She's almost your age. Yeah.

Oh my God, that's... Yeah, man, that's... That's freaky. Yeah, we can talk about the same shows we watch. Yeah, right. There you go. Well, that's cool. That's a pro. But is this, you know...

What's the proper term? Oedipus. Yeah, an Oedipal thing. I seriously doubt it. She looks nothing like me. Okay. It doesn't matter. Looks have nothing to do with an Oedipal complex. I mean, sometimes he'll say, oh my God, that's what she said. And I'm like, well, we're both got to this age and know a thing or two. So...

Listen, the second he starts asking to borrow some of your clothing on date nights, that's when you got to bring the curtain down. Your plan is to just...

Not be over-intrusive and let it happen because he's an adult. Like he said, if you protest too much, you'll drive it harder. Yep. I'm just going to let it play out. Okay. I think that's probably the right thing to do. Now, if there were signs that she was a bad person and you knew that it was nefarious or something like that, then yes, I could see stepping in, but...

And even that comes with its complications. I have to step in and have him take her to the curb. I don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, good luck with everything. Thanks, Virginia. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. It would be weird, man, if your kid was dating someone who's maybe your age or older. Yeah. Yeah.

I think the only time I would ever step in is if my child was not a legal adult yet, right? If they were 16, 17 years old, I would definitely step in. And I would definitely have a one-on-one conversation with the other party. You go, the hell are you doing? Yeah. The hell are you doing? Go sniff somewhere else. I do have a friend who is married to someone who I believe is either her dad's age or a couple years older. Okay.

So, yeah. Jesus. I remember asking, like, you know, how they felt, how the dad felt. Kind of mushy. No, she was like, they get along. Like, they have things in common and they have stuff they can talk about. Yeah, for the first time I have a friend. Well, and we've talked about this before, but, like, with my cousin, what is she talking to him about? We were tying lures the other evening. They both like soup. Yeah. No, but, like, what are they, when, you know, like, when...

The girl is so much younger or whatever, whichever way around. When there is such a large age difference, what are they talking about? Well, shut up about the son! I'll tell you this. If you stop and think about it, they both spanked her for different reasons. Oh, my God.

So here's a text that says, my father's oldest friend is 78. His wife is in her early 30s and they have an eight-year-old son. Their son's first and middle names is Tom Brady. So Kathy, you showed me a picture. Is this the... Yeah. So the girl is very attractive. Yes. And the guy looks like her accountant. Yeah.

Yes, I know. I want to say who he looks like, but I don't know. I feel like it's going to give away. Yeah, I think there's a 45-year age difference. So that's what this is with Russell Simmons and the daughter. The younger you are, the smaller age gap.

is kind of like a big deal. And then when you get older, it's like... And I'm only saying because I have a friend who, when we were freshmen in college, she... So she was a freshman in college. She was dating a kid who was a sophomore in high school. Right. Right? And at that time, it was almost as if she... You know what I mean? Like the 70-year-old and the 20-year-old. Yeah.

You're exactly right. You know? As it moves along in various... Yeah. So, in that example, if someone is 33 or 34 and dating a 68-year-old, it's like, ah, that's weird. Yeah. But it's not like... But... Yeah. Not outrageous. Not outrageous. You've been an adult for a while now. And I think that's the perception. How long have they been an adult? Yeah. When I was 18, my now-fiance was six, so I'm glad I didn't date her then. Yeah, it would have been weird. Oh, my God. She's that much younger than you? She's 12 years younger than me, yeah. Oh, my God. We're talking about...

about nick and andrea right now what do you guys talk about yeah well it's a little different when you're in your 40s and she's in her early 30s and you know like to casey's point uh yeah shut up about the sun we watch the office yeah it doesn't seem weird at all it's a little it's a bit of an age gap but you let her stay up a little bit later and watch the office well she makes me pudding and

And then she puts me to bed. Let me go. You need another sweater, dear. We've got a couple of Megans here. Megan Kay. Megan, you're on the air. Good morning. Hey. First time caller. Long time listener. Wonderful. A couple of them today. All right. What's up, Megan? So my dad totally can catch red flags. And I was married to a guy for about six years. But when we first started dating, he

He totally was like, this guy is not for you. And he honestly probably caught him inadvertently, like, texting, calling other people, and then also on the computer with other people. But even out the gate, he was like, this guy is not for you, and I'm going to put up this front to be like, is this guy really the one, you know? So what kind of a wedge did that put between you and your dad when he came clean about that?

Um, I honestly, and this is very sad. I never told my dad until years later. My mom knew all the stuff that had happened was happening before my dad did. No, no, no. I mean, I mean, when, when he confronted you and said, this guy is not for you, did that ruin the relationship between you and your dad? Because no, not at all. Okay. Not at all. Cause in the long run, because now I'm remarried.

yeah and my husband out the gate he knew he was going to have this front because he was already defensive because the guy i mean basically cheating but he he was like uh... how could i win him over and i didn't tell you that but i was like my husband's like inadvertently like

dealing with him on the side for other things. I'm not quite following. Yeah, me neither. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what was the age difference between you and this guy? Was it a normal relationship without a best? He was six years older than me.

That's nothing. That's nothing. But still, the parents didn't approve, and I did ask for people to call in with that. Correct. But it was like, my dad just inadvertently knew. I do think that, like, parents just know. Yeah. Sometimes. Doesn't mean they get it right every time. And sometimes your parents, or at least by my reckoning, seem to be way overprotective, and nobody's ever good enough for their kid. Megan, real quick, how old were you when you guys started dating?

Um, I was 18. Now that's a good question. I was 18 and he was 25. Yeah. So like when I look at that, I go, dude, why are you hanging out with a high school kid? Like go hang out with, you know what I mean? Like at that time, go hang out with a 50 year old. It's only five or six years, but there's a, this is something I get it. It may not even make sense, but there's a perception. And I agree. It seems sort of weird.

Let me see here. A few different things going on. Let's go to the other Megan now. Hi, Megan 2. You're on the air. Good morning. YouTube. YouTube. Are you a YouTube listener, watcher with the President Steve Show? I certainly am. It's in the bottom corner of my monitor at work. Oh, we love that. I love it. Thank you, Megan. I appreciate it. All right. What's your story you wanted to share here?

So I have two very quick things. One, I dated a guy for five years and he was just awful. He was just terrible. And my parents were, they kind of made fun of him. They kind of made digs at him like, oh yeah, that sounds great. Like, oh, he sounds successful. He sounds great. And then the day I broke up with him, they were like, hey, what's up with you?

So they would playfully make fun of him, but did they ever sit you down and say, this guy's a nightmare. What are you doing? Yeah.

No, but it was always playful and it was always like, ha ha, very funny. And then I would think about it. You know what I mean? It was it was definitely a very subterfuge of my parents, but I appreciated them for it because they never outright said no, can't see him. And had they done that, would have that have driven you deeper into that relationship?

It might have. I mean, I wasn't a very rebellious kid, but it definitely was one of those things where like, well, if I can't have it. You want it. Yeah. But the other thing I wanted to say is that I have a cousin who was actually dating her mom's boyfriend's older brother. Hang on a second there. Cousin dating her mom's boyfriend's older brother? Wow. That's right. Okay. So technically that makes her the slut-in-law. No. Yeah.

Dating a guy that's even older than the guy that she's dating. That's wild. And is his brother. That's pretty freaky. How did that end? I think she was...

17 and he was 48. Oh my God. 17 and 48. That's illegal. That's bordering on illegal. Depends on what state you're in. Yeah. And then I think when she turned 18, they moved states. You know how the parents never knew? It's because blue emu. It doesn't stink. Thank you, Megan. Appreciate it. Let's see. Let's go to someone who wouldn't listen to the parents. I'm going to go to Vicky. Hi, Vicky. Good morning.

Hey, good morning, guys. You rock. Thank you. Vicki, what's up? Okay, so I got a twofer for you. All right, so number one, the guy before my husband, we were in teenagers high school. We dated throughout high school, and we got engaged, let's say fairly young. Let's say we were like 20 years old. Okay. And my parents, more so my mother, said,

I really didn't like that because she thought maybe I was kind of throwing my life away, even though I was still in school and all that good stuff. So things came to a head, and we fought a lot. So after about a year or so, we broke up, gave him back the ring the whole night.

And when I was dating my then-husband, which I'll get to that story, it was one Christmas, and we started talking about the ex. And my entire family, with my mother cheering everybody on, saying, ìThank God you didn't marry him.î

We didn't want that to happen. There was no way it was going to happen, you know, the whole night. And I'm like, and I'm looking and I'm like, but none of you guys said anything. And they're like, if we did, would that have made a difference? And I'm like, ah, I got you there. And then luckily for that guy, I dodged a bullet because he wound up getting on the Megan's Law list. Oh my God. He got on Megan's Law list. Like no one ever puts that in their dating profile. Whoa.

Yeah, I heard from, like, after, like, this is years after the fact. I heard, luckily, my family is full of law enforcement. Yeah. And kind of got the background on how that, it was like kind of one of them dateline things, if you will. Yeah, when they say they're in law and it turns out to be Megan's law, it's a big red flag. Yeah. Jesus. So there was that.

And then, well, so now my husband, who I'm married to now, he is 12 years older than me. Okay. I met him when I was 21, and he was 32 at the time. Yeah. To me, that, again, I understand the spread. It doesn't immediately. As a parent, it would to me. It would. Okay. Yeah. If you're talking about a 21-year-old girl and a guy in his 30s. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. How did you guys meet? Just a bit much. How'd you meet, Vicki?

We met at school. He was actually working at the college I was attending, and I was a work-study student. So, no, he was not my professor. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I saw him on an episode of Dateline. I fell in love. See, I would think I was going to say, you know, they're both of age to, you know, be at a bar. So, you're 21, you're at the bar. 32, you're probably still going out to a bar. But you guys met because he was your teacher, so.

No, he was not. No, I'm kidding. Listen, Kathy totally approves. Well, hey, what did I say? An A's an A, right? Yeah, that's right. An A's an A. Wow. That's awesome. Wait, so you guys are still together, right? Yeah, we'll be married 18 years this year. We'll be together 20 years total. But your parents had an issue with it at the beginning? Again, my mother. And now? What?

Now it's much better. Like when they first asked me, you know, well, who are you seeing? And, you know, you keep talking about this guy. And I'm like, oh, yeah, he's really nice. I'm telling him all about him. And my dad is actually like reading the paper, you know, not really paying attention to my or my mother's conversation. And she goes, well, how old is this guy?

So I start giggling. So now she knows, oh, something ain't right. I can't not giggle when I'm not nervous. And she goes, how old is he? And I'm like, 32. She goes, what's an old man like that doing with a young girl like you? I'm like, well, thank you for making me feel like I'm 12 and he's a pedophile. Yeah. That was the last guy. Yeah.

No, I got that out of my system. But Vicki, now, and that's the problem. Now this guy's a gun smuggler. She's like, no, I'm an adult, blah, blah, blah. But like now as a 40-year-old woman or whatever, I mean, can you look back at your younger self and go, yeah, I was really young and wet behind the ears in other places?

Well, yeah, I mean, because, you know, I mean, I'll be honest. In the beginning, when we first started dating, there was that struggle. And there was even early on in our marriage. It was the struggle of...

Me trying to find my voice with him and trying to, you know, give my point of view and trying to get it in a, I guess, an adult way. And you're always going to think about the pedophile that got away. Oh, my God. Yeah, Vicki, I mean, listen, you know, not for nothing, but like, so Marissa over here is 40 years old, right? Yeah. But we met her when she was 21. Right. And we all dated her. And we all dated her. We all got a crack at that. You know what I'm saying? No, but like...

It's weird because I know she's 40 years old, but I still perceive her as the 21-year-old Marissa. And for you, Vicki, it's the same thing with your husband.

Yeah, I mean, it was in the beginning, but now it is different. I mean, my husband will say, like, holy God, like, you know, without you, I don't know how the hell I would function. I'm like, yeah, me too. Well, let's check it out. All right. Thank you, Vicki. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We'll see you. All right. One more quick call. We'll go to Sally. This sounds interesting. Sally, good morning. Good morning.

Hi, how are you guys this morning? Great. You have a story about yourself you'd like to share. Yeah, I was 19, 20 years old. I ended up in a relationship with a man 20 years older than me. Okay. Had two kids. My mom did everything she could to break us up. Wow. Including stealing money.

No way. All right, let me ask you, how long did this relationship last and then how long into it did your mom do stuff like that? Sleep with him?

She tried. She tried. No, so she'd take him out to the bars and do what? Honestly, that's not the first time she tried. Oh, my God. Oh, she really did try to sleep with your man? Yeah. Sounds like the guy should jump in and go, hey, listen, this lady's really not the mother. This is not the mother for you. Yeah. This guy's after. Wow. That's a top.

Yeah, yeah. So I was in the relationship for a good 10 years. Wow. Every time she would try to pull something, it just drove me closer to him. There you go. And that's what we were talking about, that that can backfire on a parent. So parents listening, if you're thinking you're going to sleep with your son or daughter's boyfriend or girlfriend, it won't work. It won't work? No, no.

Yeah. Hang on. Sally, what was the nail in the coffin in the relationship? They got married. The nail in the coffin was when he took our last $200 for Christmas and spent it on alcohol instead of presents for the kids. Gotcha. All right. There you go. All right. Okay. All right. So mom was right. But it came back to bite me in the ass. What's your relationship like with your mom?

How do you think it'd be after? Could you imagine that? I mean, I'm just Kathy. I don't want you with this boy. And if I have to, I'll sleep with him myself just to show you. It's insane. Yeah. Well, no wonder it's strained, the relationship.

Well, yeah, because she couldn't get him to leave, and she couldn't get me to leave. Why would he leave? He was begging both you and your mother. Yeah. Yeah. This is too weird to comprehend. Yeah, but you're okay now? Oh, yeah, I'm fine now. All right, all right. My daughter ended up in an abusive relationship, and I wish I had the patience of Kathy's mom. Your mother's a saint, Kathy. I'm just kidding.

I'm just going to put that out there right now. I mean, her adopted mother, not Janice Joplin. I did everything I could to get my daughter away from him, and no, I didn't go as far as my mother, thank goodness. Okay, yeah. I don't know. Did they break up eventually, her and the abuser? Yeah, yeah. Good. It was physically abusive. It was really bad. It's horrible. It's terrible. All right, well, hang in there, Sally. Thank you for the call. We do appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, it's complicated, man, but...

It'd be interesting if you were in that scenario as Russell Simmons is. Yes. His wife where their 21-year-old daughter is dating a guy in his 60s. 65. 65 years old. And they are public with it. And there's photos all over Instagram. And they have been very vocal about saying they hate it. All right. She hates it. We're going to take a break. Stay with us. Stay put. Stay with us.

What's going on in the world of rock? You'll find it at WMMR.com, your one-stop outlet for all the rock news you need to know. WMMR.com, where FOMO goes to die. Now, back with more of the Preston and Steve Show podcast. Bizarre! WMMR presents Preston and Steve's Bizarre File. Bizarre!

Let's begin with this idiot. A Tennessee man is facing charges after he allegedly opened fire on a family that was sledding in snow, purporting that the family was on his property.

Benjamin Cook is facing six counts of aggravated assault in connection with the shooting. Additional charges could be filed pending the outcome of the investigation. Deputies responded following a report that the man was shooting at a family of six playing outside in the snow. Information from the scene showed that the parents and their four children walked down the street to go sledding down a hill in their neighborhood. But around 1130 a.m., the family said they heard gunshots coming from the direction of a house down the hill. The mother said, listen to this.

She saw snow flying up from the ground, just a couple feet from her one-year-old son. Yeah, take out the little one, right? Yeah, well, that's what you do. So at any point, was there a, hey, stop that, or anything else yelled out before you opened fire? The parents immediately... I would prefer you didn't do that. ...looked in the direction of where the shots were coming from and yelled at a man later identified as Cook to stop shooting. The man claimed the family was on his property, but the family responded they were not on his property. Okay.

Well, it's shooting time. They gathered their belongings and went home before reporting the incident to the authorities. Deputies responded to the shooter's house and spoke to Cook. They also obtained pictures from a neighbor showing Cook in matching clothing, walking through the woods, carrying a black rifle slung across his back. He was then arrested on aggravated assault charges.

An investigation also revealed that the family was indeed not on Cook's property when he began shooting. They were putting creases in the snow. A search warrant was executed at Cook's home and several rifles were found inside. I bet if you catch him on a good day, he's a joy. He's probably an okay guy. All right. So a man accused of threatening to shoot store employees who caught him trying to steal hot pockets from a Michigan store says,

Was eating Hot Pockets when the police went to arrest him. Well, when you want a great meal. Without the big deal? I mean, that's your option, yeah. Daniel Hudson went into Dollar General and he began stuffing Hot Pockets into his pocket. When an employee confronted him, Hudson took the Hot Pockets out of his pocket, grabbed a container of chicken wings and began yelling at employees. Take those Hot Pockets out of your pocket! While doing this, he allegedly showed his gun that was in his coat pocket, threatening an employee that he would, quote, blow his head off.

The manager told Hudson to leave. For a Hot Pocket? Called the police. Both employees told authorities Hudson was a regular customer at the Dollar General and knew where he worked. And boy does he love his Hot Pockets. Officers went to Hudson's workplace where they found him in the break room eating Hot Pockets. He was then taken into custody. Officers found a 9mm pistol in his backpack during the arrest.

And they learned that although there's no record of the gun being reported stolen, it was registered to a different person from Detroit. Wait till you hear his excuse here, okay? Please. All right. By the way, he didn't have a valid carry license for the gun. So he said when he went to the Dollar General while he was on his lunch break, he told police that he didn't intend to steal Hot Pockets, but he didn't see a clerk leading him to putting the Hot Pockets in his pocket.

When he was confronted by an employee, he said he put the Hot Pockets back on the counter, pulled his gun out, and then put it back in his coat pocket. He told police he never pointed a gun at anyone. When he left the Dollar General, he said that he went to the supermarket next to his workplace to get two Hot Pockets before returning to work. When authorities asked Hudson about the statements that he made towards the employees, he said he told the workers...

Maybe I should blow you blow your ass. He said when he was told he was no longer allowed to make a purchase. When asked to clarify his statement, he said it was, quote, basically a threat.

Hudson explained to police the gun that he originally had originally belonged to a woman he used to talk to, and she gave it to him in September. He said he was supposed to bring it back to her, but never did, and he said she might tell police that he stole it from her. Of course she will. He also told police that he shot the firearm one time behind a liquor store near him, but didn't recall the date.

I went out shooting behind the liquor store. While saying this, he reportedly mentioned that he didn't want to walk around with it knowing that he's a felon. And...

And then he spoke about his 2017 conviction for carrying a concealed weapon. Listen, I don't know the company that makes Hot Pockets, but if they don't hire this guy for an ad campaign. He also reportedly admitted that he had previously lied to a detective saying the firearm he had was a BB gun. So he faces charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Listen, I really like Hot Pockets. All right. Let's see. Oh, this is... Yeah. Isn't that the Hot Pockets story? No. No.

No, wait, hold on. I have an even better one for you. Yeah, there is. Yeah, this is great. All right. So the Polish defense minister dismissed a high ranking general who is allegedly responsible for losing anti-tank mines and they were eventually found at an Ikea. They've got

They've got everything. Yes, they do. And Swedish meatballs. The Polish defense minister shared a post that said, we would like to inform you that on January 9th, by decision of the minister of defense, the head of the support inspectorate, Major General Artur Kepzinski, was dismissed from his post. Now, Kepzinski's job as the head of the support inspectorate was, among other things, to manage police.

the logistics support system. And according to reports, soldiers failed to unload part of the train carrying over a thousand tons of explosives in total and the anti-tank mines continued to circulate around the country before they went missing. On paper, false information about the number of mines was provided.

and officials apparently became aware of the problem when the weapons were found sitting in an Ikea warehouse, at which point someone had called the military to ask, and I quote, can you please come and collect your mines?

How close do they get to being put out on the store floor? So an investigation into the matter was open last year, which is currently ongoing. So the site that I get this from is a great site called Fark. It's a news aggregator, and they make fake headlines, and they said, IKEA enters into...

introduces their new Kaboom line, which I thought was great. I haven't been to Ikea in forever. I talked to a guy yesterday. He was telling me that now, like when you check out at Ikea, they ask you if you want a hot dog. Yeah. I was like, yeah. I'm like...

I didn't think I wanted a hot dog, but I guess I do now. So they offer hot dogs at the point of the... And mines as well. Mines, yeah. And mines. All right. Well, they do have a store there where you can buy Swedish... Lots of great Swedish food. Lingonberries and all that stuff that you have a hard time finding. It's a lingonberry. It's a kind of berry. Okay. Well, they make... They mainly make jelly and jam and spreads and stuff out of lingonberry. It's pretty good. We are going to take a break. We're going to come back in just a moment. So stay with us.

MMRBQ 2025. Saturday, May 10th at Freedom Mortgage Pavilion. Somebody check my brain. Alice in Chains. Three Days Grace. With both Matt Walsh and Adam Gontier. Stop!

Mammoth WVH. Hail, hail the Black Sheep. Dorothy plus Dead Poets Society. Why the hell would you hurt yourself in this? Philadelphia Hard Rockers, Octane. And I've never forgotten. Return to Dust. Belly up.

Plus local shots opener Fat Mez. And of course, the President Steve's side stage with live band karaoke featuring Side Arms. It's always an all-day party, so don't miss out. Buy your tickets now at Ticketmaster.com from 93.3 WMMR. Everything that rocks.

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The trash business is a goldmine. 93.3 WMMR with Preston and Steve's Hollywood Trash. What's going on this morning, Steve? Well, Preston, Las Vegas brothels Sherry's Ranch offering a sex-travaganza to the Eagles to congratulate them for their Super Bowl victory. As a bonus gift, each player to take them up on the offer will receive a year's supply of Pistol Pete's Pecker Penicillin. Oh, my God.

Six victims of imprisoned sex offender R. Kelly saying that they have yet to receive the full $10 million they were awarded two years ago. Kelly's asking for more time, saying his prison toilet wine business is suffering supply chain issues. And finally, Jessica Alba's filed for divorce from Cash Warren. In the documents, Alba cites years of having to tell people, yes, that's his name. Yeah.

I want to throw this out there. I don't know if we'll get any response on this at all, but the story enough, I wanted to share with you. It wasn't enough for the bizarre file, but people who work in face-to-face industry, whether it be retail or working at a service industry, whatever it may be,

Um, sometimes when you are a greeter of sorts, a customer comes in or calls or you make a call, uh, there's a phrase that they require you to say. Um, and there's a guy that worked at a Jack in the Box location and apparently, uh, he

No, it was a woman. So she had to offer this greeting to people when they came up to the drive-thru or to the counter. And we're assuming this is every customer has to get this greeting. Yes. So the phrase that she is directed to say is, do you want to get smashed today with our new smash jack? All right. Yeah. Okay. Hi, welcome Jack in the Box. Do you want to get smashed today with our new smash jack? Oh.

which is something that they were required to say. The employee said they must follow the script every time. The smash jack is a new burger that's being served for a limited time. Oh, it's a smash burger. Yeah. And commenters were saying, what happened to... Hello, how are you? You didn't work the register at McDonald's, did you? No, I was on the grill. So I did, and we were required for a stretch to say, would you like to supersize that? And they want you to upsell. And...

You have to say it, but you say it every time, and so you get tired of having to say it. But if the manager's anywhere nearby and you don't say it, you get in trouble. Well, and then it turns into kind of like a mumble. So another place that doesn't – and I don't know exactly what they're saying is, but DSW, it's something along the lines of, I can help the next shoe lover at whatever register. Hey, shoe lover. And so then I'll try to – I can help the next shoe lover at whatever register.

Oh, really? They just mumble over it. By the way, if you have one of these phrases that you're required to say and you just can't stand it or it's weird, 215-263-WMMR, give us a call. So correct me if I'm wrong, but in cases there'll be not simply the people at the register, the people working perhaps behind the kitchen, in the kitchen, at Moe's, didn't they? Yeah, Moe's! I loved that. That was like a cool greeting. And every now and then, Steve, you'd walk in and you wouldn't get it?

Who the hell is my welcome? Guess I'm not welcome here. You leave and then you come back in. I'm a shoe lover. Oh, I'm a shoe lover. I'm in the wrong place. Yeah, it's kind of fun, but I could see if you were on the having to recite that part. We have to. There's some commercials we have to add what we call tags onto or, you know, like a call to action or some type of a phrase that you have to say. And I remember on a different radio station, a news radio station. It was KYW.

And I remember hearing a... They had to end their sponsorships. The tagline had Yippee-I-Yo-Kai-Yay. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course, yeah. And I remember hearing a person who is clearly a journalist...

And did not want to have to say yippee-ki-yay. And they delivered it that way. They were like, yippee-ki-yay. I remember. I was like, I was grinning ear to ear. I'm Tom Brokaw. Have you checked out our smash burger? I was grinning ear to ear because I'm like, I know. I can hear it in your voice and I know exactly.

It's a great day at NBC. Yeah, I know. And a lot of times they're asked as part of the sale is that you'll have your personalities do that. But, of course, it's not something they're used to doing. Hang on. Here's a text that says, it's kind of all scattered here, Nick. It says, I worked in the 90s at Lone Star Steakhouse. Uh-huh. Things how I had to... Answer the phone. Answer the phone. All right. So here it was.

Thank you for calling Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon in Marlton, home of the new 22-ounce seasoned ribeye. This is Jen. This is Jennifer speaking. How may I help you? That's so much. There are so many words. That's wordy. That's too much. Very wordy. Thank you for calling Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon in Marlton, home of the new 22-ounce seasoned ribeye. This is Jennifer speaking. How may I help you? Do you remember the greeting at the Disney store? No.

Hi, I'm Jenny. And I just turned 18. You don't remember that? I don't remember. And I've never loved Disney more. All right, let me go to Cindy. Hi, Cindy. You are on the air. Good morning. Cindy! Gadzooks, Cindy. What's up?

So not now, but back in the day when I was a teenager, I worked at Roy Rogers. And every morning I came in, you'd have to say, howdy, partner. Oh, really? Yeah, and then when they left, you'd have to say, y'all come back now, you hear? Oh, man. And would you? And did you keep the pep in your reciting of that? Yeah, I was 16. It was my first job, and I was only there for a few months. Yeah, but I would think that 16 and only there for a few months, you would be giving it...

Very little enthusiasm. No, unfortunately. And there were no creeps coming in, you know, when it was full of, like, teenage girls dressed like cowgirls in your hat and your apron. I remember that. That's right. Roy's used to have their cashiers dress as cowboys and cowgirls. That's cool. Hey, Cindy, which Roy Rogers did you work at? It was Adams Avenue over, like, in Feltonville. Feltonville?

Well, I guess it was like Crescentville, maybe it's called. All right. So it's not Fairless Hills? No, no. Okay. All right. Well, thank you, Cindy, because Sue worked at the one in Fairless Hills. Let's go over to her. Hi, Sue. Good morning. Good morning. Sue, when were you working at Roy Rogers? It was probably around 75 or so. It was the one right in front of Oxford Valley Mall. Yeah. Okay. Can you give us your best howdy partner?

So it was more than that. It was, howdy, partner, may I serve you? Oh, okay. Wow, that's a come on. Oh, yeah, it sure was. And then at the end, it was, we'd have to say happy trails. I didn't laugh on that. Happy trails. That was Roy Rogers. As opposed to, y'all come back. Right, yeah. All right, happy trails. It was an experience, yes.

Wasn't that his clothes? Happy Trails to you? I think so. That was the song, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, the howdy, partner, may I serve you was always ridiculous. Yeah. Anyone here besides, so Nick, you had it. Preston, you never had it. I never had any of those. They never would have the bad judgment to put me at the register or the counter. It would be a bad idea. I'd be like that guy that Preston did the impression of at Panera.

Remember that guy? Oh, yeah. That's right. Don't put a microphone in front of that kid's face. No, I think of Casey in Breaking Bad when they bought the car wash. Remember, it said, have an A1 day. Uh-huh. Because it was A1 car wash. And there's also in...

Oh, what's the movie? American Beauty. He goes to the drive-thru and the girl's like, welcome to Mr. Smiley's. May I get a smiley blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for you? Something like that. What's the one in Fast Times at Ridgemont High? All-American Burger. All-American Burger. Yeah. We'll go to David next. Hi, David. Good morning. Hey, guys. How you doing? Good. What's up, David?

So my first job was actually at Sesame Place. I think I was around 15 or 16. It was actually the first year they were open for Christmas. And I remember they had us actually wearing this ugly green sweater. It was not a good look. So they

They decided to start after I worked in retail. After every transaction, you would have to say, I have a sunny day. I'm not sure if they still do it. It's been a few years since I worked there. And I remember one time it was raining outside. And I asked my manager, I'm like, do I still need to stay? If it's raining, it seems counterintuitive. Yeah.

And they were like, yes, you still need to say it. So I sent it to a customer. They weren't exactly happy about it because they're trying to enjoy their day and it's raining outside. Did you slip in a have a rainy day just to see if it would take?

I think I would have gotten fired. Totally. Thank you, David. I like this text an awful lot. It says, I worked at Zelinsky Auto Parts and had to say, I make auto parts for the American working man because that's who I am and that's who I care about. He seems nice. Let me go to Greg. Hi, Greg. You're on the morning, Greg. You're not on the morning. You're on the air, Greg. What's up, bud?

Good morning. How are y'all doing? Good, buddy. What's up? So I pull into Starbucks almost every day in the morning. I don't work there, but it's just like my pet peeves. You know, they ask you this question on the prompter. When you go through the drive-thru, can we start you off today with any food items? And, you know, I'm like, no!

So I know exactly. They're upselling. And especially if you go through the drive through, that's what they say. They're trying to push their food. Sure. Yeah. And you know what? They might get one out of a dozen people might say, oh, you know what? Yeah, we'll get something. Can we start with something that approximates food? Yeah. But but Greg, that gets under your skin because you have no interest in the food.

Yeah, exactly. But, you know, it's just, I don't know. I know what you're saying. After a while, yeah, especially if you get this preamble, you're just there for one thing. We go through it, you know, and there are iterations of callers calling in, and there's like a nice little pause, but when people say good morning or gadzooks or used to be you guys rock, like, it's a nice greeting, and it's cool to get that, but when you get it every day for years on end, you know, the bird is the word, all that kind of stuff. Like,

eventually, sometimes we get tired of those and they just sort of work their way out. Should we change it to Welcome to Moe's when people call you? Yes! Welcome to Moe's! It's funny because down the hall in sports talk, and I'll tune in from time to time, they can't stand it when the listener calls in and says, how are you guys? They can't.

They can't stand it. Why? And it's because I think they've heard it over and over again. Okay. And they're professional radio people, and they expect the listeners to know that it's unnecessary to say how you're doing. I think because it's a crutch. And it's a time filler between them getting to what they're supposed to talk about, which is sports. Lighten up. They're too cool. Too so cool. But you can hear it. You can hear it. Hey, how are you guys doing? And you'll hear them go,

We're good. All right. Yeah. We're just as guilty though, Case. Yeah. When we get tired of hearing something over and over again. Sorry to bother you guys at work. It gets old. I'm so mad you guys are. I love that. I still love it. It's cute. It is. The response is just kind of like, yeah, okay. All right. What do you want? You know, I don't,

I don't hate it. No, not at all. We're glad people are engaged. I prefer good morning it because I have a good morning to see you. It's not hate. It's just fatigue. Yeah. You just get tired. We understand the desperate loneliness of doing sports talk. Yeah. We're going to go. This is like the second chapter.

this week that you've taken it that well no no no but i will say we're not just as guilty because i think we're even if we're tired of it we're way more pleasant to our listeners than they are down the hall between i don't know like three and seven in the afternoon okay all right i'm gonna move along i'm gonna go to andrew i'm going to andrew hi andrew you're on the air good morning

Do I say hi to you guys? You guys are going to get asked? Yeah. Come on, man. Stop it. Casey. What's up, Andrew? So I used to work at Blockbuster back in the day in Fraser, Pennsylvania. I think they only have one Blockbuster left in like California or maybe Oregon. Yeah. And when I worked there, I would always have to say, okay, next movie lover in line. I'm like, well, why would you not be here if you're not a movie lover? So why do I have to say?

I have to say it over and over. Yeah. Next movie lover in line. Yeah, next mother ever. Yeah. And then I'll be like, I don't take the next son of a bitch over here.

Well, clearly. Do you have your popcorn? Do you have your candy? Do you have any of this? I have to keep asking and reminding them because the popcorn and the candy was right next to the line. So they had to like make sure, you know, we had to make sure that we reminded them that, hey, hey, do you get your candy? Do you get your popcorn? And the kids look at the parents and then the parents look at us like, why did you have it? Yeah, yeah. I got to tell you, Andrew, though, I used to love that by the Register of Blockbuster. They had the good and plenty and those little kids. And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

It was a good idea. Check one of those on. Absolutely. I'm going to go to Alan next. Hi, Alan. Good morning to you. Can you hear me, bitch? Yes. You got it, bitch. What's up? I used to work at Modell's, um,

right before I closed that, actually my first thing, I was 16. And that was when they all had the club cards. You know, every time you purchase something, you get points on the cards. That wasn't an issue me selling that. The issue I had is that they started a kids club card. So it's kind of creepy asking teenagers, hey, do you have kids? Oh, so you were required to say those words, hey, do you have kids?

Yeah, like, by the way, do you have kids? It'd be great for a club card. I'm like, no, I'm not going to ask that. That's just kind of creepy here. What's the follow-up? Oh, do you have problems in the sack? Are you impotent? You don't have performers, huh? All right. Thank you, Alan. Appreciate it. You don't have kids. You just don't want kids? Or what is it? Let's see here.

Have you ever committed a felony? How about this? I'm going to go to Bob. Bob, morning, sir. Am I on the radio? Yeah. Sweet. What's up, Bob? Hey, going back about 34 years, so I apologize for this, but this is from my service days. Okay. Good morning, quarterdeck, USS Jarrett, officer of the deck speaking. This is not a secure line and is subject to monitoring. How may I help you, sir or ma'am? Oh, yes.

Wow, man. Good for you. Bob, what was the job? Where did you work? He was in the Navy. I was a qualified surface warfare officer in the Navy. I was stationed on the West Coast, Long Beach. You know what? That's how I want listeners. When we go to them, hey, we're going to go to Bob. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's how we go to them. Repeat that again so we can write it down and do it for the subsequent callers. You serious? Yeah. You said it, but you said it so many times, Bob. Oh, my God. People would start to try to talk over you because they weren't expecting all that. Right, right. Yeah, I hear you. Well, good for you, man. I love it. Thanks, Bob. We'll see you. Thanks, great. Bye-bye. That was good.

Let me go to, let's say we have Steve. Hi, Steve. Good morning to you, sir. Good morning. What's up, buddy? So, yeah, I used to work at Fred Lee's. Okay. Right out of college. And so after they got their meals, I would have to ask them if they wanted that ice cream with it. And the thing that we had to say to them was,

Would you like a happy ending with that? I remember. I remember that. Absolutely. That was years ago. But did they ever change it? Then it changed to, would you like a hand job? Oh, man, you should have seen the look on the dad's face when I had to ask that question. I'm sure. And they were with their families, you know?

Steve, you brought back such a memory. Yes. And even then I remember thinking, wow, doesn't that have another meaning? Yeah. I was like, I have a college degree, you know, I was still trying to find a job and I'm like,

I got to say this to you. I used to love friendlies, by the way. Well, one of the most, um, one of the most, uh, um, eyebrow raising slogans for a place was salad works, which will build itself as the home of the original salad toss. There were the original salad tossers. Yeah. And it was right about that time that that phrase started to come into the lexicon. And at some point they said, need to rechange that. Yeah, most definitely. Um,

Let's see. We have Austin next. We're taking calls from people who have had to say some kind of a dumbass phrase whenever you either answered the phone or you spoke to a customer. Hi, Austin. Good morning, bud. Good morning. Good morning to see you, Austin. What's up?

So I used to work at an answering service, and so we answered for thousands of different companies, and every company had their own script. So some were just simple like, hi, how can I help you? But some were like four sentences long, and it would pop up, and you'd have to read it. You'd get in a lot of trouble if you didn't go word by word for the script. And just like that other guy, people would try to cut you off and be like, stop talking. I have a problem. I'd be like, I just got to read the script, man.

Yeah, you've got to get, you've got to buy a protocol. You're obliged to do it. You've got to work your way through that. I've wondered about those businesses, Austin, because there are people, obviously a smaller business might hire an answering service like the one you were working for, but you had to answer as if you worked for that company.

It was a real problem because people, it would be like a medical thing. Like, and it was right during COVID and people would be like, I have COVID and I'm on my deathbed. And I'm like, uh, it's like midnight on a Tuesday and I just work in an office. Would you like a happy ending? Right. I'm dying of COVID. Would you like a happy ending? Your script's all mixed up. Actually, yeah, I would. It's a way to go out. All right. Thank you, Austin. Appreciate it. Uh, we have another Navy caller. It's Russ on the line. Hi, Russ. Good morning. Good.

Good morning, guys. How are you? Good. What's up, buddy? Back in the early 90s, I was stationed at the Philadelphia shipyard and was a staff member at the naval brig that they had. And every time that the phone would ring, you'd answer it, good morning, sir or ma'am.

This is Sergeant Hoffman. This is Philadelphia Naval Station Brig. This is an unsecured line. How may I help you? There you go. Every phone call. Every single phone call. It's similar to the last guy. So they had to make sure that you knew it was an unsecured line. Yes. And that whatever you say may be heard by anyone. Yes.

Yeah, I mean, we would have family members calling to see if their loved one that was in any of the branches was...

hold up in in in the brig and i was like well i can't you know give you that information you know but again every day was you know depending on the time of the day good morning good evenings huh so the unsecured line thing is interesting you're saying there was more for people calling in civilians calling in who are going to ask sensitive questions and would want to be obviously apprised of the fact that it was not secure and other people could be monitoring

Yeah, and I think, well, some of the people I dealt with in the military, I think that helped for them as well. Hey, Russ, I don't know if you can recall or not, but when you dialed in here, how did Conor answer the phone? Good morning, WMMR. Okay. All right, pretty straight ahead. He's going to say something new now. All right, Russ, thanks, man. We appreciate it, buddy. Have a good one, guys. We should write a script for him. Good morning, bitch. You just called into the President's Team Show. How may we help you? Why don't we call him Quarterdeck USS Conor?

Okay. All right. Officer of the deck speaking. Marissa gave us these little scripts. I think they'll come in handy. Yeah. Good morning. Quarter deck USS Connor, officer of the deck speaking. This is not a secure line and subject to monitoring. How may I help you, sir or ma'am? There you go. That's what you have to say. Especially when we go, when you're going through the callers on the caller 31. Yeah. Yeah. Every time. Here's the text. It says another family thing. So this, this person worked at Friendly says another friendly thing is

Had to answer the phone a certain way for a short period of time. And here's how they would answer it. Friendly, you bet we are. Thank you for calling Winona Friendly's. This is Jen. How may I help you? Friendly, you bet we are. We need to come up with something good for Connor to say when he answers the phone today. This is off of a story of a guy who worked at Jack in the Box, or a girl who did. And her phrase to customers was,

Welcome to Jack in the Box. Do you want to get smashed today with our new smash jack? By the way, what if you're talking to an alcoholic? I was thinking smashed ass, too. Right, yeah, smashed ass. Let's see. We'll go to Samantha. Hi, Samantha. Hey, how are you? Good. What's up, Samantha?

So I worked at Applebee's and the song that we had to sing for happy birthdays was happy, happy birthday on this, your special day. Happy, happy birthday. That's all we're here to say. Hey, I thought it was very like, hey, that's happy birthday. We're good. Did you did anyone have an answer requirement for people answering the phones at Applebee's? I do remember the birthday chant.

Oh, I don't remember Anthony Defenders a while ago. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Samantha. Appreciate it. I want to go to Ryan because he's got one as well. Hi, Ryan. Morning, bud. Good morning. How are you guys doing? Great, man. What's up?

So I used to work before it was GameStop. It used to be called Funkoland back in the 90s, early 2000s. And we used to have to answer the phone with, we're having a great day here at Funkoland where you can preorder your Sega Dreamcast. How can I help you today? Man, every time. Every time somebody called.

Every time. And we used to change it up, too. We would be like, we're having a sunny and beautiful day at 74 degrees here at Funkoland. How can we help you? Man, if I would have known any better back in the day, I would have just called over and over and over again. Just to have them repeat it? Yeah. How about this for Connor? How about joining our circle jerk with our brand new jerk chicken? I like that. Connor, you down with that? We're going to go to Bill. Hi, Bill. Good morning.

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning

Do you need any lubes or toy cleaners? Toy cleaners. Oh, that's wonderful. How often does he get a yes? Yeah, every now and then when somebody says, you know what? Yeah.

Yeah, actually they would ask what the difference would be. We legit would have professionals come in and teach us the difference between the different toy cleaners, the different lubricants, what's water-based, what's silicone-based, everything like that. So they gave you a full tutorial. Wow, yeah, because I assume if you use something that was abrasive on latex, it could be a problem.

Yep. Yep. All right. Interesting. Thanks, bud. Appreciate it. All right. Here's another call. This one is from Vince. Hi, Vince. You're on the air, bud. Hello. This is Vince over at the media department in Best Buy in Springfield. How can I help you? Vince, you're at my Best Buy. I probably said that 10,000 times. Oh, my God. That's great. And for the rest of your life, you'll be able to repeat that, Vince. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Your gift from Best Buy as a loyal servant. Thank you very much and have a good morning, everyone. You too, bud. We'll see you later. I did a telemarketing gig for a while, but you were calling in and saying something I completely forgot. It was right on the script and

It was every cubicle had it right in front of you. So there's no way you could avoid saying it. I have, there are phrases from commercials that will, that will get stuck in my head. Like somebody was talking to me. Somebody will ask me, where is it? Dude, what's that? Physical rehab place that you go to. Oh, it's Trinity rehab. They have the EPAP machine, which is acoustic pressure, weight therapy, breakups, car tissue, and enhance the ceiling. Most patients are better than three, five minute sessions. No joke.

So I love rattling that stuff off. Steve, when you were doing telemarketing, what were you selling? Do you remember? Brickface. Okay, yeah. And you... Brickface sits at a popularity level along with thyroid cancer. Right, yeah, like the undercoating for it. Right, yeah, horrible. I had to do it for...

alumni fundraising in college. It was a job and you could just sit there, but it was a script and you had to read through it every single time. Every single bit. And more often than not, you just get hung up on it. I just did surveys. That's all I did, but it was the same thing. Was it a script? Yeah, it was a script. Okay. Uh,

Uh, one more call. I'm going to go to Tiffany. Hi, Tiffany. Good morning. Good morning. How are you guys? Awesome. All right. Tiff, did you work somewhere? You had to repeat a phrase of some type. I did. So I used to work at the Hooters and Ben Salem on street road. Okay. Um, and nothing as crazy as some of these people, but every time someone would walk in, everyone would have to turn around. You have to be like, hi, welcome to Hooters. Take a seat wherever you like. Everyone, everyone in the restaurant.

Yeah, because you have to acknowledge everybody that walked in. Mm-hmm.

That's actually... I appreciate that policy. Well, it really trumps being ignored when you walk into a place, which pisses me off. It happens frequently to me. Especially at my local Hooters. Is anybody working here? So the fact that they require anybody to see if you see someone lost to say, hey, welcome. That's a nice thing. Let me ask you quickly, Tiffany. It was the rule of thumb if a couple came in to Hooters, would you ask...

Would you acknowledge the woman first? There was some sort of dynamic that the servers are instructed to approach a couple with that is supposed to make it easier for the people to order. Do you know what I'm talking about? I do. So for us, we were never instructed in anything specific, but I know you could see when the women would walk in, especially if it was only a boyfriend, not a husband. But if they would walk in with their boyfriend or their husband, the woman would automatically either stick her hand in their back,

pocket in the husband's back pocket. Right. Grab their hand or something. So like, just as a rule of thumb, at least for me, I, even when I introduce myself to people now, I just automatically introduce myself to the girlfriend or the wife first. Yes. Like, you know, welcome to Hooters or hi, I'm Tiffany. Like I go right to the girlfriend. So they don't think like, Oh, this, this chick's trying to go after my wife. It makes sense. I thought I'd heard something like that. All right, cool. All right. Thank you, Tiffany. Appreciate it.

Thank you. I will see him. All right, well, at least nobody had to say, do you want to get smashed today with the new Smash Jack? Smash? What in the F is that? It's like, what are you talking about? Smash Jack. Smash Jack. All right, anyhow, thank you for sharing. We do appreciate that, especially Quarter Deck USS Jarrett, who's the officer of the deck. Thank you for calling in. All right, we're going to take a quick break. Stay with us.

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