Ep 43 - Smile for the Concussion

Season 3, Episode 10: Socks, Head Nods, and Winning Kitchen Appliances Like a Real Adult

Mike and Rich cover the full emotional spectrum of middle-aged dad life—from the joy of rediscovered socks to the sobering realization that winning kitchen appliances on a game show is now the ultimate fantasy.

What starts as a simple question (“Where did all my socks go?”) quickly spirals into moving kids out, awkward workplace head nod hierarchies, filming your nephew getting punched in the face, and the silent terror of unanswered calls from aging parents.

It’s heartfelt. It’s ridiculous. It’s aggressively relatable.

What We’re Talking About This Week

The Great Sock Recovery of 2025

When a daughter moves out, silverware mysteriously reappears… along with a lifetime supply of socks previously believed to be eaten by the dryer. A bittersweet rite of passage—with bonus hosiery.

Workplace Head Nod Politics

Is there a formal nod and an informal nod? Rich breaks down the unspoken hallway etiquette of corporate life—and now you’ll never walk past a coworker the same way again.

Workplace Anxiety Nobody Trains You For

One tangled headset. One innocent coworker. One man on the brink of an HR incident because someone refuses to untangle their cords.

Filming a Muay Thai Fight (Mistakes Were Made)

Rich tries to be a supportive uncle by filming his nephew’s first Muay Thai exhibition… until punches, kicks, and blood make him quietly root for the end of the match and consider deleting the footage forever.

Editing Your Spouse’s Texts (For Personal Gain)

Pro tip: If you’re asked to proofread a text, casually insert a glowing paragraph about yourself. Payment accepted in reputation points. 

Why Our Aunts and Uncles Seemed Ancient at 50

Back in the day: sitting, smoking, and handing kids $5.  Today: grandparents doing cannonballs and coaching soccer.  What changed—and why we’re all trying to age very differently.

Don’t Procrastinate the Important Stuff

A powerful reminder about digitizing old tapes, preserving family memories, and why some things shouldn’t be put off “until later.”

Dad Calls Are Always an Emergency

Two missed calls from your dad could mean anything—from a medical crisis to breaking news about Uncle Giuseppe’s opening in Sayville.

The Moment You Know You’re an Adult

Forget jet skis. Forget dirt bikes.
Winning a full set of kitchen appliances on a game show now feels like hitting the lottery—and honestly? That dishwasher alone is worth it.

Why You’ll Love This Episode

If you’re a dad, parent, uncle, or just someone navigating adulthood with mild anxiety and a sense of humor, this episode hits home. It’s observational comedy, parenting stories, nostalgia, and real-life reflection—all wrapped in one extremely comfortable Cool Dad Shirt.

#CoolDadShirtPodcast, #funnydadpodcast, #parentinghumorpodcast, #dadlifepodcast, #workplacehumor, #familystoriespodcast, #observationalcomedypodcast, #socks, #headnods, #appliances

Transcript

My mom listens to dozens of podcasts. I'm curious to hear which is your favorite podcast?

Wow, my favorite podcast is the one called Cool Dad Shirts.

I was secretly hoping she was going to burn me and say Joe Rogan.

Welcome to this episode of the Cool Dad Shirt Podcast.

That's a proper intro right there.

I don't know what you'd like to lead with, Rich. Would you mind kicking it off?

Sure. Ridge has a lot of socks.

I've got a lot of socks. Those sound perfect.

We'll probably kick around some observations walking down the hallway at work. Am I A supportive uncle? Yeah, another reason to not procrastinate on some things in life.

I would like to discuss texting on behalf of your wife, spouse, or girlfriend. Game show giveaways. And we will ask why we're not so old people, so old acting when we were kids.

That's a great observation. I can't wait to jump in.

All these stories and more on this episode of the Cool Dad Shirt Podcast.

A couple weeks ago, my youngest, Kelsey, moved out. And upon her departure, a bunch of things started reappearing. I picked up, I think, 4 forks, a couple spoons, a truckload of cups. And to my surprise, when I went down in the laundry area, there was a mountain of my socks. In the past few years, I keep buying socks. Enough time goes by where I don't really think that much about it. I'm like, I think it needs to be worse.

You're not noticing one or two missing here and there. Chunking up to a dryer loss, right?

Yeah, but four years of that, anything's possible. Yes. Turns out none of those things happened. They were just commandeered by my daughter. And I have a mountain of socks, possibly the rest of my life. I'm not sure. That is exciting news.

If anybody is considering socks as a stocking stuffer for you this Christmas, there's no need. Spend your money elsewhere. Sufficiently stockinged outside where the dryer vent comes out, you're checking the ground to see if any blew through. Son of a gun, there's nothing here but lint and paper.

The squirrels keep running off with them. Yeah, so that was the experience of moving a daughter out, amongst other things. It was bittersweet. It was toward the end, you start getting ready for them to leave. There's like stuff piled up everywhere. You're like, it might be time to get this show on the road. But when the day comes, it is a little emotional. I remember the night before. It was the last time I said goodnight to my daughter in her childhood bedroom. So that was a moving, touching experience. But I got a bunch of socks out of it.

Were you speculating they were just collecting in some drawer somewhere or some nightstand buried within the room?

I knew she. would occasionally grab some socks. I knew that was kind of happening. The extent was startling.

The same thing with the silverware, right? There's always a menagerie of cups and mugs in my kids' rooms.

So that was the that was the moving experience in the rite of passage.

And of course, as we know, Rich, gone might be temporary right now. You never know. There might be a return, which is always welcome, right?

Yeah, there's going to be a window of opportunity, of course, to make sure everything is launched and handled well. So it's all good. That's what great dads like us do, of course.

So before that last coat of paint goes on Studio C, you will make sure.

That's right. All the gear is stacked up in the hallway, ready to move in. I'm rewiring XLR jacks all around.

It looks like loading day for the Rush concert at the Garden. Yes. It just got all sorts of amps, guitars lined up. Mickey's on the headset down in the dining room. All right, on my signal. Go for Mickey. Come on up with the amps.

Oh, he said a full stack, not a half stack.

Four 12s. I can't work with that. A very bittersweet time. I can really imagine. Yeah. I'm not there yet. I'm still in the I can't wait till they get out of here stage. soon that will turn into sadness.

How could I miss you if you don't leave?

That's 100% correct.

What do you got? What's next on the list?

Speaking of kids, I was thinking about those kids in high school that kind of sacrificed grades just to continuously be cool. Do you know some of those? Yeah, Where have some of these people landed?

They probably have a podcast.

They probably have a podcast. They're probably working in data analytics.

Short-term gain, yes. You're the funny guy in class, but how does that really play out? I don't know. You never know. Grades aren't everything, but they do help out quite a bit.

I know, and you and I have discussed, I'm so indifferent about this whole primary school education and how much value it's adding to your career path and the formalities that are wrapped around it and all that sort of thing.

It is funny, the paths we go down. I think most people say this is not really where I thought I was going to be when I was 20. Not that there's anything bad, but you could not have charted this out when you were 23 years old. Highly unlikely. So I had a question, speaking of work and where you end up, something I observed about myself and others in the workplace when walking down a hallway. Do you ever notice yourself nodding your, non-verbal stuff, like you're just passing people, you know, sometimes you just nod your head to somebody coming the other direction. And I noticed if it's somebody, like another manager who I know, or somebody, you know, kind of important in the corporate structure, I generally give a nod down like this as I approach it, just sort of do, hey, you know, how's it going kind of thing. And then If it's a buddy of mine or somebody, a pal that I'm walking down or somebody I know fairly well, I do a nod up. I'm like, what's up? So I have.

You have an informal and informal head nod.

I didn't even realize I was doing this. And then one day I was like, so I think the nod down is like, I don't know if it's like a respect thing. Yeah, just sort of like, yeah, hey man, what's up? And then yeah, your buddy coming down the hall, you're like, what's up? You don't have to say anything, but the head nod, at least for me, is different. I don't know. We'll see now everybody listening to this is going to see this at work and see if it's true.

See how Crystal approaches them. This dude has no respect for me. I saw that head down. Hit me with a sup.

Do you know who I am?

Do you have any idea? Have you seen the name tag on my door?

I'm the assistant to the regional manager. So yeah, funny observation about myself and others. See if it plays out in your world too.

I work in a somewhat unique culture. I work at a Japanese company, right? So culture is very different there. I'm also the other person that always says hello to everybody in the hallway. Like I think it's weird. Yes. When you walk by somebody closely, somebody just sort of doesn't even look to acknowledge you. I've seen some people that'll just keep their head down. And I understand people might be more introverted than extroverted, but in that type of environment, it is a little weird that you wouldn't make a gesture or something like that.

Yeah, and I think the clincher is when you find out the person's name and use it, and then they have to say something. You're like, hey, Steve, oh, crap. I had a conversation about this with a buddy of mine a number of years ago. I said, what is with people just not acknowledging your existence, you know? And he said, well, you know, you got to remember, we were like engineers and drafters. We're kind of, we're highly technical people. And The people you hang out with might be a little spectrum-y. I said, oh, actually, maybe that does explain some of this. However, for work, I traveled over the years to Greenville, South Carolina. I've gone to Lynchburg, Virginia. I've been to Idaho Falls. You know what happens in all those places? Everybody's really nice there. Like you show up as a stranger, they're like, hey, good morning. You know, everybody is so nice. So I've determined the Northeast kind of sucks in that way. It feels a little regional. because you've heard of Southern hospitality. Yeah, everyone's wicked friendly down there.

A much different level of warmth. I think so. I noticed some people our age who are grandparents and the amount of involvement they are with their grandkids, their kids, and the level of activity, things they do, sports, school events, physical activities in the pools, playing soccer. And I was thinking about some of the grandparents and uncles when we were kids. And I always felt they acted so old. And I was trying to back into the math to see how old they were at that time. And in many circumstances, they're the same age as us, if not even younger. And the memories I have of them, They were always sitting around acting very exhausted and playing with the kids, no, we're too old for that. And maybe it's just some of the people that I am close with and not that way elsewhere. It seems to have drastically changed where people are into their 70s and their level of activity involvement is far, far different than what I recall as a kid seeing some people much younger than that.

You're completely right. And it is always hard to evaluate because when you're young, everybody seems old. So part of that is going on anyway. But you're not wrong. I remember all my aunts and uncles, well, they all smoked, number one. So they.

Yeah, smoking.

They just sat on the couch smoking. Nobody was really in great shape. And they all looked like tired and exhausted all the time. And no, that's all they did. They just sat around. So I do think society has changed a little bit. We're generally more health conscious. Yeah, the energy, I think people realize you can still do a lot of things later in life.

So different.

Yeah, absolutely. No doubt.

Yeah, your 51-year-old uncle would hit you with like a $5 bill and then he'd be like, all right, kid, good seeing you. That'd be it. Where's the lighter? Somebody get me my smokes. Yeah. They give you the five or then ask you to run out to their car to get their smokes. They don't feel like going out to the driveway.

Oh, the car is like way over there here, kid. Go get it.

Oh my God. If I give you 5 bucks, would you get my smokes and my glasses out of the car?

It was a different time. It was a different time.

And what you said about everybody sitting around smoking, that was the activity. The kids had a run off. They played in the basement or out in the colds. Yeah. And there was no involvement. Nobody did anything with us.

Nope.

Nope. I watched my brother-in-law. He's got one kid on his neck, the other kid's on his leg, the other one's on his arms. He's all over the place.

Yes. No, it's great.

It is. It's really great.

It keeps you young too, I think, to be engaged like that as we get out. But you're right, these are all people, you know, aunts and uncles, they were probably late 40s, early 50s, younger than we are right now, phoning it in, like cashed in. I'm just gonna, I'm good. Yeah.

Maybe the result of that is why more people I notice our age are much more actively involved with kids and grandkids. Maybe it was the absence of that.

Could be for sure. Speaking of aunts and uncles, I recently, we went down, we took a trip down to Washington, DC to visit my sister. My brother came. He was great. And I have a niece and nephew down there. My niece was in a school play. She did a great job. It was a thriller. I'm not really a theater type person, but it was very exciting. Yeah, it was really interesting. And it was a.

They don't usually do thrillers.

I know, but they came out, they interacted with the audience and stuff. It was a, it was. It was actually a lot of fun. My nephew has really been working out a lot lately and he's been at a gym and he kind of got into Jiu Jitsu and some MMA and his latest thing is a Muay Thai. I've never heard of Muay Thai before. It's A Thai style of like kickboxing fighting.

It sounds like a drink with an... No, it sounds like a drink with an umbrella in it though, doesn't it?

Yes, I thought this.

Is a drink with an umbrella. It's got some coconut rum in it.

Two Muay Thais, please.

Once for me, don't put the umbrella in it.

That's right. Poke my eye out again. Not doing that again. So it's a Thai style of fighting. And so my nephew said, well, I actually have an event coming up. It's not a real competition. It's just an exhibition, but I will be fighting somebody I don't know. It's his first time doing something outside of his own gym. So we went to go watch it and check it out and it was interesting. And so you get through like, I'm going to videotape this and just try to do a good job. I love the cinematic mode on the iPhone. It's really like a stable. You don't get any bounce from your hand. It kind of adds something to the, you know, it's a shallow depth of field. So you could get this kind of cinematic look as the name would imply. trying to set all this up and do a good job. Kid comes out, looks like 1,000,000 bucks. He's out there. And it's great. And then, you know, he gets punched square in the face a couple of times and you're like, oh, wow. And then kicked in the head. And at some point I'm still holding the camera going, suddenly I don't like filming this anymore. It feels weird. I kind of feel like I should keep filming it to support my nephew, but it's hard to watch.

But as of right now, it looks like I'm rooting for the other team. It does.

Then there's some blood and I'm like, I don't know. I can delete. I think I'm going to delete this. Yeah, I'm going to delete this. But, and he did great. It was, his inexperience showed it was his first time. But yeah, it made me feel uncomfortable.

The first rule of Fight Club is don't let your uncle film it. From this video on YouTube, I see you've already broken the first rule of Fight Club.

The good news is, he had something to review. He was actually appreciative. His father did it too. I mean, there's several video to choose from, but he liked it because he could see, he could review several multi-angles.

Several graphic, there are several graphic videos to choose from.

Slow motion. He did great. He really, he really did good, but it was just a strange feeling. I just, I wouldn't have predicted that 2 minutes earlier. It was very funny.

I got to take a quick pause. What's up? My intern, Jenna, is here taking our breakfast order. Yeah. Rich, you normally get the macchiato, right? Yeah. Okay. He said yes, sir. Oh, perfect, perfect. Thank you. It's too early for a Sumatra.

Hey, get your Uncle Rich some smokes while you're out.

While you're out there, get Uncle Rich's smokes and glasses from the car.

Oh, that was a callback within the same show.

I don't know if this is something you also do. Regularly, my wife will ask me to edit one of her text messages. She'll write a whole lengthy message. She'll want to send it to one of her friends or family members. And she'll say, oh, can you just do me a favor and just look through this and edit it for me? I always say yes, of course. Many times, though, what I will do is within the text message, I'll drop in a little, a nice little note about myself. So she may or may not even reference, oh, Mike and I are doing this or whatever. Somewhere in the text, I'll regularly try to say, my amazingly wonderful husband was helping out doing something. And I'll write a whole sentence speaking very highly of myself. And then at the end, I'll say, oh, I think it's all right. You want me to hit send? And she'll say, oh, yeah, sure, go ahead and hit send. I do this twice a week at least. I send out beautiful, nice little mentions of myself. And I think of it as payment for my editing services.

Yes, I completely agree. And all her friends and family have such high regard for you.

They think to themselves, she speaks so highly of him, even completely out of context. We were wondering which mop head to purchase at Costco this weekend. And in the middle of it, Nancy just explained the many, many compassionate things Mike does for his family, his thoughtfulness.

Yes, brilliant, brilliant. That's so good.

So if it's not something you're practicing now, I strongly encourage. Volunteer for a couple edits and throw your name out there.

That's good. There was, I saw it.

Oh, at the end, I should start doing hashtag cool dad shirt podcast. That's right. With the link to the last episode.

All right, Nancy, we get it. Your husband's got a show. Jeez. There was a, it kind of reminds me of, I saw, I don't know if it's true or not, but there was some guy, he, whenever he took like selfies with his wife on vacation and stuff like that, for years he was doing this, he would edit the reflection in the sunglasses, he would put like Skeletor or something. Just a teeny tiny thing he would drop in. So eventually someone told his wife, like, do you know this? They went back, it was in, it was in like 40 different photos they had over the past years of vacations and stuff like that. And just a little Easter egg he put in the reflection of the sunglasses over all this time.

I love when people are so incredibly creative on such a subtle level like that.

Yes.

I notice you do something like that on the show and I'm not going to give it away.

We'll see if people know.

Once I became hip to it, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

There is an Easter egg in the videos. Yes, there is. It's not just a shameless motion of merch. Mug.

It's just the sexy mug I keep holding up. Next you're going to tell me you're putting it on a coaster that looks like this. It's like that scene in Wayne's World.

The bag of Doritos comes in, but they're really obvious. Pepsi or whatever it was, yeah.

Those are great. I would never sell out like that. Hey, my daughter recently had some surgery. Of course, no parent wants to see their kid have to go through that. But the time we spent in recovery, my daughter, and she'll be so embarrassed to hear this, she was going on and on about all the nice things we do and how much she loves us. Thank you for doing everything. It was the sweetest 45 minutes ever.

So do you have an order of sodium pentothal on the way to the house?

I don't know. how to feel about it. My wife and I are like, my God. And not that she isn't sweet or not that she doesn't do those things regularly. It was so sincere. What parent doesn't want to hear that once in a while? It's hard work every day. We know the kids appreciate it and we know they're grateful, but hearing it like that once in a while, it goes so far. It felt so nice.

That's a great story. No, it is. Yeah, it's funny.

Everything turned out fine with the surgery as well.

Wow, what kind of jerk am I? Everything's okay, right?

No, surgery was all fine.

So I want to give you a cautionary tale. Here's just another reason not to procrastinate. For years and years and years, I've had a pile of videotapes sitting on the shelf right behind me that just needed to be digitized. It just, it was long overdue. Videotapes of the kids. kids from way back when. It's one of those things like I got to get to, I got to get to, and you just kind of never get to. So I finally decided to do it. There was a cassette tape in there too from, I'm quite certain it was 1975 and it had some audio on there and it was my mother singing with her sisters. They would harmonize They were great. They were great singers back in the day. And just to hear them laugh and just joke around, and they ripped off like 3 songs in perfect three-part harmony, it was amazing. The cassette had my sister singing on it too. It was delightful. So I threw that in the package to go get digitized. And I put a post-it note on the cassette, and I just said, this cassette is literally 50 years old. If this is not salvageable, completely understand. I won't be upset if it gets destroyed. But they were able to pull it off. I got an MP3 and I sent it off to my mom and she wrote back, my gosh, what an amazing gift this was. You brought me back 50 years to her sisters are deceased. And she said, what a great gift I had to hear them laughing and singing along with me. And she was so, just so happy with the whole thing. The important part of this story is she died suddenly three days after I sent that to her. An otherwise healthy woman had a massive stroke and died. And I got that just under the wire. And it was tough for everybody, but I'm here to tell you, if you're sitting on things like that, don't let those things slide. Try to take care of those things. And here's your cool dad tip of the week. Get on top of some of that stuff.

Just recently read, I don't know, three or four things. you should never get rid of when a loved one passes. And that was on the top of the list, any sort of audio, handwritten stuff. I remember something similar, you know, finding an old cassette of my grandmother reciting recipes for my mother.

Oh, really?

Instead of writing them down, they just recorded my grandmother walking through some of these old Italian recipes.

Oh, that's awesome.

To your point, Rich, timeliness of that and the value that has is just priceless.

Yeah, and we're at this age at life where, you know, things are changing. We have elderly parents. Make sure you get things where they need to be.

It's a great memory for you to hold on to that too. For sure.

All right, tell a funny story now, Mike.

All right. I have a work-related story, and this is a story about anxiety. There's someone that sits by me, who I'm friendly with. They have a headset for work calls. When I tell you this headset is tangled, I don't know how this individual could get it on their head. Every time I walk by and see this thing all tangled up, I start feeling anxious. I want to take the headset off his ear and untangle it and plug it back in. I don't know what to do. There's a piece of me that just wants to go over there and untangle it and not say anything and plug it in. I don't even think they'll notice because if a tangled headset is not bothering you? I don't know if they'll notice that the thing is even untangled. I think I might go and untangle it and plug it back in.

I love this story for a number of reasons. Number one, I love laughing at myself for getting wound up about ridiculous things. just like that, where you start getting bothered, like, this means nothing. And I get the same way. I'm like, how does this person get through life? So yes, I find that very funny to myself. And then you also think, it's definitely not my place to go do that. But from sheer curiosity, if I just went and fixed that for that person, what would happen next?

I don't know. if they would be set by it or they would feel some sort of intrusion on their personal workspace.

I don't know. Let us know how that goes, Mike.

If there's an opportunity, I might just go and unplug it and take all the kink out. I won't say anything.

I'll just do it. Just see what happens. Plot twist, you end up in HR for screwing up with somebody's equipment.

They call me in and they're replaying the video. That's right. In someone's personal space, touching their private property.

another plat to miss, the HR person says, no, I totally get it. Nope, nope, that needed to get straightened out. You're good, Michael.

I would say something to him offering, hey, oh, hey, did you want me to untangle that? But what would happen, here's what happened. He might say, I'll do it and we'll never get to it. And then it will drive me crazier. And now at that point, I can't go and fix it because now he'll know that it was me that fixed it.

And that you're a little obsessed. Yeah.

So I can't say anything. I can't make an offer.

You would end up in therapy.

I should be in therapy for having this as a distraction of my life. I can't focus on my work. I'm not getting anything done. For crying out loud, Larry. Just fix the damn headset.

Oh, man. That's a very funny story about workplace anxiety. That doesn't come up in training that you, the mandatory training you have to take, does it?

I've watched a lot of required videos for my job. That has not been one of them.

It's really, let's really get to what's driving me crazy at work.

As A follow-up, I'm wondering how things are working out for your rehearsal studio endeavor. The rehearsal.

the Monday night jam that I may or may not want you doing.

Where have you landed on Monday night jams?

So yeah, Mike is alluding to stories I've told. Okay, so Monday nights I have a jam in my basement. which is a lot of fun. It started out just like some neighbors coming over once in a while. It was different people showing up, yada, yada. It became more and more formal, people I work with. And now it's an entire crew of people that went to high school together. So they're all 10 years younger than me. And it's great. Everybody is a great musician, super fun, super cool. But it's getting to the point where these guys want to learn so many songs so fast. It's a little bit like a homework assignment. It's no longer just a fun jam. It's actually, oh, we should do this song. We should do this song. And it starts piling up. And I'm kind of getting to the point where I don't want more assignments in my week. And so when I found out they had another friend that they had recently been talking to, another guitar player, and said, oh, you know, he's, you know, Jason's going to come over. I paused for a moment and thought, maybe, I'll sit this one out. I'll be upstairs doing some work. You guys are sufficiently guitared. So why don't you go ahead? That did cross my mind. I did not follow through on that. I went down and jammed and I had a great time. Did your breakfast run?

You see me looking over to my right. That's my breakfast. I didn't want to kill your awesome story. We have, man, the whole staff is in this episode.

I know. I can hear all the activity upstairs.

Moving forward, given the responsibility of learning so many songs,

we're going to play this by year. The one good thing that came out of it, I have a really nice amplifier I bought like in the year 2000, 2001. And I love it, but it's a big, heavy tube amp. And in recent years, I'm not out gigging as a guitar player these days. So I bought a smaller letter digital amp that I use for practicing and just screwing around at home. So because We had an additional guitar player. I dug out my old amp, which I've been considering selling for years, and it's worth real money. And so I plugged that baby back. I kind of fell back in love with the amp. God, it's just, it's such an amazing, so I might be hooked. I don't know. I'm back in, Mike.

We talk about my dad a lot and some of the phone calls I receive. And the thing with my dad is you never know what you're going to get. If you recall, I was on the phone with you the other day. And in a very short window, he had tried to reach me twice. So of course, two calls in a very short period is a bit alarming with our aging parents. Similar to kids calling like 12 or 1 in the morning. You always assume the worst. I find myself becoming distracted with this as I'm talking to you. And now I feel that let me go address this. He could have fallen He could be having trouble breathing. He could be bleeding. I've received all those calls. One call I recently got after multiple attempts was, hey, I just got that flyer. Uncle Giuseppe's is opening up in Sayville. Did you get that? And of course I am relieved that nothing's wrong. I have no benchmark, no reference as to where we're going with this emergency, it could be anywhere from grand opening of Uncle Giuseppe's in Sayville to I can't stop the bleeding, get here immediately.

He's got it figured out though. You are compelled to answer every call because you have no idea what's on the other end of that.

I have no idea. And every call scares me.

Yeah. Well, thankfully, we now have a new location to get people.

Thankfully. for all your Italian food delicacies.

And you were notified so promptly. I mean, that's a, he actually did you a service by letting you know immediately.

He told me I looked. I didn't even get the flyer yet. It came the next day.

You're welcome, Mike.

Do you post much on LinkedIn, Rich?

Not for this, for my business, Avant Industrial Marketing. Check us out. I do post a little bit on there just to get some traction as I'm trying to further develop that business. But personally, I don't do too much of that.

No, So I don't look at LinkedIn as a humorous or overly personal type of social media site. Of course, very professional. And I don't post there very often. But I did recently post and like many of my witty pieces of advice and humor on this show, I felt as though it was a huge flop. I don't know if it was because people did not make the reference or if they were not amused with it. So I was contemplating taking it down. Thankfully, you did talk me out of it and I kept it there.

It was very good. It was, I thought it was topical, funny, and no, very well done.

And I don't know why I'm still thinking about it, but I am for some reason. I'm second guessing it. And for some context, it was a reference to the Scott Kelly resume that someone was looking at during a Jonas Brothers concert. And I thought if someone was looking at a resume at a Jonas Brothers concert and it went viral, if anybody I know was going to a Jonas Brothers concert, It would be great if maybe they would open my resume. Therefore, sending that viral and increasing the exposure much greater than a simple Indeed or LinkedIn site.

Yes, It was very clever.

To my surprise, there were only three likes, Rich. And you and Erica were amongst two of them. I don't know where it sits in people's mind. I thought it was so appropriately witty, even for that platform.

A refreshing change from that platform. Yes, I completely agree. That was well done. You know, and I'll never forget my daughter, Kelsey. This, man, this is years ago. I remember I was going to post something back when I used to be on Facebook and it was a little goofy. And I remember turning to my daughter and saying, is this goofy? She goes, dad, you are goofy. Like, it's okay. Like, you should post it. And I was slightly offended, slightly flattered, and I went with, so dude, just be you. That was funny. It is disappointing though, because, well, we talked about this before. I'm on Instagram, I do photos, and those likes are always nice. I mean, everybody likes getting likes or comments on your creative work. I care less about that than I do on LinkedIn, where I'm actually trying to grow a business. If you can just throw me a like or put a comment on there, it actually helps me, it helps your business grow by seeing more exposure. And it's very disappointing when you see 742 impressions and there's one like. That's a little frustrating because people I know with small businesses, I try to click on those and help them get going.

So the takeaway is if you see something and you like it, like it. Like it, help. your buddy out. But I feel as though it might be a long time before I try that again.

I almost posted as a comment and said, hey, aren't you the guy from that award-winning podcast?

It flopped. It was a crash and burn, as they say, Rich. It will be a while before I put my toe in the water again, that's for sure.

You're a little shell-shocked on LinkedIn.

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's not the platform for me. Maybe it's not.

You're just too funny and hip for that Wayne platform.

I know what it is. I'll take a look and see how many people no longer are connected to me. That'll be a true gauge. Speaking of being adults, this hit me kind of hard the other day. We were watching a game show. You remember, you're homesick from school, someone flips on The Price is Right, and you're watching that for the next hour with all these giveaways. You know, when they opened up those curtains and it was like a jet ski and a car or some arcade games, all I was thinking was, wow, I mean, could you imagine? I don't know what the game show was that was on the other day, but I walked by and I look up and one of the prizes was a full set of kitchen appliances. I thought to myself, that would be so incredible if we won that. I thought to myself, this is it. I'm an adult now. Forget the dirt bikes, the jet skis. The practicality of having a full set of new appliances was the most appealing thing behind all three curtains. I was so ashamed of myself, but I thought we need new appliances so bad. This would be a huge victory for us.

18-year-old Mike would punch you in the stomach for saying something like that. That's hysterical. Well, I mean, it just shows the progression of it. But the other bonus in there, the subtext there too, is it's one less thing you need to worry about. Oh, we got all new appliances. There's one thing I do not have to worry about for a long time. It's a relief, right?

Like that's 10 grand right there. The stove, the refrigerator. That new super quiet dishwasher that doesn't sound like there's broken glass in the bottom of it. That's a huge win.

Oh, how times change.

Yeah, this is where I'm at life now. To wrap up, I am more interested in winning appliances on a game show. Tangled headphone cords create anxiety for me. Lastly, I think I'm abandoning any attempts for recognition on LinkedIn.

That's A fascinating slice into your psychology. Yeah, my takeaway is I really need to read my notes better because I wrote a really funny line getting back to my nephew Barring. And I missed it. was the funniest part of the whole thing. The button at the end of that bit should have been smile for the concussion. Oh no. I was so proud of it. It's underlined and I underlined it. I'm like, make sure, make sure you hit that joke. And I missed it. I'm a terrible podcaster.

The great news is, Rich, no one will be the wiser because I will drop that in right after your bit 15 minutes ago. So you've landed it perfectly. It's another amazingly executed bit by Rich Grissel. Sloppily copy and paste it back over there. Change the EQ so it's like it's completely off or whatever. Yeah, I love that one. I love when that happens. The obvious edits.

It's a wonder we're still on the air, honestly.

No wonder why no one's liking my posts. That's all I got. Friends at work, dad calls about Uncle Giuseppe's.

That was great. Appliances. Yeah. I don't need to buy socks for eternity. That's where I'm coming in.

Were they the good socks too? The real nice, cushy, comfy ones?

Yeah, I just spend a little money on socks. Those are an important part of your day, walking around and stuff. So you know how they work. Had I been thinking, I would have got really obnoxious ones that daughters would never take. I hate Taylor Swift. I don't know. Something.

Listen, it's not long before we're buying ourselves those fancy compression socks at CVS.

With all the sitting around and smoking that we do, we might need more support in the calves.

There's no blood circulating from my ankles.

I'm out of humor, dude.

Yeah, me too. I think that's it. Dude, I went to the bakery that's right around the corner from us yesterday morning to get a couple little pastries, which I know you don't eat. And they have really good quiches there. And I wanted to get a quiche. They have a spinach, basil, sun-dried tomato ricotta.

Wow, that sounds good.

Quiche, yeah, delicious. And I've gotten them before. I've always bought them along with a lot of other things. So I never really asked how much they were. And I went in yesterday and before I even bought one, I said, oh, how much are the quiches? Do you know how much a quiche is from that bakery? I'm going to tell you because I know you don't go there. $28 for an 8-inch quiche. $28. $28, Rich. I said, no, thank you. $28. I paused because I just, people are paying $28 for a quiche. And I'm thinking.

That is interestingly expensive.

Yeah. And I'm not even saying it to keep this in the show. I'm just 28 bucks for a quiche, $5 for a small muffin. It's just so unbalanced.

Guy's going to quiche his way to a Maserati. Jeez.

You ain't kidding. All right, dude. I'm going to head upstairs. We got another teacher sitting with me right now. So because my daughter is out of school for so long, the school is sending teachers to the house, which is very nice. And it helps keep her on track. She's not falling behind. She's taking all the exams. She's getting her grades in for the quarter. As a family, we all need to be on our best behavior too. So every time they come, we're up early. We're cleaning the house. Everybody's on heightened alert.

Intensity is way down.

So I mean, by the time the teacher leaves, everybody's building, you know, the needle's like going up. So the whole family's just nearly exploding from trying to contain all this while the teacher's here. So they'll be leaving, I think, at around 1:00.

Yeah, we've talked before about seeing people out of context. Like when you see your, when you were a kid, you see the teacher at the grocery store or something and you're like, do you go grocery shopping? It just blows your mind. So yeah, it's got to be even different to have them at your kitchen table.

It's like a better home and garden shoot, you know.

We've got a showing at 10.

So when I head upstairs, I'll have to be on my best behavior.

make sure you make sure you drop a plug for the show and say, oh, sorry, I was downstairs working out another episode of an award-winning podcast. You should check us out.

I'll offer the teacher a cup of coffee and I'll put it on a nice cool dad shirt coaster.

Actually, drop her name in the show, like do it right now, and then tell her she was in the show.

In the show. All right, dude, I'll let you know. I'll catch up with you later.

Sounds good. Later.

Audio file

CDS Season 3 Episode 10 November 16 2025_mp3.mp3

Transcript

My mom listens to dozens of podcasts. I'm curious to hear which is your favorite podcast?

Wow, my favorite podcast is the one called Cool Dad Shirts.

I was secretly hoping she was going to burn me and say Joe Rogan.

Welcome to this episode of the Cool Dad Shirt Podcast.

That's a proper intro right there.

I don't know what you'd like to lead with, Rich. Would you mind kicking it off?

Sure. Ridge has a lot of socks.

I've got a lot of socks. Those sound perfect.

We'll probably kick around some observations walking down the hallway at work. Am I A supportive uncle? Yeah, another reason to not procrastinate on some things in life.

I would like to discuss texting on behalf of your wife, spouse, or girlfriend. Game show giveaways. And we will ask why we're not so old people, so old acting when we were kids.

That's a great observation. I can't wait to jump in.

All these stories and more on this episode of the Cool Dad Shirt Podcast.

A couple weeks ago, my youngest, Kelsey, moved out. And upon her departure, a bunch of things started reappearing. I picked up, I think, 4 forks, a couple spoons, a truckload of cups. And to my surprise, when I went down in the laundry area, there was a mountain of my socks. In the past few years, I keep buying socks. Enough time goes by where I don't really think that much about it. I'm like, I think it needs to be worse.

You're not noticing one or two missing here and there. Chunking up to a dryer loss, right?

Yeah, but four years of that, anything's possible. Yes. Turns out none of those things happened. They were just commandeered by my daughter. And I have a mountain of socks, possibly the rest of my life. I'm not sure. That is exciting news.

If anybody is considering socks as a stocking stuffer for you this Christmas, there's no need. Spend your money elsewhere. Sufficiently stockinged outside where the dryer vent comes out, you're checking the ground to see if any blew through. Son of a gun, there's nothing here but lint and paper.

The squirrels keep running off with them. Yeah, so that was the experience of moving a daughter out, amongst other things. It was bittersweet. It was toward the end, you start getting ready for them to leave. There's like stuff piled up everywhere. You're like, it might be time to get this show on the road. But when the day comes, it is a little emotional. I remember the night before. It was the last time I said goodnight to my daughter in her childhood bedroom. So that was a moving, touching experience. But I got a bunch of socks out of it.

Were you speculating they were just collecting in some drawer somewhere or some nightstand buried within the room?

I knew she. would occasionally grab some socks. I knew that was kind of happening. The extent was startling.

The same thing with the silverware, right? There's always a menagerie of cups and mugs in my kids' rooms.

So that was the that was the moving experience in the rite of passage.

And of course, as we know, Rich, gone might be temporary right now. You never know. There might be a return, which is always welcome, right?

Yeah, there's going to be a window of opportunity, of course, to make sure everything is launched and handled well. So it's all good. That's what great dads like us do, of course.

So before that last coat of paint goes on Studio C, you will make sure.

That's right. All the gear is stacked up in the hallway, ready to move in. I'm rewiring XLR jacks all around.

It looks like loading day for the Rush concert at the Garden. Yes. It just got all sorts of amps, guitars lined up. Mickey's on the headset down in the dining room. All right, on my signal. Go for Mickey. Come on up with the amps.

Oh, he said a full stack, not a half stack.

Four 12s. I can't work with that. A very bittersweet time. I can really imagine. Yeah. I'm not there yet. I'm still in the I can't wait till they get out of here stage. soon that will turn into sadness.

How could I miss you if you don't leave?

That's 100% correct.

What do you got? What's next on the list?

Speaking of kids, I was thinking about those kids in high school that kind of sacrificed grades just to continuously be cool. Do you know some of those? Yeah, Where have some of these people landed?

They probably have a podcast.

They probably have a podcast. They're probably working in data analytics.

Short-term gain, yes. You're the funny guy in class, but how does that really play out? I don't know. You never know. Grades aren't everything, but they do help out quite a bit.

I know, and you and I have discussed, I'm so indifferent about this whole primary school education and how much value it's adding to your career path and the formalities that are wrapped around it and all that sort of thing.

It is funny, the paths we go down. I think most people say this is not really where I thought I was going to be when I was 20. Not that there's anything bad, but you could not have charted this out when you were 23 years old. Highly unlikely. So I had a question, speaking of work and where you end up, something I observed about myself and others in the workplace when walking down a hallway. Do you ever notice yourself nodding your, non-verbal stuff, like you're just passing people, you know, sometimes you just nod your head to somebody coming the other direction. And I noticed if it's somebody, like another manager who I know, or somebody, you know, kind of important in the corporate structure, I generally give a nod down like this as I approach it, just sort of do, hey, you know, how's it going kind of thing. And then If it's a buddy of mine or somebody, a pal that I'm walking down or somebody I know fairly well, I do a nod up. I'm like, what's up? So I have.

You have an informal and informal head nod.

I didn't even realize I was doing this. And then one day I was like, so I think the nod down is like, I don't know if it's like a respect thing. Yeah, just sort of like, yeah, hey man, what's up? And then yeah, your buddy coming down the hall, you're like, what's up? You don't have to say anything, but the head nod, at least for me, is different. I don't know. We'll see now everybody listening to this is going to see this at work and see if it's true.

See how Crystal approaches them. This dude has no respect for me. I saw that head down. Hit me with a sup.

Do you know who I am?

Do you have any idea? Have you seen the name tag on my door?

I'm the assistant to the regional manager. So yeah, funny observation about myself and others. See if it plays out in your world too.

I work in a somewhat unique culture. I work at a Japanese company, right? So culture is very different there. I'm also the other person that always says hello to everybody in the hallway. Like I think it's weird. Yes. When you walk by somebody closely, somebody just sort of doesn't even look to acknowledge you. I've seen some people that'll just keep their head down. And I understand people might be more introverted than extroverted, but in that type of environment, it is a little weird that you wouldn't make a gesture or something like that.

Yeah, and I think the clincher is when you find out the person's name and use it, and then they have to say something. You're like, hey, Steve, oh, crap. I had a conversation about this with a buddy of mine a number of years ago. I said, what is with people just not acknowledging your existence, you know? And he said, well, you know, you got to remember, we were like engineers and drafters. We're kind of, we're highly technical people. And The people you hang out with might be a little spectrum-y. I said, oh, actually, maybe that does explain some of this. However, for work, I traveled over the years to Greenville, South Carolina. I've gone to Lynchburg, Virginia. I've been to Idaho Falls. You know what happens in all those places? Everybody's really nice there. Like you show up as a stranger, they're like, hey, good morning. You know, everybody is so nice. So I've determined the Northeast kind of sucks in that way. It feels a little regional. because you've heard of Southern hospitality. Yeah, everyone's wicked friendly down there.

A much different level of warmth. I think so. I noticed some people our age who are grandparents and the amount of involvement they are with their grandkids, their kids, and the level of activity, things they do, sports, school events, physical activities in the pools, playing soccer. And I was thinking about some of the grandparents and uncles when we were kids. And I always felt they acted so old. And I was trying to back into the math to see how old they were at that time. And in many circumstances, they're the same age as us, if not even younger. And the memories I have of them, They were always sitting around acting very exhausted and playing with the kids, no, we're too old for that. And maybe it's just some of the people that I am close with and not that way elsewhere. It seems to have drastically changed where people are into their 70s and their level of activity involvement is far, far different than what I recall as a kid seeing some people much younger than that.

You're completely right. And it is always hard to evaluate because when you're young, everybody seems old. So part of that is going on anyway. But you're not wrong. I remember all my aunts and uncles, well, they all smoked, number one. So they.

Yeah, smoking.

They just sat on the couch smoking. Nobody was really in great shape. And they all looked like tired and exhausted all the time. And no, that's all they did. They just sat around. So I do think society has changed a little bit. We're generally more health conscious. Yeah, the energy, I think people realize you can still do a lot of things later in life.

So different.

Yeah, absolutely. No doubt.

Yeah, your 51-year-old uncle would hit you with like a $5 bill and then he'd be like, all right, kid, good seeing you. That'd be it. Where's the lighter? Somebody get me my smokes. Yeah. They give you the five or then ask you to run out to their car to get their smokes. They don't feel like going out to the driveway.

Oh, the car is like way over there here, kid. Go get it.

Oh my God. If I give you 5 bucks, would you get my smokes and my glasses out of the car?

It was a different time. It was a different time.

And what you said about everybody sitting around smoking, that was the activity. The kids had a run off. They played in the basement or out in the colds. Yeah. And there was no involvement. Nobody did anything with us.

Nope.

Nope. I watched my brother-in-law. He's got one kid on his neck, the other kid's on his leg, the other one's on his arms. He's all over the place.

Yes. No, it's great.

It is. It's really great.

It keeps you young too, I think, to be engaged like that as we get out. But you're right, these are all people, you know, aunts and uncles, they were probably late 40s, early 50s, younger than we are right now, phoning it in, like cashed in. I'm just gonna, I'm good. Yeah.

Maybe the result of that is why more people I notice our age are much more actively involved with kids and grandkids. Maybe it was the absence of that.

Could be for sure. Speaking of aunts and uncles, I recently, we went down, we took a trip down to Washington, DC to visit my sister. My brother came. He was great. And I have a niece and nephew down there. My niece was in a school play. She did a great job. It was a thriller. I'm not really a theater type person, but it was very exciting. Yeah, it was really interesting. And it was a.

They don't usually do thrillers.

I know, but they came out, they interacted with the audience and stuff. It was a, it was. It was actually a lot of fun. My nephew has really been working out a lot lately and he's been at a gym and he kind of got into Jiu Jitsu and some MMA and his latest thing is a Muay Thai. I've never heard of Muay Thai before. It's A Thai style of like kickboxing fighting.

It sounds like a drink with an... No, it sounds like a drink with an umbrella in it though, doesn't it?

Yes, I thought this.

Is a drink with an umbrella. It's got some coconut rum in it.

Two Muay Thais, please.

Once for me, don't put the umbrella in it.

That's right. Poke my eye out again. Not doing that again. So it's a Thai style of fighting. And so my nephew said, well, I actually have an event coming up. It's not a real competition. It's just an exhibition, but I will be fighting somebody I don't know. It's his first time doing something outside of his own gym. So we went to go watch it and check it out and it was interesting. And so you get through like, I'm going to videotape this and just try to do a good job. I love the cinematic mode on the iPhone. It's really like a stable. You don't get any bounce from your hand. It kind of adds something to the, you know, it's a shallow depth of field. So you could get this kind of cinematic look as the name would imply. trying to set all this up and do a good job. Kid comes out, looks like 1,000,000 bucks. He's out there. And it's great. And then, you know, he gets punched square in the face a couple of times and you're like, oh, wow. And then kicked in the head. And at some point I'm still holding the camera going, suddenly I don't like filming this anymore. It feels weird. I kind of feel like I should keep filming it to support my nephew, but it's hard to watch.

But as of right now, it looks like I'm rooting for the other team. It does.

Then there's some blood and I'm like, I don't know. I can delete. I think I'm going to delete this. Yeah, I'm going to delete this. But, and he did great. It was, his inexperience showed it was his first time. But yeah, it made me feel uncomfortable.

The first rule of Fight Club is don't let your uncle film it. From this video on YouTube, I see you've already broken the first rule of Fight Club.

The good news is, he had something to review. He was actually appreciative. His father did it too. I mean, there's several video to choose from, but he liked it because he could see, he could review several multi-angles.

Several graphic, there are several graphic videos to choose from.

Slow motion. He did great. He really, he really did good, but it was just a strange feeling. I just, I wouldn't have predicted that 2 minutes earlier. It was very funny.

I got to take a quick pause. What's up? My intern, Jenna, is here taking our breakfast order. Yeah. Rich, you normally get the macchiato, right? Yeah. Okay. He said yes, sir. Oh, perfect, perfect. Thank you. It's too early for a Sumatra.

Hey, get your Uncle Rich some smokes while you're out.

While you're out there, get Uncle Rich's smokes and glasses from the car.

Oh, that was a callback within the same show.

I don't know if this is something you also do. Regularly, my wife will ask me to edit one of her text messages. She'll write a whole lengthy message. She'll want to send it to one of her friends or family members. And she'll say, oh, can you just do me a favor and just look through this and edit it for me? I always say yes, of course. Many times, though, what I will do is within the text message, I'll drop in a little, a nice little note about myself. So she may or may not even reference, oh, Mike and I are doing this or whatever. Somewhere in the text, I'll regularly try to say, my amazingly wonderful husband was helping out doing something. And I'll write a whole sentence speaking very highly of myself. And then at the end, I'll say, oh, I think it's all right. You want me to hit send? And she'll say, oh, yeah, sure, go ahead and hit send. I do this twice a week at least. I send out beautiful, nice little mentions of myself. And I think of it as payment for my editing services.

Yes, I completely agree. And all her friends and family have such high regard for you.

They think to themselves, she speaks so highly of him, even completely out of context. We were wondering which mop head to purchase at Costco this weekend. And in the middle of it, Nancy just explained the many, many compassionate things Mike does for his family, his thoughtfulness.

Yes, brilliant, brilliant. That's so good.

So if it's not something you're practicing now, I strongly encourage. Volunteer for a couple edits and throw your name out there.

That's good. There was, I saw it.

Oh, at the end, I should start doing hashtag cool dad shirt podcast. That's right. With the link to the last episode.

All right, Nancy, we get it. Your husband's got a show. Jeez. There was a, it kind of reminds me of, I saw, I don't know if it's true or not, but there was some guy, he, whenever he took like selfies with his wife on vacation and stuff like that, for years he was doing this, he would edit the reflection in the sunglasses, he would put like Skeletor or something. Just a teeny tiny thing he would drop in. So eventually someone told his wife, like, do you know this? They went back, it was in, it was in like 40 different photos they had over the past years of vacations and stuff like that. And just a little Easter egg he put in the reflection of the sunglasses over all this time.

I love when people are so incredibly creative on such a subtle level like that.

Yes.

I notice you do something like that on the show and I'm not going to give it away.

We'll see if people know.

Once I became hip to it, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

There is an Easter egg in the videos. Yes, there is. It's not just a shameless motion of merch. Mug.

It's just the sexy mug I keep holding up. Next you're going to tell me you're putting it on a coaster that looks like this. It's like that scene in Wayne's World.

The bag of Doritos comes in, but they're really obvious. Pepsi or whatever it was, yeah.

Those are great. I would never sell out like that. Hey, my daughter recently had some surgery. Of course, no parent wants to see their kid have to go through that. But the time we spent in recovery, my daughter, and she'll be so embarrassed to hear this, she was going on and on about all the nice things we do and how much she loves us. Thank you for doing everything. It was the sweetest 45 minutes ever.

So do you have an order of sodium pentothal on the way to the house?

I don't know. how to feel about it. My wife and I are like, my God. And not that she isn't sweet or not that she doesn't do those things regularly. It was so sincere. What parent doesn't want to hear that once in a while? It's hard work every day. We know the kids appreciate it and we know they're grateful, but hearing it like that once in a while, it goes so far. It felt so nice.

That's a great story. No, it is. Yeah, it's funny.

Everything turned out fine with the surgery as well.

Wow, what kind of jerk am I? Everything's okay, right?

No, surgery was all fine.

So I want to give you a cautionary tale. Here's just another reason not to procrastinate. For years and years and years, I've had a pile of videotapes sitting on the shelf right behind me that just needed to be digitized. It just, it was long overdue. Videotapes of the kids. kids from way back when. It's one of those things like I got to get to, I got to get to, and you just kind of never get to. So I finally decided to do it. There was a cassette tape in there too from, I'm quite certain it was 1975 and it had some audio on there and it was my mother singing with her sisters. They would harmonize They were great. They were great singers back in the day. And just to hear them laugh and just joke around, and they ripped off like 3 songs in perfect three-part harmony, it was amazing. The cassette had my sister singing on it too. It was delightful. So I threw that in the package to go get digitized. And I put a post-it note on the cassette, and I just said, this cassette is literally 50 years old. If this is not salvageable, completely understand. I won't be upset if it gets destroyed. But they were able to pull it off. I got an MP3 and I sent it off to my mom and she wrote back, my gosh, what an amazing gift this was. You brought me back 50 years to her sisters are deceased. And she said, what a great gift I had to hear them laughing and singing along with me. And she was so, just so happy with the whole thing. The important part of this story is she died suddenly three days after I sent that to her. An otherwise healthy woman had a massive stroke and died. And I got that just under the wire. And it was tough for everybody, but I'm here to tell you, if you're sitting on things like that, don't let those things slide. Try to take care of those things. And here's your cool dad tip of the week. Get on top of some of that stuff.

Just recently read, I don't know, three or four things. you should never get rid of when a loved one passes. And that was on the top of the list, any sort of audio, handwritten stuff. I remember something similar, you know, finding an old cassette of my grandmother reciting recipes for my mother.

Oh, really?

Instead of writing them down, they just recorded my grandmother walking through some of these old Italian recipes.

Oh, that's awesome.

To your point, Rich, timeliness of that and the value that has is just priceless.

Yeah, and we're at this age at life where, you know, things are changing. We have elderly parents. Make sure you get things where they need to be.

It's a great memory for you to hold on to that too. For sure.

All right, tell a funny story now, Mike.

All right. I have a work-related story, and this is a story about anxiety. There's someone that sits by me, who I'm friendly with. They have a headset for work calls. When I tell you this headset is tangled, I don't know how this individual could get it on their head. Every time I walk by and see this thing all tangled up, I start feeling anxious. I want to take the headset off his ear and untangle it and plug it back in. I don't know what to do. There's a piece of me that just wants to go over there and untangle it and not say anything and plug it in. I don't even think they'll notice because if a tangled headset is not bothering you? I don't know if they'll notice that the thing is even untangled. I think I might go and untangle it and plug it back in.

I love this story for a number of reasons. Number one, I love laughing at myself for getting wound up about ridiculous things. just like that, where you start getting bothered, like, this means nothing. And I get the same way. I'm like, how does this person get through life? So yes, I find that very funny to myself. And then you also think, it's definitely not my place to go do that. But from sheer curiosity, if I just went and fixed that for that person, what would happen next?

I don't know. if they would be set by it or they would feel some sort of intrusion on their personal workspace.

I don't know. Let us know how that goes, Mike.

If there's an opportunity, I might just go and unplug it and take all the kink out. I won't say anything.

I'll just do it. Just see what happens. Plot twist, you end up in HR for screwing up with somebody's equipment.

They call me in and they're replaying the video. That's right. In someone's personal space, touching their private property.

another plat to miss, the HR person says, no, I totally get it. Nope, nope, that needed to get straightened out. You're good, Michael.

I would say something to him offering, hey, oh, hey, did you want me to untangle that? But what would happen, here's what happened. He might say, I'll do it and we'll never get to it. And then it will drive me crazier. And now at that point, I can't go and fix it because now he'll know that it was me that fixed it.

And that you're a little obsessed. Yeah.

So I can't say anything. I can't make an offer.

You would end up in therapy.

I should be in therapy for having this as a distraction of my life. I can't focus on my work. I'm not getting anything done. For crying out loud, Larry. Just fix the damn headset.

Oh, man. That's a very funny story about workplace anxiety. That doesn't come up in training that you, the mandatory training you have to take, does it?

I've watched a lot of required videos for my job. That has not been one of them.

It's really, let's really get to what's driving me crazy at work.

As A follow-up, I'm wondering how things are working out for your rehearsal studio endeavor. The rehearsal.

the Monday night jam that I may or may not want you doing.

Where have you landed on Monday night jams?

So yeah, Mike is alluding to stories I've told. Okay, so Monday nights I have a jam in my basement. which is a lot of fun. It started out just like some neighbors coming over once in a while. It was different people showing up, yada, yada. It became more and more formal, people I work with. And now it's an entire crew of people that went to high school together. So they're all 10 years younger than me. And it's great. Everybody is a great musician, super fun, super cool. But it's getting to the point where these guys want to learn so many songs so fast. It's a little bit like a homework assignment. It's no longer just a fun jam. It's actually, oh, we should do this song. We should do this song. And it starts piling up. And I'm kind of getting to the point where I don't want more assignments in my week. And so when I found out they had another friend that they had recently been talking to, another guitar player, and said, oh, you know, he's, you know, Jason's going to come over. I paused for a moment and thought, maybe, I'll sit this one out. I'll be upstairs doing some work. You guys are sufficiently guitared. So why don't you go ahead? That did cross my mind. I did not follow through on that. I went down and jammed and I had a great time. Did your breakfast run?

You see me looking over to my right. That's my breakfast. I didn't want to kill your awesome story. We have, man, the whole staff is in this episode.

I know. I can hear all the activity upstairs.

Moving forward, given the responsibility of learning so many songs,

we're going to play this by year. The one good thing that came out of it, I have a really nice amplifier I bought like in the year 2000, 2001. And I love it, but it's a big, heavy tube amp. And in recent years, I'm not out gigging as a guitar player these days. So I bought a smaller letter digital amp that I use for practicing and just screwing around at home. So because We had an additional guitar player. I dug out my old amp, which I've been considering selling for years, and it's worth real money. And so I plugged that baby back. I kind of fell back in love with the amp. God, it's just, it's such an amazing, so I might be hooked. I don't know. I'm back in, Mike.

We talk about my dad a lot and some of the phone calls I receive. And the thing with my dad is you never know what you're going to get. If you recall, I was on the phone with you the other day. And in a very short window, he had tried to reach me twice. So of course, two calls in a very short period is a bit alarming with our aging parents. Similar to kids calling like 12 or 1 in the morning. You always assume the worst. I find myself becoming distracted with this as I'm talking to you. And now I feel that let me go address this. He could have fallen He could be having trouble breathing. He could be bleeding. I've received all those calls. One call I recently got after multiple attempts was, hey, I just got that flyer. Uncle Giuseppe's is opening up in Sayville. Did you get that? And of course I am relieved that nothing's wrong. I have no benchmark, no reference as to where we're going with this emergency, it could be anywhere from grand opening of Uncle Giuseppe's in Sayville to I can't stop the bleeding, get here immediately.

He's got it figured out though. You are compelled to answer every call because you have no idea what's on the other end of that.

I have no idea. And every call scares me.

Yeah. Well, thankfully, we now have a new location to get people.

Thankfully. for all your Italian food delicacies.

And you were notified so promptly. I mean, that's a, he actually did you a service by letting you know immediately.

He told me I looked. I didn't even get the flyer yet. It came the next day.

You're welcome, Mike.

Do you post much on LinkedIn, Rich?

Not for this, for my business, Avant Industrial Marketing. Check us out. I do post a little bit on there just to get some traction as I'm trying to further develop that business. But personally, I don't do too much of that.

No, So I don't look at LinkedIn as a humorous or overly personal type of social media site. Of course, very professional. And I don't post there very often. But I did recently post and like many of my witty pieces of advice and humor on this show, I felt as though it was a huge flop. I don't know if it was because people did not make the reference or if they were not amused with it. So I was contemplating taking it down. Thankfully, you did talk me out of it and I kept it there.

It was very good. It was, I thought it was topical, funny, and no, very well done.

And I don't know why I'm still thinking about it, but I am for some reason. I'm second guessing it. And for some context, it was a reference to the Scott Kelly resume that someone was looking at during a Jonas Brothers concert. And I thought if someone was looking at a resume at a Jonas Brothers concert and it went viral, if anybody I know was going to a Jonas Brothers concert, It would be great if maybe they would open my resume. Therefore, sending that viral and increasing the exposure much greater than a simple Indeed or LinkedIn site.

Yes, It was very clever.

To my surprise, there were only three likes, Rich. And you and Erica were amongst two of them. I don't know where it sits in people's mind. I thought it was so appropriately witty, even for that platform.

A refreshing change from that platform. Yes, I completely agree. That was well done. You know, and I'll never forget my daughter, Kelsey. This, man, this is years ago. I remember I was going to post something back when I used to be on Facebook and it was a little goofy. And I remember turning to my daughter and saying, is this goofy? She goes, dad, you are goofy. Like, it's okay. Like, you should post it. And I was slightly offended, slightly flattered, and I went with, so dude, just be you. That was funny. It is disappointing though, because, well, we talked about this before. I'm on Instagram, I do photos, and those likes are always nice. I mean, everybody likes getting likes or comments on your creative work. I care less about that than I do on LinkedIn, where I'm actually trying to grow a business. If you can just throw me a like or put a comment on there, it actually helps me, it helps your business grow by seeing more exposure. And it's very disappointing when you see 742 impressions and there's one like. That's a little frustrating because people I know with small businesses, I try to click on those and help them get going.

So the takeaway is if you see something and you like it, like it. Like it, help. your buddy out. But I feel as though it might be a long time before I try that again.

I almost posted as a comment and said, hey, aren't you the guy from that award-winning podcast?

It flopped. It was a crash and burn, as they say, Rich. It will be a while before I put my toe in the water again, that's for sure.

You're a little shell-shocked on LinkedIn.

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's not the platform for me. Maybe it's not.

You're just too funny and hip for that Wayne platform.

I know what it is. I'll take a look and see how many people no longer are connected to me. That'll be a true gauge. Speaking of being adults, this hit me kind of hard the other day. We were watching a game show. You remember, you're homesick from school, someone flips on The Price is Right, and you're watching that for the next hour with all these giveaways. You know, when they opened up those curtains and it was like a jet ski and a car or some arcade games, all I was thinking was, wow, I mean, could you imagine? I don't know what the game show was that was on the other day, but I walked by and I look up and one of the prizes was a full set of kitchen appliances. I thought to myself, that would be so incredible if we won that. I thought to myself, this is it. I'm an adult now. Forget the dirt bikes, the jet skis. The practicality of having a full set of new appliances was the most appealing thing behind all three curtains. I was so ashamed of myself, but I thought we need new appliances so bad. This would be a huge victory for us.

18-year-old Mike would punch you in the stomach for saying something like that. That's hysterical. Well, I mean, it just shows the progression of it. But the other bonus in there, the subtext there too, is it's one less thing you need to worry about. Oh, we got all new appliances. There's one thing I do not have to worry about for a long time. It's a relief, right?

Like that's 10 grand right there. The stove, the refrigerator. That new super quiet dishwasher that doesn't sound like there's broken glass in the bottom of it. That's a huge win.

Oh, how times change.

Yeah, this is where I'm at life now. To wrap up, I am more interested in winning appliances on a game show. Tangled headphone cords create anxiety for me. Lastly, I think I'm abandoning any attempts for recognition on LinkedIn.

That's A fascinating slice into your psychology. Yeah, my takeaway is I really need to read my notes better because I wrote a really funny line getting back to my nephew Barring. And I missed it. was the funniest part of the whole thing. The button at the end of that bit should have been smile for the concussion. Oh no. I was so proud of it. It's underlined and I underlined it. I'm like, make sure, make sure you hit that joke. And I missed it. I'm a terrible podcaster.

The great news is, Rich, no one will be the wiser because I will drop that in right after your bit 15 minutes ago. So you've landed it perfectly. It's another amazingly executed bit by Rich Grissel. Sloppily copy and paste it back over there. Change the EQ so it's like it's completely off or whatever. Yeah, I love that one. I love when that happens. The obvious edits.

It's a wonder we're still on the air, honestly.

No wonder why no one's liking my posts. That's all I got. Friends at work, dad calls about Uncle Giuseppe's.

That was great. Appliances. Yeah. I don't need to buy socks for eternity. That's where I'm coming in.

Were they the good socks too? The real nice, cushy, comfy ones?

Yeah, I just spend a little money on socks. Those are an important part of your day, walking around and stuff. So you know how they work. Had I been thinking, I would have got really obnoxious ones that daughters would never take. I hate Taylor Swift. I don't know. Something.

Listen, it's not long before we're buying ourselves those fancy compression socks at CVS.

With all the sitting around and smoking that we do, we might need more support in the calves.

There's no blood circulating from my ankles.

I'm out of humor, dude.

Yeah, me too. I think that's it. Dude, I went to the bakery that's right around the corner from us yesterday morning to get a couple little pastries, which I know you don't eat. And they have really good quiches there. And I wanted to get a quiche. They have a spinach, basil, sun-dried tomato ricotta.

Wow, that sounds good.

Quiche, yeah, delicious. And I've gotten them before. I've always bought them along with a lot of other things. So I never really asked how much they were. And I went in yesterday and before I even bought one, I said, oh, how much are the quiches? Do you know how much a quiche is from that bakery? I'm going to tell you because I know you don't go there. $28 for an 8-inch quiche. $28. $28, Rich. I said, no, thank you. $28. I paused because I just, people are paying $28 for a quiche. And I'm thinking.

That is interestingly expensive.

Yeah. And I'm not even saying it to keep this in the show. I'm just 28 bucks for a quiche, $5 for a small muffin. It's just so unbalanced.

Guy's going to quiche his way to a Maserati. Jeez.

You ain't kidding. All right, dude. I'm going to head upstairs. We got another teacher sitting with me right now. So because my daughter is out of school for so long, the school is sending teachers to the house, which is very nice. And it helps keep her on track. She's not falling behind. She's taking all the exams. She's getting her grades in for the quarter. As a family, we all need to be on our best behavior too. So every time they come, we're up early. We're cleaning the house. Everybody's on heightened alert.

Intensity is way down.

So I mean, by the time the teacher leaves, everybody's building, you know, the needle's like going up. So the whole family's just nearly exploding from trying to contain all this while the teacher's here. So they'll be leaving, I think, at around 1:00.

Yeah, we've talked before about seeing people out of context. Like when you see your, when you were a kid, you see the teacher at the grocery store or something and you're like, do you go grocery shopping? It just blows your mind. So yeah, it's got to be even different to have them at your kitchen table.

It's like a better home and garden shoot, you know.

We've got a showing at 10.

So when I head upstairs, I'll have to be on my best behavior.

make sure you make sure you drop a plug for the show and say, oh, sorry, I was downstairs working out another episode of an award-winning podcast. You should check us out.

I'll offer the teacher a cup of coffee and I'll put it on a nice cool dad shirt coaster.

Actually, drop her name in the show, like do it right now, and then tell her she was in the show.

In the show. All right, dude, I'll let you know. I'll catch up with you later.

Sounds good. Later.