Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: I became outraged when I learned that
[00:00:05] Speaker B: in this world awash and surplus stink,
[00:00:08] Speaker A: a single canister of crowd controlled tear
[00:00:10] Speaker B: gas can cost as much as $1,500.
Give me $40 worth of stale chili dogs and a fraternity house full of impoverished Sigma Nus and I'm confident I can manufacture something so overpowering protesters will flee to their basements for relief.
Contact your local officials.
Who needs tear gas in a world where we'll never run out of rear gas?
I smell opportunity.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Bear with me.
Here we go.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Chris, and I've been thinking. I realize the statement puts me at odds with many of my progressive beliefs, but I feel strongly about it. If you're a guy and you've never seen Cool Hand Luke, you might be
[00:00:57] Speaker B: using the wrong bathroom.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Did you know that humans are the only animal to spend 70% of its entire existence on either its butt or its back?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: And also the only Animal to spend
[00:01:09] Speaker C: $45 billion a year on footwear?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: If you see someone rushing through the
[00:01:14] Speaker C: subway or driving like a maniac, give
[00:01:15] Speaker B: them benefit of the doubt and just stand aside. Who knows? Maybe you've just seen somebody on the way to the hospital to deliver triplets.
It's unfathomable. It's unfathomable.
It's unfathomable.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: It's.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: It's impossible to calculate how much better off the world will be if every time someone has a good intention, they simply acted upon it.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: He's cheerful, polite, enjoys laughter.
[00:01:37] Speaker C: Go ahead and declare the Pillsbury Doughboy one of the greatest role models. I'm Chris.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: The NFL draft is in Pittsburgh this week.
I remember when it wasn't a big deal. I was one of the few guys who watched it. And my reason watching had nothing to do with football and everything to do with social contact. I enjoyed seeing the stiff, stoic Roger Goodell excessively celebrating with young men whom in six months he'd be fining for excessive celebrations.
This is a story I wrote in 2015, and I intended to get a national movement going, and it never happened, never went anywhere. Another one of those get rich quick schemes I had that I've worked on for 30 years hasn't gotten me rich, and it has certainly not been quick over 30 years. I'll have to rename it, but this is about trying to get America to recognize Boston Corbett Day, America's greatest eunuch.
You won't see it anywhere in the news. There will be no stirring memorials. Congress won't pause to honor the actions of the man who should be acclaimed by America's grit, acclaimed as America's greatest eunuch by unanimous consent.
All hail Boston Corbett, the man who killed the man who killed President Lincoln. It happened 145 years ago this very morning.
Again, this is from 2015.
Really? Can you even name a single other great American eunuch?
I can't.
I guess we're all stumped.
And so are the eunuchs, but in a much more literal way.
A eunuch is a man who undergoes deliberate removal of testicles for any number of offbeat cultural reasons. Throughout history, eunuchs have served royals as courtiers, harem servants and trusted guardians of the virginal princesses.
Some even willingly become eunuchs so they could serenade a discerning king with a treble voice of unmatched loveliness.
It sounds extreme, but I'm surprised no one's tried it yet on American Idol. I guess in these days of instant fame, making a real sacrifice for the sake of art is no longer fashionable.
Of course, Corbett makes each of these motivations seem like pikers by comparison.
Born Thomas P. Corbett in London in 1832, he he eventually moved to Boston, where he picked up a nickname with slightly more dash than he'd have if, say, he'd moved to Passadumkeag, Maine in 1858 at the age of 26 is when things got interesting.
Fired with religious passions, he grew his hair long in an attempt to imitate Jesus.
Then he did Jesus one better, two better to be precise.
History books say he was so consumed with lust for Boston prostitutes, he resorted to dire remedies.
So one night he took a pair of rusty scissors, dropped his trousers and snip, snip, cut off his troublesome testicles.
That's taking safe sex practices to a whole other realm.
Then he sat down, had a nice dinner and attended a Methodist prayer meeting before staggering off to the medical attention he needed.
Amazing. For literary purposes, it would have been great fun to discover that the entree that night was meatballs, but the menu is lost to history.
The man is a testament to the fact that it doesn't take real balls to be a real man.
In April 1861, he enlisted as a private in the New York militia, was honorably discharged after his three month commitment, then re enlisted to fight again.
He was taken prisoner in 1863 and was captive for five months in the notorious Andersonville Prison before being freed in a common prisoner exchange.
He would later testify for the prosecution and the death penalty trial of the doom prison commandant, Captain Henry Wirz.
After again reenlisting it was Corbett on this day in 1865 at the Garrett Tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia, who, against orders, shot the bullet that struck John Wilkes Booth in the back of the neck, about one inch from where the dastardly booth slew Lincoln on April 14th.
Providence directed me, he said when asked why he disobeyed orders. Then, like today, you can get away with a lot if you can convince believers that God whispered in your ear.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: Psst.
[00:05:50] Speaker B: Hey, buddy.
Corbett's post war life became increasingly erratic, perhaps because of exposure to mercury when he worked as a hatter in New York and Boston.
Because of his fame, he was appointed doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives, where he pulled a pistol on some men who'd caught briefly yawning through the morning prayer.
He was sent to an insane asylum, escaped, and lived for a while in a hold at allaboutbikes.com today lists as the number one scenic attraction in Kansas.
It may be a big state, but I'll drive hundreds of miles out of my way if I can avoid a state where the most scenic site is Corbett's hole.
He is believed to have died, along with more than 400 others in the great Hinkley fire that consumed hundreds of acres of Minnesota forest where he built a cabin, was living when the fire spread on September 1, 1894.
His story is the reason I never fail to engage airplane seatmates about their lives.
I'm sure he shared many stagecoach rides with men and women to engage in their 19th century iPad equivalents to hear the stories of this fascinating eunuch who killed the man who killed the president.
So, to honor America's greatest eunuch, I suggest we all cut the workday short.
Please don't feel the drastic need to cut off anything more significant.
And just to be safe, let's all steer clear of the prostitutes in Boston, at least for today.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Double ding.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Excuse me.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: What the hell? I'm feeling generous.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Chris, and I've been thinking.
True dreamers fly kites with no strings attached.
Facebook is the perfect venue for keeping up with old friends. Friends we really ought to call, but we do not out of fear that they might answer.
Some people keep bucket lists of the things they want to do before they die. I keep a bucket list of the things I want to do the day I die. I want my demise to happen after an afternoon spent carousing with family and friends in a local tavern, and that I step outside into the sunshine, so unaware of what's going on around me that I step right in front of a speeding bus. I want my friends to say that the bus was going so fast they'll swear that they saw my soul squirt right out of my body and shoot to heaven and that my soul was not wearing pants.
The pessimist laments that smallpox killed 15 million people. The optimistic points out that at least it wasn't big pox.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: The pessimist laments that Small repeated something there.
This was from 2013. I had a speaking engagement.
Here's what happened.
I'll be speaking in about four hours to 50 members of the retired Westmoreland County Teachers association happy the whole time. They aren't the retired Allegheny County Teachers Association.
I hate the thought of Mr. Hartaby or some of the other grade school teachers interrupting my presentation to heckle. It'd be ruinous to be segueing into a poignant story about my grandfather and having old man Hardaby mock the farmer's in the booger barn. The farmer's in the booger barn. It's what he'd yell at whenever he'd bust me or one of the second grade boys picking our noses.
I had mostly good relations with my teachers. I think it's because I played a lot of hooky.
Teachers expressed their gratitude by passing me even when I didn't deserve it. They just moved me around just to get me out of their hair.
As a student, I was never gifted.
More like regifted.
This is the third time in 10 months the meetings organizers hired me to uplift and entertain one of their groups. If this dear woman worked for, say, Coca Cola, I'd be one of the busiest and most compensated speakers in America.
Oh well, gotta start somewhere. Today that means Ferrandi's Lakeview banquet facility near Greensburg. So right now I'm trying to fulfill my senseless need to blog and weigh which lines are too ribald for the group of retiree teachers.
Should I tell off color jokes? Swear? Titillate?
Hell yes.
They'll all get the full funny. It means I'll start off by insinuating I'm a dickhead.
That's the unspoken punchline about one of my opening remarks that declares the US Use all the crayons. Asks all the important questions, why are we here?
Where do we go when we die?
What is the meaning of life?
That puts everyone practically to sleep, which is just where I want them to be when I blast them off with an electrifying jolt of off color humor.
And then it also asks important questions just to me. Like if fans of the Grateful Dead are called deadheads. What does that make those of us who revere the book Moby Dick?
I didn't tell that one last time I was at Lakeview for reasons that will soon become apparent.
A local church was having an anniversary gala and asked me to come enjoy service with him, followed by lunch and a series of devotional speakers capped by me.
All told, my involvement lasted six hours.
It was the most time I'd spent with my head bowed since the day that at the intramural softball fields at Ohio University when my contact lenses popped out.
The people there, about 125, were all so nice, so good, so reverent, so I felt right out of place.
Plus Val was there and there's always right right beside me. She was there on the dais, and that always makes me incredibly nervous. She's never done it and I hope she never will. But I have tremendous fear she'll begin to refute with family facts. All the times I say, gee, being broke for so long, for so many years at a stretch just ain't so bad.
So I had that going on on my right.
On my left were church hierarchy that included the pastor and the all high bishop for the entire district.
So when I jokingly told the story about how I make my life more colorful by pretending to be a reverend to get the clergy discount, I smiled over at him, seeking jocular reassurance.
There was none.
In fact, the guy was glowering like he was going to take a holy phone and text Lucifer the four word directive. Prepare for Chris Rodell.
He looked truly pissed.
I don't know what the big deal was. I wouldn't care if the bishop wanted to pretend he was a blogger.
So I'm looking forward to being back at Lakeview and am confident it'll go well.
How could it go otherwise?
At the very least, a lot of retired educators will say they've been entertained by maybe the world's number one fan of the book Moby Dick.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Tweet. I guess it is.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Here you go.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: Question Will humanity be better or worse off when tear gas is used not as a crowd dispersal agent, but instead as a alternative fuel made from actual human tears?
I can see some father talking to a news crew saying, well, we had to get through the desert and we were running out of gas. So I told Timmy that he was ugly and stupid and we never love him as much as we loved his sister. He cried and we made it through the desert. But we've got some other problems to worry about now.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Thanks for checking it out. Have a great day.
