Ep 46 - Backhanded Compliments - They Sting

This week on The Cool Dad Shirt Podcast, Rich and Mike tackle the important issues facing modern society:

• Is there actually a Dansville Business District, or was it just a fever dream from a previous episode?
• Why do movie cops spend ten minutes sneaking around quietly only to make the loudest gun-click in cinematic history?
• How fast is too fast when you're driving on a donut spare tire? (Hint: apparently faster than common sense.)
• Is it okay to compliment comedians for turning childhood trauma into entertainment?
• And why are people suddenly saying "literally" like they're auditioning for a British period drama?

Along the way, the guys discuss giant wind turbines, classic cars, rotary phones, Ben Folds Five, the Foo Fighters' drummer drama, and whether hearing The Beatles should really be the reason someone picked up drumsticks if they were born after 1975.

Rich also shares an inspiring experience mentoring college students during an RPI innovation competition that left him surprisingly optimistic about the future of humanity—a refreshing change from the dads usual superfluous topics.

Plus:

• A public apology to Broadview Credit Union
• A review of the Zoom H1 recorder and the greatest "low cut vs. high pass filter" debate nobody asked for
• The return of Grandpa Bob's maroon 1966 Chevy Corvair
• The shocking revelation that Rich actually knows TWO people named Lance

As always, it's big energy, questionable relevance, and absolutely no shortage of opinions.

Featured Topics

• Dansville, New York
• Road trip stories
• Wind turbines and renewable energy
• Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC)
• Zoom H1 recorder review
• Podcasting and audio production
• Foo Fighters and Josh Freese
• Rush and Annika Nilles
• Beatles vs. KISS debate
• Classic cars and the Chevy Corvair
• Rotary phones and 911 history
• Ben Folds Five
• Dad humor and pop culture commentary

Keywords

Comedy Podcast, Dad Podcast, Funny Podcast, Parenting Humor, Music Podcast, Foo Fighters, Josh Freese, Rush, Annika Nilles, Ben Folds Five, Classic Cars, Chevy Corvair, Podcasting Equipment, Zoom H1 Recorder, Road Trip Stories, SPAC, Saratoga Springs, Gen X Podcast, 80s Music, Rock Music Discussion, The Cool Dad Shirt Podcast

Listen If You Enjoy:

Dad jokes that somehow become sociology discussions
Music debates nobody asked for but everyone enjoys
Random observations about everyday life
Gen X nostalgia and pop culture
Two friends solving problems that don't exist

Transcript

The Cool Dad Shirt Podcast. Big energy, questionable relevance. A landmark achievement in pop culture commentary. Wait, did somebody actually say that?

Welcome to this episode of the Cool Dad Shirt podcast. All right, I have a bit of a callback. As we're driving upstate New York to visit another college for my daughter. And on last week's show, our guest Jay made a funny comment about the Dansville business district, referring to an entrepreneur and his partner Diane. who were moving into the Dansville business district to open up shop and become highly successful. About 6 hours and 15 minutes into my drive, only a town or two before my final destination, I saw a giant sign that said Dansville. I thought it was something Jay might have just pulled out of thin air to reference, but after seeing it, I got suspicious that Maybe Jay knows somebody up in the Dansville area. That's where that reference came from.

And you put your entire family at risk trying to get a photo of that sign for the comedy value of that, and it was appreciated by Jay and I. That was hysterical.

Fortunately, there was more than one sign. I was able to arm myself with the second occurrence of the Dansville exit. I kept poking around to see if there might be a business district. The towns up there, they're really small. They're super quaint. Perhaps Dansville does not really even have a business district.

Hey family, I know this trip is unnecessarily long already, but I'm going to pull over. We're just going to do a couple laps through town to see if we can find another sign.

You know, some of those towns have a bypass, right? You can go down Main Street or you can take the bypass and just keep cruising through. So We took the bypass.

That's good stuff. That is good stuff.

It was a great, great reference and great discovery along the way.

And you got the photo, so you made it happen.

I got the photo to prove it. I also noticed once you get up there, I don't know what town it was in, those wind power generator windmills are unbelievably enormous. They were just ominous on the mountaintops. Trees just look like little tiny objects compared to them.

You cannot even understand the scale of those until you're up close to one. If you've ever driven past one on the highway, like a blade being delivered, like you can't believe it's more than the length of an 18 wheeler and hangs off the end. Just one single blade of those things. They are insanely large, yes.

And while they look like they're moving rather slowly, the scale of them is very deceiving.

Yeah, they actually have to moderate the tip of those just because of the leverage and the speed at the farthest. You have to be very careful where you start getting into problems creating sound and approaching the speed of sound. I mean, it's going very fast at the tips of those things and they have to moderate that with some gears, yeah.

My journey passing through Dansville.

Speaking of callbacks, I have to make a correction from a previous rant I did, which I thought was hysterical and turns out I need to apologize to some people of business specifically.

We're feeling sir.

I did this whole thing last year. They were doing all of these advertisements for Saratoga Performing Arts Center, commonly known up here as SPAC. In every commercial, if you've ever been to SPAC, there is a very large stage, a huge, huge amphitheater And then in the back, there's like a pavilion. So when they do smaller shows or something like the Jazz Fest, there are actually other acts in the back on a much, much smaller stage. And I don't know why all the advertising kept talking about, you know, Dave Matthews is on the Broadview stage. I'm like, I'm pretty sure he's selling out two nights. They're not stuffing him in the pavilion in the back. Of course he's on the Broadview stage. So here's. The.

Drummer doesn't even have a riser.

Got a pair of Congos back there, yes. So I thought that was very funny. I couldn't understand why they were so painfully explaining that they were on, in fact, the larger stage. Turns out that's not at all what's happening. The other day I was driving just around town and I realized there's a local credit union here called Broadview and they are the sponsor of many of these shows. They are putting their business name on the stage when acts come to play at SPAC. So the Broadview stage is a tip of the hat or an endorsement from the Broadview Credit Union. I was completely wrong. I apologize to Broadview and all its employees for being that obtuse. Now I see that sign everywhere. They're all over the capital district. I'm very sorry for not picking up on that sooner. So we would like to correct, officially correct the record here now.

Yes, while you're at it, remind them to please not to deny your loan application.

I got some big things coming up. I need to.

We're expanding. We're opening up another 30,000 square foot facility and we might need some lending.

In fact, the Cool Dad Shirt podcast is considering a live show on the Broadview stage. So, you know, maybe we can make that happen too. Come out to the live show.

One giant stage, 2 lonely chairs.

Are you talking about the audience or the two chairs?

I know you don't watch a lot of movies, but I'm sure you've seen your fair share of cop related movies. Tell me if you haven't noticed this from time to time. The cops roll up on a house real quiet, sirens off and they cut out front. You know, the guys are giving those hand signals, you know, two guys in the back and they're tiptoeing around the house super quietly. They know the bad guys are in there. They're trying to not give it away that they're actually in the house. and everything is dead silent. When they're almost ready to go, the one guy ***** his gun and the volume is like, I'm like, they've gone through all this trouble to be silent and not make a sound. How is no one not going to hear that? And I understand the impact of it and the intensity that it brings to the movie.

I think the Foley artist in post is like, here's my time to shine. The microphone is 1 millimeter away from the. He lobbies really hard to be the loudest part of the movie, yes. Thus ruining all the secrecy.

You just gave us away.

That's when all hell breaks loose.

Movie observation of the week.

Speaking of microphones, this is a conversation we had. I'm going to, well, here, I'll do an unboxing. We have spoken before about the counterintuitiveness. This is a little inside baseball for the audio files, but I just stumbled out of something interesting, so I'm going to bring this up. We have joked around about when you do some EQ. in audio live or recording. There's a thing called a high pass filter, low pass filter. It's very counterintuitive because a high pass filter really is just a low cut and a low cut filter is, or a low pass filter is a high cut. So it's just named screwy. And so Mike and I have joked about this for some time now. I had a little zoom handheld recorder that I've had forever. It's ancient. It was time to replace it. I'll actually give an endorsement. These things are amazing. It's a little H1. So I went and bought a new one and I'm unboxing it here now. It's pretty awesome. And only $109. This thing is amazing. These things are amazing. But if I can get it into the camera, I got to show Mike. There is a button on there and it actually says low cut. You can just press the button and do what we want it to do is cut the low end for the getting rid of the rubble.

Simply named for its function.

I don't have to do any calculus to figure out the frequencies that are high passing.

Wouldn't it be great though if they put in parentheses high pass filter? Like it says low cut and then it says high pass filter.

I think they were so irritated they're not even going to clarify it. This is what you want. This is what you want. We gave it to you.

Even Zoom is disgusted with the naming convention. Who came up with that? Good for them.

Yeah, good for them. Yeah, it's very intuitive. So thank you, Zoom.

So that's a new H1 that you got.

It's the H1. Yeah, they have an entire suite. A lot of podcasters before all this podcasting rage, but all these shows, they were using the H4 and stuff like that. This is the H1. These things are amazing.

Yeah, that's a nice upgrade from your previous one, right?

Yeah, so we'll do whenever we have the jam in the basement or the the guys come over, I can actually record something pretty quickly and easily.

That one doesn't have 32-bit float, does it?

Does. Yes, it does.

Yeah, that's a nice feature.

The reading sounds amazing. I think the 32-bit floating can handle the loudest sound that can be produced on Earth. That is the mathematics involved. That's what they claim, yes. All right.

It'll definitely eat up some more space on your recording medium. What does it have?

It's probably, I think it's, I think it's the micro SD.

Yeah, micro SD. Yeah, micro SD. Okay, yeah, so the 32-bit will eat up a little more space on there, but well worth it when you're, you know, when quality, you know, when quality recording is your primary focus. The quality matters, yes.

Memory is cheap these days.

I think in the past we've spoken about proper ways to compliment somebody. And I was wondering if comedians get offended if you compliment them for their material, because many times very good comedians have somewhat dark pasts that are filled with, you know, fair amount of unhappiness. And I thought, if that would, would that almost be an insult, you know, after hearing somebody and you say, I love your material. I love when you were talking about growing up. And in effect, it was really such a hard, difficult time for them. And of course, they've turned it around and they've made light of it and are entertaining you with that now. Somewhere I'm wondering if that might, I don't know.

Can we not dwell on my abusive father and my depressed mother?

Is it inappropriate to compliment someone on their great material for a very disturbing past?

I think so, because Number one, they're putting it out there anyway. And #2, I think it's whether, sometimes it probably comes from a place of healing, which is good. I mean, they're moving through stuff, or if they can put a funny spin on it, I think they appreciate the creativity that went into that.

For now, I'll just stick to, I'm a big fan.

You know what I've learned? I try to keep learning as we get through life. Somebody told me to just take the compliment. I would always make a joke. I would always do, the humility. Like, I would always fluff it off. But then, I'm kind of making it about me. And someone said, people are saying nice things about you. Just say thank you. It means something. And I am much more conscious of that now. And I do make a point to engage and take the compliment.

What if it's a backhanded compliment?

Those sting. They sting. Yeah, they do.

You will not stand for those.

I shall not stand for those, Michael.

I'll take a compliment, but I will not stand for a backhanded compliment. Enough is enough.

I'm so obtuse, I probably miss half of those.

I'm putting a stake in the ground today. No more backhanded compliments.

You know, over Easter, my daughter Kelsey went and went to her grandfather's house. And she fired me a text and said, Grandpa got a classic card. He wants you to come over and see it sometime. I said, oh wow, what is it? She said, it's maroon, you know, like dark red.

Yeah, that's what I got. I thought you were going to go a little more specific and she was going to tell you the year. And it was a year where we were very much alive. It was a 1996. I mean, it's well over the 25 year mark. You're like, oh, it's a 2002. Oh, but is that sting? Just count your blessings. It's good she only referenced the color and not the year.

Yeah, that could have turned into an insult, but no, it was just, it was a delightful, it turns out actually, it.

Turns out in fact it was, it's a 2008. It's a classic.

It's got AM and FM radio.

Meanwhile, I'd be happy driving a 2008. Like this is my daily driver, dude. This whole bomb gets me back and forth to work. Are you serious?

The guy down the junkyard said, I got a couple more years in this. It turns out Grandpa Bob has a 1966 Chevy Corvair. I've always seen those. Of course, they became hugely noteworthy because Ralph Nader had a campaign against them as saying unsafe at any speed. And they are kind of interesting, cool looking cars, but I guess I didn't fully realize. It's a rear engine, air cooled. It's crazy. You pop that trunk open and there's a there's like a flat engine on the bottom with an air cooled fan on top of it. And the spare tire is like jammed at an angle, sort of hanging over the it's an insane car. You want to talk about safety, like I climbed into that thing. The steering wheel is just this thin little piece of metal. Like the dashboard is all metal. There's no headrest.

I've never seen one in any other color than white.

It might be in aftermarket. I'm not really sure. It needs a little work. Grandpa Bob's going to be doing some work on that. But I did validate it is indeed a maroon. Yes.

Okay.

Kelsey nailed it.

Good, How fast are you supposed to go on one of those spare tire donuts? I see people whizzing by me daily at like 80 plus miles an hour on the expressway with those things. Potholes everywhere and that tiny little tire that's probably about two inches wider than a bicycle tire.

It's called a donut. Yeah, it's a very temporary, unsafe way to go in desperation. Yes. And it's printed in very large numbers. I can't remember the number, but it's like do not exceed 50 miles an hour or something like that. This is to get you limping to a place as fast as you can. You are not ripping through an afternoon commute at 75 miles an hour. No.

Daily, I see people, I mean, flying by with those tires. And it's very unsettling to me because all I'm thinking is 1 tiny pothole. This guy's going to be spiraling out of control, barrel rolling his car across four lanes of traffic and who knows, wiping out how many people in this terrifying crash.

It is crazy. No, and I don't understand that either, yes. And you're going to take out a bunch of other people too. But along the same lines, I don't know, this is an observation. I don't know, see if anybody else agrees. Lately, I've been noticing an uptick in aggressive female drivers. Are you noticing any of this? I am watching people whip in and out of traffic and tailgating people and they are often young women. And it's kind of, I don't know why this trend. Have you noticed anything like that at all?

I haven't noticed more so in women over men recently. I think it's spread pretty evenly.

Maybe you've just achieved equality down there. I think the young women up here are finally feeling. Finally feeling it's time to start behaving or taking on the worst characteristics of men and start engaging in, yeah. So ladies don't do that. We love you ladies because you're not like us. Don't take out our worst qualities. Geez.

Rich, the times are a changing, you know? Women have the right to experience as much road rage as men.

Then act out on it. Oh, geez.

Tear down the walls. You know, it's time for road rage for everyone. I was talking to somebody recently about the rotary phone. It's something that younger kids just have no idea what it is or how it operated or even what it looked like. As we got older, the 911 thing was kind of created during our lifetime where it was the emergency response. You dial 911. I believe that came after the rotary phone. I believe it did. I somewhat recall a little sticker you could put on the phone that had the number of like the fire department and the police department. And an emergency, you would have to decide, well, do I call the fire department, the police department, and basically choose one and then start dialing. I was trying to think about what it was like to try to dial one of those numbers during an emergency because it was a very time, not time consuming, but It took several seconds to actually work through dialing that number. And of course, of course, if you're familiar with the rotary phone, right, the nine and the zero were the furthest away. So the one would be at the top. You could hit the one and it would roll back because it had the shortest distance. It would roll back faster. But if you had to dial a nine and a zero, that rotary dial was on a mechanism that sort of rolled it back with some restraint. There was some resistance to how it sort of rolled back. It took significantly longer to dial A9 and a 0 than it would a 1 or a 2. With today's needs and emergency situations, I could never imagine having to make those calls with older technology like that.

And having to wait for, yeah. Okay, here's my impression of Aurora from Aurora. Yes, that's how long you'd have to wait for each digit to go through. And you had to dial 7. Well, back then you didn't really need the area code like you do now, but you still had to plow through 7 numbers trying to get a hold of an ambulance. Yes.

It was not a very quick situation. And of course, If you dialed any of those digits wrong, you'd have to hang up and start the whole cycle all over again.

It was a different time for sure.

It would be interesting to see number of 911 situations from mid 70s to today's times. I wonder what those numbers look like.

I suspect people feel more comfortable going to 911 these days than they used to. I think we've all heard stories of, well, we've all heard the recordings of just ridiculous, like people getting angry at a fast food restaurant for not getting their order correct, calling 911 to get the police over. Like, I don't think that happened when we were kids.

I think you're right. I think if it was a true emergency and a significant emergency, right? Even if you were a kid and you got injured, the scale of the emergency and the need was definitely different.

Yeah.

Hey, do you recall all the excitement around Josh Freeze joining the Foo Fighters?

I do. Even the little videos, they did a teaser video and a great drummer, highly respected, everybody was looking forward to it. Then they ended up letting them go, right?

Exactly my point. First of all, I love his playing and he is one of those guys that have been on more records and recordings that you could even imagine. The amount of hype that surrounded the Foo Fighters new drummer and who's it gonna be and we talked on the show. All those funny clips of Chad Smith, I don't know if Tommy Lee, but there was all these big drummers that they were teasing you with, ultimately joining the Foo Fighters, and then they announced Josh, and then maybe a year later, they fired the poor guy, you know.

I don't know why I'm laughing. Well, it's just that this story is funny.

All this hype and excitement over it. And there was somebody else that came to mind that they were making a lot of hype about.

Annika Niles joining Rush probably.

It probably was. That's probably what made me start thinking about the whole Josh Freeze thing. And I don't think Rush is going to fire Annika. It did make me think about just a lot of social media hype over hiring somebody.

Yeah.

I think the fans overall though have definitely been enjoying her playing with the band.

No, and it's cool, you know, and I saw a little video with Getty and he said, you know, it just The obvious choice of picking some monster drummer is kind of not what Rush does. Like we just wanted like a good feel and a good vibe. And she's just a sweetheart who is an amazing player. She's got experience playing with so many different people. I totally get her as a pick. And I would never have would have guessed that, but what a great pick so far. The one performance we've seen, she did great.

For those guys too, having played together for such a long time, choosing somebody who may not, I mean, in the drum community, very popular, no surprise in the drumming community. Most drummers who are active and on social media know her outside of the drum community, of course, less known. But you think about Getty and Alex playing for so long together, adding some other larger personality in the band and in the mix, even if they were technically proficient. to play every Neil Lick exactly, kind of having that personality. I'm sure Annika comes in, again, lots of fun, super easy to work with. And for those guys, that's probably almost more of the fit.

I think you're exactly right. The chemistry and the fit is kind of what they're going for. And the commercial success of bringing some hugely famous person in there, you could make the case from a touring, but it didn't matter. I know she's known in the drum circles, but the average person has no idea, has never heard of her before. And they are selling out every tour date you can see. So they know what they're doing. They might be on to something here.

That's no accident. And speaking of drumming, from time to time, I kind of come down on the Beatles. And it's not that I hate the Beatles. I just, it frustrates me when everybody says how much they love the Beatles. So it's not me that hates them. It's me that doesn't like hearing about How many people love the Beatles? And here's something that bothers me. And I hear this A lot. When I heard the Beatles, I knew I wanted to play drums. I never thought that I wanted to play an instrument when I heard the Beatles. Did you? There was a lot of other bands, of course, that were playing. So I can't say that. I definitely wouldn't have thought that when I heard the Beatles, because at the time that was It was very new and maybe, it was that inspiring because it was so fresh and new and different.

I don't know why I get such a kick out of how conflicted you are having this conversation. It comes up a lot, Mike.

You know, if you were young in the late 60s and you said, when I heard the Beatles, I knew I wanted to play drums, that would make sense. But if you were born in the 70s or if you were born in the 80s, You should never be saying, when I heard the Beatles, I knew I wanted to play drums because there was a lot of other reasons why you should have been playing the drums in the 70s or the 80s.

Totally agree. I mean, the Beatles, I mean, one of the great things, I mean, they obviously are very popular. They write great stuff. But they were super, super different at that time. And they're very eclectic in their songs. So that was transformational at that period of time. But you're right. There was a magic time. By the time you got in the 70s days, there were piles of amazing drummers and piles of amazing guitar players. And just the sheer amount of influence is very different. I agree.

That 80s rock was just in your face. Not everybody was even that great of a musician, but there was just such a presence. That alone, you know, would be hugely inspiring. Like, oh, when I heard Kiss, you know, I knew I wanted to play drums. You know? All right, Peter Chris, fine drummer, not the best drummer, but I could see how, you know, when that band hits the stage and there's like, 30 foot flames, not the lights that look like fire, but flames coming off that stage and smoke and explosions. Yeah, I think maybe that might want to make me play drums a little bit more than Love Me Do.

Yeah, and my buddy Jay, guitar player Jay, he Ace Freely, like he's a perfectly okay guitar player, but when fireworks were shooting out of it, as a 10, 12, 14 year old, you're like, that can be a job? Like you could do that.

Yeah. It's a little more influential, isn't it? Yes. This guy's got a Roman candle strapped to his guitar. Exactly. It hit four fans, and everybody is thrilled over it. No one's scared.

No, there were no lawsuits at all. They were all bragging to their friends that they were hit in the face with fireworks. Yeah. It was a different time.

It was a Monday morning. Check it out. Aces. I had him sign it after the show. I had him circle the blisters.

Yeah.

I mean, that makes more sense to me.

I'm with you. I'm with you.

You mentioned your friend Jay. How many true friends named Lance do you have? I feel like that's a name you just throw in there to sound like.

A generic.

Is it a filler name? I'm biking with my buddy Lance. How many Lances do you really know?

I know two. There was a very close friend of mine through high school. We don't hang out much these days. He lives very far away. But I have a high school friend Lance and then a guy I met at GE and we still hang out a lot these days. So I'm coming in at 2 Lances.

Here's how I connected those. You had told a story on the show about, you know, when I was growing up, my buddy Lance and you referenced Lance as a kid growing up. And I know you don't live near where you grew up. And recently, and often now I hear you reference a buddy Lance that you go cycling with. And I thought to myself, wait, the same Lance you grew up with probably doesn't live in the same neighborhood as you live in now or the area. And Lance is not a super common name. So maybe you're protecting their identity, I thought to myself. And you thought Lance is just kind of a cool name, not super common. So that's my go-to protect their identity name.

Nope, they are authentic Lances.

This is fantastic news, Rich.

I got to do a really cool event not too long ago. I go to some of these local networking, business networking events from time to time, and I met this younger guy who I had no idea, he was so mature, I had no idea he was a sophomore at RPI. A few weeks ago, he asked me if I would be part of an event at RPI. It's called Change the World, where they have a competition with some criteria around solving a problem. And if I would be like an industry expert, I was like, you're giving me way too much credit, but I will take it because that sounds like a lot of fun. He's like, oh yeah, it's probably just going to be a couple hours, like on a Saturday.

Take a compliment, Rich.

Call back to an earlier part of the show. It was great. He said it'd just be a couple hours. It was a very long day. It started at 10 A.m. I didn't get out of there until 6.15, but it was super, super cool. They put some topics up on the screen at the beginning of the morning after a keynote address and a little bit of coaching. And then people, the kids brought their teams in. It wasn't just RPI. There was other college kids who drove here to be part of the situation. And as part of it, they would work through things on a whiteboard and There were three or four other people like me that just we sat in a room and they would come in and pitch the idea. It was a complete Shark Tank kind of thing. It was like a really nice Shark Tank thing. We were much kinder and gentler than what you see on. Not as much drama. It will hurt the ratings because we weren't quite as explosive. But it was a ton of fun. And so the moral of the story is the world is going to be fine. I know we're all wound up and we're going through a tough time. It's going to be okay. I spent the entire day with engineers and business people pitching ideas and watching these kids work their ways through problems just in their own heads and also getting challenged with devil's advocate stuff too. It was really something to be a part of. And I'm here to tell you, everybody settle down. Humanity is going to be okay.

Where were areas that you provided feedback and input?

Well, they'd pitch ideas and a lot of it was feasibility. So the part of it was you can't have magical thinking. You don't actually have to produce the solution, but the solution you come up with has to be actually attainable, you know, through a process of building a business or developing a product that actually could be produced. And so a lot of it was like, did you think about this? what about the regulations of that? is this something you can actually procure? And then flip side, here's an idea. Why don't you chase this down? You guys need to do a little bit more research on these following things and just keep working on your message. And it was so much fun.

Did they come in with some ideas and some concepts prior to the meeting or did they?

No, it was a total surprise. So they put three things on the board. It was something about clean water, natural disaster responses, and aging. That's all they said. And they said, you got to keep going until you get to an actual solvable problem. You can't have some big grandiose platitude. Like pick something that you can tackle and go after. So the kids had no idea. They had their teams. They walked in with three, 4, 5 kids with them. And off they went to go pick a topic and just come up with a solution.

Did they have any parameters on?

No, because the idea is wide open, because you could get funding. I mean, that is the hardest part of doing things. But you could get funding and you could get grants and stuff like that too, if it really was a great idea that people could get behind.

That's very cool. Good for you. Sounds like a good exercise. It reminded me a bit. I went and took one of those, I guess it was a county type of job that you test for. It was some sort of research analyst, government related research analyst, where you take an exam for. So There were not a lot of materials, but I hunted some down and prepped to take the exam. And I went in on a Saturday morning to take the test. And I thought to myself, the test started at 8. I told Nancy, I'll probably be home by noon. I can't imagine them giving you more than three hours for the test. So I showed up at 8 o'clock. As I'm taking my seat, there was probably 10 or 15 other people entering the room. And they all had bags and lunch boxes and all this other stuff. And I thought, maybe they're going to want to snack during the exam. I'll be fine. And as the proctor entered the room and started giving us the instruction, they said, you can feel free. You can't leave the room unless you need to go use the restroom. If you do, give me your papers and then come back. And you're certainly welcome to eat lunch at any time. The exam will start promptly at 8.15 and you will have until 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock to finish the exam. And I thought to myself, you couldn't have any phones or anything. And I'm thinking, I told my wife I'd be home at noon. I'm going to be here till 5:00 and there's no way to get in touch with her. She's going to be worried. She's going to be definitely angry. And she's going to be angry for worrying. I think I finished early afternoon anyway. I remember being not unprepared in a information, but being very unprepared on how to show up for this. I was starving. It was long. I had nothing to drink. I know this is much different than your story about being there much longer, but I remember being completely blindsided by this about how long this would actually take.

Yes. That makes for a very long day. Yes. And it's like the old days where you couldn't call, like if you didn't hear from somebody, you didn't freak out. There was just no wait to hear from somebody. But nowadays, holy cow.

Yeah. I think I left with a lot of text messages on my phone. Not to turn this into a complaining type of episode, I don't know the proper way to say this word, but it bothers me when I hear people say this.

Oh boy.

It is literally amazing. Is the word literally as in L-I-T-C-H-R-A-L-L-Y? Or is it literally? Is literally the way you say it when you have an English accent? Is literally the way American people want to sound smarter and fancier by saying that way.

It's ironic that word actually means meaning, which is extra funny. But I think you are correct. I believe in my casual observation and our ********** guidance that we provide here on this show. I think you're right. The British have more of the CH sound in it and the Americans have a stronger T sound. So I suppose if you're trying to look smarter or you're not that smart, you go with a different pronunciation. I can't tell which camp you fall into. I make a point to try to not use that word very much anymore because people just go bonkers with it.

I try not to use it at all. Yes.

Yeah.

You a fan of the Ben Folds 5?

I am. I can't, I only know a hand, I don't think I own any of his stuff, but the few songs that made to the radio, I thought are quite good.

Yeah. I fired them up the other day. I've always been Ben Folds 5 fan. I thought I knew a fair amount of their material. I fired them up the other day for a very extended period of time on Spotify, just hearing whatever came up randomly. And I was absolutely delighted.

Yeah, it's good stuff. A lot of piano, very piano. Of course, their biggest hit was Brick, right?

Brick, yeah. But there's a lot of other great songs. So I don't have much more to say other than I enjoyed listening to them. And if you have some time, maybe give them a little play.

That sounds like a good advice. Yeah, check it out.

You know, I'll leave. I'm going to leave you with that, Rich. I'm going to leave you with listen to the Ben Folds 5.

That's good because I am literally out of topics.

That is perfect. So that's all I got for this week.

It sounds like a good way to punctuate this episode. All right, yeah. Season 4 reference.

Episode 46.

Coming at you.

Is in the can.