Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we had dinner with some friends last night, and
at the end of the dinner they are very healthy people,
and you know, small portions, very healthy foods.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
They're not. They didn't grow up like I did. There's
no fried chicken here, right. We're not priding ourselves on
how much we eat, so I have to be on
my best behavior. Food was phenomenal. I had chicken. My
wife had fish. My wife would eat fish at every meal.
She could not me, not me. If I'm eating fish,
(00:34):
it's going to be fried yep. And you know, where
was I the other day? Where was I? The other day?
I could not get fried catfish? And I could not
believe they would not They did not have fried No,
it wasn't Dante's third level of Hell. It was somewhere
(00:59):
that I would have expected. And they said, no, we
have drum, but not catfish. I don't want drum. Yeah,
the drums. One lives at his girlfriend's house. Uh what
what where was that? Hold on? Let me think about this.
The other day it was me and non though, and
(01:21):
I decide I'm going to have Oh, I can't remember anyway.
Did I ever tell you my story about Charles Clark
at brassfreet nineteen. So a lot of restaurants, if you
go in and ask for catfish, it was what I
grew up on, they will make comments like ew, I've
(01:44):
been told by a restaurant owner I will not name
when I said, how come I don't fry catfish? That
catfish is a trash food? Be that as it may.
We can start listen. Your wife's got a tattoo that's
begun to sag. Let's not kid it. I don't know
(02:05):
who said that to me, and I don't know if
that person that was, I shouldn't say that, because whoever
it was probably listening to the show, and I'll be
accused of insulting his wife when that's not what I'm
meant to do. But anyway, I have been told before
that catfish is a trash food, which I think is ridiculous.
Catfish is a delicious food. It's a bottom feeder. Wait
a second, what fish are you eating? And do they
(02:30):
just did they just float on top of the water.
Anything beneath the surface is beneath them? Literally, Ah, bottom feeder?
What does that even mean? When you're eating the flesh
of a fish, what are you Yes, it's a bottom feeder.
(02:50):
What do you think I'm down there nibbling on the
bottom of the lake. What kind of stupid people have
I said? Yeah, it's vegan. What do I care? Honestly,
what do I care? If you really want to get
down into your food source, whether meat based, fish based,
(03:16):
or whatever else. And before you tell me how nasty
pigs are, let me fry you some bacon and you
have some of it, and you tell me how nasty
that pig was. Whoa, Let me get you a delicious
pork chop. Mm and let's talk about how honestly, But anyway,
(03:36):
can I need to get back to my fish?
Speaker 1 (03:38):
What?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yep? Plus some bacon?
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Oh man? I don't eat pork. Are you Jewish? I
ain't Jewish. I just don't dig on swine, that's all.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Why not hold on the delivery of John Travolta in
the way he says, are you Jewish? Like half kind
of jack at him, but half kind of asking, knowing
good and well he's not. Travolta in this role is
so good and it's so different than the way he
(04:10):
he sort of off handles, are you Jewish? Do that get?
What's a bacon? Oh man?
Speaker 3 (04:16):
I don't eat foork. Are you Jewish? I ain't Jewish.
I just don't dig on swine, that's all. Why not
pigs are filthy animals?
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I don't eat filthy animals.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, but bacon tastes good, poork chops taste good. Hey,
sword rat may taste like punk and pine, But I
never know, because I wouldn't eat the filthiness.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Pigs sleep and group.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And that's a filthy animal. I ain't eed nothing, ain't
got sense enough to disregard its own CCSP. But a dog,
dog eats his own feces.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I don't eat dog eagle.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a
filthy animal. I wouldn't go so far as to call
a dog filthy, but they're definitely dirty. But dogs got personality.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Personality goes the wrong way.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
So by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality,
he ceased to be filthy animal.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Well, we have to be talking about one. I mean
he had to be ten tathmore chiming in that arlold
on green ankles.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
You know what I'm saying? Good dialogue, good writing is
lost in most films. Great films should have wonderful writing,
and that's one of the things that Tarantino does so well.
If you haven't seen the movie Vengeance, it's by bj
(05:29):
what's his name, B B. Jayden. I can't think his name.
I can't think of his name. Guy's from New York.
But it's about Texas. It's what's set in Texas. The
BJ Novak you've seen it. The dialogue in that there's
some scenes. There's some discussions of water burger that you
better not drink anything while you're watching that movie, or
(05:52):
you will spew them out of your mouth. Like the
church it laid lay out to see you. It will
blow your mind how good the dialogue, and then you
will be There's an opening scene of bj Novak and
John Mayer, uh, two buddies, and they go to party.
It's kind of like a wedding crashers type thing, uh,
(06:12):
and they're telling stories about the their their conquest. Anyway,
So back to my story. So we have this meal
and then at the end of it, they put on
this plate these very beautiful hand painted pieces of art. Well,
(06:34):
I know that sometimes I can ask questions that make
people uncomfortable. So I don't know if you can eat
that art because it's honestly too pretty, but it might
be a chocolate. And it was presented on a tape
on a plate with on a plate with some macaroons.
So I said, oh man, these are gorgeous, thinking, you know,
(06:57):
trying to trying to flush out what exactly they were,
and I said, wow, these are these are really pretty.
So I pick it up in hopes that by picking
it up, I might you know, if it crumbles in
my hands or when I set it back down, if
there's some color on my finger, then that means that
(07:22):
it was a chocolate. And there's maybe six of them
on the plate, along with about four my karooms, and
you if you saw them, well, I'll explain in a
minute after I decide whether to judge Michael Barry Michael
(07:44):
Berry Show. So finally I kind of hemmed and hard
around this thing. I've twisted it over in my hand.
I've held it for a while, and this couple are
very good friends of our. She says, uh, it's the
best chocolates I've ever had, And I hope that my
body language did not reveal Oh, okay, it is a chocolate.
(08:09):
Now I say that to complement the thing, because it
was truly a work of art. It was something you
might have bought at a museum. I mean it was
incredibly obviously hand painted and just it had it had
a like a gloss over it, like a like a
(08:32):
you know when they'll do classic cars or hot rod
cars and then they put I don't know what it is.
It's like a glaze over it so that it almost
seems like the color is an inch like yet yeah,
like a lacquer type deal. Anyway, So it was that.
So I bite into it. It looked like a ladybug.
It was half orange, half green, the coloring scheme on
(08:56):
the hump of a ladybug. And I said, wow, what
is that? And she said carrot cake. Not only did
it look amazing, it tasted amazing. No, we didn't then
(09:18):
kick poor people. I ate more. And it was an
awkward situation because I was the only one eating them.
So there are four of us at the table and
there were six of them them, and so I had
my one, and in my mind I thought, okay, if
you have two, not everybody can have two. But my
wife every year takes a vow, she gives up something
(09:41):
every year. It's an Indian thing, and so this year,
it's sweets. Oh she went ramon one year. She said,
for five years, I'm not eating meat or sweets. I thought, well,
what else and you don't she doesn't drink? What else
is there? Oh, it's all And she did it for
(10:02):
five years. She did it anyway back to it. So
I've already processed that if I have the second one,
not everybody can have two. So it's already kind of
one of those moves. But I thought, well, none, that's
not going to eat any So technically there's three of us,
so there's two each. And just so when I took
(10:24):
my second one, I was clear. I said, sweetheart, are
you going to eat any knowing she wouldn't, but to
tell them, I'm telegraphing to them I can have the
second one without overstepping the bounds. And she said, no,
you go ahead, all right? So I hit number two.
We started with six. Now there's four left. I've had two.
There's two of them. Well, how do I convey? Suddenly?
(10:49):
And I'd like another one. So everybody's sitting and we're talking,
and I'm like a child, just focused on those chalkits.
And so I waited a little while, and I kind
of reached out a little. Finally I picked one that
(11:10):
was different than and I said, I'm sorry to touch this,
but I just have to see it. And the husband said, oh,
have it, okay, So I waited, awhile and waited, awhile.
We're thirty minutes into nobody else has eaten one except
for me, and I finally just said, I feel like
it's appropriate if I have a fourth win. And before
(11:32):
long there weren't any left and I went home. So
before I said, where do you get this? And she
says it's called mostly chocolate, and she gives me the
lady's name and she does catering, but really it's it's
a chocolate thing. I said, okay, So Ramon, let's see
how much you know. If I were to tell you
(11:56):
that the maker of these chocolates is from a place
in the world that if you go to a restaurant,
I mean, if you go to a shop anywhere in
America and it's high end chocolates, I mean three or
four dollars per little tiny chocolate, where would you guess
she's from. There's two countries they're most likely from. There's
(12:17):
a number one that's the obvious number. So Okay, Switzerland,
good guests, all right, I'll give you credit. There's three
places they could be from. Not Belgium, because the Belgians
do chocolates, but they don't do them like this. Let
me let me tell you if a place, if a
place sells these, not necessarily makes although they do make things.
(12:37):
It's where they're always from. And there's a lot of
these in Houston. There's probably ten of them like this
in Houston. No, it's where people are from that will
have high end chocolate shops. They will also uh, it'll
also be a coffee shop, and they'll have like a
fresco dynique. People would be sitting out and smoking cigarettes
(12:58):
in the middle afternoon, us to the nines. In Italian clothing.
The women will be beautiful. They'll all be wearing shades.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Italy is a good guess. It's it's where you see
a lot of these people vacation. Not sweets, not Switzerland,
not Italy. Focus on the chocolate. It'll be chocolates. It'll
be uh, what's the Greek thing? I like baklava? Chuck? Yeah,
(13:31):
they do. Shut your filthy mouth. I love them. Everybody
loves bahcla bah see now, why do you want. We're
on a positive trainer. It'll always it'll be chocolates. It
might even be some real high end Italian some gelato coffees.
Germans don't do that. Lebanese, they're always Lebanese. What are
(13:53):
you doing? Everybody would guess Lebanese. Everybody that knows anything,
You don't pay attention to anything. The number one most
likely place they would be from and they would be
is Lebanese, followed by Irani. I'm telling you, anybody that
knows knows. So I looked this place up. It's called
mostly Chocolate. Their website is mostly HTx dot com. Jump, yeah,
(14:21):
like most of it. Now listen to this. I'm thinking,
oh yeah, these people like chocolates right. The woman's name
is Rena Kumkagi, and it says Rena's passion for cooking
began when she was just a child. Hey this music.
Growing up in Lebanon, Rena was taught by her mother
(14:41):
to create delectable Lebanese dishes and pastries. From working closely
with her mother, her love for cooking and food flourished.
As she got older, Rena realized her passion and natural
talent for cooking was more than just a hobby when
she crafted a pistachio filled chocolate pastry. Let me read
that again, a pistachio filled chocolate pastry to serve over Thanksgiving.
(15:07):
Her friends were astounded by the delicate texture and full
flavor of her pastry, and she was convinced to replicate
the pastry for a friend's wedding. Inspired to sharpen her craft,
Rina completely specialty courses completed, sorry, completed specialty courses with
local Houston chef and chocolateier on A Gomez. So this
(15:27):
woman was a chef and a chocolatear We're about to
talk about chocolate worse than Somlie's do. This is like
a PhD of chocolate along with local Houston chef and
chocolatear on a Gomez. And then went on to attend
the Chocolate Academy in Saint Hyacinth in Montreal, Quebec with
(15:48):
world renowned chocolateer Christophe Morrell. Y'all are getting way too
serious about chocolate here, Okay, So then it talks about
her catering. Then here's her son and his son. Danny
Komkagi joined the team in twenty eleven. His endless drive
and passion blah blah, blah blah. After various internships studying
(16:09):
under renowned master chopletiers in New York in Montreal, Danny
became head chocolateer in twenty fifteen. Since then, he's gone
on to win various prestigious national and international awards, the
three Dessert Grand Champion Buckal Awards at the HLSR Houston
Lifestile showan Rodeo Best Bites competition for the Goat Cheese Truffle,
Pacan Pie Truffle, and hazel Nut and Pop Rocks, a
(16:32):
first place gold finish in the International Chocolate Award America's competition,
second place silver finish in the internationals Chocolate Awards World.
These people are getting real serious about chocolate. Michael, Mary Show, Michael,
this is before your time, romone. What I read this yesterday?
(16:54):
If you were raised on baloney, drank PEPSI played in
the dirt, got your butt s bank, had three TV
channels in and out side antenna. School started with the pledge,
had a bedtime, rode in the back of a pickup truck,
recorded songs from the radio using cassette tapes, drank from
a hose, played in the creek, said sir and ma'am
and you still turn out Okay, say amen about that.
(17:19):
Our friends we had dinner with last night, the husband.
I've known this guy almost ten years, and I had
no idea he had a knife collect, no idea, not
the slightest Why would I. So it turns out he
(17:46):
he has a cane collection. So I'd had a little
accident in January, and I don't know how he found
out because nobody knew. We show up to dinner and
I hadn't been out in a long while, and it
was the first dinner we'd been out to. And when
I arrived, he puts a pretty cool cane in my hand,
(18:11):
which should have been funny, but I was kind of
enjoying having a cane. I like a cane, right, that's
a nice It's an old English thing. It's old fashion.
If it makes me feel like Churchill, I like a
cane and I tested it and it did. He open
it up and you got the knife inside, right. I
like to imagine some old, portly English gentleman and some
(18:33):
thug comes running up on him and he pulls out
the knife from his cane. Oh guts him. So anyway,
known this guy for ten years, and he never told
me he had a knife collection. Well, when I commented, oh,
I was thank you for the cane, and I didn't
(18:55):
give it right back because I was enjoying it. I said,
did you do just go buy a cane? And he goes, no, No,
I keep some canes. How many canes do you keep?
A few? His wife rolls her eyes like, how many
is a few? He's being strange, he being the artful
(19:19):
dodger at this point. That's Oliver Twist for you, Romo.
So that's what where do you keep your canes? You
got about sixty canes? Okay, So that's a lot of canes.
And they all different handles, and one of them has
a crystal ball on the end of it. That is
(19:40):
a golf ball. It's not a golf ball, but it's
dimpled like a golf ball, and I bet it weighs
eight pounds. So if you go up on that guy,
he's going to hit you and smash your head and
ruin his crystal ball. So I said, this is really crazy,
(20:01):
and I felt like I was back in fifth grade again.
You know, when you go over to your buddy's house
and he's like, you want to see something. Yeah, And
then y'all go out to back and he's got you
call it a fork, but frankly, it's just it's a
couple of two by fours in an old scrap piece
of plywood that's busted in half. You know, plywood is
(20:23):
like straighted muscle. It's got you know, it's got like
fibers to it. And when part of it's been busted out,
you can see the inside of the of the plywood.
It's lost its integrity. But I felt like I was
he's taken me out to the hideout to see the
porno magazine. Well they weren't really pornos. It was Playboy
back in those days. And he goes, you want to
(20:43):
see something. Well, if you say it like that, yeah, right,
So go upstairs, go through the bedroom, go into his closet,
and there are all around the closet. I told him
(21:05):
last night when we got home, I sent a text
to him and his wife, and my text to him was,
thank you for inviting us to dinner at your knife museum.
So I posted this to Facebook. If I'm not giving
his name, because he's a very private person and doesn't
like that. So I got a number of I didn't
think about this, but people are like, hey, I got
a knife I want to sell, and hey, I want
(21:26):
to ask him by that, And he's not that. He
is a very very very private person. You'll never hear
his name mentioned on the air ever, not by me anyway,
because it would ruin our friendship anyway. So it turns
out his wife refers to his collection as a sickness,
and you will understand why. So he's got these boxes
and they're made by I guess what's a company that
(21:47):
makes these boxes for and they're about yay, why so
how tall? How long? Was it? About a foot wide?
I mean, and then about two inches tall? And they're
just they're everywhere. The clothes are perfectly done in this
custom closet, but the focus of this thing is really
these boxes. And he starts opening them out and showing
(22:11):
me the knives. There's fifteen hundred knives there, and no
two knives are the same, and I don't I don't
mean to tell you. These are like knives like a
handle and a blade. Every knife that he collects, he
collects because the opening or locking mechanism is somehow interesting.
(22:32):
So he can hand you a knife that you have
no clue how to open. One of them was a
lady's lipstick deal, you know the lipstick deal. It'll have
like it'll be blue on this ind and blue on
this in and it's got a blue it's got a
gold belt in the middle, and you unscrew it and
then she kind of screws her lipstick out. Well where
you screw that out? Knife blade? Yeah, So you run
(22:56):
up on some woman. You're like, there's warrants out for
your arrest. Either you lay down with me or I
take you to prison. And she says, okay, well let
me put my lipstick on, and she pulls it out
and she says, huh, And there you've been jabbed anyway.
So we're going through all these knives. He's got every book.
(23:18):
There is a book for knife collectors. You probably don't
know this, and it was written by a guy named Warner,
and he's got every addition going back to nineteen eighty
two and they are stacked perfectly neat. So he starts
pulling out knives and he goes open that and then
he takes it back from you pretty fat. He goes,
I don't want you to cut yourself because you would
have you would have had no idea how you open
(23:38):
these knives. They're all pieces that they're all engineering marbles.
And what was I going to tell you about that? Oh?
Gets it, open, locks it. So there really no risks
you're gonna cut yourself unless you're just totally stupid. And
on the knife is a little bit of label and
(23:59):
it's as K O O three eight eight. Okay, Well
maybe when he bought the knife it had a label
about the fifth one. They all have K and numbers.
I said, tell me, every one of them is labeled.
And I have journals, have a page on every single life.
(24:22):
I don't have that much discipline. Must be right when
he says my labor it's art, it's not art.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Imitating that Rush paid him a cool million to perform
at Rush's wedding like a house concert.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Then they questioned and criticized Elton John, Why would you
play Elton? Why would you play Rush Limbaugh's wedding? This
was when he married Catherine, not too many years ago,
and they were afraid that, Well, I'd like to see
the tax rate lowered, the borders closed. I'm against abortion,
(25:18):
and I think affirmative action is out of control and
global warming is a bunch of bunks. They thought, maybe
you know, you shared some political views, and he says,
pay me a million dollars. The maody paying you a
million dollars. You think you might get passed some minor
disagreements over politics. And when Rush was criticized or questioned,
(25:42):
he said, I love Elton. John's a dream come true.
Are you kidding me? You don't need to come to
the wedding. You're not invited anyway. It was only Rush
could do all right. Nine presidents never graduated from college,
the last one and the only one of the twentieth century.
(26:03):
Can you guess it was? You can guess? Think of
the most common president, by which I mean breeding schooling.
He was a clerk. In fact, he was a very
very corrupt clerk in Missouri who I think it was
(26:23):
a Pendergast family who ran a machine there, and he
was the cog in the wheel that made it happen.
Harry S. Truman S stands for nothing. Yeah, it's like
in the word T, like iced T. The E and
the A are silent, same thing. There's no middle name.
So you're nine presidents who never graduated from college. George
(26:48):
Washington Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore,
Abraham Lincoln, you could practice law without a college degree
(27:10):
at the time, Andrew Johnson, the accidental president when Lincoln
was assassinated, and last, but not least, Grover Cleveland, and then,
of course Harry S. Truman. All right, very quickly, ramon
to make a point. There are a handful of first
ladies in American history that are extremely well known, and
(27:34):
the rest are not partially known. I don't know much
about him. You either know the first lady and something
about her, or you don't know her name at all.
I looked this up this weekend, so I'm kind of
interested to share, like a little nerd. All Right, so
here we go. I'll give you the president, and very quickly,
you spout the first lady's name. Are you ready? We'll
go in order. George Washington. Martha Washington is correct, John Adams,
(28:00):
Abigail Adams is correct. Thomas Jefferson, aren't they. You wouldn't
know James Madison, Dolly Madison, that's correct. James Monroe, Elizabeth,
you wouldn't know that, John Quincy Adams, Louisa. You wouldn't
(28:21):
know Andrew Jackson. A lot of people know this one
because they were married, well that they were both separately married,
and it became a huge scandal and they smeared him
with that. Rachel but Emily Jackson, who oh, you're just
(28:42):
guessing old names. Martin van Buren Hannah but her full name,
just so you know, was Hannah Hoose h o E s.
Hannah Hoose van Buren. Those Hose girls, you know, that's
what they were known as. A William Henry Harrison, Anna
Tutthill Sims Harrison, John Tyler, Letitia James K. Polk, Sarah
(29:10):
Zachary Taylor, Margaret Millard Fillmore. Another Abigail Franklin Pierce, Jane
James Buchanan never married. You know what that means if
you're president from eighteen fifty seven eighteen sixty one and
you never married. Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln is correct,
(29:36):
Andrew Johnson, Eliza, you wouldn't know that. Ulysses s. Grant,
Julia Rutherford b. Hayes. Be's Burchard by the way, Lucretia,
Oh no, sorry, not Lucretia, Lucy Lucy James Garfield's been
shot down. His widow was Lucretia his successor Chester, Arthur Ellen,
(30:02):
Grover Cleveland, Francis Benjamin Harrison, Caroline Grover Cleveland. I like
old name, Francis William McKinley, Ida. Don't name women Ida anymore?
Teddy Roosevelt. Do you know Teddy Roosevelt's wist name? Edith
Kermit Caro Roosevelt, William H. P Helen Woodrow Wilson Ellen,
(30:35):
not Helen Ellen. Calvin Coolidge or what a perfect name
for his wife Grace because he was a Methodist minister,
Grace good Hugh Coolidge did not sound like a minister's wife, Grace.
It'sund like an English novel. Herbert Hoover. His wife's name
(30:55):
was Lou Lou Franklin D. Roosevelt. See there's one of
the that you know. The wife's name Eleanor is correct.
Harry S. Truman. I think not as many, but a
lot of people will know Harry Truman's wife's name, Bess
b e Ss. Dwight D. Eisenhower from here people will
(31:15):
know I think most Maybe you know what state. Dwight
Eisenowler was born in Texas. John F. Kennedy, the Lovely
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and then she goes and ruin it
by Marionette Lyndon B. Johnson, particularly known in Texas. What
(31:38):
a great cause. Flowers on the Highway that might seem silly,
but that's lasting to this day and I love it,
by the way. Lady Bird, Dick Nixon, Pat Gerald Ford,
Betty famous for Jimmy Carter, Rosalind Ronald Reagan, of course,
(32:00):
Nancy Barbara Bush, Oh sorry, George Bush. Barbara Bush most
noted for what was her cause? Literacy? Bill Clinton, Oh,
that tastes in my mouth. George W. Bush, Laura Bush,
Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Donald J. Trump, the most beautiful,
the first Ladys of Millennia. And Joe Biden, Doctor Joe Biden,