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Five Minute Mysteries with Mike Rowe

At the top of my list of podcasts to follow is The Way I heard it…. by Mike Rowe. As Rowe puts it, “All good stories have a twist, and all great storytellers are just a little twisted. Join me for a different take on the people and events that you thought you knew, from pop culture to politics, Hollywood to history… The Way I Heard It is a series of short mysteries for the curious mind with a short attention span.”

Short attention span theater is what works for me and these five-minute epics work week after week. Here’s the latest. See if you can recognize the person he is telling you about BEFORE he gets to the parts where it starts to become obvious.

Bonus feature: Rowe tells a troll how to fold himself into an origami dildo and insert himself in where the sun don’t shine.

What can I say? I work for half-a-dozen different companies, none of whom pay me to share my political opinions. I run a non-partisan foundation, I’m about to launch a new show on Facebook, and I’m very aware that celebrities pay a price for opening their big fat gobs. Gilbert Gottfried, Kathy Griffin, Colin Kaepernick, Milo Yiannopoulos…even that guy from Google who just got himself fired for mouthing off. There’s no getting around it – the first amendment does not guarantee the freedom to speak without consequences. And really, that’s fine by me.

So no – I’m not going to share my personal feelings about Charlottesville, President Trump, or the current effort to remove thousands of statues of long dead soldiers from the public square. Not just because it’s “bad for business,” but because it’s annoying. I can’t think of a single celebrity whose political opinion I value, and I’m not going to assume the country feels any differently about mine. So, rather than blow myself up, or chime in with all the obvious observations about the cowardly scum in the pointy hats, I’m going to talk instead about my belief that comments like yours pose a far greater threat to the future of our country than the existence of a memorial to Thomas Jefferson, or a monument to George Washington. Ready? Let’s start with a closer look at your claims. Mike Rowe — Off the Wall

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  • ghostsniper August 7, 2018, 10:03 AM

    Short Story from a long time ago.

    I went into Circle K this evening.
    As I was looking around I noticed this older gentleman kept looking at me.
    He was a customer also.
    I was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing as he walked up.
    He had a tear in his eye and he proceeded to tell me that I looked like his son that was killed in Vietnam.
    I told him that I was sorry to hear that.
    He talked to me for about 5 minutes.
    He told me how he and his son were fighting before he shipped out.
    And that he never did say good-bye to him.
    I felt bad for the guy.
    He asked me if I would say good-bye to him as he left the store.
    I said I would.
    As he was going out he yelled “Good-bye son”, I yelled back “Good Bye Dad”.
    Well the coffee had just finished and I went up to the counter to pay for it.
    The clerk told me the total was $58.65.
    I said for a cup of coffee? I think you made a mistake.
    She said “No a carton of Marlboro’s and a 6-pack of Bud, your dad said you were getting his”.
    NOW my blood is boiling.
    I rip out of the store, the old man is just starting to get into his car.
    I grabbed him by the arm and tried to lead him back to the store.
    He fell to the ground and I got a hold of him and started pulling on his leg.
    Kinda like what I am doing to yours right now. 🙂

    I said this was from a long time ago.
    It was originally written by a dood named Fred Stone (ID: Blue Crab) that ran a bulletin board named “The Tiki Hut” in Cape Coral, FL from 1991 to 1999. This was all modem strings in those days. My son and I were running a BBS on the Worldgroup platform at the time (1988 to about 1993) as it had a GUI interface as opposed to Freds DOS looking thing, and could run groups of files in one burst. We were running multiple modems side by side to increase bandwidth and therefore reach out further, so Fred was always sending us stuff to post on a nationwide level and this was one of them for the “Jokes” category.

  • John Venlet August 7, 2018, 10:09 AM

    Ghostsniper, Tom Waits’ version of that little tale is also worth a listen.

  • Denny August 7, 2018, 10:11 AM

    I’m fairly certain that Twitter, You Tube, Google, Face Book and NPR will all start banning the disgusting racist and offensive speech of Mike Rowe.

  • MMinLamesa August 7, 2018, 11:44 AM

    great story gs-thank you

    As for Mike Rowe, dollars to donuts he’s appalled that Confederate statues are being removed. If he wanted give a run for the WH a shot, he’d have my attention. He’s got more common sense in his little finger then most have at all. Hell of a voice too.

    I remember one of the Dirty Jobs episodes where he was in the sewers of San Fran, IOW waaaay underground. It wasn’t the zillion cockroaches that gave me the SuperWillies, it was being underground when the Big One hits CA. What a nightmare way to go.