105 Indecent Exposure transcript (Jerry Springer)

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Michael: [00:00:00] Famous and gravy listeners, Michael Osborne here. I've got two things to say before we start today's episode. First, we could really use your help growing the show and there's a very simple thing you can do. Leave a review for Famous and Gravy on Apple Podcasts. If you're listening on Apple, you just scroll down on our show page, tap the Stars, and write a few words.

These reviews help feed Apple's algorithm and help new listeners to find our show. The second thing is, if you yourself are interested in starting your own podcast and you wanna learn about how we built Famous and Gravy, we would love to have a conversation. Our email, as always is hello@famousenggravy.com.

So two things. Please write a review, and if you're fantasizing about your own show, please reach out. That's it. Thanks again. Let's get to it.

Steve: This is Famous Eng Gravy biographies from a different point of view. To participate in our opening quiz, email us at [00:01:00] hello@famousenggravy.com. Now here's the quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2011, age 58. His colleagues said he had charisma and a knack for spontaneity, charisma, and his, uh, knack.

Friend: That's a lot of people.

Archival: Robin

Michael: Williams, not Robin Williams. In the mid 1970s, he played minor league baseball for about four years in the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds organizations.

Mainly as an outfielder.

Friend: Oh, uh, not my category. Um, not Michael Jordan. Pat Tillman.

Archival: See, I know you already did Bob Eer.

Michael: We actually didn't. Oh, okay. Well, Bob Eer, not Bob Eer, but good guess he acted in the 2002 movie, Spider-Man appeared on sitcoms like mad about you and lent his scratchy baritone to video games and cartoons, including Family Guy and King of the Hill.

Friend: Was he on 21 Jump Street?

Archival: It's not [00:02:00] Joe Tory.

Friend: He's got a scra. Oh, nope. Not Harvey Firestein. Not Harvey. No, no. Were you saying Harvey Weinstein? Is that it?

Archival: No, no, no. He, he's got that really scratchy

Michael: New York. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Not, not, not him. He would wear brightly colored cowboy hats and outfits dripping with fringe.

Friend: Uh uh, Randy Macho man, Savage. Randy macho man. Savage

Archival: Randy. Macho man. Savage.

Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Randy Macho man. Savage. Oh

Archival: no. Awesome.

Archival (2): I'm the Queen and the World Wrestling Federation. The Queen. Yeah, the queen of the crop. And there is no one that does it better than the macho man. Randy Savage.

Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne. And I'm Steve [00:03:00] Prada. And on this show, we choose a famous figure who died in the 21st century, and we take a totally different approach to their biography. What didn't we know? What could we not see clearly? And what does a celebrity's life story teach us about ourselves today?

Macho man, Randy Savage died 2011, age 58. Okay, so I've invited my friend Steve Prada onto the show. Steve works in cybersecurity. Uh, he and I have become good friends over the past few years, and listeners can't see this, but I'm gonna pay you an awkward compliment. You're a very fit man. Yeah. Well, you are, you're a bit of an exercise guy, but here's something I love about you.

You are also a very and emotionally aware dude, and I feel like you and I have actually had some really good conversations about masculinity and how we understand that today. So I wanna start off by asking you, what was your relationship to pro wrestling growing up?

Steve: I loved watching it a as a kid, you know, [00:04:00] from the ages of about six or seven until I even watched through high school, to tell you the truth.

Okay. You weren't further than I did. So there were some, there were some friends of mine and I that would buy the pay-per-view events Yes. In high school. Yes. And when I was in high school, that was the time of Stone Cold, Steve Austin. Yeah. The Rock was a big name then. Right. And yeah. I I, I've always So you were into it.

Fascinating. You were into it. It's, it's, it's always been fascinating you sports too, right? I love sports. I love athletics. Yeah. And, um, the stuff that these guys do, I don't think they get nearly the amount of credit that they deserve as athletes, like what they're doing. It's extremely difficult. And you have to be really coordinated and also mentally sharp to be able to have that dance.

Yeah. In front of. Thousands of people. I mean, it's, it's, it's impressive. I

Michael: think people think it is just bodybuilding and it's much more than just bodybuilding or non-fans may mistake it as that. And also the sort of circus cartoonish aspects. When I grew up, the ultimate warrior was kind of the big [00:05:00] figure in as much as I ever had a guy, he was my guy, but the macho man was a fixture of my youth.

And I was not somebody who actually grew up loving pro wrestling. I grew up with friends who did, and they explained it to me. And really the question was always, is this a good guy or a bad guy? And that changed,

Steve: it changed a lot. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a fascinating thing to dive into. So. IB. Before coming and doing the episode, I had told a couple people, Hey, I'm, I'm gonna be doing this podcast.

I'm really excited about it. Yeah. It's, do you know Macho Man and none of these people I was asking. Watched Wrestling as a kid.

Michael: Yes.

Steve: But as soon as I said Macho man, they did okay. They knew exactly who I was talking about.

Michael: He's little bit beyond the sport. He's

Steve: beyond the sport. So people, people know Hulk Hogan Yeah.

And who, who that is. But it's the same type of

Michael: deal. I think that's gonna be a good segue. Okay. Into our first category, category one, creating the first line of their obituary. Randy Savage, who with his trademark sunglasses, bandanas, and raspy voice, was [00:06:00] one of the most recognizable professional wrestlers of the 1980s and nineties as the character Macho Man died on Friday in a one car accident in Pinellas County, Florida.

He was 58. You're having. You have a face? I have a face. I have. I have opinions. I have opinions. Tell

Steve: me about your opinion. I was slightly let down. There is way more going on with macho man. I. Than raspy voice, sunglasses and bandana. One of the words I would've expected to see is a word like outrageous.

Oh, yeah. Like macho man was outrageous. Yeah. He was over the top or something. Yeah. Was just, or larger than character. Larger, he was even for

Michael: professional wrestling. Right. I was,

Steve: I would've loved to see more adjectives like boisterous. Magnetizing, polarizing. Yeah. He was a great heel. I mean, he, you, you hated him and loved him at the same time.

Yeah. He was a showman. Yes. And he was more than a professional wrestler. The guy was a cultural icon.

Michael: Yeah. Wow. Okay. I [00:07:00] agree with that, that there's a lot more available to describe this guy. I do think that the audience is people who mostly don't give a rat's ass about professional wrestling. That said he did go beyond the sport.

This is, to your point a minute ago, the only way they capture that idea that he's sort of more than wrestling is most recognizable, which is pretty lame as a sort of, you know, as a way of describing it, I'll tell you something that's not in here that I think actually might needed to have been. Slim Jim.

Slim Jim.

Archival (2): I always like to keep my favorite snack handy. Little excitement. Step into a slim Jim. Oh yeah.

Michael: People absolutely remember him for the Slim Jim commercial, and he pioneered a whole lot of commercial opportunity for other wrestlers because of his success with that brand. Like to this day, if people can't remember him and you said Slim Jim, they might.

Steve: [00:08:00] I have bought Slim Jims because of macho man, Randy Savage

Michael: most of America has. Yes,

Steve: and And whenever I'm on a road trip and I'm walking into gas stations hopping, yeah. If I see Slim Jim Snap, I think of Randy Savage. Yeah. Snapping those immediately.

Michael: Totally. So is that first line of the obit territory? I don't know, but I actually think there's a case that that could have been included, but it only as a symbol of larger fame, because I do think that he was somebody, as you said, Hogan is king at this time in the eighties and nineties.

There's no question. He's the biggest. Andre the giant is in there too. Certainly in the eighties. Macho man, Randy Savage belongs in that category like he is. Absolutely. Yeah. Now I will say to their credit, trademark sunglasses, I think that's actually pretty good. His sunglasses were never the same and he's always wearing them, and raspy voice had to get in

Steve: there raspy voice for sure.

What they did not mention here, his outfits were. Out of control. [00:09:00] I think he's even more known for his hats than he is for bandanas, I would, I would've thrown hats. Oh, because he had custom

Michael: cowboy hats. A hundred percent. And this is gonna come up later. All right. You know what I, I do think that it's hard to read this without immediately thinking.

The author of this did not care for a professional wrestling. This, this was,

Steve: this was, this was not a fan, this not a fan. This was not a fan of wrestling

Michael: and this guy, or even an appreciator on some level, which, okay, fine with that. I get it. Yeah, I do get it. But, but it is a little disappointing.

Steve: Macho man.

Deserved more.

Michael: All right, so I'm gonna go seven. And the reason is, is because I do think it is hard to make a case to people who don't care about wrestling that this is somebody who you should care about. I do think that they paint a visual. I'm somewhere between a six and a seven as I'm talking this out.

I, I wish they had done more. However, had they done more, it would have been kind of playing into the theatrics of professional [00:10:00] wrestling in a way that might have turned off. Readers who, who I do want to, to, to take more in. So I'm gonna give it 6.6, but I'm gonna round up to seven.

Steve: So my score was a six.

Michael: Okay.

Steve: But as I was talking through, you were wanting to drop it down. I was, I was wanting to drop it. Yeah, I was, I was ready to go.

Michael: You know what, if you go five, I'll go six. You wanna just make a compromise? I'm,

Steve: I'm on five. All right.

Michael: I'm good

Steve: with five.

Michael: I'll drop my 6.4. Alright. Category two, five things I love about you here.

Steve and I will develop a list of five things that offer a different angle on who this person was and how they lived. I'd like you to kick us off, Steve.

Steve: Okay. So my first thing was his own man, Randy Savage, was his own man. He put in a lot of time and effort into carefully curating who Randy Savage was going to be in the ring.

Yeah. And it started off as. Randy Pofo. Mm-hmm. And then it was Randy Savage. Mm-hmm. And then it was macho man, Randy Savage. He was very [00:11:00] conscious about the decisions he was making about this character that he was gonna bring into the ring. He deliberately construct this. He was very deliberate. Yeah. His commitment to that character is incredible.

Michael: People remark on this, that the guy you see on camera is the same guy off stage and outside the camera. But one thing that is really striking, I really like this, I gotta say as a thing, number one, because he was not, I. Randy Savage growing up, like the way people describe him and his childhood and in his adolescence and into his early adulthood, you would not have guessed that this would be who he becomes?

Steve: No. He, people say that he kept to himself. He's like a quiet guy, relatively quiet. He, he was extremely athletic. Yeah. Was was friends with people, but he didn't let a ton of people in. He wasn't loud, he wasn't outgoing.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, I think we need to explain a little bit of his backstory here. So his dad was a professional wrestler in the forties and fifties, and you and I both read this biography by John Finkel, and it starts off [00:12:00] with his dad in this, what was it?

Like a situps contest? Sit contest. He

Steve: did something like 6,000 situps. He broke a world here, right? They talk about him chafing on his abdomen and ass, right? To get this right. Bleeding, right.

Michael: Doing situps to win his situps. So, okay, so Randy Savage's father is a professional wrestler, is a professional lunatic.

He's a professional lunatic. But the way his dad and his family are described, that was not forced upon him and his brother. What there was was a household of fitness. They had like a, they like built up gym and you know, but what Randy Savage loved or Randy Popo loved before it became Randy Savage was baseball.

This I did not know about him.

Steve: This was Randy Po FO's purpose as a young adolescent, teen baseball, single focus. Totally. He, he, this was his dream. He made it pretty close. He was in the minor leagues for a couple of teams and he did well if, if he had not have injured his shoulder in [00:13:00] that collision at home plate.

Things might have turned out differently. It's, it's, it's an interesting thread to pull on. Yeah. Things could have been different. You know,

Michael: when you look at pictures of him from that age though, I mean, he's pretty skinny,

Steve: lanky, ewy strong,

Michael: but, but he is not jacked. No. But then, and I think this is to your point about he was his own man, that the wrestling personality didn't emerge until the baseball dream died.

And then he began to construct this character, and then he lived that character with full commitment for the second half as of his life,

Steve: the development of Randy Savage yet. But what I found interesting, even during his commitment to baseball, there was always a little bit of a wrestling tick in the back of his mind because he started.

Wrestling professionally. While he was still in the minors, he would wear a mask. Yeah. And go on stage and his teammates would come after the games in their uniforms and be like, Hey, we gotta go see Randy. He's gonna be wrestling tonight. I remember that. Yeah. So that,

Michael: that dream, [00:14:00] that seed must have been planted.

It was, it

Steve: was always there. And when you grow up around a sport like he did, you have to imagine

Michael: what I hear in that as a kind of famous and gravy theme. I like that he chose himself. Right. I, I think that we are always constructing who we are gonna be and the characters we play on the stage of life and in, in a, in a very literal and exaggerated way.

That's what Randy Savage did. He decided to be what sounded to me like a character that you would not have seen him becoming, had you known him before his wrestling career.

Steve: Macho man, Randy Savage was premeditated.

Michael: Right. Which is, which is incredible. And it's a full on commitment after that. Now, I don't want to do the things he did with my life necessarily, but I do like the idea that we can, he chose his own destiny.

It's nice to see an example like that because it reminds us of our own agency and our own power and our own possibility. We don't have to go to the same extremes that he did and went to. [00:15:00] But that does tell you something about with a certain level of determination and commitment, who you can be, it's inspiring.

Steve: Exactly. He had an awful set of circumstances dealt his way, which basically ruined his childhood dream.

Michael: Yeah.

Steve: And in fact, and he took that. And said, okay, you know what? It's time to remake, rebuild, and he did it. Let's save

Michael: that. 'cause it gets into my thing number two. All right. Thing number two, I had freakishly athletic.

All right, so we're starting to tread on this territory a second ago. One thing that's really striking about his baseball journey, what people will say is that he was very good. And if you could get into the pros based on determination and grit and commitment, he would've been there. But he did not have the raw talent.

But as a example of his determination, one of the most striking stories is that you mentioned this a second ago. He was, he dislocates his shoulder or something? He injures his should is throwing shoulder, injures

Steve: his shoulder. Yeah.

Michael: And, and what he decides to do at that [00:16:00] moment is become ambidextrous and say, all right, if I can't do it with my right arm, I'll do it with my left.

And he had some insane workout of like throwing the ball with his left arm thousands of times a day to like practice it. She

Steve: did. Everything. With his left hand, he ate cereal with his left hand. Right. He, he, he opened doors, he drove forward. For all I know, he wiped his ass with his left hand Uhhuh, like he did everything.

Sure he did with his left hand and, and, and it took him, I think it was like eight months is what it

Michael: said. See, isn't that insane that because think of the like, risk of injury. You know, I know how to throw a baseball with my right arm, but that's not just my arm. That's my whole body. That's how I step into it.

That's how I pivot my hips. That's how I rotate my shoulders. You've gotta learn all of that on the other side. And he did it to a level where he could actually play in the minor leagues and almost made the cut to the majors with his other arm. That is insane.

Steve: It it's nuts. Yeah. But it speaks to how, [00:17:00] I don't think pro wrestlers get nearly the amount of credit for how athletic they actually.

Are, these aren't just big dudes with they, they are athletic.

Michael: I think that there's also, and so I guess we're really just talking about the body. I do think we should pause here for a second. One thing that the biography did not deal with, and the documentaries don't deal with quite enough, is steroid use.

It is actually hard to verify that o other than the obvious, his body is bulging and like, it

Steve: seems like I didn't come across any direct evidence or quotes that said I saw him do X No,

Michael: in the documentary, oh, oh, his, his girlfriend gorgeous George in the, uh, they said he just, she said she saw him using steroids, but it's all pretty clandestine.

Steve: We don't know. Well, so. When people hear steroids, they immediately think size, [00:18:00] gains, all that kind of stuff. Muscle, lean muscle. Yeah. One of the most important effects of steroids is actually muscle recovery.

Archival: Hmm.

Steve: So it will speed up how fast your body is able to recover from extreme exertion. Do you, you can guys, are

Michael: you speaking for, I mean, you've never had problems with steroids, have you?

Or I

Steve: I have not taken steroids. No. Known people who have I know, and I know a number of folks who have.

Archival: Okay.

Steve: And what basically, so if you go to the gym on Monday and you knock out a number of deadlifts and squats and you go home, you eat a ton, you sleep, you might not want to do that workout again, uh, without steroids for another week, but maybe on Wednesday, I.

Your body is already recovered and ready for more reps, more sets. So these guys are putting their bodies through the ringer. And it makes a lot of sense to hear folks talk about Randy Savage and his steroid use later in his career. Because as you get older, your body [00:19:00] does not recover as fast. Right. So it's, it's almost less about size and more about survival.

Michael: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I gotta say, I had not really thought much about steroids in a long time because we tend to hear them invoked in conversations around performance enhancement and like cheating in sports or something. But I hadn't really thought of 'em. With a filter of drugs of abuse and what that can do to you physically and psychologically.

So I went down a little bit of a, you know, research rabbit hole, not what are the addictive risks around steroids. And there are things like, it may make it hard for certain hormones to rebound and can lead to depression. And that can create a kind of psychological addiction. Your body will rebel. People get addicted to how they make you look right.

And there's body dysmorphia that can kind of come up and all that. Don't get me wrong,

Steve: diet is king. Diet is extremely important, but Right. If you're on steroids, you could probably eat a couple bags of Doritos. Yeah. And you'd still look like an Adonis. I,

Michael: and I guess thing is, and I wanna [00:20:00] move on from number two.

The reason I really wanted to talk about this now is that steroids or no steroids, Randy Savage was freakishly athletic. And he had a commitment to fitness. That is actually something I love about him. So freakishly athletic. All right. What'd you have for thing number three?

Steve: I, I titled this one, Doogie Hauser.

Um, the reason, the reason I titled it Doogie Hauser, uh, is in reading about his upbringing and his lifestyle. This was someone that was a student of the sport

Archival: Yeah.

Steve: Of wrestling.

Archival: Yes.

Steve: This is someone that was around people. He, he was lucky enough to be in a family of wrestlers. His father Angelo, yeah.

Wrestled very heavily in the fifties and sixties,

Michael: and his younger brother and his,

Steve: well, his younger brother was Randy's tag team. A partner for in the beginning part of Randy's career, I think he went by the professor or the genius, I think, or the genius. That's what it was. Yeah,

Michael: yeah,

Steve: yeah. But as a kid, he soaked it up.

He had access to these early great wrestlers like Nature Boy Buddy Rogers and Cowboy Bob Ellis, who was a [00:21:00] Texan. Yeah. Uh, Han Schmidt. Uh, Vern Gagne, who was an ex Navy Seal.

Michael: Well, and there's one guy in there who he modeled his voice after.

Steve: Yes.

Michael: Hemp peril purple. The wild bull of the pamas and Oh yeah.

Steve: So he was a student of the sport.

He soaked it all in. He paid attention to what these folks were doing and it shows in his career. So one of his first big Wrestlemanias WrestleMania iii. Yeah. This is like that. This is a watershed moment in wrestle history. This is looked at as quite possibly one of the most famous matches in WW f history.

Archival: Planted that knee right into the high cervical vertebrae area of the back. You know what that was? Steamboat went to the Well, once too often. I, I have to agree with you. Yes. He got away over the top rope. Look at the dragon. Held down to the top rope and pulled himself back in and got close, lined off.

You're, you know, you gotta get up pretty early in the morning. Now Outsmart the macho man,

Steve: Ricky Steamboat, and he had this [00:22:00] match. They spent an inordinate amount of time and legal pads. Right. Documenting step-by-step. I think it got up to like 160 or 180 steps Yes. Of the match. Yes. And they would quiz each other to the.

Until you could be like, Hey, where they knew every single move, Hey, I just didn't move number 41. Yeah. What happens next? Right. And it turned out to be one of the most beautifully choreographed wrestling matches ever.

Michael: I think people who don't follow wrestling may not realize that while yes, there is a lot of scripting and planning and predetermination about outcomes, that level of detail in scripting on a given match does not happen.

And to your point, this is something that also comes out like he, he was almost annoying with other wrestlers about like, we need to talk through the plan. Right? Yeah. A lot

Steve: of folks wanted to ad lib. Yeah. And Randy was like. We gotta make this. But

Michael: I think clean, what I also like about that student of the sport idea is that I feel like he had an understanding of the culture and the entertainment value.

And maybe to put it in something that I [00:23:00] think about a lot and relate to, he cares about his audience. Like he has an idea of how the crowd is not just watching what's happening, but is like caught up in the story of what's happening. And that's a, that's not just a athletic point, that's a culture point.

Yep. Right. He understood the

Steve: culture

Michael: as

Steve: a student of wrestling a a hundred percent. He understood what, what would play with the crowd, what wouldn't play with the crowd. Yeah. And I think, uh, back to the Doogie Hauser Po like. If you're a kid and around this stuff, you can't help but soak it up and become somewhat of a nerd wrestling nerd.

Yeah,

Michael: but lemme say this, lemme pay you another compliment. You know, I have had conversations with you about cybersecurity. Mm-hmm. I'm not a cybersecurity guy. I don't think about this stuff, but I do like it when people have found their thing and are really, really into their thing. They're passionate about it and they're students of their thing.

And I feel like that's something, again, this is like to turn it back on us, to be a student of your chosen destiny and to nerd out on it. I want that [00:24:00] for myself. I want that for everybody.

Steve: I'm drawn to people like that. A hundred percent. It's energizing. Yeah. To see someone light up Totally. When they talk about the thing they love.

Exactly. I love that's a people, that's a great way of putting it. People. Yeah, me too. About the thing they love.

Michael: Beautiful. All right, number four. This is kind of a quick one, I just wanna spend a minute on it. Voice consciousness. Okay. Um, the, the thing, it's called out in the first line of his open. It's the thing people most remember him for.

Everybody wants to do a Randy Savage personation, the Oh yeah. And, and the way he says Yeah. Is affirmative. And I also like the, you, we used the word deliberate earlier. I like the deliberative nature of his cadence. I like that you can see him choosing his words and bringing a certain kind of intensity to it.

Archival (2): I saw a woman psychiatrist. And she said it was OCD one. Cool dude. And she understands the way I think right now. And everything's cool. Everything's copacetic, everybody's happy.

Michael: I the voice for me, as somebody who loves audio and [00:25:00] podcasts, the voice is an instrument and he. Built his own instrument of his own voice and stuck with it and while it, it can wear you out and get a little tedious.

I love this about him. It's

Steve: so great. It's so good. It's so great. And this is, as a kid, I used to love. The ridiculous stuff that would come out of his mouth. Yeah, yeah. Like, ooh. Yeah, I, I've flown with the Eagles and s sld with the, my snake,

Michael: like the reference, you know, talking about himself and the third person, I'm the cream of the C cry the cream.

And he'd pull

Steve: out a little creamer like, come on man.

Archival (2): Lemme tell you something right now. Card stacked against the macho man, Randy Savage in WrestleMania 3D Hey, let me say it. Yeah. Let me say it out loud. And let me point to the president of the World Wrestling Federation, the macho man, Randy Savage, is not happy with your decision.

Yeah, I am the Cream and the World Wrestling Federation. Wait, wait a minute. And there is no doubt about it.

Michael: I [00:26:00] did a, a little bit of a nerdy deep dive on the word macho. All right. So macho. You know, why, why did he land on that? Term macho man. You can actually look up on Google Trends, the appearance of certain words over time.

Macho comes into vogue in the mid seventies and like rockets up in terms of its frequency of appearance in books and, and you know, it's, it interesting. It's sort of like, doesn't exist as much as you would think before 1960. It's etymology is rooted in Latin languages. Anyway, the reason I want to talk about this a little bit is it's a catchy name, macho Man, Randy Savage.

How exactly is he macho, other than the obvious? 'cause there are ways in which he codes for a certain macho personality. He's protective. He's, he's jacked, he's intense. But you know, the neon is a little bit contrary to our associations with macho in the 1980s, neon,

Steve: speedos, and fringe, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's litter,

Michael: [00:27:00] it's flamboyant, right?

And I don't know that we would've called that macho at the time that he is. So it's. I, I like that he's sort of taking a cartoonish version of this term that is a really important term to sort of understand.

Steve: Like everything Randy did, he took it and he 10

Michael: Xed

Steve: it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he leaned in totally.

Michael: Well, okay, I think this will come up again how we understand much. What do you Absolutely. What do you have for think number five,

Steve: the equalizer. So I have the equalizer here.

Michael: The Denzel movie? Uh,

Steve: yeah. The Den, the Denzel movie. And the reason I have this is it's one of the coolest stories I think I read as a teenager, he got wind that these bullies were picking on a special needs kid.

Yeah. And excuse my language, but he beat the shit out of these bullies. Yeah. Apparently. Yeah. And I love that, like standing up for the person that really needs. Someone to stand up for him. And you see this in his life. Mm-hmm. Later on. Mm-hmm. How dedicated he [00:28:00] is to giving back to sick kids. Yes.

Specifically children's hospitals and his charitable work there.

Michael: Yeah. He, this comes up a lot that people say he's great with kids, which we'll get to this in a future category. He didn't have any children of his own, but that he would say stay in school. And he was a role model of sorts to, to kids. But he also, I mean, to your point, was a protector that is heartwarming to see.

I loved learning about that as

Steve: who he was, and it kind of goes contrary to his character and his image. 'cause he was a, and, and when we use the word heel in wrestling, heel is like the bad guy. The bad guy. Mm-hmm. Hulk Hogan was the good guy. Yeah. Randy Savage was the bad guy.

Michael: I love that. And I think that that's a good one to call out and that's a wonderful, uh, sort of thing.

Number five. All right. So let's recap. So number one, you said he was his own mo. Number two, I said freakishly athletic number three you said.

Steve: Dookie,

Michael: Hauser, Dukey, Dukey, Hauser, uh, number four, voice consciousness, especially as it relates to the term macho. And number five, [00:29:00] equalizer. Awesome list. Okay, let's take a break.

Okay. Category three, one love. In this category, Steve and I will each choose one word or phrase that characterizes this person's loving relationships. First, we will review the family life data. So Randy Savage had two marriages, one to Miss Elizabeth, and if you follow pro wrestling, she was actually involved in a lot of the storylines around his professional wrestling career.

They met in 1982. They married in 1984. Randy was 32, Elizabeth was 24. They got divorced in 1992, so they were married about eight years. It's a pretty complicated relationship because they both kind of got. Eaten up by the wrestling machinery and celebrity basically. Okay. His second marriage is sort of interesting.

Lynn Payne, they knew each other from high school and they reconnected in the two thousands. They married in 2010 when Randy was 57. She's 55, and he died a year later in this car accident. Other relevant info we've already mentioned that dad was a [00:30:00] wrestler who trained him and his brother, and when Randy decided to commit to, uh, pro wrestling, his dad played a, an important role in, in guiding him into that process, but he never really forced it on him.

He did force a certain kind of physical fitness regimen and created a, a, a household full of athletics, but his dad, while strict, was not committed to them going into the family business. All right. So what did you have for your one word or phrase?

Steve: The phrase that came to mind for this was Iceberg right ahead.

Michael: Yeah.

Steve: To me, Randy Savage's. Uh, personal life. Mm-hmm. Love life outside of the ring. And even inside of the ring. And I'll talk a little bit about Miss Elizabeth here. I mean, it was very, uh, in some ways it almost looked abusive. Yeah. Um, the way he would talk to her on camera and boss her around, go over here to this corner, why are you talking to him?

Right. Why are you what? Don't talk to him. It was part of his character, part of the script. But, but, but

Michael: reality and behind the [00:31:00] scenes, that's the, the wire seemed to get crossed. Right? There are,

Steve: there are people that, that talk about how outside of the ring, he could also be very domineering and demanding and Yeah.

Macho in a not good way here. Macho in a, not in a, not a good way. So he had a very interesting relationship with women and, and I wanna, I wanna. Talk about this because you had, you mentioned Miss Elizabeth. Mm-hmm. And you mentioned Lynn Payne. Yeah. In between, there was this woman, gorgeous George, who was a former, she worked at, she was a stripper.

Stripper and he met her at, I believe he met her at the strip club. She's a lot younger and she's a lot, she's a lot younger, but, but Randy Savage, it seemed to me, had a lot of insecurities around women. Yeah. He was always concerned that Miss Elizabeth, when he was married to her, was fooling around with other wrestlers behind his back.

This was a regular thing. Yeah. He, at one point, gorgeous George found out that he had planted

Michael: Gorgeous George, we need to remind the listeners. Is a [00:32:00] Is a woman.

Steve: Is a woman. Yeah. Gorgeous. George is a woman girlfriend of Randy Savage. After he was with Miss Elizabeth and they Separat. Yeah. He had a few girlfriends, but

Michael: she was sort of the most prominent in a way.

Yeah.

Steve: But he put video cameras in her house. Yeah.

Michael: He's paranoid to

Steve: spy on her. So he had a lot of insecurities with women, which. Is surprising to me because I mean, macho, macho man. I know. Macho man,

Michael: Randy Savage. Look, I think it's actually an important point because part of the reason I had wanted to do this episode in the first place is to talk about the word macho and, and use Randy Savage as a vehicle for having that conversation.

And while there are maybe some elements of positive masculinity, there's also some real obvious signs of negative masculinity. And you see that in his interpersonal relationships. It, it was all, all the way up until the end. We don't actually have a whole bunch of information about this woman, Lynn, but around the mid two thousands he quits dyeing his hair.

It [00:33:00] seems like he might have backed off the steroids 'cause he, he is not. As jacked, and he does seem to be entering a new phase of life. People describe it as like he really moved into a more zen mode.

Steve: I have a lot more on this for later.

Michael: Okay. Then we'll save it. All right. Well, let me give you my one word or phrase.

I wrote Lifting to failure. Ah, you like it? All right, I like that. So this is a phrase that, you know, bodybuilders use or people in the gym will use that when you do an exercise until to failure, right? You know, you're not gonna do just 10, you're gonna go until you can't do it anymore. I think that this is a little bit of how he understood and experienced love.

I think that there's a lot of intensity. There's no restraint and it pushes until a thing kind of gives until it fails. His relationship with Miss Elizabeth, it was iconic, but tragic. It was marked by possessiveness performance and devotion taken to an unsustainable extreme, uh, where at some point the relationship breaks.

And [00:34:00] this is not just a wrestling storyline. We talked about this a second ago. This was rooted in, I think, to your point about insecurity. A desperate need to hold on even as the. Used my metaphor, weight grew too heavy. I also think that this stems from his upbringing, that he grew up in a household that was shaped by wrestling and by masculine toughness.

And I think emotional vulnerability was not modeled. It was about discipline and performance and it's ultimately painful and unsustainable even if it's very sincere.

Steve: I went back and I, I, I was watching footage of matches.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Steve: And have you ever gone back and watched a movie that was filmed in the nineties and you watch it today and you think to yourself, Ooh, I laughed really hard at that joke in the nineties and up.

This doesn't, I'm not quite sure that's funny anymore. This hasnt age well, but it was super funny. Yeah. Had an age. Well, that's kind of how I felt when I was watching some of the matches where he would order around [00:35:00] Elizabeth and how he talked to her on camera. Yeah. It was. Disrespectful in a lot of cases.

Really not. Okay. And I, you're right. Like it's just not hold up. I just, I kept filtering it through, and I know we're not supposed to do this, but, uh, it's hard not to filter it through the lens of today. And I was like,

Archival (2): Elizabeth, look into the video scope and see how proud you are to be the manager of the macho man.

Michael: I'm proud to be the manager of the Macho man when

Archival (2): I think that your time is done, and I think that the spotlight should go on top of me. Yeah.

Michael: I think we have to say this doesn't hold up today. And then I think we have to try and place it in a context and it shouldn't have hold up. And that there are ways in which certain things are normalized, you know?

I mean, it, it was done so that the crowd hated him. Yeah. But that, that's not sort of the end of the story. There's still an element of normalizing a certain kind of personality and especially one that sort of like is leading up to that line of violence.

Steve: Yeah, I think that's right.

Michael: And that's, that's the thing that's dangerous here.

Right. That makes sense. And that's, that's why it doesn't hold up is that you [00:36:00] see whether what, I mean in some sense it is sort of staged violence, but even then the sort of tension and combustibility of it

Archival: all Yeah.

Michael: Is, is what really feels like not okay and shouldn't have felt okay then, but feels even more not okay now.

All right. So lifting to failure, that was my one love. Let's move on. Category four, net worth. In this category, Steve and I will write down our numbers ahead of time. We'll. Talk a little bit about our reasoning. We'll then look up the net worth number in real time to see who's closest. And finally, we will place this person on the famous eng gravy net worth leaderboard.

You know, there's some hints of this. I had to work to sort of not find out his net worth. Same. He was one of the more successful wrestlers. Wrestling is a bigger industry than you would. Imagine it's not the same thing as like the NFL, but there's some data in the biography about it's, you know, comparable to some of the other major sports like baseball, hockey and basketball.

If you're a star. Yeah, if you're a star, which he was. There's also obviously Slim Jim and the fact that he didn't have kids. There's no dependents. All [00:37:00] of this had me at, at a high number, but not too high of a number. Was there anything else you factored in as you thought through his net worth? I,

Steve: I, I went all over the place with this one.

Okay. Because I, I looked at, he had a 32 year wrestling career. Yeah. Independent. 73 to 85 wwf. 85 to 94, and then 95 he went to WCW, which is another wrestling entertainment company and promoter.

Archival: Right.

Steve: And he retired in 2004. Yeah. Now the other thing on this, yeah, and I forget if we talked about this or not.

He is notoriously. A penny pincher. Yeah.

Michael: He's totally cheap. And this comes from his dad. Yeah. My man

Steve: saved his money. Yeah. And he, this is part of being around the wrestling business from a child. His father did a fantastic job managing finances. 'cause he had seen people blow through, I mean, their life savings

Michael: wouldn't spend money on dinner as he is driving people around the Midwest, there's a story

Steve: of macho man playing a sold out arena.

The [00:38:00] entertainment is leaving to go to their hotel. And macho man is sleeping in his car. 'cause he did not want to pay for the hotel.

Michael: All right, well let's reveal. So Steve Prada wrote down 15 million. Michael Osborne

Steve: wrote down 20 million.

Michael: Okay. Okay. 20 million we're in a similar zone. All right. Randy Savage's net worth was estimated to be around 8 million.

That tracks, that's about right. Right. I'm not shocked

Steve: by that 8 million is nothing a

Michael: No. Of course it's a, that's a great number. Snee that, but it's not, it's not in insane. I I'm very

Steve: curious where he puts, where this puts him on the leaderboard. Yeah, let's

Michael: do that. You're actually gonna, I'm, I'm quite happy with this one.

So at 8 million, he is in the, that's the funnest part here. So this puts him in the 86th percentile. So this is definitely like the lower half of Famous Eng Gravy. That's good. So is

Steve: that 86% of the famous Eng Gravy gravy topics higher or prepared? Were higher. Higher,

Michael: but the company is fantastic. Oh God. So just above him [00:39:00] at 9 million.

Mean Jane Erland? Yes. Yes. Uh, ju uh, but tied with him. You're gonna love these names. Neil Armstrong. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Bill Buckner. Yes. Yes. That's the dinner table. Billy Bee, somebody a Supreme Court Justice, the man who went to the moon, the man who some people thought cost. The Red Sox, the 86 World Series, although that turns out, out to be true.

I love that episode. It's one of our favorites. And Randy Savage. What a fantastic dinner table. Well done. 8 million. I'm, I'm at peace with it. I think that's a good number for Randy Savage. It's about right, right. It's a beautiful

Steve: number for the man.

Michael: It's a be all right. Category Five Little Lebowski Urban Achievers.

Archival (2): They're the little Lebowski, urban Achievers. Said Yeah. The achievers. Yes. And proud. We are, of all of them

Michael: in this category, we each choose a trophy, an award, a cameo and impersonation or some other form of a hat tip that shows a different side of this person.

Steve: Where did you go with here? I mentioned this a little bit earlier.

I went with his charitable work. Yeah. [00:40:00] That's not talked about a lot. You know, you hear Macho Man and Randy Savage. I think of Slim Jim and I think of professional wrestling,

Archival: right.

Steve: He did an extraordinary amount of work with the All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mm-hmm. He spent time with sick kids, donated money, delivered gifts to patients.

Michael: I think, I think he took his iconic status sim seriously on some level. He took it very

Steve: seriously. Right. And he, and,

Michael: and this, this is where there's evidence of that.

Steve: And we, we started off the episode, I was talking about how as a kid, I think around like seven or eight, I started when I could sneak some professional wrestling in and watch it Uhhuh.

I just was thinking back like, what a huge smile it would've put on my face if I were in the children's hospital and Macho man, Randy Savage came Yeah. To like.

Michael: Yeah. It, no, it's big deal. That's a, that's a really good point. I mean, I'm about putting a smile on a kid's face. I mean, he is, he is a, obviously larger than life figure, right?

This is the whole idea of professional wrestling. But I mean, one with that kind of like intensity, is this even a real human? And actually you do hear stories about those kinds of celebrity [00:41:00] encounters of people saying, he took a minute with me and it meant everything in the world. Yeah.

Steve: Make-A-Wish is one of the foundations he was big into.

Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. He's a good, make a Makea Wish

Archival (2): candidate, the benefit, the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We should do anything that we can playing in Hollywood. Yeah. November the 17th, the hottest party of the year. Oh yeah. The hottest party of the year. Macho man, Randy Savage says November 17, planet Hollywood. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is important.

Gee, everybody back it and do it for them. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And, and, and I go back to Randy Pofo.

Archival: Mm-hmm.

Steve: Randy Pofo, by all accounts, was a kind, compassionate. Gentleman, and I think his charitable work with children allowed him to be Macho man and Randy Pofo.

Michael: Yeah. It's sort of the best use of this character, right?

And the best use of what we want of athletes. You know, I love that one, Steve. All right, well, I, this came up in the quiz. I, I went with the first Spider-Man with Toby McGuire. I went back and [00:42:00] re-watched this. So Sam Raey was the director, right? Who? People who don't know Sam Raey did Evil Dead two. I had forgotten this part.

Bruce Campbell from Evil Dead two Fame, who's a kind of cult figure, is the announcer for the wrestling match. Randy Savage is pitted against Toby McGuire as he's just discovering his superpowers and he's in a wrestling cage match.

Archival: Hey, listen, it's

Archival (2): some kind of mistake. I didn't sign up for Cage match.

Hey, unlock the thing. Take the train off. Hey Joe, you're going nowhere. I got you for three minutes. Three minutes of free time.

Michael: Here's why I chose this for, for my category One is that Randy Savage is not wearing his sunglasses in this cameo, and you rarely see his eyes. Right? It was sort of, you actually don't recognize him because you see his eyes initially. A lot of people talk about that, how when they saw the movie, they forgot him.

The other thing though is that there [00:43:00] is a kind of nearest neighbor quality to professional wrestlers and superheroes. There's something kind of perfect about having this superhero like character in a cage match with an actual superhero charact. What his name, what was his name in the cage?

Archival (2): Buzz Saw.

Buzz Saw. That's what it was. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: It's perfect Buzz saw, and he still, you know, all the behind the scenes work apparently. He like took it seriously, took time with the crew to give autographs and was like all in on the commitment to being on this movie. I love that. So, uh, that was my little Lebowski.

All right. Let's take one more break. Category six words to Live by in this category. Steve and I each choose a quote. These are either words that came out of this person's mouth or was said about them. What did you have here? What'd you go with?

Steve: July 13th? Mm-hmm. 1992. Macho man. Guest on Arsenio Hall.

Arsenio Hall says, macho man. Ever cried?

Archival (2): Oh yeah. Really? Uhhuh. It's okay for macho men to show every [00:44:00] emotion available right there, you know, because I've cried a thousand times. I'm gonna cry some more, but I've soared with the eagles and I've slithered with the snakes, and I've been everywhere in between.

And I'm gonna tell you something right now. There's one guarantee in life and that there are no guarantees. Yeah, and I understand this. Yeah. Nobody likes to quitter. Nobody said life was easy. So if you get knocked down, take the standing eight count, get back up and fight again, and you're a macho maniac.

Steve: Now, I picked that mainly because this is really good, Steve, because I know for myself, growing up as a product of the eighties and nineties, yeah, it was still. A time where men weren't exactly encouraged to be emotionally in touch with their feelings.

Michael: Dude, I still struggle to cry. I cry sometimes and I cry a little bit more easily.

Now.

Steve: It's, it's actually, you know, when I cry, do you struggle to cry? Shit, I, if I wanna [00:45:00] cry, you know what I throw on a Disney movie. Oh, really? They, they make me lose it every single time. Really? They, I mean, Disney movies make me lo Disney and Pixar. Yeah. Have my number.

Michael: Yeah.

Steve: And that movie Inside Out too. I mean to, we're going way off track now, but not really that movie inside.

No, I

Michael: don't think we are that movie Inside

Steve: Out too. I can remember watching it and I mean, towards the end I just broke down and cried when she's starting to get, uh, all her emotions back. But it was because it started to make me think about when I was that age. I wish someone. It could have told me it's gonna be okay.

Hmm. You are all these things. You're not just kind, you're also selfish. Yeah. You're also this, you're also, it's okay to be all these things. Yeah. But for someone like Macho Man to say I've cried a thousand times, it's surprising. It's a very different message than anyone else was putting out there Totally.

At that time. Totally. And to hear it from Macho Man was pretty cool.

Michael: I love that you found that. I can't believe that exists. I asked you, do [00:46:00] you cry a second ago? I'll say this. When I am with other people, when I'm in front of my children, when I'm with my wife, it is still hard for me to cry in front of other people.

Archival: Mm-hmm. Same. Um,

Michael: and I think that is just the way I grew up. Right. I do think not only should it be okay, but it's almost important. To show that it's okay. And that's what this is. So that is awesome. Nice. Fine, Steve. All right. Um, mine's not nearly as good as that. Mine's mine. I've been looking at it now.

I'm sure it is. Let me let, let's hear it. He just says, I'm the undisputed king of the squared circle.

Archival: Yes,

Michael: yes.

Archival: See, but I love

Steve: that because that's also, that's also macho, man. He's all of it, dude. He cries a thousand times square, and he's, he's the king of

Michael: the square circle. The undisputed king. Undisputed king.

Yeah. And there's tons of these where he says something that's like, that's nonsense. That doesn't mean anything, but he says it with such intensity and sincerity there. You're like, yeah,

Steve: [00:47:00] okay. Yeah. Uh, okay. I believe you. Exactly. Square circle is real.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. So, all right, great words to live by. All right, let's move on.

Category seven, man, in the mirror. This category is fairly simple. Did this person like their reflection? Yes or no? This is not about beauty, but rather a question of self-confidence versus self-judgment. This is an interesting one. Okay, so we talked a little bit about steroids and the sort of risk and possibility of body dysmorphia.

Certainly there's a professional burden he's wanting to extend his career, and this is a culture that makes it okay, and let's just assume that he's jacked on steroids because the body makes it seem pretty obvious. There's also, I think, some real insecurity as evidenced by his interpersonal relationships, and there's even to your first point about he chose to be this character, that almost feels like a decision you make because the truer, deeper, real self inside.

Is something that you might want to hide from? All of that kind of leads into the, [00:48:00] no, at the same time, the amount of confidence he has, the voice consciousness, the willingness to get in front of the camera, the body awareness, whether it's his freakish, athletic qualities, sort of point to yes, he does, like his reflection.

So there's a strong case to be made in, on either side. Where, where would you go

Steve: with this? I, I, I liked hearing you talk through that. I painted a little bit outside of the lines on this one. Okay. And, and hopefully it's okay. You,

Michael: no, you have to choose an answer. This is the one category I'm gonna make.

It's a binary.

Steve: I think Randy's view in the mirror would've been different depending on the period of life he was in. No, he question. He went through so many different transformations that to say he did or he didn't like it. For me is, is too hard to do because in his twenties when he's chasing his dream of becoming a baseball player.

Yeah, of course. He's proud of who He looks in the mirror, I think. Yeah, he's, he's, I agree with that. He's working towards his dream. He loves what he sees in the mirror, breaks his arm. Now he's in professional wrestling. You move through that period. He's losing his hair. Yeah. He's on steroids. He's doing drugs.

He's spying on his ex girl [00:49:00] women's half his age or strippers. Yeah. Does he love himself in the mirror then? Probably. Probably not. Doesn't look like that. But then, and this is where I was alluding to earlier. Yeah. He reaches this beautiful point in his life when he stops reconnects with his high school sweetheart, he stops dying his hair.

Yeah. He starts to accept his age. Yeah. And who he is. And he's calm and he can look himself in the mirror at that point and say. Look at all this cool stuff I did with my life. You know what's so, and I'm comfortable with who I am right now. That's what I think.

Michael: Yeah, no, no, I think that's right Steve.

What's so interesting about that answer is that we do force a, you have to make a yes or a no case. The life he lives in the middle, when he decides to be Randy Savage from the beginning, after the baseball career, up until letting that identity go shortly before his death. That's what we know him for.

That's the area of life where he's most likely to be a no. Everything outside of that is most likely to be a yes. You know? So yes, this is a particularly hard one. I, I'm, I think I made up my [00:50:00] mind. I'm gonna go yes, because I do think at some point he does. Shed the identity to some extent, and he knows that there is a deeper, truer self in there that he's tried to actualize for most of his life.

Steve: If, if the question is, what was his view of himself in the mirror towards the end of his life, I think yes. In some, in, in, in, in some, yeah, he's looking in the mirror. I'd be pretty proud of all the amazing things that I had done with my life.

Michael: Then let's go. Yes and yes. I like it. Yes and yes. All right, next category, cocktail coffee or cannabis.

This is where we ask which one would we most wanna do with our dead celebrity. What do you got here, Steve? This was

Steve: a tough one. We have three choices in keeping with the beauty of the show. I'm going to choose one of the choices here, which it would be coffee. Okay. The reason why I'm choosing coffee though, is because I can't choose cocaine and steroids.

Sure. Because ripping a line of cocaine, [00:51:00] shooting myself up with some steroids, and then going for a workout at Do this, the gym with Randy Savage. Oh yeah. I wanna do that and go to the gym with Randy Savage, throw some weights around and have him tell me we have like a killer workout workout. Yeah. Be like, dude, put me through one of the workouts that you did on the regular.

Let's do this. Yeah. And, and let's talk about how and why you gravitated towards this workout and what you loved about athletics and what fires you up. Like,

Michael: and bodybuilding for that. And bodybuilding. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But,

Steve: but you know, I. I. Coffee. Coffee. Because I, coffee, coffee, coffee. Because I want, I want him, I want, I want him stimulated.

I want my Randy Savage stimulated. Yeah.

Michael: Alright. It's funny, I went in a similar direction, slightly different. I'm going cannabis. Hmm. What I want actually is to hang out after a good workout. 'cause it is actually, with the right friends, working out and pushing yourself is actually kind of awesome. That's great.

Right? And, and. If you [00:52:00] work out with somebody who studies the body and is attentive to good form and knows the muscle groups and says, this one's gonna, you know, burn and hurt and all that, like you will push yourself harder. And I like that competitive experience. I also like the afterburn. Yes. And so what I'm picturing with the cannabis is I had a friend growing up who had this back room where we had like black lights and I'm picturing hitting a bong.

With black lights, with, with, uh, you know, the neon kind of glowing and red. Oh, do you feel that in your triceps or whatever? Tassel, swinging. Yeah, exactly. And just, and, and like that chill downtime of like, I worked my body hard and now I am relaxing and listening, you know, kind of in the, in the afterglow of a good workout.

Oh, I totally dig that. You see that? I love that one. I totally

Steve: dig. I could slide into that one easily. Yeah, I like that one.

Michael: Snap into, uh, a black light bong. Oh, that's great. Yeah. All right. I think we've arrived. The final category, the Vander beek, named after James [00:53:00] VanDerBeek, who famously said in varsity blues, I don't want your life.

In that varsity blue scene, James makes a judgment that he does not want a certain kind of life based on just a few characteristics. So here Steve and I will form a rebuttal to anyone skeptical of how Randy Savage lived. We will start with a counter argument for why James has a point with why you would not want this life.

You know, we didn't go into deep detail because I think we don't know all that much. There are definitely some signs of abuse. There's definitely some signs of domestic strife. I suspect he got himself into real trouble. I think he struggled not just with women, but also with friendships. The friendship with Hogan, who is fraught, although they do make peace towards the end, I do think that there's some real internal conflict and strife.

All of that points to, I would not want this life. If there's something else you'd add to that, please do. But let's move towards making the case for why you would want this life.

Steve: So the point for why my counter to that would

Michael: be Yeah, let's, let's, let's put some ideas [00:54:00] together would be, yeah,

Steve: let's talk about Randy Pofo.

Yeah. He buy all accounts. Had a healthy, somewhat busy and supported relationship with his parents during childhood.

Michael: Yeah. I think he was loved

Steve: and he and his brother Thick as thieves, loved each other. Totally. Yeah. Um, had great relationships there.

Michael: His brother goes above and beyond when he talks about him, about like, it's, it's not necessarily emotionally available, but it's absolutely supportive.

Steve: He had loving relationships with his family and they loved him back. Yeah. And he had a beautiful childhood

Michael: and helped to support his dreams.

Steve: Yeah. Supportive. Yeah. Yeah. And, and he loved athletics. He dedicated himself to, to to baseball first, and then to, to wrestling. He took risks. Yeah. And he stumbled and he got back up, like his quote earlier in with Arsenio Hall, he got back up.

Archival: Mm-hmm.

Steve: He became an icon for. Mega processed food sticks. Yeah. Like he, he is an icon. What a, what a dream. Um, he went out and [00:55:00] he, not saying it was a good album, but he put out a hip hop album. He did put out a hip hop album. Um, he did. He he packed so much. Yeah. Into a, what sadly became a shortened life.

Michael: I think I, I wanna, I wanna break some of these things out 'cause I'm hearing two or three, maybe four ideas in here.

Number one, you know, loving, supportive family, that it nurtured his dreams. Yeah. Number two, I do think that there's something you had to say about commitment to athletics and fitness. Yes, maybe there's steroids, but there is a sort of like, we are given on this earth, a body that can be an instrument. It even gets to my voice as instrument idea.

How are we going to use and play that instrument is a vital part of what it means to go through this world. Right. And that, that is wonderful. I think number three, when you talk to about his baseball career, we didn't really go into the depths of it. When he found out he was never gonna make the majors, he went home and broke all his baseball bats and yet picked himself up.

And [00:56:00] this is, this is your point. Number one, I think is the most important thing in a way he chose. A new path, and he chose a character and he chose a way through it that he became in control of his own destiny. And number four, he's a symbol. He's an important icon and a problematic one in places, certainly as it comes to violence and abuse.

But another way is a seriously inspirational one. I love that quote about him saying it's okay to cry. I think he is not deliberately necessarily, but he is pushing on the question of how do we understand what it means to be macho and what it means to be masculine, which is the whole reason I wanted to have you in on this episode.

So I, I don't, I, I mean, those are four

Steve: really good reasons, four really good reasons. In the eighties and nineties, you would be hard pressed to find someone that did not know who Macho man Randy Savage was. Yeah. He was that well known. There's this idea that you don't really ever die until. Someone [00:57:00] utters your name for the last time, right?

You continue to live on, right? Yeah. Yeah. So if immortality is someone's name, someone's image and their words forever being referenced, Randy Savage kind of achieved immortality. People still say, oh

Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. He lives on, he lives on, uh, I think with that, James VanDerBeek, I am macho man, Randy Savage, and you want my life.

Famous and Gravy listeners, if you enjoyed this episode about Macho Man, Randy Savage, and you've got somebody in your life who could use a bit of entertainment, maybe, uh, a little bit of fun or some reflection, and you think they'd enjoy it, you've got the phone in your hand right now. Share this episode with them.

It helps us to grow speed round plugs for past shows. Steve, if listeners enjoyed this episode with Macho Man, Randy [00:58:00] Savage, what's an episode from the famous Eng Gravy archives that they might also enjoy?

Steve: I, I, I'd have to pick two. Okay. The first one would be George Carlin, the someone that grew up in the New Jersey, New York area.

My father, huge, George Carlin fan. I can remember George Carlin on HBO and how. The man just said what was on his mind.

Michael: Yep.

Steve: I loved that episode. That, and I also, I have a very soft spot in my heart for Mr. Rogers. Yeah. Fred Rogers episode. The Fred, the Fred Rogers episode was terrific.

Michael: Thanks, man. All right.

Uh, I actually really like Fred Rogers as a contrast to my Joanna 30 savage. Yeah, yeah. There's an interesting sort of compare and contrast element there. Uh, all right. So episode 100, divine Neighbor Fred Rogers, and episode 92, acerbic comedian George Carlin. I'm gonna plug the episode with Hank Aaron, episode 49, hammer Time.

I don't know why, but there were some elements that came up in this conversation that had me thinking [00:59:00] a little bit about transcending sports and what it means to achieve excellence. And I think it's, I'd like to think that the home run King before Barry Bonds and before the Fair Era is worth a listen.

So episode 49, hammer time. Hank Aaron. Here is a little preview for the next episode of Famous and Gravy. Her institution was forced to justify its existence in the face of often skeptical public attention and scrutiny. Her institution, um, wow institution sounds really important, famous and gravy Listeners, we love hearing from you.

If you wanna reach out with a comment question or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousandgravy.com. In our show notes, we include all kinds of links, including to our website and our social channels. Famous and Gravy is created by Amit Kippur and me, Michael Osborne. Thank you so much to Steve Prada for sitting in on this episode.

It was produced by Evan Scherer with original music by Kevin Strang. Thanks and see you next [01:00:00] time.