Emo kid Mike Henneberger hits Rock Bottom and tells us who had the best week 1976, 1988 or 1995!

this is podcast new york what's up dueling decades this is wax peace to all you guys and uh thanks for having me on the show will it be the 90s or the 80s beanie babies or crack babies will it be nirvana or madonna maybe britney maybe whitney do you like new metal a new wave dave roll or super dave i don't know but now the battle begins dueling decades let's see who wins

broadcasting live on digital delay from the podcast new york studios it's another all-new dueling decades the adult-only retro game show where the decades battle for supremacy because it's your history we just fight for it i am mark james and this week we have for you a week experience battle where all of our competitors picks must fall within one calendar week i'll be representing may 8th through the 14th of 1988 alongside the other jewelers and the decades they will be fighting for first off with the 90s he's all that and a bag of microchips say hello to man crush i'd say that would be accurate if i didn't have this booger lodged in the back of my nose uh but yeah i have uh may 7th through the 13th of 1995 and it's a little odd because i haven't had the 90s in quite a while so this is it feels

different also joining us on the panel in this week's in this week he's shagging his wagon to the 70s it's the professor drew zachman what's up everybody i am repping the 70s here i have may 9th through the 15th of 1976. and as always here on the show we need somebody to adjudicate all of this awesomeness this week's guest judge is the emmy a winning producer and best-selling author of rock bottom at the renaissance on emo kids journey through falling in and out of love in and with new york city all rise for judge mike henneberger thanks thanks for having me and um thanks for getting through that title all in one try he's been practicing we're going we're going for it thanks

ladies and gentlemen the following contest will be held under dueling decades rules the judge's coin flip shall decide who picks first out of the five dueling decades categories movies television music news and hud products a judge's ruling will determine who wins each round allowing the victor to choose the next available category the first three rounds are worth one point each with rounds four and five worth two points a piece and in the event of a tie after all five rounds we will go to a final wild card round remember duelers to review the show listen subscribe and play along at home it's time for more dueling decades

all right let's go right down to our guest judge mike henneberger for the coin toss which this week will be between man crush and drew zachman you call it drew uh i'll go i always go tails i'm gonna stick with tails maybe one of these weeks will actually work out for me all right well here's what i got i didn't have anything great so i got creative and i took two rock bottom at the renaissance buttons these are the here's the bottle of pills which obviously is heads and then for tails i got the bottle of scotch oh definitely going scotch all right here we go and flip it is pills oh all right man crush you won the coin toss and you get to select our first category all right let's go hot products let's start off with hot products let's go uh may 8th 1995. and i know recently i've been talking a lot about products having legs and i've been chastised for it drew that's right dave uh but this product right here this isn't even something that's tangible it's not even something that you can put your hands on yet this one has legs for days and uh by this point 1995 i had already been on the internet for four years and during those previous four years this barely existed so it's strange to think about like going on the internet and not seeing ads in your face at every turn however in 1995 it was strange for me to see ads on the internet because up until the mid 90s unless you were on like aol or prodigy or like one of those other services that had like a graphical user interface mostly everything was text based so it was super rare to see an ad that is until these websites started popping up and selling banner space so i came across this write up with several internet ad spaces that you could purchase for them here's one i mean for the mere price of 30 000 for 60 days you could put a banner ad at the top of wired magazine's brand new hot wired which was their digital version of their magazine and at the time they were they had a hundred thousand digital subscribers and 250 000 visits per day uh but if that was too much for you you could opt to throw a banner on zdnets ziff.com which of course now is zd net which everybody uses you go there for reviews and whatever but uh for anywhere between ten thousand dollars and twenty five thousand dollars per quarter i mean which seems like a steal compared to wired so you get four months of ads for 25 thousand dollars i mean sign me the [ __ ] up right uh or uh the other one that i found that was on here about uh like this was the web browser choice in 1995. of course you had internet explorer but the more popular one was netscape navigator in 1995. so you could put an ad on their home page for 40 000 for three months and this was like i don't know if you guys remember this at the time but like mid 90s their portal page was you can get like news or sports scores stocks that was kind of like your home so they were getting 400 000 visits a day huge numbers right which is dwarfed now 400 000 a day is like squat you know like blogs you're doing that uh and then prodigy like i mentioned before they'll hook you up for four thousand dollars a week for a banner and like here's the kick in the nuts with prodigy i had prodigy for a very short period of time i think it was like 94-ish i had it and what they did with these ads they had it before you can even log into the system you had to wait for like several ads to like just load on a 2400 baud modem [ __ ] genius thanks a lot prodigy but i would wait i think that's why i ended up canceling uh i don't think i really need to get into the legs here because like if you look at it these days digital marketers know more about you than you know about yourself honestly just be careful what you say out loud like if you tell somebody like hey mark you need [ __ ] vagisil you're gonna start seeing like feminine hygiene ads you know i mean that's just how it is now i mean so i give you internet sponsored ads from may of 1995. i went a little bit outside the box here

all right drew zachman what do you have for the hot products round so i uh with the 70s i kind of went a little outside the box here as well so i figured you know what's what's a hotter product than something that can help reduce neural tube defects am i right right uh yeah but i'm talking about fovite which is a folic acid drug that was approved by the fda on may 13 1976. now if you don't know what neural tube defects or ntds are i got you guys covered don't worry about it thank you an ntd occurs when the neural tube fails to close early in embryonic development resulting in damage to the exposed underlying neural tissue and these birth defects are like not good at all like basically if you wind up if you get like a serious case of it you can get what's called uh and encephaly which is like it's like your uh the skull doesn't completely cover the brain it's like it's pretty bad i mean if basically if your child winds up with that they're going to either be stillborn or uh if they are you know if they are born they're only going to maybe last a couple days so why die that in oregon trail no that was dysentery that was dysentery yeah um or you get attacked uh but but yeah this stuff so basically what they came out with was that you know uh there's no cure for and encephalin but uh you can um try to prevent it a bit if you get enough folic acid before and during pregnancy which can help you know prevent some of those defects so uh you know since the united states began fortifying grains with folic acid there's actually been a 28 decline in pregnancies affected by ntd so it's been a good thing uh so in order to get the recommended 400 micrograms of folic acid every day a woman can eat foods four to five folic acid or take a supplement containing the folic acid such as fovite which was what was approved now folic acid is basically it's a synthetic form of the vitamin b9 is really all it is but uh you can get it in all sorts of forms over the count or now but you know getting the fda to approve this you know definitely helped out immensely uh with birth defects back then so that's what i got full fight i thought i went outside the box hot product we're they're saving children man i mean what does the product get any hotter than that no and you would think you picked the right judge for it just said it true true we'll see we'll see all right so time to bring the show back down to earth kind of dumb things down a little bit and go back inside the box the vhs box that is because for my hot product i kept it simple and i went and looked and saw what the brand new releases on vhs were for my week that i had which was uh may 8th through the 14th of 1988 and i found an article in the evening sun out of baltimore maryland uh may 12 1988 and says new video releases include baby boom in this movie the movie i selected which is the running man from vestron video which you could own for the low low price of 89.98 and in case you're wondering kids that's three dollars and twelve cents in 2021 we were the running man is a vision of future television game shows much like dueling decades and much like rolling ball rollerball it was a precursor to competitive sports based on the stephen king short story written under the pseudonym richard bachmann in in the setting is in the year 2019 convicted felons compete for pardons on national television by surviving a race through los angeles that resembles a battle scarred rubble that you saw in escape from new york richard dawson who shamelessly steals the johnny olsen call come on down is perfectly cast as the host of the audience participation show that turns bad when framed ex-policeman arnold schwarzenegger takes on assassins who wield weapons such as razor sharp hockey sticks so this movie i thought found its groove once it hit the rental shelves and on cable it wasn't such a barn burner at the theaters the evening sun in baltimore maryland also said that arnold schwarzenegger's latest wants to have its cake and eat it too a lurid sick sick mix of satire and sadism that'll please arnie's army of fans he is a framed cop forced to participate in a television game where people get killed for the ratings pop fun but the movie ends up wallowing in the violence that it pers that it pretends to criticize so that's the running man from vestron video 89.98 you could own that all-time classic did you happen to get the price of baby boom i didn't uh baby boom was actually the same price okay it was also yes 89.98 it's so amazing the prices back then remember that the scene with the old lady where they're taking the bets and she's like oh i i'm paraphrasing here i think this is what she said didn't she say something like my money is on bed richards he's a bad

or that just come to my i don't know it's a great movie it is it is it's a fun movie but it's dark that's what it's like it takes a dark subject and makes it fun i feel like i heard they were rebooting it but i mean i hear they're rebooting everything so yeah it's true well they did it was called death race

come on really what that's what it was a reboot i never saw it oh no no i was being sarcastic i was like uh jason statham he wasn't a cop but he wanted them getting framed for murdering his family and then he put him in prison and the reason why they excuse me the reason why they brought him there was because he used to be a a driver and so basically they do these like races and these cars are like pimped out to like no end with like you know missiles and shields and stuff it's pretty crazy that's actually a reboot of death race from the 70s correct yeah it was based off the original death race movie but i mean it's kind of the same premise and then if you wind up winning what was if you had to win like three races or some [ __ ] like that they would let him go i don't think i've ever watched that yeah in the original stephen king short story the running man it wasn't a disgraced cop he was forced to go on the game show in order to earn money to get medicine for his sick daughter it was the only option he had left it had nothing to do with a disgraced cop so that kind of just asked for a raise yeah all right well let's throw it down to mike henneberger for the ruling on the hutt products round yeah no these were these were all good um i love the running man that's that's such a great movie um and i'm sure it'll get totally ruined if it gets rebooted um but uh let's see and i mean medicine for birth defects i mean even though my my daughter was born perfect um i you know can still give that a little credit but i have to go with the internet ads even though they're horrible um just so we can keep saying vagisil for anyone listening outside of headphones and serve them some vagisil ads i love where your head's at we're just all episode that's going to be like vagisil not sponsored not yet not yet it's a free plug that's right this is you

all right man crush will you pick up the first point point in this game you take control of the board what category are we going with next man man this is tough mid 90s um

let's go [ __ ] it let's just go movies we'll go movies here uh may 12th 1995 and you know 26 years ago today this tony scott jerry brockheimer classic was released to theaters and if you go over to our facebook every single day uh www.facebook.com forward slash dueling decades we release movies that came out in the 80s and 90s they're all in one post usually there's we picked the we cherry picked the the six that we like and we put them up there and this that one this movie was actually on that uh that list day so coincidentally this is one of those movies though where the movie was a monster hit when it came out and nowadays we don't really hear much about it we've talked about this on the show before uh you know this movie i think they played on tbs or tnt a lot so i think that's the only time i ever hear about it but it always fascinates me with movies like these they're huge hits big big time money makers at the time and they just kind of like fade out over time and in spite of that like i initially had like a little bit of apprehension with this pick because i didn't think i would like this movie because i didn't even remember much of it anymore like is it dated was it big for the moment in time and now nobody cares like i honestly don't know the reason why this happened so i figured i'll watch the movie and if it doesn't hold up i'll just find something else so once again i have 2 000 movies and this is not one of the movies i own so i ended up renting this movie on amazon last night for 3.99 which my life my wife always loves but i loved it so with that said i'm actually really perplexed why this occurs um you know maybe you guys don't feel the same way let's see how that goes with this movie uh at the box office this one brought in 157 million dollars in 1995. that's about 275 million in 2021 so it's pretty good for a like remnant cold war movie obviously we're a little bit outside the cold war but they're still bringing it back in the film was nominated for three oscars in pretty much like the most popular categories and of course i'm talking about best sound uh best film editing and best sound effects in everything mark's nodding like i'm being serious right now editing editing is always important but i mean obviously screw best actor actress no i want best editor yeah i mean that's we're talking about a dynamo here when you have the three of those but i mean all kidding aside i'm actually shocked that the two co-stars this one didn't get any any oscar buzz for their performances you put gene hackman and denzel washington on the same screen it's literally a slam dunk in any movie this movie could have been about like two landscapers and those two would have been in it and you would have been like oh this [ __ ] movie is the bomb like i'd watch this again and again uh that said they actually offered uh before uh gene hackman got this role they offered his role to tommy lee jones but he turned it down but i think that's good though because who wanted to see tommy on another navy ship another ship yeah like dude you just did under siege yeah whatever i think we're good here so if uh if you're into tense movies water sports or more accurately like tactical underwater maneuvers i think they would call it uh cold war hangovers angry extremists quinn tarantino dialogue changes which actually happens in this one personality classes the importance of chain of command jack russell's double mutinies because that you didn't get one mutiny you got two mutinies you got mexican standoffs and an argument that lasts the entire movie about a le panzer stallion then go out and rent yourself a copy of crimson tide and here's a little uh here's a little factoid that you could take to the bar with you and you're trying to hook up with somebody and you start talking about crimson tide because that happens all the time right the pants are stallions they're in fact slovenian so both the guys in this movie are completely wrong so thank you google in 1995 obviously these guys could look that up i could but uh yeah crimson tide wow not even out of the second round and we've already brought up vagisil and crimson time

look is it lipins or le panzer stallions uh it's [ __ ] horses i don't know all right drizzy and two movies and two movies with a dynamo in them that's true true all right drew zachman what did you bring for the movies round yeah uh crimson tide is definitely a panty dropper you know when you're out at a bar you gotta throw that out there i mean skip the conversation be like you like crimson tide and she's like you're in dude oh it's straight spanish fly oh yeah all right so for mine i could not find any releases between may 9th and may 15th of 1976. however uh mark i believe you also were frequenting this newspaper earlier but i pulled up the movie calendar and one of my favorite newspapers the baltimore sun and i'm not joking i like the baltimore sun um and several theaters such as campus hill cinema 2 not one two uh church lane cinema and glen burnie mall just to name a few there were several others they were playing one movie and one movie only and that movie boasted 93 cars destroyed in the most incredible chase ever filmed this movie actually came out in july of 74 and actually had 127 cars getting destroyed throughout the film now the movie was written by produced by directed by and starred the same person h b halicki now if you're not sure what film i'm talking about perhaps this tagline will give it away you can lock your car but if he wants it it's gone in 60 seconds so that's what i'm talking about and uh interestingly enough i started digging into halicki it sounds interesting this guy did like everything by himself uh it turns out the guy married denise shakaryan just before filming the 1989 sequel gone in 60 seconds too where they would wind up both starring in that halicki who was also a stuntman was tragically killed during the filming of the sequel but after his death shakarian began dating and i think was even engaged to some fancy lawyer named robert kardashian who raised some of the dumbest [ __ ] in the world uh and and speaking of car chases robert kardashian represented some guy who was in probably the most infamous car chase ever albeit they were going to post at speed limits if not a little bit slower but still uh oh and robert and denise were third cousins so yuck um but yeah eventually this flick would spawn a 2 000 a 2000 remake with mr nicholas cage and is actually one of the best movies ever made and i don't care what anybody says so i'm going with gone in 60 seconds as it was in movie theaters during that time wow so there was not one movie that was released during that week no and i checked a couple spots i couldn't find anything that was released because like sometimes like the dates online might be off by a couple days and so i went into like each of those movies i went on imdb wikipedia i went to like a couple different spots and i couldn't find anything that was which is weird because like it's may you know like it's summertime you figure they'd be having some movies come out but did you go to newspapers.com well yeah that's where i found bought the baltimore sun wow and there wasn't man if it went to that point i probably would have found a porn that was released uh no i didn't research those but how do you pick oh it's dude you just go with like remember uh it was last year i i forgot what i had it i think it was the 70s as well it was when jamie kennedy was on and it was a worse stuff episode and i went with some porno there was about some chick that killed herself at the end i was like what's worse than that i i think i won that round too i forgot what it was called are you kink shaming i watched i actually watched it for research yeah well i'll tell you what i mean if you're talking about porn i so i had no idea who this denise shakarian is just google her and she probably would be in a porn based on the pictures i saw so i thought you were gonna say she got married to nicholas cage i thought that's where you're headed that's where i thought you were going too probably i mean he's he's been married once or 17 times so who knows but she was she was actually involved uh in the 2000 remake so there you go all right guys so uh for my movie selection we're gonna go to may 13th 1988 and we get the release of a movie that the favorably mentioned in the last episode bruce campbell has gone on to admit that he only did this movie because he needed the money and it's the least favorite of every film that he's ever done uh so we're going to go over to the daily news may 18th 1988 where the headline reads bodies to the left of bodies to the left of us bodies to the right you have you have the you have the right to remain violent in maniac cop a prolific movie maverick larry cohen again displays his patent flare for taking the simple but solid premise and cleverly exploiting every story hook and with and with it and and with it style the premise here involves a mysterious killer cop played by the hulking robert zadar i don't know if i've ever heard robert zadar described as hulking before he's hulking in that movie did you see the shower scene yeah i don't know i feel like that word should be used more by the way like in our regular vernacular i feel like you guys are throwing that around more that's so good so the hulking robert zadar is a rapidly reducing gotham's law abiding population uh via his nocturnal slaughter habits so frightened citizens respond by killing innocent cops while you know maniac cop is out there on the loose on a killing spree the result boasts in a higher body count than the latest friday the 13th movie which was also released at the same time and was in the theaters so of course naturally i had to go with the one that has the highest body count so i went with maniac cop despite the modest budget and occasionally slap dish direction of genre flicks currently unspooling maniac cop ranks among new york's finest the review says now the modest budget they talk about was about 1.1 million dollars now it grossed just over half of that but again this is one of those movies that found its legs in the aftermarket on cable on tv in the drive-ins in nvhs rental stores so that's what i got from my movie selection may 13 1988 it's maniac cop takes a maniac to catch a maniac i totally forgot bruce campbell is in that the only scene i remember with him he's isn't he like uh cheating on his wife or something with another cop in a hotel or something yeah that's like the whole premise he she he's cheating on his wife if his wife finds out about it and then gets killed by maniac cop so of course he wants to avenge his uh you know his wife's uh his wife's death so it's fantastic it's a great flick all right let's go down to judge mike henneberger for the ruling on the movies round um this one is a little kind of easy for me um and i you know crimson tide is a film that you know i watch with my dad and my father-in-law that's kind of what you know those movies remind me of although like i'm a i'm a big military and history buff so i'm still interested in that stuff um but not at all interested in the importance of chain of command military or otherwise um yeah it's probably why i didn't do well in the military or with my dad who was 20 years navy so yeah maybe there's just a lot of stuff i need to unpack when it comes to those kinds of movies um so uh your next book yeah exactly um and i'm sorry i should be more familiar with maniac cop i know of it i have not seen it so i can't pick maniac cop and drew you don't gotta defend yourself i think gone in 60 seconds is one of the best movies ever um so i gotta go with gone in 60 seconds because it gave us um the reboot of gone in 60 seconds it had legs you're not allowed to use it you chastising son of a [ __ ] you

all right drew zachman you pick up a point you tie up this game heading into our final one point round you get control of the board what category are we going with next all right i'm gonna do tv all right so uh if you're a sports fan specifically living in boston odds are you may have been tuned in to the red sox game against the milwaukee brewers maybe not though given that red sox were 9 and 15 at the time in milwaukee was 10-11 so not exactly a battle of uh first place powerhouses now while the teams weren't doing well there was no shortage of all-star talent here uh milwaukee had a young robin as well as some guy named hank aaron uh two hall of famers right there and boston had carl yostremski and carlton fisk two more hall of famers and also dwight evans who should be in the hall i honestly don't know why he's not but still some good talent there records weren't showing it uh terrible pitching on both sides basically but this game in particular was not about the offense it was in fact about the pitching now boston jumped out to an early one-nothing lead in the bomb the first before milwaukee tied it into second and boston would take the lead for good in the fifth as the sox wound up winning two to one so a good pitcher's duel here so like i said right this game is about the pitching milwaukee's pete broberg took the loss while jim willoughby for boston earned a save but boston's starting pitcher well he threw six in the third innings while scattering five hits and allowing only one earned run now that boston picture would only pitch the majors until the end of the 1978 season and uh while his career era of 505 might not look like much he certainly provided some stiff competition during his 1977 season with seattle he threw three complete games proving he could last all night he did give up a few home runs in his career 61 to be exact so he did get spanked around a bit but on may 14 1976 one pitcher was ahead above the rest and that picture was dick pole there we go so nice may 14th uh 1976 we got the watch dick pole pitched well against the brewers uh that's great back in the mark do you remember that episode we did back in the day when we hoop culture with uh the weird sports names yeah we had dick paul and rusty [ __ ] rusty cotton oh yeah fantastic that was a great one

all right man crush what did you bring

all right so let's go uh may 12th 1995 we got a friday here um i was initially gonna pick the conclusion of a show right here and then i came across something very odd and it sparked my interest so now like one of the reasons we started doing this show was to give folks like a little bit like a mental vacation from the daily grind allowing our audience to reminisce about nostalgia but the other reason and this is what makes it fun for me is finding things from our youth that we may have overlooked or perhaps things that just weren't initially in our wheelhouse that we actually enjoy as adults and for me this selection falls into the latter category and here we get a debut of a show that would premiere a few weeks later on comedy central may 28th to be exact so i know you're you're saying yourself man crush why the [ __ ] are you picking it well it's sort of like what would happen when we find a sneak preview for a movie the same exact thing occurred for this tv show on uh friday may 12 1995 in roughly 25 theaters they showed the first episode of this hilarious new this quotes here hilarious new comedy central series and actually it is pretty funny uh dr katz professional therapist and uh they played it before certain feature presentations at the movie theater i saw these commercials all the time in the late 90s like all the time i never gave two shits about it i was like ah never gave it a chance well thanks to some dude on youtube that uploaded all six seasons and 81 episodes into one video that's like 11 hours long i stayed up for like two hours actually it was probably longer than that because i think i watched like seven or eight episodes in a row so i finally watched it it's pretty damn hilarious i don't know if you guys have ever seen the show before i'm not sure if i would have loved it as much as a teen but as an adult it's damn good man like a lot of stuff they talk about is just hilarious like i don't think i would even gotten it as a teen but definitely as adult you do but if you don't remember this one you might remember this they used something called squiggle vision yeah so yeah so there was a cartoon but it looked like everyone had parkinson's like it's kind of difficult to watch it first but you get you get used to it but they utilize this so they can incorporate a comedian's stand-up performance as like he was on the couch with dr katz so they would like use a part from his bit and then dr katz would reply and they'd go back and forth and you would never know the y's or they'd have to match up the mouths they have to do anything because they had this weird squiggle thing going on right uh at least the several uh episodes that i watched that's that's how they were it's very dry humor and it features amazing comedians you had ray romano david tell kevin meaney jon stewart louis ck are we allowed to talk about louis c.k again who knows yeah i'm not sure the rules anymore uh mitch hedberg uh classic you know rest in peace uh emo phillips great one from back in the day conan o'brien was on it gilbert godfrey rodney dangerfield bob goldthwait even had dave chappelle i mean the list literally goes on and on and on for the show for like six seasons so if you dig comedy these comedy like therapy sessions they're gold like everything that goes on in them like you just you don't even have to pay too much of his attention as an adult you just watch it i was laughing my ass off but uh go check out dr katz professional therapist and if you're quick enough you can go watch this dudes 11 hours of it all in one video it's up there but or go buy it i mean it's it's funny but yeah that's what i got it was played in the movie theaters so it's weird awesome yeah i was a huge fan of that show yeah good job do you watched it back then yeah i watched it when it originally came out i haven't seen it since but i wish i did it was a fantastic show that's so funny him dealing with his son yeah he's like just dumb as [ __ ] oh that's great and i i haven't worked at comedy central for about uh six years so i'm not saying this for them it's for the audience um but supposedly the comedy central app has everything that's ever been on comedy central so you you might be able to find it on there too uh it'll probably be better quality because the ones that are on youtube they're all ripped from vhs yeah if it's on there i don't know how far they i mean they have some really old stuff on there but uh i don't i don't know if that's and they brought it back a couple times so they might have like the the older stuff or the newer stuff because i think uh i think i might have seen like 2007 or something somewhere around there they had brought it back so they might have it definitely check it out it's funny if for older people i'm 43 i watch it now and a lot of stuff's relatable so yeah

all right guys so i found my television selection in the prime time highlight section of the orlando sentinel may 14 1988 and where the headline read an ocean of talent is on hand for atlantic records 40th bash atlantic records 40th anniversary it's only rock and roll a four-hour celebration spotlight spotlighting performances by top rock jazz rhythm and blues artists spanning the label's four decade history will be televised at eight tonight on home box office the program will originate live from new york city's madison square garden among the atlantic artists scheduled to perform on the show are the average white band the bee gees phil collins mick jagger genesis the manhattan transfer herbie mann the rascals new shoes michael hutchins of nxs iron butterfly benny king debbie gibson the coasters robert plant keith richards crosby stills and nash vanilla fudge and yes and the article completely forgets the headliner of the act the reunion of led zeppelin john paul jones jimmy page and robert plant with jason bonham on drums from that night from them we heard cashmere heartbreaker whole lot of love misty mountain hop and of course stairway to heaven now there were some non-music guests there as well that included bill murray lisa bonet and michael douglas and robert hayes from airplane he served as the guest guide for the special event offering kind of a backstage look at the concert and he did some interviews and stuff so do you still have his drinking problem during that yeah with all those rock stars yeah man i feel bad for him so may 14 1988 it's atlantic records celebrating their 40th anniversary with four hours of it on hbo now hbo only covered four hours the concert in itself was over 13. can i just clarify did you call the bee geez an average white band is that what she said no no no we had the average white band and the bg's oh i thought you were starting there and then you were leading up to led zeppelin which was the above average white band correct okay where does vanilla fudge land in that they're in the middle they're all right they forget you know led zeppelin but they include [ __ ] new shoes wow all right let's toss it down to mike henneberger for his verdict on the television round this is a good one and um it's it's tough for me um because of course you know dr katz like you said it's one of those things like i would never have gotten at the age i was when it came out even though like i was a huge i've been a huge comedy nerd my whole life you know from just our such early memories of watching saturday night live when i probably didn't even get those you know um so uh but yeah i'm definitely gonna go back and take a look at those because i i know how highly regarded it is in the world of comedy uh so i'm sure it's it's gonna be amazing and i'm glad to have something that i can go back to and appreciate now as an adult um and let's see dick pole i mean come on like that without you know i was leaning towards dick pole for a little while um not something not something i do often but uh um and then atlantic records um you know i gotta give them a shout out because they let me use a death cab for cutie song in my audio book for free um of course i needed the death cab for cutie's management's approval on that and the bands which i got um and that was one of the the bands in my audiobook that i was really scared of being able to get so i went and got there's 20 songs in my audio book from small punk bands to jimmy world but i left jimmy at world and death cab for cutie for last so i could kind of lay on their management and record labels and let and say like well everybody else gave me their music for free why are you guys want to be the only ones um so atlantic records let me use them probably weren't around when that concert happened but uh still a great record label so to make things interesting i'm going to go with atlantic records all right you know who wasn't on that guest list dick paul

shame he just wasn't written yeah it's good that you brought that up though and i was wondering while i was listening to your book with all those bands in there what would you have done because obviously you wrote it with the songs in mind yeah what would you have done if they were like nah you can't use it well i was going to i pro i mean if i couldn't have gotten the jimmy world songs i wouldn't have released it because the for those who don't know every song every chapter the book has a song that goes with it um and it appears as like a soundtrack to what's happening um it's not like an essay about the song and so the first chapter is a jimmy world song and that kind of sets up the format you know and so if i couldn't have had that song in there um it wouldn't have made sense and so i would have just fought i mean it took me almost a year to get all the songs cleared because i was that dedicated to having it the way it's supposed to be um and in fact universal music uh was gonna charge me for the jimmy world songs and the thing is is 50 of the royalties from my book ebook and audiobook are going to mental health charities um and artist relief um and tour crew relief charities so that's a big part of why bands allowed me to use their music for free um and the book is about you know mental health struggles um and how music kind of helped me get through that and that's another i mean none of these bands let me use this music because i am me because i'm nobody you know um so they they let me use it because of that stuff and um the deal was set from the first bands that it's called an mfn uh most favored nations agreement meaning that you can use these songs for free as long as no one else gets paid whoever gets paid for it then you have to pay these bands the same amount uh so whoever is like the most favored that gets that gets applied to everyone else so if i had to pay one ban i had to pay all of them for publishing and for masters which would have come out on the price that universal music was going to charge me for jimmy world which was 125

for two jimmy world songs each that's such an arbitrary number yeah you know that's just like it means nothing and even if the band got 50 of that split between uh four guys like what that's that's so arbitrary and it was but also it would have come out to over ten thousand dollars for me and i wouldn't have been able to do that so jimmy world uh just recorded um two some live stream concerts this this year where they re-recorded their music on these live streams and so i was able to go to gme world and get those new recordings so i wouldn't have to pay universal music but i had to go through their management and their management talk to them and um i like paid for this vip session with meet and greet online so i could tell them about it so they wouldn't understand that i'm not just some guy exploiting their music um and so they were familiar with it and yeah they were totally cool about letting me use that stuff for free um so i wouldn't have to pay universal music and in fact dashboard confessional and the smoking popes gave me versions re-recorded versions of their songs that they own too so i wouldn't have to go to universal music um so yeah i mean hearing the audio book now i've come to realize that this like should have started as an audio book like it it's it's meant to be heard as an audiobook it's not meant to be read um i mean it's it's i just feel really great about it and really proud of it as a book but hearing the audiobook it's just it like actually puts you in it um 110 dude like uh i told mark this when i first got it i think it was like uh it just was like april 27th or something was like the date or 28th it was a date that it came out in audible and they put it in my account and i was like all right i'm gonna start listening to this that and tyler posey reading the book yeah dude it feels like and i i always listen to it at nighttime so like i'm getting ready to go to bed i'm laying in bed i'm not watching television i'm listening to the book and it puts you in that hotel room you're what dude it's like uh it's like a one-man movie with flashbacks that you can he does such a fantastic i listen to you i think i said this to either you or uh or staff or somebody like i listen to a ton of audiobooks and he does an amazing job or he puts you in that room you don't get that often it's usually puts me asleep and the worst part about your book is it kept me up because i was listening to it and i'm like well when you saw it i am when you said that you would listen you were listening to it like before bed i i i had that thought because other people have told me that too and it's always been the same thing like they stay up for three hours or for like i mean it's only six hours long um but yeah i mean i take very little credit for how good the audiobook is because tyler did such an amazing job with it and then also the music being in there like i'll take credit as like the producer who came up with the idea and put it together but like having those bands like their voices and then tyler's also um makes it it makes it so different that like i i feel like i can listen to it objectively like i i feel like it's not my book anymore because i mean tyler also did it for free you know he he we had a mutual connection um through our publicist and he's you know has pop was has played in pop punk bands and is in the emo scene too and so like and has talked about his mental health issues and so when he read the book he just related to it so much that he i mean i have a video interview that i put out with him where he says like i didn't know what you wanted me to do whether it was an audiobook whether it was a tv show i was just down to do it so like i'm hoping we get to make a tv show out of it yeah it's awesome for sure it's like at the very least the the two things i see is either a play yeah i thought of that too or a movie like i saw it as a movie i was like this can totally be one night this dude sitting in there and just you know going through it's amazing like go out yeah yeah i mean i thought of it as a movie first um but because it's so kind of uh serialized you know it feels like true uh those need to be like episodes because i don't know yeah i don't know how i would make it a two-hour movie yeah you couldn't you know what it actually reminds me of it it's completely different but uh 13 reasons why the way that first season is set up not before the second season and it got all crazy but like that first season how it's like segmented up i could totally see it like 13 episodes yeah no and and yeah and that's the thing like tyler too like he did it for the same reasons as like the bands like he could relate to it and he you know wanted to be part of what it could do like the potential it has to help other people who went through that stuff like i did you know like the only reason it exists is because i'm not that person anymore and i'm healthy enough i'm mentally healthy enough to be able to say like not be ashamed of that anymore because i overcame i overcame it you know and um now i get to say like that's who i was but look who i am now and i want other people to know that that's possible you know right so yeah no i i um hopefully i i'll if you know if i can get you guys you know ways to listen to it too if you haven't um yeah i mean i just want people to hear it i don't like i barely make any money off of it but i mean that's not what it's about like it's really good man and like just circling back to the episode i could totally see you at a bar trying to talk to a chick about crimson tide yeah for sure that was my that was my go-to that was my opener you never say it in the book but now i'm putting too i didn't want to give it i don't want to give away my gold you know you

all right guys well i picked up a point in that last round and this game's all tied up heading into our first two point round and i have control you know what we're gonna go to the music round all this talk of music let's just do some music so may 12 1988 uh capitol records recording artist mega death released their second single from the album so far so good so what and that was an album for megadeth that received almost no radio play in support of it but the single would go on to eventually help push the album to platinum status along with uh their their first single which was a cover of the sex pistols anarchy in the uk so for my pick i'm rolling up a little mary jane now contrary to popular belief mary jane is not a song about weed mega death bass player in coffee mogul dave dave ellison talked about the real life origins of mary eugene in 2009 he said whether while he was visiting his hometown in jackson minnesota he was contacted by the nearby jackson county historical society uh they have a museum there and he they wanted him to contribute his own historical perspective on the story of the now legendary girl mary jane twillinger who the song was actually written about legend has it that she was a young witch burned alive by her father in the nearby loon lake minnesota cemetery the mystery surrounding the mystery surrounding here grew to such legendary proportions that over the years it was rumored that anyone who dared violate her grave in any way was doomed to certain and immediate death there were even stories of deadly car crashes involving people who got drunk or had some sort of crazy mayhem around her grave and they thought it was all harmless fun ellison said so it's mary jane by mega death it was released as a single may 12 1988 it's off the album so far so good so what overall it's it's a really good track kind of an interesting sound for early mega death i think it has kind of more of a prague rock sound so it's like i don't know it's interesting it's a good tune uh but it was released in the week i have so that's what we got it's mega death

all right drew zachman what did you bring for the music round all right so uh this album was released on may 14 1976 and it made an appearance on rolling stone's 500 greatest albums of all time uh i'm pretty sure loads of cocaine were used to make this but two songs made the top 40 last child and back in the saddle this album also sold over 4 million copies and it has been stated that this album also influenced bands such as guns and roses metallica and motley crew as well as nirvana kurt cobain himself said rox which is the album i'm talking about from aerosmith was one of the albums he thought was most influential to nirvana's sound and he wrote that in his journal in 1993. now back in the saddle is cited by slash and james hetfield as among their favorite rock songs so pretty good a compliment there in fact aerosmith was the reason hetfield said he wanted to learn guitar so pretty awesome now as for slash uh i found this story in q magazine it's pretty it's pretty awesome actually so i'm going to read it to you guys so he's uh says rox was the album that inspired him to learn guitar and that album you know basically changed his life and slash said i was in seventh grade and just going through the whole 78 music thing that was happening for kids which was like cheap trick and the cars anyway there was this chick that i was going after that was considerably older than me i'd been uh trying to be cool enough to take her out and have my way with her finally i sort of weaseled my way into her apartment so we're hanging out and she put rocks by aerosmith on and i was mesmerized by it it was like the be all and then doll best attitude [ __ ] hard rock record i'd grown up with music but this was like my record i must have listened to it about half a dozen times completely ignored her and then got on my bike and rode i was totally in there i was at least going to get a decent french kiss out of it and i completely dropped the ball for aerosmith and that was that it's probably one of the records that sums up my taste in the hard rock bands to this day meanwhile she's out there somewhere and i missed it but it was worth it so uh pretty pretty funny story so slash basically gave up a girl so he could go become slash essentially uh but anyway yeah rockstar that's too bad because he he probably never had a girl again ever again that was his only chance that was his pinnacle that was it yeah um but yeah so rocks by aerosmith if we didn't get this album we might have never gotten metallica on guns n roses so as they say it has legs ah come on can you picture like when i hear slash got on his bike and like rode away i picture him being about nine years old but i also can't picture him without the hair in the top patch

he's driving like this so he's seeing this nine-year-old kid with slash hair and a top hat

all right man crush what did you bring for the music round oh man i went just as influential as drew zachman that's what i did let's go uh may 13th of 1995. uh you know what though anytime i see a former guest of ours pop up on any of these lists i will go back and and go a little deeper and do that work so i can make that selection and these guys we had these guys on way back in the day we we mentioned poop culture before they were actually guest of ours on poop culture this is probably like five years ago six years ago and this is how [ __ ] awesome these guys were we had scheduled an interview with them right and the week of their interview their booking agents scheduled them for a show the night of the interview and like typically when this happens like we're left to scramble look for a replacement it sucks um we get it though i mean it happens these guys work they're getting paid for a gig it's important so that said it still shafts us pretty hard when this happens so but this is what happens so like these guys they emailed me and they were like hey there's a scheduling snafu uh can we reschedule and we sent a couple emails back and forth and neither one of us can come to a mutual date they either had a show or we had somebody else on so instead these guys were like well you know what why don't we just do the interview from backstage that night and boom done deal they came on they chatted with us for like an hour backstage uh was the audio [ __ ] horrendous absolutely it was uh but it was it was cool as hell much respect to those dudes for making that work mark was there he knows exactly where i'm going with this uh so this album was released in may of 1995 super super small pressing it was done by piss off records so you know it was very small long gone sold out i did find a copy of this on ebay today after i was doing the research and i almost purchased it i might by the end of the show it just depends on how much i drink by the end of the night so i i went in hard for research on this one and i i sort of found like the cd release party that was on may 13th of 1995 and it was at the copacetic cafe in old san bernardino california where they played that night with jump with joey king willy the specks and skiptooth many people you probably never heard of but the album it would go on to be re-released two times at least two times by mojo records the first time is after their second album came out turn off the radio uh that became popular in 1996 and they released an ep with it uh which had a couple of the songs from this album then they did a full re-release in 2000 and i think there was actually one more in 2009 if i'm not mistaken complete re-release so drew zachman once again vagisil we have legs here

and the other thing too the band re-released a lot of these songs on subsequent albums like over the years like onesies and twosies like over and over and over so if you're into like punk or ska and you're like me and you enjoy finding like early cuts from the band that doesn't have that pristine studio sound that is exactly what this album is so if you're looking for this like if you're gonna go out and buy it after i tell you what the name is and you want the original release just make sure that it has 19 tracks in total there's 18 and one hidden and because all the uh the re-releases have more tracks of course except for the uh the ep uh and here's the other thing about this ban they're they're not super popular anymore they do have a hell of a following and they put on one of the best live shows that i've ever seen seriously like if you ever see these guys playing live anywhere just go and and watch them it's it's a [ __ ] event uh but you know those bands you grew up with that like they either broke up or they went like all adults as we got older and we kind of just like faded that we kind of waned away from them not this band this band never did either one of those you can either throw on an old album or their latest which was a life sucks let's dance which came out in 2018 and you'll instantly be skanking all over your living room at 43 years old i guarantee it but it's the release of real big fish's debut album everything sucks and it includes timeless tracks in this one i'm cool hate you why do all the girls think they're fat i want your girlfriend to be my girlfriend too uh go away uh [ __ ] yourself and beer those were all tracks too i wasn't telling people to go [ __ ] themselves those are all tracks from that album it's it's fantastic real big fish yeah that was an awesome episode those guys are so cool man remember how bad the audio was oh it was atrocious it's probably one of the worst ever but whatever it was cool wow i feel like that's cheating a little bit because you know about my ska band history oh i didn't know about your scott well yeah i mentioned it a little in the book not a lot but all right let's toss it down to judge mike henneberger for the ruling on the music round all right i'm people who know me might think they know where i'm going on this one um you know i have my my history in in playing in the ska band i started a ska band when i was 14. um it was a christian ska band because i never wanted to get laid um because jesus wouldn't like that jesus would not have liked that so i did all i could to avoid it um but uh but i i grew up in a small little town in south texas where like it was it's amazing i even ever heard sky or punk thanks to like my little my skater friends um and skate videos and stuff like that but that's kind of what saved me you know finding that stuff and starting a band and that's how i learned how to write was writing songs that's how music became so important to me um and of course that was like i mean that's that band started in 97 which was like right around you know real big fish hitting the radio you know maybe a couple of years later it was the summer of 96. okay um yeah so um so yeah that album and that band are have a special place in my heart um because it you know a lot of people always hate when they're like their scar punk bands get on the radio or their favorite like indie bands like get popular but for me i feel like it validates my taste you know it's it's like all these people are discovering and liking it but i i knew about it before so um so i feel cooler about it um so yeah that that that has a special place um too however i can't go with it because um when i had my ska band in this small little town there was a rival ska band which sounds so stupid and like the nerdiest yeah um but uh all the guys in that band were like marching band musicians like new music all of us like most of us had just picked up instruments never knew how to play but we knew we actually knew punk and scott and they didn't but real big fish was on the radio and all they played were real big fish covers they didn't even like go through the trouble oh no they knew a couple sublime covers too um but they weren't a christian scott band and they played parties and they you know drank and um so like they would make flyers and their band was called monkeys doing it and a bunch of posers and they would make flyers that said kingsville is my hometown that said kingsville's only ska band and we had been playing for at least a year longer than them um but after high school we actually toured the country a couple times and they never did anything um so validated again oh so yeah so then [ __ ] them so you should throw that out i think my pick is still valid oh for sure um no and i just saw i just saw i mean it's been a couple years but i saw a real big fish at warped tour a couple of years before working yeah no i'm i i will still watch real big fish every chance i get same with like less than jake and i still love all those bands on next week by the way oh really next week oh that's awesome cool um and then you know um mark you you had me at capitol records because i was a security guard at the capitol records building in la um for a little while and i i think my wife thinks it's funny she might think it's annoying but she still kind of laughs every time that iconic capital records building appears on a movie or tv show i say hey i used to work there and every time it's it's an instinct i can't help it um independence day gets destroyed so yeah yeah um which i think i don't know is it apartments yet and everybody like for the longest time people talked about it you know getting sold and turned into apartments so it's a badass building yeah it is very cool um but i gotta go with daryl smith and i'm not even the biggest aerosmith fan but i think that's that's you know if it gave us slash and it gave us all these other you know bands um and just for the visual it gave me of nine year old slash riding riding the bike and blowing his chance his one chance to lose his virginity um yeah uh but now that that's definitely uh an important record uh so yeah going with aerosmith all right awesome yeah maybe one day slash will lose his virginity i'm holding out man again you

all right drew zachman you pick up a big two points heading into the final round which is the news round that means you're in the lead you get to decide if you want to defer or if you want to go first i'll go first here uh all right so for news i have may 12 1976 while sitting alone in his jail cell nelson mandela mandela began writing his life memoir

i had to i'm sorry i know i was gonna say it if you didn't you already you guys already got o.j simpson brought o.j simpson back up too so yeah yeah he's been up a lot yeah no no no bill clinton here either so uh may 11 1976 uh the there was an amendment to the federal election campaign act uh and basically what wound up happening was um there's a case buckley versus vallejo it was a landmark decision of the us supreme court on campaign finance basically a majority of justices held that limits on election spending in the federal election campaign of 1971 are unconstitutional so now the court they recognize that reporting and disclosure requirements infringe on first amendment uh first amendment rights but the court also held that the government has a vital interest in providing the electorate with information as to where political campaign money comes from and how it's spent by the candidate in order to aid the voters in evaluating those who seek federal office also it has a vital interest in allowing voters to place each candidate in the political spectrum more precisely than is often possible solely on the basis of party labels and campaign speeches so um yeah so basically it was you know it's kind of like full disclosure requirements uh it would help deter actual corruption and avoid the appearance of corruption by exposing large contributions and expenditures uh you know kind of bring that to the light for the public to see and um that's it works really well now and i feel like our government and our leaders are not corrupt i feel like they're stand-up individuals and i feel like i feel very strongly as a matter of fact that the the amendment to the federal election campaign act on may 11 1976 really helped shape our country and really you know help get it to where it is today so that's what i have

all right man crush uh what did you bring for the news round oh man all right so let's go uh may 11 1995. same day is true there um there is now his first year in office now uh here we go though we're gonna have one of the most nefarious releases of all time here and i actually i wanted mike ranger to do this one he was gonna call in and deliver this one gaming is mike ranger's thing i'm sure he's been waiting i think he even told me before he's been waiting for this one and he would have given it due diligence uh his like i don't think his wife is gonna let him on tonight so he could not make it to do the call-in uh so i'm gonna give this one a try i'm gonna see if i can give it some justice here because i'm really i'm not a gamer you know like sometimes i wish i grew up and i was a gamer but i was just never really into consoles after the nintendo so it is what it is it just wasn't my bag all right but let's begin with a quote from the ceo of sega of america from february of 1995 just to give us a little context all right and here's the quote it says the magic price point is 300 if your product costs more than 300 then your market is very very limited okay that's his quote all right initially the north american release of this product it was supposed to happen and what sega was going to call saturn day and that was going to be saturday september 2nd 1995. and that was slated to be one week prior to the upstart sony playstation that was being released on september 9th of 1995. and a little interesting bit here mike ranger gave me this one he was explaining to me how sony initially went to sega to work together on some hardware and sega of japan said hell [ __ ] no like what do these dudes know about making games they make tvs so then they said no and then they doubled down on just killing the playstation before it got started so tom kalinski the same guy that i gave you that quote from before of sega of america he announced the e3 which is the electronic entertainment expo they had on may 11 1995 instead of waiting until saturn day which is the worst name ever they're just gonna go ahead and start selling the sega saturn right now as soon as he was done talking we're selling it it's coming out and then he followed that up with a statement by just dropping the lowest introductory price they can come out with with 399.99 which is the equivalent of 700 in 2021 and like bro like i kind of remember you just saying in february that 300 was that like was that the top off like huh anyway so he says that several hours later i don't know if you guys have ever seen this before but it's epic if you've never seen it go look it up on youtube steve race he's the head of playstation america he walks up to the podium in e3 it's like their time to talk he goes up there and just goes i make believe i'm walking out walk up 299. drops the [ __ ] mic leaves the building that's it he's a hundred dollars less and since like sega launched early without any real notice there were only 30 000 units that had been sent to select retailers right and even though they had this four month head start they created a hardware shortage by themselves but like people just couldn't even get their hands on these sega standards because there's only 30 000 of them for those four months and since they basically sold those 30 000 units to toys r us it pissed off all the other retailers so in spite of that there were several big toy store chains like uh like kb toys for instance they refused to even carry the sega saturn when it was back and stop and back in stock rather when once the hardware shortage was over and on top of that all the game companies that were prepared for a september release they didn't have any games to sell for the sega saturn so if you were one of the lucky people or not so lucky to buy it in may or over that summer you didn't even have any games to play for the sega saturn so anyhow kolinsky he was out of sega by the next year by like next summer he was ousted by that summer actually by the summer of 97 sega was down to a 12 market share now if you remember it was like the sega genesis and nes for years yeah leading up to this so they had a decent market share now they had 12 of that u.s market gone and they're like what systems are they making these days and where is freaking sony like where's sony at now and where is that where are these guys it wasn't all that bad for them the saturn still kicked ass in japan is what mike told me he said the system was actually very good uh but it was just a flaming dumpster fire in the united states because two moronic decisions early release and it was too expensive so i give you the release of the sega saturn and everything gonna unfold it after that wow yeah talk about legs

or lack thereof

all right so for my new selection i actually found it in the sports people section of the courier journal from louisville kentucky may 13 1988 and where the headline reads you can't give these things away heavyweight champion mike tyson says he's had nothing but bad luck in accidents with his 183 thousand dollar bentley convertible and the car has brought more bad luck to two port authority of new york policemen who he tried to give it to tyson and his wife actress robin gibbons were involved in a minor accident sunday sunday morning near the manhattan entrance of the holland tunnel when the two officers whose names have not been released offered to give tyson some assistance tyson told them you guys can just take the car and keep it the officers then drove the car to a private garage in new jersey where it stayed until the commander of the holland tulle hall and tunnel police detail heard about the incident uh detectives then took the car and returned it to the company that handles mike tyson's business interests i got real problems with this behavior said the port authority police superintendent the main difficulty is that we had to ask the officers we shouldn't have to do that about the situation the information should be should be first and faster so they didn't tell anybody about this they just took the bentley that mike tyson gave them and said hey we'll just park it in the garage and drive it around whenever we want so the other half of the story is that week mike tyson was also in the news for another reason because later in the week he decides you know what i've had it with living in the united states i'm going to move to monaco so yeah that's going to be a thing now to avoid all the taxes and everything so mike tyson gets into a car accident gives away his ben lead and decides yeah i'm leaving the country i'm going to go live in monaco so that's what i got for news offering it's a wild week in new york for mike tyson and find a nickel for every time i move to monaco

all right let's throw it down to mike henneberger for the ruling on the news round oh man this one's a little easier for me i think um i've got more yeah i just i i need to start seeing a weekly therapist instead of monthly because i got triggered on that sega saturn thing um i grew up super poor and never had uh i think we had we had a nintendo and eventually got a super nintendo but not like when it came out um but i had a rich cousin who had every game system when it came out including the sega saturn um and he wasn't always like like we didn't always get to like play with it um if he was playing with it um so uh yeah that that triggered me man sorry can't go with sega saturn well that's good because i [ __ ] all over the sega yeah that's what's your story for the sony playstation yeah um and the same thing for same thing for bentley's man um you never let me drive as bentley um no but uh you know either solving campaign finance reform you know just like mandela assault racism uh i gotta i gotta go with that one all right oh wow all right drew that means you run away with this game picking up another two points love it good lord what was that five points what do you have that was a beat down this is uh i think this is a record five points oh mike thank you sir sure lord good job that's because mike tried to keep it interesting in round three and like dude thank you so much for coming on tell everybody like where they can find the book in like everything about it oh yeah well thanks for having me man this is a lot of fun i've i've enjoyed listening and i'm glad i got to i'm glad steph brought this up so thanks to her too for introducing us it was a weird thing and she threw out animals like yeah we like getting like different people on it's it's cool getting different perspectives and you know i got to listen to the book and i love the book so well yeah and i mean as as you can tell from the book too it's there's no shortage of pop culture references in it so i'm i mean any useful information i once had has been replaced by pop culture knowledge so um and i mean that's you know one of the reasons i love what are listening now maybe i'll watch too on youtube but uh um i love learning about pop culture from people who actually you know care about it and get excited about it and do research about it um so yeah thanks for having me hopefully i can come back sometime um sure but yeah i mean if people want to look for the book rock bottom at the renaissance rock bottom book dot com you can find links to buy it wherever um there's paperbacks on amazon and barnes and noble e-books anywhere you can get an e-book and the audiobook is only on audible and apple books um so i wish there was a way that i could put like just the audiobook format out like you have like you just can't put it out as like mp3s you know and have people just listen to it that way um and get the like same you know like where it'll save your spot like in an audio book um so uh yeah if i could do that i would just pass it out to people um but uh yeah it's on audible and um apple books and like i said fifty percent of the um royalties on all that since since the book came out in june and as long as it will be out um i'll be donating that to mental health charities and um as of now also artists and tour crew relief funds since those folks have been out of work for a year and it's one of the last industries to get saved um so yeah i mean it's helping people out too yeah that's that's about it if you go to rockbottombook.com too uh you'll find like videos you know i've done i started a video series called rock bottom book club where i um interviewed aj perdomo from the band the dangerous summer about the book i've done interviews with tyler posey about the book and so it's kind of a video series um and i'm a podcast call my production company is called burger media it's a burger joint on all social media but you can find the burger joint podcast where i put all those interviews and my interviews with bands and stuff um but yeah i mean that's you can find me on social media mikey lee rock everywhere or a burger joint dude i can't believe that nobody's done what you did and now i think it's going to become a thing i mean i'll have the playlist and do the stories with it because oh yeah well no spotify offers that is a feature that you can do that for podcasting by inserting songs in a playlist and they they do that now like you know how the spotify makes for you the like those year-end playlists one of the ones that they made for me this year was like a bunch of my favorite songs and then people giving the backstory behind it all in a playlist oh cool um yeah they they spotify's done that a lot with like the commentary for for albums um but yeah like if if you're someone who prefers like a physical book the paperback copy has qr codes in front so you can download a playlist on apple music or spotify with every song that's mentioned in the book not just the ones that that are chapter songs because i mean a lot of people might listen to it who you know see emo in the subtitle or see pop punk fans that they know or punk bands that they know in the book but then i also mentioned like dionne and the belmonts or i also mentioned conway twitty you know um and so i've been told by a lot of people that they've you know discovered new artists from it which i love because i've worked in music journalism for over a decade and you know that's been a big motivation in my life is just introducing people to music um so yeah i mean it's it's i unfortunately don't think enough people have listened to it or bought it to for it to be an idea that catches on uh hopefully that will change soon um people just need to like once they do man it's it's not so much like you guys are talking about like the commentary and everything else it's just it's your perspective of these songs and how they felt to you and that changes from person to person yeah i think at the same time people will relate with a lot of the stuff that you say yeah and you know what i tell people too is that like it's it's not a unique story you know it's it's a depressed guy you know dealing with heartbreak the way i tell the story is unique but people tell me all the time how much they related to it because it's it's not unique it's everybody's everybody i think has dealt with heartbreak you know like even slash from what we learned today

of nine um

um but uh but yeah so um so yeah i mean i think it's it's i mean definitely a story that people will relate to and it's and it's even if like even if you don't good good because it's it's the experience i went through and it sucks so good if you can't relate to it but it's still a fun ride because of like the music in it and the way that it pops up throughout the story right and like there's a lot of things like when you're talking about um staying up all night and having your head just you know all these thoughts you can't go to sleep like i think even get away from the darker stuff like even the lighter stuff you listen to it and i think a lot of people will be like oh [ __ ] that happens to me like all the time yeah you know i'm not the only one this happens to like i can't shut this thing off you know yeah yeah and it's and there's a there's something i like that never really comes up and conversations about it is kind of the the whole thing that kind of motivated the story was my um my my like being brainwashed by pop culture about the romanticism of new york city you know that's that's kind of what is the foundation of that book it's why i'm so depressed and it's why i'm i'm so let down by what i expected to find when i moved to new york um and it's all because of movies and music and books um that gave me this idea of what new york was supposed to be did you watch death wish at all or what you probably should a little before my time but i mean i still have seen it but uh yeah um it was it was a new new york um when i moved here but uh but yeah and so i think that's something also that people can like relate to is the pop culture side of it you know i i reference the um ted mosby you know side of of my personality and um you know say anything with john cusack and just being this you know optimist and hopeless romantic and and i mean i think a lot of us who i feel like people who you know listen to this show who are interested in pop culture have that connection to it we let it you know influence the way we think about things and and this book is very much about like how that can go wrong i guess kind of like a manufactured expectation basically yeah exactly yeah it's done really well it's thanksgiving super well like if um if you have an audible account just go on there and get it use one of your credits or i don't know i've had an audible account for so long i don't even know if you can buy stuff on there just use buy all user credit whatever it's worth it you know what and if and if you don't have an audible account if you go to rockbottombook.com um the link i one of the links i have on there is for first-time audible users to get a 30-day free trial and you get a free credit with that free trial that you can use on my book and cancel it after you hear it i don't care you know and if you want to screw with bezos that's it just special code vagisil for

yeah i mean you're already going to amazon to buy your vagisil so get while you're there you know this is gonna backfire all of us we're all just gonna get the

no so you can like you can cancel your audible account after before the 30-day trial and you won't pay anything you can just use your credit to listen to my book like that's like i said i all i care is that people hear it because i think it is that good you know um from you know everybody that contributed to make it that good um and i think that's gonna turn into this becoming a tv show or this you know you know them telling their friends who are gonna buy the copies whatever i don't care i just want people to hear it because i worked so [ __ ] hard on it man um it's definitely the i've never worked harder on anything in my life um and i've never been more proud of anything and i mean okay so maybe my daughter but i didn't have to work hard for her but i am proud so far with her i mean she's she's so advanced like she's she's grabbing the bottle already it's um she gets that from me um but uh she no so i'm excited about her of course but uh but yeah i worked really hard on this thing so i just want people to hear it and one of the cool things i i can't remember if i heard you say this or you said it in the book like you put the book down for a while right like you you yeah like stepped away yeah i mean i started it in 2011. um and so it's it's a memoir of kind of like my first like four years in new york um so uh so yeah there was a period of like four or five years that i you know set it aside because i was still dealing with um that depression and that anxiety and i didn't want to put it out and have people see who i really was you know so that's why i said earlier that like it took me getting mentally healthier to me doing the work of that of you know finding the right meds talking to the therapist meditating making it important to me to fix that or to you know learn how to manage it um and that's the only reason it's out it i hid it for so long because i was still that person and i didn't want people to know but now i you know i'm not anymore so there's also that stigma too right you know it's i feel like it's gotten a little bit better regarding mental health i feel like this past year in particular i think it has kind of shown a light on things yeah uh so yeah i mean hopefully you know it's awesome that you're talking about it because i feel like this is a topic i can also talk about for hours on end but you know it's good that more people are talking about so hopefully and maybe the near future who knows but sooner rather than later you know getting people help and you know it's kind of like normalizing that conversation uh will be an actual thing so yeah and i mean that's that's another reason i put it out because like there are there are plenty of things in that book that i could be ashamed of or i could be embarrassed by and but at this point i just feel so good about how far i've come from that that i'm not embarrassed by it anymore and like i had to deal with the possibility of like my family reading it and my you know my in-laws reading it who i you know consider some of like i consider them closer to me than a lot of my own family um and you know i'm like my wife's family reading that book was scary to me and i don't know if they have or not but they're like in the other room right now but uh um but uh yeah of the baby but uh but i mean i wanted people who are at that because like i there's like three or four i mentioned like three or four different stories in the book where i almost died from not purposeful suicide but like being reckless with drugs and alcohol because i didn't care uh chapter by the way that was the worst nice night of sleep i had oh sorry i i can't remember it was like uh the third or fourth one yeah it gets it's really dark and i was like and i i have like these headphone things that's like wrap that i wear oh yeah my wife was tossing and turning and i'm like [ __ ] she hear this she's probably because that's a dark chapter because you go you really dig deep there if i were a better writer i would have put those like chapter two is like uh the chelsea hotel chapter um which is like a prostitute experience and um the chapter three is like in case of suicide note is what i call it because i thought i was gonna die that night and so it's practically like a letter to my family and all that stuff so it gets really dark and i i i'm always afraid that people are going to stop there and not because it's like it doesn't get better but it gets less dark after that um it's so uh but yeah i'm kind of always afraid that people won't get past that part um but yeah no that's the thing is that like i i wanted people to know that like it doesn't matter what kind of stupid [ __ ] you did or how bad you [ __ ] up like you can get past it and you can't let that destroy you because it will kill you literally if you let it um and it almost killed me a couple times and thank god it didn't but uh but yeah so i i just wanted people to to you know those who need to hear that um to be able to hear that dude thanks we could probably talk about this forever but it's uh and it's mental health awareness month right now too so yeah good time to talk about it you were in the military too i don't want to poo poo it too much like you were in the military i was in the marine corps so like okay you know you know you probably know a lot of people too they go through a lot of mental health things just from that yeah it doesn't really translate because it's not the same thing but i think even those guys would still enjoy it like you know it's or still get something out of it oh yeah you know i actually got i actually got a message yesterday from uh this so when i was in the army i i was a a combat documentarian which is like combat camera photography video and stuff and i never got deployed before i got out on medically discharged before i got deployed um but you go to training you go to like army or like military film school um with people from different branches and there was this there was this girl and who wasn't yeah it was a marine she's out now i don't know are you guys always marines um apparently uh but uh um yeah i had a huge crush on her then but uh she messaged me yesterday and we stayed friends on facebook um that she heard the audiobook and she was telling me how how much she loved it because she's like going to school now um and either just got her masters or she's she's going to like work with um in psychology um but she she was a marine um and she you know has dealt with that stuff and has known plenty of people who've dealt with that stuff and um yeah there's i mean aside from what we all know about the military and ptsd and people coming back from combat ptsd there's a huge percentage of suicides and suicide attempts in the military from people who have never been deployed the department of defense puts out a suicide event report every year so the fact that they have to do that like says a lot about suicide in the military um but some of the stats they have on that are whether or not these people have been deployed whether or not they've seen combat when they were deployed and i mean um i would say i mean it's been a while since i looked at it but there's just a the percentage of people who have never been deployed who have attempted suicide would it's the last time i looked at it was at least like 30 percent and that was the thing for me too like i was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder when i was in the army and it was just from like being treated shitty and like joining so i would feel a sense of purpose and then not feeling a sense of purpose you know because i didn't i mean i joined to get deployed and go you know do you know documentation and filming and stuff and of course i know that's not all i would be doing but uh but then i just sat in a barracks in in maryland for nine months and cleaned floors and painted walls and saw people almost killed themselves in front of me and had to clean their blood from carpets and mattresses and you know so i i dealt with my share of traumatic experiences right outside of baltimore you know um so yeah there's there's a lot going on there too see this is why i think it's important to get like different guests that aren't all the same you know there's different stories to tell and i think this it hits everybody a different way so dude again thank you for coming on yeah whatever man

i know you said in your book you hate people though like again i wrote that a long time ago uh yeah and that's the thing too is i i didn't want to change it you know i wanted right despite how i feel now about a lot of those things um i i didn't really change that much of it because i wanted people to know you know where my head was when i wrote it um yeah it's so but who knows i i i feel like uh okay every now and then before covet i would have to go to middletown for for work stuff but uh so yeah i mean if i head up there sometime i'll let you know yeah dude for real hook me up uh hooked me up that's why i'm glad we're not live now but uh thanks again martin i'm sure you're you're looking at the clock but go ahead you can uh you can do your close-out all right well thanks again to mike henneberger for being an excellent judge tonight and congratulations to drew zachman for picking up the win but unfortunately we're gonna have to end this episode right here but don't worry if you've missed an episode you can always go over to duelingdecades.com that's your one-stop shop for everything for the show the audio version of the show is there the youtube version of the show is there you can also subscribe on your platform of choice now you can find all the links to all of our social medias right in the episode notes from this episode so until next time duelers we're going to bid you a peace love light and a joy have a grateful week everyone