*On this day in 2019, the Eckhartz Press book ICU Copper by Deb Tokarz was released. It's still available at Eckhartz Press.
*On this day in 2014, Eckhartz Press author Bruce Bohrer (Best Seat in the House) appeared on WGN Radio to talk about his book. You can listen to that here.
June 29, 1967. Joe Niekro and the Cubs beat the Pirates 4-3 at Wrigley Field. Ernie Banks homers in the game. Top story in the news that day: Actress Jayne Mansfield dies in a car crash. pic.twitter.com/LNVVYPXBag
— Rick Kaempfer (@RickKaempfer) June 29, 2022
*On this day in 2016, as the Cubs were heading toward their championship, Eckhartz Press author Bruce Bohrer (Best Seat in the House) was featured in the Daily Herald. You can read that here.
*On this day in 2021, Eckhartz Press author Margaret Larkin got the first copy of her novel Wicker Park Wishes.We snapped a picture of her in that moment...
Every week I send my Minutia Men Co-Host Dave Stern a list from our audio archives for this week's Studio Walls feature. We missed last week because Dave contracted Covid. If he's well enough to do it this week, these are the possibilities. Which one will he choose?
*June 26, 1981, the movie Stripes debuts. We talked to Tommy Chong about that movie. He and Cheech had it offered to them first. (Listen to the entire interview here). We also have audio from the man who eventually did co-star in it, Harold Ramis. He did a promo for our ad agency. (AUDIO)
*June 26 is Bobby Holland Hatton's birthday. We talked to the busiest stuntman in the world a few years ago. (Click here for entire interview)
*June 27 is author/humorist/parent James Breakwell's birthday. We talked to him about his best-selling book X-ploding Unicorn a few years ago. (Listen to it here)
*June 28, 1997, Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear. Naturally, I wrote a parody song about that for the John Landecker show (AUDIO)
*June 28, 1970 was the first official Gay Pride Day. I spoke to actor Dan Butler (Frasier) about that and his activism for LGBTQ causes. (Full interview is here)
*June 30, 1959, the Cubs had one of the strangest plays in baseball history when two balls were in play at the same time. (We have the audio of the PBP)
*July 1, 2019, William Dameron released his best selling book "The Lie". We had him on the podcast to talk about it. (Listen to that interview here)
*July 1 is Canada Day. We talked to Zero from The Kings about their Canadian smash hit The Beat Goes On/Switchin' To Glide. (You can listen to that here)
In the book “Records Truly Is My Middle Name”, John explains that all of his father’s professor friends heard this segment, and inundated professor Werner Landecker will calls of praise and support. After that, Werner looked at John’s career choice a little differently. The clip, by the way, features a classic Boogie Check. You can listen to it here.
I’ve always prided myself in my encyclopedic knowledge of useless information. It was acquired through years of grueling research—watching hours upon hours of mindless television, listening to hours upon hours of unsubstantial radio, and reading an untold number of articles and books filled to the brim with completely meaningless facts.
Sure, I could have mastered accounting methods, or become an expert in the law, or better yet, studied medicine. All of those would have earned me a better living, and made me a more productive member of society.
But the knowledge I acquired over a lifetime of wasting time did lead to a moderately lucrative career. I was an invaluable member of several high profile radio shows in Chicago, largely on the basis of my useless knowledge. There was no need to look up what year Foreigner’s first album came out when you could just ask Rick. If you were having a discussion and suddenly needed to know the name of the actress who played Mrs. Roper in Three’s Company, I was your man. Who was the last president to sport a mustache? Let’s get Rick in here to answer the question.
I didn’t just parlay that useless knowledge into a career. I turned it into a social life.
There used to be nothing more valuable at a cocktail party than somebody who could engage in entertaining small talk while avoiding substantial topics like politics, religion or science. My wife and I were invited to many cocktail parties, and I usually ended up holding court, having in-depth discussions about important subjects like “guys named Mick”. If someone suggested we play a trivia game, the other guests would fight over who got me on their team.
People really began to count on me. I got regular phone calls from family members and friends who were on the road. Sometimes they would hold up the phone to the radio and ask “Who does this song?” or they’d start the call with a sentence like: “Settle an argument for us.”
Of course, those were golden days of entertainment, in the pre-smart phone era, the days when I could find a way to make use of the useless. All of that has changed drastically over the last five years.
What good is it to have Rick on staff coming up with trivia questions, when the answer to even the most useless question is right at everyone’s fingertips? Do you even care that I didn’t have to look up the name of the actor who played Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show (Richard Deacon), or that I knew he also played Lumpy Rutherford’s dad on Leave it to Beaver?
Of course you don’t. You want to know why?
Because we know who
that man is behind the curtain now, that’s why!
(It’s actor Frank Morgan, who also played the fortune teller, the doorman at the Emerald City, the guard at the Wizard’s castle, and the coachman in the 1939 version of “The Wizard of Oz”.)
If someone needs to find out Billy Williams’ 1970 batting average, they can just ask their phone. If they want to know which artist is singing a particular song, they merely need to hold their phone in the air to get a written answer…directly on their phone. Who needs to talk to the guy who can effortlessly tick off a list of seventeen bogus balding “cures” when a simple Google search will net you fifty?
I know technology cannot be stopped, but how ‘bout a little consideration for the useless? Aren’t we people too? If you take away our employment opportunities (I’m just waiting for the “write a funny article app”), how can we feed our families? If you take away our “court-holding” abilities, what are we good for at a cocktail party except for drinking all your booze? And if you take away our free booze, you might as well take away our souls.
I’m positively parched over here.
I sure hope you enjoy your stupid little phones.
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*It's also John Elway's birthday. Elway makes an appearance in Randy Merkin's book Behind the Glass.
*On this day in 1997, Mike Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear during a fight. Chet Coppock was there for that fight, and tells the story in his book Your Dime, My Dance Floor.
Bridget and I went to three concerts this past weekend. I can't remember the last time we did that. We saw the great Russian group Leonid and Friends on Friday night, and then The Rubber Soul show (with Todd Rundgren, Denny Laine, Christopher Cross, and Joey Molland from Badfinger) on Saturday night. Both shows were at the Des Plaines theater.
Then, because we loved that second show so much, and they just happened to be playing again the next night in St. Charles at the Arcada Theater, we took the boys to the show there. They loved it as much as we did. (Photos: the family on Sunday, Denny Laine singing "Go Now" on Saturday, Christopher Cross singing "Sailing" on Sunday, Todd Rundgren singing "Drive My Car" on Sunday, and Leonid and Friends singing the 'We Can Make it Happen' chorus of "Dialogs I & II" on Friday)
*Mick Fleetwood is also celebrating a birthday today. Mick rated an entire chapter in two different Eckhartz Press books, We Have Company by Bobby Skafish, and Everything I Know I Learned From Rock Stars by Bill Paige.
*On this day in 2021, Eckhartz Press author Paul Banks appeared on WGN Radio to discuss his book Transatlantic Passage with fellow Eckhartz Press author John Records Landecker.
*On this day in 2019, I appeared on Garry Meier's show on WLS Radio to talk about my book EveryCubEver. It was my first time ever on a radio show with Garry since we worked together on the Steve & Garry show in the late 80s/early 90s.
*Today is TV producer Bob Vorwald's birthday. He reviewed Ryan Trembath's Eckhartz Press book Signature Shoes, and this is what he had to say...“A loose mental inventory has me concluding I’ve owned around 200 pairs of shoes in my life. None will ever stand up to the 1979 white Adidas Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hi-tops I had for my last year of high school basketball. I played better (there was nowhere to go but up) knowing that I looked better. Those shoes were sweet and I thank Ryan for this fun project which sparked this memory.”
OTD 3️⃣6️⃣ years ago ⏳
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) June 22, 2022
Diego Maradona delivered a masterful performance by scoring the “Goal of the Century’ and ‘Hand of God’ against England in the FIFA World Cup 🇦🇷 🏆 pic.twitter.com/dT7EvQPLEC
I used to feel guilty about my skills as a handyman. I don’t have any. I’m more of a “Wow your hands are really soft, do you use Palmolive?” kind of guy. If it’s broken, I can’t fix it. That’s not just being defeatist, that’s fifty-plus years of experience saving me lots of heartache and humiliation. And I used to feel very guilty about it.
After all, I’m a man, a son, a husband, and a father. For years I felt the shameful sting of being unhandy. My widowed mother would give me that “Where did I go wrong?” look when she asked for my help with something in her house. My wife would give me that “I didn’t read the fine print when I married this guy” look every time something broke in our house. My three sons said “How can I ever be handy when you’re my father?” with their eyes. Each and every look from them was a dagger.
The shame I felt wasn’t confined to my family’s opinion of me—it was a society-wide shame. When we would go to neighborhood parties, the men would inevitably congregate near the grill, and I would pray the conversation never turned to home improvement projects. If it did, I knew better than to contribute anything at all to the conversation. I was certain that handy men could smell un-handiness on other men the way dogs smell fear. Any word, any exchanged eye-contact, would expose me. I had a key word or phrase in my back pocket just in case (say “intake manifold” or “drill chuck”), but I only uttered these in uncomfortable silence emergencies.
But that was the old me. I no longer feel guilty, and I no longer feel shame, because I discovered something very important: Nobody in the world is handy.
You read that correctly.
“Hey wait a minute!” handy-ish guy replies, “I built the addition to my house myself with decorative rocks and a sandblaster.”
Fine. I’ll grant you, that’s quite impressive. But be honest with me; you’ve had to call a workman at least once or twice over the years, maybe even to “fix” something you already fixed, haven’t you? Did that person utter the following phrase?
“Whoever worked on this before didn’t know what the heck he was doing.”
That’s what I thought. Don’t feel bad. They say that to everyone, even other handy guys. Maybe you’ve even said it yourself when some unhandy friend asked you to help them out. It’s inevitable. It’s as much a part of the home improvement process as the building supplies themselves (note: I won’t attempt to identify what those are). Before the last nail is hammered, someone will utter the words:
“Whoever worked on this before didn’t know what the heck he was doing.”
It’s not an exaggeration to say I’ve heard it every single time anyone has done any work in my house. The first ten or fifteen years I heard it, I bought it. I figured I was simply living in bad homes with bad plumbing, appliances, electric, drywall, insulation, siding, windows, bricks, and concrete. Talk about bad luck.
It wasn’t until I heard the same phrase being used at a handy friend’s house when he had a workman out there, that I finally experienced an epiphany.
A gigantic weight has been lifted from my shoulders now that I know the secret. There are men all over the neighborhood working on their own homes who aren’t handy—they are at best “sort of handy.” And there are men all over the world making a living as “handymen” who will one day be called “someone who didn’t know what the heck he was doing” by the next handyman who comes by.
I’m no longer upset I can’t do it myself. From now on, when my wife or mother or sons give me that look, I’ll just walk away guilt free. When the guys at the neighborhood party start talking, I won’t be ashamed or avoid the conversation. I’ll just admit the truth unapologetically.
“I use the yellow pages, fellas, because I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.”
There I said it.
Now where did I put my Palmolive? My baby soft hands are feeling a little dry.
*On this day in 2020, the e-book for Keith Conrad's Eckhartz Press novel Righteous Might was released. It's still available at amazon. This was one of our books that might have fallen through the cracks because of the pandemic. If you get a chance to read it, it's very well done.
Every week I send my Minutia Men Co-Host Dave Stern a list from our audio archives for this week's Studio Walls feature. These are the possibilities for this week. Which one will he choose?
*June 21st is Don Knott's birthday. We had the incredible Mike Toomey on the show doing his Don Knotts impersonation. (Listen to the entire interview here)
*June 22nd is Todd Rundgren's birthday. We talked to Grand Funk Railroad's Mark Farner about his experience working with Todd. (Listen to the entire interview here)
*June 23, 1993 is the day that Lorena Bobbitt cut off John Wayne Bobbitt's wiener. Naturally we did a song about this on the John Landecker show (AUDIO)
*June 23, 1995 is the day the Disney film Pocohantas was released. Yes, we did a song about that too. It's called the Pocohantas Polka (AUDIO)
*June 24 is Roger Badesch's birthday. He appeared on our podcast talking about his book. (Listen to the entire interview here)
*June 24 is also actor Dave Vescio's birthday. He appeared on Minutia Men Celebrity Interview a few years ago. (Listen to that interview here)
*Today is Mark Leepsen's birthday. The acclaimed Vietnam Veteran/Author had the following to say about our book The Living Wills...You have to give credit to Rick Kaempfer and Brendan Sullivan, the two authors of “The Living Wills”. The authors have come up with a cast of realistic, non-sensationalized Vietnam veterans living out their lives in the early 21st century–no Nam vet stereotypes here. That in itself is worth the price of admission.
Hey, we're back! This week's episode is now available. Listen to it here.
The late Yes drummer Alan White, a cereal that doesn’t seem like a great idea for breakfast, Cockroaches, Sex-Ed through fishing, and the end of the great Elvis wedding tradition are among the topics discussed this week by Rick and Dave. [EP273]
