May 14, 2024 • 38 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 174: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: We need a Walter Cronkite moment from The New York Times. The New York Times needs, one day – one day soon, one day now – to devote the entirety of the front page – to a headline, and an editorial, signed by the publisher Sulzberger and the editor Kahn and the key columnists and correspondents – headlined “TRUMP IMPERILS DEMOCRACY” and sub-headlined “YOUR LIFE AT STAKE.”
We need a Walter Cronkite moment from The New York Times and when Trump went to a Philadelphia area seaside resort called Wildwood, drew maybe 10,000 cultists, lied and had the Republican mayor lie and say it was 80,000, complained that immigrant students don’t speak English and immediately afterwards said something like “Borden-in-riv-iv,” said something else like “carry doubt-ite-by-rite,”claimed the president between Ford and Reagan was named Jimmy Connors, said the Chinese were preparing to invade Beijing (their own capital), insisted the entire country was grateful that he killed Roe-V-Wade, thanked – by name - the Supreme Court justices who gutted it, suddenly invoked the fictional cannibal character Hannibal Lecter, seemed to praise him, claimed the character was dead, and got the name of the movie wrong, and then insisted all immigrants are Hannibal Lecter – and all of that was after he was introduced by some immigrant who called him “President CHUMP"... the New York Times story, by a sixth-stringer named Michael Gold, mentioned… none of that. This was what Editor Joe Kahn’s writer told consumers of the most influential news organization in America, quote: “After a long and often tense week in his criminal trial in Manhattan… Trump… took part in a time-honored ritual enjoyed by countless New Yorkers in need of a break: He went to the shore.”
Oh ho ho, how clever.
The Times instead lets Maggie Haberman dismiss as “hearsay” Michael Cohen’s first-hand recounting of what Trump told him about ‘not being on the market for long’ if Melania dumped him and if Haberman doesn’t know the legal definition of “hearsay” get rid of her. And the Times made room for an op-ed bashing Joe Biden by Mark Penn, a dishonest right wing pollster who has been posing as a Democrat for at least 20 years.
In Court: “Michael Cohen calmly describes Trump’s hush money instructions,” reads the headline in The Washington Post. The SUB-headline quotes Trump: “Just do it.” That’s what the prosecution needed out of Cohen. And it needs it again out of him today. AND whenever the cross-examination begins. It needs him making more self-abnegating jokes about ‘angry, even for me.’ It needs him testifying as he did yesterday: that he was there in Trump Tower, days before Trump was sworn in as president, with Allan Weisselberg, reviewing a handwritten document plan to repay Cohen for the Stormy Daniels hush money and how they would hide it. And that Trump said “smart individuals” had told him, Trump, to pay the $130,000. And that Trump told him he knew if the Daniels story got out it would be a disaster for the CAMPAIGN. And it needs him producing one outstandingly sleazy quote from Trump per day on the stand, like when Cohen asked Trump about the impact on his wife MELANIA if the story got out and Trump said “don’t worry. How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.”
B-Block (22:54) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: California Assembly Bill 2265 and what it can do to save dogs - and save shelters the horrible cost of killing them. (24:27) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: An update on the back story to the "This Is SportsCenter" commercial I did with soccer's Alexi Lalas, in which I reprised John Belushi's moment in "Animal House" in which he smashes the guitar against the wall. The update? The DVD with the outtakes literally fell off a shelf here yesterday. Enjoy.
C-Block (40:35) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. We
need a Walter cronkit moment from the New York Times.
(00:25):
The New York Times needs one day, one day soon,
one day now, to devote the entirety of the front
page to one headline and one editorial signed by the
publisher Sealzburger, and the editor con and the key columnists,
and the important correspondence headlined Trump Imperils Democracy, sub headlined
(00:50):
your life at Stake and he is insane. I'll get
to the trial and Michael Cohen and how they got
what they needed from him, which was a headline in
the Washington Post with the word calmly in it. But
first we need a Walter Cronkite moment from the New
York Times. And instead we get the backup, backup, backup, backup,
(01:14):
election reporters, backup, trying to be witty as Trump crashes
and burns intellectually, morally and phonetically, and as his whores
like Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott try to erase the
bright lines of democracy while they think we are not
watching them, and as his jihadists try to sabotage the
(01:36):
twenty twenty four election. The Times needs its Walter Cronkite
moment too, like Cronkite shocking the nation out of much
of its Vietnam delusion, Like Cronkite personally moving Watergate to
the front burner, the Times needs its Cronkite moment to
save itself. We need a Times Cronkite moment to just
(01:58):
add to our dwindling chances of saving this democracy. Saturday,
Jump went to a Philadelphia area seaside resort called Wildwood,
drew maybe ten thousand cultists, eleven thousand lied and had
the Republican mayor there lie and say it was eighty thousand.
(02:20):
He talked, he complained, He complained that immigrant students don't
speak English, and immediately afterwards he said something like Borden
in Riviv. And he said something else like carried Daudite.
By right, he claimed the president between Ford and Reagan
was named Jimmy Conners. He said the Chinese were preparing
(02:41):
to invade Beijing, which is their own capital. He insisted
the entire country was grateful that he killed off Roe v. Wade.
He thanked by name the Supreme Court justices who gutted
Roe v. Wade. He suddenly invoked the fictional Cannibal character
Hannibal Lecter, seemed to praise Hannibal Lector, claimed the character
(03:03):
Hannibal Lecter was dead and got the name of the
movie wrong, and then insisted all immigrants are Hannibal Lecter.
And all of that was after he was introduced by
some immigrant who called him President Chump, and the New
York Times story by a sixth stringer named Michael Gold
(03:24):
mentioned none of that. This was what editor Joe CON's
writer told consumers of the most influential news organization in America. Quote.
After a long and often tense week in his criminal
trial in Manhattan, Trump took part in a time honored
ritual enjoyed by countless New Yorkers. In need of a break,
(03:45):
he went to the shore. Oh how clever Michael Gold.
The New York Times could save a lot of money
by firing all of its political reporters and simply asking
the fictional Twitter writer Doug J. Balloon of New York
Times pitchpot fame to write all of its leads because
(04:06):
they are now sounding exclusively like the Times pitch bot
clunky attempts at wit that don't quite land. Trump has
renounced his New York residence. He is thus not a
New Yorker, Michael Gold. Wildwood is not a destination for
New Yorkers anyway. It's for Philadelphians. And he is the
greatest criminal in the nation's history. Michael Gold. He is
(04:27):
not in need of a break. He is in need
of a lifetime prison sentence. This occurred over a weekend
in which three of Trump's most fierce, most dishonest, most
anti democracy supporters in the Senate went on national television
and said sure they would accept the outcome of the
election so long as Trump won. The Times headline about
(04:54):
that was Vance says he would accept the election results
with a caveat, which sounds like he's wearing a tie
with a caveat, a lovely floral caveat. Yet it was
also a weekend in which a small newsroom called the
Bucks County Beacon wrote about how Trump's sewer rats are
(05:14):
openly subverting the election today, not twenty twenty, not twenty
twenty two, the one in November quote. The RNC and
its allies have already sued in five states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and Nevada, to challenge their voter roles, accuracy, and in
turn voter's credentials. In Georgia, a republican bill empowering mass
(05:39):
challenges of voter registrations was signed into law on May seventh.
More importantly, the Beacon also reveals the existence of something
on the right wing social media site Telegram called the
Election Education Channel, which is encouraging and setting the stage
four legal and extra judicial challenges to every single stage
(06:02):
of every presidential vote count inconceivably every single precinct in
this country. The kind of Sidney Powell Jenna ellis legal
quicksand we saw after the twenty twenty election, only while
the votes are still being counted, and immediately thereafter in
(06:22):
every county in this country, to create chaos and genuine danger.
The Times. The Times has reported none of that. It
has instead let Maggie Haberman dismiss as hearsay Michael Cohen's
first hand recounting of what Trump told him about not
(06:42):
being on the market for long. If Milania dumped him,
and if Haberman doesn't know the legal definition of here,
say get rid of her. And The Times made room
for an op ed bashing Joe Biden written by Mark
Penn a dishonest right wing polster who has been posing
as a Democrat for at least twenty years, and it
(07:04):
made room for a report on the upcoming attempts to
sabotage the election by the Republicans. No, a radio shock
jock named Charlemagne the God, a reactionary who does nothing
but take sides, and they pronounced he is someone The
Times fell for it quote who won't take sides? We
(07:25):
need a Walter Cronkite moment out of the New York Times.
If the reference eludes you, First of all, congratulations on
your youth. Then to explain briefly for all of the
almost biblical invocations of his supposed impartiality and the use
of the name Walter Cronkite as a substitute for complete
(07:46):
impartiality in reporting. The three biggest moments in the career
of the great CBS newsman were when he barely stopped
himself from crying while reporting the assassination of President Kennedy.
When he burst through the constraints of his job as
the anchor of the CBS Evening News to present fully
formed but fully opinionated commentaries, first on Vietnam and then
(08:10):
four years later on Watergate. In February of nineteen sixty eight,
Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam, and he spent a week
there talking to people on the record and off, and
he went back to his desk, and on February twenty seventh,
nineteen sixty eight, he delivered an extraordinary closing editorial after
a long report on our status in Vietnam. His editorial
(08:34):
began with, we have been too often disappointed by the
optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington
to have faith any longer in the silver linings they
find in the darkest clouds. His commentary ended with it
is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational
(08:55):
way out then will be to negotiate not as victors,
but as an honorable people who lived up to their
pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.
President Lyndon Johnson was not watching Walter Cronkite live that night,
but Bob Scheffer insists Johnson told him he did see clips,
(09:17):
and Schaeffer and Bill Moyers insist the President did then
say something like if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America,
and Johnson soon after then announced he was not going
to run for reelection in October nineteen seventy two. Cronkite
may have topped himself at a time when only the
Washington Post was giving Nixon's Watergate scandal daily coverage. Yes,
(09:38):
the New York Times was largely asleep at the switch
then too. At that point, Walter Cronkite devoted roughly half
of the editorial content time of two editions of the
CBS Evening News just to the one story to Watergate,
fourteen minutes out of what was basically a twenty two
minute newscast on Friday, October twenty seventh, and what was
(10:01):
cut down to eight minutes due to the rets of
the Nixon administration and the pleas of Walter Cronkite's terrified bosses.
On Tuesday, October thirty first, Walter Cronkite did not f around.
We need that out of the New York Times, and
we need it now. And if the Times does not
(10:24):
have a Walter Cronkite moment in it, they need to
get everybody out of their building and then implode that building,
because the Times is simply now mocking the idea of
responsible American journalism and Also, I know that area. I
used to work a block away at sixth and fortieth.
The City of New York could really use that lot
(10:45):
for parking. And no, I'm not expecting a Walter Cronkite
moment from the New York Times. The New York Times
does not make mistakes, let alone correct them. Don't you
know that, By the way, if you missed it as
(11:07):
the Times did, what follows is a mashup of Trump's
now constant indecipherability and Trump on President Jimmy Connors, and
Trump on the late Great Hannibal Lecter, and then Trump
walking away from the microphones yesterday when an astute reporter
at the trial asked him, Hannibal Lecter, we'll play this
(11:31):
and then we'll go to court. President Donald J.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Trump, We're going to evict this man, the worst president
by far.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Jimmy Connors is Jimmy. Jimmy Connors is good.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He's also happy.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Jimmy is a very happy man, both of them. And
they don't speak English.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
They're sitting in chairs listening to a teacher talking English
and they don't speak English.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And it won't mean Biden's burden if silence of the
lamb has anyone ever seen.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
A silence of the lync the late Great Hannibal Elector.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
He is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a
friend for dinner. Remember the last saying, excuse me, I'm
about to have a friend for dinner. Is this poor
doctor walked by? I'm about to have a friend for dinner.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But Hannibal Elector, congratulations, the late Great Hannibal Lector.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
No reason to put any of that madness in the times.
What I'd have to leave out the Jersey Shore references.
(13:01):
Michael Cohen calmly describes Trump's hush money instructions, reads the
headline in the Washington Post today. The sub headline quotes, Trump,
just do it. That's what the prosecution needed out of Cohen,
and it needs it again out of him today and
especially whenever the cross examination begins. It needs him making
(13:23):
more self abnegating jokes about angry even for me. It
needs him testifying, as he did yesterday, that he was
there in Trump Tower days before Trump was sworn in
as President of the United States, with Alan Weiselberg reviewing
a handwritten document with Trump to repay Cohen for the
(13:45):
Stormy Daniels hush money and how they would hide it
amid legal fees, and testimony that Trump said smart individuals
had told him Trump to pay the one hundred and
thirty thousand dollars to Stormy Daniels, and that Trump told
him he knew if the Daniels story got out it
would be a disaster for the campaign that it needs
Michael Cohen producing one outstandingly sleazy quote from Trump per
(14:10):
day on the stand, like he did yesterday about the
time Cohen asked Trump about the impact on his wife,
Milania if the story got out, and Trump said, don't worry.
How long do you think I'll be on the market for?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Not long?
Speaker 1 (14:24):
That's the quote Haberman of The Times falsely dismissed as hearsay,
and the quote that underscores all of us who have
viewed the latest of the many Trump quote marriages unquote
as exactly what Trump clearly viewed it as a contract
negotiated with terms dictated by the market. How long do
(14:47):
you think I'll be on the market for? And all
of it that Cohen testified to and testifies to today
and in the cross examination accompanied by receipts, metaphorical receipts
and literal ones. Trial notes in passing. Trump wanted some
(15:13):
distinguished Republicans to show up and show solidarity, but he
could only get Tommy Tuberville, JD. Vance and Nicole Mally
attackus OH and Brenna Bird. Brenna Bird is the Attorney
General of Iowa who was there in court, who should
be disbarred, because whatever you think of this case or
(15:33):
this defendant, you cannot be the head of criminal enforcement
in any state and show up in court to kiss
the ass of a defendant in another state. It is disqualifying.
Senators Vance and Tuberville do not have to worry about that.
They have long since disqualified themselves. They caught Trump sleeping
(15:55):
again in court, and somebody finally aptly compared this to
his alertness during the Egene Carroll trial. Vance stayed only
for the morning session yesterday, and then he and Tubberville
blew town and Vance, violating court rules, evidently was tweeting
from his phone in the courtroom. I saw a media
report a few days ago. He wrote that Trump looked
(16:17):
like he was falling asleep or board or something. The
obvious narrative they're trying to sell is, yeah, Biden is
mentally unfit. But this other guy's bad too. It's an
absurd narrative. I'm thirty nine years old and I've been
here for twenty six minutes and I'm about to fall asleep. Unquote.
I'm sorry, Sonny, but how does your failed mental health
help Trump. It's like saying I'm jd Vance and I
(16:40):
have multiple chins. That shows that Trump is in the
best possible health. This scumbag Tubberville meanwhile went out to
a propaganda conference with the media and said that the
people in the court were quote, supposedly American citizens. Supposedly
American citizens. He segued right from that into an insult
(17:03):
towards the district attorney, and of course what he was
saying was now, well, that was code for, hey, this
Alvin bradguy is black. Today, Vivek Ramaswami will be there
with Trump if Ramaswami can get his hair done in time.
And ABC News reports that Junior Trump has gone to
(17:23):
visit Peter Navarro in federal prison, and I look at
it this way, good practice for Junior for once Dad
goes there. Last point, the nice thing about this nightmare
is that Trump and his defense team and his cultists
and his Republican supporters have so little to work with
that they always telegraph their response because generally speaking, they
(17:46):
can only find one response per crisis. And the response
to Michael Cohen is he's a liar. He lied, He's
a convicted liar. The jury can't trust a liar. America
can't trust a liar. Leave a side. That liar might
as well be Trump's actual middle name. But say this
long enough to Cohen and they expect him to blow
(18:07):
up in the witness box. Say this long enough to
the fascists and they'll forget that Cohen was convicted of
lying on Trump's behalf. Say this long enough, and maybe
we'll all forget that. If we disqualified everybody who has
ever lied for Donald Trump, we had to wipe out
about ninety nine percent of the Republican Party, wouldn't we Okay,
(18:34):
I don't know if you hear it or not, but
I've got a lovely sinus infection working and the voice
is beginning to go, and I needed about an hour
to record this opening segment. So I'm going to go
lie down in a moment and hope for the best.
But before that happens, yesterday, a DVD literally fell off
a shelf, and I swear it was of the outtakes
(18:56):
from one of my favorites from the old This is
Sports Center commercials, and I'm going to play you the
audio from it and tell you the backstory of how
we re created the scene from Animal House when John
Belushi grabs the guitar out of the folk singer's hands
and smashes the guitar against a wall. Only an our
vision of it. The folk singer was the then soccer
(19:18):
star now soccer commentator Alexei Lalas, and an our vision
of it. The John Belushi part was played by me.
That's next. This is Countdown, El Kabong. This is Countdown
with Keith Oberman. Just to hit on this editiontive countdown,
(19:53):
the Alexi Lalas guitar smashing, This is Sports Center commercial
and the outtakes I just found after thirty years. First
Dogs in Knee, You can help. Every dog has its day.
Big Day today. In the effort to try to stop
shelters from killing healthy, adoptable dogs in California, my friend
(20:15):
Elaine Boosler, actress, comedian, singer, recently arrested at Dodger Stadium
for trying to use her ticket to get into the game.
She will be lobbying in the Capitol in Sacramento alongside
the sponsors of a bill, the Shelter Transparency Bill AB
two two sixty five. The goal is to get California
Appropriations Committee Chair Buffy Wicks to advance that bill out
(20:37):
of committee. The bill would increase the chances of dogs
in shelters to be saved rather than killed, and it
would also save shelters millions of dollars in expenses what
they now spend heartbreakingly to kill adoptable animals and dispose
of their bodies. Elaine Boosler is on social media with
how you can help with emails or phone calls, and
(20:59):
she says she will post video and good news or
I'll handcuff myself to the state Capitol. It's my thing
now unquote. So look for Elaine Boosler's accounts bs ler
and help support the California Shelter Transparency Bill. Elaine, thanks you,
and I thank you now things I promised not to tell.
(21:42):
And it was nineteen ninety four and they just had
the first Soccer World Cup ever held in the United
States and Alexei Lalas was the folk hero of the
plucky American team, and we put them in a This
is Sports Center commercial. And there's a long, great story
to this. I will tell you in a moment, but
first listen to what I've found. It is a DVD
(22:03):
with the out take. Now, I didn't do this twice.
It's two separate angles of it. I might add. In
the second angle, when I hit the guitar against the wall,
the fret of the thing flew directly into the lens
of the backup camera that was on the floor. I
couldn't do that again in a billion years. Please enjoy.
(22:27):
If you don't recognize me, I'm the one grunting. It's okay.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I still love you, man. It's okay, I still love
you man.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
The nineteen ninety four Soccer World Cup did not really
do that much for American soccer, which, as you know,
is the sport of the future in this country and
always will be. But it did make a lot of
Americans into fans of European soccer clubs, especially the British ones.
But for a while, Alexi Lalas, with his shoulder length,
reddish blonde hair and billy goat beard and anti establishment
(23:25):
vibe was on the front burner of American sports, and
he made quite a nice career out of it as
a commentator on soccer on TV. But back then, naturally, ESPN,
launching its surrealist fake documentary commercial series, wanted him to
be in it, and sure enough he came to Bristol
and Hank Perlman devised a bit in which Gary Miller,
(23:45):
our anchor who was himself a soccer immortal for his
soccer breakdown which I've played to you, you know, John, Luca, Palyuka,
the Mother, etc. Gary would be sitting at a desk
in the sports Center newsroom, as atop the adjoining desk,
Alexi Lalas sat cross legged in sunglasses, osifizing on relaxation
(24:06):
and finally playing on his guitar. Michael Rowe the boat ashore.
At that point the commercial turned into one of the
classic scenes from John Belushi's film Animal House. Another sportscaster
was to storm into the newsroom, pull the guitar out
of Alexei Lalas's hands and smash it against a cubicle
wall and emit a loud primal grunt as he did so,
(24:31):
and then hand Lalas back whatever was left of the guitar,
and like Belushi in the movie, say sorry, Well, Hank
had a sportscaster in mind for that role, and guess
who it was me? So picture that in your mind
as I play what it sounded like. And then I
have what I think is a really good backstory to
(24:53):
the filming of this. This is SportsCenter SportsCenter commercial, and
I'm talking to you all afternoon.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
About the darkness, Michael, for time's sake, the word sorry
(25:24):
didn't make it.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So the backstory and it's out of chronological order. The
guitar that Alexei Lawis was playing was not the one
I smashed. There was an exact duplicate that had been bought.
It had been taken apart, it had been sawed, and
basically it was put back together with scotch tape. It
would hold together long enough for him to scrum a
few sour notes on it, and then for me to
(25:47):
grab it and smash it. They were confident it would
not fly apart until I hit the cubicle wall with it,
but they still told me to simply grab it, not
yanked out of his hands, or I might be left
holding the neck of the guitar. And Alexey holding the
rest of it. It was especially problematic because we only
had the one prop guitar. That's right, We made the
(26:10):
business end of that commercial in one take. This is
SportsCenter campaign not only freakly achieved something approaching genius levels
of originality and creativity, but they were all done cheaper
than local news promos. In Burlington, Vermont in nineteen eighty two,
we often shot three of these commercials in one day,
(26:33):
and it wasn't until the second series of ads did
the SportsCenter anchors who start in one or two or
three even get credit for a day off. In one
of them, Charlie Sneiner is trying to get his tape
of highlights back from the Harlem Globetrotters who are passing
it around like a basketball, and he says, can he
have a little help? Then I'm typing away at my
computer and I say, sure, Charlie, and I don't even
(26:55):
look at him, let alone stop typing, let alone give
him any help. And that's done because the commercial was
shot in the area right behind my desk, because nobody
was working there that day except me, and it was
around five PM, and I was, in fact sitting at
my desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script, and
the original commercial script did not call for me to
(27:17):
even be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly the
writer said, hey, Keith, can you give us one line?
And I said, as long as I can keep writing,
and they said perfect. By the way, Charlie did the
commercial around five o'clock or so and then went and
anchored the six thirty PM Sports Center. The spot we
did where hockey legend Gordy Howe beats me up while
(27:40):
I am trying to read through a script also shot
at my desk, also on a day I was anchoring
the show, and that was my real script. Anyway, back
to alex A. Lallis and the guitar, so we only
had the one prop guitar, and so we only had
the one take, and we were shooting it in the
actual Sports Center newsroom of course, in fact, they were
(28:01):
remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate the launch of the
new ESPN News network, so this was the temporary, even
more crowded than usual newsroom. So the cameraman and the
producer and the writer and I walked through how they
thought it would work best since I would have to
weave past people who were really doing their jobs and
going to other desks and talking to people and stuff.
(28:24):
They had two cameras in the little hallway that constituted
the temporary newsroom's northern border, and they put a third,
smaller camera on the floor where they guessed that a
piece of the guitar might land after I smashed it.
See if you can get the fret or something to
go here, The producer said, that would make a great shot.
I asked him how in the hell I was supposed
(28:44):
to do that since we couldn't even practice the smash,
and he said, well, honestly, I don't know. Telepathy. Maybe
that was the other salient part of the backstory, since
we only had the one take and we wouldn't need
to be doing a dry run because they didn't want
the guitar to fall apart in my hands. I would
say less than half the people crowded into the temporary
(29:06):
newsroom had any idea that when I came in, i
was in the commercial let alone, that I was going
to actually and loudly destroy a guitar by smashing it
against a low cubicle wall, even if the guitar has
been pre broken and taped back together as that one was.
It is still going to make a lot of noise. Wait,
(29:28):
I said to my friend Hank, who wrote it. You're
not warning anybody, are you, you little devil. Hank got
a gleeful, evil glazed look in his eyes. No, isn't
that great. So they filmed the closeups of Gary, and
they filmed the closeups of Alexi, and then they set
me up to enter from a vestibule through two swinging
doors with windows in them, which was along the periphery
(29:48):
of the temporary newsroom. Then a right turn, and then
about no, No, No, fifteen twenty feet to where Alexei and
Gary were still sitting. My target for exactly where I
should hit the guitar was clearly marked on the cubicle wall,
and they even put marks on the carpet of where
a couple of the practice walks had shown would give
me the best chance at a solid stance. When I
(30:09):
swung the guitar and sent it el kabonging to its doom,
and nobody ever said quiet or roll or here we go.
They told people in the room that they were just
shooting some cover angles on Gary and Alexi, and people
could say or move whatever and wherever they wanted to,
just so long they didn't get away the cameras. Then
(30:32):
they just tapped the desks for Alexa and Gary to start,
and the producer waved to me and in I went,
trying to channel John Belushi when he takes the guitar
away from Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front
House and Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I
tried to fake some venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found
the emotion as I came through the doors. I kept
(30:53):
thinking that since I had been eight years old, I
had heard people call soccer the sport of the future
here and I was now thirty seven, and I was
damn tired of hearing it. Lalas was scrumming on the
nearly prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I took
my strides, I hit the marks. I grabbed the guitar
by the neck with my right hand and simultaneously Alexey
(31:14):
let go, and then with both hands, I swung the
guitar back over my head and smashed it right on
the mark. As you heard Michael.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Show.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
The SportsCenter newsroom promptly went silent for several seconds. The
reaction was identical to what it would have been had
there been no commercial being made and no cameras present,
and I had just walked in and destroyed somebody's guitar,
which I guess a lot of people expect that I
might do someday, because even a lot of the people
(31:56):
who were surprised were not surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the
skinny research guy, can be seen in the finished commercial,
which is on YouTube, for a second far left, just
staring at me like, yeah, well, we always knew Keys
would do something like that. After I'd destroyed the guitar,
and I have to say, I did it really well.
(32:16):
I kept moving for the plan until I walked back
through the swinging doors and out of shot. The director
shouted cut. I walked back in, and the crew gave
me a round of applause, and a couple of them
were cheering out of all proportion. Even if I had
done is good of a job, as I thought, come here,
come here. The cameraman kept saying, come here. That extra
(32:37):
camera on the floor. They backed the videotape up from it,
and they showed it to me. When I smashed the guitar,
the fretboard, the actual wood and metal piece on the
neck flew off and not only landed near the third
camera's lens, it hit it on the fly and it
stuck there. They were as happy as if they were
(32:59):
engineers imploding a building for the first time and it
had fallen exactly as they had hoped. Plus, they showed
me the playback from the first camera, and there was
an assignment desk editor with her back to the action
on the phone, completely unaware of what was happening or
even that they were rolling film and videotape, and she
literally jumped several inches out of her seat of her chair.
(33:23):
But to me, the best part of this thing is
Gary Miller. Even if you know a loud noise is coming,
it is quite the effort to not flinch a little
when it happens basically right over your shoulder. I mean,
ask the little kid in the movie North By Northwest
where Iva Marie Saint shoots Carrie Grant and he sticks
(33:44):
his fingers in his ears because it's take thirty seven
and he knows the noise is coming. I mean, you're
aware of it just for the possibility that somebody will
screw it up like me, and debris will fly into
the back of your head. But if you watch Gary
Miller in this Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink,
just a little deadpan head jerk. It's perfect. What also
(34:09):
amazes me is that we got all this done in
twenty four seconds of running time. Alexei goes on about negativity.
I have to do something about it. He plays enough
of the song that you recognize it. You got a
shot at cheerleaders incongruously in the middle of the background.
I appear from nowhere, move over there, smash the guitar
while roaring spectacularly. I give him back the neck of
the thing. The only thing missing is that shot from
(34:31):
the fret bar flying into camera three. They explained they
didn't have the extra two seconds scene. I remember enjoying
doing this so much that I asked them for the
front of the body of the guitar, and I had
Alexi sign it to me on the spot. It hung
framed in my various offices for about fifteen years. In
(34:52):
twenty fourteen, I was leaving the recording of Stephen Colbert's
final episode for Comedy Central. I was one of one
hundred guests, and I went out onto the street to
find a cab home and I got one, and in
getting into it a near he ran into Alexei Lalas,
who was one of the other one hundred guests. I laughed,
He laughed, and he said, and I don't even have
my guitar with me. And one last note, I doubt
(35:15):
this will be of any practical use to you, But
I must say, as somebody who was accorded this rare privilege,
not only of doing this, but of doing this with impunity,
and doing this to applause. If you are trying to
health an event, any frustrations or anger in your life,
smashing a guitar against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly
(35:40):
as satisfying as you would expect it would be.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Okay, I still love you, man.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillips Chanel arranged, produced and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums,
and mister Shanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of
the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by no horns allowed.
(36:34):
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my
friend Howard Fineman, and everything else was pretty much my fault.
Let's countdown for this the one hundred and seventy sixth
day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the two
(36:58):
hundred and twenty fifth day since Dictator Jay Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the legal system such as it is, Use the
mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, use
the not regularly given elector objection option. Use the campaign
(37:19):
to stop him from doing it again while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Again, I'm going to
label that as probable game time decision till the next one.
I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
(37:56):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple pots,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. We
need a Walter cronkit moment from the New York Times.
(00:25):
The New York Times needs one day, one day soon,
one day now, to devote the entirety of the front
page to one headline and one editorial signed by the
publisher Sealzburger, and the editor con and the key columnists,
and the important correspondence headlined Trump Imperils Democracy, sub headlined
(00:50):
your life at Stake and he is insane. I'll get
to the trial and Michael Cohen and how they got
what they needed from him, which was a headline in
the Washington Post with the word calmly in it. But
first we need a Walter Cronkite moment from the New
York Times. And instead we get the backup, backup, backup, backup,
(01:14):
election reporters, backup, trying to be witty as Trump crashes
and burns intellectually, morally and phonetically, and as his whores
like Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott try to erase the
bright lines of democracy while they think we are not
watching them, and as his jihadists try to sabotage the
(01:36):
twenty twenty four election. The Times needs its Walter Cronkite
moment too, like Cronkite shocking the nation out of much
of its Vietnam delusion, Like Cronkite personally moving Watergate to
the front burner, the Times needs its Cronkite moment to
save itself. We need a Times Cronkite moment to just
(01:58):
add to our dwindling chances of saving this democracy. Saturday,
Jump went to a Philadelphia area seaside resort called Wildwood,
drew maybe ten thousand cultists, eleven thousand lied and had
the Republican mayor there lie and say it was eighty thousand.
(02:20):
He talked, he complained, He complained that immigrant students don't
speak English, and immediately afterwards he said something like Borden
in Riviv. And he said something else like carried Daudite.
By right, he claimed the president between Ford and Reagan
was named Jimmy Conners. He said the Chinese were preparing
(02:41):
to invade Beijing, which is their own capital. He insisted
the entire country was grateful that he killed off Roe v. Wade.
He thanked by name the Supreme Court justices who gutted
Roe v. Wade. He suddenly invoked the fictional Cannibal character
Hannibal Lecter, seemed to praise Hannibal Lector, claimed the character
(03:03):
Hannibal Lecter was dead and got the name of the
movie wrong, and then insisted all immigrants are Hannibal Lecter.
And all of that was after he was introduced by
some immigrant who called him President Chump, and the New
York Times story by a sixth stringer named Michael Gold
(03:24):
mentioned none of that. This was what editor Joe CON's
writer told consumers of the most influential news organization in America. Quote.
After a long and often tense week in his criminal
trial in Manhattan, Trump took part in a time honored
ritual enjoyed by countless New Yorkers. In need of a break,
(03:45):
he went to the shore. Oh how clever Michael Gold.
The New York Times could save a lot of money
by firing all of its political reporters and simply asking
the fictional Twitter writer Doug J. Balloon of New York
Times pitchpot fame to write all of its leads because
(04:06):
they are now sounding exclusively like the Times pitch bot
clunky attempts at wit that don't quite land. Trump has
renounced his New York residence. He is thus not a
New Yorker, Michael Gold. Wildwood is not a destination for
New Yorkers anyway. It's for Philadelphians. And he is the
greatest criminal in the nation's history. Michael Gold. He is
(04:27):
not in need of a break. He is in need
of a lifetime prison sentence. This occurred over a weekend
in which three of Trump's most fierce, most dishonest, most
anti democracy supporters in the Senate went on national television
and said sure they would accept the outcome of the
election so long as Trump won. The Times headline about
(04:54):
that was Vance says he would accept the election results
with a caveat, which sounds like he's wearing a tie
with a caveat, a lovely floral caveat. Yet it was
also a weekend in which a small newsroom called the
Bucks County Beacon wrote about how Trump's sewer rats are
(05:14):
openly subverting the election today, not twenty twenty, not twenty
twenty two, the one in November quote. The RNC and
its allies have already sued in five states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan,
and Nevada, to challenge their voter roles, accuracy, and in
turn voter's credentials. In Georgia, a republican bill empowering mass
(05:39):
challenges of voter registrations was signed into law on May seventh.
More importantly, the Beacon also reveals the existence of something
on the right wing social media site Telegram called the
Election Education Channel, which is encouraging and setting the stage
four legal and extra judicial challenges to every single stage
(06:02):
of every presidential vote count inconceivably every single precinct in
this country. The kind of Sidney Powell Jenna ellis legal
quicksand we saw after the twenty twenty election, only while
the votes are still being counted, and immediately thereafter in
(06:22):
every county in this country, to create chaos and genuine danger.
The Times. The Times has reported none of that. It
has instead let Maggie Haberman dismiss as hearsay Michael Cohen's
first hand recounting of what Trump told him about not
(06:42):
being on the market for long. If Milania dumped him,
and if Haberman doesn't know the legal definition of here,
say get rid of her. And The Times made room
for an op ed bashing Joe Biden written by Mark
Penn a dishonest right wing polster who has been posing
as a Democrat for at least twenty years, and it
(07:04):
made room for a report on the upcoming attempts to
sabotage the election by the Republicans. No, a radio shock
jock named Charlemagne the God, a reactionary who does nothing
but take sides, and they pronounced he is someone The
Times fell for it quote who won't take sides? We
(07:25):
need a Walter Cronkite moment out of the New York Times.
If the reference eludes you, First of all, congratulations on
your youth. Then to explain briefly for all of the
almost biblical invocations of his supposed impartiality and the use
of the name Walter Cronkite as a substitute for complete
(07:46):
impartiality in reporting. The three biggest moments in the career
of the great CBS newsman were when he barely stopped
himself from crying while reporting the assassination of President Kennedy.
When he burst through the constraints of his job as
the anchor of the CBS Evening News to present fully
formed but fully opinionated commentaries, first on Vietnam and then
(08:10):
four years later on Watergate. In February of nineteen sixty eight,
Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam, and he spent a week
there talking to people on the record and off, and
he went back to his desk, and on February twenty seventh,
nineteen sixty eight, he delivered an extraordinary closing editorial after
a long report on our status in Vietnam. His editorial
(08:34):
began with, we have been too often disappointed by the
optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington
to have faith any longer in the silver linings they
find in the darkest clouds. His commentary ended with it
is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational
(08:55):
way out then will be to negotiate not as victors,
but as an honorable people who lived up to their
pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.
President Lyndon Johnson was not watching Walter Cronkite live that night,
but Bob Scheffer insists Johnson told him he did see clips,
(09:17):
and Schaeffer and Bill Moyers insist the President did then
say something like if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America,
and Johnson soon after then announced he was not going
to run for reelection in October nineteen seventy two. Cronkite
may have topped himself at a time when only the
Washington Post was giving Nixon's Watergate scandal daily coverage. Yes,
(09:38):
the New York Times was largely asleep at the switch
then too. At that point, Walter Cronkite devoted roughly half
of the editorial content time of two editions of the
CBS Evening News just to the one story to Watergate,
fourteen minutes out of what was basically a twenty two
minute newscast on Friday, October twenty seventh, and what was
(10:01):
cut down to eight minutes due to the rets of
the Nixon administration and the pleas of Walter Cronkite's terrified bosses.
On Tuesday, October thirty first, Walter Cronkite did not f around.
We need that out of the New York Times, and
we need it now. And if the Times does not
(10:24):
have a Walter Cronkite moment in it, they need to
get everybody out of their building and then implode that building,
because the Times is simply now mocking the idea of
responsible American journalism and Also, I know that area. I
used to work a block away at sixth and fortieth.
The City of New York could really use that lot
(10:45):
for parking. And no, I'm not expecting a Walter Cronkite
moment from the New York Times. The New York Times
does not make mistakes, let alone correct them. Don't you
know that, By the way, if you missed it as
(11:07):
the Times did, what follows is a mashup of Trump's
now constant indecipherability and Trump on President Jimmy Connors, and
Trump on the late Great Hannibal Lecter, and then Trump
walking away from the microphones yesterday when an astute reporter
at the trial asked him, Hannibal Lecter, we'll play this
(11:31):
and then we'll go to court. President Donald J.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Trump, We're going to evict this man, the worst president
by far.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Jimmy Connors is Jimmy. Jimmy Connors is good.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
He's also happy.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Jimmy is a very happy man, both of them. And
they don't speak English.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
They're sitting in chairs listening to a teacher talking English
and they don't speak English.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And it won't mean Biden's burden if silence of the
lamb has anyone ever seen.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
A silence of the lync the late Great Hannibal Elector.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
He is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a
friend for dinner. Remember the last saying, excuse me, I'm
about to have a friend for dinner. Is this poor
doctor walked by? I'm about to have a friend for dinner.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But Hannibal Elector, congratulations, the late Great Hannibal Lector.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
No reason to put any of that madness in the times.
What I'd have to leave out the Jersey Shore references.
(13:01):
Michael Cohen calmly describes Trump's hush money instructions, reads the
headline in the Washington Post today. The sub headline quotes, Trump,
just do it. That's what the prosecution needed out of Cohen,
and it needs it again out of him today and
especially whenever the cross examination begins. It needs him making
(13:23):
more self abnegating jokes about angry even for me. It
needs him testifying, as he did yesterday, that he was
there in Trump Tower days before Trump was sworn in
as President of the United States, with Alan Weiselberg reviewing
a handwritten document with Trump to repay Cohen for the
(13:45):
Stormy Daniels hush money and how they would hide it
amid legal fees, and testimony that Trump said smart individuals
had told him Trump to pay the one hundred and
thirty thousand dollars to Stormy Daniels, and that Trump told
him he knew if the Daniels story got out it
would be a disaster for the campaign that it needs
Michael Cohen producing one outstandingly sleazy quote from Trump per
(14:10):
day on the stand, like he did yesterday about the
time Cohen asked Trump about the impact on his wife,
Milania if the story got out, and Trump said, don't worry.
How long do you think I'll be on the market for?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Not long?
Speaker 1 (14:24):
That's the quote Haberman of The Times falsely dismissed as hearsay,
and the quote that underscores all of us who have
viewed the latest of the many Trump quote marriages unquote
as exactly what Trump clearly viewed it as a contract
negotiated with terms dictated by the market. How long do
(14:47):
you think I'll be on the market for? And all
of it that Cohen testified to and testifies to today
and in the cross examination accompanied by receipts, metaphorical receipts
and literal ones. Trial notes in passing. Trump wanted some
(15:13):
distinguished Republicans to show up and show solidarity, but he
could only get Tommy Tuberville, JD. Vance and Nicole Mally
attackus OH and Brenna Bird. Brenna Bird is the Attorney
General of Iowa who was there in court, who should
be disbarred, because whatever you think of this case or
(15:33):
this defendant, you cannot be the head of criminal enforcement
in any state and show up in court to kiss
the ass of a defendant in another state. It is disqualifying.
Senators Vance and Tuberville do not have to worry about that.
They have long since disqualified themselves. They caught Trump sleeping
(15:55):
again in court, and somebody finally aptly compared this to
his alertness during the Egene Carroll trial. Vance stayed only
for the morning session yesterday, and then he and Tubberville
blew town and Vance, violating court rules, evidently was tweeting
from his phone in the courtroom. I saw a media
report a few days ago. He wrote that Trump looked
(16:17):
like he was falling asleep or board or something. The
obvious narrative they're trying to sell is, yeah, Biden is
mentally unfit. But this other guy's bad too. It's an
absurd narrative. I'm thirty nine years old and I've been
here for twenty six minutes and I'm about to fall asleep. Unquote.
I'm sorry, Sonny, but how does your failed mental health
help Trump. It's like saying I'm jd Vance and I
(16:40):
have multiple chins. That shows that Trump is in the
best possible health. This scumbag Tubberville meanwhile went out to
a propaganda conference with the media and said that the
people in the court were quote, supposedly American citizens. Supposedly
American citizens. He segued right from that into an insult
(17:03):
towards the district attorney, and of course what he was
saying was now, well, that was code for, hey, this
Alvin bradguy is black. Today, Vivek Ramaswami will be there
with Trump if Ramaswami can get his hair done in time.
And ABC News reports that Junior Trump has gone to
(17:23):
visit Peter Navarro in federal prison, and I look at
it this way, good practice for Junior for once Dad
goes there. Last point, the nice thing about this nightmare
is that Trump and his defense team and his cultists
and his Republican supporters have so little to work with
that they always telegraph their response because generally speaking, they
(17:46):
can only find one response per crisis. And the response
to Michael Cohen is he's a liar. He lied, He's
a convicted liar. The jury can't trust a liar. America
can't trust a liar. Leave a side. That liar might
as well be Trump's actual middle name. But say this
long enough to Cohen and they expect him to blow
(18:07):
up in the witness box. Say this long enough to
the fascists and they'll forget that Cohen was convicted of
lying on Trump's behalf. Say this long enough, and maybe
we'll all forget that. If we disqualified everybody who has
ever lied for Donald Trump, we had to wipe out
about ninety nine percent of the Republican Party, wouldn't we Okay,
(18:34):
I don't know if you hear it or not, but
I've got a lovely sinus infection working and the voice
is beginning to go, and I needed about an hour
to record this opening segment. So I'm going to go
lie down in a moment and hope for the best.
But before that happens, yesterday, a DVD literally fell off
a shelf, and I swear it was of the outtakes
(18:56):
from one of my favorites from the old This is
Sports Center commercials, and I'm going to play you the
audio from it and tell you the backstory of how
we re created the scene from Animal House when John
Belushi grabs the guitar out of the folk singer's hands
and smashes the guitar against a wall. Only an our
vision of it. The folk singer was the then soccer
(19:18):
star now soccer commentator Alexei Lalas, and an our vision
of it. The John Belushi part was played by me.
That's next. This is Countdown, El Kabong. This is Countdown
with Keith Oberman. Just to hit on this editiontive countdown,
(19:53):
the Alexi Lalas guitar smashing, This is Sports Center commercial
and the outtakes I just found after thirty years. First
Dogs in Knee, You can help. Every dog has its day.
Big Day today. In the effort to try to stop
shelters from killing healthy, adoptable dogs in California, my friend
(20:15):
Elaine Boosler, actress, comedian, singer, recently arrested at Dodger Stadium
for trying to use her ticket to get into the game.
She will be lobbying in the Capitol in Sacramento alongside
the sponsors of a bill, the Shelter Transparency Bill AB
two two sixty five. The goal is to get California
Appropriations Committee Chair Buffy Wicks to advance that bill out
(20:37):
of committee. The bill would increase the chances of dogs
in shelters to be saved rather than killed, and it
would also save shelters millions of dollars in expenses what
they now spend heartbreakingly to kill adoptable animals and dispose
of their bodies. Elaine Boosler is on social media with
how you can help with emails or phone calls, and
(20:59):
she says she will post video and good news or
I'll handcuff myself to the state Capitol. It's my thing
now unquote. So look for Elaine Boosler's accounts bs ler
and help support the California Shelter Transparency Bill. Elaine, thanks you,
and I thank you now things I promised not to tell.
(21:42):
And it was nineteen ninety four and they just had
the first Soccer World Cup ever held in the United
States and Alexei Lalas was the folk hero of the
plucky American team, and we put them in a This
is Sports Center commercial. And there's a long, great story
to this. I will tell you in a moment, but
first listen to what I've found. It is a DVD
(22:03):
with the out take. Now, I didn't do this twice.
It's two separate angles of it. I might add. In
the second angle, when I hit the guitar against the wall,
the fret of the thing flew directly into the lens
of the backup camera that was on the floor. I
couldn't do that again in a billion years. Please enjoy.
(22:27):
If you don't recognize me, I'm the one grunting. It's okay.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
I still love you, man. It's okay, I still love
you man.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
The nineteen ninety four Soccer World Cup did not really
do that much for American soccer, which, as you know,
is the sport of the future in this country and
always will be. But it did make a lot of
Americans into fans of European soccer clubs, especially the British ones.
But for a while, Alexi Lalas, with his shoulder length,
reddish blonde hair and billy goat beard and anti establishment
(23:25):
vibe was on the front burner of American sports, and
he made quite a nice career out of it as
a commentator on soccer on TV. But back then, naturally, ESPN,
launching its surrealist fake documentary commercial series, wanted him to
be in it, and sure enough he came to Bristol
and Hank Perlman devised a bit in which Gary Miller,
(23:45):
our anchor who was himself a soccer immortal for his
soccer breakdown which I've played to you, you know, John, Luca, Palyuka,
the Mother, etc. Gary would be sitting at a desk
in the sports Center newsroom, as atop the adjoining desk,
Alexi Lalas sat cross legged in sunglasses, osifizing on relaxation
(24:06):
and finally playing on his guitar. Michael Rowe the boat ashore.
At that point the commercial turned into one of the
classic scenes from John Belushi's film Animal House. Another sportscaster
was to storm into the newsroom, pull the guitar out
of Alexei Lalas's hands and smash it against a cubicle
wall and emit a loud primal grunt as he did so,
(24:31):
and then hand Lalas back whatever was left of the guitar,
and like Belushi in the movie, say sorry, Well, Hank
had a sportscaster in mind for that role, and guess
who it was me? So picture that in your mind
as I play what it sounded like. And then I
have what I think is a really good backstory to
(24:53):
the filming of this. This is SportsCenter SportsCenter commercial, and
I'm talking to you all afternoon.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
About the darkness, Michael, for time's sake, the word sorry
(25:24):
didn't make it.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So the backstory and it's out of chronological order. The
guitar that Alexei Lawis was playing was not the one
I smashed. There was an exact duplicate that had been bought.
It had been taken apart, it had been sawed, and
basically it was put back together with scotch tape. It
would hold together long enough for him to scrum a
few sour notes on it, and then for me to
(25:47):
grab it and smash it. They were confident it would
not fly apart until I hit the cubicle wall with it,
but they still told me to simply grab it, not
yanked out of his hands, or I might be left
holding the neck of the guitar. And Alexey holding the
rest of it. It was especially problematic because we only
had the one prop guitar. That's right, We made the
(26:10):
business end of that commercial in one take. This is
SportsCenter campaign not only freakly achieved something approaching genius levels
of originality and creativity, but they were all done cheaper
than local news promos. In Burlington, Vermont in nineteen eighty two,
we often shot three of these commercials in one day,
(26:33):
and it wasn't until the second series of ads did
the SportsCenter anchors who start in one or two or
three even get credit for a day off. In one
of them, Charlie Sneiner is trying to get his tape
of highlights back from the Harlem Globetrotters who are passing
it around like a basketball, and he says, can he
have a little help? Then I'm typing away at my
computer and I say, sure, Charlie, and I don't even
(26:55):
look at him, let alone stop typing, let alone give
him any help. And that's done because the commercial was
shot in the area right behind my desk, because nobody
was working there that day except me, and it was
around five PM, and I was, in fact sitting at
my desk writing the eleven PM Sports Center script, and
the original commercial script did not call for me to
(27:17):
even be in Charlie's commercial. But on the fly the
writer said, hey, Keith, can you give us one line?
And I said, as long as I can keep writing,
and they said perfect. By the way, Charlie did the
commercial around five o'clock or so and then went and
anchored the six thirty PM Sports Center. The spot we
did where hockey legend Gordy Howe beats me up while
(27:40):
I am trying to read through a script also shot
at my desk, also on a day I was anchoring
the show, and that was my real script. Anyway, back
to alex A. Lallis and the guitar, so we only
had the one prop guitar, and so we only had
the one take, and we were shooting it in the
actual Sports Center newsroom of course, in fact, they were
(28:01):
remodeling the real newsroom to accommodate the launch of the
new ESPN News network, so this was the temporary, even
more crowded than usual newsroom. So the cameraman and the
producer and the writer and I walked through how they
thought it would work best since I would have to
weave past people who were really doing their jobs and
going to other desks and talking to people and stuff.
(28:24):
They had two cameras in the little hallway that constituted
the temporary newsroom's northern border, and they put a third,
smaller camera on the floor where they guessed that a
piece of the guitar might land after I smashed it.
See if you can get the fret or something to
go here, The producer said, that would make a great shot.
I asked him how in the hell I was supposed
(28:44):
to do that since we couldn't even practice the smash,
and he said, well, honestly, I don't know. Telepathy. Maybe
that was the other salient part of the backstory, since
we only had the one take and we wouldn't need
to be doing a dry run because they didn't want
the guitar to fall apart in my hands. I would
say less than half the people crowded into the temporary
(29:06):
newsroom had any idea that when I came in, i
was in the commercial let alone, that I was going
to actually and loudly destroy a guitar by smashing it
against a low cubicle wall, even if the guitar has
been pre broken and taped back together as that one was.
It is still going to make a lot of noise. Wait,
(29:28):
I said to my friend Hank, who wrote it. You're
not warning anybody, are you, you little devil. Hank got
a gleeful, evil glazed look in his eyes. No, isn't
that great. So they filmed the closeups of Gary, and
they filmed the closeups of Alexi, and then they set
me up to enter from a vestibule through two swinging
doors with windows in them, which was along the periphery
(29:48):
of the temporary newsroom. Then a right turn, and then
about no, No, No, fifteen twenty feet to where Alexei and
Gary were still sitting. My target for exactly where I
should hit the guitar was clearly marked on the cubicle wall,
and they even put marks on the carpet of where
a couple of the practice walks had shown would give
me the best chance at a solid stance. When I
(30:09):
swung the guitar and sent it el kabonging to its doom,
and nobody ever said quiet or roll or here we go.
They told people in the room that they were just
shooting some cover angles on Gary and Alexi, and people
could say or move whatever and wherever they wanted to,
just so long they didn't get away the cameras. Then
(30:32):
they just tapped the desks for Alexa and Gary to start,
and the producer waved to me and in I went,
trying to channel John Belushi when he takes the guitar
away from Stephen Bishop on the stairs of the Front
House and Animal House. I furrowed my brow and I
tried to fake some venom towards Alexei Lalas. I found
the emotion as I came through the doors. I kept
(30:53):
thinking that since I had been eight years old, I
had heard people call soccer the sport of the future
here and I was now thirty seven, and I was
damn tired of hearing it. Lalas was scrumming on the
nearly prop guitar. It made a sick sound. I took
my strides, I hit the marks. I grabbed the guitar
by the neck with my right hand and simultaneously Alexey
(31:14):
let go, and then with both hands, I swung the
guitar back over my head and smashed it right on
the mark. As you heard Michael.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Show.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
The SportsCenter newsroom promptly went silent for several seconds. The
reaction was identical to what it would have been had
there been no commercial being made and no cameras present,
and I had just walked in and destroyed somebody's guitar,
which I guess a lot of people expect that I
might do someday, because even a lot of the people
(31:56):
who were surprised were not surprised surprised. Craig Wax, the
skinny research guy, can be seen in the finished commercial,
which is on YouTube, for a second far left, just
staring at me like, yeah, well, we always knew Keys
would do something like that. After I'd destroyed the guitar,
and I have to say, I did it really well.
(32:16):
I kept moving for the plan until I walked back
through the swinging doors and out of shot. The director
shouted cut. I walked back in, and the crew gave
me a round of applause, and a couple of them
were cheering out of all proportion. Even if I had
done is good of a job, as I thought, come here,
come here. The cameraman kept saying, come here. That extra
(32:37):
camera on the floor. They backed the videotape up from it,
and they showed it to me. When I smashed the guitar,
the fretboard, the actual wood and metal piece on the
neck flew off and not only landed near the third
camera's lens, it hit it on the fly and it
stuck there. They were as happy as if they were
(32:59):
engineers imploding a building for the first time and it
had fallen exactly as they had hoped. Plus, they showed
me the playback from the first camera, and there was
an assignment desk editor with her back to the action
on the phone, completely unaware of what was happening or
even that they were rolling film and videotape, and she
literally jumped several inches out of her seat of her chair.
(33:23):
But to me, the best part of this thing is
Gary Miller. Even if you know a loud noise is coming,
it is quite the effort to not flinch a little
when it happens basically right over your shoulder. I mean,
ask the little kid in the movie North By Northwest
where Iva Marie Saint shoots Carrie Grant and he sticks
(33:44):
his fingers in his ears because it's take thirty seven
and he knows the noise is coming. I mean, you're
aware of it just for the possibility that somebody will
screw it up like me, and debris will fly into
the back of your head. But if you watch Gary
Miller in this Sports Center commercial, he doesn't even blink,
just a little deadpan head jerk. It's perfect. What also
(34:09):
amazes me is that we got all this done in
twenty four seconds of running time. Alexei goes on about negativity.
I have to do something about it. He plays enough
of the song that you recognize it. You got a
shot at cheerleaders incongruously in the middle of the background.
I appear from nowhere, move over there, smash the guitar
while roaring spectacularly. I give him back the neck of
the thing. The only thing missing is that shot from
(34:31):
the fret bar flying into camera three. They explained they
didn't have the extra two seconds scene. I remember enjoying
doing this so much that I asked them for the
front of the body of the guitar, and I had
Alexi sign it to me on the spot. It hung
framed in my various offices for about fifteen years. In
(34:52):
twenty fourteen, I was leaving the recording of Stephen Colbert's
final episode for Comedy Central. I was one of one
hundred guests, and I went out onto the street to
find a cab home and I got one, and in
getting into it a near he ran into Alexei Lalas,
who was one of the other one hundred guests. I laughed,
He laughed, and he said, and I don't even have
my guitar with me. And one last note, I doubt
(35:15):
this will be of any practical use to you, But
I must say, as somebody who was accorded this rare privilege,
not only of doing this, but of doing this with impunity,
and doing this to applause. If you are trying to
health an event, any frustrations or anger in your life,
smashing a guitar against a workplace cubicle wall is exactly
(35:40):
as satisfying as you would expect it would be.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Okay, I still love you, man.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John
Phillips Chanel arranged, produced and performed most of our music.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass, and the drums,
and mister Shanelle handled the orchestration and the keyboards. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of
the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by no horns allowed.
(36:34):
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Fauss, the
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my
friend Howard Fineman, and everything else was pretty much my fault.
Let's countdown for this the one hundred and seventy sixth
day until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the two
(36:58):
hundred and twenty fifth day since Dictator Jay Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the legal system such as it is, Use the
mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens, use
the not regularly given elector objection option. Use the campaign
(37:19):
to stop him from doing it again while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Again, I'm going to
label that as probable game time decision till the next one.
I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
(37:56):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you get your podcasts.
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