[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still.

[00:29] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: Jessica, I forgot to tell you. Oh, no, I think I did that. I found Kelly Gordon's yearbook. Before I sent Kelly Gordon's yearbook back to Kelly Gordon in the mail, I flipped through her yearbook. Is that really naughty? And I saw all the things that people wrote to her and stuff. It was really interesting. She had different friends than I did.

[01:02] Jessica: That feels like, wow, you're a peeping Tom.

[01:05] Meg: A little bit. You did it. I did it. Well, it was fascinating. I mean, I'd be interested to talk to Kelly Gordon about it. Like, your high school year was different from mine.

[01:17] Jessica: That's so interesting.

[01:18] Meg: Well, I thought about all of us because there were only, like, 45 of us. 42. 42 of us who graduated in our senior year. I kind of felt like we were a tight knit little group. But then looking through the yearbook, I was like, I do not remember that person.

[01:34] Jessica: How could that be? Swear to God. What name did you. Grace. Yeah, I remember her, but you took a second. But she wasn't with us all four years.

[01:48] Meg: Anyway, it was interesting to see, to read through somebody else's yearbook of my senior year.

[01:56] Jessica: But Kelly was friends with Grace.

[01:59] Meg: Enough to have Grace write in her yearbook.

[02:01] Jessica: Was she like, who are you?

[02:02] Meg: No.

[02:03] Jessica: Okay. Well, Kelly did I tell you that Kelly called me?

[02:10] Meg: Kelly Gordon?

[02:11] Jessica: Yeah, it was hilarious. I don't know if you remember this, but I suffered from hay fever terribly when we were kids. And of course, Nightingale did not supply endless boxes of nice soft Kleenex. And I would walk around the halls of Nightingale in the spring, trailing rolls of toilet paper behind me. And I always had a roll toilet paper balanced on top of my books, and it made Kelly laugh. And her daughter now suffers from hay fever very much. And she was explaining the toilet paper roll situation to Maya, and she's like, I should call Jessica. And she did. And it was very funny.

[02:52] Meg: Yes.

[02:54] Jessica: I feel like we are all always connected. Probably.

[02:59] Meg: I just kind of forgot a little bit.

[03:01] Jessica: Yeah.

[03:01] Meg: And it was a nice reminder.

[03:02] Jessica: That is very sweet. I love that.

[03:04] Meg: Anyway, you want to get started? Yes. What?

[03:07] Jessica: Happy late Valentine's Day.

[03:08] Meg: Happy late Valentine's Day. Last time I was here, I think your father was trying to figure out where he was going to take my mother for dinner.

[03:17] Jessica: All I know is that they did go, okay. And I believe it was French. Okay. But that is. She likes the French food. That was what he said. I couldn't believe that. I was like, Dad, I love you, but you've got this relationship under control now. I don't need to wingman you on this one. I have other things to do. Pick a restaurant. But he cared so much. It was very sweet Valentine's Day is stressful. Well, I just hope that I'm not embarrassing anyone by mentioning how very sweet he was about it. It was very charming.

[03:50] Meg: I have a date to talk to my mother tomorrow, so I'll find out how it all went. She sounds like she's in a great mood.

[03:55] Jessica: And that's all I want to know.

[04:12] Meg: Engagement question.

[04:14] Jessica: Yes?

[04:14] Meg: Have you ever taken out or answered a classified ad?

[04:19] Jessica: Well, I answered many classified ads. For, for jobs.

[04:23] Meg: For jobs, right. You would look through the near classified section and circle things that seemed like appropriate.

[04:30] Jessica: Like at the beginning of Working Girl, where she's looking for a job. That's what we would do.

[04:34] Meg: And also there were personal ads, too, like in Desperately Seeking Susan.

[04:38] Jessica: Yes, but we were not looking for. No. Hot action. I mean, the personal ads that I remember being entertained by were the ones at the back of the Village Voice that were very dirty.

[04:51] Meg: Yeah. And described things that my imagination did not go that far. Like, I don't know what you're talking about.

[04:59] Jessica: What do you mean chained to a wall? I find that perplexing. No. So want ads for jobs? Yes.

[05:10] Meg: Me, too.

[05:11] Jessica: All right, here we go. This is going to go poorly. I can imagine some hapless soul answering a personal ad and finding themselves chained to a wall knowing how your stories go.

[05:26] Meg: My sources are The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, and a book called After the Madness: A Judge's Own Prison Memoir. Sorry.

[05:35] Jessica: See. But see I was right.

[05:42] Meg: All right.

[05:43] Jessica: That, by the way, please don't cut that, because that was the most delightful giggle.

[05:47] Meg: In 1988, at the age of 41, Joy Silverman was enjoying a newfound sense of purpose. She had inherited $3 million from her stepfather, Long Island real estate developer Alvin Bibbs Wolosoff, in 1984. And between her independent wealth and her third husband's connections, her third husband was New York financier Jeffrey Silverman. She had finally found her calling, which was, she was extraordinarily good at raising money, specifically for Republican politicians.

[06:25] Jessica: Oh, Joyce.

[06:27] Meg: Joy.

[06:29] Jessica: Oh, Joy.

[06:31] Meg: She raised over $600,000 for Vice President George H. W. Bush, becoming one of his top fundraisers. And after he won the Presidency, Bush nominated her as United States Ambassador to Barbados. Cushy gig. Unfortunately for Joy, Bush had nominated many people for ambassadorships who had zero foreign service experience and the Senate put its foot down. The Washington Post at the time, called her out, quote, "Silverman, who has no foreign policy experience, no job history, and no college degree, does have one major qualification. She gave more than $180,000 to Republican causes." So her nomination faltered. Meh.

[07:20] Jessica: Meh.

[07:21] Meg: And soon after that, her husband Jeffrey left her.

[07:26] Jessica: The shame.

[07:27] Meg: I know. So it was a rough period, but Joy was finally feeling independent for the first time in her life. She'd always depended on men's advice and guidance from her wealthy stepfather to her powerful husbands, to the judge who was the executor of her inheritance with whom she had a romantic relationship. She'd always relied on men to mentor her. Now she was living single with her 14 year old daughter on Park Avenue and feeling proud of her standing in New York society and politics. Even though the ambassadorship didn't work out, life in New York not bad. And she still enjoyed a close friendship with the Bushes and all the benefits that that came with. So when Joy started receiving obscene and threatening letters, she knew who to call for help. Have you ever had, like, a super influential friend who you're like, oh, you're going to solve all my problems?

[08:28] Jessica: Never.

[08:29] Meg: It'd be nice.

[08:31] Jessica: Geez, it would be awesome. Yeah, I have to solve my own problem, bitches.

[08:36] Meg: It was in April 1992 when the anonymous cards and notes started showing up.

[08:43] Jessica: What year?

[08:44] Meg: 1992.

[08:46] Jessica: Okay.

[08:46] Meg: Some were addressed to Joy. Some were addressed to her daughter, Jessica. They were lewd, menacing, and cruel. One greeting card addressed to young Jessica included a condom and a note encouraging her to use it. Like, what the fuck?

[09:06] Jessica: This is ringing a bell, this story.

[09:12] Meg: Many of the notes claimed that explicit photographs and videotapes of Joy were for sale. They claimed that a private detective, David Purdy, had dug up dirt on her. A man in a cowboy hat claiming to be Purdy showed up at her building and told the doorman to tell Joy he said hello. Terrifying, creeperoo. Now Joy had started dating a lawyer, David Samson. It wasn't long before Samson's estranged wife started getting obscene notes, too.

[09:47] Jessica: No.

[09:48] Meg: In September, the man calling himself David Purdy, hand delivered a note to Joy's building telling her to take out an ad in The New York Times classified section under the heading Lost Texas Bulldog.

[10:05] Jessica: I have a question.

[10:06] Meg: Sure.

[10:06] Jessica: Purdy's, the private eye? The note that she got said that David Purdy was the private investigator. Right.

[10:14] Meg: Okay, so she gets a note, and the note says, this private investigator, David Purdy, has sexually explicit videotape of you.

[10:23] Jessica: Right. Okay.

[10:24] Meg: And then a guy shows up at her building in New York City claiming to be David Purdy.

[10:30] Jessica: Right. No, I was just sort of like a very that doesn't sound like a very private investigator.

[10:36] Meg: Right?

[10:37] Jessica: Very.

[10:38] Meg: How about the fact that this private investigator tells her or gives her a note saying to take out an ad in The New York Times classified section under the heading Lost Texas Bulldog? Why would this Lost Texas Bulldog be in New York? The New York Times is a local paper. It's a national paper. It's a little weird to put that kind of classified ad in The New York Times.

[11:08] Jessica: Wait, but the phrase Lost Texas Bulldog is so open ended like, is she the Lost Texas Bulldog? Is she looking for Lost Texas bulldog? Is it she talking about an actual dog. I'm confused.

[11:21] Meg: Basically, he was just picking out a title so that he would recognize oh.

[11:26] Jessica: There was more to the message.

[11:27] Meg: Yes. She was supposed to give a phone number where he could call her to discuss the blackmail terms. I see.

[11:35] Jessica: I jumped the grip.

[11:36] Meg: Right. Sorry. And I should have said that. But, like, you see my point.

[11:40] Jessica: Clearly I do.

[11:41] Meg: It's just everything doesn't make sense.

[11:44] Jessica: Correct. Although the cowboy hat, bulldog. I don't know. Cowboy hat, Texas, Je Ne Sais Quoi.

[11:51] Meg: All right, but to your point, is he a private eye, really?

[11:55] Jessica: Seemingly not. Doesn't sound, sounds a little too sketch.

[12:01] Meg: Now, from what you know about Joy, what would you do right now?

[12:05] Jessica: Well, I would run screaming through my apartment and then call the popo. No.

[12:12] Meg: Well, why would you call the police when you could call the Bushes? Joy bypassed the local New York City police and called up her good friend Bill Sessions, who was Director of the FBI at the time. And the FBI swooped in, moved into her apartment, and took round the clock shifts.

[12:38] Jessica: Love it.

[12:39] Meg: It was like, she was, like a movie. Yes, and she was worth protecting. On October 7, the caller demanded $20,000. Quote, this is from the call that was recorded. "Well, God damn it, you better understand me. You're going to get a letter from me, and you better listen to every word of it and do what it tells you to do, or you're going to be in serious, deep trouble, and you're not going to see your daughter again. You hear me? I'm a sick and desperate man. I need the money." The FBI tracked all the threatening calls coming in. They are actually very good at their job. One of them from Reno threatening, quote, "Jessica is going to spend Thanksgiving with me." Jessica, the daughter.

[13:24] Jessica: Yeah, I figured. That wasn't me.

[13:26] Meg: Another from Roslyn. Quote, "If you fuck up at all, I promise it'll cost you $200,000 to get your daughter back." A letter showed up suggesting a money for photos swap.

[13:38] Jessica: So this was just like a barrage of disconnected cuckoo. Give me this. I'm not hearing from you. Give me this. Okay. Unhinged.

[13:51] Meg: So a letter showed up suggesting a money for photos swap, which gave instructions for Joy to leave $20,000 in a cellar stairway near her building. Now, by this time, the very skilled FBI knew exactly who this mystery man was, and they were tracking his every move. They watched this man call Joy from a payphone in Louisville, threatening to, quote, "Snatch your kid," then go to a porn shop where he bought lewd cards, which they watched him mail to Joy. They had him dead to rights, but no one could believe who it was, especially Joy. It was drumroll, the 62 year old judge who had mentored Joy, who was the executor to her inheritance and close family friend with whom she had had an affair, the venerable Judge Sol Wachtler.

[14:55] Jessica: Yes, I knew it.

[14:57] Meg: Chief Judge of the New York State of Appeals. Judge Sol Wachtler, who was being groomed to run for governor against his good friend Mario Cuomo. Sol Wachtler, who said all those wonderful things about women and their rights in Episode 47 Something Wildly Violent + Englishman in New York. That's a callback

[15:20] Jessica: Yes.

[15:21] Meg: On the day he was picked up, a team of FBI agents watched Sol. Saul. Saul. Saul.

[15:28] Jessica: Sol.

[15:29] Meg: Sorry. Watched Sol drive from Albany to Manhattan, park his black Capri a few blocks from Joy's apartment, grab a manila envelope and don a cowboy hat, hail a cab and pay the driver $20 to drop off a letter at Joy's apartment asking for more money. Return to his car, stop for gas at the Mobil station on 90th and 1st, which we know very well.

[15:55] Jessica: Very, very well.

[15:56] Meg: Throw some extra extortion notes in the garbage, and then drive over the Triborough Bridge towards his Manhasset home. He didn't make it. He was pulled over and arrested on the Long Island expressway. Sol Wachtler's downfall was seismic. Unlike many skeevy powerful men who surprise no one when their misdeeds are revealed, Sol was beloved by everyone. As a jurist, he safeguarded individual liberties, free speech, privacy, gay rights, limits to search and seizure. And as a man, he was humble and generous, best friends with both the Democratic Governor, he was a Republican and the court officers married to his high school sweetheart, he was a devoted and loving husband and father of four. It made zero sense that he was guilty of what he was obviously guilty of, so it must be Joy's fault. The story everyone started spreading was that Joy was, quote, "A real snake, a barracuda, the Leona Helmsley of politics." Callback. Episode eight. The tabloids dug deep into her past, exposing two abortions in her youth, proof positive that she was evil and loose. Right.

[17:21] Jessica: This is making me grit my teeth.

[17:23] Meg: There was no way that Sol would have lost his mind if she wasn't so horrible and manipulative. A very few dissenters pointed out that this was the first time Sol hadn't gotten what he wanted, and that is what accounted for his erratic behavior. But let's back up to where it all began. As a friend of her parents, Sol had known Joy since she was a teenager. When her stepfather died, leaving her all that money, Sol became the executor of her inheritance and her mentor, and their relationship blossomed into an affair. When Joy asked Sol to leave his wife, he told her he had brain cancer. He didn't want to burden Joy with his illness. His wife would take care of him. So Joy moved on. But Sol, who, of course, did not have brain cancer, didn't like it when he couldn't have his cake and eat it, too. So he lost his mind. Possibly.

[18:27] Jessica: Keep the mind, lose the cake.

[18:33] Meg: Possibly it was an attempt to make Joy desperate enough to come running to him for help. And possibly he was just a batshit crazy, controlling asshole.

[18:44] Jessica: I'm going to go with the simplest answer tends to be the right one.

[18:49] Meg: He went to jail for 15 months and wrote an absurdly self serving book. After the Madness: A Judge's Memoir of His Time in Prison in which he tells the poor me, I went crazy because my love was so strong story. It's nauseating.

[19:07] Jessica: I loved you so much I lost my marbles. That's like the Blanche DuBois defense. That's beautiful. Okay.

[19:15] Meg: And he walks amongst us. He writes for The New Yorker. He's an adjunct professor at Tauro Law School. His New York law license was reinstated in 2007. Can you friggin believe it?

[19:27] Jessica: Shame. Shame.

[19:29] Meg: He also knows very influential people.

[19:32] Jessica: Yes, but shame on the New York City Bar Association.

[19:36] Meg: He's an advocate for the mentally ill.

[19:38] Jessica: Well fitting, self serving. Yes.

[19:44] Meg: And still lives in Manhattan with his wife who stayed by his side through it all.

[19:49] Jessica: Oh, girl.

[19:50] Meg: By contrast.

[19:52] Jessica: Oh girl. What did he have on her? That's not good.

[19:56] Meg: Joy Silverman, on the other hand, was dumped by the Republican party, left New York, changed her name for her safety and that of her daughter. When asked about "his good friends" fall from grace, Mario Cuomo said at the time, quote, "Even if everything alleged is true, you can say he's a very good person who had this narrow telescoped aberration, what does it say about the kind of judge he was? The kind of person? I mean, what does it have to do with anything?"

[20:31] Jessica: Oh, God. All right, wait. I need to backtrack for a second. So why was Joy dumped after she had all of the support of the Bushes and the.

[20:44] Meg: She was run out of New York. The tabloids just made her out to be just a horrible person, and she couldn't, her life in New York was about having influence, but everyone dropped her like a hot potato. I think the Bushes might have dumped her, too.

[21:00] Jessica: Really?

[21:00] Meg: Yeah. No, he was a victim somehow. He was a victim of her feminine wiles. She got screwed.

[21:07] Jessica: That makes me so angry.

[21:09] Meg: Yeah.

[21:10] Jessica: Does she still live? Does she walk amongst us silently somewhere.

[21:14] Meg: In Virginia, I believe, under a different name. I mean, she's got lots of money. I'm sure she's fine. She hasn't spoken publicly about the case in decades.

[21:25] Jessica: When you change your name, you're not ever just fine. And her daughter. Completely agreed. Just fine. Clearly. I'd like the millions, too, but yeah, that's a piece of no, she is never getting back.

[21:39] Meg: She had to start all over because.

[21:42] Jessica: Sol Wachtler got his panties in a bunch. What a twit.

[21:47] Meg: Yeah. Also, by the way, so he, let's do the math here. She inherited $3 million, right, in 1984. All this shit went down in 1992. I think he went to jail in 1993. So how many years is that?

[22:07] Jessica: Eight years in between.

[22:09] Meg: Okay. He earned $800,000 for being executor of her inheritance.

[22:17] Jessica: And this is where we begin the process of never stopping, throwing up.

[22:22] Meg: Like I'm sorry, what?

[22:24] Jessica: Yeah.

[22:25] Meg: And why? She was a grown woman. Why did she even need an executor? She needed a financial manager. She didn't need an executor to dole out the money to her. It just seems so infantilizing.

[22:39] Jessica: Well, it's hard to say, because if her piece of the estate was part of a larger estate, then there's someone who manages the whole kit and caboodle.

[22:49] Meg: She got the whole kit and caboodle because her stepfather was estranged from his biological children. So she inherited everything. Anyhow, to me, it sounds like another way that she was treated like a child. Yes. Well, and taken advantage of.

[23:07] Jessica: As we know. That's a hallmark of but yeah, it.

[23:10] Meg: It also it wasn't, like a billion dollars. It was 3 million. How does he earn $800,000?

[23:17] Jessica: It seems a bit what? Like if you were there when it happened. I mean, I remember this vividly and.

[23:24] Meg: I remember right, because when we told the story, you were like, there's something about that guy. I remember something about him. My mom actually sent me the article going, yeah, I remember that guy. Said, this is a follow up, and thank you, Mommy.

[23:38] Jessica: Yes. Thank you, Bevy. That's a good story. And what a creep. We can put him in our gallery of creeps, right?

[23:46] Meg: Oh, two things. Fun fact, Sol Wachtler coined the phrase "indict a ham sandwich."

[23:52] Jessica: Did he?

[23:53] Meg: Yeah, in an effort to dispense with the Grand Jury system, which gave district attorneys too much power. So he said it off the cuff, but Tom Wolfe made it famous in The Bonfire of the Vanities.

[24:08] Jessica: Fabulous. Love it.

[24:10] Meg: Yeah. And then the other thing I was just going to call attention to is this whole idea that Mario Cuomo is saying that his behavior had nothing to do with the kind of person he was. So he tortured, stalked and tortured somebody emotionally. Threatened a child, a 14 year old girl and that doesn't have anything to do with the kind of person he is. Why? Because it's a woman? I don't know.

[24:40] Jessica: Right. But if a woman looks at someone funny now she's a tramp, and that means that everything that she does is garbage.

[24:46] Meg: And that yeah. That somehow he wasn't responsible for his own behavior.

[24:49] Jessica: I'm just a man, I don't know what my actions mean.

[24:53] Meg: She was wearing a really cute outfit. So not my fault.

[24:58] Jessica: Oops.

[25:09] Meg: What you got?

[25:11] Jessica: Well, I already know what our crossover is today, but I'm not going to tell you until the very end.

[25:19] Meg: Okay.

[25:19] Jessica: Okay. As you know, I love words, and I love figuring out where words come from. And so today's topic is a fabulous interweaving of a variety of '80s TV shows and the people who wrote them. Okay, you're giving me that look.

[25:39] Meg: I just got to get my head in.

[25:40] Jessica: This is going to be one of Jessica's whacka doodle walks around.

[25:43] Meg: No, I'm trying to get my head in it so I can help.

[25:48] Jessica: Here's what I'm getting at. When we were teenagers, kids, there were a couple of phrases that everyone used, okay? And sometimes you'd know where they come from, sometimes you didn't. And I was talking to my dear friend David, who went to Fleming with me, and like most guys, he just started quoting crap at me. Like, you know how guys, they're like, hi, I'm now going to quote everything that Monty Python ever wrote. And you're, like, well aware. Why do you have to do that?

[26:23] Meg: And I know that there must be an audience for this. Not sure it's me.

[26:27] Jessica: Exactly. And I'm so glad that you remembered everything that you ever wanted to. And there are a whole bunch of shows that guys will do that with anyway. But I was thinking about how there are these things, and when we were at Nightingale, one of the weird things that we did was, do you remember we went through that phase, our group of friends, where everyone was talking like this, like Jackie Mason and the stuff that we would say, like, that would all just become perfectly hilarious. And so I was thinking about one of the things that my brother and I would say a lot and would also come up amongst our friends eventually, which was, thank you very much. And thank you very much became the thing for everything. Exactly.

[27:12] Meg: From Taxi. Andy Kaufman.

[27:13] Jessica: Andy Kaufman of Taxi. The TV show.

[27:17] Meg: I always feel so warmly towards him.

[27:19] Jessica: Yeah, well, people didn't.

[27:21] Meg: I know.

[27:22] Jessica: And the reasons why I found out a few things about Andy Kaufman and just the world of '80s television that really fascinated me. So a few things about Andy Kaufman. New York City born and bred, for the most part, actually, I think he was out on the Island when he was growing up, but born in New York City and died at the very young age of 35. Cancer. And it was not a Saturday Night Live drug related legacy. He had cancer. And as many people probably know, he was so adept at pulling weird stunts and tricks that people didn't believe he had actually died. They thought that he faked his death. What's that guy? And they were waiting for him to come.

[28:07] Meg: Sacha Baron Cohen. He was sort of a precursor to Sacha Baron Cohen. He would do crazy hijinks, and you just didn't know whether you were supposed to take him seriously or not.

[28:17] Jessica: My favorite one that he did was.

[28:18] Meg: Sometimes he was dead serious, and sometimes it was like.

[28:20] Jessica: He was never dead serious.

[28:22] Meg: You don't think so?

[28:23] Jessica: No.

[28:26] Meg: I feel like people did believe it, though.

[28:28] Jessica: No, people believed it, and they got really angry. But he did a whole thing for a while about intergender wrestling.

[28:36] Meg: Right.

[28:36] Jessica: Do you remember that one?

[28:37] Meg: Completely.

[28:37] Jessica: And he would come out in an 1890s Long John.

[28:44] Meg: Women got angry, right?

[28:45] Jessica: Yeah, women got angry. And it was hilarious. Everything was about making fun of himself and that he took it really seriously, that he was going in, and he came in in these Long Johns, and the women were like pin up types and oil wrestling or mud. But he was insane, and it was so, so funny. And he had alter egos. Like Tony.

[29:09] Meg: He was a different kind of comedian.

[29:11] Jessica: Well, he pioneered this is it. He pioneered cringe comedy. And he was on Taxi from '79 to '83.

[29:20] Meg: My memory is he didn't enjoy his time with a network.

[29:24] Jessica: What I found out was that the network didn't really want, they wanted to take the character he had already created. So Latka Gravas, which I don't even know if at the time, the general public knew that he named himself after potato pancake. But Latka Gravas was actually a character that he would do in his however much you could call what he did stand up, called the Foreign Guy or Foreign Man.

[29:53] Meg: Right.

[29:53] Jessica: And it was just - I don't understand, whatever you're doing. Thank you very much. Okay.

[29:58] Meg: And just to give some people if people haven't seen Taxi. Taxi the best show ever.

[30:03] Jessica: And so New York, you couldn't even.

[30:05] Meg: Believe it, but the whole thing took place in a taxi.

[30:10] Jessica: We're going to say depot, but it's.

[30:12] Meg: Where all the taxi drivers are waiting to be assigned their car and where they're suppoeed to go.

[30:18] Jessica: It's the garage.

[30:21] Meg: The garage.

[30:21] Jessica: And the people who were there, who worked there, the other cab drivers were Judd Hirsch and Marilu Henner, Tony Danza and Jeff Conaway, and just such a great and hello, Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito, which was his big, big break.

[30:42] Meg: He was the Louie. Louie, the distributor. That's not, dispatcher.

[30:46] Jessica: Dispatcher. Dispatcher. And he was so crass and insane that. Every single person on that show was at the top of their game. It was fabulous.

[30:56] Meg: But it was also like a stage set in its perfection. The fact that you had Louie up in his little cage, cage that was raised up above everyone else. And he had the lockers on the right and the benches and then the cars on the left. I mean, it would have been an incredible play. Yes.

[31:13] Jessica: And Latka was the mechanic, who was terrible, bad mechanic. And he was always in a white, dirty white onesie. Onesie, which is, of course, your favorite outfit in the entire universe. But Andy Kaufman. So I did a little bit of digging about him, and it turns out that Andy Kaufman actually performed his entire life. But he started out as a child. And this is what I love, stuff like this. I love entrepreneurial kids because they're so bananas. He, as a child, started performing at children's birthday parties as a child.

[31:52] Meg: As a child, just to freak out the other kids.

[31:55] Jessica: I don't know. He would show cartoons and do some other hijinks, maybe magic tricks. I don't know. But that was what he started doing. And he did a lot of other children's entertaining. And when I was reading this, I thought, oh, well, what a perfect connection to another '80s wackadoo. Total wackadoo. Paul Rubens, who did Pee-wee's Playhouse, which was also an '80s show, I think, that launched in 1986. And talk about taking children's entertaining in a very, very sinister direction. What could be more genius than Pee-wee's Playhouse, right?

[32:35] Meg: Subversive.

[32:37] Jessica: Very subversive. So I loved how subversive everything was. But a few other things about Andy Kaufman, he was what I started to go into. He's the person I researched for today's presentation because I was like, oh, should I do another person who was added to the AIDS quilt in the '80s? Is that where I want to go today? And I was like, I don't want to be so depressing, but, oh, who else died? Because I can't help but be depressing. And when I saw Andy Kaufman had died in 1984, I was like and I remember it vividly when he died. And mostly it was that everyone was like, he didn't really die.

[33:12] Meg: No, this is just another one of his stunts.

[33:15] Jessica: Exactly. And so that was where I began. And I was reading and watching videos of him doing Foreign Man, and he did the really obnoxious lounge singer, and he even had a super suave, obnoxious, like, ladies man named Tony Ferrari (Vic Ferrari). I think that was the name. He had all these great characters, but he did everything deadpan. There was no wink to the audience. Never, ever. He coined so many phrases. And one of the things that he did that everyone does now and of course, no one knows that it's an Andy Kaufman-ism. His very first stage act that really got a lot of notoriety was he would do the Foreign Man and be completely awkward and silent. And the background, the theme song to Mighty Mouse would play, and he would just bop silently. And then at exactly the moment when it goes, here I come to save the day, he would just lip sync it perfectly, and people would go wild.

[34:23] Meg: I've seen that. It's so good. Why is it so good?

[34:27] Jessica: Because it's so random. And that kind of random humor didn't happen at the time. But the other random thing and this is what I'm referring to as where do the things that we now take as normal come from? Where do they come up? And he would do Foreign Man, who's stumbling over English, and he has these little teeny high voice and thank you very much, and then end the set by doing a perfect Elvis impression that ended with, he was obsessed with Elvis. Obsessed with Elvis. And then he'd go, thank you very much. And that was thank you very much, or thank you very much. Am I crazy? Or did that not enter the zeitgeist with thank you very much.

[35:07] Meg: I'm sure you're right.

[35:08] Jessica: And I think that people think that that's just an Elvis thing, but it's actually an Andy Kaufman doing Elvis. So I was thinking about, like, okay, Andy Kaufman, genius and OOH.

[35:21] Meg: And people also said that Elvis didn't die. That was a conspiracy theory, too. Anyway, connections.

[35:26] Jessica: Yeah, you are correct. And he was on Saturday Night Live as a guest, though. As a guest, exactly.

[35:33] Meg: And he didn't do a bit, he wasn't part of the cast.

[35:34] Jessica: And he was also a frequent guest on Letterman. So the character who was really, really obnoxious, who was like a lounge singer type, but like an entertainer, was Tony Clifton. And one of the reasons that people thought that he had not died was that Tony Clifton went on for a little while, and it turns out that his manager and I think co writer Bob Zmuda, they would sometimes switch off playing Tony Clifton, co-conspirator. Yes. And so that added to the mystique yes. Okay, so now we're talking about words, my love of words. And I was thinking about the '80s, what are the other things that we said? So Andy Kaufman is this massive contributor and a massive contributor to cringe comedy, which everyone is, of course, obsessed with, and the reason that The Office and so many other shows took off and, you know, even Seinfeld to some degree, and Pee-wee's Playhouse with its, you know, complete insanity. And they had it wasn't exactly coining a phrase, but actually, no, it was the word of the day. And then everyone would go crazy. I thought the number one '80s thing that added to language, The Simpsons. And I was like, what words came from The Simpsons that come up with some regularity and that have really been absorbed into the culture. And I was thinking about to go back to the beginning of my discussion about language. The only word that instantly came into my mind was my all time favorite, cromulent. Do you remember cromulent? Anyways, I'm going to give you a list of Simpsons words that change the way that people speak. And it's all from the '80s - craptacular, cromulent, that was two characters were talking about whether or not another word that they invented, embiggen, was actually a word, embiggen being self evident. And one of them says it's not. The other one goes, it's a perfectly cromulent word. D'oh, jebus, meh, unpossible.

[37:46] Meg: Meh. I love meh.

[37:47] Jessica: Meh. These people changed so much more then, when we think of the pop culture landscape. It's like, oh, the way that we understand stand up comedy or it's a show I really loved. But the most, I don't know, life changing things that these people do is they change the way we speak. And Andy Kaufman, who began my search for today's topic, definitely did it, and in such a very short period of time. But as we go through our travels now that we're on Episode 52, as we go towards episode 100 that's my new mission is let's look at the people who find who, actually, let's find the people who change the way we speak. Because I think that there are many of them lurking in the corners of the '80s.

[38:50] Meg: So I think I know the tie in that you were thinking about.

[38:54] Jessica: Well, clearly. Yeah. Indict a ham sandwich.

[38:55] Meg: Words. Words that stick. Yeah.

[39:00] Jessica: Like a ham sandwich to the roof of your mouth. Yeah. I think it's fascinating how language changes culture. How culture changes well, and the other part of it is that lately I've been very aware of the fact that I don't really know what the kids are saying these days. I know enough slang to know that the minute I use it, it's out of date. And I was talking to God, was it Ollie's kids? I think it was Ollie's kids who were just, like, using those I said, is using those words really cringe? And they're like, cringe is cringe. So, yeah, everything that I know is now hopelessly out of date.

[39:45] Meg: But I love, on the brighter note, like, going into the etymology of these phrases is very interesting.

[39:51] Jessica: Oh, I think it's a bright note that I don't know what kids are doing. I think that's also fantastic. I don't know. I think it's the most amazing thing that exists, language.

[40:00] Meg: So on the Instagram, I posted for.

[40:02] Jessica: Such a loquacious person.

[40:06] Meg: I posted a picture of all the original MTV VJs, and I just wrote, who are these people?

[40:12] Jessica: I know who won.

[40:13] Meg: Oh, lots of people did. But lots of people were like, I have no idea.

[40:19] Jessica: They were like what is this new wave band you speak of?

[40:22] Meg: I mean, I thought it was, like, the easiest question in the world.

[40:24] Jessica: And there you go.

[40:26] Meg: We're doing a service.

[40:27] Jessica: Years later, people are not totally up on Martha Quinn. And you know who I always think is the most interesting of all of them? And there had to have been a backstory. That was really interesting was Alan?

[40:43] Meg: Yes.

[40:44] Jessica: The blonde?

[40:45] Meg: Yes.

[40:45] Jessica: What's his last name? No, wait. Mark Goodman. Martha Quinn. Nina Blackwood. Blackwell Black. Blackwood. Blackwood. Yes. J.J. Jackson and Alan.

[40:59] Meg: Eh sorry.

[40:59] Jessica: Fuck.

[41:00] Meg: Don't know.

[41:00] Jessica: And anyway, I remember at the time, watching videos and looking at there was a David Bowie video. I was like, is that Alan in the background? Really?

[41:13] Meg: Yes.

[41:14] Jessica: And he was a dancer in the video For fame. No, not fame. Fashion. Excuse me.

[41:21] Meg: Well, Joe was thinking that there's probably a story, an MTV story that we.

[41:25] Jessica: Could dig Alan Hunter.

[41:26] Meg: Alan Hunter. So one of us needs to dig up the MTV. Either a scandal or.

[41:33] Jessica: Well he co-owns a production company, Hunter Films, with his brother Hugh and is the host of a Sirius XM radio channel, The 80s.

[41:42] Jessica: Who knew? Yeah. Alan Hunter. But there he was, dancing around in a Bowie video.

[41:48] Meg: Fun. So are you going to do the MTV story, or should I dig up some MTV dirt.

[41:53] Jessica: I feel like MTV is so vast that it's like the preppy murder. We have to do it together. I don't think one person can handle MTV all by themselves. And it's not a one part either. There's so many facets to MTV in the '80s that it's overwhelming. Let's do a two parter, and when we find the dark underbelly of MTV, you're going to be so happy.

[42:20] Meg: I will. I need the dark underbelly.

[42:23] Jessica: We'll find it. We will find it. Close.