Dennis Haskins, Bombing on Radio & the One Question We Never Ask Men | Engel Angle

I had my physical today and much to my surprise, no rectal exam. According to my doctor, the University of Minnesota completed a study not too long ago that said rectal exams didn't show anything. Which leads me to ask one question. Doctors, exactly what the hell were you doing down there? Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Engel Angle podcast, Stolen Water Media, Sunset Lounge. Thanks for joining me. Before I get into my topic for this latest episode, I do want to mention something that is very exciting going on with the Sunset Lounge, and that is three wide at scout. Three wide at scout. Join the sunset lounge talking football. We are in the middle of football season, which means we are in the early weeks of the Dallas cowboys kicking us in the crotch each and every Sunday by finding new ways to lose football games that didn't previously exist. Shout out to Brian Schottenheimer. Join us at scout in the Statler Hotel every Tuesday, 05:30 to seven. That's PM, not AM. Cool off from the lingering heat, heat that will never end. By the way, let the traffic subside. It does. The traffic will subside eventually. Have a drink, grab food, craft beer. While we cover everything National Football League. Let's stick around, please, afterwards with Ziggy from Ziggy with Beer thirty Sports Clock, a half price valet available. I might be driving. Every Tuesday at Scout, that is Scout in the Statler Hotel. Let the adventure begin. Speaking of venture, I just tossed my phone and hit the ground, but luckily it fell in the back, not cracking my screen. Recently this week, we lost an actor who was quite famous based on one role. And I had an interaction with this actor many years ago that I want to share with you. And I'm talking, of course, about Mr. Dennis Haskins. May he rest in peace. Dennis Haskins died recently at the age of 75, and he was known for his role as America's principal, mister Belding, and the very popular TV show Saved by the Bell. How long do you think Saved by the Bell aired? How many years of new shows do you think saved by the bell, the original the original, was on? How many years would you guess? Eight years? Seven years? Ten years? No. Saved by the bell was on from 1989 to 1993. But it's one of those shows that was so unique because we had never seen anything like it before, It created these iconic characters that live on way, way past the airing of its final episode. Think about all those characters, Screech, all of them that we knew about when they were young actors playing the part of high school students in a comedy slash melodrama about kids growing up. We had never really seen that before. And I wanna be completely honest. I didn't like the show. I thought it was dumb. It wasn't for me. I was probably a little too old for it, but it just was never a show that resonated with me. But despite that, I knew who all the actors were. I certainly knew who the actresses were. And it just was never a show that I liked, but I knew who all of them were. Now I wanna say around that time that show was on, that would have been high school college for me. I had an ambition to write comedy. I'd always wanted to do it. I always enjoyed Saturday Night Live. And one thing I recognized now as a parent of a teenager, the success of Saturday Night Live is rooted in one thing. It grabs the audience when they're either a preteen or teenager in those formative consuming years. And the reason why you hear people sit there and say, Saturday Night Live isn't funny anymore. The comics aren't any good. It's dumb. It's too this. It's too that. The audience has been saying that about Saturday Night Live since I was watching it in the eighties. And I love Saturday Night Live. And one of the reasons why I like Saturday Night Live so much was is because it was about being older when you're young. It's about staying up late. It's about watching material and comedy and things that are edgy and racy and things that are a little bit, you know, counterculture to pop culture and making fun of society. When you have sort of that rebel feeling even though it's very much part of a corporate structure, that's that's how Saturday Night Live gets you. So you... As you grow older, you keep watching it even though if you don't even like it because you have such fond memories of watching that show when you were 11 or 12 or 13 and staying up late and watching weekend update and watching all those comics do things and go places that really could sometimes really made you laugh. Saturday night live, I'm I'm too... I don't really remember the original cast. I was too young. But the cast that I remember, my cast, my show was Phil Hartman and John Lovitz and Dennis Miller and Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon and Victoria Jackson and Jan Hooks. Jan Hooks so talented. That was my show. And that's why I'm still loyal to it. And now that I have a teenager and we introduced her to the show seven or eight, nine years ago, maybe not our best idea because the show has definitely, societal norms have changed, it's gone even further off the cuff in terms of its language and its material. I can see why she loves it. Because it's about those things that I mentioned. It's about staying up late. It's about laughing at material. Even if you don't even quite get it, the adults are laughing at it. So you kinda laugh at it. And so she knows all the cast members. And she she likes them all, and she loves that idea. So I'm I'm watching this thinking, yeah, they... They've made a they've made a fan for life. And whatever you think about Saturday Night Live in its in its iteration, current iteration, it's going to keep going. So credit Lauren Michaels, NBC, and the people who created that model and SCTV as well because they stole a lot of this from SCTV back in the seventies. And that's why it keeps going. So that's where my ambition to write comedy kind of came from, but I didn't really have an out out... Like a platform or place to do it in my in my job with the Fort Worth Star Telegram. So sometime in, like, 2013 or so, I was hired to be a part time contributor by CBS one zero five three, the fan. And I would go on a couple days a week, sometimes more. And I would sit in with the morning shows with Sean Sherif, who's been the host for a long time, his longtime cohost, a man that I've known for even longer than he's been on the show, RJ Choppy. Troy Hughes did a lot of the production. Good guy. And another contributor that we had was a producer named Roy White. And they let me try to do something that I'd always wanted to do. And I was with the program or the the show for, I think, three years, two and a half years before I got fired, something like that. I I can't remember how long it was. But I... Shout out to people who do morning news shows. That schedule is no joke, and I learned that the hard way. So when I was canned, I was... There was a lot of relief there. But one thing I did, I do miss that that network, which is no longer a CBS property, by the way. They sold off all their radio stations. But one thing they did give him the opportunity to do, which was to write comedy, and I wanted to see if I could do it. And the very first one I wrote was a hit. I'd had this idea for a long time, which was a yoga teacher who's really angry, and it worked. Hi. Good morning, class. So great to see so many of you on your mats this morning. I can I can feel the positive vibes of your love and your spirit? I'm so excited about class today. For you first timers, my name is Molly. That's m a l I, Molly. My parents were nice enough to, to let me name myself. Okay. Let's come out of a seated position, and let's come up on the balls of our feet. Arms draped down on either side, hands relaxed, stand perfectly straight at the front of our mat, and let's dedicate our practice. And my Mavs. Can't handle success, can we? Dwyane Blair's gotta kick a mother in the head. Had this thing in the bag. And instead of letting Dirk do his thing for three, you settle on a guy who's six for 19 from the floor to try to tie the game, and deep breath out. Now let's come into warrior one. Both hands pointed at the sky. Point that front foot towards the mirror. If your view is blocked, you can just point that toe at the tattoo on my lower back. Deep breath in. And you dervish. It's pronounced ace, not ass. Can you pick someone other than the Oakland Athletics to make your daddy? Me. Why not just join the rest of your teammates on the disabled list? Bum a smoke from wash and shut this mother down and breathe out. So that bit worked. And when your first one works, whomever it is that you're working with will say, yeah. Do do another one. Try another one. And this is when I experienced what bombing really feels like. I've asked stand up comedians this question a few times. What does it feel like to bomb? You know, in my job, I probably have written hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of items, created God knows how many pieces of content that have bombed. But I don't always know it because I can't see the audience's reaction. When you write a comedy bit in the... Has a live audience element to it, you feel that reaction. I was interviewing stand up comedian, Anthony Jeselnik, very successful stand up comedian, really funny guy, really nice guy, really bright guy. And I asked him, what's it like to bomb? And he said, never forget it. He said, it cuts you to your core. Now I have written plenty of things, said plenty of things that have generated reactions from an audience member. But the worst one, to make somebody angry, that's fine. To make somebody happy, well, that's great. To inspire somebody, to move somebody, well, those are wonderful. When the person sits there and doesn't react at all and is thinking this is just bad, that's the worst one. So after I created that very... And we aired that very first comedy bit that I did about the yoga teacher, I had this idea. I thought it was really funny. I wrote it, and I was really proud about it. And I... And it was long. It was too long, and it made me appreciate that comedy bits can only be in ninety seconds, a minute, one forty five max. You'll see why Saturday night live sketches usually run three thirty, three forty four minutes occasionally. It's really hard to keep comedy at that level. It's really hard. Drama's easy. Comedy's hard because you don't recognize when you're writing it that it may be missing. You don't know until you watch it in real time. So I wrote this thing. It was a it spoof was about a WNBA team. And, man, I think it's really funny. And then Troy Hughes, the producer produces it. And his production was good. His voice... He did some of the voiceover. It was really good. And it bombed. And I'm sitting there in my chair and I can re... Rewatch the reactions of my coworkers, and they're not laughing. And it's just awkward. And I wanna take a shovel and dig a hole into the middle of Downtown Dallas and jump into it. It was that bad. And if if I had been one of those guys, they would have been within their rights to say, yeah, maybe maybe we slow down on the bits, but they didn't discourage me. And what I learned, keep doing it. Just keep creating stuff. If if you've had a click when keep going and it'll work, but you gotta keep going. You gotta keep throwing pitches. You gotta take... Keep taking shots. And I I had an idea for... And I did a whole bunch of different ones. I would spoof this or spoof that. Sometimes they were really, really funny and sometimes not as good. But there was one that I had an idea for that I had for a while, which was I wanted to be a radio reporter interviewing somebody and I just get everything wrong about them. And I did it the first time with former Major League Baseball player. He was playing at the time, Chris Davis. He was playing with the Baltimore Orioles. And I said, was in the locker room at the old Rangers Stadium, and I said, Chris, I get this idea. I'm gonna interview you as if you were a black baseball player. And he said, okay. And he played it so straight. I mean, he was perfect. And he would... And he's... I would ask, and I'd be really enthusiastic. What's it like to be a great contributor to black America as a black baseball player? It was just totally stupid and silly. And he said, well, you know, I I really wouldn't know. I'm I'm white. And as the interviewer, I just wouldn't listen to him at all. So it was kind of a funny bit, and it worked. So it was okay. Do that one. So I had to kind of pick and choose when I would do that particular bit with. And I think I did it with Mike Musina. I... The one that I did it with, I still can't believe I did it, was with best selling author Sebastian Junger. He wrote the perfect storm, and he played along because I'm interviewing him. I had questions for him about the author Nicholas Sparks. Nicholas Sparks has written all these wildly popular romance novels. And on on this interview, he's all excited about Nicholas Sparks, he knows nothing about it. And so those worked. And the reason why I mentioned this as it relates to Saved by the Bell, I was at Dallas Cowboys training camp around twenty ten ish, 2000... No. No. No. No. 2015. And then sure enough, who's standing on the field but Dennis Haskins, Mr. Belding, Saved by the Bell. Now for people who are familiar with the Dallas Cowboys training camp in Southern California, a lot of times, actors, actresses, Hollywood types will show up just to watch and to be a guest of Jerry Jones and the Jones family. Denzel Washington has been there. Jamie Foxx, Rob Lowe, Sheryl Burke from Dancing with the Stars showed up. A lot of people a lot of people have shown up. But Dennis Haskins, the actor from Saved by the Bell was there. And there's not many people in the field after practice. Players have gone in. Coaches have gone in. He's just standing around. I go up and I introduce myself. We have a nice conversation. He had been a high school athlete. He liked football. Nice, really nice guy. And clearly, this was a guy who recognized he had taken full advantage of a role that made him famous long, long after the show went off the air. And he didn't run from it. Sometimes sometimes actors and actresses do that. Like, no. I wanna be known for this. You're like, well, that's what you're known for. He had no problem leaning into it. So I told him, I said, Dennis, I had this idea. Would you play along with it? I said, I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions. And sometimes they're gonna kind of push the envelope. I'll give you an example. I did one of these one time with Dallas Stars center Tyler Sagan, and Tyler had really struggled in the playoffs. And so I asked him all these questions about how horrible he was in the playoffs. Tyler Sagan, bless his heart, had plenty of patience for it and was really funny with it. I remember when I clicked off the recorder, said, Thank you, Sophie. He says, God, that was brutal. He had a great sense of humor about it. Well, I was doing basically the same thing with principal building, Dennis Haskins. And this was a good life lesson. So he plays along with it. And I recognized at about the forty five second mark, I've gone too far. I've pushed the joke too far. And now I can see this is not funny. But this is... I'm annoying him. And so at the very end of... So I pushed it one line too many. In the end of it, you can tell he's irritated. And I so wish I had this interview. It's lost in the ether. But I remember it was a great lesson. It was, if you recognize you've gone too far, you can go one of two ways. You can be that guy who tries to be uncomfortable or you can just say, okay, I'm done. And I don't have any regrets about it because it was a fun experience. And he was a good sport about it for the most part. But my lasting expression was, He says my name unintentionally, shakes my hand and just basically runs away from me. And that was my experience with Saved by the Bells, Mr. Belding. Dennis Haskins, may you rest in peace. My topic beyond that is a specific question that I think we need to ask people more of and why. I've talked about this many years ago in this podcast, and that is we ask societally very invasive questions, but we do it in a very shallow manner. And we're not doing it to be mean. We just do it because we're trying to fill up the air. How many times in a day do you ask a person, how are you doing? How many times in a day or a week are you asked, hey. How are you doing? I'm good. Thanks. And it's a shocker when that person says, Not good. You don't even know what to do with it. So there are different stages of these questions that we've asked, that we do ask. I see one of it now very often because I have a daughter who is a high school senior. Were you going to college? Well, maybe that person who's 17 doesn't wanna go to college. Maybe they don't have the grades to get into college. Maybe they don't have the money to go to college. And there's all this pressure and this weight that we unintentionally put on this person to have an answer to that question. I know when I graduated from high school, I remember this vividly. I'm sitting there in my high school graduating ceremony at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana. And my graduating class was about seven twenty people. And I'm sitting there listening to all these names being read off. I'm hearing all these people celebrating and hooting and hollering, going crazy, and have a good time when they hear their loved one's name called. I'm thinking to myself, when the hell are you... Who cares? This is high school. What do you celebrate? Who cares? You graduated from high school. Well, the older I got, I realized that was more of a product of the home that I was raised in, which is you graduate high school. And it was no different than college. You graduate college. What are you celebrating for? Who cares? It's high school. My dog could graduate from high school. Well, no. For certain families in certain households, graduating from high school is an achievement worth to be worthy of a big celebration. Just because I didn't know that doesn't mean it's not true. But we ask these questions of 17 and 18 year olds, were you going to college? There's gotta be a better question to ask. Fast forward a few more years. Maybe that person's 21 or 22. And now the question is, what are you going to do now? How many 21 or 22 year olds really know the answer to that question? And you're not trying to be mean. You're just curious and you're filling up the air with, what are you gonna do now? Who knows what they've got going on in their life? Who knows if they have any clue? I was lucky. I did. Not everybody does. So now we get into the really good ones, the relationship questions. And the the q and a really depends on your gender. Take the woman who's been in a relationship for a while. Are you guys gonna get married? Is is... You guys going anywhere? Is this is this gonna happen? Is this... What is... What's going on with that? Think about the enormous pressure a woman might feel to have an answer to that question. And if you just eliminated that question, they may have a totally different feeling about their given relationship status. But all of those questions and societal expectations to have an answer on that direction puts an enormous amount of sort of subconscious pressure on them to have an affirmative answer, to give an answer that they might feel like we have to give it. If a guy's asking it, totally different. It just is. Brother, what are you doing? Well, you've got you down, You're gonna do this? All right. I'll never forget. I'll never forget this. After I proposed to Jennifer, Randy Galloway, probably... Not probably, the most celebrated sports media personality in the American Southwest. Randy is retired now. Comes up to me after he learns I did it. I'm sitting down before a Texas Rangers press conference. And Randy leans down and his Randy Galloway draws his, welcome to hell. Should be noted Randy and his lovely wife Janine are still very much married. So there's that question. Now the person is married. You start a family? Do you have any kids? That is an extremely personal question because they're all this potential traps involved in that that you may not have any idea about. And you don't know these things until you're older. You don't know. Maybe they are trying and it's not working. Maybe there's other issues at play that you have any idea about that are challenging for that couple or that person. And then the other one is the person who does have a child. And you say, you have another one? Well, that's another question. Think about all the depth to that question and the challenges that may come along with it, whether it's emotional, logistical, or financial. Now anybody listening to this would rightly say, okay. So we're not gonna ask this. What should we do? That's a very good question. And I've given this question a lot of thought, and I'll share that response to you here in a second. Hello. It's Mike Reiner of Your Dark Companion here. Let me ask you. Are you looking for something to fill the long dead air hours of your day? Join the Sunset Lounge DFW and your dark companion on patreon.com, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Replace those sad, slow hours with sports, pop culture, music woven into interesting conversations. So step inside the green door, have a seat at the bar, and get in the groove with those shows and so very much more. So recently, I was at a sporting event, here in the Dallas Fort Worth area, one of our four major sports teams. And I asked a high ranking executive, a guy who has a very visible job. And I've known him for a long time. And I said, how are you doing? And he kind of gives me this quizzical look. Said, are you doing all right? I said, listen, I know you make a lot of money and you've got a great job. I said, Are you doing alright? I said, There's lot of pressure on this job. I said, Are you doing alright? Are you doing okay? Does anybody ask you that? And he says to me, and he was so shocked by it, I think he was so stunned that I'd asked him that question. And he said, yeah, you're right. I don't have a lot of people I can talk to this about. And I wanna be very transparent about this. My sympathy for people who have jobs like that, maybe they're head coaches, may... Of a major college football program, or they're a general manager of a major sports team or whatever. My sympathy for them is as a human, much more evolved than it was twenty years ago, like anything would be after twenty years. But my sympathy also has the stipulation of you knew what the job is. There's a lot of visibility to it. There's pressure to it, and you're making a ton of money from it. You have a quality of life because of this, and there are trades to anything. It doesn't mean you can't be human with this person, but I'm also saying, you know what this job is. You don't like it, don't do it. But as a person, just as a guy, and I think this is a huge guy problem that we still have despite our increased societal awareness of mental health, I don't think we ask the following question enough. Are you doing okay? And really meaning it. So when I asked him this question, said, are you doing all right? He said, yeah. I have a text thread of people in similar jobs and they sort of commiserate with each other about where they are in their particular job. And I thought that's interesting. That's good that there's an outlet there. And it got me thinking about... Because I've done this with other people I know and those that my job has given me access to just to say, Are you doing all right? Because usually those people, all they do is field phone calls, text messages, DMs, and whatever else from people who say, hey, I need this. We need to do this. What are we doing? And by we, what they really mean is what are you doing? That's a lot of pressure. So I've made it the older I get when I know some of these guys to say, are you doing all right? Because again, I don't think anybody's asking them that question. And I do think this still is very much a male problem. And the reason why I feel this way is I know I think four or five people who have committed suicide. The first one I knew was a guy, he was a wonderful guy. It's about twenty five years ago. And he's one of these guys that men his age would be jealous of. He's good looking. He's really smart. Funny as hell. And women loved him. Oh, girls loved him. And any guy in that position is jealous of him because of that attention. And we had socialized a lot. He's a great guy. He's an engineer. Really funny. Oh god. He was funny as hell. And one day out of the blue, he calls me. This guy never called me. Now we socialized a lot, but he didn't call me just to talk. And he called me, and he wants to talk. Just see what's going on. And I didn't know what to do with it. And, of course, now in hindsight, I know what that phone call is about. And he just wanted to talk. And again, I kind of fumbled the conversation because it was unlike any other conversation we'd had before. There was there was a quest for depth to it that I didn't have the bandwidth to go there because I didn't know. So the conversation wasn't very long. I'm talking a few minutes, and I'm off the phone. Next phone call I get is from my spouse who says, he's dead. He's killed himself. And that was my first exposure to suicide. And then we go to the memorial service and we see all these people there. And anybody who's been exposed to this knows what that's like. Just the soul crushing shattering feeling that comes with knowing that this person did not see another way to out of their problems. And I often wonder sometimes if I had been smarter or wiser, would I have been able to do anything to have a conversation with him to go places to maybe go down a different road? I'm not so I'm not so egotistical to think that I would've dissuaded him, but I do wonder about it sometimes. I've had other experiences, one specifically with another person I know who made the same decision. As I've grown older, I recognize now that as our mental health awareness language becomes more and more common, the umbrella and the definition of mental health awareness keeps going and stretching and stretching into places, but there is still a bit of a stigma with it. My awareness and familiarity with mental health disorders comes from my own family. I have family members who are very much afflicted with deep unfortunate mental health disorders. And so that's... When I hear about mental health days and mental health awareness and stuff like that, that's immediately what I think of. But those are extreme examples. But we have broadened this out. I don't always agree with it, but we have broadened this out to include feelings, thoughts, and emotions that aren't nest... There's not necessarily... There's different lanes for it. But the one area where I do believe that you can positively affect it is asking the question, are you doing alright? Are you taking care of yourself? Because I believe now firmly that one of the biggest problems that men face even in this country, even despite the advanced awareness of it is fighting the stigma of admitting, no, I'm not doing great. No, I've got stuff going on. I don't think guys are really good about it. I think they are better about it today than maybe my father's generation. My father was born in 1932, and that generation did not do it at all. So we're talking about, advancing the ball and going places, but I still think there is a tremendous hole in that type of conversation. Whereas I do believe firmly women are much better about it. Because I think one of the reasons is it's okay for a woman to sit there and share those thoughts and feelings. And something that I've come to learn is that the human experience is not specific to one gender. A male is just as susceptible or vulnerable to experiencing all those different emotions, but how we process it and deal with it is different. We may not sit in that spot for as long. We may not have the vocabulary to express it as well, but we feel those things. And it's incumbent upon us to feel comfortable to sit there and say, yeah, this sucks. This, my feelings are hurt. Can you imagine? What would you do if a male figure said my feelings are hurt? I mean, can you imagine that? But think about... Just think about how that would land on you. My feelings are hurt. What? What do you mean your feelings are hurt? That's stupid. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Well, yeah. And it's not the dumbest thing. Sometimes feelings do get hurt. There's a lot of lies we tell our kids. A lot. I'm not talking about just Santa Claus. I'm talking about the top of the list is sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Bullshit. A broken leg will heal. A rotator cuff will come back. A damaged psyche or emotional state as a result of treatment, verbal treatment by somebody who's in your circle. Yeah, that one's going to take a minute. Trust me. And I would be willing to imagine if you're sitting here listening to this, you can think of damaging sentences or words that have been hurled your way and you never forget it. And you've probably done it to somebody else either intentionally or unintentionally. We've done that. And I think... It's our responsibility as people, especially somebody you know close... If if you're close to them, is to take a second and say, are you doing alright? Are you doing okay? There's nothing effeminate about that question. There's nothing not masculine about that question. It's a human being question. And as we sit here and use these kinds of questions that are societal props to fill in the dead time in a conversation as you sit there and buy something or you walk past a neighbor, think about when you ask the following question and mean it. Are you doing okay? See you next time. This is a Stolen Water Media production.