Of What Remains With Jeremy Vickers

THIS SATURDAY MORNING:

 OF WHAT REMAINS — with Jeremy Vickers on 92.7FM WOBM

A brand-new show built from a familiar voice.

Of What Remains returns — reformatted, reimagined, and finally set free to go wherever the conversation leads.

Hosted by Jeremy Vickers, this new version of Of What Remains is a wide-ranging, unscripted journey through the things that made us… and the things that changed us. From growing up in the 1980s to surviving the chaos of the modern world, from pop culture to personal stories, forgotten history to everyday absurdity — nothing is off the table.

Some days it’s reflective.

Some days it’s funny.

Some days it’s raw, weird, nostalgic, or unexpectedly deep.

But it’s always real.

This isn’t a nostalgia show.

This isn’t a news show.

This is a conversation about what’s left after time moves on.

Memories. Culture. Stories. Laughter. Regret. Curiosity.

The strange, messy, beautiful pile of things that remain.

Of What Remains with Jeremy Vickers —

Because the past never really goes away…

and the present keeps giving us new stories to tell.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey everybody, how are you doing? It's your old pal Jeremy. Um, this is another episode of a what may of what right of what remains. Um, I don't know, it's my own title, and I still trip over it. Um, and uh, and it's a beautiful day, beautiful weekend so far. Um let's start first by uh just mentioning my sponsor, Dr. Gabriel Jasper and the Jasper Spine Institute. Um, truly, folks, if you're hurting, there's only really one man to go to. And believe me, I've been to others, and they're it's just not the same. If you want to get your life back where you're not pill dependent, you go to Dr. Jasper. And uh, and his staff at uh the Jasper Spine Institute are second to none. They intuitively know what the doctor is looking for, um, because they've they've worked closely with him for so long. Um and there and and we love our patients, we do, we love them. So if you're if having second thoughts, don't just come on in to see Dr. Jasper, he'll put them all at ease, okay? And he'll change your life. Sometimes for some of you, it's going to be a process. Follow that process. Believe me, I had to, but now look at me. Hey, strong like bull, right? So that's Dr. Gabriel Jasper of the Jasper Spine Institute. Um uh, my best bud. And uh soon to be yours if you if you head in, all right. So with that said, let's uh let's get into today's show. Um I took a bunch of notes, a few notes, uh you know, stuff that stories that popped back into my head and uh that sort of thing. Um, I was uh I would get in trouble all the time. All the time for silly things or um sometimes for things I didn't even do. I would get into trouble. And my father, my father was uh uh Scottish. And so like if I got into trouble, like one, my mother would be like swatting me. And uh, you know, then you get to wait for your dad to come home, and then you got part two of the swatting. And uh my father was Scottish, so when he spanked you, he did it to the tune of the argument, so it would be don't you ever do that again, you know? And um, which I suppose helped a little because you you knew where the spankings were coming and uh all that, but that you know, we don't do that today. Um maybe we shouldn't have done it yesterday, you know. But I think some kids today could use a wee spank just to ground them a little bit, but I would never do it. I never we never hit our son, uh, not once. Uh never needed to, never punished him. In fact, I've never had to punish my son. Not really, not when he, you know, uh when he started getting older. Uh still no. I think once we took away once he got once he got a phone for school, we would take that away every once in a while. For um, but no, for the most part, he was uh he was the perfect kid. He was a kid that I did not deserve myself because I was a I was a terror when I was a when I was a kid. Um whatever I could get myself into, I got myself into. Um, but but to my credit, like not always were they things that I had expected to come, you know. A lot of these are adventures, and you don't know how they're gonna play out until they do. Um so I had this massive crush on Christine Visisko. Um she was the she was the girl in elementary school, and she was so cool. Just talking to her, you know, go talk to her. She's so cool, she's so nice. She could get you excited about whatever she was excited about. That was Christine Vasisco. And I remember I remember when we were kids, um uh MTV first started putting the the monkeys TV show on, and she was so obsessed with it, and she would tell all of us to watch the monkeys, um, so we would be able to talk to her about it the next day. And uh, and I did. I I watched the monkeys, I ended up loving the monkeys and and who they were. Um but she was she was just amazing, and so I had this dream. My grandmother came back from like China, Japan, something like that. I don't know, and uh she brought me back this like sort of robe top to me in my childhood mind, it looked like a smoking jacket, and that's what I would call it. I'm like, oh, oh man, I got a smoking jacket. Because in my head, you know, only cool people wore smoking jackets, or like the rich, sophisticated people had a smoking jacket. I didn't even smoke, but here I thought, wow, I have a smoking jacket, and this is gonna be I'm gonna look so cool no matter where I go, you know. And I head over to um Christine's house, and uh she's not home, of course. Uh, but there were a bunch of kids I knew, and there were kids I knew through other kids. They didn't go to my elementary school, but I still knew them. And I think Danielle Womer was there. And they were trying to, I don't know, they were trying to uh create like an impromptu game of manhunt. Now manhunt is just what it sounds like someone's it, and you have to run through the neighborhood trying to uh to capture them, you know. Kind of like the TV show uh fugitive. And so I was it, and I had this smoking, I had this freaking smoking jacket on, or this Chinese um little robe or whatever, Japanese, I don't know who knows. Um, and I'm running uh fast to get away from them. And I got into these backyards, there was no fences between them, but they each had a big shed. And the one kid says, Dude, dude, I'm on your side, I'm on your side. I'm like, really? And he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hide in this shed, and I'll tell them you went somewhere else. And I'm like, okay, sure. And I'm not a freaking idiot, you know, like I saw right through his cunning ruse, and I as soon as he was gone, I immediately left the shed and went into the other shed. And peeking out through like a hole, I could see him bringing everybody to that shed I had just vacated. And I was like, Yes, see, you son of a bitch. Um I ended up hiding underneath a car, and then by the time I got home and I escaped them all, uh Manhunter champion that I am, um, because I was laying underneath the car, my kimono got all ruined with uh car oil and and stuff. And uh, and that was the that was the end of my smoking jacket. It was heartbreaking, but um, by the end of the day, I figured I just was too young to be able to wield the power of a smoking jacket. I thought it would be more seductive than it actually was for a child of my age, and that was that. My father and my mother went away. I think they they must have gone to some like Puerto Rico or or someplace. It was it was a vacation they were gonna do on their own. So my father uh puts his hand on my shoulder and he's like, son, he had this beautiful fish tank. Beautiful. I mean, he he doted over it, it was so amazing, you know. And he says to me, He says, Son, take care of my fish, boy. Take care of my fish. I'm like, yeah, dad, I will, I will. I was I was living, I think, with my grandmother at the time, but I would drive over and I I would uh I would go in and I'd feed his fish. Now, this was around the time those laser pointers first started coming out, you know, and then you could get them at any gas station for a couple bucks, and then you had a laser pointer. Uh, if you tried going to see a movie during that time when laser pointers were in everybody's hands, um yeah, like any female on the movie screen had laser pointers around her boobies and uh and stuff like that. So like you weren't well, unless you just thought that was funny, you were not gonna enjoy the movie. Um no, not with a not with a thousand red glowing nipples all over them. So um, so yeah, I would go, I would go to his house and I would sit down and I would um you know, I would just watch some TV while I fed the fish, and I'm sitting on the couch, and yeah, I have a laser pointer, and I'm like bopping it around the room until finally it lands on the fish tank. And I notice it once that the fish see it and they chase after it.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

I was like, oh wow, this is cool.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

So I'm like making them run into the glass or making them do uh loop-de-loop or uh whatever I can do, and um, and they were loving it, they were just going after the laser, you know. Now I I don't know if any of you have looked closer at one of these things, but they do have a warning label right on it about radiation and uh and stuff like like nothing that would be so harmful to you because I mean they're selling this over the counter, but um, but rather harmful to uh tiny fish once it's um I don't know, is it magnified once it goes into the water? Anyway, I don't anyway. What happened was a couple days later, um my brother called me uh screaming, and I was like, dude, what's wrong? What's wrong? And he's like, the fish are dying. The fish, they're all dying, and I'm like, they're dying, and he's like, Yeah, and he's like, and they're not just dying, they're dying in horrible ways, and I'm like, What? He's like, one of their heads came off. I'm like, get out of here. So I race over to the house, and sure enough, yeah, it's like it was like a murder scene. All that was missing were like little floating chalk outlines of these fish, and um and I felt compelled to call a detective in because surely a serial killer must be at play here, but no, uh, and and and and and the horrible thing was is that they all started to die, like all of them, except for three. They all died, and I was like, oh shit. I said, My father's gonna kill me. Oh my god, it's the one thing he asked me to do, and and then I you know, so I'm like, how could all of this have happened? And then I'm like, oh, that freaking laser pointer had to be that. Um so we f we fished out all the corpses and we flushed them down the toilet unceremoniously, and um I just waited for my dad. I didn't like call him and say, hey dad, you know, remember those fish you had? No, no, no, no. He had to he had to come home and discover his fish. And I'm like, yeah, it just kind of happened, dad. Don't really know, you know, uh blame the autumn equal equinox, something like that. Maybe some witchcraft is at play here. I don't know, dad, but uh yeah, all of his fish had died. And uh except for three, as I said, except for three fish. And my father, when he finally came home, he was so like so upset that he just scooped the remaining fish out, three a goldfish and two little silver fish. He put them in a ziploc and he gave them to me, and I had a small aquarium at uh where I was, and um I filled it with water and I put those fish in. And over time, and this is no joke, I promise you. Okay, over time the um the goldfish started getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and it wasn't like I was overfeeding it or anything like that, but it got large uh really fast. So, like you could actually stick your your finger in the water and he would come up and he would like wrap his lips around it. Um and then the silverfish, they were so fast, they would leap out of the water and then right back in again. And uh, like and it was strange to me. Like, once I realized about the radiation and all of that, I thought to myself, my god, they've been mutated uh somehow, you know. The the goldfish has gained uh Hulk-like qualities, and uh and and these silver fish have gained super aquatic speed. Um and it's a true story. So I had these three fish that had um superpowers, and they lived in a bowl where superpowers were not needed, and uh, in fact, uh threatened their very well-being. Because I mean, if these silverfish can fly out of the bowl, you know, holy crap, they're you know, they're gonna end up dying. Um over time, though, they started getting sluggish, and they started uh, you know, the silver fish started getting bloated, the the goldfish started to look really ragged and like you know, scales coming off of it, and they ended up dying, you know, and I was so I was scratching my head at it. Then I realized that radiation was what gave them this new life, these uh special powers, and perhaps it was radiation that they needed to keep going. Sadly, they died, and I would never be able to experiment on that. Hey, by all means, but um, you know, uh apart from cruelty to animals, you know, this was on this was like um accidental cruelty to fish. I had no idea the laser was gonna do what they did. I thought I was gonna train them to be like circus fish for my dad, and he'd come home and be like, holy shit, you know, and and then that was that. Uh in fact, um I I unleashed a radioactive leak in their uh community bowl, and they all just they all just died. They all just died and they died horribly. Um I think if they if they really had minds, they would have lost them. And uh well anyway, it was quite gruesome, but it was a true story. So uh yeah, so this is a great one, okay. So I was a I was a kid, it was like we were really we were young, we were like I was probably in third grade, fourth grade, like most of my stories take place, and it was the 4th of July. Um next door to me were the De Soma's. I've talked about them before. Um, Joe De Soma was the father. Dolores De Soma was the mother, and there will be a story about her uh down the road somewhere. Uh, but Dolores was like friendly with my mom, and they would always uh go out together to uh like warehouses where if you worked in like that kind of business, you were like my mom, my mom had access to the Mattel warehouse where she could buy like all of the Mattel toys super cheap. So my Christmases were amazing. Like if I wanted Star Wars stuff, I got all the Star Wars stuff, and I know it's Kenner, but um like He-Man though, specifically, He-Man was Mattel, and um I got everything, I got all the castles, I even had Castle Eternia. Now, if you even have pieces of a castle eternia, um you're gonna make bank on that. Like, so many people are trying to piece together their full sets of the castle of eternia, not not the castle of Grayscal. Don't be confused, and getting every freaking um every freaking figure and and stuff. It was great. I had so many adventures just playing as a kid with your action figures, and uh, you had all the vehicles and the castles and and all the different bad guys, all the different good guys, and uh I mean if I don't know what my Christmas would have been like if if she didn't have access to the Mattel warehouse, you know. Um so it was it was uh the day after the 4th of July. So it was July 5th, and I would always go like around the block where they had the uh the fireworks going, and I would start walking down the street looking for duds. Because even if there's a dud, you can unravel that and see the you know the the experience. The powder inside, and you can make your own pyrotechnics from it. Yeah, I was later in my life, I would I would be a licensed pyrotechnician, but um I uh I I as a kid was doing this for you know freestyle. Um I did that a lot. I just I just figured things out my my own way and what I wanted to do with things. And um here's a side story, okay. When I was a kid, I stunned two flies with one SWAT, which I thought was triumphant, and it was outside. Okay, these things are lightning fast, as you know. To get two of them, yeah, that was a big deal for a kid anyway. There was this Mickey Mouse story about um swatting a certain amount of flies in one stroke, and um because he I think he I think he killed five flies with one swat, and and his name went through the town. Uh Mickey Mouse's name went through all the towns um in the villages and talked about the the mouse that swatted five flies in one stroke, and that's how I felt. I swatted two flies and they were down. So then I grabbed like like two thin strick sticks, and my friend Rob was with me, and we decided to do it because we swatted them, and we were just we we were pretending to be cruel gods, to be honest, uh looking at this these two creatures and insects, and we cut their heads off and we replaced them with the other just by sticking them on with their goo, you know, just as they were, and I shite you not one of them flew away. So is it somewhere in the medical journals or um you know zoological or in was what's an like an insectoid journal about the first fly head transplant that was successful? And I'll never get credit for that, but I've learned to live with that. I really have. So I'm on the streets and I'm I'm looking for duds and uh I'm scooping them up and collecting them, and then I see Anthony De Soma, um Joe De Soma's oldest son. Now they he has a sister named Lisa who would babysit me. And um, she was the weirdest babysitter. Uh but these they I mean, but these two were so these two were older, they're like you know, they weren't gonna be neighborhood play pals or anything like that. But there's um Anthony out on Star Street, uh, the street behind us, um, or one street over. And he's looking for duds too, which I found really interesting because I knew that Joe DeSoma stored a paper bag filled with firecrackers, bottle rocket, I mean, you name it. He was a big um, I think it was the soccer team was called Cosmos, I want to say, if I'm not wrong. And like whenever whenever his soccer team would score a goal, he would run outside and he'd light off fireworks, or he would shoot off his um his shotgun until they made him stop. And uh so I knew the fireworks were in there. And Anthony was just kind of like taking over, and he like any duds I would find, he was kind of uh, you know, because he was old, the older kid, he was kind of muscling in and saying, All right, no, no, no, let me gather them all up. And I'm like, okay, this is bullshit. So I would go off looking for firecrackers, and I would disappear, and I would run into his father's shed, and I would grab some firecrackers, and I would run back to Anthony, and I would say, Oh my god, I just found a whole bunch. Look, and these weren't even lit. And he would he was flipping it. Oh, this is fantastic. Where did you find these? I'm like in that bush over there, and he was like, Oh my god. So then I disappear off and I would um I would go right to his father's shed, and I would grab like fistfuls more, like whole packs, like unopened packs of uh black cat firecrackers, and I would bring them back. Dude, I just found a whole cache filled right down the street there, and he's like, Oh my god, and he's like taking them off of me, and uh so after a while, um Rob Rob's brother Jeff came out, so it's just now it's just uh me, Jeff, and Anthony DeSoma. And um, Anthony DeSoma finally started getting wise, and he was like, dude, where are you getting all of these? This is insane. I'm not finding anything, and you're bringing me, you know, a stockpile in. I'm like, oh, I said laughing because I couldn't hold it in anymore. I'm like, oh, your father's got a whole bag of this stuff in his shed, and Anthony, I just saw his eyes and he got so pissed off and so angry at me that he took off running after me. And I I went running through his his grandmother was called Ma, and the whole the whole neighborhood called her Ma. Uh, she didn't speak a lick of English, but if you were around her a lot, you know, and as a kid you were, she was everywhere, and you'd say hi ma and she. And I'm like, Oh, yeah, that's great. And then you felt like you could start like understanding Italian fluently. She would be like your mother. I'm like, Oh, my mother, she's doing great, and Rosie. And I'm like, No, I haven't seen Rosie uh today, and you know, like so you could fake your way through it, you know, uh the Italian language uh as a kid, anyway. Um uh Dr. Jasper will talk Italian in front of me, and I don't know what he's saying, but um back when I was a kid though, you know, just saying I understood it. Uh well enough, I could fake my way. Um so Anthony takes off running after me. Jeff follows, laughing. I get to Anthony's uh backyard where he tackles me, and I fall to the ground, and um and he just starts whacking me, and I roll away, and there's this pot, big pot, with like this dying plant in it, and I grabbed hold of the plant and I pulled it out, and I all the dirt that was in the pot came out in a dirt in like a in a pot-shaped cluster, and I used it like a baseball bat, and I whacked him in the face with it, and Anthony tumbled down onto the ground, uh face like face down. I jumped on his back and I started uh pushing his face into the uh dirt and roots of the thing I just whacked him with. Uh, meanwhile, Jeff is just sitting up on the fence uh giggling away. Um this kid I'm I'm taking down is like two, three years older than me. Which to a kid is like like a decade, you know, at least back then. And uh I got up and Jeff was like, dude, you better run. And run I did. I took off. My legs just a blur, like a cartoon blur. Um, and I made it to my house. Uh later on, there were no recriminations um for the actions of that day. It was uh it was a funny interlude, let's call it that, an amusing interlude. And um, poor Anthony. I think he got blind and uh and his hearing start was uh I don't know. I heard a lot of different things, and um some of the things I heard from Rob, and I don't actually believe many of them, but um because Rob would make up stories that were funny to him, and I you know, but I was I always was like, what are you talking about? So um, yeah, that was my that was my fourth of July story, uh, with with uh Anthony De Solma. And you know, Anthony was a really good guy, you know, he grew up into a solid guy, and um he and his father, I think I think his father ended up buying uh uh oh yeah, he bought he bought like the oak tree deli, which was okay, so we've heard of Flip's Tavern, right? Um across the street is the fairground. Okay, so on Flips Tavern side, you go up um Green Street or Oak Tree Road, Oak Tree Road. Because then you uh and then you would see like the Oak Tree uh deli. And then next to it the oak uh oak tree pharmacy. And um, but the deli is what Joe ended up buying, and he and Anthony ran that for quite some time. Uh I don't know if it's still there, I don't know how much of Islin is still how I remember it, but um but yeah. Um there was this other story I wanna I I remembered, and uh there was a kid named Steven Rodriguez. Uh older kid, real jerk, you know. Uh the only times I would ever go, I I think I went to his place once, and that's the story I'm gonna tell. Um, but you know, you hear things about people, and other especially other kids, and if something embarrassing happens to any of them, you certainly hear that. Uh so one time, uh supposedly, I don't know, um Steven Rodriguez and his brother had this like uh tree house or fort in their backyard. And while Steven Rodriguez was had fallen asleep inside of it, his brother peed in his mouth. Um now I know some of you listening to this are in shock now after hearing that, but this is the crazy stuff that happened in neighborhoods, you know? And uh and to us kids, that was funny as hell. That was so freaking funny. So here I am at uh Stephen Rodriguez's house, and he had this big pond in his backyard, and his father like had all these crazy ginormous fish in it, and he another fish story, but uh he was very proud of it too. People do get proud. I mean, Dr. Jasper has an amazing aquarium at uh at Jasper Spine Institute, and he's deeply proud of those. There's fish, there's like there's like sea snails, there's uh eels, um crazy stuff, like you know, clown fish, whatever. Uh live coral, the live coral and the fluorescent live coral. I mean, it's just great. You have to go there. It's a big giant cylinder that takes up the center of the waiting room, and it's just filled with these glow, these just amazing fish. But Steven Rodriguez's father was no different. I mean, he he he really loved his his pond, his koi pond. Is that it? Um, he loved being able to see his fish just swimming around in it. On this particular day, um one of his fish was laying out on a on a towel, and it looked like it was just gasping, but there was something really I mean, there's a big fish. Uh there was look, it looked like something was really wrong with its jaw. In fact, it was uh dislocated somehow. And he's explaining this all to us, like he he's some sort of fish veterinarian, and he knows exactly what's wrong with this fish, and he knows exactly how to fix it. Um takes the fish up by like the middle of its body, and he figures, okay, I'm just gonna and he's explaining all this to us before he actually does it, which was great. Like if you if if if you're in the middle of something and you have this sense about you that something crazy or something weird or something weird like funny is about to happen, you you kind of just hush up and you and you watch the events unfold. Uh so he lifts up the body of this fish and he says, I'm just gonna tap his head on the on the on the pavement, and that should knock his jaw back into place. And we're like, oh wow, this is great. He's like a doctor or something. So he lifts the the fish up, not taking into account its its full weight. So however however amount of pounds you're swinging downward, you have to calculate the weight of this fish to um add to the speed and strength of as gravity is pulling it further down as you swing. Um well, to make a long story short, he swung downwards and the entire fish, the front of the fish, just exploded. And um as kids, we laughed. Oh god, we laughed. We la it was just because the look on his face at pure uh like uh astonishment, like he he he couldn't understand how that could have happened, and it was so funny. Oh my god, it was so funny. It maybe it's one of those things you have to you have to be there to get the humor, but my god, seeing it happen, this guy so sure of himself. So I got this, I got this. Let me tell let me teach you kids a thing or two, all right? And he just there was fish guts all over the pavement, uh, on the towel, everywhere. And uh and then he just quickly asked us all to leave um while he uh took care of it. But yeah, it was it was it was fantastic. It was out of sight. It was freaking hysterical seeing that happen. Um I just want to uh check out my stream here. Okay, okay, not too shabby. Um, I'm still not getting my messages through uh so I'll just keep it like that in case anybody wants a text. I doubt they will. So for those of you who watch me um or watch me live, I stream my shows Saturdays from 11 to 12. Okay. If you join my Facebook page, you just type in my name, Jeremy Vickers. That's me. You'll see like a little red-headed kid as my profile pick. Ask for a friend request, I'll answer it, and then you'll get notifications for when my uh streams go live. These this is a recorded show that then gets played the next morning on 92.7 W OBM. And I'd like to say hi to all of my listeners, all two of you. And uh and it's just that it's just a thing I have. Like that I I I get to talk about whatever I feel like, and I hope I hope some of you enjoy these stories um as much as I do. I I I love them. And if you have stories yourself that you'd like to tell on my show, please leave me a message on my Facebook and I'll we'll arrange for you to um to call in. Uh I mean you can ask, you can call in now if you wanted. Um when I'm when I'm you know recording this live. It's uh 609-389-8695. Uh, and that will yeah, the phone's on. So you you should be able to call in and uh it'll pipe it right through into the system here. And we'll get to hear your stories uh of growing up and uh your experiences in New Jersey when you were a kid. I would love to hear those. I really would. Or maybe it's just something that you you remember from the 80s, 70s, and 90s, and you just want to try to uh you know, just want to share with everybody um of what remains. It's not just of what remains of me, it's of what remains of you. So, you know, give us a call. So uh let's move on, shall we? Uh oh yeah. So this week I I got a haircut, I got my hair cut or shaved, I should say. So it's it's nice and bald now. And I want what what I wanted was I if if any of you saw my recent streams, I looked I've looked a mess. Like my my beard was so unruly. I I looked like a wild man, like somebody fished out of a dumpster. And um, and I finally got sick of looking that way. Honestly, if you ever see me like that, it's laziness. That's all it is, it's profound laziness that keeps me from getting my hair done, getting my beard taken care of, and all of that. And uh, so I sometimes I I look like uh a crazed animal. Um, but no more. I went to sports cuts. Um now sports cuts used to be fun. Sports cuts used to be young girls cutting your hair, looking pretty. Um, if you pay for the the full package, they'll give you a scalp massage, hot towel. Um They take out like a massager and massage your shoulders, like an electric one, you know. Um the whole Schabil, you know, the whole sh, you know, schlamil, schlamozzle. Um but I I guess it's not like that anymore. I walked in, there was like this older woman who looked like she didn't want to be there. And I just wanted my I just wanted to have a styled beard, you know, something that I see other men have. I I have red hair and it's not as it's not as easy to shape, especially with that look, the hairline cuts along the along the the cheeks and keeping everything like you know, using a ruler and whatever. I don't know. Well, I wanted that. I never had that before, and I wanted it. So like I figured, all right, well, I'll just go to super cuts and they'll do it. You know, whatever. I don't know. I have no idea about barbers or hairstylists. I don't know what the different I didn't know what the difference was between them. I figured a hairstylist has to go to school to be one. I figure beards are very popular now, and as well as mustaches, I don't I hate mustaches. Um I hate like I'll wake up in the middle of the night if my beard, if my mustache is grown too long and and I will shave it off. I hate it that much. Uh, but that being all said, these people go to school for this stuff, I figure. So, and if she can cut hair on top of your head, why wouldn't they be able to cut hair on the bottom of your head? If I was standing on my hands, it would just look like a head of hair, right? Oh, I mean, not really, but you know what I mean. And uh so I go in and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I want to get this, uh, I want to get I want to get the whole ship, I want to shave me bald, I want to get this all this mess. I you know, it's grown out, so you should be able to do a lot with it. Um of this beard taken care of. And she's looking at me like, you know, like like she had no idea what I was trying to say. Um uh uh well we don't we don't really do that much here. And I'm like looking up at the sign and it says beard trim, right? And Maggie's like yelling at me, and she's like, damn it, it's they all they do is trim it. They don't they don't shake. I'm like, wait a minute. She didn't just halfway go to school. I mean, she must have some skills, you know. If you're not working here this week, you might be working at a different like barber's the next week, just filling in, just trying to take in the hours. So men are gonna come in and they're gonna be like, I got this beard, I need you to do something about it. And she's just scratching her head at me. And I'm like, Well, what can you do then? So I can trim it down a little bit. And I'm like, well, all right. I mean, like, do your best. And I'm I'm standing in the lobby, and I'm like, I just don't understand. So I tell her that she signs me into the book, and I go and sit down to next to Maggie, and Maggie's like, Say, what did I tell you? And uh I'm like, Yeah, I know, I know you're right, you're right, you're right, whatever. You know, she's like, Yeah, but you you get so loud and you get so um, because I'm I'm I'm my hands are like was spread wide open, standing in the middle of the lobby when she's telling me she doesn't know what to do with a beard. I didn't understand what that meant. I figured you go to these people for a specific reason, whether it's either your head, your beard, I don't know, maybe you're getting like shit waxed on you, who knows? But if they if they can do waxing and they can do all this other stuff, why why can't they take care of a beard? It just didn't make sense. So I finally put my hands down and I walked over to the chair and I sit down next to Maggie waiting to be called. Um meanwhile, this bald man, this old old timer, you know, bald man walks in, sits down, she's immediately taken to the chair, right? He sits down in the chair. He's in that chair for a minute and a half, and half of that was talking. She does a quick buzz, and I'm looking at him, and I'm seeing that nothing had been done. Yeah, she ran the buzz around his head, but he didn't he didn't need a haircut, he was already bald. So he gets up after a minute and a half, a full minute of conversation, and then a half a minute of on his head. He walks over to the cash register, $28.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

My eyes just bulged out of my head. I looked over at Maggie, I was like, she did nothing. She did nothing with that head. He just decided I want to lose $28. That's what I want to do this morning.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Yeah, I could go get brunch, but no, I'm gonna give this woman twenty-eight dollars for nothing. Oh, it's absolutely mental to me. I finally get up and you know, when they when she calls me, I sit down. And I didn't get the other girl, I got the the middle-aged woman who's doesn't understand what a beard is, and um like I sit down and she shaves my head. And uh, I mean she's she was very meticulous about how she shaved my head, and then it was beard time. It's like, um uh, you want me to do this, maybe that? Um uh like yeah, all right. So she she did this. If you're if you're looking at me now, she did this. Uh is it great? No, I think it could be greater. But then I go to my I go to work and I'm talking to my friend Phil, and uh and he's like, dude, you have to go to a barber.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

I'm like, I did super cuts. He says, no, that's super cuts.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

You gotta go to an actual barber, they know how to do beer. I'm like, see, I didn't know there was a difference. I had like I grew up in Island um going to Hilltop Barbers. It was right next to Hilltop Card where I got my first comics. Uh, my grandfather bought me, and uh it there was a a like a very old-styled uh shop right there. And right next door to the shop right was Hilltop Barbers. And inside Hilltop Barbers were three Italian guys who couldn't speak a lick of English, like they could fake their way through English because they knew what um a trim meant, and they knew what uh a little off the side meant. But apart from that, you just had to walk out happy with whatever they gave you. And I would go in and they and they would see my you know, my mother would be asking for the same thing, which was pretty much a bowl cut, is what I got, you know. And then I would, you know, when I got home, I would try to like puff it up and make it look cooler. Um, instead of looking like Mo Howard uh from the Three Stooges. So I would look a little cooler. I mean, I had red hair, I had thin red hair. What are you gonna do with that? So I'd sit down on their their chairs and they would just they would whack you upside the head if you moved, cursing at you in in Italian. And I I dreaded barbers, to be honest with you. So is it any wonder I wouldn't know what the frick sports cuts was compared to a regular barber? I don't know, I didn't know. So I ended up with this. Oh well. Um my wife and I were talking about a bunch of stuff uh this week. And I'm trying I'm gonna try being less inappropriate with my stories, but Maggie told me to do that. Uh, because I I told the one about the uh the hedonism story last week, and uh she said, oh no, that was that was highly inappropriate. I'm like, really? I thought that it's it was a fun, funny story. I mean, that that was crazy what happened last week. I mean, you know, in that story. She's no, I think you should be less inappropriate, which was crazy because in my notes after that show, I wrote down possible segment inappropriate story of the week. So now now Maggie's giving me notes, and uh and I'm like all right. I the the last thing I want to be is the censor, okay, especially to my own stuff. Like, I don't want to censor my stories because my stories are funny because they were real, and that's that's just being real. But yeah, um, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to uh soften the language a little bit. Um, and I know George Carlin referred to that as the pussification of America, but I'll try. I'll try. I understand I have all kinds of listeners, and some of them may not be uh appreciative of certain kinds of subject matters that I might talk about. And I do, I do apologize, but um I'm my show's about real life, it's not about censored pretend life. And uh so I like to I like to put a spotlight on how we were then and compare it to how we are now, and that's right there, that's a great uh example. The censorship or the feel or the need to molecoddle it uh a people that um I feel like don't need mollycot molecoddling, like if they were if they were just uh you know like cool about stuff, but then they need to throw the two cents in, and it's usually negative stuff because I mean, really, at our base, uh at our foundation, we're all really negative. When we come home from work, what do we say? Do we say the happy stuff first or at all? No, we we talk about the bullshit at work, and um, I believe me, I hear it from my my wife who's telling me to be positive while she's telling me all the shit that's happening at work, and I'm like, yeah, um, yeah, okay, honey, I understand. And um, but uh we were driving, we're driving to the studio here this morning, and I don't know. This this morning Maggie was really playful, and she starts talking about her cocaine addiction, which she doesn't have. It's just it's just uh how crazy, oh yeah, it's my cocaine addiction. I'm like, oh yeah, you got a you got a sweet tooth for nose candy over there, and she's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we we keep leaping from drug to drug, and I'm like, you know, if you want to lose weight, I think you should try crystal meth because that's you'll get a better result. And she starts laughing, and then she, you better not say this stuff on the radio, and of course I do. So I guess we're ridiculous that way, and I love the days that she's playful like that. She she gets to be too serious, she she works a lot, uh, and she works hard. Um so when we have our playful moments where we're just silly and we're ridiculous, I love them the best. I really do. Um what else do we have here in my new I was watching um I was watching Columbo this week. Uh I love Columbo. I've always loved Columbo my whole life. I'm a huge Columbo fan. Um I had I had a class in high school called Law and Society. Uh, because we talked about law or the law, I would show up to class because I was the class clan. I always did silly things. My grandfather had this Columbo uh raincoat. He didn't get it because Columbo had it, he just happened to have it, and it was always in the closet, even after he passed away. It was always in, you know, somewhere in the house. And I started wearing it because one, it was my grandfather's, and two, it was a Colombo coat. And I love Colombo. So I would I would wear it specifically to Lawn Society class. My teacher was a man called uh Mr. Palais. And Mr. Palais, he you know, he was uh a man without sense of a sense of humor. Like he was, you know, very serious, very serious guy. So I would be coming into class, like you know, doing my best uh Peter Falk impression when he asked me for my homework, I'd be looking in every let me see here. Uh I think I had it, wait, I gotta pay for this. Uh that's uh and that's my laundry, you know, and I and he would get annoyed, and then he would end up you know kicking me out or something, and and that's that. But I I annoyed him, and because he could take it so seriously and so harsh, I was gonna do it twice as hard, twice as much. And um but I love Columbo, I still love Columbo, I still watch it, it's a go-to, it's it's a comfort show, and I'm sure you have comfort shows out there. Uh, I'm I'm actually interested in the stuff kind of stuff that you're you're watching right now. You know, I watch Columbo, that's a that's a staple with me. Um when I'm sick, like when I have the flu, and there's a big one going around. So some of you might might like to do this. I start NYPD Blue from the beginning, and I don't stop until I finish, even after I've gotten better. NYPD Blue was one of the best shows ever on TV. The best police show ever on TV. Best. It was gritty, it was real, felt real. I mean they had real detectives as their uh, but I'm I'm sure most shows do as their uh you know producers and and um continuity managers, but um Sipowitz in NYPD Blue, Dennis Franz uh was a genius and he created this character with so much depth. Um and the whole show you can say it's about the police station, but it's about Andy Sipowitz, this character. The complete story arc from when we first see him to the end is remarkable, and uh yeah, so that's what I watch when I'm sick. Um I got Maggie into Lucifer that's on Netflix. Uh, it's an amazing show, too. She says it's the best show she's ever seen, it's the best show on TV. She watches it on a constant loop um while she's baking, you know. And that was a show I had to make her watch. We have like a three-episode rule. A lot of people do. And I say to her, I'm like, listen, I will want you to watch this show. Sit down, watch three episodes with me. By the third, if you if you don't want to see this show anymore, fine, we'll move on. So I made her and she just fell in love with it. I think she's what she's watched it more than I have now at this point, and I watch stuff over and over and over again, um, as a rule. So that really surprises me. So, Lucifer, if you want to check out something else, um Invincible, if you like superhero stuff, season four of Invincible is just dropping on Amazon Prime. Um it's an adult sort of superhero story, it's a cartoon, and but it's very serious, it's got you know, uh you know, cursing and very graphic, and but it still holds true to that feel of a comic book because it was, it is a comic book. Um, and they say on the comic book covers that it's the best comic book ever made, and arguably so. I mean, it is, it's fantastic. And you can watch the episodes on Amazon Prime. There's four seasons and a movie uh about um Adam Eve. Uh that's at um a the T hit that T. Um uh Eve. And uh it's the the movie's just her like origin story, which is cool. But invincible, he's this uh he's just what he is, is he's invincible. And but he's a kid who's just discovered his powers, and he's now he's discovering how ugly the uh the world is. And um, this is a show you can binge, okay. And then you can say, uh animated usually isn't my thing. Trust me. Trust me. Invincible. Okay, so we've talked about oh my goodness, I'm well over my hour. Let me uh let me start by saying goodbye to everybody. Uh uh first off, if you're if you're not feeling well, uh you know, if you're feeling a lot of pain, I should say, uh, go to you know Dr. Gabriel Jasper at the Jasper Spine Institute. Um I have his phone number up on the screen. It's 732-262-0700. If you want to make an appointment for Dr. Gabriel Jasper, get rid of your pain. You don't have to live with it anymore. He's located at 74 Brick Boulevard, uh, Brick, New Jersey. 08723. And uh for everything else, I guess this has been of what remains of me. So I will see you next time. And uh remember, I love you guys. I really do. And I'll see you next time. Take care.