IDS #254 - You Got The Wrong Dick Van (w/ Adam Nedeff)

Author and game show historian, Adam Nedeff returns to discuss his latest book about Bill Cullen. Plus Wink Martindale, Press Your Luck, MTV's Remote Control, The Hollywood Squares so much more.

Stay till the end. We had technical difficulties again and damn near went slap happy trying to get this one figured out. This is totally one for the record books.

Huge thanks to Adam Nedeff for his patience, talent, knowledge, humor and friendship.

#ADAMNEDEFF #BILLCULLEN #PRESSYOURLUCK #MTV #REMOTECONTROL #HOLLYWOODSQUARES

Transcript

This episode of Irritable Dad Syndrome features special guest Adam Nedeff

>> Dave: This episode of Irritable Dad Syndrome features special guest Adam Nedeff. Check out his new book, the Life and Time and Fun and Games of Bill Cullen, available now@Amazon.com or baremannermedia.com.

>> Mike: Adam.

>> Darin: crack open the cold one.

>> Mike: Cracking open a monster. It's been one of those nights. Good luck. Let me tell you, our best shows come about when for, some reason, I've had a bad day. They're even better when we've both had a bad day. So I walked into this.

>> Darin: Have you had a bad day, Adam?

>> Speaker D: I'll answer that question when we're on the air. Yeah, okay.

>> Darin: Okay. Not yet. Okay.

>> Speaker D: A little bit of an inside joke.

>> Dave: There, and much more inside than it is a joke, I suppose. However, welcome to Irritable Dad Syndrome, where the secret ingredient is love. Give it up for your hosts, Mike and Darren.

>> Darin: Hi, I'm Darren.

>> Mike: I, am Mike.

>> Darin: Welcome to Irritable Dad Syndrome, Cincinnati's comedy podcast. This is episode 254. This is a big deal for us because we have never had a guest appear four times on our podcast. We're making history. This is podcast number four, Mr. Adam Neda from California, game show expert extraordinaire has decided to grace us with his presence. Just going to brag right now. Adam, you are the perfect guest. So I'm very excited that you're here. Welcome back to the show.

>> Speaker D: Well, thank you very much. And, all it takes to get a booking is to write another book and have a legend in my field die, and have you can come along invitation now.

>> Darin: You can come back on the show anytime. We love having you on because with you, I mean, basically we just have to say your name and. And then you just go, yeah.

>> Speaker D: That. Well, I mean, that's the work from home lifestyle is. I don't have a chance to interrupt my co, workers workflow. So I'm just pent up all day now doing eight hours a day in my living room. And so whenever I have a chance to actually talk to somebody. But, I'm very glad that this one came through. This is the tail end of a really weird day for me, attempting to do book publicity. I had another podcast interview scheduled earlier today. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's true. There are other podcasts besides this one. Yeah, so the other podcast fell through and the guy gives me a message like 30 minutes after we were supposed to start recording, letting me know he was at the auto shop, and the car repair that he was getting was taking way Longer than expected. so that was one interview that fell through. And then, as you guys know, and as I'm sure your viewers will be delighted to hear, we've just spent an hour, doing the least interesting Cut the red wire, no, cut the blue wire attempt at making the aud work for this podcast. So I, I, I've just been sitting here saying, testing, testing, testing, while you guys are adjusting a little knobs and saying, okay, Adam, how about now? Today's been an adventure for me, but, very glad to get this going because I enjoy talking to you.

>> Darin: Well, no, because, like you were saying this, we've never had this many technical difficulties before, so. And every time we have a guest, we, you know, memorize how everything was set up. You know, we have this in this place and this and this place, and we push this button and turn that button to that lever, and we've pushed all the buttons, everything. I mean, this, how technical can this possibly sound? We have no idea what the technical problems were. But anyway, God love you. You sat there and waited for 45 minutes for us to, get this going. So we're very happy.


Since you were on the show last, we lost Peter Marshall, Chuck Woolery

Since you were on the show last, we lost Peter Marshall, Chuck Woolery, and Wink Martindale. And were you, I don't know if friends, were you friendly with these guys? Did you know them?

>> Speaker D: Did you work with them? I would say, I wouldn't say friendly. I definitely, I crossed paths with all three of them in different ways. I am involved with a project called the National Archives of Game Show History at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. it is a museum wing that we are evolving and developing and hoping to cut the ribbon on in 2026-2027. Just dedicated to the history of game shows in all forms. So we had a chance to interview these guys for a project that we're doing involving, collecting oral histories from people who work in the game show business. I got a chance to talk to Chuck, Woolery, over a zoom call. We did his interview by zoom call because late, in life, Chuck moved to a very, very small town somewhere in Texas. Getting the oral history recorded with Chuck Woolery was the only thing I've ever done that was more fraught than the one hour of effort we just put into doing this podcast. Chuck had to go to a friend's house to get up and running because he couldn't get anything going on his own computer. We, we kind of, we had delay and just wait for him to make this long drive to Somebody else's house to do this. So that was my only real interaction with trucklery. Peter Marshall I had a chance to interview when I wrote my biography of Gene Rayburn, because he and Gene had known each other and crossed paths professionally. So I got a chance to talk to Peter. we had lunch at, a deli near his house. Peter was just a wonderful conversation. We chatted for about two hours, and it went into a couple different, directions. We ended up talking about more than just Gene Rayburn. We ended up just talking about life in general. And it ended up being something that he said to me over lunch, which I ended up quoting on social media later. They took this snippet of what Peter Marshall said to me while I was talking to him, and they used it in the program for his funeral. So in a very, very odd way, I. I had this small contribution to his funeral. I also, I had a large collection of photos of, Peter Marshall, As I have with a lot of game shows. It's one branch of my hobby is I collect publicity still. So I had all these photos of Peter Marshall, and they blew up a bunch of them to poster size to kind of decorate the area where we were having the funeral. It wasn't in a church. It wasn't in a funeral home. Cbs, Television City, which is a name familiar to game show fans everywhere from the beginnings of a lot of game shows. From, Television City in Hollywood.

>> Darin: Yes.

>> Speaker D: They actually, they rented out a studio at CBS Television City. And so Peter Marshall's memorial service was held in a studio.

>> Mike: Oh, wow.

>> Speaker D: But, the really great part was guy who works as what's called a scenic designer or a set designer in game shows. He had the Hollywood Squares grid in storage. he's just been saving it for all these years for the memorial service. He brought it out of storage, and he had it reconstructed in the studio. So we have the set of Hollywood Squares there for Peter's memorial service. My Facebook photo, on my profile right now is me sitting in hall, Litton Center Square in the center of the box.

>> Dave: When a man falls out of your.

>> Speaker D: Boat and into the water, you should yell, man overboard. Now, what should you yell if a woman falls overboard? Full speed ahead. It's a very weird experience. I, came home from this funeral with souvenirs because I got. I got all these cool photos myself on the Hollywood Square set. I got a photo with Hal Linden, because how Linden was there. And my mother was a huge Barney Miller fan. So I made it a point to get a photo with him while I was there. They had a nice, souvenir program. Yeah, it was just freaking weird coming home from a funeral. Wow. I just, I got so many great photos. I got the souvenir program. I got all these. You gotta see this is such a great funeral. But, I mean, I got some funeral.

>> Mike: Swag, some party favors, little paddle with the ball.

>> Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, but I mean, it was really, it was a wonderful little service. And if you spent your life in show business, I guess you'd want a service like this. It was, it was really a nice one to attend for the occasion. I wore a T shirt like this one for Hollywood Squares a few years back when I just, I needed a wardrobe refresh and I was probably tired of looking at all the shirts I had in, the drawer. I went into Photoshop and I just made a bunch of Hollywood Squares or a bunch of game show themed design, and I made a Hollywood Square shirt. I put a Paul Lynn joke, from the original series on the T shirt. It's Peter Marshall reading a question. Can you get, can you get 10 pounds of feathers out of a goose? And Paul Lynn's answer was, well, I got them in there, didn't I? I was walking through the memorial service wearing that T shirt and a, gentleman named Harry Friedman, who was a question writer on Hollywood Squares, and went on to win dozens of Emmys producing Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. Later in his career. Harry Friedman stops me as I'm walking through the memorial service, and he stops and he looks at my shirt. He just gives me the biggest smile, and he says, I wrote this joke, so I made it a point to get a photo with Harry, with me wearing my shirt. Yeah, that was a neat memory there. But, yeah, I really, I met Peter twice there, was interviewing him for the book. And also we shot an oral history for the museum project. Wink was the one that I had the most contact with. And the funny thing was Wink was the one that I crossed paths with the most frequently by accident. I had a lot of unplanned encounters with Wink. I was at a. I, was at a bar to see a concert by a band that some of my friends were in. And Wink was there, just having a drink and taking in the music from the band. so I got a photo, photo with him while, I was there. And then a couple years later, when I was working at, the wax museum, Madame Tussauds, I brought some friends into Madame Tussauds because I could get friends in for free at that time. As we were leaving, we're walking down Hollywood Boulevard, and Wink is just out on the sidewalk shooting a commercial. So I went up and said hi to him. I think Wink is the celebrity that I crossed paths with by accident, second most often behind Ed Begley Jr. Ed Begley Jr.

>> Dave: When I heard I got these tickets.

>> Speaker D: To the Folksman, I let out a ga, and I'm running with my friend, running around like a vil de chaya.

>> Dave: Right into the theater in the front row.

>> Speaker D: So we've got the shibilkas, because we're sitting right there. And it's a mitzvah, what your dad did, and I want to try to give that back to you. I'm not trying to be a name dropper with Ed Begley Jr. But, I mean, there was a stretch of about two years where it felt like I was seeing him two or three times a week, just going to my job, and it's like, you know, I want to leave him be.


Ed Bigley Jr. says Wink Martindale always signed autographs

I just. The celebrities are people just like us. so I never said anything to him. It's really weird how often I saw Ed Bigley Jr. Just while I was walking to work. But, yeah, I crossed paths with Wink a lot of times. Wink was always nice about, signing an autograph. So I have a slew of Wink Martindale autographs from every time I cross paths with him. I'm not an autograph hound, but it was one of those things where there's another part of your brain that says, you know, it's really cool that you get to do this. Yeah. And so I always wanted to commemorate these. So I, was just going through my Wink Martindale souvenir photo album, which. All right, thinking American, every person should have.

>> Mike: Exactly.

>> Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. No, I got, Wink's autograph on the photo album. And it's just. It's a whole bunch of photos of, him throughout his career. This is Wink when he was hosting a children's show on local television in Memphis. This was when he was hosting Wink Martindale and the Mars. It was Wink. And a bunch of kids would sit in a spaceship and advertise the sponsors products and. All right, kids, it's time to blast off to our next movie. And they would blast off on the rocket ship and roll a Buck Rogers movie serial from the, This is Wink with, Elvis Presley. Wink had a. Every local TV station in America at one point had something like American Bandstand. Winks was a show called Top 10 Dance Party and was the same idea. Teenagers would come into the studio and Wink would spin records while the teenagers danced on camera. This is Elvis Presley right at the start of his career. Wink, with incredible foresight, had a photographer come in and just document this guy who's a young up and coming singer from this area, appearing as a guest on the show because he had a feeling Elvis was going to shoot through. And Elvis did. so, yeah, Wink had, just a whole slew of photos of the day that Elvis showed up on his. On his TV show. Early in his career. Yeah, early in both their careers.

>> Darin: You know, something I know about Wink Martindale was that if Wink Martindale had married Henry Winkler, he would have been Wink Winkler.

>> Speaker D: Okay. Yeah. The funny thing about,

>> Darin: Sorry.

>> Speaker D: The first national job he ever had. Wink was a childhood nickname. his name was Winston. For anyone who's wondering where the name Wink Martindale comes from, his name was Winston. There was a kid in the neighborhood who had a speech impediment, and he tried to say, hey, Winston, one day, and it came out Wink. And the other kids latched onto that, and Wink decided he liked the name. So that's where the name Wink Martindale came from.

>> Darin: Nice.

>> Mike: Churchill did the same thing.

>> Speaker D: No. Yes. And so that was the origin of the nickname. NBC hated the nickname. So if you look at, early publicity photos from Wink's career, he's Win Martindale. Because NBC said, we're not going to put somebody named Wink on television.

>> Darin: No.

>> Speaker D: Well, he was the first national game show Wink ever. Hose was a show called what's. What's this song. And so for one year of his life, he was Wynn Martindale. And admittedly, Wynn Martindale is also a pretty good name for sure.

>> Darin: Selling cars.

>> Speaker D: Yeah. Everybody knew him as Wink. Back home, Wink had always been his nickname. So as soon as he had a little bit of freedom from NBC, he went ahead and went back and Wink. But yeah, yeah. For just one year of his life, he was Win from Hollywood.

>> Darin: It's everybody's game of strategy, knowledge and fun. It's tic Tac Doe.


Wink Martyvale was a game show host before becoming a disc jockey

>> Speaker D: And now here's our host, Wink Martyvale. Neither one of them are nervous. I'm the nervous one in the group. Let's play tic tac toe. Here we go. Game show host was kind of his other job. And what he was actually doing Monday, through Friday, was he was a disc jockey in the Los Angeles area. Go to YouTube and pull up air checks of Wink as a disc jockey, because they're. And he even said this. I'm not knocking the man. He said it's exhausting to listen to his own air checks. he had a gimmick for himself, and I forget why he did this. He explained it once in an interview, and it's slipping my mind. But he had toys that made a lot of noise in the studio. So, like, he'd be reading the news in the weather report. He would just honk a bicycle horn or blow a tin whistle while he was reading. He would talk at the speed of the guy in the FedEx commercials. Like, it's. It's just weird to hear how fast he's talking.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: While also setting off all the noises from these children's toys while he's reading the news and weather between the songs. it's. It's a ride listening to him as a disc jockey. Disc jockeys were kind of the farm system for game show hosts so eventually, if you were a successful disc jockey in the Los Angeles area, you got a shot at being a game show host. And Wink was one of the ones who really kind of took off and was, able to make a go of it. So he had this long career of, hosting game shows and eventually expanded that into creating and developing game show formats of his own. He had a lot of success in that field.

>> Dave: You're listening to Irritable Dad Syndrome, Cincinnati's comedy podcast.

>> Speaker D: Oh, that's exciting. I'm gonna drop my pants and fire.

>> Darin: A rocket if I can jump back a little bit.


You had mentioned Paul, uh, Lynn, on the Hollywood Squares

You had mentioned Paul, Lynn, on the Hollywood Squares and had him on the rundown, of questions. Was he the greatest celebrity, panelist on game shows, or was there anybody better than him?

>> Speaker D: I mean, he was the best one. It's hard to judge because, for one, there's very little to compare on some shows because this is a thing that always surprises people when I have to explain it. Daytime television was considered less important in that era, and because of that, game shows were erased. Very often, they would record a show on tape only up until the point where it aired, and. And they would just erase the tape and reuse it for the next game show taping. So a lot of game shows from the, from the 50s, 60s, 70s, even through the 80s and 90s have been wiped out. So there's not a lot of frame of reference. In some cases, I would say Paul was one of the best for the role that he was in, which was, he was pretty much the anchor of the panel on Hollywood Squares. He was the guy that everybody tuned in For I don't think it's a coincidence that the show was off NBC only nine months after Paul quit the show. I'm sure that he had some sort of impact on it. Paul left and kind of took Hollywood Squares with it with him. Yeah, Just left behind all these great, one liners. The disappointment for a lot of people. This is the Santa Claus secret about Hollywood Squares. No, the celebrities were not that clever on their own. they had a staff of writers. the writers would come up with the trivia questions and also write the joke answers. but Paul, like a lot of good comedians, Groucho Marx comes to mind. Paul was really, really good at delivering his lines as if he had just thought of what he was going to say. pride, anger, covetousness. I could never say that. Lust, glut, envy and sloth are collectively known as what, the Bill of Rights. Even if the lines were written for him, it's still, it's all in the delivery, it's all in the personality. It's all about putting yourself into that performance. Even if it's just reciting a joke on a game show, you have to do. You have to bring something of your own into that. And Paul did. He was fantastic on Hollywood Squares. I think the brilliance of that show is the fact that it had, it didn't just have humor, but it had encapsulated humor. you don't have to retract that. You don't have to recap the beats of the game to tell somebody a funny thing that you heard on Hollywood Squares. You just have to remember the question and the joke. Yeah, right. And that's why this thing still survives today, not just in the new version, but it still survives in email forwards of funny things that the stars said on the old version.


Paul Lynde became a success as a regular on Hollywood Squares

>> Darin: Was Paul on that show the same time when he was doing Bewitched? And he, I mean, he was on.

>> Speaker D: A bunch, of TV shows.

>> Darin: And then he had the Paul in Halloween special, which.

>> Speaker D: Shake it up, shake it down, Move it in, move it round Disco baby.

>> Darin: Move it in, move it out, move.

>> Speaker D: It in and about Disco baby. Yeah, it would have been concurrent with that because the Hollywood Square started in 66. He became a regular around 68, I think. Okay, so it would have had some, it would have overlapped a little bit with Bewitched, but Paul was on as a regular panelist for about 11 years. It was a blessing and a curse for him, because he was a success as a regular on the, on Hollywood Squares. It was a Regular gig for him. It certainly paid well, but also at the same time, and this is something Peter Marshall and I talked about the one time that I got to have lunch with him. Game shows in that era had a tendency to pigeonhole anybody who appeared on Paul. Lynn definitely experienced that. Paul kind of became the guy on the game show when he would have rather been known as a great comic actor. That was the curse part of it. But yeah, for whatever a legacy is worth, Hollywood Squares gave Paul Lynde a legacy.


Was Robin Williams ever a square on Hollywood Squares

>> Dave: M this portion of our show is brought to you by Whompers. All Beef Footlong hot dogs, voted best hot dog for the seventh year in a row by the National Hot Dog and Sausage Association. Whompers are made from 100% pure beef with no fillers and no preservatives. Get a ruler and measure it yourself. If your hot dog isn't a foot long, they'll refund your money. Guaranteed. M Whompers. Now back to the show.

>> Mike: So I'll be the idiot in the room.

>> Speaker D: Okay. I'm good at it.

>> Mike: Hollywood Squares. Was Robin Williams ever a square? Yeah, I would.

>> Darin: Was he during the, during the, Peter.

>> Speaker D: during the Tom Bridge run. Tom Biron.

>> Darin: Yes. okay, there's like a time where. Well, I'm gonna answer the question for, for our guest.

>> Mike: Excuse it. We have a professional here is going.

>> Darin: To answer the question. Billy, Whoopi and Robin were all on, but I don't, I don't know how.

>> Speaker D: For how long would. They. Did. They did. They did a Comic Relief week. So that was the idea. But yeah, when, when they revived Hollywood Squares in the late 90s and Whoopi Goldberg was the center square, and it was Whoopi Goldberg. And center square was kind of a get at that point because I, mean, she had by that point won an Oscar and still a pretty big film star.

>> Mike: Was a big deal. When I remember the Comic Relief, I was a huge Comic Relief fan. So every time it would come on, I, I just, I had a set of VHS tapes because the thing lasted forever.

>> Darin: It did.

>> Mike: And you know, just so I had tons of tapes of each year they did it. But yeah, I was wondering if there was a tie in with that.

>> Speaker D: But yeah, yeah, when the show, the producers would sort of gently and then later firmly ask her, and it's one of the things that she says led to her quitting the show was they kind of asked her to call in every favor that she had in Hollywood to get some a, ah, listings on the show. So there was a stretch of about Three years of Hollywood Squares where you look at the celebrity listings, you just go, wow. Because Whoopi got every major film star to be on the show. So yeah, she got Billy, Crystal and Robin Williams book for the same week on the show. I'm very, very sure that's the only actual game show appearance that Robin Williams ever did. G.I.

>> Darin: Joe.

>> Speaker D: Robin is a manly doll for sure. After all, the term GI Means he's a fighting man. But what did GI Mean originally stand for? If we're talking about the doll, we're talking about genitally impaired. Here's the thing about Robin Williams being on a game show is that structure had to be torture for him because you're Robin Williams. But the nature of Hollywood Squares is you are called on. You are asked a trivia question. Here's your joke. Answer. Give your answer. You are done in 45 seconds. Yeah, that's all we need you for is 45 seconds at a time. That had to be Robin.

>> Darin: Can't do that.

>> Speaker D: No, no.

>> Mike: Oh, let me tell you something.

>> Speaker D: There was a week when, Groucho Marx did the original Peter Marshall version. Peter Marshall remembered this in his book. He said, you know, you could tell it was difficult for Groucho Marx to do this show because, like, the idea of give your joke and then you're done did not sit well with him.


Dog escapes from his carrier and urinates all over luggage on Chicago flight

>> Darin: Earlier you mentioned the Strong Museum of Play, and I was going to ask you, have you ever been to the Field Museum in Chicago?

>> Speaker D: I've not. the, the most time I've spent in Chicago was the, the Christmas when my flight got delayed, my connection flight to West Virginia, because a dog escaped from his carrier and urinated all over the luggage. So I was supposed to fly from, I was supposed to fly from Los Angeles to Chicago and then a connecting flight into West Virginia. This dog broke out of his carrier.

>> Darin: And just pissed everywhere.

>> Speaker D: Yes. we're all looking out because we're all realizing, you know, our flight hasn't taken off. We're still sitting here on the tarmac in Los Angeles and it's been 40 minutes and it's. Why aren't we taking off? And we see these crew guys pulling our luggage off and we're going, why is everyone pulling the luggage off? And so finally, folks, this is the captain speaking. Dog, escaped from his carrier. And, well, he got caught in a cargo net. And, well, the dog kind of panicked when he realized he was tangled in the net and he did what frightened dogs tend to do. so we have to sterilize the entire luggage area. And also, honesty is the best policy. I'm just going to tell you folks right now, we're going through your luggage and, some of you have been more affected by this incident than others. That's a nice way.

>> Mike: That's a very professional way to put it. So flight school.

>> Speaker D: By the time we landed in Chicago, the flight was already gone. So I was stuck in Chicago for the night. But, yeah. So I've never gotten a chance to explore Chicago. Although if another dog ever urinates on my luggage, I will be sure to go to the Field Museum.

>> Darin: I wasn't expecting that at all. No, no. The reason I asked because at the Field Museum, as soon as you walk in there is this giant T. Rex. Sue the dinosaur. And as soon as you walk in, you see this giant T. Rex and everybody's mouth is just a God, just wide open and people can't get enough of it. And then the rest of the museum, no offense, isn't as impressive.

>> Speaker D: Right.

>> Darin: Because they blew their wad as soon as you walk in.

>> Mike: Yeah.

>> Darin: And, and I was wondering. And I've got a story about that, which I can tell, okay, so we walk into the Field Museum and I've got my kids with me, and they're really little and their minds are blown at this T. Rex. And we're watching the T. Rex and can't get enough of it. And then my littlest son, Cameron says, daddy, I gotta go to the bathroom. I said, okay. So I take him to the bathroom. He goes into the stall to do his business and he said, daddy, this is the coolest place ever. They have eight rolls of toilet paper. And I'm like, we just saw a dinosaur. And he's more impressed with eight rolls of toilet. I could have taken him to Costco.

>> Mike: Yeah.

>> Darin: Saved 88 bucks a ticket with the Strong Museum of Play. I'm wondering, what is your. Or what is the. The T. Rex? What's like the coolest thing at the Strong Museum?

>> Speaker D: Well, the funny thing was we had just gotten there the first time I had a chance to visit it. It was right after some major remodeling had done and they opened up a wing dedicated to the history of video games. They now have the Video Game hall of Fame there. So when you go in, you pay your admission. The first thing you do, if you look up, you will see the world's largest working Donkey Kong machine. It is a 20 foot tall Donkey Kong game and it is playable. They. They set this up it's the actual, whatever you call the stuff inside an arcade game. It's the actual stuff from an original Donkey Kong game. Wow. And they just refurbished it and made it workable and functional in the 2020s. And they put it inside a proportionately blown up cabinet. So it's a 20 foot tall Donkey Kong cabinet and you can actually play the thing. And so that's the dinosaur. And also there's something analogous to the eight rolls of toilet paper if you go to the bathroom. The strong museum of Clay. Because the thing that jumps out at you when you walk into the men's room there is that the tiles on the wall are arranged like Tetris blocks. So, you can see little Tetris patterns all through the bathroom as you're doing your visit.

>> Darin: Now, do they have eight rolls of toilet paper in that museum?

>> Speaker D: Yeah, we're up to seven.

>> Darin: Come on, you got to keep up.

>> Speaker D: We're hoping to get a government grant next year. But one of the neat things that they have in there is they have an original 8 bit Nintendo and it's hooked up to a controller that is literally a coffee table. it's the size of the dimensions of a coffee table, but it's a working controller. You can't operate it as one person. You need two people to work the controller for this Nintendo game. Which kind of changes the experience of playing Super Mario Brothers on Nintendo. When you need two people to operate different parts.

>> Mike: it would end a marriage.

>> Darin: It would be over. Push the C button.

>> Speaker D: See? Yeah, yeah.

>> Darin: What's wrong with you, woman?

>> Speaker D: It's definitely something to carve out a weekend for. It's not quite Disneyland level where you have to spend a week there, but they can give you a solid weekend if you take the family.

>> Darin: Yeah, I definitely want to see it. One of these days I'm going to get up there.


The Pressure Luck movie is based on a true story from 1983

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>> Darin: I think it's currently in theaters. I know it's not showing here. The Pressure Luck movie. I assume that you, you probably were.

>> Speaker D: At the Pressure Luck Cities. And the nice thing about Los Angeles is our city is always selected.

>> Darin: Yes. I hope your city is selected.

>> Speaker D: So yes, I have had a chance to see it.

>> Darin: Did they Hollywood ize it up or is it pretty much like how it happened?

>> Speaker D: When you say based on a true story, the keywords there are based on. Here's the funny thing. I watched the movie opening day, and as I'm leaving the theater, I see a group of three guys leaving. This is how I work. I'm a guy who's obsessed with game shows, and I need to info dump on somebody about this. So I just walk up to three complete strangers and begin talking to them about game shows. And one of them had seen a documentary about the incident from 20 years ago. There was a documentary called Big Bucks that a very good friend of mine, Bob Bowden, had actually had a hand in. the documentary covered the actual story and what one of these three guys actually said, which kind of surprised me. You hear this from a not game show. Obsessee was he says, it really surprised me that the actual story was more interesting than the fictional Hollywood version that we just saw. The movie gives you the story of the network kind of freaking out as this thing is going on because they don't know what he's doing. They're looking for an investigation and they're. Is this guy, Is he breaking the law? Is he. How is he doing this? How is it? He's cheating. And at one point, they send security guards out there to help break into the ice cream van that he broke to the studio because they're looking for some hints of how he's doing it. They're searching his ice cream van without a warrant, basically to try to figure out, to find the clues to this mystery what actually happened in real life. For anyone who doesn't know the story. and I'll just go through what happened in reality.

>> Darin: Spoiler alert.

>> Dave: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: Yeah. The real life story here is once upon a time, there was a game show called Press or Luck? Press yous Luck is a game board with 18 squares laid out, and you answer trivia questions to earn spins on those squares. And the way these spins work is there's a light flashing around each of the 18 squares on the board, and these squares are ever changing. There are different things that could pop up in each square. So they're cycling through different money amounts, different prizes, instructions, and in some cases, the whammies, which are the little red evil creatures that take away your money. So press the button to stop the light from flashing around, and you end up with whatever the light comes to a stop on. Whether it's money or a prize or if it's whammy, everything that you want up to that point is wiped out and your score goes back to Zero.

>> Darin: My favorite. One of my favorite shows of all time.

>> Speaker D: Absolutely. Yeah. I. I love it. And it's. I always tell people it's one of the gateway drug shows for kids of a certain generation to get addicted to game shows in 1983, when this show was developed, here was a little secret of this show. Computer technology in 1983 was not where it is now, obviously. And having the light flash around randomly was not something that computer software in 1983 could handle. The only thing they could do was program five different patterns of light flashes and cycle through it. And hopefully by cycling through different. Five different patterns of light flashes, you could make it appear random. Michael Larson was an unemployed ice cream truck driver in Ohio who was watching Presser Luck and got addicted to it because it was the winter of 83, 84, and when it's winter in Ohio, there's not much call for ice cream truck drivers. So he do in Ohio. Yeah, he was at home for six months a year. And so Michael got hooked on Press your Luck. And Michael was the guy who paid enough attention when he was watching Presser Lock to notice, oh, wait, that light's not flashing randomly. And since he certainly had the time to commit to this, he began recording the show regularly. And he began watching the show on videotape and studying the light flashes until he had successfully memorized the way the light flashed around the board in each of those five different cycles that had been programmed in the computer. He gets on a Greyhound bus and goes straight to Los Angeles. Goes to the production offices to do a contestant audition. They book him for the show. And this was an era. I, I went through results, of games because all information about game shares is on the Internet somewhere to give you a sense of perspective. On an average day on Press yous Luck, a contestant won about $11,500. Michael, in a single game of Press yous luck, wins $110,000.

>> Mike: Oh, nice.

>> Speaker D: and the way he does it is he just focuses. He was very clever. It wasn't just that he memorized the life patterns, but he kept track of what appeared in those 18 squares on the board. And he figured out that there were two squares on the board that always offered money and an extra spin, which meant as long as you kept landing on these two squares over and over again, you didn't know necessarily what you would win, but you knew you were never going to run out of spins, which meant your turn was never going to end. Right. So Michael just focused on these two squares on the game board. And just kept landing on them and landing on them and landing on them until he had rolled up $110,000. And the truth was, contrary to what the movie shows, it wasn't a matter of anyone being blindsided. In fact, what had happened at the very, very beginning when this show was going into production, Bill Carruthers, who was the creator of the show and the executive producer and the director, so he wore a lot of hats on his own creation. Bill Carruthers voiced a concern to CBS that my patterns felt like a low number to him. And he thought it was possible that somebody paying attention might be able to figure out that the lights were flashing in a predictable pattern. And the famous last words from somebody at cbs, you know what? You should be so lucky to have somebody who watches this show and cares badly enough to remember where the light is flashing. You should be that lucky to have a fan. The computer software needed to add more patterns to the board would have cost something like 500. And CBS decided, no, we don't want to spend the $500.

>> Darin: And so they went ahead 110,000.

>> Speaker D: Yeah. So they went, and nine months after the show premiered and lost $110,000 in one day. Bill Crothers was a gracious enough man, to my knowledge, that he didn't say I told you so to anybody. But CBS immediately upgraded all the software and all the. All the hardware in their computer system. So what they did, they never got it to total random in the 1980s.


Michael Morrison's fortune was stolen because of bad investments

The. The computer system was never that good, but they got it to a point where I think was 30 patterns. They programmed 30 in there, and 30 was enough to keep other Michael Larson's at bay. Yeah, that was probably. I think that was probably more than.

>> Darin: They paid Peter Tamarkin.

>> Speaker D: I mean, you know, I. Maybe certainly for that.

>> Darin: I mean, in 83, I can't imagine a game show host making six figures. Yeah, I don't know.

>> Mike: I think two patterns would have confused.

>> Speaker D: That would have been at least where I.

>> Mike: Where I'm from, I would have. Yeah.

>> Darin: Well, we're from Ohio.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Darin: Anyway. Go ahead, Adam.

>> Speaker D: No. so Michael Morrison wins. And then the crazy thing was, within a year, the money was gone because Michael did a couple of bad decisions. there was a bad real estate investment and. Real estate investment. Okay. That's one thing. We've all heard that story. We've all heard investments going wrong. The much more interesting way that he lost his fortune. There was another game show on NBC called Sale of the Century and Salem Tree in the fall of 1984 did a special month long promotion called the Dollar Bill Co contest. The dollar bill contest was at the end of each game they would put up a six number sequence on the screen and Jim Perry would give an address and he would say, if you have a $1 bill that has these six digits in this order, mail it in. We have a forty thousand dollar jackpot. And at the end of the month, anybody who mails in a dollar bill that matches one of these six digit sequences that we're giving you, we're going to divide up the $40,000among anyone who sends us a $1 bill bill. Michael Larson's great idea, Go to the bank, withdraw the money that I want on Press your luck in $1 bills, and after Sale of the Century every day, go down to the basement and go through all of my $1 bills and try to find a dollar bill of matches. Well, here's the problem. Some of the neighbors noticed him walking into the house with grocery bags filled with a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah.

>> Mike: It doesn't take a criminal mastermind to see what's going on there.

>> Speaker D: Yeah. And the thing that kills me about that is it's okay, you won $110,000. Even if you're going to do this, I don't fault Michael for doing that, for withdrawing $110,000. But also rent a safe deposit box and put your money in the safe deposit box. You're clearly not going to work every day if you're going through that many $1 bills. I mean, this is definitely still Michael's downtime. Go to the bank, you know, jot down the six digit sequence and then drive down to the bank and go through your money. So think of that.

>> Darin: So his money was stolen.

>> Speaker D: A large chunk of his money was stolen. And as legend has it, in one of the most ambitious phone calls ever placed, allegedly he called the producers of Press yous Luck and said, hey, are you going to do a tournament of champions anytime soon? And the producers of Press your Luck hearing that Michael Larson was on the phone asking if he could be a contestant on the show again. now we're good. Michael, thanks for suggesting the idea, but press your luck. For the three years that was on cbs, they never did anything like that. They never had a tournament of champions. There's no reason they shouldn't have. But I think it was you sidestepped the issue of they didn't want Michael back on the show.

>> Darin: Right. They didn't come back the next day. If they won, did they after the.

>> Speaker D: Quiz show scandals, the major networks all tended to introduce rules on their game shows going forward that there was some sort of ceiling on what contestants could win. And the logic there, I guess, was, you know, if we have this built in limit to what people can win, then it disincentivizes rigging the game. Password, for example, there was a stretch of time where the limit on password was $1,000 in the 1960s, and then CBS by 1984, when Michael was on the show, their rule was $25,000. You were allowed to win $25,000. And at the moment that you crossed $25,000, you could keep anything that spilled over, but you were done after you won $25,000. And in fact, when you watch Michael's game of presser lock, Peter chats with him for a little while after the show was over. And Michael doesn't come right out and say what he does. He never admits that he memorized board patterns or anything like that. Michael tries to make it sound like he got lucky, but Michael makes this weird remark towards the end while he was talking about to, Peter Markin. And my interpretation of this was Michael got caught up in the moment and screwed up. And his original plan was to.

>> Dave: We're having technical difficulties. Don't go away. We'll be back with more of our chat with Adam Nedev as soon as possible.

>> Mike: interactions. And this is just. There's too many variables.

>> Darin: So sorry.

>> Mike: This really sorry.

>> Speaker D: I.

>> Darin: Look, Adam, I'm not kidding. I love when you come on the show. I, I just. And I'm so sorry that this is doing this, but I'm like,

>> Mike: And you actually sound normal now like before.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Mike: I don't know if you noticed, like, whenever you were talking, we were like kind of doing this thing because it's like, it was like listening to eight and no offense, a cockroach come through a Coke can.

>> Darin: Yes. Yeah. It's like. And I think that's the title of the. I think that's the title of the episode.

>> Mike: But now nothing changed. All we did was call you back in and now you sound beautiful.

>> Darin: Okay, so we're going.

>> Mike: All right, let's go, let's go.


Irritable Dad Syndrome has technical difficulties tonight

>> Darin: Welcome back to Irritable Dad Syndrome. We have had technical problem after technical problem tonight. and, our apologies to Adam Native. We're back. we don't know for how long, so we're going to just. We're going to fight through this.

>> Speaker D: What was the last thing you heard me say?

>> Darin: Oh, you were wrapping up about the, the Pressure Luck movie. They didn't do the Tournament of Champions.

>> Speaker D: Michael was planning on stopping at around $20,000 and winning his first game and then coming back for second game and then game two. He was going to go on the big run, and that way he could maximize his winnings. But I think he got caught up in the moment. So he sort of screwed up what I think he had in mind.

>> Darin: So, factual or. Or not. Was it a good movie?

>> Speaker D: It was a good movie in the sense that I, I didn't regret spending my money and spending it at, two hours of my life in the movie theater. But it's also, if I'm being honest, it's one of those things I. I don't see myself ever thinking, boy, I'm in the mood to watch that again. It was a good movie, you know, once.

>> Darin: Well, because I was thinking, you know, they did the, the Pressure Luck movie. And the only other movie I remember about game shows was, was the Robert Redford Quiz Show.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Darin: Was there anything else?

>> Speaker D: Well, Chuck Barris made that Gong show movie in 1980.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: Oh, I love.

>> Darin: I love that movie. I own that one.

>> Speaker D: I bought that one. And, Slumdog Millionaire, that's another guy. yeah, there was Also in the 1940s, there was a movie called Hit the Jackpot starring Jimmy Stewart. And that was based on a radio show. And then in the early, early 1950s, here's a fun fact for you. Leonard Nimoy's first film role ever was in the movie version of Queen for a day.

>> Darin: Oh, Mr. Spock.

>> Mike: Okay, two things. One, speaking of Leonard Nimoy, you've seen the hobbit song.

>> Darin: In the middle of the Earth, in.

>> Speaker D: The land of Shire, lives a brave little hobbit whom we all admire with his long wooden height, fuzzy woolly toes.

>> Darin: He lives in a hobbit hole and everybody knows him. Bilbo.

>> Speaker D: Bilbo Baggins is only three feet tall.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Mike: And the other, as far as game show movies, the Running Man.

>> Darin: Yeah, with Richard Dawson contribution.

>> Speaker D: Richard Dawson and Jesse. The Body Ventura.

>> Mike: And the opera singing electro guy.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Mike: Remember him?

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Mike: I feel so bad for him.


Adam Nedoff: We're having more technical problems with our podcast

>> Darin: All right, so. So you disappeared.

>> Dave: Damn it. We're having more technical problems. Who's running this ship anyway? Hang on. We're working on it. We will be back with more of our chat with Adam Nedoff as soon as possible.

>> Speaker D: Oh, you can hear him? Yes, yes. You can hear me. Beautiful.

>> Mike: Go.

>> Speaker D: You were wondering why I'm putting up with this. And I'll tell you the truth about why I'm putting up with this. This. I'm in. I have a shared laundry room with the other people in this building. And so every time I've been booted off, I've gone into the laundry room to move my laundry around. So that's what I've been doing this whole time, is every time we have some sort of issue on my end, I take advantage of that to deal with my laundry. But I want to let you know, all three loads are out now. So m. Like, this is the left.

>> Darin: Okay, we're good.

>> Speaker D: Okay.

>> Darin: Okay.

>> Speaker D: All right. Do we need the book?


Bill Cullen appeared on game shows on all three major networks in 1973 and 1976

>> Darin: All right. So, Adam, you have written a new book about Cullen. And I was doing some of my own research on Bill Cullen, and I thought that it was Dick Clark who was the first person to be on all three major networks at the same time with shows, but they're saying it was Bill Cullen.

>> Speaker D: Well, here's the thing. It sort of depends on your definition of being on all three. If it's having a regular series, that might be Dick Clark still. But, Bill Cullen's distinction was. I only found out very recently from Bill's nephew why this was. It had to be with something kind of true, that Bill did. Bill, in the summer of 1973, appeared as a celebrity guest star on the panels of a game show on NBC, ABC, and CBS. And then the same thing happened in 1976. If you turned on the TV during a given week in the summer of 1976, you saw Bill as a celebrity guest star on a CBS game show, an ABC game show, and an NBC game show. What I found out from talking to his nephew was this was a brilliant thing Bill did, which was every few months, he would call up game show producers based in Hollywood because Bill was living in New York at that time. And he would say, hey, I'm coming out to Los, Angeles for a vacation. My wife and I are going to spend, like, two weeks in Palm Springs. Are you taping any game shows while we're in the area? Now, the trick here was, by virtue of the fact that Bill had appeared on the panels of these game shows while he was on vacation, that now turned his game, his vacation, into a business expense. So Bill was okay. So Bill would book up some of these guest appearances while he was in town, and then he could just write off the airfare and write off the hotel from the actual vacation he was taking. So he would just. He would spend three days taping game trips in Los Angeles and then spend the Rest of the time in Beverly Hills or in Palm Springs or wherever it was in Southern California that he was actually vacationing. Yeah. But, that was a shrewd little move on his part. But, yeah, in the summer of 1973 and 1976, he was on all three networks, and both times he was a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth. So if you had an independent station in your area, you could see Bill on all four channels at some point during the day, if your independent station tried to tell the truth.

>> Darin: So Bill was a. Bill, he was a big deal.

>> Speaker D: Very. A big deal. And also beyond celebrity, whatever level of celebrity Bill attained, the bigger deal was Bill was just very, very good at what he did. It's hard to articulate why game show panelist is a difficult job. The best way to put it is the next time that you're playing a game of Scrabble with your family, try to be funny the entire time you're playing Scrabble. M. you have to play the game well, but also be funny and charming and engaging while you're playing the game well. Now, the last time you played Scrabble, do you remember being funny and charming and engaging with the people that you were playing with?

>> Darin: I don't remember ever being funny, charming, or engaging. Especially tonight. Yeah.

>> Speaker D: So that's the difficult part of the job is you have to. Do you have to play the game well while also being entertaining as you play the game. And so Bill was very, very good at that, which made him kind of a premium choice for these game shows that needed to book celebrity guests. And the result of all that, at the end of his life, Bill had a very comfortable retirement, because the way to describe it was he maxed out the pension plan for, Radio and Television Performers Union, and he was just collecting this massive amount of money every month because of the sheer volume of work that he did as a game show celebrity.


The first choice for the Price Is Right was a guy named...M.M.

>> Darin: M. Was he the original host of Price is Right?

>> Speaker D: The original host of the Price is right. 1956 was when they first got the show off the ground. The first choice for the Price Is Right was a guy named Dick Van Dyke. Yeah.

>> Darin: And he was in the Weird Al Flintstones, video.

>> Speaker D: The wrong Dick Van.

>> Darin: Oh, I thought you said Dick fan. Who did you say? Oh, that's Dick Van Patten.

>> Speaker D: Yeah. Yes.

>> Mike: yeah, I'm gonna walk away.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Darin: I'm sorry.

>> Speaker D: And I'm. I'm excited because for the first time in my life, I got to say the sentence that's the Wrong. Dick Van. Yes, that's right. And you gave me a reason to say. And you know what? That is why I will keep coming back to this podcast, no matter how many technical difficulties we have. Thank you.

>> Darin: Not yet.

>> Speaker D: The star of the Dick Van Dyke show, that was still about, four years away, but he was offered the job of hosting the Price Is Right, and Dick Van Dyke turned down the job because he thought the show had a terrible premise and he didn't think it would succeed. What does he do? Yeah, and, you know, I'm sure that Dick Van Dyke is still losing sleep to this day about the fact that he said, like, if you stop and think about the butterfly effect there, because that's what happens to the movie Mary Poppins. If Dick Van Dyke is hosting the Price Is Right, when that's on the air, what happens with, Johnny Carson was considered for the role of Rob Petrie before the role went to Dick Van Dyke and it became the Dick Van Dyke Show. So that means Johnny Carson is starring on a sitcom when the Tonight show becomes available. So it's all these little things in the history of American television and film change if Dick Van Dyke takes that job. But didn't. And instead the job went to Bill Cullen, who very nearly didn't get the job. Mark Goodson and Bill Todman considered Bill unavailable for the job because it was going to go on the air live every day at 10:30am Hm. And Bill was hosting a radio show in New York. He was a morning disc jockey from 6 to 10am they didn't think Bill would be able. They had an inkling that the show would be complicated enough, they'd want a rehearsal done, which sounds surprising, but that's, the Price Is Right. Even today, the Price is Right is complicated enough that they do a rehearsal with standing contestants every day just to get into the rhythm of, you know, here's where this prize is going to be placed and here's the game we're going to be playing. And this is going to be where we set this up. And this is what the stage hands need to do once this game is over and the stage hands need to move this on. So it's.

>> Darin: Yeah, maybe we ought to start doing a rehearsal.

>> Mike: Yeah, I mean, yeah, we've basically done five shows tonight, and when this is.

>> Darin: Over, we'll be ready for the real one.

>> Speaker D: Yeah, they thought, they thought, you know, we can't do this with a. Without, Bill there because he's not going to be available for the rehearsals because he's going to be doing his more stuff radio show. And the producer and the creator of the Price is Right was again, was a guy named Bob Stewart. And Bob Stewart said, I'll bet you Bill can pull this off without rehearsing. So what they did was every morning, Bill would walk straight from the radio studio into. Almost literally just walk from the radio studio into the theater and walk onto the stage and host the show. And what they would do was they would just hand him an index card with a, few minor things to keep track of for the half hour, and that was enough to get built through. Each episode of the Price Is Right was just the notes on this index card as he was starting the show. Bill hosted the show for nine years. It was canceled in, 65. And then in 1972, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman decided, they're going to start doing a new version of it, the new Price is Right. They decided that they were going to start doing the show in Los Angeles instead of New York, because all of television was very starting to move slowly to Los Angeles at this point. Yeah, pretty much the opposite of what's happening in television right now. Everything was moving to Los Angeles, and so the Price is Right was moving out to Los Angeles. Bill told them, you know, I'm a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth, which is in New York. I have a weekend radio show in New York. I have a commercial endorsement deal right now for a chain of department stores that's based in New York, and I'm the host of a show on NBC that tapes in New York. So Bill had four jobs at that moment that all were based in New York.

>> Darin: He was like the Ryan Seacrest of the day.

>> Speaker D: Yeah, honestly. Yeah, that's a good comparison. Bill said, you know, I'm willing to host the Prices. Right. But you're asking me to give up four jobs. So he named his price for hosting the new Prices. Right. And Goodson Dogman didn't have that kind of money to scrape together, apparently.

>> Darin: No dice.

>> Speaker D: Bill sat out. There's a misperception that you see in a lot of places that said it had to do with the fact that he was disabled, which Bill was. Bill was afflicted by polio as an infant, and he didn't fully recover. He walked with a limp, and you hear it attributed very often that because of his disability, he didn't host the new Prices. Right. That had nothing to do with it. It had everything to do with what they were offering him in terms of Salary. Bill wanted a big, big paycheck. Post the prices. Right. Because he was giving up four jobs to do one.

>> Darin: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Speaker D: They didn't meet the prices he was asking for.

>> Darin: Well, there was, I was actually kind of disappointed. There's a clip of Mel Brooks and he's on, Bill Maher Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher talking about the time he met Bill Cullen.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Darin: And he didn't know. And he started walking like Bill Cohen walked.

>> Speaker D: Yes.

>> Darin: And you can hear the audience groaning.

>> Speaker D: M. Yeah.

>> Darin: And I'm like, yeah, come on.

>> Speaker D: This is something about.


Bill Cohen had polio and his shows accommodated him with small things

Yeah, this was something Bill always said. You know, he wasn't ashamed of the fact that he had polio, but also he didn't want it to be a selling point. He didn't want it to be what the public associated with. Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't that he was self conscious, but also he didn't want to call attention to it. And the shows that he worked on usually accommodated him, with a few small things. They would have him sitting down during the show instead of standing up. And anytime that the action of the game actually called for Bill to walk for any reason, they would cut to some other shot of, the set. They would shoot something else or someone else.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: Or on some shows they would just time the commercial breaks. So they took a commercial break whenever Bill had to walk. So because of that, there were a lot of people in the general public who did not realize that Bill Cohen was disabled. Mel Brooks was one of those people. So Mel Brooks was booked to be a celebrity guest on a special week they were going of, I guess, which was the show that Bill did after the Price Is Right. And Bill went out from his lectern to say something to the audience after the taping was over and kind of thank him for being on the show. And Mel Brooks sees the way Bill is walking. And Mel assumes that Bill is doing a funny walk to get a laugh from the studio audience. Mel says, oh, well, I'll get a laugh too. And he gets up and he starts doing a, ah, very exaggerated. The way he put it was a flip flop walk to mimic the way that Bill was walking. The audience is laughing and, the way Mel Brooks described it was. The other celebrity just begins screaming, what are you doing? She yells out, he has polio. You're mimicking the way he walks because he has polio.

>> Mike: Wow.

>> Speaker D: And there's an interesting lesson here. Just you don't know how certain people are going to react because Mel in an instant realizes I'M making fun of a disabled person and he wants to crawl into a hole and die.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: And Bill, on the other hand, turns around and he sees Mel mimicking the walk. And Bill turns around and hugs him. And he leans into Mel's ear and he says, you know what? You're the first person who's ever had enough guts to make fun of the way I walk. He says, everybody is always so careful and so cautious not to say anything or do anything around me. And it makes me feel really bad because I know people are being self conscious when they see the way that I walk. Bill actually saw it in a different way. He was like, oh, this is breaking some ice. It's okay for people to acknowledge that I'm disabled. The reason I was compelled to write this, this is actually, as you can see on the book cover, it's second edition. This is a, this is an expanded version.

>> Darin: The first edition was blurred.

>> Speaker D: Yes. The old Letterman joke, David. And believe me, I've used that every opportunity that I've had ever since I started writing this one. This is the second edition. There have been 200 pages added to this one. Among other things, my friend Matt Ottinger and I. Matt Ottinger is the other Bill Cullen game show obsession on the Internet and really the original one. He was the first one to have a website devoted to Bill and the first one to gather, a lot of the research that I was able to piggyback off of. So I owe an enormous amount of Matt audio. But Matt and I keep finding other stuff that Bill did that we didn't know about. We found something like three or four more radio shows in the time since the first book was published that we didn't know about. And we found out about a really weird theatrical production of one of his game shows that he did for a summer in New York. And the other thing that happened was we heard from Bill's family in New York. Now, what I knew going into this book, when I first wrote this book, his wife was still alive the time his third wife, Anne, who was a lovely woman. They were married for 35 years and had a very, very happy marriage. But there was very little to draw from about his life before he met. There were a few things that Bill indicated in magazine, interviews, newspaper interviews in his life where he indicated he wasn't that close to his family in Pittsburgh, or he wasn't really in touch with anybody from Pittsburgh, which is where he'd grown up after the book was published the first time Around. And this is just in the last few years, I heard from a guy in Pittsburgh whose mother was Bill's first wife. He said, okay, so I've read some of the information that you've published, and here's the story as I've heard it told in my family. So he's giving me other information that I hadn't heard and things that directly contradict the things that I published in the first book. And so I reached out to Bill's nephew here in Los Angeles, David Nars. David has a real interesting family tree. David is kind of his family historian. Every. Every family has someone who's tasked with being a family historian, and David is the family historian for his family. Everybody that David was ever related to became a legendary game show host. His father was Jack Nars, who was the host of Concentration, and, now you see it, Seven Keys. His uncle was Tom Kennedy, who hosted Name that Tune in split second. His other uncle was Bill Cullen. So I said, listen, I've just heard from somebody very indirectly connected to Bill from Pittsburgh, and here's what they're telling me. And it turned out that the California end of Bill's family was not terribly surprised to learn that Uncle Bill had been lying to them about life in Pittsburgh. There were a few things that he said during his life that sort of contradicted other things he had told them. So they suspected that Bill was fibbing about a few things. Okay, the family is on board with the fact that what the Pittsburgh people are telling me is a truth.


Bill was famous when he became a disc jockey in Pittsburgh

I want to do a new edition of the book now where I address what actually happened. What actually happened was Bill was kind of a crappy husband on, marriage number one. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that, you know, this was the first generation to have broadcasting. Bill was born the same year that commercial radio existed, 1920. So when Bill became a disc jockey in Pittsburgh, that was celebrity. Like, there were actually people who would come hang out outside the radio studio, Pittsburgh, and watch the radio personalities come and go from their shifts. And some of them would actually have gifts, and some of them would have baked goods. Like, it was a taste of celebrity. Even on that level, even just being in local radio in Pittsburgh, there was something of, star power to being on the radio. At that time in 1940, 41, 42, the early 1940s, a lot of women like to hang out outside the studio. The women kind of clung on to any of the big radio stars, and Bill liked that kind of attention. And Bill, oh, yeah. Indulged in that attention. Kind of the same thing happened when he first made the move out to New York. Bill ran around quite a bit in New York. So the first marriage ended in failure. And Bill made this really cryptic remark in a newspaper interview later where all he said was, looking back, I didn't really grow up until I was 30. He offered no clarification at all. So it's this really weird quote from a later interviewer, a, later interview that just hangs there with no explanation at all of what he means by that. All of a sudden I have this quote where Bill indicates that he really regretted how he spent his 20s. And then all this information from his family about how he had this first marriage that he really, really was not proud of. When he looked back on his life, I thought that was an interesting story. And also, you know, there's a lot to be said about putting celebrities on pedestals and the harm of that, the danger of idolizing somebody. I kind of like this from the fact that it humanized him. It was a reminder that Bill was not always a good person. But it's also a remind redemption as possible. Like I said, Bill was married three times, and marriage number three lasted, 35 years. Yeah. Which to me says he put in the work. And he actually worked on being a better person and being the type of person that a woman want for a husband. And really worked on himself and improved. And Bill may have been ashamed of this part of his life. And Bill, if we could have a seance and ask him. Bill might even bristle at the fact that I'm publishing these details of his life now. But I think it's to be celebrated that he actually, like I said, he did the work. And from the looks of things, he actually improved and became a better person than he had been. And I think, ah, that's worth celebrating as much as. Boy, he sure was famous. Isn't it great that he was famous? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

>> Darin: I agree.


Remote Control was the show that took MTV from what MTV is remembered

>> Dave: This portion of our show is brought to you by books. Buy a book at a reputable bookstore or check one out for free at your local public library. Read one today. They're really cool. Now back to the show.

>> Darin: What's your next book? Don't let me tell you how to do your job, but can your next book be about remote control?

>> Speaker D: Kenny wasn't like the other kids. TV mattered, nothing else did. Squirrel said yes, but he said, no remote control. Now he died his own game company. In a very indirect way, I might be able to accommodate you on this Again, we do the oral history series with the museum. It was about eight months ago, I think. We shot an oral history with Kari Werrer and the executive producers and the writers who worked behind the scenes on Remote Control. And it was just. We put them in front of a camera for about three hours and just had them reminiscing and telling stories about the show. So that is eventually going to be available on the strong use yet website. So not a book, but as the next best thing you're going to have.

>> Darin: Okay.

>> Speaker D: Just three solid hours of people telling their behind the scenes stories from working on the show.

>> Darin: That was a great show.

>> Speaker D: Yes, it was.

>> Darin: It was a really good show. Even though my, only problem with it was I, as you know, I loved MTV. I love 24 hour music videos. Remote Control comes on and it was a hit. And then, you know, Beavis and Butthead and then Headbangers Ball and. But they started veering away from.

>> Dave: Yeah.

>> Darin: The real world.

>> Speaker D: If you have nowhere pressing to be right now, I can kind of info dump on that because this was something that we discussed there. And you're right. And that's kind of the mix. Legacy Remote Control has. Remote Control was the show that took MTV from what MTV is remembered and celebrating for having been in the very beginning.

>> Darin: Hey, what happened? Yeah.

>> Speaker D: To being what everybody eventually hated MTV for being. And here's the story there. because I didn't realize this until the guys who created the show explained it. He said everybody fondly remembers the era when MTV was music videos and nothing else. Here's the problem. Television is a business and this is going to shock you. At the time when MTV was airing music videos and nothing else, they had the worst trouble with selling commercials on mtv. They could not sell advertising on the channel. And the reason they couldn't sell advertising was because you couldn't point to any block of time and say, this is when people are watching.

>> Darin: That makes sense.

>> Speaker D: Mtv. When it was just music videos and nothing more was people would turn on MTV when there was nothing else on to watch. And they would keep watching and keep watching and keep watching until they got to a song they didn't like until. And then they would change the channel. Which meant you couldn't predict who was watching at any given time.

>> Darin: Right.

>> Speaker D: Nobody was getting into a pattern of watching. There was no habit forming anything you could not point to. This is when this number of people will be watching the show. This is when viewers between 18 and 25 will be watching.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Mike: Just like selling it.

>> Speaker D: Yeah.

>> Darin: So it's exact.


By 1987 MTV needed to start making shows instead of music videos

Thank you, Mike.

>> Speaker D: Exactly.

>> Darin: Ah.

>> Speaker D: So by 1987, MTV had this really hard decision point where they all looked at each other and said, you know, we need to start making shows.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: And the purpose of remote control was now we have a 30 minute block that we can point to and say between this time and this time we are airing a game show. And anybody who wants to watch an MTV game show will be watching MTV between this time and this time. and it worked. And that led to all the other shows that you named it led to MTV becoming shows instead of just wall to wall music.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: so it's the tragedy of television is it is a business and they just, they needed to make money off commercials. And that was the only way they could do it was to start offering shows instead of music videos.

>> Mike: I'm going to store that story in my head. And the next party I'm at, when I'm at beer number two or three.

>> Darin: You know what I heard from Adam, I'm gonna find.

>> Mike: No, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna credit him because I'm gonna annoy everyone. I'm gonna, I'll credit him a little bit, but I'm just gonna, I'm gonna intentionally annoy somebody. That's a really good story.

>> Darin: Makes sense. Yeah. And I work in television. I think I would know that.

>> Mike: Yeah. I wish I could travel back in time until 1995. Mike. Hey, quit whining. This is why.

>> Darin: But they didn't have to go 24 hours non music video.

>> Mike: There were fewer channels back then. Right. Than now. So what was a 50 channels and there's nothing on, or 57 channels and there's nothing on Back then that was like, oh my gosh, there's 50 something channels now. It's like, even the most basic Cable has what, three, 4,000.

>> Darin: Well, who has basic cable?

>> Speaker D: And that was a point that they were making. we were asking them, you know, have you ever considered rebooting remote control to bring them back? And for exactly the reason you just said, the feeling was that remote control could not possibly work if you brought it back now. Because in 1987 cable was just beginning to exist. But even, you know, they were college age contestants. But even in 1987, a college age contestant had spent most of their life watching a television that had only three channels on it. Yeah. So there was, watching television had commonality of experience making remote control. Now it would be very, very hard to build game material that the audience relates to. And even the three contestants in the studio it would be hard to write material that all three contestants had shot it. Yeah, yeah.

>> Mike: I mean shows like Flipper would never have a chance these days. Never, never. No big dolphin when there's like 8000 other channels to watch.

>> Darin: I started in television in 93 and two of the people who inspired me to go into television, one was David Letterman and the other guy was Ken Ober. And he. How old was. He was died in his 50s, wasn't he?

>> Speaker D: He, he died very young and it was a, it was a very abrupt death. He had told friends the story as I've heard was he told friends, I think I'm coming down with the flu. And then died that night. Like I'm not entirely sure what the cause of death was. It was very sudden. And I do appreciate when you're MTV and you consider yourself one of the bastions of pop culture, you don't have a lot of time to dwell on the past for go nostalgia. But I really did appreciate, not just as a viewer, not just as a fan of remote control, but I appreciate the fact that when Ken over died, they actually did wipe out part of their weekend schedule and just air reruns of remote control.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Speaker D: I always thought that was a nice gesture for mtv. Yeah. To do that and say, you know, this guy did have a hand on you in getting us to where we are now.

>> Darin: A lot of people forgot that Adam.

>> Speaker D: Sandler was on Adam Sandler and Dennis Leary was one of the remote control players. It was a rare game show that had a concept.

>> Speaker D: And the idea of the show was that Ken Ober, the host of the show and that that was his real name. But he was also kind of a character in the show.

>> Darin: Well, Kenny, he wasn't like the other kids.

>> Speaker D: Ken over was a slacker who lived in his parents basement and was a game show fan. And there was an opening theme and an opening title sequence that showed him at different stages in life watching game shows. So he was the slacker living in his parents basement. And he cobbled together a game show in his parents basement. And that's what the set was designed to look like. It was a game show played on Barca loungers and with old furniture and old appliances. The studio audience was. The way they put it was the studio audience was Ken's friends from around the neighborhood. And so the premise of remote control was it was this slacker in his basement who was playing a game show with contestants who just dropped by his parents house. Dennis Leary and Adam Sandler were among the actors who played different characters who would pop in and out of the house for different categories. It was a genius premise all the way through.


Adam Volushi says in college he bore a striking resemblance to John Belushi

>> Darin: Well, Adam, we're going to wrap this up, but before we go, I wanted to ask one more quick question. If you grew your hair out long, do you know you'd look just like Peter Jackson?

>> Mike: Hey, there you go.

>> Speaker D: Has anyone told you that in college I wore my hair a lot shaggier and I was clean shaven?

>> Darin: Uh-huh.

>> Speaker D: And there was a group of guys in, in the college dorms who referred to me as Volushi. When I was in college, I bore a striking resemblance to John Belushi. But since I've been wearing my hair shorter and, grew out the beard, now that's gone away. Yeah.

>> Darin: Let it ride.

>> Mike: Yeah.


Best, uh, place to go for my books is online

>> Darin: So before we go tell people where they can go, where they can get your, they need to go right now and buy all your books.

>> Speaker D: Yes. Best, place to go for my books, is online. There are some independent bookstores that carry my books, but it's sort of like, having a movie that plays in selected cities. Best thing to do, if you don't have an independent bookstore chain in your neighborhood, go, to Amazon.com barnes and noble.com thriftbooks.com all carry my books. you can also buy most of my books directly from the publisher@baremannor media.com b e a r m a n o r media dot com.

>> Darin: Now is there one place where do you get more profit from one website than the other? No, I want you to get all the bank on this.

>> Speaker D: Oh, no, I appreciate that, but yeah, it's. My contracts are set up and I'll even tell you, for those of you, of you who go to Amazon and see that you can buy the hardcover book for $56 or the paperback for $46 or the Kindle version for 10 bucks. If you have Kindle, go ahead and buy the Kindle version because my contract is set up so I get the same royalty off the $56 copy or the $10 copy. So awesome. Don't worry about that.

>> Darin: Well again, Adam, thank you for your patience.

>> Mike: We love having you on, despite how it seems when we keep disappointing.

>> Darin: Connecting, we love having you as a guest and I hope that you come back and be our first five timer. I hope that you do. So please do.

>> Speaker D: I got a smoking jacket for that like Saturday Night Live does. We're working on it.

>> Darin: We are working on that. But yeah, we thank you so much for coming. And we want all of you guys to go to irritable dadcenter.com and you know what? You can go and you can find Adam. Other episodes that he's been on, his other three, they're all stellar. They're fantastic. But yeah, go to irritable dadsinder.com if you want to become a patron, if you want to help us out, if you want to help us buy new equipment.

>> Mike: Tired of the technical. Then drop us some.

>> Darin: Drop some. Drop some help. Yeah. Again, thank you everybody, and we hope to see you next week if there is one on irritable dad syndrome.

>> Speaker D: Thank you.

>> Darin: Thanks, lord. Mercy.

>> Dave: If you would like to listen to Adam Nedoff's other appearances, go to irritabledadsyndrome.com and download episode 98, the Whammy Party, episode 117, A Shirtless Richard Mole, and episode 188, Don Knotts vs. The Mothman. Take care, and thanks for listening. Irritable dad syndrome is a Mark Goodson Bill Todman production.


Adam disappeared from the show. Something happened and we've lost him

>> Mike: Okay, Adam, start talking. say your ABCs or something.

>> Speaker D: ABCD, F, G, H, I, j, K, aluminum, P, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, y, x, w, b, u, t, s, r, q, b, o, n, m, m, l, k, j, I, h, g, f, e, d.

>> Darin: C, b, a. I am not going to do my Alphabet forwards and backwards.

>> Mike: Checkity check, check, check. Now laugh like a buffoon.

>> Speaker D: Okay. yes. And Mel, on the other hand, is like, oh, this is actually the worst thing I've ever done. And I really hate being here right now. And then on day two, that was when he was going to go on the big run.

>> Darin: Something happened and we've lost. Chadam, I can't hear you. Yeah, the audio.

>> Speaker D: Testing, 1, 2, 3.

>> Darin: And it was going.

>> Mike: It was going well. I mean, we didn't do anything here.

>> Darin: We literally didn't touch anything.

>> Speaker D: I had a lot of fun.

>> Darin: All right, so you. Oh, disappeared, Damn it.

>> Speaker D: Uh-huh. No, he just disappeared.

>> Darin: Now he's gone. Call him back. Call him back.

>> Speaker D: He's just not there.

>> Darin: We don't see you.

>> Darin: We can't see or hear you now. He could see and hear us. I forgot to ask if Adam had a heart out. He had anywhere else he needed to be tonight. let's, let's have. Let's. We're gonna have you call back. Adam. We're gonna call you back.

>> Mike: I don't know what's gonna happen.

>> Speaker D: I don't know what's gonna happen when.

>> Mike: I turn when I. Okay. Are we. Is this where we're doing this?

>> Darin: Let's. Let's call him back.

>> Mike: Where did he go?

>> Speaker D: I'm gonna have to. Where did he go? Yeah.

>> Darin: When we had Mike Chisholm on, and I had to Frankenstein that episode together.

>> Mike: I sent him another link. He may not know. He may still be talking in some void. I just. I haven't ended the stream. I'm just still going.

>> Speaker D: Oh, damn it.

>> Mike: You were getting raised. You were. You were doing your. You wrote a thing, right?

>> Darin: We're expensive. I mean, Dave lay's gonna be all. Guys. Oh.

>> Mike: Oh, here he is. Here he is. Here he is. Hold on. There he is. Let's hurry before he dies again. Hold on.