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- [00:00]
A
Join me, John Randall, at the North American Banking Company Minnesota Golf Show, February 13th through the 15th at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Test your skills in the long putt contest for a shot at a $100,000 prize package. Plus, try the latest gear from top manufacturers and get free lessons from local PGA pros. Don't miss it. Tickets on sale now@mngolfshow.com Save $3 with advance purchase. Each ticket includes 14 free greens fee passes at area courses. Learn more@mngolfshow.com the 2026 Minnesota Golf show is swinging into the Minneapolis Convention Center February 13th through 15th, and we want your business on the green. With thousands of passionate golfers roaming the floor, this is your chance to get your brand in front of this quality demographic with a vendor booth or larger sponsorship. And this year's ambassador, NFL hall of Famer and Viking legend John Randall. So, yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Want in? Don't wait for your invitation to land in the fairway. Call Bernie Lauer at 651-632-6646 or email blaurpi.com before the best spots are gone. How's everyone feeling? You got the mid Winter blahs. Heard a fella say that today. I said, what the hell are those? Don't they have a vaccine for that? My name's Mishke Wooty. Woody. Woody wood. All right. I ran into a fella today. I asked him how he was doing. He said he had the Midwinter Blahs. What the hell are those? The mid. What the hell are the Midwinter blah? Is that B L, A H S blahs? I said, pal, I got a cure for it. I pulled out a revolver. I put it to his head. He said, that's not loaded. I said, yes, it is. I showed him it was loaded. I put it to his head and I said, I'm out of my mind. Have been for about a week now. I don't know what it is, but I've lost it. And I'm gonna put one right through your noggin in three, two. And then I stopped. And I said, right now, if I were to put this gun away and you felt that new lease on life, how does it feel? Breathe, boy. You're alive. I'm not gonna kill you. I never was. But I bet we shook those winter blahs, did we not? The idea that you were about to be a corpse. And now you. You've got a chance to live on a second chance. I'm trying to shake some life into you, boy. Now go on and live. Go live your life. You're a free man. What are the midwinter blahs? I read about a fellow who had the blahs just a couple days ago. Let me see if I can find that story. I've got it. I got it. No, I got it. No, no, I got it. Here's the story. An Iowa man was arrested for exposing himself to cars passing by on two separate interstates twice last month. Cops say that Dannon Airy, 30 years old, stood against the rear of his 2012 Chevrolet Impala with his pants and underwear removed to his ankles and his shirt lifted to casually expose his genitals to oncoming traffic. This was in a suburban Iowa city. When questioned by police, Dannon Airey said this behavior was intended to create excitement. That was missing from my blah life. Dannon Airy, 30 years old, down in Iowa. He. He's suffering from the blahs as well. He thought he'd shake them by dropping his pants and underwear and leaning against his Impala and lifting up his shirt as cars came by. I have a sneaking suspicion for a while there, he didn't have the blahs. That's not the way I recommend to take care of it. But then Dannon would probably not recommend my revolver technique. There's probably something in between there. I'd have to think about it. He has a blah life. Do you have a blah life? The blah life situation is a bugaboo. I'm not going to lie to you. I've encountered that sensation from time to time in my existence. The old blahs. Maybe someone listening right now has the blahs as I speak. Do you feel your life is just kind of languishing, folks? Has everything just become unexciting? Do you feel stuck? Do you feel like you've slipped into some kind of a melancholy funk of some sort, characterized by deep indifference? Does the world offer you little more than monotony? Don't take your clothes off. That's the easy way out. That's been the cheap way to experience a thrill since Adam and Eve first grabbed a fig leaf. I'm not saying it doesn't work to get naked. Lord knows I've done it. But never outdoors? Hell, no. Usually in a beauty salon, it's warmer in there and it smells nice. And the elderly gals might register a surprise, but rarely anger. And even if one or two do get upset, they gotta grab their walkers before they can come at me. That buys me some time generally. And I'm out the door and down the block and at the bakery by then telling everyone the exhibitionist went thataway. Get em. And for a while there, the blouse are gone. No, I get it, I get it. I know why you took your clothes off. Palace. No judgment from me. Where does the word blah come from? Blah. I looked it up today. No one knows for sure, but many believe it's from the French word blase, meaning bored or indifferent. Hey, that makes sense to me. But why then do we say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That doesn't make any sense. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Having the blahs can kind of sound like the blues. I got the blahs, which is like the blues, but not so much sad as bored. So we need the word blah because it doesn't really cut it to say I'm blue. I'm blah, not blue. Blue is sad. Blah is bored. Indifferent. The blahs, it's when you're down in the dumps. It's when you're not feeling right, but you don't know what's wrong. The blahs, who needs them? Therapists say they're seeing an uptick in people feeling unfocused and unhappy. NABC action news reporter Wendy Lane learns how that blah feeling you might be having is real. And she gets advice from counselors about ways that you can overcome it.
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B
If you've been feeling kind of blah.
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A
Well, you're not alone. You're not exactly thriving, but you're not full blown depressed, but you're somewhere in the middle zone. You just kind of feel blah. What I run into a lot, however, and this one really throws me. I can't say I find it appealing, but it's out there. And you'll probably recall someone in your own life saying it, or you yourself saying it. What I run into out there quite a bit is people saying they feel me. Not blah, meh. I don't like that one. Both words, by the way, have an H in them that is silent. The H is no doubt bored in those words. Indifferent, probably saying, why am I here? I'm not even being used. The H feels blah. The H feels meh. You're familiar with me, right? M E H. Today I have a reading for you guys. This is a book that I picked up. I actually got to meet the author of it. But I did pick out the I feel meh book. Because I am constantly saying this. Meh seems to be one of my constant moods. So here is the reading of I feel meh. Sometimes I feel meh. The word I use for this is languishing and If I asked you how you felt, and if you told me you were languishing, it would mean that you just feel meh. Cuz you probably do just feel me. I guess I'm okay, but I don't really know. I never use meh. You know why? It's a weird sound. You're not always sure whether the person is saying what you think they're saying. Because it's hard to decipher when you hear me. I mean, you really have to say it a certain way for people to even understand it. You have to say meh. You can't just say meh. You say meh. People don't know what you're saying. You gotta go meh. Whereas blah is very clear right away. Blah. You don't have to emphasize it, just say I feel blah. But if you say I feel meh, you can't say that. You have to say I feel meh. When you gotta do that to the word, you should pick blah. I read an article once in the Chicago Tribune that said we can speak volumes with our one syllable grunts. And it went on to talk about nah. Someone says, you want to come with us to the movie? Nah. Little one syllable grunt right there. Hey, Bob, I'm sorry. I accidentally stepped on your glasses. I broke them. What was that? What'd you say? Oh, I'm kidding. I didn't step on him. I was joking. Ha. What'd you say? Ha. That's different than ugh, lost a quarter of a million on the stock market.
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B
Oof.
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A
Nah, you didn't lose that much. You lost $200. Well, in that case, meh. What Meh. I bet there are animals that just make those sounds right there. Those sounds alone. Those are animal sounds. Really, when you think about it. Is that where we get them? Nah. Ha.
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B
Oof.
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A
Blah. Mah. See the human through the bars there, Jimmy? Those are little noises he makes here, throw him some food. Meh comes from the Yiddish. It means so. So how was the movie? Meh. Was it blah? No, no. Meh. Well, at the risk of this show becoming one of those one of those one of those blah shows, I better move on. Brad Shaw and Bryant, Batman and Robin, Cato and the Green Hornet. Joe Friday and Bill Gannon, Starsky and Hutch, Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Perry Mason, Paul Drake, Brad, Shaw and Bryant on the Mount Rushmore of great heroic duos. Try and top Bradshaw and Bryant, you're gonna need a personal injury attorney at some point in your life. I can feel it. What duo are you contacting Marty McFly and Doc Brown. Thelma and Louise. Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. No. Brad Shaw and Bryant. They seek justice for the injured and they get it. And you don't give them a dime until they do. Let them balance the scales of justice. Find them@minnesotapersonal injury.com. i want you to do me a favor and I want you to listen closely. I want you to call up Josh Arnold. I want you to call up Josh Arnold. You got Nothing to lose. 48 minutes free. Just a conversation. I want you to tell him, josh, I'm going to be retiring in a few years. I want to tell you kind of how I think it's going to go. And you tell me what I'm doing wrong, what I could be doing better. After those 48 minutes, you hang up the phone, you spent nothing. You never have to call them again. But I would appreciate you calling me, contacting me, texting me, telling me how that went. I want to know. Josh Arnold has over 40 years helping people out just like you, making sure they make the right moves on their way to retirement. Josh Arnold can be found at 952-925-5608. You call me back afterwards. I can be found at 651-321-8949. Wanna talk about a flood I was not familiar with? I'm wondering if you were. This happened back in 1919. Were you around then? I was a real little kid. 1919. The flood I'm talking about is the Great Molasses Flood. You familiar with the Great Molasses Flood? If someone would have told me they were making a movie, a period piece movie, and in it they were going to have a great Molasses flood, I would say, well, I hope you're not selling that as believable because that would never happen. A Great Molasses flood. I would have been wrong. A large storage tank in Boston filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses weighing 13,000 tons broke open in an explosion and a tsunami. A giant tsunami of molasses rushed through the streets of Boston, burying 21 people, horribly injuring another 150. Here's the headline from the Boston Post. Extra, extra 50 foot high wave of molasses sweeps through Boston. For decades afterwards, people in the area said they could still smell it decades later. Nearby buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Here's a report from an eyewitness. Molasses covered the street. It swirled, it bubbled. Here and there. You could see a struggling form. That's all you knew, is that it was a form. Whether it was an animal or human, it it was impossible to tell. It was a form covered in molasses. The only way to know where life was was to see a sudden upheaval in the molasses, a thrashing about in the sticky mass indicating life. Horses died like so many flies on sticky flypaper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Humans, men and women, suffered likewise. The dense wall of syrup surged from its collapsing tank, moving fast enough to sweep people up, demolish buildings, settling into giant gelatinous pools. People couldn't escape. Rescue workers and cleanup crews for days tracked the molasses through the streets and spread it to subway platforms, to the seats inside trains and streetcars, to pay telephone handsets, into homes. They spread the molasses around. It was on their clothes, on their shoes, on their hands. Everything that a Bostonian touched ended up sticky. You would think I'm making this up, but this happened in the United States of America. The great molasses flood. January 1919 Boston, Massachusetts. Don't ask me how I came across it. I was randomly reading this and that, and I stumbled upon it. But after I did, I thought to myself, it makes a regular flood seem so Rockwellian. Just regular old water coming at you. There's something almost refreshing about that. And I got to thinking about what other things have created floods. Okay, we know about water, and now we know about molasses, but what else? And that's when I learned about the Great Dublin Whiskey flood. That was 1875. A fire broke out in a whiskey storehouse in Dublin. The escaped whiskey formed a burning river, destroying 35 houses, killing quite a bit of livestock. Get While there were no human fatalities as a direct result of the fire or flood, 13 people died of alcohol poisoning after drinking from the stream of whiskey, which was whiskey of an undiluted cask strength. The exact cause of the fire was unknown. Started at 4:30pm Barrels within the storehouse began to explode from heat, sending a whiskey river flowing through doors and windows, down the streets. Whiskey river, take my mind. The stream of whiskey stretched down Cork street, turning into Arty street, catching a house on Chamber Avenue, continuing further to Mill street, demolishing a row of small houses. People living in the area were first alerted by squealing pigs, said one fella. At first I thought it was Ned Beatty. That I looked and saw was livestock, and all that whiskey was flowing. And I said, honey, grab some pails. We're going to have a pretty decent weekend. Many people Gathered by the whiskey streams, filling any vessel they could find. 24 hospitalizations due to alcohol poisoning. 13 death. Well, after I read about that, I decided to explore further. And of course, it wasn't too long before I learned about what could be the worst of them. And that would be your pig manure lagoon floods. That's a good name for a band, by the way. Pig manure lagoon flood, Ladies and gentlemen, all the way from Louisiana, here's a story I found from years ago. Rain from Hurricane Florence caused 30 pig manure lagoons in North Carolina to flood. North Carolina is one of the biggest hog farming states in the US second only to Iowa. Its 9.7 million pigs live on some 2100 hog farms and generate a lot of manure flooding from hurricane Florence. The worst rainstorm to hit the east coast in recent history ended up causing a toxic soup to flood the area. This isn't just about hog manure flooding the area, said one local official. We're talking about salmonella coming down the streets. Jardia E. Coli. It's comin down the street, but I ain't sure why. It's salmonella giardia and E Coli. Coli. I wish it were just water. Oh, those were the days when the dam would break and we would die in lovelier ways. Those old fashioned floods, we sure get fewer. They've been replaced by giant waves of hog manure. That crap comes along and it kicks our asses. Behind it comes a giant wall of molass. Clearly we are seeing radical changes. Was this in the Book of Revelations? Come on Lord, be a friend to Mishky. If you gotta send a flood, make it Irish whiskey. Come on Lord, be a friend of Mishky. If you gotta send a flood, make it Irish whiskey. Well, what do you say we make a phone call, spin the big Rolodex and see whose name comes up? Sure, I'll make that call. Hello, Debbie?
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B
Yes, hello.
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A
What am I catching you doing? Napping?
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B
Working?
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A
Doesn't sound like it. I don't hear machinery in the background. What possible job could you have?
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B
I work at a law firm.
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A
We better be real quiet. Then maybe some of the fellas will think I'm just a client.
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B
Right.
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A
I could pass along that I feel I was injured by the reckless callous behavior of another and that I have a personal injury claim. Maybe you can tell me if you think I have a case. I don't really have that circumstance. I'm just trying to get you off the hook for playing hooky here. Are you in an office all by yourself?
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B
I am now.
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A
Good. Very good. There's a heaviness in the room. A lot of feeling of oak and big leather chairs. I'm sensing a lot of old men there.
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B
You are correct.
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A
Yeah, I can feel it. I can feel those guys. But, boy, it will be good when those stodgy old men move on, won't it? I'd like to see him replaced and soon. Don't they have hobbies?
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B
Exactly.
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A
You sound relatively young.
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B
Sure.
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A
What would we be looking at in the way of a decade with you, do you think?
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B
Baby boomer.
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A
So we'll just say you were born in the 50s. We'll just say that. No, we won't say that. 40s.
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B
No other way.
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A
If you're born in the 60s, you're not a boomer. No, no, no, no, no, no. You know what you are? I believe you're a Joneser. I've had this battle more than a few times with people there in any way in hell. Anyone born 61, 62, 63, 64 can claim to be a boomer. Did they grow up with a Mickey Mouse club? No, they did not. Were they worried about being drafted into the Vietnam War? No. Were they at Woodstock? No. No, you're not a boomer. Let me see if I have.
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B
I've never heard of that one.
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A
Jones Generation. I'll just see if I have it right. I hate to make this stuff up. Generation Jones refers to a cusp micro generation situated between baby boomers and Gen X, named by cultural historian John Pontel to highlight their unique experiences. Very different from boomers. Your generation. Jones, you must have felt all your life that there was just something different about those boomers. I did.
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B
I never thought about it.
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A
You were busy thinking about becoming a lawyer.
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B
I'm not a lawyer, though.
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A
Oh, I'm sorry. You're a. You're a paralegal.
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B
I'm a real estate assistant.
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A
Yeah, say no more. You're a real estate assistant, so you assist in real estate. So say I had some real estate, you would assist with that. Real estate, I assume. What, helping me mow the lawn, do some hedge trimming. And what would you be available for?
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B
I help at the closing.
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A
Always be closing. Always be closing. Because only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line, which is dotted. You close or you hit the bricks. I tell you. Do you feel that they're just driving.
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B
You like a dog?
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A
So what else do you do with your life besides assist with real estate?
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B
Then I go home and make dinner and watch tv.
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A
Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness?
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B
No.
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A
Lucky. Lucky you. Lucky you. Let me tell you, it's not fun when they look across from you in that little room there, that dark room, they look into your eyes and they tell you you have a mental illness. The hardest thing to take when they're telling you that is this guy is looking at you and you know, the. The plaques are on the wall and everything, awards and honors, and yet he has a wig on and lipstick and he's telling you you're messed up. Okay, I'm gonna let you get back to work. I've enjoyed chatting with you. Thanks for hanging out with me.
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B
Yeah. Talk to you later.
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A
So long. I've been thinking of late that the Wellshire probably won't be advertising with me for long. They're doing pretty well out there and it's understandable. People are lining up to get their loved ones into that memory care center. The standard in this region of the country for memory care centers. The Wellshire of Bloomington and Medina. There comes a point when people get that interested in a place where. Where you need to take a break from advertising. It's working a little too well. Nevertheless, I hope you at least give it a tour. Go out and talk to them, call them up. If you're thinking of placing a loved one in a memory care center, that's the top of the line. And I hope there's room for you or for them. I hope there's an opportunity for you to experience what it's like there. Because anywhere else you go with your loved one will be lesser. It's just the way it is right now. They created a world at the well shire that I think will be the standard all across the country 10 years from now. It's January and stuff happens in January and some of it isn't pretty. I had a furnace go out on me one time in a house. Pipes burst in the walls. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage. It was ugly, old, beat up. Furnace had to be hauled out of the house. The whole house had to be wrapped. There was asbestos involved. It was a mess. You know who I would never consider calling? Everybody else. That's right. It was Minneapolis St. Paul plumbing, heating and air and that's it. I wasn't going to make a phone call to anyone else ever if it meant I had to live in a snow hut the rest of the winter, dying of hypothermia. Eventually I was going to die. Am I saying Minneapolis St. Paul plumbing, heating and air or death? Yes. Those are the choices in January in Minnesota, that's what it sometimes comes down to. Life and death. Minneapolis, St. Paul plumbing, heating and Air. Or you die. You just die. They've been around since 1918. You got another business, you know, that's been around since World War I. Oh, yeah? Which one is that? Which business do you go to? That's been around since World War I. You understand? Now, I would never consider calling anyone else. When there's a legend in your town, you go with the legend. Hey, just a public service announcement. Washington county is having a snowplow naming contest. I don't know if you people are familiar with Washington County. There's hardly anything that ever happens there. One time in the 70s, something did, but I've forgotten what that was. So it's always a slow day over there. And they're having a snowplow naming contest. They've already received 1,400 suggestions for naming their snowplow. Now they have a couple of different snowplows. These are trucks with a plow on them, and they plow the snow. And these things apparently need a name. 1400 suggestions have come in. They narrowed it down. We have the finalists here. Life of a Snow Girl. That's one name. Plow. Osaurus Rex. Chuck the Plow Truck. Blizzard of Oz. Duck Duck, Orange Truck. And Claire D. Way. You get that? Claire D. Way. Hey, Claire D. Way. Those are finalists. So Washington county has a couple of plow trucks they want to name, and then they have a couple of shovels too that they want to get named. These are old shovels from the 70s that are sitting in the back of a tool shed. I was thinking of offering up the names Mark and Stephen for those shovels. We don't need to get nearly as creative when it's old shovels. Let's not think too hard. Mark and Stephen, solid names. Washington county says they also have some salt crystals for melting snow that they want to get named. Each individual crystal would get its own moniker, they say. I was thinking of suggesting for the names all of the people who have ever participated in. In the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Just take all those names from all those people over the decades who've been in that big choir. There's something about naming things. I get it. It's fun. When I was growing up, we always named our automobiles Windshield Ice Scraper. Just that little ice scraper. We always went with the same name. Margaret Miller. Margaret Mary Miller, I think it was. And that was Grandpa's idea. My grandpa had been committed to a psychiatric hospital. In St. Peter, Minnesota. And on one outing where we were able to get him outside for a couple hours, he suggested that name, Margaret Mary Miller. Years earlier, grandpa had crashed into an elderly gal who had that name. Grandpa didn't clear the snow from his windshield that morning, and he hit her. And she was thrown up on the hood and right into the windshield. So grandpa always thought we should name our windshield ice scrapers after her. Margaret Mary Miller. She didn't make it, which was tragic. The impact killed her. She was dead immediately. I remember my grandpa driving straight to her family's farm. He figured might as well deliver the body and explain what happened. Rather than calling a coroner, he said that step would just involve an unnecessary middleman. So he pulled into the Miller farm. There, Margaret still on the hood. And those were rough roads that day. They were rough roads. Her bouncing up and down on the hood and against the windshield had scraped all the snow off of it. So grandpa was not having to be forthcoming with explaining what had happened. He didn't say anything about the fact that the windshield had been covered in snow. He said Margaret had first been hit by a snow plow and then thrown onto his hood. He said he asked the Miller family if they wanted him to come up with a name for that snowplow, but the family just angrily rejected that idea. Grandpa even offered to sponsor a naming contest in the paper. He even suggested possible names for the snowplow. The Margaret launcher, the miller killer, that sort of thing. Family did not like that. Not at all. Okay.
- [33:34]
B
Hi. If you record your name and reason for calling, I'll see if this person is available.
- [33:40]
A
I'm David, and I'm having a heart attack. And I was calling to see if he has a defibrillator. I need a defibrillator.
- [33:51]
B
Thanks, David. Please stay on. I'm sorry, this person is not available. If you would like to leave an additional message, please reply after the tone.
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A
Hello? Hello, Ty?
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B
Oh, hey there, Mishke.
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A
What's new?
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B
Oh, not a whole lot, I suppose. I'm out here in Portland, Maine.
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A
Portland, Maine?
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B
Yeah.
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A
What's going on outside your front door? Would you take a peek outside your front door and just let me know what's going on there? Might be the closest I ever get to Portland, Maine.
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B
I'm in the basement of city hall right now.
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A
The basement of city hall? Do they know you're down there? Are you hiding?
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B
I'm employed by the city, so I hope they know I'm around.
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A
But not employed in a real way. It's just their Way of giving you something to do. You're the son of the mayor, and he. He is worried about you. And he asked the city if they could give you a little kid's desk down in the basement so you could pretend you're working.
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B
I'm a Minnesota boy, though. I'm out here for a little bit, though.
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A
Just a little bit. Huh. What possibly could have drawn you out there?
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B
My wife is working at the hospital.
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A
Really? Pediatrics?
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B
Pulmonology.
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A
I was going to say pulmonology. I knew it was a P word. Penile implants, something.
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B
We'll be moving to Duluth this summer. Moving back to Minnesota?
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A
Where were you born and raised?
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B
Maybe you know this. It's a town of 1500 people. Probably not. Maybe Albany, Minnesota.
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A
Good old Albany. Yeah. The number of times I've gone there to pick up something I bought on Facebook, Marketplace, only to find out they meant Albany, New York. More times than I can count. I've done that. Yeah. What is the big draw of Portland, Maine? I know it's something. Is it autumn leaves? What is the big draw?
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B
I suspect it's autumn leaves and people are obsessed with the lobster roll sandwich.
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A
The lobster roll sandwich.
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B
Does that sound appealing to you?
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A
I don't know. I will tell you that one time I was at a store, I was 13 years old, and I purchased a lobster to free it. There was a grocery store in our neighborhood where they had the live lobster and the water.
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B
Right.
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A
I wanted to free the damn thing. I was really bothered by the fact that they had it living there. So I took it and I got a block away and I let it go. Failing to realize that you can't just let it go in a park. I just let it go in a wooded area and I came back the next day and it had maybe gotten nine yards and it died. I thought I could let it go in a park. I'm not a ocean guy. I don't know what I'm looking at when I'm looking at this lobster. I just know this thing needs to be let go. It's unhappy in the tank. I could tell that. But I had disastrous, disastrous experiences with animals when I was young. I picked up a salamander one time up in northern Minnesota. Brought it home, put it in an ice cream bucket, an old empty ice cream pail. Put some food in there, some grass, a couple of rocks. Put it in the back of my closet because I was afraid my mom would find it and make me release it. And then I forgot. I forgot that I had. Was about four months later, I was in class grade school. And I remembered sitting at my desk, I remembered, and I just. I think I even hit my forehead. I just said, damn it. And I went home that afternoon, just terrified at what I was gonna find when I went into the back of the closet in my bedroom. And sure enough, there it was, one tenth the size that it had been. Just shriveled up in the corner looking like it had had the worst death ever. When you buy an animal, one of the things everybody should tell you at the pet store or wherever you are, remember you bought it. Remember you bought it.
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B
They never tell you that, do they?
- [38:34]
A
Nope. Doctors do at maternity wards.
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B
Well, thanks for calling me and the balls of city hall here.
- [38:43]
A
Great hanging out with you. Glad you answered and see you back here sometime soon.
- [38:48]
B
All right, Very good. Been a fan for years. Thanks so much for the call.
- [38:51]
A
Thanks for that. Bye. Bye.
- [38:53]
B
All right.
- [38:53]
A
Bye.
- [38:53]
B
Bye.
- [39:00]
A
When I get together with my buddies at the local watering hole, they say to me, mishke, we check out your show from time to time. That American pressure operation. What a unique little part of the world that is. I say, darn right. How much time before you ever heard those ads did you spend thinking about pressure washers? Well, buddy, old pals, there are guys out there who have to think about pressure washers all the time because that's what keeps their business running smoothly. And they hear my ads and they say to themselves, boy, that Mishke loves that American pressure. American pressure sells and services pressure washers, but they do far more. They offer hydro excavating accessories, automatic parts, washers, detergents, hoses, all the parts in the world you'd ever want for a pressure washer. They offer floor scrubbers, flat surface cleaners, sanitation systems, and industrial run all day battery powered pressure washers. This place is a miracle, frankly. American Pressure, they're solution people. They're highly intelligent folks who in this industry are second to no one. And you need them in your life if you deal with industrial pressure washers. American pressure.
- [40:37]
B
The phantom collar strikes again.
- [40:41]
A
Well, I know the guy, but this is Mishke.
- [40:44]
B
Yeah. You're gonna always be the phantom collar to me.
- [40:48]
A
I'm always gonna be the phantom caller to you. So in other words, what I did in the 1980s surpasses all.
- [40:57]
B
Well, it's the basis of where Misky comes from.
- [41:02]
A
You know, it's funny. My mother says I will always be a fetus to her. That's where it started.
- [41:09]
B
I have a lot of questions for the phantom collar fire when ready, its origin Is this just a brain child of yours or.
- [41:19]
A
I was listening to FM music radio in the 1980s. I did not know AM existed. AM to me was something that was perhaps listened to in the 60s or 70s, but I assumed it was being retired as a medium. I honestly never thought of going to AM radio. And then my brother said to me one day, have you ever listened to Don Vogel? And I said, no, I have not. Where would I find him? And he said, well, he can be found on talk radio. And I said, I'm unfamiliar with talk radio. I'm a music guy. I like to listen to music in the car. I'm a young guy, life's just starting out. I like music talk. That's for our fathers, our parents. That's old stuff. And he said, well, you might be surprised. Give it a try. So I listened to a guy named don Vogel at AM 1500, the Round Mound of sound, stone blind out of his mind. That's the one. And the thing that intrigued me was not that there was a guy talking with no music. That was not as intriguing to me as the fact that he took calls from people. I just couldn't believe you could pick up the phone and be on the radio. The idea that a radio station would allow random people to just talk with things on their mind. 50,000 watt radio stations, they said, this can't be. I was driving a delivery van at the time, and I pulled up to a payphone, reached out, grabbed the phone, brought it into the car, put a quarter in, and dialed the number that Don Vogel was giving out. Pretty soon I was on the air. Now I didn't have anything to say because I didn't even believe you could be put on the air. I really didn't think it was possible. But suddenly I hear you're on the air. And I didn't know what to say, so I just said, and this was the very first phantom call. I said, t shirts and bumper stickers. And I hung up because I was terrified you're going to say, why did I say that? Well, prior to going on, I could hear the radio show through the phone, and they were talking about T shirts and bumper stickers that they were giving away. So I just repeated those terms, T shirts and bumper stickers, and screamed and hung up. And I was embarrassed and feeling weird about the whole thing. And I turned down the radio in my delivery van and I heard myself say, t shirts and bumper stickers. And then Don Fogle and Bruce Gordon, who was his sports guy, started laughing. So now it isn't talk radio that intrigues me. It isn't that you can get on talk radio that intrigues me. It's you can make people laugh on the radio that intrigues me. So the next day I said, well, now that I know you can get on, I'm going to try to actually do something entertaining. I don't recall what the second day's call was, but I called, and once again, I was too nervous to stay on the line. I said something and then hung up. I was never comfortable talking back and forth. That would have been a little much. 50,000 watts. I wouldn't have been able to handle that. So instead I would just say my peace and hang up. The next day, they laughed again. Once more, it was the laughter that was the hook. There's a power, an extraordinary power when you make someone laugh that goes into your bones. You want to do more of it. So the third and fourth and fifth day, I also called, and there were varying degrees of laughter. Maybe not so much even on one of the calls, but a magic set of words followed from one. Don Vogel. This guy has been calling all week. We had to come up with a name for him or something like the Phantom Caller. And that was it. I saw suddenly was somebody. I had a job. I had a role. I had a place in this world, damn it. I wasn't a delivery truck driver. I was the Phantom caller on AM 1500 KSTP. And if you didn't believe me, ask Don Vogel. He just said I was on 50,000 watts. He said I was the Phantom Caller. Now, you don't give a guy a name who you don't want calling back. That might as well have been a giant billboard that said, call often. We enjoy it. That's all I needed to hear. I didn't get enough attention as a kid, so I started to call four days a week. I gave myself one day off. I took these calls very seriously. I would think long and hard about what I wanted to say. Sometimes I'd spend a couple hours thinking about it. And then when I did decide what to say, sometimes, if it was particularly long, I'd write it down. But it was always the same thing. I'd call up and they'd say, hello, what do you want to talk about today? And I'd know what the subject was they were talking about. So I just say that subject. I'd say, I want to talk about the twins. Or I'd like to talk about that fire in downtown Minneapolis. Okay, what's your first name? Norm. Okay, Norm, we'll put you on hold. I was a different first name every single time. And then while I was on hold, I'd listen to the show. Sometimes I'd wait three minutes and I'd go on the air. Sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes 20, sometimes 55 minutes. I'd be sitting there waiting, waiting for a 40 second statement I planned to make. But I was the phantom caller. Don said I was. I had a job. And it was a more important job than my delivery van job. And it was far more important than my busboy job when I was a busboy. And it's far more important than the college kid, because then I was just a student. What's that? A student's nothing. Anybody can be a student. But a phantom caller, that's a real thing. That's an important thing. And so I did it four out of five days a week. And the reason I didn't do it 5 is there were a number of times when my friends would say, you're leaving, Mishki? Yeah, I gotta get home and do my phantom call. What the hell do you do that for? Do they pay ya? No. You keep leaving in the middle of fun things we're doing. I know I gotta make my call. And I'd say to myself, it is ridiculous to do this five days a week. I gotta give myself a day off. And so I wouldn't do it one of the days. But usually in the 5 o' clock hour every day, I'd make my call week after week, month after month. One day, Don took all my calls and he had what he called a Phantom festival. He just played all of them back to back. Yeah. And now I was part of a Phantom festival. I was in a festival named after me. Well, I'd never been this important in my life. I come from a family of eight kids. I was at the bottom. No one ever looked at me, let alone asked me what I thought. And then one fateful day, Don Vogel let it be known he had been hired by a Chicago radio station, a much bigger market, and was leaving the Twin Cities. And he was killing off all of his characters, every one of them. He was a man of a thousand voices. He had all these characters he liked to bring on the air, and he was killing them off. He was taking a Gatling gun or a Gatling gun sound effect. And he was killing him. Well, I said to myself, I was one of his characters. Not one he invented, but I was one of his characters. And I got word to him that I wanted to be Killed. I should be killed with everybody else if you're leaving. And so he invited me in to be killed. All I was going to do was come into the station on Highway 61 and be shot. And that would be it. And I'd go home. So I wore an old tuxedo I bought from the 1940s, just a bad tuxedo that was too big for me. And I wore a ski mask. And I arrived at the front doors there, and I was ushered in, and I was brought into the studio. And there I sat with Don Vogel, not knowing that one day I would be his partner. And he asked me a couple questions about my time calling. And his news guy, John McDougal, said, you know, Don, I think I recognize that man's voice. I think I know who it is. And there was nobody who was a bigger nobody in the Twin Cities than me. The idea that John McDougal knew me was impossible. And of course, he must have mistaken me for someone else, but he was sure he knew me. And then I was shot, the Gatling gun was fired, and it was over. And I walked out the door thinking that was a weird little run in my life. And I went on with my life, and I went back to going to school, getting a journalism degree, freelance writing. Five years later, I hear Don Vogel on the airwaves in the Twin Cities. He's back. I can't believe he's back. And I don't want to assume he wants the Phantom Caller back. So I call him up and ask him, are you interested in me doing those calls again? And two things happened. Number one, he was interested, but I found I didn't have it in me anymore. The five years had gone by, and I wasn't that guy anymore. I wasn't the Phantom Caller. That worked for that time five years earlier, but it wasn't interesting or entertaining or creatively fulfilling. But the second thing that happened was Don said, would you help me find a place to live in the Twin Cities? I gotta buy a home. He didn't know anybody. So I spent time over a couple weeks driving him around to different houses that were for sale. He was blind, and I'd tell him about the neighborhood, tell him about the house. But during that time, we sort of got to know each other and stopped off at a couple bars, and we'd enjoy time together. And pretty soon we were going out in the evening together, and he was singing karaoke at certain bars, and I was having margaritas with him. And one day he said, you know, it's Just not the same. At KSTP before, when I worked there, they had a news guy, they had a sports guy, they had a weather guy. I could play off people. They've cut the budget. It's just me now. I mean, there's a 22 year old woman at the board. What does she and I have in common? Nothing. I need a producer or something. And I said, I'll do it. And his exact words to me, where that would be beneath you. That was the respect he had for producers. I got to understand it later. They were hiring these kids out of brown and it wasn't really fair to call them producers. They were board operators who were used on the air to bounce off of. And in my case, I wouldn't be working the board because I didn't know anything about that stuff. I'd just be sitting next to them. So he went to the boss and he said, can I try out this guy? And they said, okay. They brought me in on a Saturday. Don took a Saturday to go in and do a practice show. We were on the air, but it wasn't his normal show and Don thought it was the best show he ever did. But here's the crazy part. I hardly said a word. I hardly said a word. And in fact, the boss said after hearing it, I don't get it. What does that guy offer? Because the truth is, when the microphone went on, I was terrified. I didn't really say much anything. The only thing I did, and I did it quite often, is I laughed at what he said. That's what he needed. He needed someone to laugh at what he said. He needed to feel that being Don Vogel was working. It used to work with his sports guy and his news guy and his weather guy because they laughed. So I got a job at $20 a show for laughing at Don Vogel's jokes. Suddenly I was on a drive time slot at a major market station, getting 20 bucks each day to laugh at Don. Slowly, over time, I came out of my shell and eventually talked more. Took a while because this wasn't really me. This wasn't my thing. I was a guy who liked to write. Anyway, it ended up working out and the ratings went up. And one day they brought me in and gave me a real live contract. I mean, a real salary. Something that a guy could say, I'm making a living on.
- [54:25]
B
You're a talent.
- [54:26]
A
I became talent. I remember when the contract used that word. I'd never heard the word used that way. It wasn't you are talented. It was, you are talented. Don taught me a lot. Mostly by me just watching him over those next. Oh, I think it was 17 months we were together before we had our classic Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin breakup, Abbott and Costello breakup, Simon and Garfunkel breakup. And I went home and thought, that's over, done, finished, I'll move on with my life. And Barbara Carlson called me, the late, great Barbara Carlson. And she said, you're out, you're done. You're finished in radio. And I said, yeah. And Barbara says, you know what you ought to do? You ought to take a night show. It's a good place to kind of hone your skills and learn about radio. See if they'd let you do something late night. And I said, oh, they got a guy working late night. Well, they'd fire him if you wanted that spot. And I said, well, I don't want to get a guy fired. She goes, during the day, he's got a full time job as an attorney. He's doing just fine. And I said, yeah, but he probably loves radio most of all. And I'd be taking away his radio show. And she goes, mishke, in this business, everybody who has a job got it because someone got fired. It's Astoria Radio. If you're here over the next 10 years, you'll watch another 25 people get fired. I ended up watching 27 people get fired. So I went to the boss and said, barbara thinks I can do a nighttime radio show. And the boss said, you got it. So I started the Mishky broadcast.
- [56:07]
B
And it all started with the Phantom collar. We wouldn't have the Mischie anything if it wasn't for Misky as the Phantom collar.
- [56:15]
A
Well, my mom would say it started with me as a fetus.
- [56:21]
B
From my perspective, it was just wonderful.
- [56:26]
A
Well, I appreciate that.
- [56:27]
B
And bizarre at the same time.
- [56:29]
A
It was strange. The whole thing was very odd.
- [56:32]
B
I really appreciate getting kind of the rundown because there was a lot of mystery around it as well.
- [56:39]
A
That's how it all happened. I think back on it sometimes and think, if my brother doesn't tell me about this show he's listening to, what am I doing today? I don't know.
- [56:54]
B
Oh, what a wonderful story. Thank you for that.
- [56:56]
A
Yeah. Good talking to you.
- [56:57]
B
You.