Soup Sandwich
Welcome to Soup Sandwich, a podcast that explores the complex and compelling world of veterans in the United States. Through interviews with veterans themselves, military experts, and advocates, we'll dive deep into the issues that matter most to this community, from mental health and employment, to the history of veterans in the US and the future of military service. This podcast is supported by the generous contribution of the members of VFW Post 3033.
Soup Sandwich
Plays of Principle: The Veteran's Journey in Sports and Service
Buckle up, Soup Sandwich listeners, this episode isn't just about touchdowns and tackles; it’s a deep exploration of the threads that tie us together, from the roar of the stadium to the silent sacrifices behind community service. We raise our glasses to the brave souls of Voice of Democracy and Patriot's Pen and delve into the emotional rollercoaster of heartfelt events, moments that leave us laughing or with a lump in our throat. It's a reminder that whether it's on the field or through service, every play counts and every voice can ignite change.
Our conversation leaps from the tactical plays of the Detroit Lions under Dan Campbell's wing to the shifting sands of college athletics, where loyalty and legacy wrestle with the lure of compensation. We're not just bystanders; we're veterans, coaches, and die-hard fans, analyzing every play while never forgetting the values that brought us together. So tune in, and let's navigate this journey, where every story echoes with the cheers of the past and the hopes for tomorrow.
Email Us with your comments and suggestions at vfwpost3033@gmail.com, we'd love to hear from you!
War is a paradox. It is the power to bring nations together, to inspire heroism and sacrifice and to forge bonds of camaraderie that will span a lifetime, but it also has the power to tear families apart, to shatter communities and to leave scars that will never fully heal. And, for those who have served, the transition back to civilian life can be one of the greatest challenges they will ever face. This is the typical life of military veterans, a world that is both familiar and foreign to most of us. It is a world that is shaped by unique experiences, values and traditions of the military, and by the sacrifices and struggles of those who have served, but it's also a world that is constantly changing, as new generations of veterans confront new challenges and new opportunities. Thank you for joining us at Soup Sandwich. Dig your foxhole, heat up your MRE and spend some time with us.
Speaker 2:We want to welcome everybody back to the next episode of Soup Sandwich. My name is Charlie Klein, ryers Group President, post 3033, mount Pleasant, vfw. Tonight we have with us.
Speaker 3:No pain, Pass district commander, pass post commander, pass Ryers. Group President. And I think I covered all the bases on that one.
Speaker 4:Yep. And then you have the jeweler Sergeant Arms of Ryers Group, also the post commander, district commander, director of Ryers Group and a lover way lover of the Mount Pleasant VFW.
Speaker 4:It is my life, unfortunately. And now, with that being said, we have to throw something out there and I have to find it on my phone because we're getting ready to do it on the intro, but right now we can't do it we're still working on that because the nerds aren't around, so it is a disclaimer. It is a disclaimer because we are veterans and we are colorful in everything that we do Definitely with the language right.
Speaker 3:Definitely with the language right, Especially to no, shut the front door.
Speaker 4:Okay. This podcast is designed solely for entertainment and, occasionally, informational purposes only, and is to be regarded strictly as satire. It's compromising of veterans. It delves into their thoughts and experience and combat as well as their perspectives on various aspects of daily life that may be unsettling to certain listeners. This podcast is not suitable for individuals under the age of 18. Definitely not, definitely, not, definitely not the views articulated. This is too. This isn't me talking. An attorney wrote this. The views articulated in this podcast may not necessarily align with those of the national VFW, because I'm sure it doesn't. The VFW Department of Michigan.
Speaker 2:Department of Michigan's what?
Speaker 4:it is, or the VFW Post-2033. I'm sure it doesn't. Additionally, we kindly request that listeners refrain from pursuing legal action against the creators or contributors. What the fuck is this? Hey, don't sue us. Okay, we are who we are, man. This is Veterans, all the way.
Speaker 2:Well, this is solely explicit content not suitable for your workplace, not suitable for those ears under the age of 18, and or if you are the type of person that takes offense to everything. Something someone says please turn this podcast off, Go away. Do not listen to any previous episodes. What this is is satire. Just veterans sitting around talking about veterans shit.
Speaker 4:Just go away. Go away If you're offended go away, go away this is not for you.
Speaker 2:So once again I have to throw the plug. I'll do it every time. Aj Sky Lounge hosting the podcast again tonight.
Speaker 4:AJ Sky.
Speaker 2:Lounge. It's about 85 degrees in this fucking place and, Tim, if you take your sweatshirt off, I'm throwing you out. I have 100% authority.
Speaker 4:I'm telling you do not do it. I'm too sexy for my shirt Will absolutely not allow that. So I can take my pants off and I can't take my shirt off.
Speaker 2:You definitely cannot take your shirt off, because I will pop the shop door and you will walk down the stairs and get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 4:Whoa, he's send that fire truck.
Speaker 2:Because I can. It's not you Right, right, right and like that to the tech that's not here tonight. I know he's listening because I see his comments popping up, so like that would that be inside.
Speaker 4:Unfortunately, we're missing a couple couple people tonight. We're missing our nerds two parts, two parts and tech and tech and we're missing 11 typewriter. He had a he had a daughter, thing that he had to do T bone.
Speaker 2:T bone was taking his daughter to training which is huge right Like I mean. I get it because my son just turned 18 on the 25th, which is crazy because that's the birthday of my buddy, david Cannelly, that I served with the Marines. Same birthday, that's the day that I went to bootcamp was 25th of January, turned 18. Awesome, I get it when those kids get the freedom. The parents get the freedom.
Speaker 2:You're no longer dragging them around, you no longer picking them up, you no longer dropping them off and doing the thing. So that's awesome for him.
Speaker 4:I but the crazy, so happy for the crazy thing is 11 typewriter can't drive either. He run into T bone, the fucking van. So 11 typewriter can't drive either.
Speaker 2:But you know he had the insurance on the bike and that was in his fault because the road was under construction. So let somebody in. Yeah, he was in the turn lane.
Speaker 4:Bullshit, t bone bullshit.
Speaker 2:I wish we were going to know Well when he, when he got his new Harley I'm not fucking burning clutches up. I wish we were named before you T bone the car because he's like 1000.
Speaker 4:He's like wow, he's like 6,000.
Speaker 2:I'm letting the clutch out. I wouldn't even clutch. Let's make a name clutch we love you, billy. That is your dark name, clutch. Why could you come in?
Speaker 4:clutch. He's not quite the game, I tell you dude, you started.
Speaker 2:you started the Friday night Dark team right at the post no. Terry and sense oh okay, but you got kicked off the team as the post commander because everybody that subs for you was so much better.
Speaker 4:You can't kick me off you can't kick me off my own team.
Speaker 1:Don't tell me your, your, I.
Speaker 2:Something like twice this year in your own teammates were like are you playing for Tim next week? I'm like no, you didn't ask me. He's like no, you are playing. You are playing for Tim Well and then and then on your bowling team that Terry and sense, feel started. I roll out and I throw like a 680. I'm averaging 230 a fucking game. A month ago when I bold, and I bold twice this year, brother, I twice, and I'm averaging like 230 a fucking game.
Speaker 4:I rolled a 301.
Speaker 2:Seriously seriously, yeah like 72 fucking points.
Speaker 4:Hey, I'm a killer, I'm not a bowler.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know that's that's. That's one thing I've been blessed with. I think it actually comes from my dad. My mom zero sports. As far as I know, my mom's whatever 75, never played sport in life. My dad pretty athletic. I think he was on the golf team in high school and you know he might have played basketball. He's like 62. You know what I mean. But neither one of them crazy like my sister. Pretty athletic, shoot starts, plays volley like sand volleyball in the recreation league. You know there's has fun. You know their husband, my brother in law, but I would come on man.
Speaker 4:I don't even know who you are. I do. Yes, she's a beautiful lady. She's beautiful.
Speaker 3:She's very impressive, I know but she's beautiful.
Speaker 2:She's older than me, but I always say, whenever we introduce each other, I was this, my younger sister, because she's she's like seven years older me, but she looks like she's 12 years younger than me.
Speaker 4:Yes, she's gorgeous. She's a beautiful, oh, I know, and you?
Speaker 2:know how many times I wanted to punch my brother in law in the face over her Because he'll say some smart ass remark I'm like dude, that's my sister. Or we be at bowling and I used to bowl with my brother in law on a team and people would be like, oh man, I would build your, your wife or whatever, and I'd be like dude. And my brother would be like that's his sister and they'd be like, oh, sorry man, sorry man, I'll fucking knock your teeth out. You know like I mean? Because she, she is, she's beautiful, she got all the looks. It's like you've ever seen that movie Danny Vito, arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 4:Yep twins twins.
Speaker 2:I'm Danny Vito, right Like I got all the leftovers. My sister got all the good shit right, because she is absolutely 100% agree with you. Looks like she's 12 years younger than me.
Speaker 4:She's seven years older than you didn't get any looks, that's for sure. Definitely not.
Speaker 3:You guys look a lot of like you do.
Speaker 4:You can, you can tell, you can tell that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, guys guys, you got it. The eyes, yeah, all the things I get, I get.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna say you got it. Her ass, she's got.
Speaker 4:She's got better moves than he does.
Speaker 2:But now I don't know, I'm a solid B cup. She might be the.
Speaker 3:C of a solid B, yeah Well no, I love my sister.
Speaker 2:death and I will bury a dude in the back. Yeah, I know her for sure She'll bury.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 2:I told my brother in law to. I said you know what? I got fortunate with my brother in law, john. I said, hey, man, of all the dudes she could have picked, seriously, because it's that's the way it works, they marry us. We don't we asked them, but they marry us what did we talk about.
Speaker 2:We all know it. Yeah, we got, they can. They can get it when they want to get it. We're hoping to get it when we go to the bar, when we get ready to go out, and totally get it go to the bar.
Speaker 4:We go, man, I hope I get laid tonight. They look at the mirror and go I'm getting. I'm getting laid tonight.
Speaker 2:Yep, 100%, 100%, I get it.
Speaker 4:They got a half the money and all the pussy and I told my brother.
Speaker 2:I said man, of all the guys, she, she, she picked a good one. I love my brother on death, been married like damn your 30 years. My wife and I are 25. They're probably 30, 31, 32 years married. I said she, she, she did well, yep, right, love my brother on death, great guy. But he's always known, if you ever fucks over my sister, I'm burying him in the backyard Period. That's just the way it's gonna be.
Speaker 4:Okay. So now that we're done burying people in the backyard, let's, let's. What do we want to talk about? Do we want to we want to start out with the lions? Let's get it. Or do we want to start out with the? The VOD.
Speaker 2:Let's just get ready to the lions. Let's just get out of the way, because the game's still raw.
Speaker 3:I want to say something that was, that was my damn birthday, yep.
Speaker 4:It was your birthday.
Speaker 3:How often can you say the lions played on your birthday?
Speaker 2:In a playoff game of all things, how?
Speaker 4:often can you say the lions lost on your birthday.
Speaker 3:I can say it right now. I can't because minds in September.
Speaker 2:They always win the fucking bullshit. I'll tell you what.
Speaker 3:Tell you what I'm glad they went as far as they did.
Speaker 4:They rock, they fucking, they look at you.
Speaker 3:I wasn't on the bandwagon and did that whole. The lion showed up again. I wasn't that guy. I wasn't that guy because they fucking played. They earned a place to play fucking right.
Speaker 4:They kicked and everyone's throwing clubs at damn Campbell. Why did you do this? Why did you do this? He did what he did all fucking year to get up there. Yeah, all year to get him there. And then people are like, well, take the points. He didn't take the points all year because his, his mindset, is an infantry mindset. Right, charlie Yep, we ain't gonna go halfway. We're gonna stop your fucking guts out.
Speaker 2:Well, the one thing I will tell you, right At the end of the day, they threw a pass to Sue Panay. So to win a game last year last year. Yep Right, so you want to talk about a guy that's got some guts to win a game?
Speaker 4:Do it to Taylor Decker.
Speaker 2:They should have won a game if, if he would have got a first down on a, on a fourth and four, fourth and two, fourth and one on whatever they would have been like, that was the guchiest call that was such a great thing to do. He did everything to win the game. He would either. You're the hero, you're the goal. You're like the kicker right Kicking the 55 yard. You make it, You're the hero. You miss it, you're the go and go.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean you're the guy who's hit him in the fucking hands. Hit him in the hands of him, in the fucking chest Reynolds.
Speaker 4:Reynolds has to catch that.
Speaker 2:Jamar. Jamar Gibbs fumbles a ball. You have the defensive or the safety. That takes one off the face mask and the motherfucker catches it.
Speaker 4:He's got to get his hand up there.
Speaker 2:He catches on the two for a touchdown. So there are so many things in that game that could have gone 100% differently and the outcome of the game could have been the Lions are in the Super Bowl, but here's the deal. I'm 45 years old. I've seen one one time they've made the playoffs that I can remember 91. Right. So I would have been I don't know eight years old, no, 13 years old One time. They made the playoffs. They won the NFC North. They won two fucking playoff this year, right.
Speaker 2:So what they've done this year is mad, as I was during the game doing the same thing every Lions fans out there doing, and I've got brothers in the Marine Corps that reach out to me like dude, we wish you were the one. We wish you were the one we were rooting for you. Right, you got to be devastated. I'm like look man, we were on 16. Two years ago we were like three and 13. Last year we were in 98. Like, things are getting better. You look at, like Michigan football right, you make the semifinals two years from now, you lose. So you don't make the national championship game.
Speaker 2:30 year you come back and you win the right, you rock, so it's like you have to think about what's actually happening, what's going on, and when you have the Lions fans bitching and pissing and moaning and complaining, they shouldn't be doing that this year. They should be bitching, pissing and moaning that we didn't make the playoffs.
Speaker 4:They should shut the fuck up, because three years ago we were three and 13. Yeah, this year they should be going like, yeah, baby Next year, ben Johnson is back, ben Johnson is fucking back and that was crazy, because that came out yesterday. Yesterday.
Speaker 2:That was all over the Pat McAfee show. That was all over the ESPN tickets and everything else that he turned down Seattle and Washington.
Speaker 4:I said, no, I'm gonna stay with the fucking Lions, so I'm gonna take him to the fucking Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this question, though so is that the fact that maybe he didn't, they didn't even want to give him the money that he wanted? One Probably. So I'm going to do a three part for two parts.
Speaker 4:Okay, hey, two parts. If you're listening. This is for you, but we're gonna call it three parts.
Speaker 2:So this, these aren't the questions, but going on to it. So either he was wanting you know some astronomical number that they didn't want to give him, or two, did he not get off the job, and or three, is it the leadership of Dan Campbell as the head coach that he would give up all that to come back for Dan Campbell's leadership?
Speaker 2:It's, either it's either like one, one, two or three, and maybe he was asking some crazy number that somebody wasn't willing to pay. Maybe two, he was never even offered the job, he was just in the running for it because they already had somebody else they wanted, which nobody's been announced for either one of those teams.
Speaker 4:Oh, you know no, john McDonald. John McDonald from Baltimore, defensive coordinator, took the Seattle job.
Speaker 2:Okay, so maybe they already had a guy that that team wanted, but the commanders, so maybe they haven't announced anybody yet then. So maybe he either wanted too much money and or, two, maybe they still got somebody laying in wait that they want to hire Aaron.
Speaker 3:Glenn is still in the running for that kind of job. I think you want to stay with the line I would read.
Speaker 2:I would. I would almost think in no offense he could get his contract restructured. It hasn't been done yet and any coach's contract doesn't come. It's not a player's contract, so it doesn't come with salary cap right. So if they wanted to offer Dan Campbell 300 million over 10 years, they could do it.
Speaker 4:It's not going to affect the team at all Kind of like Mel Tucker until he?
Speaker 2:Jesus Christ. We'll dive into that because I got my brother-in-law, sean, is he? Yeah, we could dive into that one later, but anyways. So it's not going to affect any type of salary cap how much you're paying a guy or anything else. So my thought is Dan care, dan Campbell's leadership got him back to Detroit. I agree, I think so. I think if if you're going to go to war with a guy and that guy's got your back regardless of how you call the game or what your scheme was or anything else, because they were lights out first half and I'm not going to blame the offense, I'm going to blame the defense a lot and we can get into players if we want to go players, because there's guys I see all year that I'm not happy with. But I'm not a coach either, nor am I an NFL player, so it's easy to be the armchair quarterback, right.
Speaker 2:Looking back at things going. I would, I could, I should. This guy, that guy, the other guy you know what I mean. It's easy to do, but I have the same feeling that maybe you guys have, that Dan Campbell is a dude that you will go to fucking war for. Because that guy, if he tells you we got to take Hill one and we're going to take mass casualties, I'm running up that fucking hill screaming and firing my fucking rounds down range. Yeah, yeah, no matter what the outcome, is that dude I so kind of guy he is and you got to look at. I honestly think he's that guy. Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 4:People run through walls for him. I think it's just Jared golf. They went up and said what did you think about his, his calls on fourth and four? Nothing wrong with it, I'd follow him anywhere. Okay, because it wasn't the call, it was the player not executing.
Speaker 2:And those passes were open round drop to your. That continues again right there.
Speaker 4:Grop Jared golf puts that on and he catches that fourth and four Motherfucker. Guess what now? Now motherfuckers are rolling, now we're rolling, now we're rolling. And then all of a sudden, bam, bam. I'm on. Saint Brown, drop to pass that he normally doesn't drop.
Speaker 2:Well, we're all, we're all military. Yeah right, no. Well you're in the army, so maybe no. No, he was in the.
Speaker 4:he was MP, so he wasn't really.
Speaker 2:Anyways, what I'm, what I'm saying is when you have a leader and there's difference, right, there's. I call them screamers and leaders. Screamer and a leader We've all worked for a guy. All he does is scream at you, tell you where you're doing wrong, tell you what you need to do. Those are the screamers. Yeah, I want the leader, want the guy that's digging the hole, humping the shit, picking up the slack, doing the stuff Right.
Speaker 2:So you're screamers and leaders saying hey good job when you see Dan Campbell on the preseason doing up, downs or guys. We have a mission, I have a goal. I need you to get into this. If we get into, this will be successful and he gets those guys. They're there to make a paycheck Right. They got a contract, they're going to make their millions, are going to do the things, regardless of what team they play for.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they don't care.
Speaker 2:They buy into that mission that he's selling bingo and they, they believe in it, they live it, they taste it, they die by it.
Speaker 4:They die by it, they drive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they die by it. And you look at the way that their season's gone From two years ago when he got hired, right. Everybody makes fun of the biting the kneecaps thing. Right, you know, I can stop and we'll take the other kneecap. We get up, we'll take another honk, we'll do this, we'll do that. Detroit's been beat down. Anybody that watches news or reads an article can tell city Detroit what. What do they need? They need hope. City needs hope. And you look at that last game. They opened up Ford field and they were selling tickets to watch the game on the big screen in Ford field. They kept out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they kept showing. They kept showing 15 minutes. They sold every fucking ticket. I had friends up here in Mount Pleasant Drive, two and a half fucking hours to Detroit, to watch the game in Ford field. So it just goes to show you. Like, sheila, let's run to the team now for Martha.
Speaker 4:Yeah, she's doing the right thing. Oh, absolutely she's doing the right thing 100% right thing.
Speaker 2:That team can make so much money. The city of Detroit can make so much more money If that team is doing the right thing. You think of how many jerseys, shirts, sweatshirts, hats, parking, food tickets. I mean it's insane, like you look at what an average cost of a ticket toward the end of the season cost. When Detroit was in the playoffs it was like $600 a ticket. You could have gone to three other NFL games playoff games and still not have equaled what one Detroit Lions playoff game ticket cost.
Speaker 4:Fucking crazy and here and I'm not going to go back and be a crybaby or anything like that, but guess what? I'm going to go back and be a fucking crybaby. San Francisco should have been in Detroit. That fucking bullshit in Dallas. That bullshit in Dallas was bullshit that clearly clearly fucking. Dan Skipper did not report as eligible, taylor Decker did. Clearly that's a two point conversion. They win that, san Francisco loses it. Now Detroit's got three fucking home playoff games. They go to number one.
Speaker 2:Hey, tell you, and I in these you said back right, we're talking about the arm chair quarterbacks. I honestly hate to go to this. I don't think. I don't think it would have made a difference if they're at home or away. Josh Reynolds caught a ball, didn't catch a ball. Jermere didn't fumble the face. Max, you know, pass play 60 yards, right With a score of the next play. I mean, I don't think it would have made a difference if they were at home or away.
Speaker 4:Well, but I believe the energy would have been different because the energy and momentum is real. Momentum is real. If you ever played any sports, you know when you get out there and things are going well for you, everything's pumping. You're like chakaboo momentum is a big bitch. I know, but momentum is a big bitch. And then all of a sudden, bam, you get stopped on fourth and four because the dude drops the ball and the other team goes. Wow.
Speaker 2:No, I get where you're going, because when you're on offense, everybody's quiet, when you're on defense, everybody's loud. Ford Fordfield sets some records for decibel levels. Yeah, there was like 133 to 140 or 137 or whatever it was for their second playoff game. You've got the enclosed stadium right. You're in a big ball. It's loud. I get it can throw the other, the opposing team, off, and I'm sure it happened out there in the Bay, but I don't necessarily say they don't necessarily know that that's. That was going to be enough to swing the game. I think it would have an influence on it because that guy takes that, takes that catch off the face mask, crowds into it. No, no, no, the defense feels like shit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the whole third quarter just stopped.
Speaker 4:No, I did. No, it was terrible. It's the worst third quarter. They've always struggled in the third quarter, and to me, offensively and defensively that's, that's never, never clicking.
Speaker 4:Not in the third quarter. They come out in the third quarter and they couldn't do shit. So, ben Ben Johnson, if you're listening to us and you know what dude, maybe you should subscribe, because I've got some ideas for some place. Ben Johnson, figure out why it seems like the whole year, detroit always came out flat after half time. I got a, they always came, I got a.
Speaker 2:I got a great story. So Jason Mac and Tyre, coach Mac for Mount Pleasant High School junior, his dad was a coach, but junior he's the what is he? The athletic director now? He was a science teacher, graduated or had a me quarterback. High school, I mean, played football. Jen worked at a chiropractic pain management place 20 years ago. I met Sean Beal His wife worked there to ex wife work there.
Speaker 2:So we they did like a Texas hold them type night when in there was like a benefit, everybody pays in and the money goes to a charity, all this kind of shit. You know, food, drinks, whatever. They get down to the final table playing Texas hold them. Jason Mac and Tyre said they were bullshitting. We knew each other from high school. We're friends but not like best friends. You know like I see him. Hey, charlie, I was going, hey Jason, I was going, kind of kind of thing, right, and at the time I was just in my apprenticeship for local 85 plumbers, steamfitters, right, and we're at this charity night. You know they were hosting or whatever.
Speaker 2:And at the final table it's me and him and he was like oh, you know, you ever think about coaching football, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because I played in high school and I'm like, yeah, I thought about you. He's like Well, let me ask you a question. You know we're just kind of bullshit. And he goes if you're on offense, right, we get the kick return, right, kick off. What's the first play you run? Fucking hell, mary. I throw that motherfucker as deep as the my fucking quarterback and throw it. He goes how do you feel about defense? Hey, never coach a lick in my life. And he didn't ask me to, he didn't ask me to be on the team. You know, as a coach, what would you do? Everybody's thinking run, yeah, throw a short dump, pass or something Fucking throw that fucking throw the fucker down that fucker right Like just give her hell.
Speaker 2:You know, but I was, you know, this is like 2005,. Six, you know, a couple years out of the reason. I'm like fucking throw that ball deep, start the game out, man, get them on their heels, right, like that's the way I'm thinking. And he was like, how do you feel about defense? And I'm like, yep, I know, I'm just not gonna ask me to coach on the team Because he was just kind of starting out back then. And I tell you what he's done a great job here in my pleasant, always making the playoffs there, undefeated seasons, just great, great quarterback kids love them. My kid, andy played for him, loved him. Yeah, absolutely spectacular, but so easy to sit back here and we're talking about lions and I hate it.
Speaker 2:I hate it because it's so easy to go. We should have we could have you know the whole, the whole bullshit and you can even go back to. You can even go back to the Michigan games. Even though you won the national championship, you can still go back there and say Well, this team we could have, this team we should have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the thing you got to take away from the season is where did we come from last season or the season before that? You know we we built a team 98 lines last year. That's what I'm saying We've. We build a team from nothing to almost going to the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:But you built that team on the leadership of the. Dan Campbell.
Speaker 2:Dan Campbell right yeah, head coach, and everybody belong from the offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, linebackers, line coaches, all those people. They've got some work to do and I think they got the work to do in the secondary. I think it'd be great if they picked up another another defensive end to help out to help out with Hutch, some hutch, because if if they're double team and triple team and him he's not going to get out of there and yeah, and you can only do so.
Speaker 2:The 49ers did did a great job, because he didn't get any sacks. They got pretty much three rushes on Purdy to make him scramble, so the pocket was collapsing the way I've scrambled. But then you had nobody as a linebacker scout. Yeah, because he could run and then he could take off. And he got how many first downs?
Speaker 3:Scramble out of the pocket. You need more. Yeah, you need more.
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna I'm gonna throw a player out. And there was a guy on Facebook YouTube years ago talking about Darius sleigh and my dad listened to the podcast. My dad will laugh. This guy was like Darius fucking sleigh and this guy was a diet lion's fan. Season ticket holdings. Like we spend $6,000 my group on $6,000 on fucking season tickets.
Speaker 2:And I get so pissed off. I get more worked up than the fucking players do and I'm sitting there in the stands and I pay all this fucking money. I'm watching you shake hands and fucking glad hand after getting your asses kicked, and Darius fucking sleigh gets burnt. Every fucking time this guy's going nuts. You know he's like. You know it was like a paint manning thing. You know like.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna get paint mannings out of the graph. He was a UPS. That fucking shit. I don't want to fucking see it. I'm paying for the fucking tickets and I've been more worked up about the game than you are and you're getting paid to play. I'm paying your fucking tickets. This guy was going nuts. I mean, absolutely get it. And that's where the lions were shit. And I agree, Cam sun. I was messaged in with my buddies and we're talking on the phone watching the fucking game and camsut is good enough and I'm not trying to bag on the guy. He's an NFL quality player. That's why he's playing Right. He's good, he's good enough to play in the NFL Right, and that's saying something. You got like 9,000 fucking football players in college and he's you know 100, 100 out of that that are playing right, that are playing defense in the NFL. So he's he's good.
Speaker 2:He's good. I'm not trying to bag on the guy, but the same extent he gets fucking burned every goddamn time, you know. I mean he gets frustrating when you're watching it. So he used to be the fuck. I didn't play college ball, right, he played college. He plays NFL. He's a million times better than me, so I'm trying that.
Speaker 2:It's supposed to be the dude. I'm not trying to be the asshole sitting here going second guess and something Some guys get paid millions of dollars to do, but I get frustrated to watch it, to watch it. You know what I mean. And I just hate bagging on somebody when I'm not to his level, not even remotely on his level, and I'm bagging on the guy. That's. That's his shitty for me to do. Ok, so here we go. I feel I feel shitty to do it. It's like I was banging on Jared Goff. Oh, he missed the pass. I couldn't throw the ball fucking 40 yards right, much less throw it 50 yards on a dime, and I'm expecting him to do it. I can't do it. That's that's shitty. Me to say that Well. Well, let's look at this right he gets Ben Johnson.
Speaker 4:Ben Johnson right, coming back to the Lions, coming back to the Lions, he's gonna be there. Oh see, he's got a, he's got a gig. He's got a gig with Jared Goff. They see, they see things the same way. Aaron Glenn OK, what's been the suspect program with the?
Speaker 2:Lions. How much is that his fault? Because he doesn't have a choice as defense coordinator. Who gets drafted? Right, that's also the next camel. Yep, now do you not think either? One of those two sit down and they start looking at the draft, going hey, we need this, we need this. Oh yeah absolutely Off offense is good. Yeah, absolutely, Offense is clicking. I mean they're they're. They're a top 10 offense in the national football.
Speaker 4:So if Aaron Glenn gets hired at the commanders because he's in the running for the commander's job, are we really losing anything? Yes, ok, I, I would kind of disagree because because it's his job to find out what his people are good at and make them and sell. And until the last four games of the season we couldn't put any pressure on a quarterback man because he didn't blitz, he didn't do this, he didn't do that, and I and I get it because his secondaries Right, his secondaries like Fat Charlie, fat Bill, Fat Tim Bouter, trying to fucking guard.
Speaker 2:You know, I agree with you but you have to play the cards that you're dealt. Yes, so if these are the players he has, he's got to figure it out. He has to try to play with what he's got.
Speaker 4:Yes, and he's got to figure it out away because an NFL quarterback it doesn't matter if you're Teddy Bridgewater, it doesn't matter who you are If you're a second stringer. If you give him nine seconds to run around in the pocket, the dude's the dude's going to find somebody to throw the ball to because the defensive backs can't cover for nine seconds. There's just no way. And that was my gig early when I was like dude Aaron, you're doing this four man rush and you only got one stud and they put three blockers on him.
Speaker 2:You got more than one stud because you got McNeil.
Speaker 4:Well, he was you know you could tear it up, so but everybody would, everybody would go to hutch and they would block him and there was no pressure.
Speaker 2:No, they were, because this is this is the issue. Right, you had to drop back as he had to worry about the pass. So you're dropping all your linebackers back into coverage. And then, when they got pressure, what would pretty do? You ran the ball. You had nobody there because you had to have everybody back in order to give everybody else time to rush the quarterback, and then pretty had the opportunity to scramble.
Speaker 3:They run for a first down every fucking time.
Speaker 2:So so here's the issue. So so you know where the weakness is right. You got to pick up offensive linemen, ends, safeties or quarterbacks.
Speaker 4:You got to pick up another edge rusher to go I would agree with a Hutchinson.
Speaker 2:Because they can't matter what. You can't double, team both sides.
Speaker 4:You can't double team both of them, because you're right or you have to leave a.
Speaker 2:you have to leave a, leave a running back in as an extra block.
Speaker 4:Yes, and a kill a team McNeil. He proved that he can. He can get that push in the middle. He can get that push in the middle, but the but the scheme has to be where you don't get out of your lanes. Because that's what happened with Brock Brock's not a runner, lamar Jackson's a runner, brock's not a runner. But we got out of.
Speaker 2:We got out of our lanes, we got over here and then he dipped Um oh, we're never going to say it's perfect, but you're trying to build a team, so you have to find out what your weakness is.
Speaker 5:I don't know what your weaknesses are until they're exposed, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think we all agree, the offense is clicking. Yeah, I think offense is clicking. There's a few things that need to be changed Very few.
Speaker 4:Somebody needs to spray. Fucking stick them on Josh Reynolds.
Speaker 2:So so you ever see, I don't know what was the, what was the? Replacement with the replacements and you guys like it looked like a jacked off an elephant, because he's got the stick of just dripping off his gloves.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they make a catch, you know. But and then he's drinking the water out there and he can't. He can't get rid of the water because it's stuck to his fucking hand. I looked like I just jumped off an elephant Once again.
Speaker 2:Once again, we're going to back on Josh Reynolds, who's been solid all year solid all year.
Speaker 4:You know he missed the catch to okay, he missed. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. They did not. They didn't throw a lot to do it and say no, but the one time they did when they needed it yeah, it's a catch that he usually makes Yep, and he dropped it. He dropped it. But that's where the mole yes, I said mole, that's where the momentum was going all San Francisco, because it was like the receivers and the offense. They got a lot of out of sorts kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Well, and that and this is where I will agree with you. I think sometimes the whole home field advantage they wouldn't want the Dallas game, this was played Detroit rather than playing out there, it's very well could have made the difference. I'm not saying it's going to make the difference, but it could have. I mean, temperature wise was the same difference. You know, 75 in the 75 and four field 75. So you're playing in Green Bay and it's 10 degrees out of Buffalo. It's Kansas City is negative 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, some bullshit. You know what I mean. Because, I think all those games should get moved like you play in Buffalo. Fuck that. If you got nine feet of fucking snow, you're going to move the game.
Speaker 4:I believe that the NFL absolutely ridiculous. I believe the NFL needs to say hey, if you're going to build a new stadium, it's got to be done, it's got to be done.
Speaker 2:I don't. I don't care if you have a retractable roof for the summertime, fall time, whatever, but it's got to be done, you got to have, you got to maintain at least 50 degrees. Yeah, it's got to be done, minus 50 because it's not fair for Miami, which I think is better than Buffalo as a team but they have to go to Buffalo. They go from 75 degrees in Miami to 30 to negative 20. You're talking almost 100 degrees swing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could be a foot of snow and a foot of dude, they were fucking shoveling snow in fucking Buffalo for like four days ahead of the game. Yeah, last year, I think it was last year.
Speaker 4:They actually they went to.
Speaker 2:Detroit. They moved the game to fucking Detroit because of fucking snow, but because Detroit had a home game, they didn't move it.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:And they're the only other fucking domed close enough up north, yeah, close enough to be able to play. So and I I never said agree, I think it's an unfair advantage, but at the same extent, you know where it becomes an unfair advantage. The other way, if you're a green bag, you're practicing indoors and now you go down to Miami, it's no big deal, play the game because you're practicing all week indoors, or Buffalo, your indoors practicing. They're not on that field practicing Right.
Speaker 4:Unless you go to mind, you go to my body, and it's raining and it's 13 inches of rain and the fucking field is just mud.
Speaker 2:Nobody plays on grass anymore, it's all it's all. It's all turf. It's all turf, it's all got drainage right. All I'm saying is you could? You could practice indoors that, even if you turn the facility up to 90. So you're used to the temperature down there. You could do that. Yes, you can't go down to Miami. They're going to turn the air conditioning down to negative 10. So they're practicing in the fucking cold.
Speaker 4:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:They're not going to do that, so it's an unfair advantage. If you're an up north team and you're used to playing in the cold, maybe they'll do half a day indoors and half a day outdoors to get used to it. You're living up there, so your blood's thicker.
Speaker 3:How many teams? How many? Stadiums are come on, how many stadiums don't have a dome on them anymore? A lot.
Speaker 2:A lot. You're talking Buffalo, pittsburgh. You're talking Patriots, green Bay, minnesota, minnesota, no, minnesota, do they?
Speaker 4:do they? Yeah, yeah, after.
Speaker 2:the after the dome fell in. Yeah, they had the. Whatever they were, they were playing.
Speaker 4:It was a super dark. I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, I think now they're fucking.
Speaker 2:dome fell in or something, so they were, they were playing, were not?
Speaker 4:sure, the metro dome. So how I think there's, I don't, I don't know if there's a retraction.
Speaker 2:You're, I'm just gonna spec. Jersey. I'm just gonna speculate there's work out the out of 32 teams, there's probably 10. They're probably at least play outdoors up north, up north.
Speaker 4:Yeah, up north yeah.
Speaker 2:I think Seattle's still outdoors.
Speaker 4:No I think they got, why, I don't know. I think they are. I think they're.
Speaker 2:I mean obviously Kansas City, that's like in the middle of the fucking country.
Speaker 4:Kansas City's open. So would that be insane. And we're talking about sports now, that soon. We're talking about sports now, but soon we're gonna. We're gonna hit on mine and Charlie's baby the VOD, but right now the same thing with the college football playoff. Do you think the Georgia Bulldogs could go to Ann Arbor in January one and beat them?
Speaker 2:No, that's the reason why the NCAA doesn't allow it. It's always in Texas, or California or Florida.
Speaker 4:It's Southern, it's Southern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a reason why, because it's a fair fight. You know, michigan or or Hal State, they're practicing indoors. They're gonna go to Texas, they're gonna go to California or Florida Orange Bowl, peach Bowl, whatever the fuck and they're gonna play indoors.
Speaker 4:But my thing is Ohio State plays outside.
Speaker 2:Michigan does too. There's not very many colleges that have a dumb stadium, penn State.
Speaker 4:Okay, so you get. You get these Southern schools that get to enjoy all the warmth. Make them make the national championship game in Ann Arbor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 4:Never, well, we'll never happen.
Speaker 2:Ncaa will never do it. No, they will never do it. Make it in.
Speaker 4:Ohio.
Speaker 5:Make it in the shoe, make it in the Happy Valley Never.
Speaker 4:Never, no, they won't never do it. But again we're talking about, uh, unfair bench, okay, and I'm not saying if Michigan's in it or Ohio State or Penn State, I'm talking about let's say it's uh, well, there's USC and fucking Florida.
Speaker 2:Yeah, usc, they'll never do it Florida State. You're making play in Ann Arbor. No, they won't ever do it. No, they won't ever do it.
Speaker 4:Because it's time of year, because it's cold, yeah, we don't want the weather Well, to make a difference.
Speaker 2:So who wins? So once again the NCAA has got to write the NFL's got it wrong.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So the the NCAA is all about making sure that things are correct, Just like to do with her overtime. I hate the NFL overtime. I love college football overtime.
Speaker 4:I like it.
Speaker 2:I like the NFL. No, line her up on the 25 or the 30. Runner in. The other team's got the same advantage coming in. Flip it the next overtime. If you tie it same thing, I hate the fact. You know, was it Wayne Fonch? Or was it high rod Marinelli? Who the fuck was it for the Lions? I was the head coach that took the wind over taking the ball.
Speaker 2:They kick like a fucking Marralli and they Marralli and they kick like a fucking 60 yards to win the game. And now they change it to where, if you don't score a touchdown, you know the other team. Now you have to get a field goal. The other team. You have to kick off.
Speaker 4:Yeah that's Brady rule.
Speaker 2:That's a Brady rule because they would take the ball and then Brady would go down 30 yards and then score kick a field goal, they win and everyone's like, oh I don't, I don't, I don't think it was the Brady rule, but it was. Yeah, it was stupid because you only had to go like 40 yards to kick a field and be done with a game.
Speaker 4:And then they went and said, okay, so if you kick a field goal they get, because back then one possession, first points. Right, that's, that's, that's. It was because it was uh, it was a playoff game against Kansas City that Brady went down. They got the ball at the overtime, brady went down, pass, pass, pass, kick the Benetiri, kick the fucking field goal. It was like well, that's not fair, because they should have got a chance to have the ball. And then they changed the rule to where every ball team gets a possess the ball.
Speaker 2:Well, it should be, because it got to a man I thought kicker fiend kicking 50 yards, yeah. So all you gotta do is get down to like the 35.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, you, you're spotting them five, six yards behind that, seven, usually seven, and then you got the ten yards of the end zone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, I mean so really you don't even have to hardly go but 30, 40 yards and guy your guy could probably kick the field goal, especially depending on if you're open air and you got wind or anything else. I mean it's just that's why they college has a right. You get the ball to 25. You get your first downs, you get a timeout, you score, you kick the field goal, flip the coin, so you go first. You both tie, it flips. The team that went first or went seconds now going first. You know what I mean. I think that's so much more exciting, especially for the fans, and it's and it's more fair.
Speaker 2:No yeah, it gives everybody the opportunity to have, because all you're doing the NFL is you're dropping 94 motherfuckers into coverage so you don't give up a big play and it's chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk all the way down the fucking field, because all you're worried about is making sure they kick a field goal rather than score a touchdown. Right, you know what I mean? I just I think I think the NCAA has it right there. I love the fact that they're going to a bigger playoff next year. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I do too, you know you're gonna get 12 teams in there rather than fucking four.
Speaker 4:Who knows? Who knows, somebody's got eyes, somebody gets hot and all of a sudden bam bam, bam.
Speaker 2:The issue is is you're always gonna have the big 10, the Pac 10, sec, acc. You're always gonna have these big schools getting in. And now maybe you can get in a Mac team, maybe you can get in the Mountain West team, maybe you can get in somebody else. Right, because we, we, we watch like I do. I don't watch the NBA. It's, it's garbage basketball. I don't care if they're playing anymore. It's like you to get nine steps before you call travel If you look at the guy wrong. It's a fucking foul. It's just fucking garbage. We watch the ticker today. Fucking LA scored like four games in a row with 130 points. Back in the eight late 80s or 90s, you scored 130 points in two games, two games. You were killing it. Motherfuckers are hacking you. It's all about defense.
Speaker 4:You know, turning upside down on your fucking. Yeah, I mean you didn't.
Speaker 2:You didn't take nine steps before they called a fucking travel it's. It's garbage. Basketball and NCAA it's drama. No, it's not basketball and NCAA now is where it's at, because I still call the game the way it's gonna be and you get the Cinderella teams in the tournament, right. You put 64 teams in a tournament.
Speaker 3:Why are we talking about basketball? Where are we talking?
Speaker 2:about hockey. We're talking about football.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about hockey. The Red Wings are fucking doing phenomenal yeah they are Patrick, kane Patrick.
Speaker 1:Kane, come on.
Speaker 4:That hip replacement surgery that everyone, everyone says, uh, the motherfucker, he's never gonna be able to do that. And the motherfucker, he came back and he's scoring goals and he's looking like a champ.
Speaker 3:He said the Red Wings are looking fucking impressive coming back from his fucking yeah. Recovery.
Speaker 2:Who's Patrick Kane?
Speaker 3:The newest member to the Red Wing.
Speaker 2:We actually went down to Red Wings game last year. We took uh business partner and I took wives down and they have this Molson like you know, the bear Molson Canadian. Yeah, they got this like Sky Lounge. Of course we're at the AJ Sky Lounge. They have the Molson Sky Lounge at the new arena, wouldn't?
Speaker 4:I hear you're talking about the AJ Sky Lounge.
Speaker 2:Never, never been, never been to LCA. So we went down there right Little Caesars Arena, I don't know. You go up to like the fucking 18th floor and they got this wrap around shit. That's all like. You know, the, the guys calling the game, where the the press box is, the whole shit. We're looking down. I think it's on my Facebook. I got some pictures from there. Amazing, you get your own buyer, the guy that plays the Oregon, the Oregon's, up there. We got pictures of the guy playing and shit. It's cool as fuck. You can see the entire game, oh yeah, entire game. And I tell you what, what a beautiful arena. I think you're beautiful.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, last year you see the Detroit's rocking man. I mean they're, they're doing it right, amy took me last year for my birthday and uh got me in. Recognizes a veteran.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 3:And they took me up where you're talking. Oh, they gave me a Detroit Red Wings coin, like a military challenge coin, right, the best seats in the house. And it's amazing because the seats where we were we were like six rows from the glass, but when we went up, to the sound of freedom sound of freedom baby, but when we went up to get that coin, it was the best seats in the home oh yeah, because you can see everything.
Speaker 2:Were you at the? Were you at the Moulson's Sky Lounge thing? Yeah, I'm talking about. Yeah, it's amazing, we were the, the Oregon player. Yeah, yeah, and his wife his wife comes to every game. She was up there. She's like oh, he loves this. You know he loves taking pictures of the people.
Speaker 3:It was awesome See the whole arena.
Speaker 2:Looking straight down.
Speaker 3:You can see, and it was perfect. I mean, it's not too high up that you can't see. You can see the players. You can see their names in their jersey. Still, yeah, best seats in the house.
Speaker 2:I just, I just love the fact that when you go to LCA and you're walking around indoors, it feels like you're outdoors and the crazy thing is Well yeah, because it's a cold news. Well, no, but I mean they make all the buildings look like they're the face of a building that you see on the street.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So like when you you walk around, it doesn't look like you're in the mall. It looks like a storefront oh, it looks like the front of a independent building, right Right In whatever. But it's so cool because when you're walking around there you'll see, like you know Tom's Realty or you know Jim's accounting business or whatever. So there's independent businesses that rent the spaces inside there. So when you walk by, it's not just you know a t-shirt shop, a jersey shop, a hot dog stand or whatever. There's actually businesses that rent space in there and actually have their offices. So it really feels like, as you're walking around, it actually feels like you're just walking down the street in downtown America. It was cool, you know what I mean. Like the way they, the way they have that building and we have. I've only gone to one Red Wings game there. I used to go to the Joe lot.
Speaker 2:My sister and brother-in-law had had season tickets there.
Speaker 3:I think I've been in there In LCA.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we went down to one where they did like a first responders police officer kind of night. If you signed up with the tickets you could get like a special jersey. Yeah, you know where it was either blue if you supported police, or red if you fire me a mask or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, that was. That was a game we went to so you could get this jersey I got. The hell is wrong with you, man, you should have.
Speaker 3:I got to go in the box. Did you stay in my?
Speaker 2:chair Did you share yourself?
Speaker 4:I stayed your chair.
Speaker 2:Somebody take it with you and leave a hundred dollars at the door.
Speaker 4:Somebody just shared. Myself I got to go.
Speaker 3:One time I got to go in the box sweet. And. Lca. Yeah, no, I was in the Joel. The Joel, oh, okay, never even been in that either, the Joel. And it was amazing because every period they catered something different. It was like it was a a different meal every time. Befe yeah.
Speaker 3:It's like like one time they brought in like like a pizza buffet, and the next time they brought in like I don't know, like hot dogs and hamburgers, and then the next time they brought in another thing and then they had TVs that you could watch it right there in the suite. But you could walk right out into the and watch it from there, from the front.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so the only, the only suite besides, like central michigan I was the fox news suite at the time I've ever been in was down at tiger or not tiger stadium, but uh america.
Speaker 2:So there's uh another business owner here in town. She had a big, you know you take the bus down. You had uh had a big suite came with the buffet and all that. So we were down to a comarica watching the tigers play and that was. That was pretty cool and I mean I've done it, like lune stadium and a couple other places. I got mixed feeling on the suites. I don't think you technically get the fan experience when you're not sitting with the fans. I agree, I like the fact that I can walk around and I've got space to sit and talk to people, but I'm there to watch the game, yeah so I don't want to sit, you know, way back in the suite, just bullshit with my friends.
Speaker 2:I don't mind doing it before or after the game, while the crowds either getting there or clearing out. That's cool games on. I want to be watching the game, that's why I'm there that's what I did when I was there.
Speaker 3:I still did that, but I was in the suite when I was watching the game yeah, and I think I think that's that's kind of part of it. You know, is the is the fan experience but, I was there with a group of people that I still had the fan experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, that's different if you're going with a, with a slight group of friends. I went with like 40 other people, right, jenn and I went bunch of people from town. We went down. I knew some of them. I didn't know all of them, so we kind of clicked up in our little groups and you watch the game or whatever. But yeah, I think you know when you, when you go to it it's. It's a good experience to be able to do it one time. I think it's better if it's all your friends.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah what then they're going, which is, which is huge. So my experience at comarica wasn't that way. It was more just this big group from town that went down, you know, and it was you know whatever a hundred bucks a person, you know, and they packed the bus with 80 people to pay for the suite, the bus trip and all the shit. It was still.
Speaker 3:It was still good, don't get me wrong I did get box seats at the cmu football game one year, the year I got back from iraq. It was a year cmu played the army. Oh really, somebody gave me me, somebody bought me tickets to that game anyway, and then when they found out I was going to the game, they were like uh no you can go sit in the box, and it was it was the day.
Speaker 1:It was the day of my homecoming party at the vfw.
Speaker 3:Oh cool. So I put my army uniform on and went up, sat in the box and they were like who you're rooting for?
Speaker 2:I was like, uh, yeah, they should have thrown your ass out of the stadium bingo that's what I'm talking about why I'm rooting for cmu I can't, I can't believe he got his army uniform.
Speaker 4:That's beside the point oh yeah, he had to get it. He had to get it tailored out.
Speaker 3:I just got back from iraq it was baggy, I mean sure, okay, your story. I was only 170 pounds. He's just graceful. Happened to you, brother, I just got back from my right hot beef injections, yeah hot beef.
Speaker 2:Uh, that captain was looking good, even though his name was tim. All right, well, let's get on the vod, so vod baby so for those listening and voices of democracy.
Speaker 2:We have the patriot's band. We talked about this not too long ago last week yeah, so these are, uh, these are scholarships that we give out. So voice democracies, high school age kids and junior high nope, junior high and below are a patriot's band. Yeah, yeah, so they earn scholarship money, or just money. They write uh the right essays, yeah, based on a theme from the national commander chief. He'd be puts those out every year yeah and basically what these students do is they.
Speaker 2:They get it through their school. They ran an essay. They have to do a voice recording of their essay yep they submit them yep they get judged at the local level, so the post level.
Speaker 2:So if we're in mount pleasant, all those students that submit those to our level, they get voted on, ranked or whatever, and we give them an award, which is money, a money award, yep, first, second, third, so on and so forth. Then the winners, the first place winners of both those events, move on to the district level, which would be a regional. So, yep, like, for ours is called district 11. That's going to probably cover 10 counties. Yeah, pretty much basically in northern michigan, east side, northern michigan, yep.
Speaker 2:So all the way from alpina shepherd alpina, and I don't know what all the counties are so basically, if you're looking at the map, it's going to be your index finger, second finger, almost to the middle finger. Yep, right, if you hold your hand up as a map, yep, which is awesome for being michigan, right? People ask where you're from. You just hold your fucking hand up and point to somewhere where you from right yep, basically right I've never lost everybody knows everybody knows he tried, nobody knows anything else, so he just point point out the hand where you're from.
Speaker 4:I'm from here, yep.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're from mid michigan yep, that's what I pointed to pretty much yeah good old rosie palm, you know if you're looking at that tim's date you're looking by hand I got 46 running right all the way across the fucking and you pretty much do, yeah, creasing your hand yeah, and then uh, and then the winners of those districts move on to the department level, or we would say the state level. Yep, and those kids on the, the patriot pen level, when up to a thousand, well right, but I think the minimum is 500 yeah, 500, 500, 500, 500, and then the winner and then the winner gets right.
Speaker 2:So there's, there's all bunch of scholarships, so there's 12, 12 people. They get to make it yep, because we have 12 districts.
Speaker 2:There's, like you know, whatever six or seven that are going to be a $500 scholarships one seven that are 750, some that are 800, couple 900, then the winner gets a thousand and then the voice democracy, it's like 1500. Those are the high school kids 1500, there's like six of those. And then they go up from there all the way to six thousand dollars and the winner of that? They get a trip to national, which would be the national level at washington dc. So they'll get, they'll get paid trip to go out there to win 35 thousand dollars so not only at the post level did they probably win 500 bucks.
Speaker 2:Then at district they win six thousand or they might win two thousand. That district, yeah, department, they win another six thousand. Then if they go to national they could win another 35.
Speaker 2:So total, I mean you're talking 40, 45 thousand dollars a ton of money to go to school, that that kid could win, that student could win. Patriot spends, the younger kids and middle school kids. If they get all the way, they could, you know, maybe make six or seven thousand right. And not only does the voice of democracy winner, which is high school kids, they're only do they get a all expense paid trip for the student, the guardians, parents, whatever, out to washington dc. But they also. This year they won. Uh, what was the trip to Tennessee?
Speaker 4:oh there was a trip to valley forge valley forge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, what was what was thinking?
Speaker 4:valley forge the valley forge was. It was add on to the trip to national that they would take them to valley forge so they could see where we're custer, get the fuck out of the fucking, fucking brits and, uh, they take them there to the battlegrounds and the museums and and all that bullshit. That was like an add-on trip.
Speaker 2:It was the first time I've ever heard of it yeah, it was me too, which I think is is is pretty cool for the students that that have the opportunity to do that. But so here in the department of michigan or the state of michigan, we had our voice, democracy, patriot pen. Uh, we called the mid-winter conference for the vfw and our auxiliary members to go to um. So on saturday, during the day for the general membership, we have our cfa, which is uh council of administration.
Speaker 4:So essentially, that is that's when we make rules, of regulations and we vote on things and we make bylaws and and the membership get to hear us, uh, but we on the cfa we vote, we actually which is the.
Speaker 4:So the cfa is all the district commanders, yep all the post commanders, so you have to be a district commander in order to be able to sit at the table and have a voter voice and we voted in our very own chaplain from post 3033, terry coons, is now the department chaplain because the cfa voted on him and he won the election.
Speaker 2:Yep, and, and I'm not gonna like it's okay, you can have a woody right now. Okay, I'm gonna have a woody, because we have a table, so I can't see it he, he fucking landslide well, the guy that, so I, so I talked to terry after after the dinner, so we'll get to you later. And I said to him and he goes, the guy that ran against him, because I didn't, I didn't even know anybody else was running for me.
Speaker 2:I didn't either or I wouldn't have thrown my name on the hat yeah, but he landslide, I'm talking I'm talking everybody, we are 25, 24 votes, uh, I think.
Speaker 4:The cfa, there's 12 district commanders and you have a the commander, junior senior, junior senior, uh, chief of staff chief of staff, pass the department commander you blah, blah, blah blah and I think he had to get like 18 or 19 at least yeah, he got. He got all but like three votes. Yeah, and it was a lands, as steve nix says landslide because malvaga rocked, oh, but he is more than well deserving, so so past district commander, so past district commander, but he's also, he's been a member of our polls forever.
Speaker 3:Vietnam veteran for godnegals president.
Speaker 2:He's got neagles, which is another riot group veteran service organization rioters group. Uh, he's been the president there forever does a great job. Huge support of anything in the community doesn't he own that insurance company?
Speaker 4:that is yes, our insurance policies come through him. Uh, and most of the department michigan's insurance policies come through him. Yeah, um, also, he is a big founder, the, the, the. When I say that the, I'm saying the first vietnam war memorial. That's in mount pleasant, michigan right now because there's been others that came up, but mount pleasant was the first. It is the number one, first one that they ever did so well and he was he was a huge supporter of that.
Speaker 2:But that's in. That's an individual states, the national no, I'm talking about.
Speaker 4:No, I'm talking about in mission, yeah, yeah because other people, other people in michigan will say well, we have one in beldy we have one in lansing, not the same but the number one, the first one that was ever in the state of michigan.
Speaker 2:That's, that's right. That's what I wanted to clarify in the state of michigan.
Speaker 4:Right was in mount pleasant michigan and he had a huge he he, he run that I mean he, he lost a brother in vietnam and that's that's his baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's his baby well, that's, that's the reason why he's with the forgotten eagles and but their district or regional or whatever chapter president, chapter president, however they, however they, they determine their riders group, but and we've always been excited for our riders group at our post to be able to join in their events when, when possible right to help support those guys. I think it's it's always been a it's always been a good thing and it was great to see him recognize and be voted in as the chaplain.
Speaker 2:He's done a great job at our post forever and he's a district chaplain so he could get up there in front of a group of 300 people and give an invocation or anything else bow your heads bitches and I do an absolute yeah he does a great job.
Speaker 4:So this great man great man.
Speaker 2:So this, this vod and patriot span was down to cal mizu this last weekend and I'll stand up here at our our next post meeting. Do the same thing it did last year shame and I will.
Speaker 2:If you are a member, no matter where you're at, whatever state, they all do them. And if you're a member, don't care. If you're a auxiliary member, don't care. If you're a post member, you're not going to these things. Shame on you.
Speaker 2:These things are so great and out of all the conventions, conferences or anything you could go to, this is by far my favorite and one you know. Being able to meet other people from around your state, department, district, whatever, it's always fun. As well as hanging out with your auxiliary brothers and sisters, your post brothers and sisters, whoever. That goes great. But to shake the hands of when you go down the next year. It's the same people you know and you become friends with people.
Speaker 2:But to see these students that love our country because more than likely they don't have to turn anything in, much less care this much to see them be recognized, to see their faces, to watch their parents and the pride that they have in their kids, and when you walk up to a mom and dad say I really appreciate your, your son, your daughter being here, blah, blah, blah, blah. And to see the love that they give back to us for putting this on for their kid, that's so huge, right. And then we have a student at a district 11 on the Patriot Pan. He was seventh grade or sixth grader.
Speaker 4:That's that one seventh grader mr Dary, mr Dary, mr Dary well, his post was out of far wall, far wall 30 39 and I tell you what we'll see.
Speaker 2:This kid, as you get like a, you get like a roster in here, at least in michigan, and you're kind of checking the box and you're right now, okay, this kid got eighth place and your, your kid's still in it, and the seventh place, oh shit, our kids are gonna get 700 bucks, you know. And then, okay, his name wasn't called, okay, he's gonna get $900 this time, you know, and you're like you're so excited to see your student climb the ladder because they start at 12th place and they finish at first place, right, and then you get down to the last two and your student's still in it from your district, you know, like we get excited.
Speaker 4:Your dicks are enough to cut diamonds, man. We get excited because our kid.
Speaker 2:That might be out of your post, might not be, but they're in your district. That's you're, that's still your kid, it's our kid. We get excited for that. And then to see him win, or you know, you they're at like a head table kind of thing and you're sitting there watching them and you can see like they're looking around like holy shit, I'm still in it, holy shit, I'm still going. Like they get crazy excited. So you get more excited. And then wherever they place it doesn't matter if they place 12th or they place first you're standing up, you're clapping, you're showing them support because that kid's got america first. Yep, you know, whatever that, whatever that thing they wrote about, you know they're there, they're at the show. So it's no different. If you make the nfc championship and you lose the game, you're in the show you're in so he's in the show or she's in the show.
Speaker 2:You're so excited for that kid. You don't even know him, but you're excited for him.
Speaker 4:It was crazy because, mr darryk, okay, I'm the district commander, so I walk the uh vod uh winner down participant and her name was isabel walton and she won a thousand bucks. Oh, she was from out, plus she's from out, plus she's sponsored from our post. And then kathy sass, who is the district 11 president, walked darryk. I mean we were four abreast, but basically she walked the patris, she walked the patriot and I walked the vod. You can't have him hold your arm anymore because people are uncomfortable with with that whole touching a stranger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, touching the stranger, and you're kind of creepy, I, I'm creepy.
Speaker 4:But but isabel is about like when I, when I want to walk, she reached up and she was like okay, because she understands, because she's she's taught, well, she understands that, hey, you're being escorted in. What do you do when you're being escorted in you? You are mo, the are mo. And I was like oh, sorry, dear, can't do that. And she's like well, that's stupid.
Speaker 4:I'm like yep, I agree with you, but rules are there are people that never had an issue with it, so they threw a fit about it. So now we can't do it. And and she even said she goes well, that's dumb. I'm like that. It is dumb, but it is rules and rules. So we come up to the door and I'm a big person. No, shut up, you whores. Shut up, don't I? I didn't say fat, I said big, I'm six, I'm six, two, two hundred and seventy pounds. Okay, brought at the shoulders, narrow at the hips. I got a bat at the head, yeah. And then cathy sass says she's a big lady. So we were trying to get into the door where we could get for a breast. Well, that wasn't happening. Sports fans wasn't happening. So I went in kind of at an angle and we angled and we went up and come up and we got the pictures and we took them down. They said but the whole way, derrick, mr, there you go, mr derrick, sorry, sorry, mr derrick, mr derrick's like he's under 18, he can't listen.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's like hey, I I ain't reading.
Speaker 4:I, I ain't gonna read this, I'm not reading my. I don't want to read. And he's just going on and kathy's like you know, mr derrick? She didn't say mr derrick, she said hey, just you know, if you win, just look above them, don't think about them. And I looked at him and I was like, hey, when you read your thing, when you win and he looked at me, goes, am I gonna win? I'm like, hey, your district 11, you're gonna win. I said, when you win, just pretend like we're all standing there in our underwear and he he laughed, yeah, he laughed.
Speaker 4:I said so, so don't worry about it. I said, just get up there and do your gig. And he's like okay, okay, I don't like this, I don't like this, because he's kind of kind of 80, 80 hd kind of thing. And he was like no, I don't who. And then I got to set at the table with his mom and dad and with isabel's mom and dad and with the director for the vio vod, john wanington, and my I don't know how I want to call this my mentor, terry and sensual. So we sat with the parents the eagle, the eagle. So we sat with the parents and they were asking us all these questions about whoa well, they don't know. Yeah, yeah, they were. They were asking all this shit and john did a great job because I was gonna I was gonna kind of jump in because I'm in a district commander for two and a half years and, uh, john's been my vod guy.
Speaker 4:But I was like no, john, this is your baby, not my baby you be the man okay, and then, before this all fucking started, I don't know how charlie feels about it, but they had a uh, retired master sergeant no sir, major sergeant, major sergeant, major major like yep army 29, 29 30.
Speaker 2:You're saying 30 something years 30 something years.
Speaker 4:He was salty. Oh, they had him come up. They put the lights down, they turn on a thing with a flag behind the thing there was a, basically a light behind the american flag yeah and he did the old, glory, old glory speech and he, he didn't read it.
Speaker 2:It was all memory. He didn't read it.
Speaker 4:He fucking felt it. He didn't read it and he felt it, he walked around and he walked around and he bellowed and I'm thinking he had like a speaker thing no, he did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because he didn't have microphones.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and he bellowed and he fucking did this fucking thing and I've never heard of it before, of you, old glory, yeah I've never heard this.
Speaker 2:I've never. I've never heard it live like that. But yeah, I know the old glory speech because that's, that's a written thing. Yeah, I've never heard it live like that.
Speaker 2:But he did it without any reading anything, yet he was mic'd up just through the form and he absolutely passionate, killed it and and whoever lined him up, which I've heard, barry walter- very heard ray commander, ray low bar's department commander and had you lined him up and then barry walters absolutely he killed it and I saw people peeling their their glasses out their face crying barry walters, he did, he did an absolutely great job. And I tell you what I was there last year and there was nothing like that. And to have that this year was crazy, impressive and I know that one.
Speaker 4:The students felt it, but us in the audience felt it yeah because then, and it was, a it was a it was a cool thing to do then he walked back, barry walter, called up a young lady that's a gold star, mother, and for you, they don't use theirs, theirs, theirs. I want to, I want to throw this use, use, because our national commander, commander, commander in chief commander in chief. It's from jersey, so everything is used. So you means out there, it means you, that means everybody, right, it's like y'all, y'all, what do you? What do you say? Use y'all what up, what I don't know? Yeah, he doesn't know but, they.
Speaker 4:They call her up gold star mother bear gold star mother.
Speaker 2:I want to just cut you off real quick so the people that out there that might not know. So there's a blue star mother and gold star mother. So if you're a blue star mother, that means you have son, daughter, husband, whoever that's deployed right, actually serving the gold star mothers are those mothers that have deceased children. So I want to make sure the distinction, because you might drive by and you'll see a flag hanging in a window with a blue, with a, with a blue. That just means that their son, daughter, whoever is actually serving a deployed maybe see the gold star on the flag. That means they've lost son, daughter, whatever, yep, right. So there's. I just want to make sure you made that distinction for no, I because because people might not know so barry walter.
Speaker 4:He's here in vietnam that he's our uh department quarter master adjutant, adjutant service officer for 100 years. I mean, he, he does such a great job with veterans. So he's setting up here and he's talking and he's crying. He's crying. He takes his hanky out, he moves his glasses, he wipes his fucking tears away.
Speaker 4:Right, I'm sitting here at the table with these parents going not gonna cry, not gonna fucking cry, not gonna fucking cry, not gonna fucking cry. Right, I was, yeah, I'm proud to admit it. Well, I'll tell you what. And then he said we're gonna bring this young lady up who is an auxiliary member and I've seen her several times but I never knew, and she's a gold star mother. And they had the serge major come down and give her a flag that flew over our capital, the pentagon. The pentagon, pentagon flew over the fucking pentagon. And he had it all wrapped up and he said please accept this on behalf of a grateful nation. This, this flag, flew over the pentagon on what it was it was like january 14th of this year, yeah and I'm crying like a little bitch.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm crying like a little bitch, and so I you know. But luckily I was trying to hide it. And then I went back to the back where the, the water was and the coke was and berry was there. And I looked at berry and I said, if you and ray ever do this again to me, I'm gonna fucking kill you. Well, the good thing, this ray won't be there next year.
Speaker 2:It's campere's turn, but she's got some big shoes to fill, yeah and berry looked at me and goes what do you mean?
Speaker 4:I said look it, if you're gonna make me cry, tell me ahead of time. So I know I'm gonna cry. Don't. Don't sneak up on me, motherfucker berry. Berry just laughed. He's like, hey, he goes. You know me. And ray just thought this was fitting and I was like it was.
Speaker 2:I was like it was very fitting and the and and the best part of it that I I love is you have 24 students patriot pen vod kids plus their parents, plus the teacher of the year, which we do a high school teacher of the year, we do an elementary school teacher of the year, so on and so forth, and you have these students that are patriot pens, plus the vod's, the voice democracy kids. Watching this and seeing how much all of us in the audience love the country and care about the country and and everything else, and they get to see it and watch it and feel it too, like we do.
Speaker 2:You know, just like our commander chief stood there and said all these students, you are the future leaders of america, yeah right and, and the thing is and how important is that yeah, like when bill was the district commander.
Speaker 4:Okay, because I followed bill, we didn't have that when, when you were the district commander, I mean we, we walked them down and that was it. But but I'm telling you, this was uh, I, I don't know how they they will ever redo it.
Speaker 2:I, I don't, I don't like I say, like I say, kimberley has got some big shoes to fill in my chair and I feel bad for her because how do you follow that? I know, how do you. I mean, you can only go so high. And I'm not saying she can't figure something out, that's.
Speaker 4:That's her job to figure something out, but that's our major and and we had a hundred and five year old war war two lieutenant nurse nurse in the audience she's gonna be a hundred and six years old in february april. Oh, that's february. I thought it was april. Okay, we're, we're gonna whatever either.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's just call it march, we'll split the difference. Call it bingo, bingo, I'm all about it, but she's up there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean she was there and she has her, her faculties. She can't get around much if she was her body's old. Well, in six, I hope so. Yeah, but she's got, she's got her mind. Yeah, she hundred and fucking five years old.
Speaker 3:I'll be lucky if I'm alive at 70 man you'll be lucky if you make it to next year.
Speaker 2:You're lucky if you get out of here, we might. I got the shovel still I'll bury you. Say something else about my sister.
Speaker 4:I'm buried your ass on back under the snow you're gonna go on the ship on a river by the end of the night, but it's, that's what.
Speaker 2:That's what the VOD is about, that's what that conference is about, and it's and that's the reason why I will stand up at the membership and I'll say if you're not going to this thing, shame on you. Because I used to sit there in the membership and I listened to colon, which is our VFW, rapid the pulse then then and he would sit there and say you know all this that the other you give us report every month and I'm thinking to myself fuck off, why are you wasting my time like this means nothing to me. We went, jen, I went down last year and my wife's lifetime. I can remember VFW.
Speaker 2:We go down and out of every conference that we could go to, if I had to miss convention and fall conference, we would, which we did, fall conference but if there was one out of the three we had to make this is the one. It's business formal. It's so important for these kids to have the support. It's such a good time and unfortunately the the Radisson to Kalamazoo here in Michigan was under renovation, so the normal room that we'd have for the hospitality room wasn't available they were there in Milan, the top floor, so that that that changed things this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot, a lot it did, because I think that kind of separate a lot of people yep as you went to the, the hospitality room that the department had and just was too loud or too small or too crowded people in the hallway and just didn't quite work. And it's not the hotel's fault, right, they have to do this, they have to do their shit and as a plumbing mechanical contractor, I get it. Things take time, so it just, it just didn't work out so hopefully next year it's gonna be better to be back to normal district 11 still rocked.
Speaker 4:We had like at one time, we had like 15 people with the auxiliary and the post. Yeah, and, and that wasn't even with you and Jeff?
Speaker 2:no, because I just throw messages out like hey, when's people gonna be there, and anything back yeah. I'm not naming names, tim, but you didn't mess with me back two days later, but school well, you know we did our own thing, I'm sure me and there being chicken man, chicken me and lady, gentlemen, a hotel room by ourselves without a chicken, 18 year old at that point, at home, chicken bow yeah, I was going down there. That going down there, maybe you know it was part of the gig but it was fucking.
Speaker 2:It's a great weekend, it's a great weekend, and that's that's. That's what the VFW, the American Legion they have bats, all these other things should be doing, and that's your important, these kids that are out there, that are America first. They get it, they understand it next year parents are great, the teachers are great next year.
Speaker 4:We're gonna do this, whether he likes it or not. Bill and Amy's going. We are gonna push Billy and Amy to go because you need to get back in the fold. I agree you can't be number.
Speaker 3:You're out of here yeah, I'm getting ready to roll, okay well, you get where you going home for what chicken bone?
Speaker 2:she's already sleeping I you can leave your beer. We're good. Yeah, we'll drink that. Don't take that. It'll be here for the next time we show up to a podcast okay, so everybody say goodbye to past district commander Bill Payne.
Speaker 4:Past department riders group rep director director, past post commander, and Billy, you take care, and nobody likes you anyway. So peace out, fuck off. See you later, brother, I love you love you guys catch you later.
Speaker 2:For some odd reason, we lost the Facebook live volume wise, but I don't even understand why.
Speaker 4:Well, we're just gonna have to fire the nerds.
Speaker 2:I don't know why the nerds aren't, so let me just throw something out there, see if he hears me yeah, cuz I gotta go through freaking microphones on oh, I'm sorry no, you're all good, we're still.
Speaker 2:We're still rolling the Spotify I heart radio, all the other things, but you know, is as far as anybody out there listening, you know, these, these things that we do, they might sound like they're all about us, but they're really not. You know it's. We're out there to support the community or out there to drive the VFW mission, which is community, which is service, and it's definitely about the kids. So you know, we spend a lot of time and effort. Everything that we do at the VFW is all voluntary. Nobody gets paid, nobody gets really compensated for their time, their efforts, their travel, their hotels, their dinner tickets. We donate tons of money to events. We donate, you know, just ton of money in donations. You know these, these kids that win money at your post level, your district level, department level. They've all been fundraised and it's fitting to see you have adults out there to help support the kids.
Speaker 2:All too often, as adults, especially if you have kids, you know they're not doing their chores at home and we're we're getting on them, we're bagging on them, we're doing something. The point is we're there to teach kids. And when you have great parents, especially when it comes to voice democracy or comes to the Patriot pen. You have these parents that understand as veterans we have concerns, we have things we've, we've served a bigger purpose and now they're instilling those same things to their children, where they're writing these essays with the direction or theme that our commander-in-chief, which is the commander of all the VFWs in the world, which Dwayne said this year, which I actually met him as the national junior a few years ago in Flint, he came, absolute gray guy, he was giving a speech and he's making everybody laugh and he's from New Jersey and you know I got the New Jersey you know, education, you know from public public education in New Jersey you know you're such a great speaker, you can easily connect with them.
Speaker 2:But when you have the parents, jerry, Geri actually always called the VFW the geriatric genjoint which which which falls back to, you know, the old time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and, and I was, I was on it because, like I thought of my grandfather, certain World War two and I'm gonna walk in there and they're all sitting around telling their stories and doing their bullshit your local VFW, american Legion and vets, whoever isn't like that anymore. Right, they're just not. We're about community, it's about community. So you know, when we raise these funds, or we, we take our time. You know me that it probably cost, you know myself, three, four hundred dollars just to go to this thing, and that's hotel rooms, gas, travel, food, all the other things that we had to pay beer.
Speaker 2:Charlie doesn't drink a lot of non-drinking Miller lights tonight cuz that's a union made beer and has a United Association local 85. Steve Finner, that served my apprenticeship as a union tradesmen. Now I might be in the management side now as a company, but Malamutha unions, I still drink Union beer trust me 100%, I'm gonna drink Union beer. Now there was a union made liquor out there. I don't know about sponsor this podcast. I'll drink your shit and I'll definitely give you the promo on this. You let me know and send me a couple samples and if it's any good.
Speaker 2:I like whiskey and bourbons to us don't feel bad if you want to he's an equal opportunity drinker, absolutely. But you know so it costs us all money, it costs us all time because we can away from family or kids or whatever else going on. But we're there to support the people that support us and that's huge because all too often, you know, nowadays it's, you know, police, fire, ems. We're not fighting really wars anymore, you know. You look at 9-11, not not wars that we know about well for sure.
Speaker 2:You know, I wish Trey was here because he would tell some more stories about stuff that he was doing, because there's a lot of behind-the-scenes things you know even you and I.
Speaker 4:You and I did this company.
Speaker 2:I didn't met fast company. You know I was behind the scenes thing where you know where it's not a war but we're still there. Well, we're still doing. There's a lot of things that you know about, a lot of things you don't know about some of the people. A lot of things you shouldn't know about well, but general public doesn't need to know, right, but you don't know.
Speaker 4:It's good for you well, hold it right, fuck, and that there you go. Did I say it the right way? No, it's fun and like that. Oh, it's fuck and like that, right, okay, there you gotta make sure that.
Speaker 2:I gotta get this down we gotta make sure techie gets his plug. You know he's not here, he's sitting at home one or whatever probably say let's just say a rubbing one.
Speaker 4:Okay, we won't say masturbation.
Speaker 2:Well, you just did and he's probably probably rubbing.
Speaker 4:Okay, never mind, I didn't know if he's like rubbing his knee, cuz he heard his knee work.
Speaker 2:He's probably stand at your picture on Facebook downloaded. Yeah, I'm guessing tech. Stop that, you son bitch somehow we lost lost the Facebook live volume at some point. He said he can't hear us again, but I think now they can. Maybe it was me answering the text message, or but we'll figure it out. I'm sure I screwed it up. Well, I'm on an island without the two nerds here, yeah, and that's gonna have to be a rule.
Speaker 2:Both nerds can't take the same no, definitely not allowed to have the same night off, especially we have some important talk about. Yeah, once again, this time Spotify, I heart and all the other things, so I'll make sure one of the nerds gets this SD card and they can get it.
Speaker 2:They can get it uploaded. We keep going, but we're trying to do the Facebook thing cuz I think there's a lot of people out there that you know might want to listen in or comment or do something so lately lately we've had people that try to comment, that try to try to get in there, like hey, we can't hear you, whatever I mean lately.
Speaker 2:So so we're like nine of us in here or that typically are here. We're all infantry guys. Yeah, we pull triggers. Yeah, there's like two guys that have any idea how to use technology yeah, we could.
Speaker 4:We kick doors in, put two in their chest, one on the head, and look for something else to kill. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm at the age where I'm dangerous for technology. These guys are like oh, if we, you know, convert this to this and we do this and we do that, we could have this ticker and we could, you know, like yeah, and I'm thinking about what's going on.
Speaker 4:I'm thinking about well, whatever you said, I might as well just jump upside down, stand on my head with my thumb in my ass, because I have no fucking clue you just talked about, okay so, tim, that's here tonight.
Speaker 2:It's post matter of our post here at 333 Mount Pleasant. I'm president right here. We actually went out for a ride today yes, we did what was the temperature here in Michigan?
Speaker 4:Central.
Speaker 2:Michigan 34 fucking degrees today wasn't 34 34 didn't even make 35. I left here at the office, jumped on the bike it's like drinking we got rolling.
Speaker 4:You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. So we always say you can't fucking ride in January unless you fucking ride in January, that's it that's it, so we had Trey who's pussy. The vice president right he's a pussy.
Speaker 2:He's the vice president right well, he bailed out us.
Speaker 4:Oh no, he had his daughter's thing.
Speaker 5:So I'm gonna do the thing tonight don't, don't, don't be cutting on him.
Speaker 4:I'll give you family, brother, I'll give him a break.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna come across this table smack in the mouth. Don't bag, I do I'll give him a break because he had his daughter. I will smack in the mouth. What I'm saying is if you got family stuff going on, yeah, absolutely get it. There's, there's other, there's other brothers and sisters that will fill your shoes for you. It's cool, I get it, trust me, I get it and Joker and Joker had the dad thing.
Speaker 4:I get it. Yep, so we're probably gonna Monday. Probably Monday next week's gonna be beautiful, next week's, yeah, beautiful. I like 44, yeah, beautiful, and 44 degrees. We ain't no pussy.
Speaker 2:So you dress for negative 20. Yeah, pretty simple to dress for 35 as long as the roads are dry that's half the battle and you're cold we're out there and we were. We were having lunch. I'm gonna say at lunch it might have been lunch out of a can glass we had food.
Speaker 2:Well, we did have food earlier, but last stop we made we were having our second lunch out of a glass and we actually had a guy come up to us and go is, are those your bikes? Out there? Well, we're the only dude two dudes sitting in here with our vests on yeah right, it's good vests on and we're like, yeah, those are our bikes. He's like man, it's awesome, glad to see you guys out.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's kick ass yeah like, and he was like it's too cold for me. Well, the fuckers like 80 years old, yeah 80s, 80s too cold for you, right? The guy in the degree where I still have a sweater, I get it, but it was this is the whole biker dude. He was like yeah, that's badass, you guys are out there right.
Speaker 4:He told me he's like yeah, I used to do that shit oh yeah it's just. It's too cold for me now I get it.
Speaker 2:That's. That's cool. You gotta know your limitations. And I'm not saying we're badass guys, no, or anything else, but when you put your hands on the handlebars and you start riding, and especially when you can throw our back batch for the VFW on it we're like.
Speaker 4:We're like a fucking rolling billboard billboard.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what it's supposed to be about. So when we go out there and we go to bike nights or you go to events or you do this, you know you'd be surprised at how many veterans that are out there that are riding independently that could qualify to be the VFW, american Legion or anything else. I don't care, you don't have to be a VFW member. If I can help you get into a riders group for American Legion riders or AmVet riders or whoever?
Speaker 2:what it's about is linking brothers and sisters up with other brothers and sisters. That can be your support system yeah, I don't care that's.
Speaker 2:It's not our mission all the time to. If you're not a VFW, you're not. I'm a fucking American Legion member myself, right? So you know, I get tired of hearing people like, oh, you think you're just better than us, or you're the varsity team and we're only the JV team. No, what it's, it's about veterans serving veterans. Yes, regardless of what type of veteran you are, it doesn't matter. You served, you did your time, you got out at, whatever your situation was. I'm all about it. All about it, because if we're not taking care of ourselves no one else was getting on the series of why we lobby Congress as, like veterans groups, right, if we don't stand together, we stand divided, and my, my thought that's a unit thing.
Speaker 4:Yes, my thought process, process with veterans, is this doesn't matter of you and I don't know how to say this doesn't matter if you had the opportunity to go to combat, which I'm not gonna say that's a good kid or not, or whatever it's, it's all good. It's all good. All the matters is that you, oh Charlie, I hello, hello, hello. All the matters is that you, as a veteran of the United States of America, you at one point signs your name on the dotted line up to and including your life. You did that. You were the dude or the chick or however you want. I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, offend anybody by calling the chick, but but you did it. You said, hey, I'm gonna sign on the dotted line and if my country asked me to go to war, wherever that may be, I'm gonna go.
Speaker 4:A lot of people don't get that opportunity and again, I'm not gonna say it's an opportunity. Some people don't get that opportunity, but but they were ready to do it. They were ready to say I will go and support my country from all enemies foreign, domestic, and I will go, kick ass and take names, and that's what a veteran is. The veteran is is that person that is more about the country than they are about themselves?
Speaker 2:well, it's all about the greater good great right, you know so you know it comes down to the south yeah, yeah so it's not always you have to get recognition for doing good right or doing bad, but it's doing what's best for everybody.
Speaker 2:And you know, you look at any type of first responder as a matter of CMS firefighters, police, yeah, nurses, doctors, whoever we all get paid in some aspect, right? Some better than others. Yep, some of us have bigger dangers than others, right? It's like you know, typically when there's a gun fight or a shooting or something, ems fire will sit back until the police go in and they make sure that it's safe for them to come in.
Speaker 2:Yep, or you know you're sitting in Afghanistan, iraq, syria, wherever you know you're gonna. You get paid differently to do different things and one's not any better than the other. We all serve a purpose right. We all realize that the person purpose is better than our own well-being yep some people are up to it, some people are like.
Speaker 4:I know if there's any more pleasant Isabella County police officers here. Hey, if you get in a firefight, let me know like I'll roll in with you. I'll roll in with you and take care of business.
Speaker 2:I could probably guarantee you that if there is a veteran that sees a police officer struggling with somebody on the side of the road and we drive by, what we're gonna, I guarantee you that we'll probably stop by, let you know that we're a friendly and help you in the situation if it's justified. Maybe you're gonna say I don't know who you are and get away get away. A veteran will probably understand that. Get out, I'll get away.
Speaker 4:I'll be like hey, dude, I just want to kick his teeth in, cuz I mean I do well, but no.
Speaker 2:But the crazy thing is, as a combat veteran, what do you? What do you miss? Adrenaline. And when you get the adrenaline from the fight, you get it from the fight. So I might be out to a bar and I hear a couple people getting loud. Course my course, my heads turning you start getting ramped up, course my heads turning. Yep, I hadn't seen it and unfortunately, with Jen, I mean it's happening at our post absolutely, that's what I'm talking about, and no matter what I can't go on, it stops yes, everything stops and you're going and well, but it stops.
Speaker 2:I happened a couple years ago and I'm like look man, this is my house, mm-hmm, you take your garbage out to the out to the park, a lot out to the street, you're just not doing it my house? Yep yeah, and the guy wanted to swing. I mean I'm like, do what you gotta do well, not gonna get my ass kicked, well not gonna say I'm some badass fighter well, no, you're not gonna get your ass kicked, but you think? You think I was afraid.
Speaker 2:No, you're gonna have 13 other motherfucking veterans of watching you, I get you can be jumping over you and I get you, but it was like I was, yeah, and I used to get itchy, itchy, and that's before I even became a member of the post. We'd be out anywhere and I was itchy for it, because that's what we miss. We miss that it was all pheromones or not pheromones. That's like tracking other sexes or whatever. But I mean, you get you miss that adrenaline rush right with you Marines.
Speaker 2:I understand that, cuz you're trying to attract the baby so wait a minute, how did you get, how did you get your road name? You get that road name from a Marine kind of it's not it's make sure we tell the truth. My man kind of, but I'm not gonna.
Speaker 4:But you guys don't get that. You guys don't get the pleasure of hearing how I got my road name. My dogs do, but I'm the jeweler. I'm the jeweler because I cut diamonds. I'm not gonna tell you how I cut down just 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:You can't hear anything. Who just a? We gotta get the nerds in here you gotta get the nerds in here.
Speaker 4:You will have to put them on the payroll tell me we're on.
Speaker 2:I don't know why speaker's not working. I'm gonna kill the live, so that we're now no longer live.
Speaker 4:I have no idea. We're no longer live because we're. We're still working on bugs and the nerds are here.
Speaker 2:The nerds not here it is what it is, but that's all right, we'll still roll with what we got hey, you're running like a bride.
Speaker 4:That's right, we'll rock out. First thing that goes to hell in combat is the plan. When the bullets are flying, people are dying, the plan goes down.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna try to go live again real quick okay but we go to plan B and the only reason I might do it? Because I want to see if it actually works right right.
Speaker 4:I got you.
Speaker 2:I got. I'm all love brother, I love everybody, I'm turned over. I've turned over a new leaf let me see and maybe this guy stay off my phone that could be.
Speaker 4:No man. No more angry, angry Tim.
Speaker 2:I have no idea. Why don't you text people? Text all right says we're live right now. Why don't you get a hold of tech or message Krista, see if we're back live, krista. So for those maybe catching up to the live right now. We apologize, we're trying to do this thing on Facebook. We're not sure if we got it. We just went live again and some people comment on our last one. They couldn't hear us still not sure what we're doing, apologize.
Speaker 2:We're trying to get things out. So people want to comment on something, do whatever. I want to make sure that if someone wants to comment, come up with something, join us, do whatever. They're more than welcome to do it, but if we're not, we're not getting it. We're not getting it right and unfortunately we're.
Speaker 2:We're door kickers, not tech guys, so but yeah, so there's just a lot of a lot of crazy things going on right now. You know, we're still still gloating in the Michigan Wolverines winning national championship, but now we got a coach change, jim Harbaugh head into the Chargers, which is a surprise, but not really a surprise. I thought he might hang for a little bit but, it's tough to follow up a national championship season and you know he lost a lot of four year, five year guys. He teams gonna change he want?
Speaker 2:he wants a fucking Super Bowl man well, I think he's gonna upstage his dad and his brother gotta have it because he can have the nanny and then he can have a Super Bowl to it. I don't know how quick it's gonna happen with the Chargers, but he's back on the West Coast. He came out of the 40 and Iersford came to Michigan. Might take him four or five, six years to get there. I'm just surprised he's gonna try to hang around the league that long. I think that's probably what it's gonna take to build a team out there. Not saying it's not possible, but you know, sure one more. I'm happy with him as the head coach coach six games this year when Jim was on suspension. And what do you do when everything?
Speaker 4:he fucking beat Penn State. Yeah, he beat fucking Maryland, maryland the only the only one.
Speaker 2:They're really well, there's two that matter, penn State matters, and well, I'll say thank you and he beat him well, but I think the team's a good hands because he's grown up in the system. He's a mission, he's a fucking Michigan man he was literally balling his eyes out oh yeah, for you, I love you, like I mean he's. He's got it. I think the players that are staying you know know him, bought in with him were coached under him offense alignment, because that's that's where it's at offense and defense alignment.
Speaker 4:If they, if they lose that, yeah, but it's.
Speaker 2:It's tough because we talked about this previously. Right, and I out who pays a college player more. It's not necessarily always about exposure, but I think if someone's got the purse strings they're gonna go there. You know, you might be a sophomore and if you can make a hundred grand going somewhere, you make 50 where you're at or 10 where you're at, no different than an NFL player, no different than you and I. If somebody came in right now and said, right, I know you're a company owner, but I'm gonna pay you X to go, I might walk out the office tomorrow.
Speaker 2:The deals, the deal, you know. I mean, I don't, I don't blame a kid, want to make money, I wouldn't blame you or a guy that works for me. I doubt he's gonna make any more money anywhere else. Or a union. They make a good living, pension, 401ks, insurance and they make good money on the check every week. Do they pay dues? Yeah, but they're dues monies for a reason. You got the representation that deals with our contractors association and we come to an agreement. Right, you know, they know what they're making.
Speaker 2:A lot of the guys that are coming non-union, you know they might be making 30 bucks an hour and they got to pay into their health insurance. No pension, no 401k, no training, no, this and all that. They come to us making 42 and some change, plus a pension plus 401k, plus insurance, plus plus plus. They know where they're coming from and I wouldn't blame you if you decided tomorrow some other company coming offered you 50 bucks an hour. You probably walk out the door too and I wouldn't blame you one bit. Get away, you can get it. I don't blame Jim Harbaugh for leaving at the charges. I made him a deal. I haven't heard what it is. Fuck Jim.
Speaker 4:Harbaugh, I am just because I wanted to repeat. I wanted to them to fucking repeat when you're trying to build the dynasty.
Speaker 2:You win one and you're gone.
Speaker 4:I wanted him to stay to build a dynasty it's.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a shitty thing. You build one and you're gone.
Speaker 4:Jim, why did you do this to me?
Speaker 2:but I get it. It's under your belt. You hosted the trophy, you know time to move on sometimes fuck you, jim Harbaugh it's. It's rare and I think that's the reason why Sabin left, because Sabin was the biggest proponent of the NIL. He goes.
Speaker 4:This is gonna change he was against it and he was against.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was the biggest proponent of it because he was against it you use against it. I guess I can't can't be a proponent and be against it, but he was the biggest guy against it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he was against it because he was like you're paying college athletes, no, but it was.
Speaker 2:It has no loyalty anymore. Right, it used to be. What can the team do for me? What can the university do for me? And now it's doing everything against me and my brother-in-law. Sean is at Michigan State. He works in the Electric Department now. He's an accountant kind of guy, right, so he deals with scholarship money, blah, blah, blah blah. Whatever his fucking job is, I used to know, we used to be able to have like family. You know, bull pick them and we would bet for the winner.
Speaker 2:We can't do it anymore because it violates the NCAA policies. Most just for fun, you know used to be like a six pack of beer or whatever the kids were doing it, they get a six pack amount do. We can't even do that anymore now. It's just for bragging rights because that would violate the NCAA policy. So we just do it for fucking fun but the whole thing is there.
Speaker 4:They're paying well right, so now how can they're paying kids to come play for you?
Speaker 2:so now kids can go out there and make a hundred grand, 200 grand, whatever it is. Yeah, but he's in the office just at the university, you know, dealing with scholarship money, you're dealing with payments or whatever the hell he's dealing with and he can't do it. But these kids can get paid to play.
Speaker 4:Well, it's like it's fine, I get it. It's like Hunter Dickinson okay, stud center for Michigan. He left Michigan and went to Kansas City. Or I was Iowa no, he's Kansas. Iowa no, it's Iowa.
Speaker 2:No, it's Kansas how much you want to bet. How about we bet next tomorrow's lunch and beers?
Speaker 4:okay, because I'm thirsty and I'm hungry, I'm not gonna take your money, but why?
Speaker 2:not.
Speaker 4:You want to make the bet, make the better right here, right here right now, cuz I know Iowa, kansas, iowa, okay, so here we go, here we go and man you better, where does? Hunter Dickinson play. Now you do this talk, I know.
Speaker 2:I do Iowa Hawkeyes yeah. Kansas J-hawks. I'm hungry tomorrow already but he left.
Speaker 4:He left because they could give him more. No money, but you're missing it could you want to?
Speaker 2:I have a first no he did not.
Speaker 4:He left Michigan, went to Kansas, but now he's on a top four team in the nation. You know I'm saying well, but he left Michigan because he couldn't make the no money that he could at Kansas yeah, under basketball but this is why Nick Saban said yes, and I was gonna kill a car sports and you know where it all started Northwestern.
Speaker 2:Well, northwestern basketball players sued the NCAA because here the University is making millions and millions and millions dollars on our name and that's likeness yep, that's how that all came about. Yeah, they did that ten years ago. Yeah, they sued, yep you know out.
Speaker 2:Why are you able to make money on us? Well, I've got mixed feelings because I think now college players should have to sign a contract. I think the universities would in the NCAA would be smart. No different than any NFL player, nba player, you sign a contract with the university if you're gonna get brought in. You sign a contract. You leave, there's a penalty. If you leave before your contract, there's a penalty, or the team that picks you up has to pay you out to get you man, I'll tell you what, charlie.
Speaker 4:Right now I'm, by the way, I'm drinking one of Bell's beers. Oh no, I'm not drinking it off, you're not. You'll have this fight, I will. I will tell you this I so want to kiss you right on the mouth right now. That's not, it's just you.
Speaker 1:I know I know.
Speaker 4:But here's deal. You are exactly fucking right. If you want to be paid like a professional athlete, sign the contract. I knew you are gonna play at my university for four years. You are gonna and we'll do the nil, but you are gonna be. You're gonna play at my university, my football team and if you want to leave for another team.
Speaker 2:They gotta pay you up.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely well because here's the issue. You have all these other students that go to these colleges or universities that aren't playing sports, but they they're paying for the athletes. They're getting free housing, free education, free everything, food, books, training, coaching, blah, blah, blah, blah. I understand they're bringing money in by selling tickets. People are showing up the stands, not show up the stands to watch a lecture. Right right, here's an average student. They're showing up the basketball games, football games, softball, soccer, whatever right. I understand that. So they're bringing revenue in to help support them. It's not a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:We all know that the football programs typically make all the money for the ball here at here at Central Michigan, same thing football team or basketball is bringing all the money in for the women's sports, the field, hockey's, the soccer is, the softballs, the baseball's, whatever, right, I get it, I get it, but the same extent.
Speaker 2:If you come to see a new to play and you're getting top tier or second tier, third tier, whatever, coaching, training, nutrition, blah, blah, blah, right, you sign a contract two years, four years, three years, ten years, whatever it is, you sign a contract if you decide to transfer and go, like Hunter, you're at Michigan, you said you want to go to Kansas, iowa, usc, florida, whatever, okay, by the contract out, you can get them. If not, you start to the contractor. You don't play right, because it's not fair to the average student that's paying ridiculous amount of money, absolutely to go to college, absolutely and have these guys bouncing because now he gets a little bit more exposure and he can make more cash. But I'm the kid that's just going to college to be a math teacher or science teacher or accountant or whatever and I'm paying an exorbitant amount To fund you.
Speaker 2:You're getting paid on the side, plus all these free things that I'm paying for, right.
Speaker 2:It's just not right and I think it's too hard and the reason why probably hardball left Michigan. It's too hard being a college coach. There's too many regulations, too many things. You bought the bottle kid of cheeseburger and he gets benched for three games on suspension under investigation. And you know we talked to a kid when it wasn't recruiting time and now he can't coach another three games and it's too restrictive. It's only Universities. It's not restrictive on the students, right, and that's not right if you're gonna get paid or you're gonna get something for free. Those universities, even back in the day, before the NIL, they were still paying these students to come play football or basketball or baseball, because we're gonna give you a hundred thousand dollars scholarship a year, and when I mean that it's not only the credit hours, the housing, the food, the coaching.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you're not playing anything got paid nothing.
Speaker 2:Oh, you gotta do is come play football. So they're still getting paid because they're getting everything for free. Yeah, so free is still getting paid. Yeah, you know what I mean. Now, if you had these football players coming in say, okay, you can play on the team, but it's gonna cost you a hundred thousand dollars this year because you gotta pay all this shit. They're gonna come play, but we're gonna do it for free. Come play for us and we're gonna make a bunch of money off you because you got a beautiful amount. They're getting paid to play.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and that's what I said. They, they, they get paid to play Because the free tuition, free food, free housing just the coaching, free training free everything, yeah. And then they were like well, no, the no thing, you know, you're using our stuff. Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2:Well, I actually think it was Lou Holtz. Might have been Lou Holtz back in the day. I saw a quote that basically said the way that the students look, or the players look nowadays neat. Might have been at Notre Dame I don't know who's that before Notre Dame, but it used to be. Basically, what can I do for the university? You know, it's like the old, whatever the old school.
Speaker 4:Well, it was. What can I do to make the university great? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:What can I do for my country now what my country could do for me? It was kind of the same concept, but it was basically based on there's no loyalty anymore. It's like who's got the biggest dollars, I'm gone. Yeah, you know and and I know Saban said it I think that's probably the reason why he retired, because he realized he was done.
Speaker 4:He was done. He's done with a nail no longer. And he said that. He said I don't like if.
Speaker 2:If there was a third string in Alabama, they'd start a central Michigan. They'd be a starters. Third string in Alabama, they'd be a starter at Michigan.
Speaker 4:Probably be a starter at Kentucky.
Speaker 2:Tennessee, definitely Michigan State because they saw Michigan's no, but yes, I'm just picking up.
Speaker 4:All the great. All the great, I mean, they go, you know, they, they might set behind a dude for two years, but they're learning. And then when they get their shot in the sun, they're, they're, they're to a town, toca la la la, their jail in Hertz, they're. I mean Absolutely, you're right.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not stringer in Alabama Could probably start for anywhere 90%, 90 more, because that third stringer could go to a packed and mad Yep Somewhere else, acc team or whatever he could just get out and they'd be a. They could be a starter and get paid. So what do I want? To sit third string in Alabama, not get paid, and I can go to Virginia Tech, or I could go up to Maryland or I could go to Whatever yeah and get North Dakota State get paid and not play per se, right, but I could.
Speaker 2:So it's totally changed the landscape. The college football, yeah, absolutely to the to the good, to the bad, depends on how you look at it. But I think, and I would be surprised in the next four or five years you don't see the answer late.
Speaker 4:The NCAA come up with contracts for players Now that they're getting paid my, my personal, my personal Thing is if you sign up, if you say, hey, I'm going to college, you have to play four years for me, yeah, but you'll never be able to hold the player unless you have a contract.
Speaker 2:Well, and why would I want to sign a contract with you at CMU, but I don't at Northern Illinois, or I don't at this college or that college, unless the NCAA actually makes it a regulation or a protocol that you have to do that?
Speaker 2:Well it just will never happen. Because you could say you could be the university that says you got to sign a contract. They wouldn't do it. I, I can't do that with my guys. I can't say you guys sign a contract saying you're gonna work for me for the next four years and I'm gonna pay you X, y, z. They're not gonna sign it. I'll go down the road to the next guy that pays them $4 an hour less, right, and they have the freedom to do whatever the fuck they want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just want to be here.
Speaker 4:Well, I just, I just think that that my thought process with with football, at basketball, the one and done, the one and done. No, I don't know. No, you, you're happy ass, we're paying you to come to play ball for us. You should give us a little bit of time.
Speaker 2:I understand it. I think you know when it. When it comes down to it, it's unfortunate for the normal students that will never see Any type of sport and they're. They're right in the check or bar on the money for their credit hour, their housing there, they're working at the Texas Road Houses, the Applebee's, trying to scrape by. And you have athletes out there that have the world given to them by the universities, by the coaches. They get tutors, they get this, they get that and the average students don't get it. It's almost a disservice to those students and it's a benefit to others. And once again, I agree, they're bringing money in To the universities because they're selling the basketball tickets, the baseball tickets, the football tickets. People are buying their jerseys or they're, you know, donating to the Athletic fund or whatever, and I'm not saying there's none of their compensation. Or maybe those students technically aren't, especially with boosters or whatever at Bayer universities, and it's unfortunate here in my pleasant we deal with Central Michigan University and there's all kinds of you know, different funds and golf outings and things they do to raise money for those athletes. There's some sort of offset to that cost, but the average students more.
Speaker 2:When I'm, because my daughter went to northern Michigan University, born and pretty much raised here in Mount Pleasant. Couple years I was gone in Reans. She traveled around with us Virginia, california. But For the average kid here in the air in Mount Pleasant, michigan, you know, unless your mom or dad work at the university or you get some sort of credit hours which I got because my mom Was at the university, I got the free credit hours or whatever but Most kids here in town when they go to college if their parent is not affiliated with the university, they leave Mount Pleasant and they're gonna go to college in Alma or Michigan State or Michigan or Wayne or Western or Northern or whatever.
Speaker 4:Yeah, they're gonna want to get the hell out of town. Yeah they're gonna do that.
Speaker 2:So I did the right. You know right in the checks for tuition. You know I get how much it costs. It was fourteen thousand dollars a year, right rain checks, for you know it's expensive. You know it was great when she got a fresh one year, got out the dorms and got an apartment, had a job and yeah, cuz the dorms are probably like so much more expensive, but it comes with food and comes with all the dorms.
Speaker 4:Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's all kinds of different things that I know. Every university can be different and I was. I was glad she got out of my pleasant kind of spread her wings and did her own thing and it was great cuz she met her husband up there, great guy that loved him to death and I probably buried my daughter over him.
Speaker 4:He's Bends a good dude.
Speaker 2:He's a great dude, bends a good dude. So once again, just like my sister made my brother long, my daughter did a great job with she. She picked him. He was lucky. She picked him. Oh yeah, and I know who rules the house Up in our school to see. Lenny she does guarantee I don't. Who wears pants? Yeah, he likes to pretend, just like I like to pretend she might weigh 120 pounds. I might be like 210, but Lady Jen wears the pants in my house and that's a good.
Speaker 4:That's a great thing about me is I'm 270, you wear the pants in the house and I wear the pants cuz I ain't got no woman, so but that's funny shit right there. But but when I was married, when I was married the three times before, One strike, two strikes, three strikes. Yeah, no foul balls here. But when I was married no, you're, you're exactly right, man, you're, you're just a dude they were in the house. They got a half the money and all the pussy.
Speaker 2:It's true statement she only gets it when I give it to me. You call an, ask her, she'll tell you.
Speaker 4:They. We fought all our lives to get out of it, and then we fight.
Speaker 2:Our life to get back. But you know, I just I just feel bad because, I'm right, the tuition checks up north and they got a football team. That's terrible. At northern I have a great hockey team. That's. That's what they're known for up at up at northern.
Speaker 4:We had, because they're division one, aren't they?
Speaker 2:I don't know he's Subscribed to their. You can watch one line.
Speaker 4:Seaboard because he's a he's a equipment guy Polish member, brother, I serve with him. He's a equipment guy at Ferris, oh, and I believe that that they might. I believe their division one team there might be their biggest rivals.
Speaker 2:Obviously Michigan Tech up there, up in Hold oh, yeah, up there, yep, which they're a whole bunch of Scientist crazy nerds like if you don't have a 4.0, you're not definitely getting in that place and that's out of 4.0, like in others high schools that, like five, you could be like a genius at a 5.0. Here, your genius at 4.0 because the scale only goes to four.
Speaker 4:Why are we calling them and figuring out our fucking podcast?
Speaker 2:well, shit, my, my niece actually went to Michigan Tech and she's Chemical engineer Fancy word for chemical scientist.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so she can work for like 3m or work, so she can make up chemicals that can kill everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she kind of got into nice.
Speaker 1:I'm not quite sure what she does her husband same thing or fiance same thing.
Speaker 2:You went up to that's where they met. Was that Michigan Tech Crazy nerds right there all in the science and that's that's what that universities know for. They live in the Ann Arbor ish area, you know somewhere down that way, and they work for big chemical companies or Startups, that kind of stuff. They kind of as they grow their career. They're kind of bouncing around and some other friends that went up there.
Speaker 2:Friends of the family, work for 3m Chemical engineer. Another one became a mechanical engineer, so he's working for a firm out of New York in New York. But yeah, so mash and went to, went to northern and yeah, the big sport up there is hockey, hockey. I mean they they're football team. I don't think they even have a baseball team. Never heard they did. She was up there four years, got her bachelor's Think. I don't even know if they even got a baseball team or soccer team or anything else. It was like hockey, football and football. Like yeah, we don't really go to. The games are terrible, it's all about the hockey up there but think about that.
Speaker 4:You get, you get a dude. You get a dude that's six foot four, 230 pounds, and then you put him on nine inches of skates, right, and he's going Mach seven with his hair on fire and he drives you into the boards, right. Holy fuck man. That that is just Unfucking. First of all, how in the fuck can a dude do that Skates?
Speaker 2:let me ask you a question Do you like hockey? I love hockey go, go, red wings. So have you ever been down to Michigan? I've been down to Joe. Never miss that's. I'm not talking about the Joe, that's red wings. I'm talking about Michigan, mm-hmm. So it's Yoast arena.
Speaker 4:Yoast arena.
Speaker 2:Yep. So Jen and I used to go down and have a friend Tim and see him. They're not together anymore, but Tim was actually one of my first foremen when I joined the local here in this building Working for the in-laws. He was one of my first foremen him and his ex-wife he's. He played like amateur hockey, played adult leagues like you know. He'd be at the ice arena midnight playing hockey because that's when they get ice time till 1 am or whatever.
Speaker 4:We're at.
Speaker 2:Well, they're actually from the Beaverton area. Okay, but you played out of Midland. I don't know if you played him up, I was. But anyways, jen and I would buy Michigan hockey tickets. And I'm talking Fuck, it was 20 years ago. He was my foreman and we did it for years and years and years. Jen and I would buy tickets down to Michigan. They're both Michigan fans. We'd buy tickets and say, okay, hey, I just text them. Hey, man, we got a game, whatever, february 27th, you guys are coming. We got tickets, sweet. So it was like kind of our once or twice a year we do that by these tickets. We'd go down early, have dinner together, walk around Ann Arbor, we tailgate In the parking lot outside of Yost.
Speaker 2:Arena, and that's before they did their big remodeling. Actually, one of the last games we went to was when the Tigers Went to the series. Right, wasn't the series on what they do? They won the division. It had been like eight nine, two thousand eight, nine, maglio, or don't? Yes, hit a walk off against the ace and did that send him to the? That's time of the world series. Yes, that's some of the series. What was that? Oh, eight nine, um 12.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna say, okay, you Google it. Hey, we got ghouls.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying. So, whatever that was, it was probably like two or three years after that we kind of quit going. So I don't know if it was 10, 12, whatever it was.
Speaker 4:So because anyways, I Will tell you what, if you go to a London Maglio Ardonias hit the walk off against the A's. What year is that?
Speaker 2:This is the reason why your phone doesn't understand. You ask a fucked up question. 2006, so it probably would have been like 10, 2010, probably last time that we went as like a four-some to a game, right, right, and we've taken, you know, our daughters, boyfriends or whatever you know, kids we took to games. Joe says he can hear us now yeah, he just message to on the Facebook lab, but anyways, so we would go out of these games. So we're still gay, jesus, dude, text that don't say it over the mic. Anyways, so we were good on these matches, whatever, nothing fucking better. I love, I hate professional sports. I think they're born Compared to college.
Speaker 2:You go down to Yolst arena and I were watch a hockey game. Every time there's an intermission, every time there was like a stop-and-play, the bands playing. There was something going on in the ice. Oh, it's crazy. Something's going on like the students have a chant. They call the sea a chant. Every year, the senior class add something to it. It's like fuck you, you piece of shit. Blah, blah, blah and it's it's. I got 90 fucking words and at this point, because every year the senior class had something else, michigan was actually getting fined every time they say it by the NCAA, because how many swear words were in it, right, and the students kept doing it. Michigan would just pay the fucking fine. And you know it's like. It's like going to the Great Lakes loons, our minor league team here in Menden. Yep, there's always something going on all the time you go down to watch the Tigers Between innings it's like you're sitting there watching guys warm up again.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah you go to the Great Lakes loons they're throwing t-shirts. They're doing you know races. They're doing whatever. Something's always going on, yeah same thing.
Speaker 2:Couch hockey down there at Yoast Awesome fucking time. Loved every fucking second of it. And my buddy Tim and I. He's Enter at my union. He's now in the front office, a local 85. He's a what they call a business agent and I'm on the management side as an order of a company now. So we sit together at a joint trust For the apprenticeship. So you have labor side, management side. We jointly manage what our apprentices do Schools that we have.
Speaker 2:We have two schools, one second one traffic city, anyway. So we're still good friends, even though we sit across the table from each other, might different, like you and I might different sitting across table, and one of the best things ever we're at this game. Now there are, you know, they're doing the Zamboni thing and they put little kids out on it.
Speaker 2:Right so you could put your kid in. You know, hey, do the Zamboni ride whatever so during the air mission. So I don't know if this first second air mission there's this little kid Right around one of the two Zambonis they got out there. You know they got kids on right. So we're sitting at our seats and Tim and I grab our shoes off our feet, grab one of the shoes we're waving around and we're like throw it, throw it. So this little kids riding around the Zamboni, the moms banging on the glass kid pulls his shoe off, starts waving around because he sees me and Tim.
Speaker 2:Throws his fucking shoe and me and him are sitting at our seats like no, we're pumping this kid up and the kid throws his shoe on the ice. Somebody, come on, get it. It was like Some. I'll never forget, you know, because I'm out there with my buddy and you know his old lady and my old lady and we're just having a great time and no matter where you buy a seat At those small arenas and I used to put a put together a big crew of Michigan fans so we'd actually go to Big Rapids when they play fair estate.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I had a buddy Kyle. His mom and dad lived just on the road. He had a 15 passenger van. He was a scout master Back in the day say this huge ass fucking van, we throw coolers in the back and I throw 15 motherfuckers in there. Maybe and I wouldn't drink we'd be road tripping all the way to Big Rapids.
Speaker 4:I'm guessing the coolers were all water and waters and Gatorade, right, no?
Speaker 2:So, anyways, we would road trip all the way over to Big Rapids and I'd buy, you know, 15 tickets at the game, so we're all sitting by each other and I'd get, you know, you get like seven people in row two and seven people in row three, so we're sitting behind each other, not all strung out the same right, so we could talk or whatever. We'd go over there and Michigan played them. We'd go over to Big Rapids, the Ferris State University, and watch the watch the hockey match. So that was kind of like a thing like we do, or derv's and food at the house, and everybody meet there. They have the van, we'd all load up and then car pull over and it was like a party night, you know.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, jen, and I did that, you know. So I mean, it was just fun hanging out friends and you cannot get a bad seat at those small arenas. No, he can't. So but you. But you could go to a tiger's game. You could go to a lion's game. You could go to the fucking Red Wings game. You could be in a nosebleed which behind the fucking which really aren't Terrible seats.
Speaker 2:No, not but the worst seat that you could get at a collegiate arena Would be like the upper lower bowl at a professional game. You know what I mean, because they don't have the second tier oh okay, third tier or fourth tier right in the stadium. If you went to LCA little Caesar's arena to watch the Red Wings, what's what? You bought the worst do it.
Speaker 2:You bought the worst seat at Yost, your upper deck of the lower. You're still upper deck of the lower bowl at LCA, so you're still in the 100 level. You're not in the 300 level, the 400 level. Right way.
Speaker 2:The fuck up there, like you know, 105 rows up, you're like at roll 40 and that's the upper bowl of these arenas. See, had great seats, man. You could smell the sweat, you could. You could hear the jaw jacking and it was like 25 bucks. Fuck, I'd be 125 bucks to have that seat at LCA. Yeah, oh absolutely Absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 2:But you don't have the band, you don't have the students chatting, you don't have the experience that you get at collegiate level, right then you do so. My sister and brother-in-law probably will hear this podcast because they know about it and they're Michigan State people. She went to Grand Valley, he went to Michigan State. They live in East Lansing.
Speaker 4:Sorry, you want the Michigan State, but that's okay.
Speaker 2:He works for the university. Still, mm-hmm, 20 years after graduating, he's still part of the university. They go to everything, michigan State, right. So you know, we, we talk football, we talk basketball, we talk different sports, mon arena they have. They take their kids, brennan Decklin, little kids, still, she's Probably 10, he's should, I know seven, eight. You know they go to everything because he's with the athletic department. So you.
Speaker 5:So he gets tickets or he gets discounts as being an employee or whatever you know.
Speaker 2:So they, they go and it's. It's great. I'm I'm so happy that they are able to take their kids to those things, because I think that instills a sense of belonging Is misguided, as it is being Michigan State, but still they, they, they love Sparta.
Speaker 4:I mean they had absolutely, they had a lot of kids. Absolutely it's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if that's what, they're into, even though it's wrong.
Speaker 4:I'm okay with it. Wrong is six guys blowing seven because someone's got two dicks in their mouth. But you know you're, you're correct. If that's that, if that's what tastes them, I'm gonna call them critters, even though they're they're not, they're not little.
Speaker 2:They're not Amelia, they're not Amelia. Yeah, my four-year-old critter my granddaughter.
Speaker 4:But them critters, they take them to this. They are gonna be lifelong, life long Spartan fans. Which is they?
Speaker 2:are, which is unfortunate, but it's cool they don't have a choice.
Speaker 4:Yes, they don't have a choice because their dad Wards there, but but they're gonna be. They're gonna be lifelong college foot college College sports.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say absolutely I rather it's Michigan State. I'm not. I'm not back out of the kids, I'm not back out of the like I get it, just like. My kids grew up loving Michigan, yeah, and they were terrible forever. And I have no, no affiliation with the University.
Speaker 2:Right right, no affiliation other than I. Just I don't have affiliation with CMU other than my mom working there. Mm-hmm, right, my sister went there, parents went there, or whatever. I don't have an affiliation other than my parents being there. So if there are kids like that, stuff, that's, that's great.
Speaker 4:No, it's cool.
Speaker 2:Just like I've never played for the Lions, but I'm a Lions fan, yeah, tigers fan or whatever. That's your team. That's great. I know problem with it.
Speaker 4:My son, andy, came up to me like seven years old and I'm a I'm a Michigan guy man, I'm just gonna say and he come up to me and goes Give me the hookup horns Texas. He goes, go Texas. I said what he said go Texas. I said I'm gonna beat your ass. You're either gonna be a Michigan fan or I'm gonna kill you do.
Speaker 2:Lady Jen, lady Jen, texas fan you shut up. So let me, let me. Let me explain the backstory. Her grandmother, kate if Kate's listening to this, she'll she'll understand their grandfather and grandmother. Blanchard, michigan. He worked for total refinery. She was a librarian at win elementary for shepherd school.
Speaker 4:Finally, man that's a blast from the past.
Speaker 2:Well, bill just passed away a couple years ago. He was 95, 96 years old.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but totally fine, he's a blast Well.
Speaker 2:I'm fine, he's been gone for 35 years. I know, I know you were tired out of there. You know they made the gas diesel, but they had a. They have a. They had a place down in McAllen, texas, in the Callen Texas, which is like five seconds from the border. Yeah, now my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, just bought a place. They've been big, they've been wintering. It's called those Fresnos, so if you know where South Padre Island is in Texas, they're like we're all the girls hang on, show their boobs.
Speaker 2:So that's like a huge, that's like a huge spring break place. Yeah, padre, yeah, they're like 15, 20 minutes from South Padre. Those Fresnos they've been, they've been on their camper down there forever fifth wheels, whatever they got. They just bought a place there, mm-hmm natural place to live in. You know, just bought about two weeks ago. Anyways, my Father-in-law mother-in-law been.
Speaker 2:You know the parents had a place so they were going down there. The girls went down there when they were young, you know, to visit grandma, grandpa, the winner, or whatever. So somehow I Don't know how my wife became a huge Texas fan. I have a feeling it comes from Grandparents being down there. You know I'll win her long or whatever. So somehow she became a Texas fan, I don't know. We see, and she does this hook-up horn shit to me all the damn time. Okay, so you like the team you like, I don't care.
Speaker 4:So I guess I'm gonna have to ask you when I see her Is it because she went to South Padre Island and showed her boobs? Everybody too?
Speaker 2:Probably not. I was on South Padre Island, which I was with everybody, living in a big house yeah. We were on vacation. I didn't even get to see him, so I doubt it was. I doubt it was way back when. Damn it, jim damn it. But I'm saying is she became a Texas fan. I still get those. You'll still. Yeah it doesn't matter if we're doing you know, college Bowl, pick them, yeah, you know, for fun, or we're doing yes you definitely Pick them stuff.
Speaker 2:As a family. For fun. She'll pick Texas like is literally as long as she did pick Texas, until she knows we're not gonna win. And even then she'll probably take them one more time Just because, just because and I think you know, now that her parents have a place down there, she'll probably even be more of a ridiculous Texas.
Speaker 2:And my father-in-law I love the guy to death, casey Love the guy to death. But he is such as wish you wash your mother fucker, because If I'm around him he'll want Michigan shit. My brother-in-law's around him. He'll wear a Michigan State ship. My sister-in-law's around him. He'll wear Grand Valley ship, where his daughter went, which is understandable, right, he gets around his father-in-law, bill, who's passed away. Now His wife passed away. They literally, like the day before I went in the Marines in 98, my grandmother-in-law, I guess, end up getting remarried again to a lady he met in Texas. Jesus, she lived in Illinois, so he sold his place on Lake Cadillac and moved down to Illinois with her. Then he became the biggest Illinois fucking fan on the planet shut up.
Speaker 4:Come on, dude. No, make a call, I know she was all about everything in Illinois.
Speaker 2:Don't matter, it's Calcutta cops in there for the Bears didn't matter. The final line I champagne, yeah, and this motherfucker started wearing Illinois shit. So you're like, it depends on who he's around, depends on the team he likes, you know I mean. I don't know. I don't know if if that's rubbed off on my wife. So I'm thinking maybe like there was some sort of transition she picked up on. She likes. Texas as a kid.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the whole thing. Maybe not make a call man picking team, but but it's funny.
Speaker 2:No, he, literally you. Hopefully they would maybe listen to this and come out of the next life or something. Yeah, they'd be like no, my dad is like that. Or yeah, my father-in-law is definitely like that, because he's serious to God. You know, he comes to my house. He's wearing Michigan shit. He goes down to Lansing. He's wearing state shit. He goes down to visit his father-in-law.
Speaker 2:He was wearing Illinois shit and he'd watch every Cubs game. I mean, they would, they would sit in the house, didn't matter if they were there for a day or a week. And he's, he knows every guy on the Cubs team when they won the World Series or he knew. I mean, he knew everything. He was. He was good at no in the crowd, he was around, right who he needed to be, he read the room and I don't I don't blame him, he read the room, I don't blame him. There's nothing wrong with that. But I'm just saying like he never really picked the team, you only picked the team dependent upon who he was around, kind of right, which is cool because I always Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You know, if we're watching the game where we're talking about something, he was knowledgeable, you know. He knew the people playing. He knew if they had a good game, a bad game or whatever was going on. So I get it. It was. It was nice to know you could talk to my brother lot, michigan State and he knew what was going on. He talked to me, knew what was going on, talked to them. He knew what was going on so you didn't feel lost in the conversation, right? You know, I mean, and I and I always appreciated that he was very Like bill and Margaret come up to Michigan for Christmas. He's didn't matter, sean and I lived or died, married his daughters. He's wearing a lion eyes shit or a cubs shit or whatever, because it was all about his father-in-law which was great. Like his wife.
Speaker 2:He made that feel more than welcome and everything else, but it was just kind of a crazy and I'm wondering if that's where Jen gets her hook of morn's, because if you walked up to her and did that, she'd do it straight back to you.
Speaker 4:She'd be like you like Texas too, I'll do that. He's so geeked, I will do that. I won't come to her and say hey, monday night I'll say hey, girlfriend.
Speaker 2:Monday night when we're playing in the fire for the trip to. Vegas. I'll be like, hey, girlfriend, throw him out, she'll, she'll love it. Just just give her the hook of morn's, she'll straight up love you to death. Which I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but here's what it is. Well, we're getting close to three hours. Yeah, you got about 12 minutes. You want to keep going till we get to three hours.
Speaker 4:What else we want to talk about.
Speaker 2:Well, we got the VOD stuff out of the way. We got coming up to the post.
Speaker 4:Well, what we got coming up post is Not a lot really. What the fuck was that?
Speaker 2:It's a it's a break of the silence, cuz you don't know what's going on. Um, we have district meeting coming up Sunday, got a district meeting coming up on Sunday.
Speaker 4:At the district meeting we're gonna have to figure out how the district's gonna move forward. Because I am stepping down. I will not seek re-election as a district commander.
Speaker 2:Which is good, because I've always said there's there's a good thing with a change in leadership. I'm Gonna be doing that with the riders group. I've been the president for a few years, you know, I think, fresh ideas, new leadership, tray coming in as the VP right now. I think Tray is killing it. I think he's gonna continue to do a great job as a president.
Speaker 2:You know my job is to make sure he's up to speed on what the membership wants, to make sure he's a leader for the membership To continue the mission that we do. I think district level, or even post level, is a good thing for you to kind of Step back. You've got bigger ambitions at the department level, the state level for stuff which is good Well for the district level.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna talk to a couple of guys, because my senior vice Struggling, he's struggling. Well, talk to him a little bit at the VOD mid-winter conference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's struggling, he's struggling, which is okay. Um, you know I'm gonna be going to the.
Speaker 4:He said he he would run for a quarter master, which is good because, because, because, we need a new quarter master and this dude does the quarter master work. But that leaves. That leaves three open positions from junior senior.
Speaker 2:Well, you have it. You have a junior that's gonna pop up, yep, and I'm for hopefully hopefully.
Speaker 4:I mean I'm hoping Scott's not gonna tell me, no, I can't do it.
Speaker 2:But it's understandable if you can't. But here's, here's the difference. You're not moving to Alaska, right, you're still gonna attend meetings. You're still gonna attend meetings, so there's still opportunity to get training in or get guys up to speed on what's going on District level. Why the stuff's not crazy like it is at the post level. It's more day-to-day stuff. It's not gonna fail.
Speaker 2:No, you see both right, so For you, don't ever limit yourself on what you want to do and make sure the guys that want to stop up which is it gonna be a great thing. We have a meeting coming up on Sunday, so you'll be able to put it out there ahead of time and get get the thoughts that hey, get the guys fuckers.
Speaker 4:This is what's going on right week. Just these are the position we need to fill and in May we need to fill.
Speaker 2:Well, they will be. They will be. And you know, I tried to do the same thing with the riders group, because the mission that our Membership does and the riders group so important and it takes a team, it's not one guy at the front. The only thing the guy at the front does is make sure that those that are out there doing what they're supposed to do, that's, that's the easy part. If you get which we have, an absolutely phenomenal membership they bottom of the mission, of pushing the VFW mission forward.
Speaker 2:It's always nice when I get to stand out there and you know, I hear the accolades and I get to be the guy in the front. But I, what do I say? I've said the department commander, I've said it everywhere. It's not me. I get to be the lucky guy in the front, say thanks, I appreciate it, but it's the membership, some membership doing the work. And I go back to the membership at our next meeting and say, look guys, we got the accolades. But don't ever, don't ever don't ever forget.
Speaker 2:When these guys gave us the accolade, what did I say? It's not me, the membership that did it. Yep, it's everybody else. That's, that's always done. It's not me, right? They bought into the mission. They understand what the priorities are. They get it. The district's gonna be no different. Who's at the front? The district's gonna survive. Push it out there. Get people to step up and actually take accountability. And why? The CXC?
Speaker 4:it's not gonna die Well they don't have a choice because I'm I'm gone, I'm gonna run, I'm gonna run for Department judge advocate and you can't hold to and I can't hold two positions on the C of A and I'm not saying that I want to run for through the chairs to be the department commander, but I can't say that maybe, why not? Well, right now, I don't want to Right now, I don't want to Now. If I do a couple years at judge advocate and I do okay at that, and then I I feel the flow and Evan flow and I throw my name in the half for department junior and Okay, but right now, right now.
Speaker 2:You have to stick your toes in the water first, yep, figure out if you want it or not. Yeah, you know it's it's not easy to to level up. Yeah, but you've got a lot of years of experience as a post commander. You got a lot of years experience as a district commander, so it's not a leap for you to bump up to the department level, right. Right, and maybe it's not right for you right now. You know the Goal year as judge, advocate and then move. Try to make a run for the chairs as a junior. Maybe it's gonna take you two or three years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe two years and and that's not saying you can't move from that or stay in that or go to chief of staff.
Speaker 4:Right or do something different yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you never want to limit yourself where you want to go and you can never feel you have to worry about the cheer that you're leaving, because our job is just like with me as the president of Red Group is to make sure that the junior or the vice or the senior has the opportunities to grow or learn.
Speaker 4:But you didn't leave. You didn't leave because you didn't trust the people coming Well.
Speaker 2:I got. I got asked by a lot of people right to stay.
Speaker 4:Because they didn't trust and coming behind you.
Speaker 2:Well, but my condition is staying. Was the guy that's gonna take the vice president of the Red Group? I gotta have something. That's all in Yep, oh yeah. There's a lot to it. It's not as simple as just running a meeting. There's a lot of rides, a lot of obligations, a lot of weekends, a lot of Conferences, a lot of conventions, a lot of different things you got to go to. You have to yeah. Because, we this group.
Speaker 2:Our group cannot be the shining star in the state of Michigan If we're not the shining star in our membership deserves that. We donated over $9,000. Right, our membership work their asses off To raise the money and then give it away $9,000 for a bunch of people that just like to grab handlebars and ride motorcycles. And it was to various things cancer, kids, national home camp, trotters, I mean, it was all kinds of shit we raise money for.
Speaker 4:Aaron's helping hand or whatever.
Speaker 2:It was deployed, deployed service members right, care packages, I mean it was all kinds of things we did and we get. We get that membership gets recognized for and I don't want to see it left in shambles. But and the personal sacrifice to me, you know, I just couldn't sustain it without having the guy behind me Right, get it and understand it, because we do so much and the post gets credit for it, the district gets credit for it. Yeah, we get that, we get the pad on the back. That only goes so far, you know. I mean it really does. So for me it was tough. It was easy for me to leave because I knew I'm not moving to Africa, so I could sit there and help the next guy.
Speaker 4:I thought you were going to.
Speaker 2:Africa Depends on the government's looking for me or not. What I'm saying is you know, I mean it's it's one of those things where it wasn't gonna fail Because I would still be there to help make sure things move forward. But People probably didn't understand everything I had to do and You're throwing somebody into something that they don't understand what's all involved, and they didn't want to set somebody else up for failure. So I got asked to stay again, almost begged to stay again by a lot of people. Yep, okay, I'll do it. But my condition was the guy behind me has to be all in and I had the conversation with Trey and he was all in and he's proved every step of the way. I know the group's gonna move forward. I know the group's in good hands.
Speaker 4:So if you guys are confused about Trey, he's a lemon typewriter, just so you know From a previous podcast. Yeah, a lemon typewriter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, but he gets it, he understands it, does a great job. He's immersed himself in it.
Speaker 4:Does a great job.
Speaker 2:I have absolutely zero qualms If I died tomorrow. The group wouldn't even skip a beat If, like today no, seriously like today we were out riding. And if I got smoked by a semi and he had to take my spot, zero problems, zero problems.
Speaker 4:We're not saying zero problems, but we would miss you.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is I don't feel that because the group would be. Yeah, I don't feel the group would be at a detriment at all. He's right. You know, and the mission that we do, that membership does, would not skip a beat. You would still continue on. I mean, I'm not saying there wouldn't be a lag because you know morning or whatever, blah, blah, blah Bullshit. What I'm saying is he would continue to move the group forward, no different than I'm moving the group forward. He understands.
Speaker 4:Agreed.
Speaker 2:What we've been doing and where we need to go. Agreed, he's all into it, but the same extent. You know, we're kind of an anomaly as far as an activity of a VFW, as a riders group, because a lot of the riders groups out there we have seven in the department of Michigan, oh yeah, seven right, and we're probably besides District Four the ones that report their activities. We're probably besides District Four, which is made up of, you know, 12 posts or whatever. I'm an Ashery of guys from different places. We're a single post. We probably do more than District Four does or equal to what District Four does. We do a lot more things that help the VFW, not necessarily monetarily but voluntarily. We do like taking care of camp trotter, dock in, dock out, cleanups, all these different things which are just as important as throwing money at something, and to get from an auxiliary member to a support rider, which is not affiliated with the VFW. They're just people that love to ride motorcycles.
Speaker 4:And they don't own, they don't have any affiliation, they don't have any like. I have to do that other than they ride motorcycles and they love the VFW what Period? And they show up in droves.
Speaker 2:And they show up in droves Drones to help out. And they don't even need to Always help out. We almost get more support and I really hate to say this we almost get more support out of our support riders than we do auxiliary VFW riders.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I agree with you and if you added the VFW membership and the auxiliary membership, compared to the support it's almost two to one. You might have like 15 support riders. We have 30 VFW and pulse membership. We almost get as much support out of the 15 support people that have no affiliation other than the VFW, other than the riders group. Then we do a lot of Because when we're doing something that I called.
Speaker 4:I called a viper. Yeah, I called a viper and say, hey, dude, can you do this? Can you grab ice? Can you do this? Yep, not a problem, I'm on the way. Grab 10 bags of ice. We pay him out, obviously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:But he's like hey, viper, we got a bike broke down because he's a mechanic Now world class, World. I was gonna say Jam world class Jeff.
Speaker 2:Lamar's world class.
Speaker 4:Not a mechanic, world class fucking mechanic. This dude is the dog. We have something going on at the post where somebody's vehicle breaks down. Hey, viper, can you hook us up? Yep, I'll be up, boom.
Speaker 2:And he no questions asked. No question asked, right, no question asked. Well, where I was trying to go is I don't feel like if I had to step down tomorrow, the group would fail, and I want you to feel the same way at district. Don't feel bad that you wanna bump yourself up and do something more. There'll be guys that will step up to fill the shoes. They haven't had the need to do it so that some people just don't wanna do it because I don't need to do it. Now they have a need to do it. They'll step up to do it, and it's not that they're not capable of doing it. They've never had the need to do it. You know what I mean. Now they're gonna have the need to do it, and you'll be surprised that the guys that'll come out of the woodwork to step up to do it.
Speaker 4:I hope so.
Speaker 2:You will, because you have 12, 13 posts in your district. You'll get guys that'll get oh shit, he's gone and we have to fill these spots up. I'll throw my name in and I'll make sure it happens Right. They don't wanna see it fail either, just like the RIS group. They don't wanna see it fail. There's guys that will step up. You know, when I said I'm done, step of the meeting, I'm done, not doing it no more.
Speaker 2:This year was terrible on me. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I gotta be done. And how many people came out of the woodwork. So if you need me, I'm there.
Speaker 2:If you need me, what would I gotta do? And it's a little bit different because it's a lot more commitment. All the different rides and all the different events and all the different shit. I mean it's a lot of shit. I'm gonna get half of it taken off my plate and that's huge for me. I mean I'm talking 30 events and I'm now down to 15. That's huge. You know it's huge. And Tray's all in and you'll get the guys in the district level. That'll be all in. You will be. You'll be surprised. I hope so. And you know, you know me. I told you last year, you know and Scott Taylor decided to run for junior. I submitted a letter. I couldn't be at the meeting and submit a letter. I said I'll do it if it's gotta be done. We're not gonna see it fail, especially younger guys. Right, it's not gonna fail on my watch. It's not gonna fail with my generation. This shit's been going on for 125 fucking years.
Speaker 4:Pretty much, it ain't, it ain't, it ain't.
Speaker 2:Right, it's not gonna be my generation that ruins it. We're just not gonna do it Just like it's been that way. 50 years ago they went through the same turmoil, you know, a guy wanted to bump up and another guy you know no one wanted to really do it because they had something going on. But guess what? They were still here because there was guys or women that stepped up and said you know what? I might have sacrificed a little bit, but it's not gonna be my generation that ruins it. Right, and they'll step up and make it happen. So you need to do what's best for you. Let us worry about picking up the sticks. We're gonna. We're gonna push it forward. Don't, don't worry about it. I'm glad to see that you're, you're improving yourself, because that's what we need. We need younger guys to step up, because I've had this conversation, you know, as a younger guy, and it sucks because we're sitting down there at midwinter.
Speaker 2:I'm looking around at the meeting and I'm like I'm 45 and I'm probably the youngest guy in the room. Yep, you know what I mean. That's terrible to think there's and I was like before fucking Iraq and fucking Afghanistan war. I'm early 2000s that I got in, yeah, and I'm looking around going how many younger motherfuckers could be in this room other than me? And ain't nobody here. And I'm the youngest guy, at 45.
Speaker 2:Thinking to myself no offense, I really don't want another Vietnam guy running the fucking department of Michigan. That's not a knock on yak, it's not gonna be a knock on Kimberly as a golf war person. Or knock on Ray as a golf war person, not knocking on him. Somebody has to step up. And I get. There's a shift in the way our women are because, like my dad, you get out of work, you go to the moose and have a beer, go to the Legion have a beer, go to the post, have a beer before he went home and dinner was ready at seven, because that's what it was back then. Nowadays I can remember I kind of my hand how many baseball games my dad made.
Speaker 4:Right, mine too, because he was off doing all that shit right.
Speaker 2:But if I were to miss my kid's game, or damned if I wasn't home to cook dinner for a night, you know?
Speaker 1:when James was working and getting nails done and doing whatever.
Speaker 2:like I get it, we're under a different set of rules nowadays than it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, when the young guys at 30 or 20 could stop up and do shit. Now they've got family obligations that if they're not there, they're an asshole Right. Or you know, mom's the veteran, but she's got to be home to take care of the kids because dad's doing whatever.
Speaker 2:Like I get it. We have different obligations nowadays. Not knocking on anybody or anything, it's just different and it's hard to get young people involved when there's a culture shift.
Speaker 4:No, it is. You're exactly right.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the fucking fix is. I fucking don't you know.
Speaker 4:Arnold is the ROTC commander. He is a senior vice in our post. He is an Iraq veteran. He's 50, 54. He works every five years, fucking day, with combat veterans. There are the senior leaders of the ROTC, but they're not VFW members. Why is that? And I've asked Arnold, why is that? Well, they don't want to join. Okay, I can't argue with that, but you know, they're a commander.
Speaker 1:They're a light commander.
Speaker 4:They're a staff sergeant. They're a fucking sergeant major. They're E7. They all served in Iraq and then they come back, and now they're being ROTC instructors. Yeah. Why do you want to join? Well, they don't want to join. Student veterans of America how many, charlie, I'm gonna throw this how many fucking people in CMU that are student veterans of America? That has served in fucking combat? How many? You don't know that, but I'm guessing. I'm guessing a whole fucking lot 20?.
Speaker 2:I have no idea if their membership's 100 or their membership's 20, I don't know.
Speaker 4:Okay, if their membership is 500, I'm guessing 200 of them served in combat.
Speaker 2:Probably, or at least in theater.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we can't get them to join.
Speaker 2:Right, but we're our own best kept secret. True, and I was the same way, like I joined online. That's the way we do things nowadays. The younger generations right. I joined online VFW National because, one at mid-30s, I felt that was something I should do. Mm-hmm. But I was afraid of walking into the pulse because I was thinking it's my grandfather's geriatric gin joint.
Speaker 4:They're sitting around telling worst of me the geriatric gin joint. Yep, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep. So I understand it, I get it, and I don't know how we market the service organizations any better. Because here's the other issue Tech in two parts. A great example A new young guy walks in. What's the first thing we do? Put him to work, do this, do that? I'm gonna put you in charge of this, I'm gonna make you do that. I'm gonna make you do this or that. Right, right, right, right. And you work them to fucking death and they end up walking out the door and never coming back Because it's fresh blood. That ain't right.
Speaker 4:Absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, and if you don't think young guys talk to young guys and went in there, the first thing they do is put me to fucking work. I didn't even know what the fuck's going on. I've been there fucking four months and I'm the quartermaster now. What the fuck? Yeah, you know, and I'm in my fucking elbows deep in bullshit. And the second they can get out of it. They get out of it.
Speaker 2:They never walk through the door again and you never hear from them again, because the second they walk through, you piled a bunch of bullshit on them because you were tired of doing it Right Rather than doing it the right way. You know what I mean, and I honestly think that's part of the problem. Probably no, I get you Okay well, I just wanna make sure you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 4:What I want everybody to understand is was it clipping?
Speaker 2:No, it's not going. Okay, when my former quartermaster I'm gonna do that when you say the name.
Speaker 4:Okay, former quartermaster decided to be done. I went with two parts because he was interested and he came up and said how can I help? I was like, hey, dude, I need a quartermaster.
Speaker 2:Did he even know, what that even meant?
Speaker 4:Well, I told him, I said you know you're gonna run the books, it's gonna. It's very time consuming, but I believe that the quartermaster we have right now has everything in order. So it's just, it's gonna be an easy pass off. He's like okay, I'll do it. Okay, well, that didn't work for him. That didn't work for him it wasn't an easy pass off.
Speaker 4:So now my quartermaster has a problem Now with the other nerd Tech. He is a he's a typey guy, my adjutant, which basically is the guy that takes minutes at the meetings Secretary.
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 4:Secretary. Yeah, you can call him whatever you want.
Speaker 2:Pretty much what it is.
Speaker 4:Yep, pretty much what it is my old secretary. I said Terry, terry, russell, how you doing he goes, I'm done, I want, I want somebody else to do the adjutant job, okay, and then Joe got involved and I was like Joe, would you like to be the adjutant, cause he's computer, he can do all this bullshit by computer.
Speaker 2:That's the reason why our Facebook live is fucked up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because of Joe because of Joe, but he, he did it, I mean, and he jumped on it and he's relatively new.
Speaker 2:Straight away our website.
Speaker 4:He had squared away. Our website, joe Joe rocks.
Speaker 2:There's no no, no, no complaints on either side, I'll. I'll make. I was trying to get at it and you guys walk son.
Speaker 4:And then you throw. First thing we do is put them to work. You throw a bunch of bullshit out. That's not that's not the way it should be.
Speaker 2:And then what they do is they get overwhelmed and they walk out the door and they come back and they say, fuck this, I'm done. And that's the unfortunate part, yep, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4:Thankfully, we have two dudes yes, and I don't call people dudes unless you're Jason Nickerson. You're my point man, you're going to lead me through combat. We have two dudes right now that are rocking out, and that's Bretton and that is.
Speaker 1:Joe.
Speaker 4:Gates, yep, two dudes, I agree.
Speaker 2:They're my dudes, so I agree.
Speaker 4:But anyway.
Speaker 2:Wow, we, we struggle with the same thing. Every post struggles with Yep. You know you're looking at. You know, claire, they got a quarter master and a post grander that rotate every other year. They don't have anybody else to step up. Right. You know, and they're always good with membership, they always have lots of people, but it's always a tough thing to get somebody else to volunteer a bunch of personal time to deal with stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's that's. The unfortunate part is, these positions are never paid, you know. So if you're the postman and you have to attend quarterly meetings on a Sunday, and you know, or you got to make a convention or a conference because that's your job, and now you got hotels and travel expenses and food and all kinds of things. I mean you know we go down to the VOD and it's a four or $500 a weekend Right Can be, and that's just one thing. And now I got to do it three times a year. It's 1500 bucks. And now I got to make these other things and it's another you know day and another bunch of money and a bunch of you know. So it's.
Speaker 2:It's tough when you're a volunteer organization. I have no idea what the solution always is either. You know, I mean I couldn't tell you how much money I spent in fuel and time and in donations to rides or anything else that I did over the summer. You know, I mean I would bet you, if you're going to be the president of our riders group, you better expect two grand coming out of your pocket.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and you should probably expect 100 hours worth of your time. Yeah, pretty easy, pretty easy. So about, once again it's a volunteer organization that does a lot of good, so the time, the money, is well spent because it's serving a bigger purpose, and that's what we did when we were serving in the military it's the bigger purpose, doesn't matter if you're a police fire or you're a police officer.
Speaker 4:Not about us.
Speaker 2:No, but once again, some people are more fortunate than other people when you have the time or the resources to be able to spend or do. Retired. Well, right, but once again, though, here's the issue with me being a younger member.
Speaker 4:A sexy younger member.
Speaker 2:It's nice to see. It's nice to see younger people in leadership positions, leading you.
Speaker 2:And that's not a knock on the older membership. Everybody's had a time and a place and everybody's got their ideas. Nobody's knocking on those things. But you know, I said this before, especially at our posts to the older members we don't pick the phone up off the kitchen wall with the curly cord anymore. We're not saying answering the phone is wrong, we just do it differently. Nowadays it's the cell phone in our pocket, back pocket, whatever. We're still answering the phone, we're still talking to somebody. Live the phone calls. Not wrong, we just do things differently. We're not.
Speaker 2:Because I think all too often and Tim will agree that if a younger guy comes in or a younger woman comes in with a different idea, it's well, you're just telling me I'm doing things or we've been doing things wrong all these years. No, that's not it. We do things different. I mean we have quartermasters out there which is like the accountant for the post. They still have a ledger where they write every check or every deposit or every withdrawal, like in a checkbook register. Nowadays we do things on the computer, you know. So you're using QuickBooks or using whatever to do your accounting stuff. We're not saying that keeping the track of the money is wrong, obviously it's right, we just do it different. Just like the telephone. We don't answer it on the kitchen wall anymore, with the curly queue, you know. And if you were high speed back in the day, right, you had the cordless phone, but we don't answer the phone that way anymore. We all have cell phones. So we still talk on the phone, we still do the things we have to do, we just do it differently, right, and sometimes it's hard to get through to the older guys. We've done it this way for a hundred years. Well, we're still doing it. We're just doing it different. We're still doing the same thing, we just do it different.
Speaker 2:And it's hard sometimes to get that across to people. I mean, I'm not saying I'm right, wrong, but you know, if you want to get younger people involved, we have to get up with technology, right. You have to get the creators, you have to get the internet, you have to get things different. You know, and we're blessed at our post, we're able to do that stuff right. We have canteen, we have darts, we have events, we have stuff going on all the time. We're not as blessed as the Detroiters but have a million members sitting five miles away. We're in the middle of Michigan, you know. So we have to be creative on how we make our money and how we pay our bills. They don't have to get creative right. They do a burger night. They get 600 people off the door. We do a burger night we get six people off the door.
Speaker 2:So what they do down there doesn't work for us. You know they're blessed, they can do anything and make money. We have to be creative with it. But same extent. You know, answer the phone's. Answer the phone and sometimes the older generation is a little bit tougher, but we've got a lot of, we have a lot of good ones in our posts. They buy into what the younger has got. Young guys want to do yeah, and they even say my time has passed, it's your turn the eagle the eagle.
Speaker 2:My time has passed, it's your turn.
Speaker 4:Eagle, that's great. Terry and Satsio. He tells me all the time my time has came and gone and I'm going to support you guys because now it's your time. Yep, and you got to love him, but the one thing's that doesn't happen very often. No, because normally the old guys they don't want to hold on to it and fucking die. Yeah, they don't want to do nothing.
Speaker 2:Well, but they don't want to change.
Speaker 4:Yes, they don't want to change.
Speaker 2:Just, typically, older people don't like my dad. My dad's a creature habit, dude. He gets up at six o'clock, he has a cup of coffee, he has breakfast, he walks the dog, he comes home for lunch.
Speaker 4:He does this. He does this.
Speaker 2:He's a creature, like if he has a doctor's appointment and it's time to walk the dog, he freaks out. I walk the dog from eight to nine. I have an eight. I have a doctor's appointment. He'll fucking tell the doctor no, no, no, I can't be here till 9.30. I walk the dog from eight to nine. Yeah. I can be here at 9.30. He'll fuck his whole day up. Yeah, if you change something and that's honest to God.
Speaker 4:Yep and, like Charlie said, with the leadership you know you want to see younger. You got Ray Lopez. Sorry, who's younger? Sorry, commander Lopez, 55 years old. You got Junior Vice or Senior Vice, kimberly Napoleon say they've been 50, 50, 55, 56.
Speaker 4:Then you got Yonka Yonka, junior Vice, yonka Vietnam era, 60, 63, 64, 65, whatever. Okay, but a lot of this is Ray Lopez still works. He works at GM or Ford Ford. He still works. So he works and he's trying to. He's trying to shuffle his family because he's got a little two year old little boy and Benny Benjamin. Benjamin, I love you, you little critter he was he was so great. Yeah, yeah, he's got a beautiful wife, natalie.
Speaker 2:He was the same. Natalie Put up with him. Yeah, as a jarhead.
Speaker 4:Yep, if you can put up with a jarhead, natalie, I love you. So so they have. They have this. But he's working. Kimberly, I don't he retires.
Speaker 2:He actually retired. He told me commander Lopez told me he's retiring in April or May, april, april, may.
Speaker 4:But that's hard to do, that's hard to be the department commander, and that's hard to be the department commander and work and be a husband, and be a husband and a father, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4:So then you get Kimberly. I don't know what Kimberly's situation is, but Yacca is a retired dude. He's a Vietnam vet, so he has all the time in the world. And with what Charlie's saying is, there's not a lot of 55 year old men, women or otherwise, that are retired at 55. Like I am, I am because I get 100% disability from the VA. I'm 57, okay, so most people can't even try to run through the chairs until they're retired, which is 62, 63. Depends, yeah. However, that works, yeah. So the younger people are looking at, okay, who am I gonna follow, like Kimberly and Ray Gulf War or Desert Storm, desert Storm, yacca.
Speaker 2:Vietnam, the only thing I will tell you as a younger member, so I will speak for every motherfucker out there. Please do, because that's what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 4:Okay, please do.
Speaker 2:The difference is that we're blessed at our post If the senior leadership for the Department of Michigan District your post accepts, understands and talks to you about your opinion and takes it at least into consideration. I'm not saying you have to go with it, but you have to understand what we're talking about the lower level.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if I'm a post member and I come to whatever, or I'm at the department, if I decide to move up whatever, I say, hey, guys, we need to do this. This is what's gonna bring the membership up. This is what we need to do Because this is what the younger veterans that are eligible for us need or want. At least listen to it, right, absolutely, because I'm talking from my generation, your generation's. Good, you know what I mean. You guys, you understand where you're coming from. At least understand where I'm coming from, because I'm that person, Right. So I'll speak for my generation of veterans at the VFW. You speak for yours. That's great, right, I'm not gonna knock on you, but if there's a way to go get us or get us involved or get us to join or anything else, More members, at least listen to what I'm saying, because why would I bullshit you, why would I tell you something that's wrong?
Speaker 2:Right, if this is what got me here, and this is what I know I would want to get here, take it as almost gospel, because if you don't, you're only hurting ourselves.
Speaker 4:You're hurting our organization because we're losing membership.
Speaker 2:But some of it is, and I 100% agree with you, Rat. It's tough. There's very few of us that could sit in a spot, Work wise, family wise, like my youngest just turned 18, he's shipping out my five months to boot camp. Jen and I are just about empty nesters, Right. He has a job, he goes to school, he hangs out with his buddies. We hardly see him. He's at that age, he's 18. Just not even graduate high school yet just turned 18. So we're at that stage where it's easier for me now to step up and do things, because I don't have the littles at home where I'm doing the baseball games, the football games, the soccer matches, the swim meets or whatever.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:But at the same extent I'm getting my freedom. So where do I want to spend my freedom time? For sure it's taking my wife on vacation or going out date night or doing whatever. Probably the VFW is gonna be a very close second to that, because she understands where my passion's at and I get lucky because she's crazy supportive. She's awesome. Why are we on the podcast tonight?
Speaker 4:Hey, jen, you are awesome, I love you. And three and a half hours, yeah, jen is awesome. Your wife is awesome. She's an awesome woman and I'm blessed. You are blessed.
Speaker 2:I'm just like Commander Lopez is blessed with Natalie, with. Natalie yes, how much shit does she have to deal with with him on the phone and traveling weekends and doing this and going to this event.
Speaker 4:Past past department commander John Griffin with Chris, With Chris, yeah.
Speaker 2:With Chris, but she's also she's also crazy active with the Agilers.
Speaker 4:Yes, One for garden. All the different things You're blessed you gotta have the families to support.
Speaker 2:You have to have it. So it's tough for the young guy, right, if they're, if they're spouse, man, women, whatever it is, it's a spouse. Well, because you could have we have a lot of female post-members. I get it. I get it. And if their spouse isn't, they have to understand. Yeah, if this is her passion, this is what she wants to do and it's not the husband's passion, yeah, but my sister did it Cause my, my brother-in-law, was so involved in the city of Mount Pleasant.
Speaker 2:He was on like city commission for like 20 years, he was mayor for like five. So it's meetings and it's this and it's that he was marrying people and he was doing all kinds of shit all the time and my sister had to realize, hey, this is my husband's passion. I'm gonna support him, yep.
Speaker 2:However, I had to, even if he's gone, or we have to go do this or we have to go do that. She was supportive of him because that was his passion. Same thing with me, right? So VFW American Legion, remember both. If this is what we need to do, you know I'm taking days off work. I'm Blasquez, my business partners like never complains. Well.
Speaker 2:I'm a fuck. Resistant Florida for four days. Just got back today in the office. But guess what you think I'm gonna say nothing? No, because we had to go move the war memorials.
Speaker 4:That's right. On Friday we're going on. That's right. We rocked that shit and he didn't say a word. Who do you think he said a word after and out? He didn't say a fucking word.
Speaker 2:He didn't say a word today. He didn't say nothing.
Speaker 2:You know we're out having lunch and we're hanging out, we're talking about stuff coming up tonight, right right, he doesn't say a word. But you know what? He supports it because he understands what's passionate to me. As long as the business gets done Same thing with Jen. As long as things are getting done at home, the kids are taking care of business and being taken care of, she'll support me 100%. Yep, that's the partnership, that's the team we tried to build. The same thing in the writers' group. It's about the team. Our small team supports the post, which our small team supports. The post supports the district. Our small team supports the post, the district, the department. Our small team supports the post, the district, department and national. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. So it all flows uphill and you have to have the support at home because these are your passions and if it's something that makes you happy to do, do it. But it's tough because there's very few of us younger guys that have the freedoms. That's right.
Speaker 4:I'm very blessed with it. You are blessed because there are a lot of younger guys. I get it. They gotta be with the kids, they gotta be.
Speaker 2:Well. This is why, before I go back, I can count on one hand how many I was an all-star team baseball, played football. I can count on one hand how many games my dad made Me too, Because he was off running with the moose and all these other things that he was involved in business-wise. Right, he did a deal where it was like a speech club Yep, the thing I get. I'm a toast master, so I think it was called back in the day You'd have to write a speech and they travel all over the place and give speeches and get graded and all these things. Because he wasn't a great public speaker. I'm not either. Like, if I get up, like no way could I be Mr Derek, get up there and read my essay Mr Derek.
Speaker 2:No way could I do that.
Speaker 4:Mr Derek, we love you. You did a great job, man yeah.
Speaker 2:And this kid's like 12. And I'm 45. I couldn't do Seven great seven greater, I couldn't do what he did. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And he didn't miss a beat he did not miss a beat.
Speaker 2:No in front of 300 people. I couldn't do that I don't like doing it Me either, like getting up in front of the district and getting on the Ryder's Group. These are all my brothers, you know what I mean. And this kid's getting up in front of 300 strangers.
Speaker 4:That he doesn't even fucking know, that's why they're strangers to him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because he doesn't know them. Oh, that's true. So there you go. So you hear what I'm saying. So, like, so my dad was doing all these things to better himself, you know, and it was all good. We went on the trips and did stuff with him too, you know. Yeah, my mom was crazy supportive of it. But it takes that, and I think there's a culture shift between you know, my parents, the Vietnam era people, and then me and my wife. And then the new.
Speaker 2:Nowadays, you know if you missed your kid's basketball game, your shitty dad or your shitty mom or whatever you know. So there's differences nowadays. You know, where you know my dad would go out and do whatever and mom was cool with it, and mom and I would do shit with her girlfriends. Dad was cool with it. Nowadays it's like who are you with and what are you doing and why aren't you home and why is?
Speaker 4:my dad and why are you watching Charlie? Why are you watching Charlie dribble the ball off his foot?
Speaker 2:I don't play basketball by any means, but you understand what I'm saying. So there's just a different culture shift. Yeah. Nowadays to back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, when we have a lot of our leadership doing things, and I 100% agree. You need to be retired, you need to have the opportunity of the time to do things and it's tough on a young member nowadays to have that freedom to do it Like I could 100%.
Speaker 4:If I wanted to, I could throw my hat in to be Department of Junior Vice. Could, because I am retired. Um, I've worked at the VFW as a bar manager, but I can. My schedule is floating or whatever you want to call it. I could 100% do that, but I 100% don't want to do that right now.
Speaker 2:So we're using my phone as live right now and I could pull up four different calendars and I can't hardly tell you what I'm doing tomorrow, because I have my work calendar. I have a family calendar that's got both kids in it. The white calendar, I have the one with just me and Janet. I got a personal calendar for my personal shit, like when I get a haircut or do whatever. I go down to get my pedicure. I got my personal shit I do in it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:I can take care of your toes.
Speaker 2:And when you want to clip them. I will chop them, motherfuckers. How's your foot massages?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know. Then you're not doing it. All I'm saying is at the end of the day, when someone's like hey, what are you doing next Tuesday?
Speaker 4:I don't know, Let me check my calendar, because I have no idea, you have no idea.
Speaker 2:You know, and then sometimes I'm like, well, it's free, but let me check with the wife to make sure she doesn't have something she just didn't put in the calendar yet. And we make, you know like our son pretty much runs his own life and the only thing we tell him is put when you work in the calendar so we know you're working and when we do that we know you're kind of free, yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So if you want to go out to dinner with you or you know like, I know like when I get homes, I get home a lot of times before Jen, so I make dinner, am I making for two or three mistakes? So I need to get out tomorrow, or how many pork chops or whatever I'm making? You know what I mean, because we're all. I mean I'm lucky to get one night a week at home Because, let me put it this way, I had Dart League Monday. Tuesday I was home, so we did stakes last night, tonight podcast. Tomorrow night Andy's got his National Technical Honor Society Award ceremony at high school. Friday I got the 50-50 for darts.
Speaker 2:So Monday through Friday, how many days did I get home? One One. So I have no idea how other parents do it too. We're running and I'm my free night she's shooting darts tonight for my sister with Elisa Beale tonight and here I am doing the podcast stuff. So like we start setting stuff up and I'm like, well, I'm good this day or this night or whatever. It's tough. And then on the weekends it's like there's always something that's going to go on that we don't know about, whereas we're doing laundry all day Saturday cleaning the house, and Sunday we're going to try and do a family dinner or something, because we're all together finally for one night. It's just crazy tough and I've only got one kid at 18 years old, but our nights are packed full of stuff.
Speaker 4:And my nights are like Sunday Fuck this, I don't want to be home. Go to the bar, because I hate being home alone. Monday, I'm going to go to the post for a little while and we'll watch Charlie throw darts, and then I'm going to the fucking bar.
Speaker 2:We're in the finals. Monday for the Vegas trip. Baby, we're back again.
Speaker 4:Tuesday is kind of my day off, but I got to go to the post and I hate it because I got to get a couple of things done. And then I surprise, surprise, I am going to the fucking bar because I hate being home alone. Wednesday, wednesday, my fucking Charlie calls me up and says we're getting your January ride. So now I have to be a bulldozer and I have to un fucking shovel the fucking thing so I can get, so I can liberate my bike from the backyard of the post, and then we go and we always got the podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I'm trying to say. We're all busy this is where the struggle is with the leadership of the VFW medical legion Zambia. Anywhere else, we're volunteer organizations. Nobody's getting paid to do post commander, down to Sergeant Ironfield.
Speaker 4:Anybody.
Speaker 2:So how much time can you give Consistently? It's a struggle and as when young guys come in and they see everything being ran by the old guys, they're like, oh, I'm going to change. Well, it's a tough mindset to change is Okay. If you want to run the show, how much time do you have to give? Well, I can only do this. Like me, I have to check my schedule to see what I have for time. They're all the same, same boat and it's hard to change their mindset to of. You only got so much time, and the time that you can give consistently is not enough to do the job Right. You know what I mean. So you know, when we have an event going on at the poster in the weekend and I don't show up to it, it's not because I don't want to be there or gender to be there.
Speaker 4:You have other things to do.
Speaker 2:We're trying to do shit on the weekend, if we have a day to get ready for the next week, because we don't have a free night.
Speaker 4:Right? No, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm lucky to have one free night at home a week, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Like, when I go to these conferences went to the conference, right. You know how many phone calls I got. Hey, what's up? I'm like I'm in conference, what's up? Well, we're out of this. Well then, go to the store and get it. Oh well, this happened. Well, fix it.
Speaker 2:I'm how many times are you and I out Having lunch or riding? What am I doing all day? Checking emails. Yeah, because you're taking business calls your dudes is yeah, I'm taking business calls constantly. Yeah, all the time. Yeah, and that's okay. My job affords me to work remote, but if I'm having fun I'm still working, right, lady Jen had to figure it out the hard way. First couple of three years I'm being an owner, mm. Hmm, we're on vacation, the laptop's going.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, my bag's going. She's like, well, what the fuck is this? And you're like, hey.
Speaker 2:She might have to take the kids to the beach, and I'm bidding the job or I'm managing the job.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 2:I'm, you know, covid. I'm down there with a laptop and I'm on a Zoom meeting for a project we had still going because it was deemed essential, yeah, and they're like, I see palm trees, what the fuck? I'm like we're at a condo in South Carolina, right, you're like what the fuck? I'm like, well, we own the motherfucker. So we came down here. It's 75 degrees down here. It's 30 in Michigan. Yeah, you're like what the fuck. And I'm like, well, guess what? It's 11 o'clock. I'm not on the golf course, right, I'm in the meeting, right, that's what we do. Well, my vacations have never really been vacations. They're always working vacations.
Speaker 4:That's what you get for being an owner.
Speaker 2:And we were in Vegas for Darts last year when John and I won the trip and Alisa unfortunately they're three Vegas is like three hours behind here, so she's getting up at like four in the fucking morning in the bathroom working, working, Shut up, Like four am Vegas time, seven am back here in Michigan and she's working. Yeah, she's sitting in the bathroom on the floor with her laptop and her earphones on and a microphone working, while we're all still sleeping in the room because we had to share a room, right, right?
Speaker 4:Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2:Seriously, she did it like four days in a row she had to work, usually the other she takes a bunch of PTO, you know, or whatever. So it was like we're not doing anything till noon anyway. So she might as well get her whole day in, you know, from four am to noon. She just worked through her lunch hour or whatever and be done, and then we could go out at noon and do whatever. Yeah, she's sitting in the fucking bathroom working, you know, or we'd be down in the dark room shooting in the tournament. She might be kind of finishing up her day or whatever. But yeah, so those are just the responsibilities we have to do. Even if you're on vacation, you're still working. You know what I mean. And it was impressive that she could do it because, you know, when you're three hours behind, it's midnight. Out there it's 9 am or 9 pm. Back here it's 3 am. We're still going. It's midnight. I'm in bed, dude. I'm 45 years old. I'm in the office at five.
Speaker 4:Because you're old fucker.
Speaker 2:I'm in the office at 5 30 am. If my guys are on the road going to a job site or doing something, I'm up. If they've got something, they need something, I'm on. I'm up or I roll in here to the shop. They see me rolling in right behind them. Right, I don't have to be here till 8 am. I'm here at 5 30. Right, because you're you're there working.
Speaker 4:I'm working, you're making it. It's an example to the guys. You're absolutely it's. You're setting the example. Well, if they're working, I'm working.
Speaker 2:It's always what I try to instill which is, I think, a positive, but at the same extent, yeah, it's tough. You know what I mean, because when I travel, these guys go on vacation, they take two weeks and they go somewhere Cancun, jamaica, whatever the fuck they don't, they don't have to work, okay.
Speaker 4:So, charlie for this, because it's that time.
Speaker 2:It's done, that time it's time.
Speaker 4:Oh man, I was trying to find, Trying to find. Oh glory, because I was going to say it.
Speaker 2:Don't say it, we'll do it on the next one, okay.
Speaker 4:So, hey, sports fans, it's awesome to have you, it's always awesome to have you.
Speaker 4:Okay, keep listening, keep enjoying us, keep giving us some feedback, keep giving us some stuff, because we're always going to, we're going to go there, we're going to go in the deep, dark places that you don't talk about at parties. That's it, because that's what we do. But we love you and we want you to keep listening to us, and this went a little longer than we thought it was going to be, because we thought it was going to be a shorty. We're going to talk about the lions and we're going to talk about the VOD, and then, obviously, me and Charlie can't shut up, so we just continue to march. But you guys have a nice night, sleep well and we're out.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us at Soup Sandwich, a podcast that explores the complex and compelling world of veterans in the United States. Through interviews with veterans themselves, military experts and advocates, we'll dive deep into the issues that matter most to this community, from mental health and employment to the history of the US military, the future of military service and everything in between. Whether you're a veteran yourself, a spouse or family member of a veteran, or simply interested in learning more about this community, this podcast is for you. So come with us on a journey into the heart of the veteran experience and discover the stories, struggles and triumphs that have shaped our nation's brave after they've returned home.