JASON: There’s a guy in Cape Cod who claims he was swallowed by a humpback whale while diving for lobsters. I told you it was a stretch, but just bear with me. Michael Packard, 56 years old, diving off, what was it — Herring Cove Beach — last Friday morning when he felt a bump and then everything went dark. Reminds me of my honeymoon. At first he thought Jaws got him, right? I mean, this is it. And then he didn’t feel any teeth. He instantly realized as most people would, right? I’m in a whale. I mean, come on. It’s happened to you.
Packard described 40 agonizing seconds where he says he braced for the next moment, thinking, he’d get, you know, eaten or sucked into the big belly and done for. But then all of a sudden the whale realized that this is not the right season for humans and started trashing its head, spitting him back out into the water. This guy’s buddy, Captain Joe Francis — this is Michael Packard’s buddy — says he witnessed the tail end — pardon the pun — the tail end of the ordeal and helped bring him to safety.
FRANCIS: I saw Mike come flying out of the water feet first with his flippers on and land back in the water so I jumped aboard the boat, we got him up, got his tank off, and got him on the deck calmed him down, he goes, “Joe,” he goes, “I was in the mouth of a whale,” he goes, “I can’t believe it, I was in the mouth of a whale, Joe.”
JASON: You know, I wasn’t there for that, but I did sit through an episode of Flipper last night. Does that count for anything? No? All right. Can’t believe he was in the mouth of a whale. Packard was apparently hospitalized with some soft tissue damage to the legs, but he’s otherwise doing pretty well.
Now, look. I thought for sure, you know, after hearing the story — I don’t know about you, but really I’m going back to Robert Shaw in Jaws. And this is what thought we’d here.
SHAW: When I was a boy, a little squid, wanted to be a harpooner or sword fisherman. What you got here? Portable shower or a monkey cage?
DREYFUSS: Antishark cage.
SHAW: Antishark cage. You go inside the cage? Cage goes in the water? You go in the water? Shark’s in the water. Our shark. (singing) Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies, farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we received orders for to sail back to Boston, and so never more shall we see you again.
JASON: Well, you go in a shark cage or you get swallowed by a humpback whale, what’s the difference? The point is it’s an unbelievable story, and I thought the perfect segue to the Larry the Lobster story from Rush TV days.
RUSH: Here’s Steven — back to the phones — Gainesville, Florida, great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: You used to have a show on TV about 20 something years ago, and I was a kid at the time, and I picked it up on my antenna, and I remember you had this lobster in the background. And you had him in a tank, and you said you were gonna eat him on Friday. And this was before the internet and there’s only three major networks. And I just remember how much, you know, outpour you brought nationally because you said you were gonna eat a lobster at the end of the week and what that told me was this. It just showed me that one, Democrats don’t have any sense of humor and two they’ll make a ruckus out of anything. There’s nothing logical about that.
RUSH: let me explain the lobster story, because you watched it when you were young. There are actually two elements to the lobster story. The first element is that a Los Angeles (Malibu, I think) bar or restaurant had Larry the Lobster (they had named him) in the tank. He was big and he was old, and they were going to eat Larry.
They were gonna do what they did, and Mary Tyler Moore and a couple of other Hollywood actresses launched a campaign to save Larry the Lobster, and I entered the bidding to buy Larry the Lobster so that I could eat him and share him with my audience — and that further outraged them. When I lost — and then there’s a second lobster story. Katie Couric was doing a cooking episode with some chef on the Today show.
The chef is cooking lobster, and the chef started cutting up a live lobster and throwing the parts on a skillet, and Katie was grossed out. (wailing) “Ewwww! Oh, my God! Oh, my Gaaawd! What are you doing! Oh, my God,” and the chef says, “Well, this is what you do. You gotta do these a certain way, otherwise they’ll poison you. Gotta…” Couric said, “Oh, my Gaaawd.” So then we had, later in the week, after playing that…
Of course I didn’t bring in a lobster and a chef and all that, but we brought our friends over from Patsy’s and started throwing fried calamari to the audience. So we did two episodes with the lobster. Yeah, the Patsy guys came over with just giant vats of fried calamari, and I just started throwing it into the audience in honor of Katie Couric being grossed out by watching the way you cook a lobster. Good memory, sir, because that’s 20 years ago.
CALLER: Yeah, it was a long time. I was only 12 or 13 at the time. But, you know, the thing… It’s just a paradigm to explain how illogical the liberals are on anything.
JASON: Actually it’s a paradigm to explain Greta on global warming from across the pond, how childish liberals — I’m telling you, Victor Davis Hanson had the best line last week at some point where he said the Millennial left — and I think the entire left — is stuck in “prolonged adolescence.”