Ep 41 - A Salty Saga: Burnt Toast and Suppositories

Dive into another crispy edition of the Cool Dad Shirt Podcast, where nothing goes according to plan—just the way we like it! Expect spontaneous bucket tumbles, burnt breakfast disasters, and a deep existential rant about waiting for a stop sign to turn green (spoiler: it never does). If life’s got you feeling like burnt toast, you’re in the right place!

 Lightning, Bees, and “Be Safe”

The dads swap wild stories—like surviving an electrical storm on a boat with hair literally standing on end and a suspenseful bee attack so severe, it required Raid and leather gloves (and nearly set the neighborhood ablaze). Safety tips? Not welcome here—we prefer our podcast risky and our arguments spicy!

Oral Suppositories (Swallow At Your Own Risk)

Don’t miss one of the greatest medical mix-ups in podcast history: a guest swallows a suppository and consults poison control, only to learn he’ll live to laugh about it (and so will everyone else). This headline is your warning: read before ingesting!

Listener Movie Showdowns & Alien Hot Takes

Mike Wiseman returns to roast a past movie review and debate the genius of “Dirty Work.” The hosts plot a future episode with an alien guest (IT support from space?). From aliens to controversial catchphrases like “reach out,” they cover every weird internet rabbit hole—so the SEO gods will be pleased!

Pickle Season: A Work in Progress

Pickle talk turns sour as legendary family recipes get tested and tossed—turns out, not every batch is share-worthy. The journey to pickle perfection is just another ongoing dad project!

Tune in and subscribe for new episodes where grievances are aired, listeners are roasted, and every tangent is a potential headline! Like, review, or just keep listening for more dad wisdom and wit!

#BurntToast, #OralSuppositoryFails, #DadPodcast, #ElectricalStormBoat, #BeeAttack, #DadAdvice, #BeSafeRant, #CoolDadShirt, #PickleRecipe, #MovieReview, #PodcastComedy, #AlienPodcastGuests, #GenXNostalgia

Transcript

Dude, you got a tan.
That's my lighting. That's my lighting. Welcome to this episode of the Cool Dad Shirt Podcast.
So things fell down stairs.
Late entry topic. It's my fault and I hate myself for it. I had to empty the dehumidifier.
Oh, yeah.
I didn't feel like walking down the stairs before, so I put the little bucket up by the top of the stairs. I said, I'm coming down a little bit. I'll remember to bring it down. I opened the door, my foot just barely caught it, and I watched in horror with my hands full of other items. I watched the thing tumble down the stairs, asking it to please not break. And of course, it got to the bottom of the stairs. and it broke. I'm going to try to repair it somehow. The float broke.
It's a float on a hinge.
Exactly.
Okay, so the hinge broke and now it can't, yeah. Broke.
And I hate myself already for it.
I hate myself.
Things are going to get better, Mike. I know we're not into the show yet. My first topic was burnt toast.
Go ahead and run down the list, man.
Today we're going to talk about burnt toast. How long does it take for the light to turn green while waiting at a stop sign? And a bunch of other items on my list that I'm too frustrated to look up right now.
We're coming out of the gate salty. That's funny. Let's see where this goes.
What do you got, Rich?
So on my list, a listener calls me out on a movie review I did in the last episode. Why do I keep using phrases I don't actually like? Have you ever been on a boat with an electrical storm coming in? And stop telling me to be safe.
I have been on a boat with an electrical storm coming in.
I don't have a topic. I love that story. I don't want you to tell it.
I was thinking to myself, you too, Rich?
Yeah, so you might, well, why don't you just leave, that's a great segue. Why don't you just dive in and tell us about the time you were Got a boat with an electrical storm coming in.
And I will add one more item to the list. Oh, what do you got? We're going to talk about oral suppositories.
I can't wait for that part of the show.
That's like a double negative, isn't it? What do you want to kick off with?
Tell the story about the time you were in a boat when there was lightning.
Yeah, this is a true story too, which is even better. It was myself, Wiley. I'll change the names to protect the innocent. Guilty. And my wife. and Wiley's girlfriend at the time. I think those were, those are the only crew members.
Crew.
If I'm recalling this correctly. And we were out, way out in, I don't know if we were on Saratoga Lake. or Sagandaga. We were on one of the lakes and we ate some dinner and we were back out on the water. Because it was dark, we didn't necessarily see all these clouds roll in. And the next thing we know is we found ourselves in the middle of a very frightening electrical storm. You know, we quickly packed up everything that was loose on the boat so we can make a very fast break for the shore. And for whatever reason, we grabbed a flashlight to help see a little bit better. And we just sort of spun around and we aimed it on ourselves. And I'm not exaggerating. Our hair was sticking up because there was such a strong electrical charge in the air. And the story's funny, but at the time, of all the moments in my life that I really thought that I was going to die, I've never felt more fear about being closer to death than at that moment. And now we're gunning it towards shore. And as we got there, were some other people. And I remember there was one lady in the water because she had to do something with the boat. And as I sort of reached over to her to give her a hand, she said, no, don't come close because I believe people were so fearful that if one person got hit with lightning, it could likely arc and affect many people. So that was the story, Rich. I'm sorry it didn't have a humorous spin to it, but well, I'm sure we can make something out of it.
Well, I recall, I think the origin of you telling me the story was, man, this goes back so long ago. I think I told you an urban legend, which the story goes, they found three dead guys a golf course and a camera laying beside them. This has all the fingerprints of an urban legend. And later when they developed a film, they found pictures of each other with all their hair standing up. And so they surmised that they were laughing so hard about everybody's hair standing up, not realizing they were about to get struck by lightning and all killed immediately, which not really a funny story, except that I'm pretty sure that's not true. To which you said, I have a story just like that, and I remember you telling it. And to your point about fear, that's not just wondering if it could happen. You guys were charged. You were actual targets of lightning, yes.
In terms of just having a very, very interesting, scary life experience, that's in one of the top three for sure. True story.
No, I like the story and how we segued into that.
And I'll add, when we did pull the boat out of the water, even the ride home was frightening because the thunder and lightning was so severe.
That's a rough night. It really is. It was a rough night.
I needed some ice cream after that. I definitely.
We're going to swing by and grab a cone. Yeah.
Thanks for bringing that up.
No, it's great. I don't know what made me think of it. I guess summertime and electrical storms got me thinking about that amazing story you told me years ago.
Episode 41, the death episode.
The one everybody stopped listening to. Well, on a lighter note, we got a message from longtime listener and previous guest on the show, Mike Wiseman, calling me out about my movie review regarding Dirty Work. Norm McDonald and Artie Lang. Norm McDonald, one of my favorite comedians. I was so looking forward to the movie. And I think I suggested after the one time I watched it a million years ago, it started out great. It sort of left me. He said, you need to go watch that two or three more times to fully appreciate the genius of the movie. We were tasked to go check out that movie and see if I would like to recant my previous review.
Okay, I will see if it's available on Netflix or any of the 10 services that we subscribe to. We'll report back to Mike and maybe even have him on the show for commentary since he's such a cinematic expert.
And very opinionated on the topic, so yes.
Hey, speaking of opinions, what's your stand on aliens? I'm a fan. Because I read somewhere that having a good podcast requires having a position on aliens. We probably should, probably should make known what our position is in our stand.
Yeah, we didn't want to talk about this quite yet because there's still some negotiations in the workbeat. We are trying to get an alien on the show. We're going through the booking process. Actually, interstellar conversations are a little more difficult than you might imagine. But hopefully we can bring you some additional content from outer space, yes?
We'll do our best for sure. And if that space rock, 31 slash Atlas, if that makes its way here, we might have a guest real soon.
We'll have a guest real soon. Our alien overlords will straighten everything out, yes.
Yeah, the guy from Harvard. 0.005% chance of it being organic or natural.
Not a spaceship is what he's saying.
No, what he's saying is it's that slim of a chance that it's some sort of natural thing in space. He's thinking that it's a man-made object or an alien-made object.
Okay, so it's highly likely that this is not a rock.
This is not a piece of space debris. Something else is going on. I don't know where we're headed with this.
I don't know either. Hopefully the algorithms will kick in from this conversation to drive a lot more.
I wanted to be in the good podcast category, so that's why we're bringing this up.
Well, these are topics on everybody's mind, so it's probably timely, I would say.
I think so.
Do you have any phrases that you use that you wish you didn't?
I say the word nightmare quite often. Oh, that was a nightmare. What a nightmare. Dropping the bucket to the dehumidifier down the stairs right before the show. What a nightmare.
Total nightmare.
I'll have to think and do homework. Do a little homework. work on the phrases. You must have a couple if you brought it up.
Yeah, so this is part of the problem. Our new favorite part of our show is launching the unexpected topics at the co-host and seeing where it goes. But a few of these would require, like, I would like a little more input or thought on these so I can come prepared to it. But maybe that's part of the fun. I don't really know. Or maybe this will jog your memory. A couple of things that I I hate the phrase so on and so forth. And lately I've been saying it a lot. I think an episode or two ago, I dropped it twice. I'm like, why? You don't even like that phrase. Why do you keep saying it? I said it worked the other day. I'm actively trying to not say that anymore. Right in line with, and I know this may be controversial. Oh, another win on the podcast topic front.
Controversy.
Controversy. Stirred up, man. I really dislike the phrase. I'm going to reach out. Did so-and-so reach out? Janice reach out? Can you just reach out? Just reach out and see what's a, I think so-and-so reached out trying to find information. It's not even that bad of a phrase, but I hear it 72 times a day and I refuse to say it anymore. Every once in a while it slips out and I'm so angry at myself when it pops out of my mouth. And so I'm deliberately trying to say, You know what, later I'm going to connect with Dexter and we're going to go over the numbers on this.
I'm guilty of that occasionally. Not in excess though.
No judging, no judging. It's okay, but I'm fed up with the phrase and I'm changing, actively trying to go in another direction.
I remember the first time I heard it, I naturally just kept making that hand motion that they were going to reach out to ask that. It's a little visual, yes. Yeah, it was very visual. I know exactly when and where and who it was that said it, which... I'll share with you another time. I just don't want to mention them on the show.
But you can send them a link to this podcast and just say, in case you were wondering, I was wondering about you.
It was you.
Probably think this podcast is about you.
My day started by accidentally burning toast. And that kind of action sets the tone for the entire day. I'm not kidding. Our oven normally takes, and I make the toast in the broiler, The boiler takes a few minutes to get up to speed there, up to temperature and toast the bread. For whatever reason today, it suddenly decides to get hot lightning quick. I put the toast in, I turned around for maybe just a minute. And all of a sudden, my toast was completely destroyed. And from that moment on, my entire day just followed suit. Everything today just turned up like burnt toast. Up until just a couple minutes ago, when I dropped the dehumidifier water bucket all the way down the stairs. It's still happening. This has been taking place since 6.40 this morning.
A chain of events that started with burning toast.
Burnt toast, yep. I'm sure people out there can relate. Maybe they have, maybe it's not burnt toast from them. Maybe it's a mismatched pair of socks. Maybe it's spilling your coffee.
It sets a tone and that's a, yeah, it's tough to escape that mindset.
I hope you don't burn toast tomorrow, Rich.
I'll be very vigilant tomorrow morning for sure.
Just skip the toast, go straight to oatmeal tomorrow.
Since the theme of the show is a little salty, we're a little wound up, I'm going to keep with that theme and just say, everybody stop telling me to be safe. I've really about had it with people, say, oh, be safe, just be safe. It drives me crazy to assume that you, I'm not sure where I'm going with this. If I want to stretch too far off a ladder to clean a gutter, I know what I'm doing, or I don't. You telling me to be safe is like really intruding in my life and I don't like it. It's a very personal decision what I do with my safety.
I think the general response when we were younger was drive fast, take lots of chances to sort of mock it.
But there's something very fun and adventurous about that. It's not even the drive safe, it's be safe. Like it applies to every part of my life. And I don't think I'd like your input on my life like that. Yeah.
Stop telling me what to do.
Exactly. That's my point.
It's too woke. People are just overstepping things.
Wanting me to not get injured.
You appreciate the compassion, but if you want to take risks and live a little, so be it.
Precisely. Your life is so together, you're going to step into mine and start micromanaging my safety.
Things are so excellent and together in your life, you have time to help me put mine together, my messy life.
27% of my energy today is going to go into managing you.
Helping others put their life together.
You are welcome.
Let me know if this has ever happened to you, Rich. And I already know the answer, but I like to throw that out there anyway.
This is what we do here.
I found myself the other day stopped at a stop sign and I was waiting for the light to turn green. And there was no light there, but I just stopped at the stop sign as if, you know, there'd be another indicator letting me know that I could go. I was that tired.
That is tired. Yes. waiting for a sign. So I thought you misspoke at the top of the at the top of the. this episode, but now this is even funnier. Yes.
But that is a true story also. Nothing but the truth on this show. I'll tell you that right now. You may not get humor. You may not get a lot of things. You may not get entertained, but you will get the truth.
This is very authentic. This is super authentic in all its naked glory. Yes. this is the problem of moving into a digital world. You had an expectation that you would get some sort of indication. Along the same lines, I don't know if you've ever done this either. Have you ever picked up a magazine or something with a photo in it and actually went to like pinch zoom it? Your hand starts to move to do it. You're like, dude, what are you doing? It's paper, man.
What's wrong with you? Too many times to admit, that's for sure.
Good. I'm not alone.
I'll tell you another thing we talk about a lot is bees. And once again, I was attacked by bees last weekend.
What?
I go outside to turn over and weed a flower bed. So I'm out there. I see a couple bees and then some more bees. The next thing I know, there's bees all around me and they're on me stinging me.
Oh geez, you were attacked.
Yeah, I'm trying to pull them off me, but they had like super strength, super gripped feet or whatever, whatever bees have legs.
Oh, they grab you good and keep stinging you here.
They're latched onto my skin. They're latched on to my hair, my clothes. I thankfully had some heavy duty leather work gloves on and I was actually pinching them and pulling them off me. And I went running to the house. I'm like knocking on the door and Nancy opens the door and I'm like, you know, I got bees on me. I got bees on me. Help get them off. She opens the door and like, it's not even sinking in. She's like, wait, there's a bee nest. Where is it? And she, like, she's like walking right past me because she's curious. So she's like, where's it? And I'm like, no, there's bees on me. Get them off. I'm like, I got bees. And I'm pulling them off me and she's like, where? I was out there yesterday. I think I saw one. I'm like, no, there's bees all over me.
You're having a seizure on the front porch. Like, where exactly are they? They're on your husband, man. Yeah.
Then she came out to inspect. I said, please don't come over here. I said, please be safe. I didn't say that. I said, don't go over there. They are very angry. They're very aggressive. You're going to wind up getting stung. Sure enough, she got stung a couple of times too. Oh, really? Yeah.
What's her fired up? It's bad news.
I couldn't really even tell where the nest was. I waited a day and then I hung out out there for a while and just tried to observe where they might be coming from. And I found the nest and I felt bad, but I mean, these things were aggressive and dangerous. So I put like a half a can of Raid Hornet and bee spray and right into the opening. And I haven't really seen any since then, thankfully.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, we try not to kill things that don't need to die, but that is legitimately dangerous.
And to her concern, right? You're out there with a dog and all of a sudden, next thing they know, I mean, they're all in the dog hair. farming the dog.
Yeah, or a five-year-old kid walking, down the street next to you.
I feel bad. I mean, I don't mean these to be repeat segments, but I mean, this is my daily life.
Well, it's something everybody can relate to. You know, it's August. This is when this is when we're dealing with aggressive yellow jackets and hornets, and it's that time of year.
All the stories can't be cool, Rich, I guess.
Well, if I can try to make it cool, my next-door neighbor, at least once a year, he, I don't know why his yard gets a lot of the yellow jackets in the ground.
These are in the ground too. I forgot to add that. I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, So that always ends with gasoline and fire. It's kind of cool.
It's very cool. It is. Gasoline and fire.
Yeah, you get a killer flame. And so interestingly enough, I think the past couple times, the next morning after doing that, he's found the ground tore up and like a raccoon or a skunk or something gets in there and dismantles it and just eats the remaining larvae. Wow. Like twice he's gone out there and seen the ground opened up and like the honeycomb stuff busted open the nest in the backyard.
I haven't dug the nest up. I should dig it up and take a look down there and see.
Definitely. Give it a few days, sometimes they don't die immediately. They continue to hatch for a day or two. So maybe give that a couple days before you dive in there with a shovel.
Yeah, I'm going to go take a look. I couldn't set this one on fire because it was right at the base of one of those large ornamental grasses. I would add the neighborhood up in flames in a matter of seconds.
So you could have, you exercised judgment and did not.
I like where you're going with that, Rich. Yes.
It probably, seriously, it would have been awesome for about 15 minutes.
It would have been. It would have been an amazing display of pyrotechnics. So I got a funny story about oral suppositories.
I totally forgot about that topic. I cannot wait to hear where this goes.
One of my niece's boyfriends, for whatever reason, I don't know what it was. And maybe I'll have him on in the future to tell the story. Whatever details there were before this, I just know that at some point he took a suppository and swallowed it because he either didn't read or didn't know the true nature. As he started to complain how hard it was to swallow, My niece figured out exactly what happened. And from that moment on, fear and panic ran very deep through his soul. He did not know what was going to happen to him. He didn't know if he was going to die. They wound up calling poison control because they were so afraid that he swallowed a suppository. It turns out that he was okay. It would be all right. I think they just encouraged him to drink some liquid or whatever. He wound up swallowing a suppository.
Not to pass judgment here, but suppository is a very distinct word. By the time you're 12, 14, 15, you swallow a pill, if the word suppository comes into play, even if you don't know what the word means, it kind of sounds like...
When you hear suppository, the only thing closer to it is depository.
That's it. Something's going somewhere.
Something's going somewhere. And he's smart guy, nice guy.
That's what makes it funny. Yes.
Anyway, it all turned out all right. He's okay. I would like maybe to have him on sometime to tell all the details.
Yeah, not a bad, that would be a great feature to recap the actual horror from the storyteller himself.
I would probably invite my niece to actually tell the story.
She was a participant. She was certainly along for the ride. I saw a crazy meme the other day, kind of right up the alley of the Gen. X. The nostalgic thing is very popular these days. Someone said, do you realize, you know, the Bryan Adams song, one of his biggest hits, the summer of 69? We are actually closer to the year 2069 than when the song was written about in 1969, which was probably written in 1989. We are 44 years away from 2069 and we are more than 56 years past the summer of 69.
This show's turning into a real, a real salty downer, Rich.
You know, added this out. That's too much of A downer.
No, we're going to keep it. We're going to keep it. This will be episode 41, the Depresso.
Depresso. Buckle up, fans. This is going dark.
Forget your oral suppositories. You're going to need, you're going to need a Xanax.
That's going to be the highlight of the show, the suppository. It's going to rescue this episode.
Look at this product placement right here, Rich. Oh yeah.
I miss Dr. Pepper. God, I loved Dr. Pepper. I don't actually think I can drink it anymore, but that's, yeah, my fave. You look refreshed after that.
Yeah, I feel refreshed. My skin is so burnt, I had to moisturize before the show. Now that we're on camera. I had to moisturize. I got baked.
Weekend at the beach with the former roommate Wiley.
I can save the updates for another show. It was a great time. We missed you. It was great seeing him, catching up.
That's great. Yeah, I regretted the timing didn't work out well for me, but we'll connect all again soon.
Yeah, we'll all get together, make it happen.
Summertime on Long Island, yeah. Hey, when is pickle season? You've mentioned a few times about making pickles. Is there a season for that? You got anything coming up? New recipes? What do you got?
Yeah, as a matter of fact, I had to stop by my dad's on the way home from work today and take care of a couple things. And my uncle was down this weekend and he brought down 4 jars of pickles that he just made. Yeah, this is kind of the heart of pickle season.
Did he share his recipe or workflow with you? Or is that a tightly kept secret?
He would share it with me. I think what's been happening is he's still experimenting with the recipe a bit, as am I. So I think when one of us get together or get a solid, consistent recipe together, I think at that point we'd feel comfortable sharing. The first batch I made, they were like kerosene rich. I took one bite and dumped the whole batch in the garbage. naturally, I'm not going to share that recipe with anybody. I ripped it up and threw that in the garbage. Take that. So horrible. The second batch had much more flavor. However, the Kirby pickles were not that good and almost dried out on the inside, which I was really disappointed with. I felt like they had been picked and sat for a long time before they were sold.
And it's hard to tell. Yeah, when you buy them. Yeah.
I have not had what I would consider a very successful batch that I'd be confident and proud to share my recipe.
Okay, it's a work in progress, like any other.
It's like everything I do in my life is a work in progress.
I'm in a constant state.
I'm raising kids. That's a work in progress. That's right. I've been at my job for 49 years. That's a work in progress.
I won't know what to do when I hit a finish line.
As soon as I get good at something, I quit. try to do something else. Once I feel like I'm about to master something, I throw in the towel and I move on to do something else. It's no longer challenging.
Always chasing the challenge, yeah.
That's everything, Rich.
Yeah, that's good. And we're going to offer some variety. This episode features a little bit more frustration and angst. And I think I've said it before, it's really hard to not use this platform as a as a way to just air all your grievances. It's very tempting to go down that road. We did a little bit today, but we got, we'll keep that in check and try to bring more hilarity as the episodes continue.
I think everybody can relate to burnt toast though. It's a universal experience. I am sure burnt toast. Being hit by lightning, maybe not so much. And God bless them. We're thankful for that.
Yep. Yes, you all use phrases you don't like. Somebody has complained. I'm going through my list now. People have complained about it. Somebody absolutely did not like your review of a movie. There's no way you got to this age where somebody didn't disagree with your review of a movie.
We're coming for you, Mike Wiseman.
Man.
We'll get him on. We'll let him tell us what he thinks about the episode.
Yes, Maybe we'll have a feature.
Movie reviews by Mike Wiseman.
He would totally do it. All right, man.
All right, dude. Well, I think it's another usable episode.
Dude, this is this episode is Definitely probably usable.
It's.005% usable.
On that note, please like and review, or don't. Just keep listening.
Delicious.