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[00:00:04]

Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. This is going to be kind of short, which Chuck and I were just discussing. So let's go on with the long, meandering intro that has nothing to do with anything, Chuck.

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Well, maybe it's going to be short in the front row and then maybe, you know, we should have done as we should have done like two minutes and then a commercial break and then ten minutes. That's a great idea. Maybe we will. The mullet of podcasting will edit out this part where we figure it out as we're doing it to you.

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All right. Maybe we should take a break. Man, that's an ultra short mullet right there. All right.

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So we're talking about the mullet business in the front party in the back. Always, I thought was very funny of this hairstyle where your hair is short in the front and top and long in the back. Yeah. The one that really got me that I have never heard before.

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I know. I know. It's the Missouri compromise. Yeah. That one or it's a good one. Kentucky waterfall. I hadn't heard that one before either. I hadn't either.

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That one got me. But for some reason, Missouri compromise really gets me. It's like the is working it out, you know. Right.

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Or the the teenage Judas Priest fan is working it out with his mom, you know.

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So let's go ahead and level set here and talk about our own history with the mullet. Have you had a mullet ever?

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No. Have you? I have what I did, man. There was a time, believe it or not, in the 80s where the mullet was sort of a skater haircut. It was kind of short and spiky and then a little longer in the back. And this was pre Billy Ray Cyrus and pretty sort of anyone calling it a mullet. But looking back, it was definitely what you would consider a mullet, but it was kind of like a cool skater kid haircut.

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Yeah, Tony Hawk had one. He yeah. And one of the differentiators, too, was like it wasn't just short bangs on top, like it would come over the one eye from the side, but yeah, it would be spiky on top and then long in the back it totally was a mullet. I never put two and two together like that, but no, I still never had one.

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But there is a very embarrassing picture of me from like the 10th grade from a church, whatever album, annual yearbook. What are they called when they're churches. I have no idea.

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Well, churches used to put these out every few years by the year, but, you know, yeah, it's a Bible and we were all in it. But I had a mullet. This is the only picture of me with a mullet in existence. And I was wearing a mullet and paisley maroon suspenders and a tie. Wow. And my brother still threatens to that's sort of his big thing. He holds over my head my attention.

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Scott, I'm speaking directly to you now. We demand to see that photo.

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Yeah, I will I will say that I got wise pretty quick. And by the end of 10th grade, it was a short lived haircut and I had sort of the other skater look, which was just like long bangs, right.

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Yeah. So so you just lopped off the back of that Tony Hawk cut. Yeah. And there was still a little hair back there. But I mean, actually the most embarrassing haircut I had in high school is the that mushroom when you would shave around your ears and the and then the bottom of the back and just have sort of a big poof on top.

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I'll have to take a picture of what's going on my my high school haircut was a Caesar. You remember those? Oh, sure. I had one of those for years and years and years.

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Didn't look good on anybody, especially not that guy on the original CSI series.

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Do you remember him? Did you ever watch that? No, I never saw it.

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There was a guy who's a well, he was an old older guy, like well into middle age who had a seizure. And it wasn't like accidental. Like he had a Caesar haircut. And it was just an odd hairstyle choice, I think, for him.

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All right. Maybe we should take a break and we'll actually talk about the mullet when we come back. Does that sound good? Sounds great.

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If you want to know your. Look, just listen to Sanjak stuff. You should know. Hey, it's Bobby Bones, executive producer of Make It Up as we Go, the brand new podcast from Audio Up and I Heart Radio brought to you exclusively by Unilever's Noor and Magnum Brands. The story follows a songwriter's journey as well as the songs themselves and how they make it to country radio from executive producer Miranda Lambert and creators Scarlett Burg and Jared Goosestep, a story inspired by the competitive world of Nashville writing rooms featuring original music by Scarlett Burke, director and executive producer, featuring some of the biggest names in country, including The Cool Guy and Everything Now Nowadays.

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Just like now, it's feeling like one day on a Saturday night, make it up as we go only on the podcast network in association with audio of media created by Scarlett Burke and Jared Goosestep. Stuff you should. All right, Chuck, so let's get down to the mullet, aka hockey here, that's another term for it.

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Yeah, some credit, the Beastie Boys with popularizing the term mullet. They had a song and ill communication in 1994 called Mullet Head, where Ad Rock says you want to know what's a mullet? Well, I got a little story to tell about a hairstyle. That's a way of life. Have you ever seen a mullet wife?

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It doesn't make that much sense, but it does seem to be like the first real reference to this hairstyle using the word mullet from what anybody can tell.

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Yeah, and the term mullet head has long been around just as a general derogatory term for a dummy. Yeah. Which had nothing to do with the haircut. And they think that may have come over from the British derogatory term head.

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Oh, it's still yeah. That's what they said, but it still doesn't explain. And maybe they just aren't related how the haircut got this name after this weird looking fish.

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Right. So I guess Mike Dee wrote a little article about what they were talking about in that song Mullet Head, and he said that the mullet fish, the Mola fish is basically just like one long.

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It's like oblong. It's like a drawing of a whale.

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Basically, it doesn't have any kind of anything that would suggest its head is separate from its body. And apparently when it rots, it rots from the neck down, which kind of gives it the appearance, a bit of a mullet or people who have the mullet hairstyle look a little bit like a rotting mullet fish, I guess, as far as my dear Adblock thought. And that that's how he explained where that term came from, but that the the use of the word mullet had to mean kind of a dummy makes Mark Twain frequently cited as the guy who coined the term mullet, which is way off because he was using it in that sense that you were saying, which is.

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Yeah. Kind of Thick-Headed or Erdem or something like that.

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Yeah. I think the fun thing about this article which we got from HowStuffWorks was kind of tracing back the actual hairstyle through history. And if you go back and look, there's a great article on history. Dotcom woman named Linda Lucena writes about the ancient Greek poet Homer in the Iliad. Rape's writes about this group of spearmen called the absentees, and they had their four locks cropped and hair grown long at the backs. That's a moat. That's a full mullet.

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Yeah.

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And Homer wrote The Iliad in the 8th century BCE so almost 3000 years ago at the at the latest.

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People were already wearing mullets, and there's this other article for Deji Dazed Digital by Oliver Lonn that talks about and I've seen pictures of prehistoric peoples that look like they kind of have a mullet. And practically that kind of makes sense because, you know, if you're hunting and gathering, you need that hair out of your eyes. So you might cut it off with a stone tool right up front and then you want a little further in the back to protect from sun or from rain or to help keep you warm.

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Yeah, the sun's a big one. I suspect that's why Andre Agassi had won, because he had to go play tennis in the sun all the time. Was very sensitive about his neck getting sunburn.

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Yeah. Agassi, you think of Mullet's, you think of Agassi, you think of Billy Ray Cyrus. And there was a basketball player for the University of Florida named Duane Shininess that I think he played pro for a little while. But he was a big, tall center and he had a fantastic boxy mullet.

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Did he really OK. I always think of Shawn Thomas Scott, Shawn William Scott, Kristin Scott Thomas, one of those he was in.

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Dude, where's my car? The non Koocher guy.

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That was Kristin Scott Thomas, right?

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Yeah, his he had a really fantastic mullet in old school. You remember that?

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Oh yeah. Old school is that was a good movie. Yeah. Yeah it was. I mean it's funny, it was very funny.

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But he's the guy who shows up with I can't remember what kind of animal to the birthday party, the kid's party.

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And he has a drug Gleiser Gun that Will Ferrell accidentally shoots himself with.

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Is this Stiffler? Yeah. Stiffler, that's right. Yeah, he's funny.

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You know, another movie he was in that was underrated and under scene is not stepbrother's big brothers. Oh, yes.

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Well, is that the name of it where he had role models. Role models. That's it. That is a good movie. You know, Paul Rudd wrote that himself. Oh, he did. That was a David Wain directed movie. So it all makes sense. It was good all around. Everybody in. That was great. Yeah. He was very funny, very underrated movie, I think. Should we talk about a couple of the cool examples of Mullet's in rock history?

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Yeah, that's it.

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You're about to step into some controversy, but I'll watch you do it. Well, there's two that I can really think of. The one this article mentions is David Bowie. That's the controversial one. Yeah. I mean, if you look at Ziggy Stardust in the era, he definitely has what you would consider a mullet, but it's also dyed red and he's wearing the Ziggy Stardust outfit. So it's hard to call that a mullet, even though it kind of is.

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Well, from what I saw, the people who say it's not a mullet just basically say David Bowie was literally too cool.

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Yeah. To have what you would call a mullet even when he was wearing a mullet. That's their argument, basically, which I mean, that's pretty, pretty impressive as far as the cool factor goes that people will defend you like that. Yeah.

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The other example is there was a time in the 70s where both Paul and Linda McCartney had a matching mullet.

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Right. And it was really puffy and spiky on both of them and very long in the back. So, you know, it was a look it was a look for a couple for sure.

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What about Jane Fonda and Klute? That wasn't a mullet, really.

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My mom had that haircut for a little while in the 70s. That sort of. I mean, it's a female, it is anything, it is just going that term. Oh, no, you never heard that? No. Now, the lady Mullet was always called a female. It. But I know what haircut you're talking about, it was it was sort of like a haystack with a little bit in the back. Yeah, I guess that's a good way to put it.

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Florence Henderson had one for a little while, kind of on The Brady Bunch, too.

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But I think of I think of Jane Fonda's as a straight up mullet, but maybe maybe it is just a female.

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It was such a good movie. I never saw it. I'm not even sure what it's about.

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Oh, man, you should check it out. It's awesome. OK, well, it's a it's a mystery, OK. All right. Don't spoil it for me. Hey, speaking of mysteries and movies, get this. I went back and watched the original 70s Sidney Lumet version of Murder on the Orient Express.

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That was a good man. It is. Oh, yeah. Delightful.

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Albert Finney plays Hercule Poirot, and I couldn't even recognize him for the first 30 minutes.

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He does such a good job. And so it's a really great scene. It's it's it's on the Internet so you can find it.

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One final moment where we should mention is none other than President James K Polk.

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If you go look him up, he's certain he has a mullet. Yeah.

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And what was the name of. I want to say Mogwai, but it wasn't the the bad guy, um, he wasn't a Mohawk. I can't remember what he was, but in the Last of the Mohicans, do you remember that guy played by West Studi? He had them. Yeah. I don't care what you call it.

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It was a mullet he was wearing. And that was a great movie, too.

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Uh, yeah. I was trying to think of a PC joke, but I can't. OK, we'll just leave it at that. And that's it for short stuff, everybody. That's it.

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We have. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?