402: Coffee with Mom—The Bad Grammar Scammer with Peggy Rowe

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A cup of coffee with my, with my mom.

There you are.

Well, you got all dressed up for us.

Is that fuchsia?

I know.

I'm wearing my mother's necklace.

I'm wearing a pink blouse.

Your mother's pearls?

Well, yeah.

They're little mini pearls.

Mini pearl.

See what you did there.

Well, I didn't mean to.

It was quite by accident.

15 seconds in and jokes.

Do you remember that song we sang like a thousand years ago?

My mother's pearls?

I vaguely remember that.

Why don't you and Chuck sing it for me?

Let's see.

I couldn't possibly go ahead, Chuck.

My mother's pearls were her boys.

Boys and girls.

And no other treasures had she.

pretty close.

Hands worn with care,

I can still see her

there,

tired yet content as can be.

Aw,

yeah, so that's it.

When we would say she'd be rich someday, she'd look at us tenderly.

For her boys and girls were my mother's pearls, and our greatest treasure was she.

Oh, I don't think I remember that.

That's very nice.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, look, we have a guest.

Oh, who is this?

I didn't know you had a dog.

I don't.

I'm at my sister's place in North Carolina.

This is Oliver.

Oh.

He's a Meekie.

A Mickey.

Hi, Oliver.

Yeah.

Aren't you a pretty boy?

Oh, is a Meekey?

It's like a combination of three dogs, which makes no sense, but that's what it is.

You know, he's hypo-allergenic, doesn't shed,

just a companion dog.

But what's really funny is this dog watches TV and just barks at all the dogs.

Oh, he does?

He's a really sweet dog until he sees a dog on TV and then he just goes crazy.

That's how I feel about the whole hyper-allergenic dog non-shedding qualities.

I mean, he's adorable.

I'm sure he's great company, but it just seems something like,

I don't know, a little too manufactured, a little too controlled.

I mean, to have a dog that doesn't shed and that doesn't...

What did they do to him to make it that way?

I believe it was painful, whatever it was, but it was worth every bit of it.

He endured that pain for us, and I like that.

I mean, I say this as a guy who has a dog that's the opposite of hyper-allergenic and who's who's the opposite of non-shedding.

Freddy literally will shed probably two or three pounds of his hair every week and he only weighs 15 pounds, but it grows back like a chia pet.

He's the hairiest, sheddiest animal I've ever seen.

Maybe I'm just jealous.

I don't know.

It says the Miki is a rare toy-sized breed developed in the late 20th century to be a companion dog.

The Miki, reputedly an exceptional toy breed that normally possesses a good-natured, relatively calm temperament, few health issues, and high adaptability to living situations.

Hypoallergenic and are low maintenance overall.

Don't know about the low-maintenance thing.

Yeah, and there's one word in all of that, mom.

What's the one word in what he just read that you think would make my back go up?

Wow, I don't know.

It's a short word, only three letters, but it makes my earlier point.

Toy!

It's a toy, it's It's a toy dog.

It's not really a dog.

Oh, no, I assure you, it's still, it eats and it craps.

So I know, but it's like a, what's the song?

A real live girl, right?

I'd rather have a paper doll to call my own, a doll that other fellas cannot steal.

And then there are these other songs about it's better to have your arms around a real live girl.

It's better to have a dog that sheds and craps, of of course, but to get a dog that craps but doesn't shed does sound like a toy.

Not quite a stuffed animal, but not quite an animal.

I think toy is just descriptive of size.

Is it?

Yes.

I mean, is your husband a toy husband because he's 5'7?

He's not a toy.

No.

Oh, I just got a message.

Oh, really?

How many other things would you like to deal with as we attempt to satisfy our sponsors, assuming we have any?

There's a bocce ball practice coming up.

That's what I don't have to talk about.

There's a bocce ball practice

coming up.

You know, I don't know how I feel about that either, Mom.

Oh, my God.

Some sports I just don't feel

deserve practice.

Bocceball.

Are you kidding?

The more you practice,

the more accurately you can roll those balls.

I know, but you're on a clay

surface.

It's pitted.

It's rudded.

It's rooted with all kinds of vagaries and imperfections.

I just don't.

I'm not saying you shouldn't practice.

I'm just saying that part of the fun of playing bocce ball is anybody can show up at the barbecue and they pick up a ball and they roll it.

Now everybody's involved and it's great.

But now you start practicing and next thing you know, you're in leagues and now you got shirts.

The point of practicing is so that you can learn what the defects of the court are.

So, if your ball, when rolled down the center, is going to roll to the left because of some imperfection, it's not quite level, then you know that you have to compensate for that when you roll your ball.

So, it's very important to practice.

I stand on that.

Practicing, that's scouting.

Like, imagine if every sport was bedeviled by that same level of inconsistency on the field of play.

A bowling alley.

You got to go practice because this one might be tilted to the left or the right, or a pool table because it might be.

Most sports go to the trouble to make sure that the baseball diamond, for instance, is neatly trimmed, you know, on the grass and the dirt is carefully raked, you know, even during the course of the game.

Nothing like that in bocce ball.

It's a crap shoot out there, if you ask me.

Well, it's a crap shoot with baseball when it comes to the outfield, because that's anybody's guess as to what it's going to be.

It could be 400 feet to center field.

It could be 389.

True, but within the confines of the stadium, you have a groundskeeping crew whose whole job is to make sure there's some hat tip to uniformity vis-à-vis the specific field on which the play is taking place.

No such commitment.

If you've had rain recently, then the ball is going to roll more slowly as it comes to you.

So, yeah.

But if rain's in the forecast, or if rain should occur during the game, what do they do?

They put out the tarp.

They take steps to preserve the integrity of the field.

Nobody does that in bocce ball.

Chuck, Mike talks a lot, doesn't he?

I just, you can't shut him up, Peg.

He just

really, he's quite the talker.

Not that we don't love him.

He's bedeviled by all sorts of things, and he wants to let us know how bedeviled he is.

Well, we also haven't done this in a while.

And, you know, I don't know, Chuck, if you knew this, but my mom and I don't talk anymore.

What?

Unless there's some sort of way to monetize the conversation.

I have other things to do.

I know I love you, but we're busy people.

And unless we can persuade a couple of sponsors to subsidize whatever's about to happen, I would frankly just as soon wait.

Maybe Abachi League would like to come along, throw a few shekels in our direction.

I don't know.

Maybe you'd rather wait until there's a funeral to attend and then you can catch up with everything.

Jesus,

I went right to the dark place.

But he's quiet now.

Stick around.

Stick around is right.

So.

I'm just going through the eulogy that I'm going to be writing

to figure out exactly how I want to get into it, what I want to open with, what I want to lead lead with.

I figured you were figuring out how you were going to monetize it.

Oh, yes.

They could have sponsors at the funeral.

Brought to you by Hess Funeral Parlor.

Hey, and maybe we could stream it

and get some big sponsors.

Oh, my gosh.

One night only.

You know, we'll do it live.

Well, almost.

Or almost live.

Almost live.

Live-ish.

Live-ish.

This is terribly dark.

We have to start.

I think we should still be able to.

She started it.

No, no, we're not starting over, but I do want to start with what you just said, how you always go to the dark place.

I totally.

You do, and this is something your fans don't really know about you.

What with all the Pollyanna sliding up banisters like Mary Poppins routine you do, all that optimism.

There is a darkness to you that your fans deserve to know about.

That's the best example I can think of.

The way you'll take a story, it's just meandering along, and all of a sudden, and you got it from your mother, and you're very good at it, but it continues to surprise me to this day how dark you'll go without any real provocation.

We just talked about bocce ball, and now suddenly we're at your funeral.

But I always come back to the light spot.

Hey, Mike, we talked the other day

about

no money.

No, no money.

I mean, your father and I really experienced a short-lived crisis the other day, and I told you about it.

Actually, I wrote you a letter about it, and you shared it on Facebook.

Oh, my God.

Are you up to speed with that?

That thousands of people are fascinated by your,

yeah, all of that.

But please, continue.

Well, it was just a terrible experience.

We were at the kitchen table.

We had just had breakfast, and I was finishing my Sudoku, and dad was reading the morning news on his computer when he received an email

and he said listen to this peg and he started reading it

well

it was somebody telling us that they had hacked into our computer

I've got the letter it's a three-page letter that this person or this bot or these people had written and they told John that they have his password and they told it to him and it was the password.

It was John's password.

Full disclosure, people should know that what we're talking about right now is an email that you wrote to me that I read

and posted on Facebook two days ago.

It's now been shared like 2,300 times and it really struck a chord because it's a letter about being scammed.

And it's very funny, mom.

It's a shame your book is already done done and at the publisher and being printed as we speak, because this story would have fit right in.

Well, there's bound to be another one.

It is quite a story, but I'm telling you, for the first few minutes, I worried about your father.

I mean, his eyes were bulging.

It was so scary, the things that this scammer said that he could do.

He could get into all of our programs.

He could access, you know, all of our emails and so forth.

And then came the clincher, a few paragraphs in, I guess it was the second page, he said to John, and Michael can probably say it better than I can.

Let me read it to you, mom.

Let me read it to you because I have it because you sent it to me.

The guy says.

Well, wait a minute.

Let's go back.

You should have been.

like clued in with the first, like the very first paragraph.

I write to share bad news with you.

Approximately a few months ago, I discovered you internet password.

I now gain access to all you devices for internet browsing and buying of things.

I have since start tracking your many internet activities and hack your email.

Your password is Sarsparillo Rumpelstiltskin with two exclamation points.

Now,

this is a fascinating paragraph because everything in it says, all right, you're dealing with an illiterate idiot and you're getting some sort of form kind of thing.

But somehow they had your real password.

Yeah, I guess those old passwords are floating around.

But then the clincher came when he said, I have noticed, would you rather read that part?

While gathering information about you, I see you big fan of adult websites.

I see you spend spend much time watching nasty content when alone.

But I see you, John Rowe.

I have control of you camera.

I record you loving porn while pleasuring yourself at keyboard.

I now send video of you to everyone in contact list, unless you do as I instruction.

Well, you know, that revealed to us that this was a scam because,

as I say my 91-year-old husband

who has had bladder cancer three times and has had maybe a dozen cystoscopies and a heart attack

really

the last thing he's going to do during the day is pleasure himself at his keyboard and surf the web for pornography i know this man

he ain't doing it

so technically mom, those things would go in reverse order.

You would surf the web for pornography, then the pleasuring would commence.

Oh, yes.

Typically, typically.

How do you know so much about this, Mike?

Well, as I share, or as your mother, well,

we've all been there, Chuck.

When it comes to self-abuse, if it's not one thing, it's your mother.

Oh, my gosh.

That's terrible that I'm going to write that down.

Well, anyway, it ended happily.

And we knew that it was a scam, but we did learn something from...

The funny thing is, this person or whomever

tried to come off as really the soul of generosity.

He didn't want us to worry.

He assured us that all we had to do was send him some Bitcoin, whatever the heck that is.

$400 in Bitcoin.

$400 in Bitcoin.

Seems like a bargain.

And he would erase everything, and we would never hear from him again.

And he says something like, you can trust me, I keep my word.

Once you pay $400 crypto, we can forget all about each other.

I promise to delete all harmful software and erase embarrassing video.

Trust me, I have no point to create trouble in your life.

Everything will be done in a fair manner.

I keep my word.

Wow.

This is somebody you'd like to know, isn't it?

Well, he's like, you know, what'd you say?

An extortionist with a heart of gold.

Exactly.

It's a ransom note and a public service announcement.

As you may have heard me say several thousand times before, we need to close the skills gap in this country and we need to do it stat.

I hate to be an alarmist, but there are currently 7.6 million open jobs out there, most of which don't require a four-year degree.

And currently, 250,000 of those jobs exist within the maritime industrial base.

These are the folks who build and deliver three nuclear-powered submarines every year.

to the U.S.

Navy.

And there's a real concern now that a lack of skilled labor is going to keep us from building the subs that need to get built.

On the positive side, there's a growing realization that these jobs are freaking awesome.

I'm talking about incredibly stable, AI-proof careers, just waiting for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand and start a career with some actual purpose.

Additive manufacturing, CNC machining, metrology, welding, pipe fitting, electrical.

All of it is spelled out for you at buildsubmarines.com.

That's where all the hiring is happening and you really really need to see it to get a sense of just how much opportunity is out there.

That's build submarines.com.

Come on and build a submarine.

Why don't you build a submarine?

That buildsubmarines.com.

And you know what?

I come across this all the time and it's slightly different format, but I'm on Facebook because Six years ago, my publisher said I should be on Facebook because in this modern day and age, you don't sell books unless you're on social media.

So a couple of times a week, I write a 200-word story, uplifting and humorous.

And invariably, there will be these scammers who come on there and try to entice the people who leave comments to friend them.

you know, send them their personal information.

It just...

Right.

And fortunately, my viewers, my readers and commenters are very savvy and they don't give this person the time of day.

They might say get lost creep or something along those lines.

But I mean, and some of their comments are just hysterical.

They'll say, oh, I never do this,

but I wonder if you would friend me because

you seem like such a wonderful person and I love your looks.

And this one person even said to somebody,

My son called you to my attention.

My son reads this post and said

something like, Dad,

this woman, this woman who had left a comment, is so much like my dead mother.

Why don't you reach out to her and see if she'll be your friend?

And maybe we could get...

It's that sick kind of stuff, you know, and I really resent it.

And I could, really, I could throttle these people it starts off like that and it ends with send $400

and then I go away I go away oh no

well I know a case that is a little bit different I know a woman she's the friend of a friend well

she's had some sadness in her life and She is divorced and she had no money and she had to move in with a relative.

She came across somebody like this on the internet.

And she responded, and they responded.

Before long, they were having conversations, an online relationship, and he told her that he lives in another country, but he would love to come here and see her if only he could afford it.

Well, bottom line was she talked her relative, who could ill afford this, into giving her a couple of thousand dollars so that this person could come

here.

So it happens.

You know, there are people.

It's happening right now.

I mean, literally, as we speak, people are being defrauded out of hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars.

These kinds of things, as ridiculous as they sound, and we had a good laugh, because it is ridiculous, and you have to laugh, but it wouldn't be happening if they weren't getting hits on a massive scale.

That letter you sent me, a letter about scams, scams, funny as it was, I read it, I posted it within two hours.

It had over a thousand comments, and virtually all of the comments had a reply that was generated by a bot.

And the reply was an invitation to please come over here.

And, you know, can you look at my page?

Can we be friends?

I've been following your blah, blah, blah.

So, you know, I mean, that's a thousand, mom.

A thousand people responded to a post about scams, you know, and then somebody responded with a scam to all of those responses.

So it's literally everywhere.

It is literally everywhere, all the time, to varying degrees.

And

I mean, what can you do?

Didn't you meet somebody at the home who had responded to one of these things and thought they had been talking to you online?

oh but it wasn't

you yes

this woman came to one of the sales events and she came up to me and she said peggy i am so-and-so

and we've been talking we've been messaging back and forth i follow your page i love it and i said I'm flattered that you follow my page.

I'm so glad that you like it.

But I don't, I don't message anybody.

I don't respond to messages I don't even read the messages you've been corresponding with a bot or with somebody who is just waiting and they're going to try to extort money from you I brought something up this morning I took this off of my current post it's from somebody who calls herself J-U-D-I and there is a last name I don't know if I should give that or not and she says to this person I'll make up her name Mary Ann it's awesome that you're such a big fan of Peggy's books.

She actually created a fan page where you can send her messages directly.

You can send her a message right now.

Good luck.

You might want to show your gratitude later for the link I shared with you.

And so there's this long link at the bottom.

That's the sort of thing that people are bombarded with.

And so many people, you know, they fall for it.

Yeah.

And isn't that a shame?

couldn't wouldn't you like to just strangle that person i would i would i'd murder them uh but this is an actual headline that popped up can't hear you can't really see that you what do you mean you can't hear me okay i see you i see your picture but we can't read the text

okay well i'm just proving it yeah just read it to us what does it say we trust you mike calm down jesus uh it says microe's permanent ED cure has experts in all and an industry terrified.

That's the headline.

The giant picture under it is of me looking kind of smug, like a guy who, you know, finally got his ED under control.

It's an article that appears to have appeared in GQ

in the style and grooming section, apparently.

It's super specific.

So what follows that headline is an interview with me, pretty extensive.

Somebody sat down and talked not just about my ED, but about dirty jobs and life.

And then they get to the ED issue.

It reads like a completely plausible interview, except for the fact that I apparently have made some sort of deal with this erectile dysfunction company, and that's just in the article.

So, that thing made the rounds.

That was December 4th, 2018, really six years ago.

And

has the problem cleared up for you?

Enormously.

Well played.

Well played, sir.

I mean, and so there's so many ways.

There's so much mischief.

There's so many ways to create this level of mischief online.

I mean, I hate to say it, but it just really comes back to a kind of

the onus has to be on the user, and your default position has to be one of profound skepticism.

Yeah, yeah, you really.

You're in trouble.

You just have to be dubious, which really is probably why you go to the dark place so often and so quickly.

Well, I'm usually very skeptical about things.

I think your father is more apt to fall for something than I am.

But sometimes it's really hard.

I had a question about my Xfinity bill

and so I wanted to call them, but I couldn't find a number.

They really discourage phone calls.

They'd rather you do it, you know, via internet.

Online.

Yeah.

So I went online, found a Xfiniti phone number, telephone number, and I called them.

And I told them that I had a question about my bill.

And of course I told them what the bill was and what it should have been and blah, blah, blah.

and the

what do you call these people who answer the phone this

anyway customer service representatives the rep said CSRs CSRs very nice

so he said

hold on a minute and let me check so I heard all this clicking of computer keys and then he came back and he said all right yes your bill was well he was just repeating what I had already told him I had already told him who I was and so forth.

And he said, All right, I've cleared it up.

Don't worry about it.

You were right.

Your bill should have been such and such.

And that will be rectified, you know, in your next bill.

But for now, just ignore it.

You're absolutely right.

And you have been such a valued customer.

I'm going to offer you a really nice discount on your next bill.

Well, I was suspicious right away, but it was such a great discount.

I said, well,

let me talk to my husband about it when he comes home, and I'll call you back.

He said, oh, unfortunately, I can only offer this today.

It won't be any good tomorrow.

And I said, well,

then that's it.

You know, we can't do anything about it.

And he said, but since you've been such a great customer for so long,

I'll let us do it tomorrow.

He said, I'll give you a call tomorrow.

And I said, okay.

And so the next day,

Dad and I had to run some errands.

And we were back on the avenue in White Marsh.

And there's an Xfinity store back there.

And I said, Oh, while we're here, let's just go in.

So I went in and I told him about the phone call.

And the woman said,

You didn't give him any personal information, did you?

And I said,

I came this close.

So she downloaded the Xfinity app

on my phone.

She said, this is the only way you get in touch with us through this app.

It's safe.

So I came home.

Dad and I went to dinner.

We went down on the new step.

We're working out side by side and my phone rang.

And I answered it.

And he said, hello, Peggy.

This is Ben.

I said, hi, Ben.

How are you doing?

He said, I'm fine.

How are you, Miss Peggy?

I said, oh, I couldn't be better.

He said, well, are we ready to save some money on our next bill?

And I said, you know, Ben, funny thing happened today.

John and I stopped by the Xfinity store.

Silence.

And I said, oh, I have to excuse myself for what I'm about to say because I don't usually use bad language.

But I was going to say another word, but I was afraid since he had a foreign accent, he wouldn't understand the meaning of the other word.

And the other word was excrement, and I was afraid he wouldn't know that.

So I said, apparently, Ben,

you're a sorry piece of shit.

No, I said, you are a sorry piece of lying shit.

Wow.

Well,

silence again, and then click.

Oh, can I say that word on your podcast?

Click.

No problem.

Yeah.

Click is good.

Excrement was the word.

Well, anyway.

You can say excrement as well.

Just don't say shit.

Oh, okay.

I won't say it again, but really, I mean, I'm embarrassed to have said that,

you know, on the internet.

You look pretty torn up.

I know.

But you know what?

It really made me feel so good to say it to him.

How bad.

Because he really was.

That was

totally descriptive.

But it's so easy because it sounds so plausible.

And I called him.

He didn't call me in the beginning.

The first call was, you know.

Well, that's just the thing.

You said you got that from the internet.

So you called the number you found on the internet.

Was bogus.

On the Xfinity website.

Supposedly, which was bogus.

Supposedly.

Supposedly,

which was bogus.

So

there's no end to it.

I mean, there is no end.

Chuck, do you remember?

I had,

it was less than a year ago, I found like 15 pages on TikTok that were all mine.

Yeah.

I don't have a page on TikTok, but there are 15 of them there, and they all look like mine because what they do is they take photos from all over the internet and they build a profile and then they build a page and, you know.

It looks as much like my page as my Facebook page or my Instagram page.

One of them had over 100,000 people following it.

And these people,

whoever was running the page, was affirmatively marketing to these people.

They were offering them bottles of noble whiskey.

They were offering them dirty jobs, collectibles.

They were offering things that were super consistent with things that I might do.

All of it is just another way to get your credit card, to get...

some kind of personal information, your social security number, your address, any number of things.

I mean, I think it's safe to say, I mean, I hate paint with too broad a brush, you know, because there are probably some legitimate people out there trying to do business, but man, why would you ever give anybody your personal financial information online?

They would just have to be impeachable somehow.

And I'm not even sure what that, what that would be anymore.

Remember years ago, were you still in college and you worked for a telemarketing company?

Yeah, I remember that.

And you did so well.

Nowadays, those people probably wouldn't even talk to you that you called and sold things to.

Did they give you personal information?

Yes.

Yeah, they did.

If they were an NP or a new prospect, this was a company called Dial America, by the way.

And at the time, they were the oldest and largest telemarketing company in the country, maybe the world.

But this was 1981,

82.

I wrote about this somewhat extensively because for me, it was like the big lesson was, wow, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you can't hate it.

And I hated it.

I hated calling people and asking them to subscribe to Time magazine for a year so 12.5% of the total purchase price could come back to the Special Olympics or the Big Brothers and Big Sisters.

It was legit.

Those organizations both made millions, but it was really an attempt by the publishers to find new customers by linking their subscriptions to a cause.

And there were many causes, and the causes were also legit.

Police Athletic League, March of Dimes, Special Olympics, Big Brothers and Sisters.

100% legit, but I hated it.

And hopefully the world's become more skeptical since then.

Oh, yeah.

He's not like the other celebs, you know, but it occurs to me that Theo Vaughan, like so many other guests on this podcast, is a true American giant.

What he's built with his own massive podcast and his comedy tour and his advocacy for people struggling with addiction and his whole unlikely overall rise to fame, it's not just a monument to hard work.

It's a love letter to reinvention and to the American dream.

I could say the same thing, of course, about the men and women who work for American Giant.

I mean, the sewers and the cutters and the dyers who make American Giant clothing right here in America.

For nearly 16 years now, they have been delivering on a pledge to make all their clothing right here.

And today I'm delighted to tell you that they've not only honored that pledge, they're helping MicroWorks train the next generation of skilled workers by selling MicroWorks t-shirts and zip sweatshirts to benefit my foundation.

I'm so delighted by this.

Go to american-giant.com slash mic, wherever you find the MRW logo.

You'll know know the net proceeds of that purchase will help fund our next round of work ethic scholarships.

While you're there, check out their whole inventory: quality sweats and teas and jeans and all the other essentials at American-giant.com/slash Mike.

Go there, buy something awesome, even if it's just a simple American-made tea to benefit the MicroWorks Foundation.

The quality is second to none.

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Well, let me tell you what has happened to me recently, not directly to me, but on my behalf, is that an email was sent to somebody in our organization that we all know

from me saying, hey, I need to change my direct deposit

to such and such a place.

Please authorize this.

And that was sent to two people within our organization.

You talk about my company?

Your company, yeah.

So it wasn't from my email, but it appeared to be from me.

And it looked convincing enough that it was forwarded to the person who actually does that,

who looked at it closely and said, hey, wait a minute.

I don't think this is from Chuck.

Twice that happened.

Why don't I know about that?

Why does anybody tell me anything?

Why don't you?

We don't want to scare you, Mike.

We know how jittery you get.

And,

you know, you'll start cussing again.

And what do we do about this, though?

I don't want to be too hyperbolic, but what is the appropriate punishment?

And as you ruminate on it, Chuck, your friend and mine, Nick Cearcey, didn't his relative do that movie, Thelma?

Yeah, I was going to bring that up.

Yeah, Thelma.

I was going to tell you about it, Peggy.

It was this great movie called Thelma about like an 87-year-old woman who gets a call from her grandson, and it's based on a true story, gets a call from her grandson saying, Grandma, I've just been in this horrible accident and I need a lawyer right away.

Somebody's going to call you immediately, and you need to send him whatever, however many.

dollars he needs.

He's going to call you shortly.

And it's like her grandson's voice and everything.

And then sure enough, the phone rings and it is this older gentleman who says, yes, I'm the lawyer,' blah, blah, blah.

I need $10,000, send it to this address.

And it's a PO box.

And of course, she's 87 and she goes,'Oh, you know, she gets the cash out and she puts it in the mail to this PO box.

And then later that day, she calls her daughter, and her daughter says,'What are you talking about?

He's fine.

He's right here.' Hey, grandma, yeah, it's me.

I'm fine.

I wasn't kidnapped.

It must have been a scam.

Everything's fine.

And then she goes, Oh, well, that's great, but what about my money?

And then the rest of the movie is like mission impossible if Tom Cruise were an 87-year-old woman.

In a wheelchair.

And it's hysterical.

She does spend some time in a scooter.

You've seen the poster for it.

I did.

Oh,

I'm sure it's playing on Prime or something now.

It's worth seeing.

It's very funny.

Okay, it's an upbeat movie.

Oh, totally.

But I watched one called The Beekeeper.

And in the very first scene, Felicia Rashad

is scammed.

And she loses lots of money for people for whom she is investing,

and she kills herself because of it.

Spoiler alert.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Well, it happens in the first scene.

So, if you watch the first scene, you will know that.

I won't tell you what happens ultimately, but I mean, it's not a great movie.

I will.

I saw it on a plane.

I'm going to ruin it for everybody.

You didn't like it, did you?

No, it's Jason Statham.

So it's a high-energy, super ultra-violent, you know, I had no problem with that.

It's just revenge porn.

That was the movie that was on my mind when I said, what do we do to people who prey on the elderly like that?

And that is the one thing I liked about the movie.

I don't care how far you take it.

I don't care how many people you blow up.

I don't care how many teeth you knock out.

I don't care how many people get thrown from the top of a building.

I don't care.

If you're affirmatively scamming people, especially the elderly.

Especially the elderly.

There's no limit.

For me, that's why the urine suit was, well, I was going to say invented.

That's why it still lives in my mind as a workable prototype that somebody really needs to work.

And mine, too, since you first told me about it.

Do you want to fill people in on how it works again?

Do you know how it works, Peggy?

I don't know what you're talking about.

The urine suit, what's that?

I mean, I know what urine is.

Okay, and you've seen suits before.

You're halfway there.

Oh, wait a minute.

Is this like a lawsuit or something you wear?

No, this is something you wear, mom.

This is something that I've, you know, my friends and I dreamed up one evening after just a few sensible snorts of Noble.

We were like, you know, what are we going to do?

There's just a certain group of human vermin that deserve to be punished in ways that I don't think our current canon addresses, you know?

Anyway, the urine suit is very simple.

It's like a deep diving bell, like a dry suit.

You know, it has a helmet on it.

It's a full suit.

So it's the kind of thing you could go 300 feet down in the ocean with and with the air pump to you.

You just walk around.

Welders wear them, you know, dry suits.

Anyway,

the urine suit is like that.

It could also be polyethylene.

You just need some room in it.

A feeding tube is running through the back intravenously.

So you'll get all the nutrients and all the hydration you need to live.

for as long as you live while you're in the urine suit.

You can move around a little bit, but you're anchored to the ground.

So you can't bend over, you know, you can't scratch yourself or anything like that.

You're kind of frozen inside of this suit.

And as time goes on, you know, you relieve yourself, as you would.

And the urine suit eventually fills with your own effluvium and whatnot.

And over a period of days, it slowly rises.

As you stand, unable to sit, cramping.

And the urine, of course, will burn your skin off.

You know, it's very um very powerful you can't stand in urine for any real length of time the uric acids and whatnot will do horrible things to your skin i only made that mistake once yeah i mean it's a teachable moment for sure you learn very quickly there's only so many things you can do with your own urine try them all but you don't want to stand in your own urine for any length of time because it'll chemically cauterize your skin stripping it off but at the same time keeping you you know it won't let you bleed out in other words anyhow you know the bad bad guy stands there, I don't know how long it takes, a couple weeks, maybe a month.

So this is kind of a punishment for bad people?

You put them in a urine suit.

Yeah, that's right, mom.

You could say it's kind of a punishment.

You know, you drown without your skin on in a suit filled with your own urine.

Yeah, it's a kind of punishment.

It certainly isn't a reward.

That's for sure.

I thought it was just like a weekend fun thing to do, you know.

You know, there's probably a club for this sort of thing.

I don't know.

Like the urine suit camp.

Yeah, sure, USC.

I thought you were going in a different direction.

Did you read David Sederis' essay about the stadium, pal?

Oh, my God, of course.

Yeah.

We've talked about that at length.

That's a little funnier than your short suit.

I wasn't really trying to craft a comedy, mom, in this moment.

I was answering Chuck's question.

For the record, the urine suit does not exist, you know.

Okay.

It might after this podcast.

Some enterprising young team, go-getters, might put one together.

I mean, you know, the people who push people off of subway platforms.

Urine suit.

The urine.

Yeah, that would be okay.

Yeah.

No question.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Anyone who kidnaps someone.

Oh, God, it's just so horrifying.

But that letter that we started talking about, the one with the adult websites and the scamming, basically it is blackmail.

It's just straight up ransom.

Oh, it is.

It's a ransom demand.

And, you know, dad's comment is hysterical in that.

Once he realizes that

it's impossible that he has been caught in flagrante delecto vis-a-vis the computer, once he realizes that, you know, the next thought is, what's the world coming to?

There must be a lot of people who do that sort of thing in order for a fishing expedition like this to be worth anybody's time.

But still, in the midst of all of it, like, why wasn't your first thought, well,

okay, we'll send you $400 Bitcoin, but can you show us the tape first so we're sure you have it?

Yeah, that might be fun.

Let's see.

You might have the wrong John Rowe here, right?

That's right.

Well, that's one way, or you just cop to it.

You go, look, my husband, he's insatiable.

He has these predilections.

But still, if we're going going to give you a $400 Bitcoin, just show us the tape.

Or just say, look, I'm going to send you the $400, but please put it up anyway.

He deserves it.

I'm sick and tired of him spending all afternoon in front of the computer.

I'll give you the $400 and another $400 for marketing because I want to blast this out into all my social channels.

Can you boost that post?

Isn't Dad the liturgist this month at the church, Mom?

He is, yes.

He is.

He reads the Old Testament lesson

on Sunday mornings.

Yeah.

And he's very good at it.

Elastic cognitive dissonance.

Today's liturgist has been...

Maybe you've seen him most recently on the internet.

He's

shaking hands with Mr.

Happy.

Pool in the goalie.

I was reading your blog the other day.

There was some, speaking of the Old Testament, didn't something go wrong with Deuteronomy?

Oh, yeah.

Well, he always reads it to me first just to make sure he's pronouncing everything.

Because when you have extreme hearing loss, he's not quite profound.

It's about 85% hearing deficit.

You tend to mispronounce some words.

And so he always reads it aloud to me first to make sure that he's pronouncing everything correctly.

And he was saying Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy.

Instead of Deuteronomy, it was Deuteromony, like money, M-O-N, why?

Deuteronomy.

Yeah.

And so, oh, he practiced it and he practiced it.

And finally, Sunday morning, he's up there and he said, Deuteronomy.

And he winked at me.

And I thought,

you shouldn't do that.

He winked at you from the pulpit?

From the lectern.

The minister stands in the pulpit.

Oh.

Yes.

But he stands at the lecter.

And he just looked at me and gave a little wink because he had pronounced it correctly.

I don't think it's appropriate to be winking that close to the altar anyway.

Oh, geez.

Well,

it's not like it was a porn sight, you know.

It's the Bible.

I think Deuteronomy actually has some things to say about the business at hand.

Well, I've been busy lately doing domestic things, in case you're interested.

My book is finished.

It's in the hands of the publisher.

They've done all the artistic layout, the printing, and now it's, you know, it's gone to press.

And

I'll be getting, are they called a dummy book

in the mail soon?

A galley.

The galley.

I'm not getting the galley.

Yeah, because it's called a galley.

God, how'd you get dummy out of that?

I don't know.

Wait, because it's not real.

It's a dummy.

Oh, that tracks.

Yeah, so anyway, so I've been catching up on some of my domestic chores.

I tackled a pretty good size pile of laundry.

And then yesterday

I did the bathrooms, did a good job on the bathrooms.

I do have a cleaning lady who comes from time to time, but in between I have to do it.

And it's a good thing I did because let me tell you what happened to your father.

he came home

where had he been oh he'd been playing pool for a couple of hours came and he headed right for the bathroom he said oh everything just shines and I need to borrow your sunglasses it's so bright and shiny in here he always says that and then I heard him say uh-oh

So before he really got down to business, he leaned forward and his hearing aid fell out of his ear into the bowl.

Fortunately, I had just cleaned it and it was just sparkled.

So it was okay.

So he reached in and got it and dried it off and put it in the charger.

Anyway, that was Dad's latest adventure.

Wait a minute.

Dad's hearing aid falls out while he's on the bowl or approaching it.

This was not a jell-o-bowl.

This is the toilet bowl, I believe.

He was standing in front of it and leaned over and just one hearing, left hearing aid fell into the bowl.

Fortunately, it was clean.

Yes, it was just clean water.

And

so I said, well, you're lucky there wasn't a turtle in there

because we have a friend here who went out to the turtle pond one day.

And as she was watching the turtles and the fish, the goldfish, her $3,000 hearing aid fell into the pond and a turtle gobbled it right up.

And she didn't have insurance.

It was $3,000.

And it probably didn't do the turtle any good either.

I just don't think any insurance policy is going to cover that, you know?

You're like a turtle rider.

She didn't get it back, of course.

Anyway, that's the end of the story.

It's okay.

His hearing aid dried beautifully.

And so from now on, I guess he has to make sure they're really in there real good before he

taper top of them.

Yep.

Man, there's a lot of stuff in Deuteronomy.

Going back to the old self-abuse thing here that really launched this.

So we got to wrap things up, but people should know.

A lot in Leviticus.

There's some in Galatians.

Fair amount in Corinthians.

Well, the people of Corinth were just self-abusers to beat the band.

That's not all they beat.

They founded the pulpit as well, I'm sure.

Polishing the bishop.

Anyway.

No?

Is that?

It's my mother, dude.

Sorry.

Too far?

Too much?

Too powerful.

I didn't know you played chess.

Do you play chess?

I'm a big fan of chess, yes.

Very good.

Loved it.

Loved it as a game.

You know, when I was doing that show on Broadway,

in between like the afternoon show, the matinee, and the evening show, I...

bought a little chessboard that was electronic and I could play the computer in chess with like actual pieces.

It wasn't all electronic.

It's like you had to pick up the piece and then push it down.

It knew where everything moved, and it would play against you, and I'd have to move for it.

It would tell me where it moved.

Great game.

Great game.

It is.

I love it.

I'm

playing in ages either.

I did see The Queen's Gambit.

Did you see that?

Oh, great film.

I enjoyed it.

She was terrific.

Yeah.

Do you know the story of the guy who invented the chessboard for the Emperor?

I don't.

Well, it's long, but the super, super short version is it was a giant challenge that had gone out to the land to create a game that was infinite in its possibilities and complexities.

The Emperor was a real puzzle solver.

The guy who came up with it positively delighted the Emperor, and he was deemed the winner and was offered a huge cash reward for doing this this in excess of the reward that had been announced around the whole attempt to create this great game.

He said, what I'd rather have is some rice.

And the Emperor said, you can have much rice as you want, how much you want.

He said, I want, let's use the chessboard as an example.

I'll put one piece of rice on this square on the lower left-hand corner.

and then two on the square next to it, and then four on the square next to that, and then eight on the square next to that.

Now, there's 64 squares on the chessboard, and the emperor's like, I get it, I get it, just give me a number, add it up.

Well, the number all added up was far in excess of the total supply of rice that China had on hand for like the next decade.

So the emperor was like, okay, I'm not going to give you all of that.

I'm going to kill you now, put you in the urine suit, or we'll come to more, you know, reasonable terms.

Anyway, I always laughed about that because

it's the same thing with origami.

You know, you fold the paper once, twice, three, four.

I think you get up to like

25 or 30 times and the paper would reach to the moon.

Exponential.

Just the doubling, the compounding of a thing, you know.

Yeah, I thought I understood all that vis-a-vis, you know, interest rates and stuff, but it was the chess analogy that really drove it home

more grains of rice than existed do you remember his name the creator of the chess

game

frank yeah yeah frank stevens did it unusual yeah no he's a missionary at the time okay

ultimately yeah it's uh frank stevens of course the saint francis of assisi there's a whole tie into san francisco and ultimately back to uh rice-arone which was the san francisco treat Are you making this up?

No, not a lot of people.

Mom, I made up every single thing I just told you just now.

Michael, you should be a writer, hon.

Nope, that was real.

And the jazz thing is real, but all the other stuff.

You should try writing someday.

You might be good.

I like the rice-a-rone reference out of nowhere, though.

I thought that was clever.

Did I ever tell you?

When I moved out here, I know we got to wrap it up.

This is the last thing.

But speaking of rice-a-rone, I lived in like a corporate housing for a few months on the top of Knob Hill.

It's a pretty great little apartment.

So CBS put me up next to St.

Grace's,

Grace Cathedral in the top floor, and I like 360-degree views.

It was a small apartment.

It was really great.

And San Francisco just felt like this charming little

almost imaginary place I had learned about from reading like Tales of the City and Armistead Maupin and so forth.

And, and, you know, the fog was just perfect.

The whole thing looked like a rice-arone commercial, San Francisco treat.

And every morning I'd, I'd walk down and there was a cable car that ran right down California Street down to Broadway.

And I'd take the cable car to Broadway and then I'd walk over to CBS just a couple blocks away.

So convenient.

It was the greatest commute ever.

And I did this for like eight or nine days.

And the cable car was always crowded with people.

And I'd just kind of hang off the end, you know, sort of like a, you know, I just striking a pose.

It just seemed like the, anyhow, I was like, this is so great.

This is the best commute ever.

And then one day, the conductor caught up to me.

Not that I was trying to avoid him.

I just never really noticed him and the car was so crowded.

But he comes back and he looks at me and he says, young man, you ever going to pay me?

You thought it was free?

What are you talking about?

Pay it?

Yeah, I thought it was free.

I thought the cable cars were just all part of the San Francisco experience.

And like the whole town had welcomed me.

And it's free.

You need to go somewhere, Mike, just hop on one of these cable cars.

I'll take you wherever you want to go.

You know?

Well, yeah, for $2,

right?

And I felt like such a dummy.

I was like, oh, yeah.

How much do I use?

I've been watching you for eight days.

You never pay me.

All right, I'll make it up to you.

Anyway,

it's the way life is.

Well, those commercials, those rice-arony commercials gave you that impression that you just hop on and hang off.

You know, it's so great.

Yes.

You never see anybody paying for anything in a commercial like that.

Yeah.

You know,

it's like in the westerns, all those horses, but you never see any horse crap in the streets.

What's up?

It's the craziest thing.

I'm sure it's there.

It's kind of like the scammers, Chuck.

No, it's there.

What is rice-aroni?

What is rice-aroni?

It's a San Francisco treat.

It's like hamburger helps.

It's not macaroni.

Why do they call it rice-arone?

No, it's no.

Because it's rice invented by a man named Frank Roney.

Oh, you made that up.

Did you make that up?

You guys, I don't know what to believe.

I may have.

No, it was actually, what's his name?

The guy that invented the radio invented

maconi.

And that's another big lie.

I hear macaroni, and I think of you, Michael, one year for Mother's Day, you gave me a mug.

I think maybe you and Chuck had gone downtown to some kind of a craft festival or something.

And

they took your picture and they put your picture on the mug, which would have been fine.

But you had a piece of macaroni stuck up each nostril and you've got this long noodle hanging out of your nose.

Did you give your mother one too, Chuck?

I think I did, actually.

yeah

yeah they would take your picture and put it on a mug it's the most unflattering photo I could imagine taking yeah that's what I did and you thought it was appropriate for Mother's Day did I did I give you the boob a mug as well oh I think you did

yeah you did yeah boy that what did

yeah I guess we could unpack that yeah that's uh whatever that's hardly worthy of discussion

we don't want to milk that one utterly ridiculous look you open

oh

utterly ridiculous.

Oh,

all righty.

Well, listen, we could go tit-for-tat, I suppose, for the next hour.

I so miss dinner times when you guys were growing up.

I so looked forward to dinner.

Not that I love to cook.

But I managed to get a meal on every night.

But dinner time just went on, and I heard stories, and

they were great stories.

And the kids all loved poetry, and they had memorized poems.

And after we ate, we would tell stories and recite poetry.

And I really missed dinner time.

I mean, we still eat dinner every night, but I miss dinner time with the family.

Thankfully.

With the kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was okay for a while, but then you discovered girls.

Being honest.

Then I realized there was a world with boob-shaped mugs

Yeah, no, the poetry was fun and dad's still doing it, right?

I mean, he's like he's still walking around he joined the theater class here every Thursday for two hours from 10 to 12 a.m.

He goes to theater class and they do really interesting stuff.

Like the first week he had to take an object that stimulated the senses and talk about which sense it stimulated

and how he reacted to these objects.

And last week he had to memorize a poem.

Well, of course, I think he did the cremation of Sam McGee.

Yeah.

Dangerous Dan McGrew, maybe?

Yeah, he knows that one also, but Dangerous Dan,

the cremation of Sam McGee.

I don't think that's it.

And he memorized, like, I don't know how many verses it has, at least 10.

And so he did that.

It has 14.

So this coming week,

they're going to do some improv.

And he's really enjoying it.

I mean, the fact that he doesn't hear real well is kind of annoying.

It makes him an interesting scene partner.

Yes, and.

But the people in the group.

He took yes and to yes, what?

I mean, they're real close and they're all elderly and they all have you know he's not the only one who doesn't hear well

and so he's really enjoying that.

I'm glad he can do that.

Yeah.

That's good.

There's strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.

The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.

The northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see was that that night on the marge of Lake Labarge when I cremated Sam McGee.

And you know what?

It's not only a fun poem to hear and to recite,

but he tells a story that's really great.

Now, Sam McGee was from Tennessee where the cotton blooms and bloams.

Why he left his home in the south to roam round the pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but that land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell, though he'd often say in his homely way, I'd sooner live in hell.

T'was Christmas Day.

We were mushing our way over the Dawson Trail.

Talk of your cold through our park as folds.

It stabbed like a driven nail.

Yeah, it goes on and on.

And

the last verse is wonderful.

I love it.

Can I just say that that's episode 278,

which is called occasionally Halloween 2022, the cremation of Sam McGee.

You read the whole thing and there are sound effects and all.

It's great.

Oh.

Mom, go listen to it.

Episode 278 of The Way I Heard It on Halloween.

I read The Cremation of Sam McGee.

Play it for Dad if he hasn't heard it.

I bet he'll like it.

I mean, when he's in between surf and the adult websites and not being surreptitiously videotaped.

This is something I'm sure he will.

He might enjoy it.

Yes.

Well, fun, again, mildly inappropriate, guaranteed to generate

sorts of love letters.

All right, everybody, go get something to eat.

That's mom, Peggy Rowe.

She'll be back sometime soon.

Mom, I'll call you later if we can find a sponsor.

You mean I put lipstick on for nothing?

Love you.

Here's to the guys who advertise and subsidize the podcasts that I do.

They spend their dough.

And you should know before you go, that's why it's free for you.

Because it's free, I hope you see and then agree.

Their bottoms should be kissed.

Without the guys who advertise, this show would not exist.

There's no podcast without a sponsor.

Thank them for paying the frate.

Please don't fast forward through their commercials,

even ones that you hate.

There's no podcast without a sponsor.

Thank them for paying the frays.

Please don't fast forward through their

commercials.

Even the ones you hate.

It's true, our sponsors really are the reason we show up in your podcast app every Tuesday without need of remuneration.

Presuming, of course, you subscribe, which we certainly hope you do.

So, here's one final shout-out to the brands that brought you the way I heard it: ZipRecruiter, American Battlefield Trust, Groundworks, Pure Talk, Field of Greens, U.S.

Money Reserve, Butcher Box, K-12 Schools, American Giant, Land Zen, Three-Day Blinds, Aura Frames, Noble Tennessee Whiskey, and the book, Oh No, Not the Home by Beggie Rowe.

See you next week.

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