#566: Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

GETTING MORE TALE #566: Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

1998. I had just moved in with the legendary T-Rev. Two Record Store managers under one roof. Can you imagine the CD collections? We used to marvel at the wall of discs. Two CD towers, massive ones, side by side. We’d boast that nowhere else in town would you find two copies of Metallica’s Garage Days in the same place. Same went for many of our rare singles and imports. Finding one was difficult enough, but with our combined collections we often had two. You could come over for a drink and end up spending hours just going through our collections.

Collection samples

T-Rev and I had a lot of fun, although as it turned out, I wasn’t the right guy to have a roommate. I’m a real early to bed, early to rise kind of guy and our wake/sleep cycles didn’t really work out. Having said that, I wouldn’t trade those months for the world! I’d never fallen asleep on the floor before, but we had some pretty epic parties. It was also the first time I’d woken up to find girls in the apartment! Yeah, we had good times. When we weren’t partying, we’d be playing video games on the good old N64. Goldeneye was a staple. Duke Nukem and Top Gear Rally were regular go-to’s.

Another thing we had fun with was our answering machine. We couldn’t just have a normal answering machine message. One weekend, Trevor went out to see a Britpop band who I can’t remember. Supergrass? One of those. They met the manager Andy who kept on hitting on the girlfriends. So Trevor came home and did an answering machine message with a British accent. “You’ve reached Trevor, Michael and Andy! Leave a message after the beep!” That confused a few people. “Who is that British guy who is living with you?”

T-Rev was also a big fan of Jerry Springer. I’d never really watched before, but T-Rev was into it. The fights, the yelling, the chanting of “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”…we found it all terribly entertaining. In particular, I liked Jerry’s “final thought”. That’s the part of the show where he somehow simultaneously agrees with all parties on the episode.

Our enjoyment of the chaos of the Jerry Springer show led to a couple tributes.

T-Rev came up with a sign idea, and I wish he was able to put it up in the store. It was a “no shirt no shoes no service” sign that said:

Because highschool is free,
And Jerry Springer does not work here,
Shirts and shoes must be worn in store.

Yeah, shirts and shoes were an ongoing summer issue. When I once asked a guy to put on a shirt, his answer was “Why, are you serving food here?”  I just didn’t want to watch that bead of sweat dripping off his nipple ring.

It only made sense that we should honour the mighty Jerry Springer Show with a new answering machine message. I did it up:

“Thank you for calling the offices of the Jerry Springer Show! If you’re a white trash mother who’s pissed off at your little white trash daughter, press one! If you’re a white trash daughter who can’t stand your bitchy mother, press two! For all others leave a message after the beep!”

People were used to bizarre answering machine messages from us by now.

The best response to it came from the boss at the old Record Store. He called one evening we were out, and left a message asking if one of us could cover a shift. And he ended the message by saying, “Oh, and I’ll take option two. Thank you.” He was a good sport.

22 comments

  2. Oh… and Goldeneye was a staple with me and my friends too. We would have marathon game nights that went until the sun came up.

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  3. Ah good old Jerry. I remember watching an episode in Holland where the two ladies fighting actually went to ground. That was the best fight I’ve seen, though this one was pretty good.

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  4. Who cares about Jerry…It’s LADANO living life like Belushi did in Animal House…partying/waking up on the floor/chicks crashing/ man I want some stories….stories/stories/stories…..

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    1. LOL! Well…I used to drink rum & coke so I don’t remember much except those all nighters were fun! T-Rev had a lot of female friends who he worked with at his second job at the Waterloo Inn, and I’m telling you…they were all hotties. AND he married one and they are still happily together 20 years after first going out. 20 years this summer.

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  5. Jerry Springer! There’s something I completely forgot about!

    Also, I reckon there should be a universal ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ policy in stores.

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  6. Best Jerry scene was with Dr and Scott Evil aka Austin Powers II right? Quite rightly ending with Jerry going toe to toe with Dr Evil himself LOL…

    Never laughed so hard during a movie (the couple pre-show drinks helped)…

    “I got his hood I got his hood…”

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  7. I remember when Jerry Springer first started on the talk show circuit in the early 90s! So nerdy, but I actually liked his Donahue-esque ways back then.
    I also tried the funny answering machine message thing too, using the theme from Shaft back when I first lived alone. My family HATED it. 😏

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    1. Donahue! That relates to my Peter Criss post yesterday. Peter and the Peter Criss imposter were on Donahue, that’s how it came to national attention.

      If I remember the story correctly, Tom Arnold took in the imposter. He didn’t know it wasn’t Peter Criss. Have a look at the post…they don’t look ANYTHING alike.

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    1. With 20/20 hindsight, it wasn’t the best idea. The first three months when we were both single was awesome. The second three months when T-Rev had a girlfriend were less awesome (for me).

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