010 Countdown King Transcript (Casey Kasem)

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Michael: This person died in 2014 at the age 82. And he's a man.

Scott: Okay.

Michael: He grew up in a middle Eastern immigrant neighborhood of Detroit, not Johnny. Gosh.

Ashley: Okay. You said not Johnny Cash. Okay. Let's keep going.

Michael: He embraced Courtney. As Vietnam era cynicism, Pete, but his format struck a chord.

Scott: He didn't. So as he comedian it, Bob Barker,

Michael: I don't think Bob Berger is a comedian. In fact, I don't even think Bob Barker's dead. He had a cameo in 1984 Ghostbusters in which he played himself.

Ashley: Oh my gosh. It's not Leslie Nielsen, right?

Michael: It's not Leslie Nielsen, but that's not a bad guess. His biggest role off the radio was in the TV cartoon series. Scooby-Doo where are you? The movie TV cartoon series.

Ashley: Oh, I don't know who the voice has worked for that

Michael: he retired in 2004 handing over duties to Ryan Seacrest.

Scott: Oh, oh, oh. I might, uh,

Michael: today's dead. Celebrity is Casey Kasem.

Casey Kasem: In Hollywood, this is Casey Kasem on American top 40. We're counting down the biggest hits in the USA on our way to the number one most popular song in the nation. I'm Casey Kasem. Now one more time. The words I've ended my show with since 1970, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

Michael: welcome to famous and gravy. I'm Mike, Osborne,

Amit: my name is Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about multiple aspects of a famous person. We want to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answering a big question. What I want today?

Casey Casey died 2014, age 82. First-line. Let's do it. Casey Casey, a disc jockey who never claimed to love rock and roll, but who built a long and lucrative career from it, creating and hosting. One of radio's most popular syndicated pop music shows American top 40 died on Sunday in a hospital in gig Harbor, Washington.

It was aided to it's interesting that

that's

Amit: the one thing that they chose. To accentuate that he didn't love rock and roll, but made his life around it. There was so much to his life. Yeah. That that's a strange thing to pick, but you got to pick something, I guess I'm a little befuddled why they chose to accentuate that.

Michael: I mean, I think it's sort of like he made his fortune and his fame and. Industry that he was not necessarily enamored with. Do you feel like there's commentary by doing that, by making that choice to say he, he became successful as a result of rock and roll, even though he didn't like, yeah. It seems like

Amit: the author of the obituary is a rock and roll enthusiast who doesn't like that.

Somebody who didn't embody and love rock and roll with so much of the voice

Michael: of it. Yeah. Do you think they should have mentioned.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, I had forgotten about that coming from the bushes

Michael: and we'll see what it is, school. We don't worry.

Amit: I'm right behind you. That's headline and

Michael: stuff. So does that feel like an omission here?

Cause I feel like whenever we go through the obituary, we're looking at the verbiage, we're looking at. The expansiveness, how much do they capture the whole life? Which includes omissions, right? Is there something they missed? Yeah. As well as cleverness and economy, how well the one sentence does the work of in a tight way.

Yeah. To

Amit: me being a chief character of Scooby-Doo is more important than the fact that he may not have loved rock and roll.

Michael: It's also his take by the way. There was a case he's taken himself. Casey. Casey has said it was quoted in New York times article, I think from 2007, he said years from now Casey case and will be long forgotten, but shaggy is going to live on.

Yeah, I

Amit: saw that in my research. So he wasn't lying about. Yeah. Like, and I think some of the other things that I read is that he enjoyed being the counter to rebellious rock and roll. Like even if a hard rock song was on the top 40 or something with a very counter-cultural message, he enjoyed being the, the counterweight.

Michael: So let's get back to the obituary here for a second, you know, long and lucrative career. They kind of hinted good fortune. That'll come up later. It's not a particularly. Obituary.

Amit: Very low, clever

Michael: points. Yeah. It sounds like you're sort of skewing on the, not as impressed with this obituary

Amit: now. I'm not. And I think the reason that we choose New York times obituaries for our show is because they tend to wow.

Us with their cleverness or their. Brevity or lack thereof and

Michael: then 15 pieces of flair.

Amit: Uh, and I don't think it did it. I may have them, this just sounded descriptive with one possible

Michael: grudge. It also doesn't get at the drama that surrounds his death and his end of life, which I know we're going to get into as well.

Yeah. Do you think that's appropriate? Was that another. First

Amit: line. I don't know what we look for in the first line. And the reason we choose the first line is because of the summation. And I don't think it's that important in the summation of the public Casey, Casey,

Michael: I do think like they describe him as a disc jockey.

People still obviously listen to terrestrial radio, but I wonder, and we, I don't even like if you were to pull millennials and younger, I wonder if they would know what DJ Stan. No, probably

Amit: not. And if you told them disc jockey, they would probably, there's probably something very offensive about it. You think so?

Yeah, because the word jockey a jaw, anything jockey is typically tends to be jockey, but I would imagine

Michael: what does it mean? I think of like the, the little guy on the horse.

Amit: No, but I mean, look who you're sitting in front of this was like the eighties insult to my people was to call us camel jockeys.

Michael: Oh really?

Yeah. I guess now that you say that, yeah. Sorry, I forgot you.

Amit: Should've been on the same playground as me,

Michael: Michael. It gets late. I guess I should have. I felt like that didn't happen. That it would have been if we'd gone up in the same town, but yeah, but that term that's interesting. So

Amit: that's, that's my, I mean, I'm just bringing that in, but that's my association with

jockey

Michael: being a maturity, if that makes sense.

So you hear the word jockey and you think of the majority of camel

Amit: jockey. I mean, I think of a few traumatic moments probably in like elementary school. Yes.

Michael: Wow. That's a, it's an education moment for, for my white ass. Good. That's good. I need to hear this. I won't use the word shocky again

Amit: and grabbed and let's not, and tiredly irrelevant to my experience.

Let's not forget KCK. Some was Lebanese American. I mean, I am Indian American, but we share a pretty

Michael: similar complexion. You might both have received that insult on the place.

Amit: I don't see how growing up in 1930s, America, if that slur existed back then how he couldn't have received it. But I don't know. I don't know that the origins

Michael: of it.

Wow. I didn't think we were going to talk so much about the word. The J word, you're going to say it anymore. Uh, well, that's great. And what do you think I'm going to

Amit: go for? Because it's

Michael: high based on it. I think you always bump up a point or two. I think you should go lower based on how negative you are on this.

Amit: No, I'm not going to be forced into this, Michael. All right. It was still a summation. I don't think it was inappropriate. now on obituaries. Yeah. Well, I've never have I given. That's what I, that's my point. Yeah, it would guess it would have to hit me in a certain way. The way I look at a forest, that's pretty bad.

That's getting a 40 on a test. Okay.

Michael: But

Amit: where are you? Where are you going to score it? I was going to say three. Um, and that's so vastly different from my four.

Michael: Well, I see more positive here. I do think the summation is good. This is not Kenny rod. Kenny Rogers was, I'm still pissed off about that one. They capture that really high and important points.

He was on the radio. He had a long and lucrative career. I think he is going to be, or should be at least when he died, remembered for American top 40. And I think that that should be elevated above. This could be do voiceover because he lent his voice, but he didn't necessarily like design or write the show.

I think in terms of comprehensiveness, good. I, it did not have 15 pieces of flair, so I'm a little disappointed in the verbiage. So it's a low score. It's an average. I don't think of it as a 40 on a test. I start with the number five. Is it better or worse than average? But if you're a journalist, you should

Amit: be ashamed of yourself.

If you're getting a three-year or a

Michael: four for me, I think so. I think so. I would have loved to have heard something about his voice here and the richness of it, the way that he seemed to just reach through the microphone and literally speak to people so that you heard that voice and you were. Right there with him.

I mean, he, it was, it was trending. I'm Casey, Qassem

Amit: among these 40 top acts of

Michael: the eighties. We have 18

Amit: groups, 12

Michael: of the groups are either American or part American. And

Amit: we're up to the

Michael: biggest of these and to not have mentioned of that, to just call him a radio DJ. You know, belittles, I think what was it?

Incredible. God given talent. Yeah.

Amit: So either way a three and a four. We're

Michael: disappointed, indeed. Okay. Shame on your New York times. Let's go on to the next category. Five things I love about you here. I'm at, and I worked together to come up with five reasons to be talking about this. I'll just say, I don't know if we want to include it, but to me, the voice is number one.

It's so good that I don't know if this is a career that can ever be replicated. The richness of it is incredible. Yeah. So I'm going to go ahead and steal that one for number one. If you don't mind, I'll agree with that. I'll high

Amit: five. You on it. It's a very imitated voice, but no one else can ever have that.

Like he has just cornered that off from our current. For several

Michael: generations. Well, I, you know, I took a stab a second ago, trying to talk about what works about it. If this is a quality that not necessarily everybody is given, we all only have so much control over our vocal range. We can go to speech therapists, we can learn to sing.

We can take voice lessons, we can practice diction. We can practice and unseen. That sort of thing. I don't know. I guess I just want to shine a light on that quality and the importance of like voice as instrument, as something that is desirable. Even if you don't have Casey caissons God-given voice, like you can make your voice better.

And I think that that's a powerful, great thing to do in life. Yeah.

Amit: I think there's something about it that makes it sound like an announcement. But everything is an announcement. So certain people, if they're making announcements, be it they're broadcasting a game or presenting a speaker or whatever, they only have finite moments that they can really put emphasis behind something and make it sound like an important announcement.

He could make everything sound important just by the way he accentuated it. That sort of confidence I think was even.

Michael: Yeah. All right. Well, uh, do you want to go on number two? Yep.

Amit: I will take, well, then we've been talking about it forever, but I can't let it go shaggy. Yeah,

Michael: that's on my list. Yeah, I love

Amit: Scooby-Doo.

Yes. And it was a forgotten fact for me until I started researching for this episode. I think I knew it in the past, but it was a forgotten.

Michael: Scooby doo is so great. It's such a great cartoon. I watched it with my kids now, and I haven't seen the movies or the reboots, but like just a 30 minute mystery and unlikely friends and a van and a dog.

And certainly like, I think it was a clever cartoon in the way that you learn somewhere in adolescents that at least shaggy and Scooby are probably high that had some cultural cachet for me. Yeah. Jackie come to life. Yeah.

Amit: And shaggy was so the opposite of the case, the case from that was projected on the TV

and

Michael: radio shows the persona.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. I watched a YouTube clip of him doing shaggy behind the scenes and he's animated. Casey Qassem is when he was doing it. I mean, he's sort of like it, he's not standing still. He is doing like, he's really into it, which I think you have to do, you have to use your whole body if you're going to do that kind of voice work, but.

I love that. Number two, I think that's a great one. Contact three. Sure. I'm going to say develop the countdown format. This is a little bit of a meta point. I think it relates to our show, but this sort of the gaming aspect of radio, like you're never going to guess who number two is this week, you know, there's a suspense built into the.

Show format that I think actually informs a lot of what we're listening to and listening for in audio today, whether it's terrestrial, radio or podcasts. Yeah. So I think it's like a great idea, but I also like think it is probably had more cultural impact in terms of conditioning, the listening audience for a certain thing, then maybe we have.

Correct.

Amit: Yeah, because we are in list culture. We are maybe past it a little bit. Like the peak of it may have been Buzzfeed type of era, but everything was a list everything's a top 10, top 20. And not just on important things. He basically started

Michael: all that. That's exactly my point. And I, you know, I disagree that we're paying.

We're passing this culture. We may be past a certain kind of clickbait on the internet. I don't know if like five things that will make you want to go to Hawaii. We'll get the same kind of click that it might have a few years ago just because we're so numb to it. Yeah. Right. But that said, I do think that there is something about the human brain that once things organized and ranked, you know, and

Amit: once.

Once winner's

Michael: crowned, right? Like the best or the most popular or the most successful song of the week. Yeah. So I guess I'm, I'm encompassing the idea for the show, but also its legacy. Uh, and my number three, uh, you want to take four? Yeah,

Amit: four. I'm going to go with active. On a lot of things on a lot of animal rights, he was a strict vegan, had some causes that were bearing dear to him around middle Eastern politics.

And there were a few other things I knew I saw. Yep. Yeah. And he took big stands on it. Like I think part of, and I'm maybe mixing stories here, but part of, I think. The end of the Scooby doo years was the, he was, they were supposed to be in a burger king commercial. And because he didn't want to promote me consumption, he left it.

Yeah. So, I mean, he took some pretty strong positions.

Michael: Uh we'll return to that in a moment. Okay. But it's not necessarily this specific possessions he chose that you admire it's that he took a stand and was actually an, a real activist. Yeah.

Amit: As best I can tell the realness of the activism and not just somebody that says they champion a cause it's genuine.

Yeah. And I'm removing myself from the causes. I'm not saying that those are my causes. I'm just saying the authenticity of it. Yeah,

Michael: that's good. I've got an unusual number five. Okay. His failed attempts to break into.

Amit: Hi, I had, I had a variation on that.

Michael: I like, he really tried to make it over and over into the movies.

It's some of the movies he's in, in the sixties are clearly like schlock movies. I heard, uh, heard somebody describe them as the movies that Troy McClure might appear in. I'm trying. Startups, such films as P as far as psycho and the president's neck is missing. Their titles include the girls from thunder strip, the glory Stompers screen-free free with an exclamation 200 years later, the cycle savages and the incredible two headed transplant.

I love that he just kept. At it that he worked his way through the radio circuit. He was Michigan. And then he was in San Francisco and he worked his way up in LA and he's like trying to get into acting and not giving up and gets into voice work and still continues to try and get on the silver screen.

I think his dream was to be an actor and I think radio is a pretty good second best, but that he'd never. Totally bailed on that. I admire the failed attempt. Yeah. Specifically.

Amit: I like the horror movie. I think the two headed transplant is what I wrote down now. But yeah, I liked that part of the story.

It's so LA and so America,

Michael: well, and gets back to his signature tagline or what is it? Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. Like he lived with that, you know, he was doing that. That's what this is. So do we have our five? I

think

Amit: we have our five. Okay. I imagine we'll

Michael: do very little disagreement on that, Michael.

Wonderful. All right. Well, let's move on. Category three Malcovich Malcovich Malcovich Malcovich milk, milk, milk. This category is named after the movie being John Malcovich, in which people take a portal into John Malcovich his mind where they can have a front row seat to his experiences. I want you to take this first.

It was hard

Amit: because I was looking for something very deep or very representative of the various areas he lived through. Yeah. And I landed on playing myself and Ghostbusters. What's

Michael: good.

still making headlines all across the country. That Ghostbusters are added again, this time at the

Amit: fashionable dance club, though. I just think it's the playing yourself. There is a coordination for that. And I think that was a big budget movie. They obviously didn't know how big it would actually be, but you can tell they put a lot of resources into it.

And if you are plucked out to play yourself in something like that, like you are being crowned as a pillar of

Michael: culture. My memory is that his cameo is sort of like in the mix of a montage, as the Ghostbusters are sort of gaining more notoriety around New York city, because they're so busy. And like they, that the Ghostbusters being mentioned by Casey Qassem in the movie is actually a mark of.

Well known the Ghostbusters themselves are becoming, is that correct? Correct.

Amit: But that's the compliment I'm talking about is that the studio is saying UKC or the culture maker, right? So UKC are going to be the person we're going to have on screen to acknowledge that our characters, the Ghostbusters are officially part of ascending culture.

He validates

Michael: the ghost by. He validates the Ghostbusters. I liked that. I struggled too with a Malcovich moments. I still have a minute session, actually. I've got to, okay. You mentioned the burger king ad. So he walked away from the character of shaggy. When he was asked to do a burger king ad in the character of shaggy and as a vegan, he wouldn't do it.

He eventually agreed to come back and do shaggy only if they made. Shaggy a vegetarian.

Amit: Oh yes.

Michael: I like the idea of him in the negotiating table saying here's where I draw the line. I come back, but you're going to make this cartoon character vegetarian. And by the way I read that shaggy is the first acknowledged vegetarian cartoon character.

That was sort of like claiming of the character in his stamp on. It's a little bit of a power grab and that, that he drew that line there

Amit: And he won I mean, that's huge. It's courageous, but it's also, I mean, that's again, I'm going to use the word that's culture making.

Michael: Yeah, no, that's true. I think I really like that you're using that phrase because that.

What he's doing. I mean, he is a culture maker. Well, I'm going to go with that one then my other one was, are you aware of his hot mic

Amit: moment? Hotmail? Well, meaning Mike is on and he's doing the same things. Yeah. He had a few of those. I saw that he's like yelling the humanly at staff

Michael: while the mic is still on.

That's what I meant. It's not a hot mic moment. Thank you for there's a YouTube clip that compiles his hot mic moments. Have you listened to it? I was going to play a little bit of it. Okay. We're up to our long distance dedication. And this one is about kids and pets and the situation that we can all understand whether we have kids or pets or neither, it's from a man in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And here's what he writes. Dear Casey, this may seem to be a strange dedication request, but I'm quite sincere and it will need a lot. If you play it recently, there was a death in our family. He was a little dog named snuggles, but he was most certainly a part of that's. Come start again. I'm coming out of the record, play the record.

Okay. Let's see. When you come out of those up-tempo goddamn numbers, man is impossible to make those transitions. And then you got to go into somebody's dying. You know, they do this to me all the time. I don't know what the hell they do it for, but God damn it. If we can't come out of a slow record, I don't understand it is Don.

Okay. I want a goddamn concerted effort to come out of a record that isn't a fucking uptempo record. Every time I do a goddamn death dedication now make it. And I also want to know what happened to the pictures I was supposed to see this week. Cause a God last God damn time. I want somebody who's his fucking brain to not come out of a goddamn record.

That is a that's up Tampa and I got to talk about a fucking dog die.

Amit: That is genius. I mean, it's not, it's, there's a lot

Michael: of these, so what makes it a Malcovich woman? There's one in here towards the end where let's say.

Amit: That is funny. That is, that is humanity.

Michael: It is humanity. The reason I chose it as a Malcovich moment is that I think when you lose your temper, you're telling yourself a story about how you've been wronged somehow that's ultimately sort of a pity party.

Yeah. I kind of want to know who's at fault for this he's blaming. Near as I can piece things together here, he's blaming his producers for the song. That's a lead in to a death dedication about a dead dog, and that he is being asked to create the emotional connective tissue from one song into this dedication.

And he's pissed off about it. That set him off that day. I just want to know what was going

Amit: on in his head. Like what was the trigger?

Michael: What was the trigger? But what was the story he was telling himself? They're trying to screw me over and they're trying to make me look bad, or they're trying to ask me to do something I can't do here, which is make this.

Dedication to a dying dog. Snuggles. Yeah. Or it's like, are

Amit: you fucking with me

Michael: maybe? Right. I guess that's what I want to know. I just, I want to, I kind of want the lead up to what is the narrative going on? That this is the thing that sets him over the edge and he has a temper. This comes up later. In fact, not a bad segue into our next category.

Well, then let's do it. All right. Next category marriages. How many. Also how many kids. And is there anything public about these relationships? There's lots of public things about these relationships. It's going to be a hard one to talk. Yeah. We're going to have to work

Amit: hard to be concise about this. Let's take it easy with the first marriage.

Michael: Okay. First marriage wife, number one, Linda Myers in 1972 to 1979. So Casey was age 40 to 47. It's pretty late marriage. That's what I thought is a little bit older, three children. In those seven years, I try to find out information. Why the marriage didn't last. And the only thing I found was that his first wife said it was his temper now worth knowing nice and 72 American top 40 launches in 1970.

So he's had his flirtations with Hollywood and he is now beginning his rocket ship rise. Terrestrial radio on FM radio. Yep. And I think that's noteworthy about when he gets married. So I just wanted to mark that. All right. Wife, number two, Jean Thompson of cheers fame, 1982, his death in 2014. So Casey was aged 48 to 82.

She at the time of marriage was 26. So 22 years younger than him, they had one child. And one random fun fact, according to time magazine, they were married by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. I saw that in that. Great. Do you want to try and do the succinct version of.

Amit: Well, I mean, there's just the last several years of his life, since he was diagnosed with Parkinson's,

Michael: it's not Parkinson's it's, uh, Lewy body dementia.

It's like Parkinson's. So it is a degenerative disease. He did eventually lose his voice. And for a man who's all the trade was his voice. That was. Uh, tragic, but he gets the diagnosis somewhere around 2007. And I think the last seven years are trouble. Yeah. So

Amit: basically there was a riff between his children from his first marriage and his current wife, his second wife.

Yeah. The children basically accused. Her of, or not even accusing, she actually did block access to him and that he was being mistreated or possibly like his death was being expedited in a certain way.

Michael: And that actually, I think it was the other way around. I think that he had signed something in 2007 saying if I get to a place where new lifestyle living well.

Yeah. And they, and she wasn't honoring that. That's correct. So this dispute emerges between the children of the first marriage and. The second life, their stepmother, essentially, there are several

Amit: lawsuits judges and all involved. It's not a, a little family

Michael: dispute. No, it explodes into a sort of immediate debacle.

There's all kinds of news reports about it. I mean, I would say this was such a big deal that in doing the research for Casey Qassem I did not know about any of this at the time. No, I didn't. Yeah, this is not the kind of thing I pay attention,

Amit: but it's got a whole, like a missing Richard Simmons element to it.

Michael: It was such a big story that it was actually hard to find out information about Casey Casey's life. Not related to this drama in the last seven years. Yeah. I mean, the judges said. Okay. At one point, you've got to give the kids access and then gene Thompson takes him out of state, chose

Amit: him to Washington state,

Michael: which is ultimately where he dies.

And so in very contentious and eventually like the lawsuits continue after his death. Yes. So this is all in the marriage category. I felt like we had to talk about this. There's also this one really weird incident about the meat throwing. Did you see. Meet throwing now. So gene, uh, the kids and one of Casey's brother, or as he's dying, go outside their house and are like protesting and they capture on a cell phone film, gene coming out, reciting biblical verses and throwing raw meat at the kids.

It's weird. It's a weird. I think she was trying to be symbolic and throwing this mate saying, this is what you're after somehow. And this is how immoral it is because that's her point of view on the children that our children are trying to do. Something that they shouldn't. And the children's point of view is that the stepmother is who knows.

I don't know. You said we needed to be succinct. I completely agree. I don't know what the truth is. That's sort of my point and I don't know what to make of this. I think that we have. Why is the marriage category always so goddamn problematic on it? I think that's

Amit: a separate question, but I think the key element here for me is there's not seem to be a graceful transition for the children becoming stepchildren to the second wife.

I think that's

Michael: and clear.

Amit: There is a lot of people out there that we see that have multiple marriages, children from separate marriages, but they seem to still compose a family unit. And that does not. At all. See my parents,

Michael: obviously not. I mean, you look at just the marriage record for Casey. It was married for seven years.

With a woman, had several children didn't work out. She said he had a temper and that marriage ended fine he's with the same woman. The second life for decades afterwards. Right. And in the abstract, I like that. But I also agree that whether marriages end in divorce or not, that I, I do want my definition of family to be broad enough.

Okay. Anybody who might call themselves a family member is welcome at the table, and that did not happen here and was not happening here and is a decades old. You know, we don't like step mom and step mom. Doesn't like the kids.

Amit: What we're after is to figure out what is good and what is desirable. I think having your own biological children despise your current wife does not seem to be.

Michael: I think let's leave it at that. Yeah. All right. Go on to the next category category five net worth, or do you find top 40 times?

Amit: Is that correct? 80 million, 80 million, 2 million for each song on the

Michael: list? Well, I, I don't think that's where the money came from. I think it was came from Scooby. Yeah. Well, and the voice work.

I mean, he also did the voice of Robin and there's a transformer thing. It was doing commercials as well. I mean, voice of NBC, he did a lot of voice work and that seems to be where the paychecks were coming from.

Amit: Yeah, but I mean, a TV show, as well as a syndicated radio show, there's a lot of royalties

Michael: coming in.

Yeah. I don't know. I haven't cracked open the books. I have no

Amit: clue, but I would just guess, so they said at some point, like the, the top 40 radio show was syndicated on like 1100 stations. Yeah. And if it's a weekly show, that's even if it's coming in. Pennies or dollars

Michael: it's adding up. Well, right. And this is obviously when FM radio used to be significantly more important.

How do you feel about the number though? Uh,

Amit: higher than I expected. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: I, you know, I gotta say I'm okay with it only because I do think I am so impressed with his voice. You know, it's like the voice of a great singer. It's like a great, and you know, somebody like an incredible guitar player or something.

I mean, it is a singular. God given talent. But I think also when he honed, I think he paid attention to it and cared for it. Yeah.

Amit: And it was a long career and a varied career. If you're going to look at both that host duties and the voice acting duties to separating income streams that are both royalty producing and that lasted a long, long

Michael: time.

Yeah. So while it may have surprised you

Amit: that, that I sort of dissect it, it doesn't surprise me.

Michael: That's how I felt. As soon as I started thinking. Okay, let's go onto the next category category six Simpsons Saturday night, live Hollywood walk of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL or the Simpsons as well as impersonations.

I have something happy to report. Yes. He hit off. He did the tricep all three. So triple crown, and triple crown with the Simpsons in season three, there's a, an episode where Bart fakes being stuck in a well, and he like throws a little tape recorder.

Amit: Cause that was modeled after the baby Jessica and Midland.

Michael: It's exactly right. And there's a song created during the episode called sending our love down the well. DJ KCK, some leads us off on this song and like, cause it out. I remember it

Amit: very clearly now. Yes.

Michael: Saturday night live. I don't know if you remember the Dana Carvey impersonation. No, it's not fresh.

Amit: It's new.

It's out there, but it's not, I don't

Michael: remember it firsthand. Yeah. I never saw him guest hosting Saturday night live, but the Dana Carvey impersonation knocks it out. And then he also had a Hollywood walk of fame. By 1982, which I thought was because of the show. I actually unclear, I, I Scooby I watched this 1993 tribute where he, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know why he would've gotten the, but it was, he had the star by 1983. So somehow he got it so clearly famous. I did do the, what I call the Brandon tests, where I said to the 22 year old, who will a production assistant. I have, do you know who he is? Brandon did not know who Casey goes and was. And then I asked, my 36 year old friend is like, oh yeah, absolutely.

So somewhere between 22 and 36 Casey cases. Fame has tempered

Amit: parallels were syndicated programming. Yeah.

Michael: Kind of dries out. Yeah. So anyway, so that's

Amit: a lot, plus, I mean, plus all of these appearances and various things, right?

Michael: Yeah. So a famous man, a famous man

Amit: married by Jesse Jackson. That's right. Yeah.

That's right. He also campaigned for it

Michael: and ADA that's right. All right. Category seven overall. And this category, we look at generalized life expectancy. The year that this person was born to see if they beat house odds. As a measure of grace, he had to have, he was born in 1932. Life expectancy was 61. He made it to 82.

So 21 years we have another winner for the over category. He's a

Amit: depression baby too. Yeah.

Michael: 1932. Yeah, that's a good run.

Amit: But you know, we talk about this category. One of the reasons we talk about it is did they age gracefully? And I think he peed did or may have, but you know, he died of terrible disease and those last seven years of his life sounded

Michael: awful.

There's no question about it. So

Amit: even though he beat the house odds, even without those last seven years, it's a very rough ending.

Michael: I think that's right. Uh, let's pause for a word from our sponsor.

Amit: So Michael, we each do our own set of research. As we prepare for these shows. I notice you always referenced a biography and you have like a paperback biography with you as we come to studio. So I am to assume that you're getting these from. Online mega Mart. Is that

Michael: correct? No, not at all. The first thing I do when you and I decide on our next dead celebrity, is I go and find out, is there a biography on this person and is that biography available at half price books?

There's a store right up the street from me. An actual brick and mortar store where I can walk in. When I go there to find out, do they have a biography for our next dead celebrity, but I always wind up picking up more books. I go through the children's section, I'm a sucker for a good page Turner. So I go through the murder mystery section.

They also have rare collections. They have signed stuff. I don't know how this sounds to you, but I actually, I love the smell of half-price books. It's got that

Amit: old book smell. I do. I like that too. And that a great smell. Yeah. Half price books is currently celebrating 50 years of buying and selling books, movies, and music.

There are more than 120 stores and you can find out more about half price books@hpb.com.

Michael: All right. Thus far, we've gotten after the relatively easy to obtain public information, the next series of categories are going to be introspective questions where we try and think through what it would have been like to have been this person. The first category here is man in the mirror. What did they think about their own reflection?

The Casey case. I'm like his reflection. What makes you say

Amit: that? Just his gate? I think the way he stood, you know, he dressed very plainly very square, but I think he actually liked that. And I also don't think you can get that type of voice projection unless you have a certain amount of confidence and self-respect,

Michael: I agreed.

I went with, yes. He liked to, I think that's part of the reason he kept trying to act is that he felt like he belonged on the silver screen. Yeah. Every picture I saw of him smiling. It's always an open mouth smile. There's never teeth together that looked very deliberate. Does that signal anything? Does a closed mouth smile or smile with just teeth versus the.

Let the draw hang. Does that signal anything to you at all about?

Amit: That's a great question. I know I, in my interpretation, it's just one factor in a compilation of a lot of things that about a person's smile. Interesting point though, you know, I was kind of surprised to find that, you know, when I became familiar with the show, probably in the eighties, he was in his fifties and I mean, deep looked good.

So I think he was a, he was a pretty like fit. Just good

Michael: looking, man. Not only that, I also think that his interest in health and wellness as a vegan, I think that he seemed like body conscious, you know? All right, let's go onto the next one. Outgoing message. You have reached the voicemail box. Like man, the mirror, we want to know about how somebody felt about the sound of their own voice.

When they heard it on an answering machine or outgoing voicemail, would they have recorded it?

Amit: I'm going two part question absolutely loved his own voice, but his voice was his entire thing. Right. So if he's given the choice of the default message of you have read. 5 5, 5, et cetera, et cetera. Hilda's go with the default greeting because his voice is too valuable.

He's not going to like hand it out, you know, where you can just call and anybody can hear the Casey case and you have reached

Michael: my house. I have a surprise for you. Okay. And I mentioned earlier, I found this 1983 profile that somebody had done of KCK. Somebody I'm just going to play you this one. When you hear

Amit: your

Michael: own voice now,

Amit: do you like it?

Michael: She was actually asked, do you like your own voice? And he

Amit: said, if I

Michael: played for you, what I sounded like on the radio was a disc jockey. When I was the number one district I came to Detroit, you would never think that I had a career in radio. He ducks the

Amit: question he ducks the question

Michael: really disappointed.

I found out I'm like, oh man, I can just shut this up. And we actually have data for once. Yeah. I think he loved it. I'm good with that. I think he loved it too. Well, let's move on next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept us personal awaken. Got a handful of things here.

Amit: Yeah. We mentioned that he was a vegan and that he quit shaggy in the mid nineties when asked to do a burger king commercial, he returned in 2002 and assisting shaggy be a vegetarian. So I don't know if that's a regret, but it's sort of like, what am I lending my voice and my, my power.

Michael: Too, but that sounds like a triumph though, lay, but, uh, you know, we walked away.

I mentioned, I think already, uh, that he said to the New York times as it was in 2004, there are going to be playing shaggy and Scooby doo for eons and eons. And they're going to forget Casey. That made it sound like he had a little bit of a conflicted relationship with this Scooby-Doo character in terms of legacy, maybe not, but I read a little bit of regret there.

The last one that I have in the public category is he did run into some controversy in 19. One, when a CD was released, that included profane remarks, he had made on tape dismissing the band U2. He said, these guys are from England. Who gives a shit. I wonder about some of these, like what was caught on microphone moments.

Oh,

Amit: it's not that he didn't say Ireland. That's not the regret. You're saying that he actually said, he actually

Michael: said, yeah, That's all I got in terms of public. I do think the private thing is more speculative, but also probably more important. I wonder if he didn't regret not figuring out a way to make peace between his second wife and his first three children.

Amit: Yeah. We don't know how much of that he was in shape. Right.

Michael: Well, but at the, but that's, that's long bro-ing stuff that goes back to 1980. And you know, if he takes a new wife, when the kids are still Eddie, Betty, which they are grows up and has a relationship with them, I have to imagine that he had wanted peace acceptance.

So

Amit: also I think, you know, he walked away from his own show that he creates. Yeah, right with the contract dispute the top 40 show in returned to it 10 years later. And so I've got to wonder if he regrets that the walking away and not having the just pure continuity of his career. I think I would be bothered by.

It's a very Steve jobs, like the Casey case, someone, Steve jobs. There's a lot of parallels with like that. Even though Steve jobs didn't walk away, he was fired and then like triumphant return and the temper tantrums. The other one I wonder about, and maybe, and this is probably me wondering more than you is.

He's known as Casey, right? His Lebanese identity was very sort of non-public yeah. He didn't go by his birth name because I mean, he wouldn't have had, because he had

Michael: come all I'm in case. Yeah.

Amit: But I'm just saying as, as a larger theme of being perceived as, so mano American by so many.

Michael: Yeah. That's a really good call.

Yeah. I got to say this actually informs the next category. Can we go onto the next category? Boy, this feels like it's an order. The next category is good dreams or bad dreams. And this is about looking in the eye. Did he have a haunted look in the eye? I'm going to say bad dreams.

Amit: You go bad dreams. Also. I think that temper tantrums that's indicative of something.

I mean, he was somebody that went to. Yes. Well, he was in Korea. Yeah. There's, there's obviously anger and fear built

Michael: in there. So we both are pretty resolutely in agreement about bedrooms here. Yeah. I

Amit: don't think he necessarily had the look in the eye that looked haunted. I saw. You saw it? I felt like

Michael: I saw it.

I felt like there was just something being covered up

Amit: there. Yeah. But I just think there being two people or possibly three people, you have like the All-American dad type, hosting the show, you have somebody very prone to anger and you also have the immigrant child and there was kind of these. Floating out

Michael: there.

I'm not saying it's not justified, but I saw something haunted.

Amit: Yeah. Haunted is a cruel word. We need to come up with something better. I'm in haunted five pain, pain. I saw pain pains. Good.

Michael: Yeah. Painting is not good, but pain is a better description. Haunted. It makes it seem like a victim or something, but I saw pain.

All right. Second to last category, talk to a coffee, cannabis. This is where we ask which one we would most want to do with our dead guest. It's maybe a question of what drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person, or it may be what drug would allow access to a part of them that we're most curious about.

I

Amit: want to unlock with the Canada. Interesting. Yeah. What do you after I want to hear the natural voice. Yeah. Yeah. There's a fighter inside of him, obviously with all of these causes that he has taken up the has the very strong positions and there's a deep thinker inside, but the public KCI new is so different from that.

And so I just feel like that's the quickest access to the disarming of Casey Casey

Michael: to grading. I want cocktail because I really think that if you catch this guy in a good mood, he would entertain the hell out of you. That is true. I think it's interesting because he is a culture maker, but he's not necessarily in the center of culture in terms of like, has good stories.

He may or may not. He's certainly had plenty of trivial information, which he used to introduce different segments, but I just feel like there's probably some good stories in there and that you just get them on a roll and he probably knows how to make you laugh, knows how to captivate your attention and hold it and keep it.

I just think it would be. To get him in a good mood and hang out with that good mode. And I think that the best way to do that is through a nice, stiff drink. Okay.

Amit: Yeah. Let's compare notes afterwards. After we each have our

Michael: sessions with Casey, that sounds good. I think we're there. We're at the VanDerBeek named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity blues.

I don't want your life based on everything. We've talked about, Amit. The big question is, do you want this life I'm going

Amit: with no. I think the career is fantastic historically important. Trend-setting Ivan. He was a man of principle. What I cannot get past is the suffering in the end. Amen. It's really, really hard to.

Think about that much suffering that much intra family strife, but also, I mean, to just die of a gender to disease alone and to suffer for for seven years, I don't want it. I don't want it no matter how good things were that proceeded it. I just, I can't have those last seven years,

Michael: the strong lean in that direction.

I basically have the same answer. Let me talk it out a little bit more just to, just to unpack a couple of things, because I do think like, look, death is scary. No matter what. I don't want to die of a degenerative disease. I'm not sure I want to die of anything, but it's inevitable. And I don't think we just necessarily get to choose our death.

Right. The more troubling aspect is who was caring for us and how, and that we were not well known enough to those who sensibly loved us so that they could all come together and agree on how to die at the same time. I don't want. Conclusion of whether or not a life is good or not to be based only around the death.

You know, I heard the other day, somebody say, apparently there's an old Charlie brown cartoon where Charlie brown and Snoopy are talking and trolley brown says something like you only live once. And Snoopy says, no, that's not true. You only die once you live. Every day. And I liked that. Yeah. I liked that a lot because I do believe life is one day at a time.

So I don't want to draw too many conclusions from the death alone. I definitely admire this title. Fame and celebrity, I mean, to have a voice like that, like KCK Sims is a sort of transcendent power then to

Amit: use it in a variety of ways,

Michael: right. To exercise it where you can. And even though it never breaks through on the silver screen, that, that it does as a voice actor and in commercials as well as just on the radio once a week.

And you're creating experiences for people through voice. That's great. That's great. So it's not necessarily the death. It's more the relationships that his children and his second wife couldn't come to an agreement about him signals to me a deeper alienation that I don't want I'm with you on the no, but for a slightly different.

'cause I think I don't want it because I need more evidence of relational wealth. Yeah. Proper closure. Yeah. I mean the older I get, I definitely family dynamics are always weird and siblings can pick her out each other, and second wives can hate first children or whatever. I get that, that, that family is always complicated, but I want to live a life where, when things really come to matter.

Everybody's able to look past that. And I think everybody was trying to hear for what it's worth, but that he could not communicate to them. What everybody needed to do is, is a limitation that scares me more than the death itself. It's more about how he lived one day at a time, if that make sense. Yeah.

Yeah. So we're both now and we're both now, so to close us out. Oh man. You're Casey caisson. You've died. You're meeting say Peter at the part of the gates. Saint Peter is a standard. You have your opportunity to make your pitch? The floor is yours. Everyone

Amit: has given a voice when they're born. Definitely not.

Everyone uses it equally. And when we talk about a voice, we're talking about two things, we're talking about specifically the words that come out of our mouth and the sounds that we make. But we're also talking about a voice, meaning what we stand for as an individual. And I mastered both. I used my natural voice in a way to create excitement, comfort, new categories of programming, togetherness, storytelling, dedicating, essentially feeling.

I made culture and not just on my music radio show, but even in cartoons that were seen by millions kids and adults. And then there's the other type of voice of what do you stand for? And no one. I can look at me now and accuse me of not standing for something. I walked away from things, very lucrative things, because I will not, and did not compromise on my beliefs.

And so if there was one thing. That I have left to the world. It's an example of how to use your voice. Let me in

Michael: Thank you for listening to this episode of famous and gravy. If you're enjoying our show, please go to apple podcasts to rate and review. You can sign up for our mailing list at famous and gravy dot. And you can follow us on Twitter at famous and gravy. Our show was co-created by Amik Kapore and may Michael Osborne mixing mastering and sound design by Morgan Honaker graphic design by Brandon Burke and original music by Kevin Strang.

Thank you again for listening and hope to see you next time.