February 16, 2023 • 31 mins
While many celebrities and public figures are known for achievements in just a few specific fields, almost everyone has had more than a few odd jobs on the way to fame. Before she became a legendary actress, Whoopi Goldberg flexed her acting chops on some... mature phone lines. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was a jack of all trades before he finally entered politics. And iconic performer Steve Buscemi was, it turns out, one heck of a heroic firefighter both before -- and during -- his acting career. Tune in for the full scoop on this next installment of Ridiculous History's Surprising Former Careers.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. This is part three in a continuing
series Surprising former careers. Because people have their breakthroughs for
certain things, and once they have that breakthrough, sometimes that's
all they're known for. We talked a lot about presidents,
(00:48):
right that was of a special interest or super producer
mister Max Williams, But nol as we found they're a
lot of people who did a lot of things before
they ever became famous or public figures. Oh, no question
about it. It's incredibly common. Today we are going to
(01:12):
talk about several folks that you are definitely familiar with
from their celebrity days, but perhaps had some more unassuming beginnings.
Let's first talk about somebody that we all know and love.
I think Whoopee Goldberg and an occupation that I was
not aware of existed until this exact moment, The Nights Whisperer. Yes, yeah,
(01:36):
Whoopee Goldberg, most famous as being the alter ego of
Guyden in Star Trek, at least to a young Ben
Bullin turns out, was not always calling herself Whoopie Goldberg
and was not always a very famous actor. She was
born Karen Elaine Johnson in nineteen fifty five November thirteenth,
(01:58):
in New York City, and now she has a huge,
huge CV of all these different appearances. I remember her
and sister act. My grandmother liked watching that movie. Yeah, yeah, huge,
distinctly seeing in the theaters with my mom when I
was a kid. So wholesome. And she also now I
(02:20):
think is maybe most known as erstwhile co host of
the TV talk show The View. She's such a big
deal in Hollywood. First black woman to win the coveted
Egott the Emmy Grammy oscar An Tony. We know a
lot about her background. She was not born with in
(02:40):
a silver spoon family. She grew up in a housing project,
moved to California, found her home in the theater, and
she made a lot of waves. Her Hollywood debut was
in The Color Purple in nineteen eighty five, and it slapped.
It was a great adaptation of the book. She performed
a more and more films. But let's fast forward past
(03:04):
all of that and go to some information we learned
in a twenty eleven segment from Good Morning America, Nola.
I love the euphemism night whisperer. That doesn't mean someone
who goes out in the dark and says some asmr
things to the moon, does it? Well, maybe not whispering exactly,
(03:28):
but certainly a particular type of delivery, if you know
what I mean. On the telephone. This is back in
the days before the Internet, where if you wanted a little,
a little some something, you might call a number with
a nine in it. It's like a nine hundred number,
or I think there was also like nine one seven.
(03:50):
There was different ones, but they had a nine in
them for someone, right, because nine hundred numbers were the
ones you had to pay for. This segment on Morning
America by Elizabeth Hasselback talks about a growing number of
stay at home moms in twenty eleven who are earning
income on the side as operators of phone sex lines.
(04:13):
And now, you know, a lot of our fellow ridiculous
historians listening today may not have seen a payphone, right,
may have grown up with a smartphone. And back in
the day when the pursuits of vice were far less evolved,
people would call these lines, these nine hundred lines, or
(04:33):
you know, various prefixes, and they would pay crazy amounts
of money to have blue conversation with a stranger who
would give them something we would call ASMR today very
quiet storm until it wasn't. And the mom said, look
(04:55):
this works for me. I'm making more money for the family,
I'm able to spend time with my kids more often,
and I just have to say some weird stuff on
the phone. This was a big conversation, people like should
this be off limits? And then that's when Whoopi Goldberg retorted, well,
I was a phone sex operator. And then famously someone
(05:21):
else on the show said, well, surely that's in your past.
Whoopi Goldberg said, how do you know? You don't know
what I do at home. Yeah, it's a good point.
And another good point is that you know today her
voice would be so recognized you she'd never get away
with it. But there's a movie called I think it's
called Girls six or something like that. There was a
(05:43):
Spike Lee joint about phone sex operators. It's actually pretty
cool if I don't remember correctly, but yeah, what an
interesting subculture. And you know, today a SMR is probably
the most modern equivalent, Like you said, Ben, but you know,
back back in those days. I think phone sex lines
probably still exist some niche kind of technological backlash, ludite
kind of way um, but you know, back then they
(06:06):
were big money makers too, because you got charged by
the minute, and I'm gonna go ahead and cop to it.
You could call the number and without actually speaking to
a person, some kind of sultry interlude from a pre
recorded lady. And we kept trying to do that when
in boy Scouts we would sometimes walk I guess you
(06:30):
could say trek for miles and miles to the center
where there was a pay phone and probably whomever's parents
had the worst relationship that kid would have the magazine
that had the dirty numbers, and we would trying to
call it see if we could talk to someone. And
(06:52):
now that's you know, knowing that we obviously never got
through and just heard those selacious interludes where somebody going,
oh no, it seems like a strange, wholesome moment and
a coming of age story. But it's really it's really
weird that we were doing that. And also there are
still a lot of a lot of people who do
(07:16):
this as a part or full time job, and I
think that does that can count as sex work, and
that's real work. So to be clear, we're absolutely not
at all diminishing what people are doing here. Yeah, and
it takes a lot of creativity when you think about it.
You got to be able to act, you have to
be able to improvise, you have to be able to
(07:37):
kind of paint a scene with nothing but your voice. Really,
if you think about it, you could say podcasting owes
a little a little bit of these phone operators, baby, yeah,
because I mean a lot of people talk about podcasts
being a way of kind of keeping them company. You're
having a little bit of a companionship or sort of
(07:58):
like a stand in for a friend. And you know,
there certainly were people who maybe were shut ends who
would use these phone sex lines to just just a
little bit of a talk human contacts, you know. Yeah,
and that's a that's again, that's a very human point.
This was not this was the former career would be Goldberg,
We're not sure for how long, but it was not
(08:20):
the former career of politician Justin Trudeau. That would have
been a little bit more of a story, I think
if he was a former phone sex operator. But Justin
Pierre James Trudeau board in nineteen seventy one in Ontario, Canada.
(08:44):
Is a Canadian politician. He's all right being a politician,
you could say, because he is the Prime Minister of Canada.
He is the leader of the Liberal Party. He's a
bit of a you know, people don't like the term,
but he has been a bidding from name recognition, if
not nepotism, because he's the son of former four time
(09:07):
prime minister Pierre Trudeau, and so he was always viewed
as having these, you know, frankly unfair advantages because of
his childhood and because of the family came from. But
he didn't do a straight shot, you know, like from
college to politics. He actually had a kind of rough
(09:29):
childhood because his parents divorced when he was just six.
That's right. Margaret, who was twenty nine years younger than
Trudeau's father, was the daughter of Liberal MP James Sinclair
and was kind of a fixation of tabloids who accused
her of having dolliances, let's say, with rock stars and
(09:49):
other celebrities. Finally, I guess this proved to be too
much for the couple to take and she moved out.
So Trudeau has two of your brothers were raised by
their father, who Maine in politics for fifteen years. M Yeah.
And after studying at a private French language Jesuit school
(10:10):
in Montreal, the same when his father went to Justin,
Trudeaux earned a degree in English from McGill University, and
instead of going straight into politics, he worked as a
snowboard instructor. Uh. Yeah, he was. He was one of
(10:33):
those guys. He was a snowbro. And I'm sure was
he like one of the bad boy kind of bully
snowboarders that messed with the nerds and the ski lodge
and we're always looking up with the hot ski bunnies,
you know. I hope, you know, I hope not. I
hope he was more wholesome. But I am certain his
pants were too large and had a ton of pockets,
(10:56):
you know, like maybe he had some Jinkos when he
was not bording. Let's see, this would have been the nineties, right,
wasn't that Jico territory? Yeah? Yeah, okay, so he and
let's hope maybe you have one of those lives and
the longest of chain wallet, the longest chain wallet you
can stay. And he did this while he was getting
(11:19):
a degree in education for the University of British Columbia,
and then for a while he taught high school French
and elementary school math, which makes you wonder, right, and
things change. In two thousand, he's still very young, he's
twenty eight years old, and he is at his father's
(11:40):
funeral and the eulogy he delivers puts him back in
the national spotlight, and this opens the door for him
to enter politics. And a lot of people love his father,
and given the tragedy, they're saying no, Like even the
Prime Minister at the time says, there is a place
(12:01):
for you justin in the Liberal Party, which is not
not what the average person gets. The average person doesn't
get the prime minister or president of their country reaching
out and saying, hey, you're twenty eight you want to
go into politics with us, especially after being a snowboarder,
(12:22):
teaching math and French. Yeah, why don't you grind the
powder of policy justin? You know, nothing like that. It's
kind of weird, right, But he doesn't enter politics for
eight years. I think no, But presumably he's kind of
being groomed during this time, right, Yeah, that's a good call.
(12:44):
Is this before or after that embarrassing photo of him
was taken where he was dressed in blackface. I got
a picture. It was around this time, because that seems
like the kind of move that a snowboard bully would pull,
thinking that was real clever at one of those fancy
Aspen parties. I'm guessing before I'm guessing this is one.
(13:07):
It was in colleges. It was in two thousand and one.
Oh so right now the story right now, in this story,
and but this is after. This is after he was
no longer teaching snowboarding. So now, man, you could take
the bully off the slopes. You can't take the slopes
out of the bully. Okay, Yeah, that's all right, dude.
(13:28):
I have to taking it through. I'm thinking it through.
So so so he does this black face photo, very
very bone headed and offensive thing to do. He goes
back to Quebec in two thousand and two. He starts
studying to be an engineer and he abandons it. And
(13:49):
then he starts studying environmental geography and does not complete it.
And while he's doing all of that, he's working at
a radio station in Montreal. He covers the two thousand
and four Olympic Games. He gets a gig in a
TV miniseries The Great War. He becomes a spokesperson for
(14:09):
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society unpaid, and then he serves
as the chairman of the board of directors at a
volunteer organization his father established. He did a lot before
he became Prime Minister and entered politics. I think the
press appreciates that he's pretty open about his past jobs.
(14:33):
He did a interview with Laura Logan in sixty Minutes
where he listed even more jobs, and we have the
quote for you here. Some of the other ones might
surprise you, folks. Indeed. Well, I was a snowboard instructor.
I was a bouncer in a nightclub. I was a
Whitewater river guide. Hey, that's in the other eighties movie
(14:54):
where he's the Whitewater river guide bully. I worked as
a teacher. Okay, okay. I made no apologies for a
very varied set of life experiences. Right on, man, I
appreciate that. Don't make an apologies, though, maybe apologize for
the black face thing he did. He didn't just he did.
He did a pretty good job. He didn't just apologize
(15:16):
for the two thousand and one brown face he also
apologized for the black face he wore in high school.
That's right, he did it more than once. And his
one of his statements that will will end it here
is this. The fact of the matter is that I've always,
and you'll know this, been more enthusiastic about costumes than
(15:39):
is sometimes appropriate. I don't love it. Do you guys
know about his special skill he has? Oh? What is it?
I don't like the son? Yeah, you did for everybody it.
Max did some air quotes. Well. I learned about this
because when he was first running to be prime minister,
(16:00):
John Oliver did a segment about him and the other
person who's running for prime minister, and uh, the way
he talks about you know, was he's like he's a
little he's a little aloof and he has this skill,
his party trick he does where he falls down the
flights of stairs. He's sort of like a fletched type figure. Yeah,
sort of a Chevy Chase. Is it? Is it really
(16:21):
a trick like he is purposely doing Pratt falls? Yep, yeah,
yeah he does. He doesn't for the person doing the interview,
like they had a clip of him just falling down
a flight of stairs to get Stuffing's like, I'm fine,
I love that, I would I do that. That sounds
like fun, but he also real facts he did. He
did also profusely apologize he was able to save his
(16:43):
political career. But speaking of saving things, we have saved
the best for the last. In this episode of Surprising
Former Careers, it's the man, the myth, the legend, the Eyes,
Peter lore Eyes, one of our favorite most distinctively faced actors.
(17:06):
You know him from what Khan Air? Probably Reservoir Dogs,
Cohn Air, Yeah, stealing, maybe that matters. Also caught airy
Steve Steve Bushey, who seems like a really good dude
(17:28):
off screen, right, he totally does. And I think I
think this one some folks might know about this one. Um,
we're gonna give you a little more detail. Steve BUSHEMI
actually was kind of a real life hero. He was
a firefighter before becoming the quirky, amazing character actor that
we know and love today. He was a New York
(17:50):
City firefighter and then actually came back and volunteered as
a firefighter again after September eleventh to how you know,
his former brethren, you know and the NYFD, Yes exactly,
And he talks about this. He says, my dad was
(18:10):
a sanitation worker for New York City. His message to
me and my brothers was, when you turn eighteen, take
whatever civil service test is available. Lucky for me it
was the fire departments. I didn't yet know what I
wanted to do for a career, but at Engine fifty
five and Lower Manhattan I found something even better. Brotherhood.
Steve Bushemi was not born into wealth and aristocracy. He
(18:34):
was born to working class parents in Brooklyn in nineteen
fifty seven. They eventually moved out to Long Island, and
this guy was, you know, your average kid. He was
good at wrestling, soccer, he liked doing theater, but he
wasn't confident enough. I think at this time maybe he
didn't see it as an attainable job. So he takes
(18:58):
his civil service exam and he goes on a couple
of years of odd jobs while he's waiting to get
a chance to work at the Fire Department of New York.
He he is a gas station attendant. He drives an
ice cream truck, which now seems really creepy for Steve
Brushemi given some of his other roles. That's a really
(19:21):
good point. I mean, look, the man is a legend.
He is absolutely uh and one of my favorite actors
I think of all time. He's got a look that
he does a bit of a crypt keepery type vibe
and in a in a in a you know, in
those ice cream man whites rolling around beckoning young children
(19:42):
come hither. That's a little on the creepy side. I
mean he doesn't he doesn't have a trust me to
sell ice cream face, you know what I mean? Like
if I if I saw him roll and we should
do a thing a history of ice cream trucks too,
because that gets sketchy pretty quickly. Uh. Yeah. So while
he's doing this, he's feeling somenwie. It's kind of aimless existence.
(20:06):
We've all been there when life feels a little too
much like a waiting room. He spends these what are
called empty nights at a local bar. This becomes the
basis for a film he makes in nineteen ninety seven
called Trees Lounge. And before all that happens years before,
(20:28):
he finally summons up the nerve to go into an
acting class at the Lee Strasbourg Institute in Manhattan, and
we can go into depth about all the stuff he
was trying to do. He didn't have an easy time
coming around to it, but eventually he gets involved. He
(20:50):
starts doing stand up comedy, He starts making some inroads
in the somewhat insular downtown theater communities. In nineteen eighty
he gets the top of the New York Fire Department list,
and so that's when he signs up to work at
Engine number fifty five in Soho. And originally he's just
(21:13):
treating this like a job, you know what I mean
That acting, the performing stuff, that's a hobby. He thinks
of himself professionally as a firefighter, But when he goes
to parties with his co workers, he starts doing some
stand up for his fellow firefighters. I hope it's very
firefighter specific comedy too, Like how Fred Armison did that
(21:34):
stand up for drummers? Do you guys remember that? Oh? Yeah, no, no,
it's super cool. I haven't seen them live, but I've
definitely seen some clips from it. And that guy's genuine
incredible musician and has a lot of history with excellent bands,
like he's friends with Carry Brownstein because he was actually
in bands that played with Lear Kenney and a lot
of those you know, legendary Seattle bands from the nineties. Yeah,
(21:57):
and so Steve eventually is thinking, you know, I want
to focus more and more on acting, and so he
starts to doing more and more comedy, and over the
next eight years he performs with a comedy duo they
call himself Stephen Mark him and a guy named Mark
(22:18):
Boone Junior, and they get love from The New York Times.
They start producing entirely new shows every week, which has
a lot of work, and now the guys starting to
feel sort of torn between two worlds. Am I an actor?
Am I a firefighter? Yeah? And I mean he was
(22:43):
look this all this speaks to this Steve Bishiming having
an absolute heart of gold because he was able to
kind of answer that question, and I think he's both,
you know, the firefighter kind of spirit never really left him,
and he was able to truly lend a hand, not
just with his select pretty but an actual hand, you know,
helping clear debris and do all kinds of things of
(23:05):
the you know, I mean of all of the mean.
I know, the NYPD was hugely helpful as well, but
it was really the fire Department that kind of came
out as the true Heroes of nine to eleven. Yeah,
so he had he was one of them. Yeah, he
had left the fire department. He told himself, you know,
I'm not quitting my job. I'm taking a leave of
(23:25):
absence and I'll be back when I'm done with this
movie and this play I'm working on. But when he leaves,
it takes like seventeen years pass. He is in Miller's Crossing,
Barton Fink, Fargo, Big Lebowski, pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and
of course, most famously, the seminal work, the cinema work
(23:47):
of cinema call a Air. Yes, yes, right, I mean,
look at the very least it generated one of the
most incredible gifts of all time, which is just Nicholas
Cage with his fake flowing locks, just like Fabio blowing
in the wind. You know. Oh yeah, that was That
was a crazy time for film too. You know The
(24:07):
Rock was right around that time as well, with Sean Connery. Anyway,
do you know The Rock has a Criterion Collection edition? Yes, yeah,
I don't don't think Khair does. But The Rock for
some reason was worthy of that of to be included
in the Cannon. You know, well, I mean Kahn Air
is on the level of Jeff Goldbloom and Cindy Lauper's vibes,
(24:30):
you know what I mean, Like it's Criterion has to
earn enough prestige to be able to issue a collection
with those or an addition with those, and you know,
maybe they'll get there one day, because Steve Bushemy became
a world class actor, so maybe one day Criterion can
afford the rights to Khanair. Oh. You know what I'm
(24:50):
realizing again this is I love Steve Bishemy and he
his look as a person is not the issue here.
I think what's happening is I'm remembering his character in Khane, Right,
that's what does a child molester, you know, just right?
Or a serial killer, not a child serial killer, but
also potential child There's there's serious MOLESTI vibes where there's
(25:10):
like a girl in a in an empty swimming pool
or something and he's just kind of really leering and this,
you know, like I'm not letting go of vibes. You know,
I really think Criterion Channel should consider it. I completely agree.
Vibes has vibes for days. Yes, yeah, yeah, an old
bloomiest gold Bloom performance you'll ever see very much so,
(25:32):
and uh, you know, good luck to you criterion. So
Boushimi does like you said, No, this is a heart
of gold moment. Bushiman does return to service as a firefighter.
He wins an a list actor because he says the following.
One of the strongest sensations that flooded over me on
September eleven, two thousand and one was that feeling of
(25:54):
connection referring to that firefighter brotherhood. The next morning, I
grabbed my old gear, got a lift to the site,
found a place on a bucket brigade. Instead of water
going up, it was rubbled coming down. Once in a while,
a body bag was passed, though none weighed much at all,
was disturbing the dust. It was more of a nuisance.
Pulverized concrete and who knows what the clogged to face
(26:15):
mask so fast you worked better without one. Somebody'd say
this is probably going to kill us in twenty years.
It actually felt good to be there. I was on
the site for less than a week, but it wasn't
until I got home the magnitude of it all caught
up with me. I was already seeing a therapist and
thought it was almost impossible to process the enormity of
what had happened. Just having someone with whom to sit
(26:36):
with all the feelings was a consolation, not something first
responders usually get. Announcing vulnerability is a hard thing for anyone,
but especially for people whose primary identity is as a protector.
And that's where we're going to pause today. This is
not the end of Former Careers, which seems like one
(26:59):
long episode, but we do hope you enjoyed it. And
as always, the moral of this story, if moral there be,
is that people contain multitudes, and some of your favorite
or most hated prominent historical and public figures have been
a lot of other things before the spotlight ever turned
(27:22):
to them. And you know who knows, looking back through
the decades or the centuries, maybe one day future historians
will say, funny thing about those guys is they used
to host a podcast. Indeed, Also, I just want to ask,
what is y'all's most ridiculous former career. I don't think
(27:44):
we've done this before on these Oh yeah, I think
I know, Maybe I know yours, bem. You might always
surprised me. Mine would probably be I worked at a
science center doing like science shows for kids, school groups,
things where you like, you know, rub the boon on
your hair and make static and we had like one
of those plasma balls and things like that. It was
(28:06):
pretty cool. It actually honestly was a It prepared me
for you know, public speaking and this kind of stuff.
It was kind of fun. Ben. I think I might
know ears, but but give it to us. What's what
would you say yourars might be. I'm trying to I'm
trying to think through it. No, Um, I would need
to defer. Max. You can you vamp some stage time
for me? What about you? But unless you can guess
(28:28):
because I'm having a hard time thinking which one was
the weirdest? I know you wrote for a golf magazine,
which is kind of just so out of character for
you that I just always will remember that as long
as I live. That was That was one. I don't
know if it's the strangest, but yeah, thank you. I
totally forgot about that. He brought it up. It was
a weird drift, all right, you, mister Williams. Yeah, so
(28:50):
it wasn't selling Windows store at or but that was
pretty bad and weird one. It was working this place
called Zamba fun Land, which was um the way we
described it was if Chuck E Cheese kind of fell
on a hard time, this is the place he would have. Yeah,
and I mean Chucky Cheese already feels like if Chuck
e Cheese fell in a hard time. Yeah, Chucky Geese
(29:10):
harder is like hanging on by the fingernails of life. Right. Wait,
So Zamba Zamba Zamba fun. It was a privately owned
play area in Dunwoody. I was like nineteen freshman in
college and I was that technician, so I had to
fix the animatronics. They did not know unfortunately now, but
(29:34):
they did have you know, ski ball, and they have
that one of the light spins around the time it right,
and you know, kids are coming up shoving tokens in it.
It was a very strange place I found out. Eventually,
my friend Ryland got me the job there so he
could have someone else work with him, so he could
just go outside and get high. Oh yeah, no, I
always assumed that a lot of people. How else would
(29:56):
you get through the day working in some of those things? Uh?
Surprising former careers. Indeed, I'm still trying to think what
the weirdest legal job I had was. Uh, well, this
is a story for maybe another day. But uh, but no,
I do have to reply like you are right. I did.
(30:18):
I did write some stuff for golf magazines and the
person who hired me said that I didn't have to
visit the courses and they were they were fine with
being not a knowing much about golf or be being
interested in it. So that's so read Golf Magazines with
the grain assault. In the meantime, we can't wait for
(30:40):
you to join us for some future episodes. Folks. We
got a lot of cool stuff on the way. We're
gonna call it a day here. Thanks as always to
our superproducer mister Max Williams, Thanks to Zamba fun Land,
thanks to the Science Museum Noel that you worked at,
Thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track, and thanks
(31:02):
to everybody who's had a really weird job in the past.
I think they're formative for people's character, you know what
I mean? Completely agree and thanks again. It's a super
producer and research associates, Max Williams for rolling out another
banger of a research brief. This is a fun one.
I look forward to continuing this occasional ongoing series. Yes, yes, yes,
(31:28):
and here's two continuing our surprising current career. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(31:49):
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. This is part three in a continuing
series Surprising former careers. Because people have their breakthroughs for
certain things, and once they have that breakthrough, sometimes that's
all they're known for. We talked a lot about presidents,
(00:48):
right that was of a special interest or super producer
mister Max Williams, But nol as we found they're a
lot of people who did a lot of things before
they ever became famous or public figures. Oh, no question
about it. It's incredibly common. Today we are going to
(01:12):
talk about several folks that you are definitely familiar with
from their celebrity days, but perhaps had some more unassuming beginnings.
Let's first talk about somebody that we all know and love.
I think Whoopee Goldberg and an occupation that I was
not aware of existed until this exact moment, The Nights Whisperer. Yes, yeah,
(01:36):
Whoopee Goldberg, most famous as being the alter ego of
Guyden in Star Trek, at least to a young Ben
Bullin turns out, was not always calling herself Whoopie Goldberg
and was not always a very famous actor. She was
born Karen Elaine Johnson in nineteen fifty five November thirteenth,
(01:58):
in New York City, and now she has a huge,
huge CV of all these different appearances. I remember her
and sister act. My grandmother liked watching that movie. Yeah, yeah, huge,
distinctly seeing in the theaters with my mom when I
was a kid. So wholesome. And she also now I
(02:20):
think is maybe most known as erstwhile co host of
the TV talk show The View. She's such a big
deal in Hollywood. First black woman to win the coveted
Egott the Emmy Grammy oscar An Tony. We know a
lot about her background. She was not born with in
(02:40):
a silver spoon family. She grew up in a housing project,
moved to California, found her home in the theater, and
she made a lot of waves. Her Hollywood debut was
in The Color Purple in nineteen eighty five, and it slapped.
It was a great adaptation of the book. She performed
a more and more films. But let's fast forward past
(03:04):
all of that and go to some information we learned
in a twenty eleven segment from Good Morning America, Nola.
I love the euphemism night whisperer. That doesn't mean someone
who goes out in the dark and says some asmr
things to the moon, does it? Well, maybe not whispering exactly,
(03:28):
but certainly a particular type of delivery, if you know
what I mean. On the telephone. This is back in
the days before the Internet, where if you wanted a little,
a little some something, you might call a number with
a nine in it. It's like a nine hundred number,
or I think there was also like nine one seven.
(03:50):
There was different ones, but they had a nine in
them for someone, right, because nine hundred numbers were the
ones you had to pay for. This segment on Morning
America by Elizabeth Hasselback talks about a growing number of
stay at home moms in twenty eleven who are earning
income on the side as operators of phone sex lines.
(04:13):
And now, you know, a lot of our fellow ridiculous
historians listening today may not have seen a payphone, right,
may have grown up with a smartphone. And back in
the day when the pursuits of vice were far less evolved,
people would call these lines, these nine hundred lines, or
(04:33):
you know, various prefixes, and they would pay crazy amounts
of money to have blue conversation with a stranger who
would give them something we would call ASMR today very
quiet storm until it wasn't. And the mom said, look
(04:55):
this works for me. I'm making more money for the family,
I'm able to spend time with my kids more often,
and I just have to say some weird stuff on
the phone. This was a big conversation, people like should
this be off limits? And then that's when Whoopi Goldberg retorted, well,
I was a phone sex operator. And then famously someone
(05:21):
else on the show said, well, surely that's in your past.
Whoopi Goldberg said, how do you know? You don't know
what I do at home. Yeah, it's a good point.
And another good point is that you know today her
voice would be so recognized you she'd never get away
with it. But there's a movie called I think it's
called Girls six or something like that. There was a
(05:43):
Spike Lee joint about phone sex operators. It's actually pretty
cool if I don't remember correctly, but yeah, what an
interesting subculture. And you know, today a SMR is probably
the most modern equivalent, Like you said, Ben, but you know,
back back in those days. I think phone sex lines
probably still exist some niche kind of technological backlash, ludite
kind of way um, but you know, back then they
(06:06):
were big money makers too, because you got charged by
the minute, and I'm gonna go ahead and cop to it.
You could call the number and without actually speaking to
a person, some kind of sultry interlude from a pre
recorded lady. And we kept trying to do that when
in boy Scouts we would sometimes walk I guess you
(06:30):
could say trek for miles and miles to the center
where there was a pay phone and probably whomever's parents
had the worst relationship that kid would have the magazine
that had the dirty numbers, and we would trying to
call it see if we could talk to someone. And
(06:52):
now that's you know, knowing that we obviously never got
through and just heard those selacious interludes where somebody going,
oh no, it seems like a strange, wholesome moment and
a coming of age story. But it's really it's really
weird that we were doing that. And also there are
still a lot of a lot of people who do
(07:16):
this as a part or full time job, and I
think that does that can count as sex work, and
that's real work. So to be clear, we're absolutely not
at all diminishing what people are doing here. Yeah, and
it takes a lot of creativity when you think about it.
You got to be able to act, you have to
be able to improvise, you have to be able to
(07:37):
kind of paint a scene with nothing but your voice. Really,
if you think about it, you could say podcasting owes
a little a little bit of these phone operators, baby, yeah,
because I mean a lot of people talk about podcasts
being a way of kind of keeping them company. You're
having a little bit of a companionship or sort of
(07:58):
like a stand in for a friend. And you know,
there certainly were people who maybe were shut ends who
would use these phone sex lines to just just a
little bit of a talk human contacts, you know. Yeah,
and that's a that's again, that's a very human point.
This was not this was the former career would be Goldberg,
We're not sure for how long, but it was not
(08:20):
the former career of politician Justin Trudeau. That would have
been a little bit more of a story, I think
if he was a former phone sex operator. But Justin
Pierre James Trudeau board in nineteen seventy one in Ontario, Canada.
(08:44):
Is a Canadian politician. He's all right being a politician,
you could say, because he is the Prime Minister of Canada.
He is the leader of the Liberal Party. He's a
bit of a you know, people don't like the term,
but he has been a bidding from name recognition, if
not nepotism, because he's the son of former four time
(09:07):
prime minister Pierre Trudeau, and so he was always viewed
as having these, you know, frankly unfair advantages because of
his childhood and because of the family came from. But
he didn't do a straight shot, you know, like from
college to politics. He actually had a kind of rough
(09:29):
childhood because his parents divorced when he was just six.
That's right. Margaret, who was twenty nine years younger than
Trudeau's father, was the daughter of Liberal MP James Sinclair
and was kind of a fixation of tabloids who accused
her of having dolliances, let's say, with rock stars and
(09:49):
other celebrities. Finally, I guess this proved to be too
much for the couple to take and she moved out.
So Trudeau has two of your brothers were raised by
their father, who Maine in politics for fifteen years. M Yeah.
And after studying at a private French language Jesuit school
(10:10):
in Montreal, the same when his father went to Justin,
Trudeaux earned a degree in English from McGill University, and
instead of going straight into politics, he worked as a
snowboard instructor. Uh. Yeah, he was. He was one of
(10:33):
those guys. He was a snowbro. And I'm sure was
he like one of the bad boy kind of bully
snowboarders that messed with the nerds and the ski lodge
and we're always looking up with the hot ski bunnies,
you know. I hope, you know, I hope not. I
hope he was more wholesome. But I am certain his
pants were too large and had a ton of pockets,
(10:56):
you know, like maybe he had some Jinkos when he
was not bording. Let's see, this would have been the nineties, right,
wasn't that Jico territory? Yeah? Yeah, okay, so he and
let's hope maybe you have one of those lives and
the longest of chain wallet, the longest chain wallet you
can stay. And he did this while he was getting
(11:19):
a degree in education for the University of British Columbia,
and then for a while he taught high school French
and elementary school math, which makes you wonder, right, and
things change. In two thousand, he's still very young, he's
twenty eight years old, and he is at his father's
(11:40):
funeral and the eulogy he delivers puts him back in
the national spotlight, and this opens the door for him
to enter politics. And a lot of people love his father,
and given the tragedy, they're saying no, Like even the
Prime Minister at the time says, there is a place
(12:01):
for you justin in the Liberal Party, which is not
not what the average person gets. The average person doesn't
get the prime minister or president of their country reaching
out and saying, hey, you're twenty eight you want to
go into politics with us, especially after being a snowboarder,
(12:22):
teaching math and French. Yeah, why don't you grind the
powder of policy justin? You know, nothing like that. It's
kind of weird, right, But he doesn't enter politics for
eight years. I think no, But presumably he's kind of
being groomed during this time, right, Yeah, that's a good call.
(12:44):
Is this before or after that embarrassing photo of him
was taken where he was dressed in blackface. I got
a picture. It was around this time, because that seems
like the kind of move that a snowboard bully would pull,
thinking that was real clever at one of those fancy
Aspen parties. I'm guessing before I'm guessing this is one.
(13:07):
It was in colleges. It was in two thousand and one.
Oh so right now the story right now, in this story,
and but this is after. This is after he was
no longer teaching snowboarding. So now, man, you could take
the bully off the slopes. You can't take the slopes
out of the bully. Okay, Yeah, that's all right, dude.
(13:28):
I have to taking it through. I'm thinking it through.
So so so he does this black face photo, very
very bone headed and offensive thing to do. He goes
back to Quebec in two thousand and two. He starts
studying to be an engineer and he abandons it. And
(13:49):
then he starts studying environmental geography and does not complete it.
And while he's doing all of that, he's working at
a radio station in Montreal. He covers the two thousand
and four Olympic Games. He gets a gig in a
TV miniseries The Great War. He becomes a spokesperson for
(14:09):
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society unpaid, and then he serves
as the chairman of the board of directors at a
volunteer organization his father established. He did a lot before
he became Prime Minister and entered politics. I think the
press appreciates that he's pretty open about his past jobs.
(14:33):
He did a interview with Laura Logan in sixty Minutes
where he listed even more jobs, and we have the
quote for you here. Some of the other ones might
surprise you, folks. Indeed. Well, I was a snowboard instructor.
I was a bouncer in a nightclub. I was a
Whitewater river guide. Hey, that's in the other eighties movie
(14:54):
where he's the Whitewater river guide bully. I worked as
a teacher. Okay, okay. I made no apologies for a
very varied set of life experiences. Right on, man, I
appreciate that. Don't make an apologies, though, maybe apologize for
the black face thing he did. He didn't just he did.
He did a pretty good job. He didn't just apologize
(15:16):
for the two thousand and one brown face he also
apologized for the black face he wore in high school.
That's right, he did it more than once. And his
one of his statements that will will end it here
is this. The fact of the matter is that I've always,
and you'll know this, been more enthusiastic about costumes than
(15:39):
is sometimes appropriate. I don't love it. Do you guys
know about his special skill he has? Oh? What is it?
I don't like the son? Yeah, you did for everybody it.
Max did some air quotes. Well. I learned about this
because when he was first running to be prime minister,
(16:00):
John Oliver did a segment about him and the other
person who's running for prime minister, and uh, the way
he talks about you know, was he's like he's a
little he's a little aloof and he has this skill,
his party trick he does where he falls down the
flights of stairs. He's sort of like a fletched type figure. Yeah,
sort of a Chevy Chase. Is it? Is it really
(16:21):
a trick like he is purposely doing Pratt falls? Yep, yeah,
yeah he does. He doesn't for the person doing the interview,
like they had a clip of him just falling down
a flight of stairs to get Stuffing's like, I'm fine,
I love that, I would I do that. That sounds
like fun, but he also real facts he did. He
did also profusely apologize he was able to save his
(16:43):
political career. But speaking of saving things, we have saved
the best for the last. In this episode of Surprising
Former Careers, it's the man, the myth, the legend, the Eyes,
Peter lore Eyes, one of our favorite most distinctively faced actors.
(17:06):
You know him from what Khan Air? Probably Reservoir Dogs,
Cohn Air, Yeah, stealing, maybe that matters. Also caught airy
Steve Steve Bushey, who seems like a really good dude
(17:28):
off screen, right, he totally does. And I think I
think this one some folks might know about this one. Um,
we're gonna give you a little more detail. Steve BUSHEMI
actually was kind of a real life hero. He was
a firefighter before becoming the quirky, amazing character actor that
we know and love today. He was a New York
(17:50):
City firefighter and then actually came back and volunteered as
a firefighter again after September eleventh to how you know,
his former brethren, you know and the NYFD, Yes exactly,
And he talks about this. He says, my dad was
(18:10):
a sanitation worker for New York City. His message to
me and my brothers was, when you turn eighteen, take
whatever civil service test is available. Lucky for me it
was the fire departments. I didn't yet know what I
wanted to do for a career, but at Engine fifty
five and Lower Manhattan I found something even better. Brotherhood.
Steve Bushemi was not born into wealth and aristocracy. He
(18:34):
was born to working class parents in Brooklyn in nineteen
fifty seven. They eventually moved out to Long Island, and
this guy was, you know, your average kid. He was
good at wrestling, soccer, he liked doing theater, but he
wasn't confident enough. I think at this time maybe he
didn't see it as an attainable job. So he takes
(18:58):
his civil service exam and he goes on a couple
of years of odd jobs while he's waiting to get
a chance to work at the Fire Department of New York.
He he is a gas station attendant. He drives an
ice cream truck, which now seems really creepy for Steve
Brushemi given some of his other roles. That's a really
(19:21):
good point. I mean, look, the man is a legend.
He is absolutely uh and one of my favorite actors
I think of all time. He's got a look that
he does a bit of a crypt keepery type vibe
and in a in a in a you know, in
those ice cream man whites rolling around beckoning young children
(19:42):
come hither. That's a little on the creepy side. I
mean he doesn't he doesn't have a trust me to
sell ice cream face, you know what I mean? Like
if I if I saw him roll and we should
do a thing a history of ice cream trucks too,
because that gets sketchy pretty quickly. Uh. Yeah. So while
he's doing this, he's feeling somenwie. It's kind of aimless existence.
(20:06):
We've all been there when life feels a little too
much like a waiting room. He spends these what are
called empty nights at a local bar. This becomes the
basis for a film he makes in nineteen ninety seven
called Trees Lounge. And before all that happens years before,
(20:28):
he finally summons up the nerve to go into an
acting class at the Lee Strasbourg Institute in Manhattan, and
we can go into depth about all the stuff he
was trying to do. He didn't have an easy time
coming around to it, but eventually he gets involved. He
(20:50):
starts doing stand up comedy, He starts making some inroads
in the somewhat insular downtown theater communities. In nineteen eighty
he gets the top of the New York Fire Department list,
and so that's when he signs up to work at
Engine number fifty five in Soho. And originally he's just
(21:13):
treating this like a job, you know what I mean
That acting, the performing stuff, that's a hobby. He thinks
of himself professionally as a firefighter, But when he goes
to parties with his co workers, he starts doing some
stand up for his fellow firefighters. I hope it's very
firefighter specific comedy too, Like how Fred Armison did that
(21:34):
stand up for drummers? Do you guys remember that? Oh? Yeah, no, no,
it's super cool. I haven't seen them live, but I've
definitely seen some clips from it. And that guy's genuine
incredible musician and has a lot of history with excellent bands,
like he's friends with Carry Brownstein because he was actually
in bands that played with Lear Kenney and a lot
of those you know, legendary Seattle bands from the nineties. Yeah,
(21:57):
and so Steve eventually is thinking, you know, I want
to focus more and more on acting, and so he
starts to doing more and more comedy, and over the
next eight years he performs with a comedy duo they
call himself Stephen Mark him and a guy named Mark
(22:18):
Boone Junior, and they get love from The New York Times.
They start producing entirely new shows every week, which has
a lot of work, and now the guys starting to
feel sort of torn between two worlds. Am I an actor?
Am I a firefighter? Yeah? And I mean he was
(22:43):
look this all this speaks to this Steve Bishiming having
an absolute heart of gold because he was able to
kind of answer that question, and I think he's both,
you know, the firefighter kind of spirit never really left him,
and he was able to truly lend a hand, not
just with his select pretty but an actual hand, you know,
helping clear debris and do all kinds of things of
(23:05):
the you know, I mean of all of the mean.
I know, the NYPD was hugely helpful as well, but
it was really the fire Department that kind of came
out as the true Heroes of nine to eleven. Yeah,
so he had he was one of them. Yeah, he
had left the fire department. He told himself, you know,
I'm not quitting my job. I'm taking a leave of
(23:25):
absence and I'll be back when I'm done with this
movie and this play I'm working on. But when he leaves,
it takes like seventeen years pass. He is in Miller's Crossing,
Barton Fink, Fargo, Big Lebowski, pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and
of course, most famously, the seminal work, the cinema work
(23:47):
of cinema call a Air. Yes, yes, right, I mean,
look at the very least it generated one of the
most incredible gifts of all time, which is just Nicholas
Cage with his fake flowing locks, just like Fabio blowing
in the wind. You know. Oh yeah, that was That
was a crazy time for film too. You know The
(24:07):
Rock was right around that time as well, with Sean Connery. Anyway,
do you know The Rock has a Criterion Collection edition? Yes, yeah,
I don't don't think Khair does. But The Rock for
some reason was worthy of that of to be included
in the Cannon. You know, well, I mean Kahn Air
is on the level of Jeff Goldbloom and Cindy Lauper's vibes,
(24:30):
you know what I mean, Like it's Criterion has to
earn enough prestige to be able to issue a collection
with those or an addition with those, and you know,
maybe they'll get there one day, because Steve Bushemy became
a world class actor, so maybe one day Criterion can
afford the rights to Khanair. Oh. You know what I'm
(24:50):
realizing again this is I love Steve Bishemy and he
his look as a person is not the issue here.
I think what's happening is I'm remembering his character in Khane, Right,
that's what does a child molester, you know, just right?
Or a serial killer, not a child serial killer, but
also potential child There's there's serious MOLESTI vibes where there's
(25:10):
like a girl in a in an empty swimming pool
or something and he's just kind of really leering and this,
you know, like I'm not letting go of vibes. You know,
I really think Criterion Channel should consider it. I completely agree.
Vibes has vibes for days. Yes, yeah, yeah, an old
bloomiest gold Bloom performance you'll ever see very much so,
(25:32):
and uh, you know, good luck to you criterion. So
Boushimi does like you said, No, this is a heart
of gold moment. Bushiman does return to service as a firefighter.
He wins an a list actor because he says the following.
One of the strongest sensations that flooded over me on
September eleven, two thousand and one was that feeling of
(25:54):
connection referring to that firefighter brotherhood. The next morning, I
grabbed my old gear, got a lift to the site,
found a place on a bucket brigade. Instead of water
going up, it was rubbled coming down. Once in a while,
a body bag was passed, though none weighed much at all,
was disturbing the dust. It was more of a nuisance.
Pulverized concrete and who knows what the clogged to face
(26:15):
mask so fast you worked better without one. Somebody'd say
this is probably going to kill us in twenty years.
It actually felt good to be there. I was on
the site for less than a week, but it wasn't
until I got home the magnitude of it all caught
up with me. I was already seeing a therapist and
thought it was almost impossible to process the enormity of
what had happened. Just having someone with whom to sit
(26:36):
with all the feelings was a consolation, not something first
responders usually get. Announcing vulnerability is a hard thing for anyone,
but especially for people whose primary identity is as a protector.
And that's where we're going to pause today. This is
not the end of Former Careers, which seems like one
(26:59):
long episode, but we do hope you enjoyed it. And
as always, the moral of this story, if moral there be,
is that people contain multitudes, and some of your favorite
or most hated prominent historical and public figures have been
a lot of other things before the spotlight ever turned
(27:22):
to them. And you know who knows, looking back through
the decades or the centuries, maybe one day future historians
will say, funny thing about those guys is they used
to host a podcast. Indeed, Also, I just want to ask,
what is y'all's most ridiculous former career. I don't think
(27:44):
we've done this before on these Oh yeah, I think
I know, Maybe I know yours, bem. You might always
surprised me. Mine would probably be I worked at a
science center doing like science shows for kids, school groups,
things where you like, you know, rub the boon on
your hair and make static and we had like one
of those plasma balls and things like that. It was
(28:06):
pretty cool. It actually honestly was a It prepared me
for you know, public speaking and this kind of stuff.
It was kind of fun. Ben. I think I might
know ears, but but give it to us. What's what
would you say yourars might be. I'm trying to I'm
trying to think through it. No, Um, I would need
to defer. Max. You can you vamp some stage time
for me? What about you? But unless you can guess
(28:28):
because I'm having a hard time thinking which one was
the weirdest? I know you wrote for a golf magazine,
which is kind of just so out of character for
you that I just always will remember that as long
as I live. That was That was one. I don't
know if it's the strangest, but yeah, thank you. I
totally forgot about that. He brought it up. It was
a weird drift, all right, you, mister Williams. Yeah, so
(28:50):
it wasn't selling Windows store at or but that was
pretty bad and weird one. It was working this place
called Zamba fun Land, which was um the way we
described it was if Chuck E Cheese kind of fell
on a hard time, this is the place he would have. Yeah,
and I mean Chucky Cheese already feels like if Chuck
e Cheese fell in a hard time. Yeah, Chucky Geese
(29:10):
harder is like hanging on by the fingernails of life. Right. Wait,
So Zamba Zamba Zamba fun. It was a privately owned
play area in Dunwoody. I was like nineteen freshman in
college and I was that technician, so I had to
fix the animatronics. They did not know unfortunately now, but
(29:34):
they did have you know, ski ball, and they have
that one of the light spins around the time it right,
and you know, kids are coming up shoving tokens in it.
It was a very strange place I found out. Eventually,
my friend Ryland got me the job there so he
could have someone else work with him, so he could
just go outside and get high. Oh yeah, no, I
always assumed that a lot of people. How else would
(29:56):
you get through the day working in some of those things? Uh?
Surprising former careers. Indeed, I'm still trying to think what
the weirdest legal job I had was. Uh, well, this
is a story for maybe another day. But uh, but no,
I do have to reply like you are right. I did.
(30:18):
I did write some stuff for golf magazines and the
person who hired me said that I didn't have to
visit the courses and they were they were fine with
being not a knowing much about golf or be being
interested in it. So that's so read Golf Magazines with
the grain assault. In the meantime, we can't wait for
(30:40):
you to join us for some future episodes. Folks. We
got a lot of cool stuff on the way. We're
gonna call it a day here. Thanks as always to
our superproducer mister Max Williams, Thanks to Zamba fun Land,
thanks to the Science Museum Noel that you worked at,
Thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track, and thanks
(31:02):
to everybody who's had a really weird job in the past.
I think they're formative for people's character, you know what
I mean? Completely agree and thanks again. It's a super
producer and research associates, Max Williams for rolling out another
banger of a research brief. This is a fun one.
I look forward to continuing this occasional ongoing series. Yes, yes, yes,
(31:28):
and here's two continuing our surprising current career. We'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(31:49):
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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