Dirty Jobs

 The "Dirty Jobs" crew and I were called to a little townin Colorado, called Craig. It's only a couple dozen square miles. It's in the Rockies. And the job in question was sheep rancher. My role on the show, for those of youwho haven't seen it -- it's pretty simple. I'm an apprentice, and I work with the peoplewho do the jobs in question. And my responsibilitiesare to simply try and keep up, and give an honest accountof what it's like to be these people for one day in their life. The job in question: herding sheep. Great. We go to Craig and we check into a hotel, and I realize the next day that castration is going to bean absolute part of this work. Normally, I never do any research at all. But this is a touchy subject,and I work for the Discovery Channel, and we want to portray accuratelywhatever it is we do. And we certainly want to do itwith a lot of respect for the animals. So I call the Humane Society and I say, "Look, I'm going to be castratingsome lambs. Can you tell me the deal?" And they're like, "Yeah,it's pretty straightforward." They use a band, basically, a rubber band,like this, only a little smaller. This one was actuallyaround the playing cards I got yesterday -- (Laughter) But it had a certain familiarity to it. And I said, "Well, what exactlyis the process?" And they said, "The bandis applied to the tail, tightly. And then another band is appliedto the scrotum, tightly. Blood flow is slowly retarded; a week later the partsin question fall off. "Great -- got it." OK, I call the SPCA to confirm this. They confirm it. I also call PETA just for fun, and they don't like it,but they confirm it. OK, that's basically how you do it. So the next day I go out. And I'm given a horseand we go get the lambs and we take them to a pen that we built, and we go about the businessof animal husbandry. Melanie is the wife of Albert. Albert is the shepherd in question. Melanie picks up the lamb,one hand on both legs on the right, likewise on the left. Lamb goes on the post, she opens it up. Alright. Great. Albert goes in, I follow Albert,the crew is around. I always watch the process donethe first time before I try it. Being an apprentice,you know, you do that. Albert reaches in his pocket to pull out,you know, this black rubber band, but what comes out instead is a knife. And I'm like, "Hmm, that's notrubber at all," you know? (Laughter) And he kind of flicked it openin a way that caught the sun that was just comingover the Rockies, it was very -- (Laughter) It was ... it was impressive. In the space of about two seconds, Albert had the knifebetween the cartilage of the tail, right next to the butt of the lamb, and very quickly, the tail was goneand in the bucket that I was holding. A second later, with a big thumband a well-calloused forefinger, he had the scrotum firmly in his grasp. And he pulled it toward him, like so, and he took the knifeand he put it on the tip. "Now, you think you knowwhat's coming, Michael, You don't, OK?" (Laughter) He snips it, throws the tipover his shoulder, and then grabs the scrotumand pushes it upward, and then his head dips down,obscuring my view. But what I hear is a slurping sound, and a noise that sounds like Velcrobeing yanked off a sticky wall, and I am not even kidding. Can we roll the video? No, I'm kidding, we don't -- (Laughter) I thought it best to talk in pictures. I do something now I've never, ever doneon a "Dirty Jobs" shoot, ever. I say, "Time out. Stop." You guys know the show, we use take one;we don't do take two. There's no writing, there's no scripting,there's no nonsense. We don't fool around, we don't rehearse -- we shoot what we get! I said, "Stop. This is nuts." I mean -- (Laughter) "This is crazy. We can't do this." And Albert's like, "What?" And I'm like, "I don't knowwhat just happened, but there are testicles in this bucket, and that's not how we do it." He said "Well, that's how we do it." I said, "Why would you do it this way?" And before I even let him explain, I said, "I want to do it the right way,with the rubber bands." And he says, "Like the Humane Society?" I said, "Yes, like the Humane Society. Let's do something that doesn't makethe lamb squeal and bleed. We're on in five continents, dude! We're on twice a dayon the Discovery -- we can't do this." He says, "OK." He goes to his box and pulls outa bag of these little rubber bands. Melanie picks up another lamb,puts it on the post, band goes on the tail,band goes on the scrotum. Lamb goes on the ground,lamb takes two steps, falls down, gets up, shakes a little, takes another couple steps, falls down. I'm like, this is not a good signfor this lamb, at all. Gets up, walks to the corner. It's quivering, and it liesdown and it's in obvious distress. And I'm looking at the lamband I say, "Albert, how long? When does he get up?" He's like, "A day?" I said, "A day! How long doesit take them to fall off?" "A week." Meanwhile, the lamb that he had just donehis little procedure on is, you know, he's just prancingaround, bleeding stopped. He's, you know, nibblingon some grass, frolicking. And I was just so blown awayat how completely wrong I was, in that second. And I was reminded how utterly wrongI am, so much of the time. (Laughter) And I was especially reminded of what a ridiculouslyshort straw I had that day, because now I had to dowhat Albert had just done, and there are like 100of these lambs in the pen. And suddenly, this whole thing's startingto feel like a German porno, and I'm like -- (Laughter) Melanie picks up the lamb,puts it on the post, opens it up. Albert hands me the knife. I go in, tail comes off. I go in, I grab the scrotum,tip comes off. Albert instructs, "Push it way up there." I do. "Push it further." I do. The testicles emerge. They looklike thumbs, coming right at you. And he says, "Bite 'em. Just bite 'em off." (Laughter) And I heard him, I heard all the words -- (Laughter) Like, how did I get here? How did -- I mean -- how did I get here? It's just -- it's one of those momentswhere the brain goes off on its own, and suddenly, I'm standingthere in the Rockies, and all I can think of is the Aristoteliandefinition of a tragedy. You know, Aristotle saysa tragedy is that moment when the hero comes face to facewith his true identity. (Laughter) And I'm like, "What is thisjacked-up metaphor? I don't like what I'm thinking right now." And I can't get this thoughtout of my head, and I can't get that visionout of my sight, so I did what I had to do. I went in and I took them. I took them like this, and I yanked my head back. And I'm standing therewith two testicles on my chin. (Laughter) And now I can't get --I can't shake the metaphor. I'm still in "Poetics," in Aristotle,and I'm thinking -- out of nowhere, two terms come crashinginto my head, that I hadn't heard since my classics professor in collegedrilled them there. And they are "anagnorisis"and "peripeteia." Anagnorisis and peripeteia. Anagnorisis is the Greekword for discovery. Literally, the transition from ignoranceto knowledge is anagnorisis. It's what our network does;it's what "Dirty Jobs" is. And I'm up to my neckin anagnorises every single day. Great. The other word, peripeteia, that's the momentin the great tragedies -- Euripides and Sophocles. That's the moment where Oedipus hashis moment, where he suddenly realizes that hot chick he's been sleeping withand having babies with is his mother. That's peripety, or peripeteia. And this metaphor in my head -- I've got anagnorisisand peripeteia on my chin -- (Laughter) I've got to tell you,it's such a great device, though. When you start to look for peripeteia, you find it everywhere. I mean, Bruce Willisin "The Sixth Sense," right? Spends the whole movie trying to helpthe little kid who sees dead people, and then -- boom! -- "Oh, I'm dead." Peripeteia. You know? It's crushing when the audiencesees it the right way. Neo in "The Matrix," you know? "Oh, I'm living in a computer program. That's weird." These discoveriesthat lead to sudden realizations. And I've been having them,over 200 dirty jobs, I have them all the time, but that one -- that one drilled something homein a way that I just wasn't prepared for. And, as I stood there, looking at the happy lambthat I had just defiled -- but it looked OK; looking at that poor other little thingthat I'd done it the right way on, and I just was struck by -- if I'm wrong about that, and if I'm wrong so often,in a literal way, what other peripatetic misconceptionsmight I be able to comment upon? Because, look --I'm not a social anthropologist, but I have a friend who is. And I talk to him. (Laughter) And he says, "Hey Mike, look. I don't know if your brain is interestedin this sort of thing or not, but do you realizeyou've shot in every state? You've worked in mining,you've worked in fishing, you've worked in steel,you've worked in every major industry. You've had your backshoulder to shoulder with these guys that our politicians are desperateto relate to every four years, right?" I can still see Hillarydoing the shots of rye, dribbling down her chin,with the steel workers. I mean, these are the peoplethat I work with every single day. "And if you have something to sayabout their thoughts, collectively, it might be time to think about it. Because, dude, you know, four years." So, that's in my head,testicles are on my chin, thoughts are bouncing around. And, after that shoot,"Dirty Jobs" really didn't change, in terms of what the show is,but it changed for me, personally. And now, when I talk about the show, I no longer just tell the storyyou heard and 190 like it. I do, but I also start to talkabout some of the other things I got wrong; some of the other notions of work that I've just been assumingare sacrosanct, and they're not. People with dirty jobsare happier than you think. As a group, they'rethe happiest people I know. And I don't want to start whistling"Look for the Union Label," and all that happy-worker crap. I'm just telling youthat these are balanced people who do unthinkable work. Roadkill picker-uppers whistlewhile they work, I swear to God -- I did it with them. They've got this amazingsort of symmetry to their life. And I see it over and over and over again. So I started to wonder what would happen if we challengedsome of these sacred cows? Follow your passion -- we've been talking about ithere for the last 36 hours. Follow your passion -- what couldpossibly be wrong with that? It's probably the worst advice I ever got. (Laughter) Follow your dreams and go broke, right? I mean, that's all I heard growing up. I didn't know what to do with my life, but I was told if you follow your passion,it's going to work out. I can give you 30 examples right now. Bob Combs, the pig farmer in Las Vegas who collects the uneaten scrapsof food from the casinos and feeds them to his swine. Why? Because there's so much proteinin the stuff we don't eat, his pigs grow at twice the normal speed,and he's one rich pig farmer. He's good for the environment, he spends his daysdoing this incredible service, and he smells like hell,but God bless him. He's making a great living. You ask him, "Did you followyour passion here?" and he'd laugh at you. The guy's worth -- he just got offeredlike 60 million dollars for his farm and turned it down, outside of Vegas. He didn't follow his passion. He stepped back and he watchedwhere everybody was going, and he went the other way. And I hear that story over and over. Matt Freund, a dairy farmerin New Canaan, Connecticut, who woke up one day and realized the crap from his cowswas worth more than their milk, if he could use it to makethese biodegradable flowerpots. Now he's selling them to Walmart, right? Follow his passion? The guy's -- come on. So I started to look at passion, I started to lookat efficiency vs. effectiveness. As Tim talked about earlier,that's a huge distinction. I started to look at teamworkand determination. And basically, all those platitudesthey call "successories" that hang with that schmaltzy artin boardrooms around the world right now, that stuff -- it's suddenlyall been turned on its head. Safety. Safety first is ... Going back to OSHA and PETAand the Humane Society: What if OSHA got it wrong? I mean -- this is heresy,what I'm about to say -- but what if it's really safety third? Right? (Laughter) No, I mean, really. What I mean to say is: I value my safety on these crazy jobs as much as the peoplethat I'm working with, but the ones who really get it done -- they're not out theretalking about safety first. They know that other things come first -- the business of doingthe work comes first, the business of getting it done. And I'll never forget,up in the Bering Sea, I was on a crab boatwith the "Deadliest Catch" guys -- which I also work on in the first season. We were about 100 milesoff the coast of Russia: 50-foot seas, big waves, green watercoming over the wheelhouse, right? Most hazardous environment I'd ever seen, and I was back with a guy,lashing the pots down. So I'm 40 feet off the deck, which is like looking downat the top of your shoe, you know, and it's doing this in the ocean. Unspeakably dangerous. I scamper down, I go into the wheelhouse and I say, with some level of incredulity, "Captain -- OSHA?" And he says, "OSHA? Ocean." And he points out there. (Laughter) But in that moment, what he said nextcan't be repeated in the Lower 48. It can't be repeated on any factory flooror any construction site. But he looked at me and said, "Son," -- he's my age, by the way,he calls me "son," I love that -- he says, "Son, I'm the captainof a crab boat. My responsibilityis not to get you home alive. My responsibilityis to get you home rich." (Laughter) You want to get home alive,that's on you." And for the restof that day -- safety first. I mean, I was like -- So, the idea that we createthis sense of complacency when all we do is talkabout somebody else's responsibility as though it's our own, and vice versa. Anyhow, a whole lot of things. I could talk at lengthabout the many little distinctions we made and the endless list of waysthat I got it wrong. But what it all comes down to is this: I've formed a theory, and I'm going to share it nowin my remaining 2 minutes and 30 seconds. It goes like this: we've declared war on work,as a society -- all of us. It's a civil war. It's a cold war, really. We didn't set out to do it and we didn't twist our mustachein some Machiavellian way, but we've done it. And we've waged this waron at least four fronts, certainly in Hollywood. The way we portray working people on TV -- it's laughable. If there's a plumber, he's 300 pounds and he's got a giant butt crack, admit it. You see him all the time. That's what plumbers look like, right? We turn them into heroes,or we turn them into punch lines. That's what TV does. We try hard on "Dirty Jobs"not to do that, which is why I do the workand I don't cheat. But, we've waged this waron Madison Avenue. So many of the commercials that come outthere in the way of a message -- what's really being said? "Your life would be betterif you could work a little less, didn't have to work so hard,got home a little earlier, could retire a little faster,punch out a little sooner." It's all in there,over and over, again and again. Washington? I can't even begin to talkabout the deals and policies in place that affect the bottom-line realityof the available jobs, because I don't really know; I just knowthat that's a front in this war. And right here, guys -- Silicon Valley. I mean -- how many people havean iPhone on them right now? How many people have their BlackBerry? We're plugged in; we're connected. I would never suggest for a second that something badhas come out of the tech revolution. Good grief, not to this crowd. (Laughter) But I would suggest that innovation without imitationis a complete waste of time. And nobody celebrates imitation the way "Dirty Jobs" guysknow it has to be done. Your iPhone without those peoplemaking the same interface, the same circuitry,the same board, over and over -- all of that -- that's what makesit equally as possible as the genius that goes inside of it. So, we've got this new toolbox. You know? Our tools today don't looklike shovels and picks. They look like the stuffwe walk around with. And so the collectiveeffect of all of that has been this marginalizationof lots and lots of jobs. And I realized, probablytoo late in this game -- I hope not, because I don't knowif I can do 200 more of these things -- but we're going to do as many as we can. And to me, the mostimportant thing to know and to really come face to face with, is that fact that I got it wrongabout a lot of things, not just the testicles on my chin. I got a lot wrong. So, we're thinking --by "we," I mean me -- (Laughter) that the thing to do is to talkabout a PR campaign for work -- manual labor, skilled labor. Somebody needs to be out there,talking about the forgotten benefits. I'm talking about grandfather stuff, the stuff a lot us probably grew up with but we've kind of --you know, kind of lost a little. Barack wants to createtwo and a half million jobs. The infrastructure is a huge deal. This war on work that I suppose exists,has casualties like any other war. The infrastructure is the first one, declining trade school enrollmentsare the second one. Every single year, fewer electricians,fewer carpenters, fewer plumbers, fewer welders, fewer pipe fitters,fewer steam fitters. The infrastructure jobs that everybodyis talking about creating are those guys -- the onesthat have been in decline, over and over. Meanwhile, we've gottwo trillion dollars, at a minimum, according to the American Societyof Civil Engineers, that we need to expendto even make a dent in the infrastructure, which is currently rated at a D minus. So, if I were runningfor anything -- and I'm not -- I would simply saythat the jobs we hope to make and the jobs we hope to create aren't going to stick unlessthey're jobs that people want. And I know the point of this conference is to celebrate thingsthat are near and dear to us, but I also know that cleanand dirty aren't opposites. They're two sides of the same coin,just like innovation and imitation, like risk and responsibility,like peripeteia and anagnorisis, like that poor little lamb,who I hope isn't quivering anymore, and like my time that's gone. It's been great talking to you. And get back to work, will you?  I must have been about 18 or 19, telling me that if I didn't agree to the ridiculous terms or painfully low salary in his movie that he would just replace me because girls are replaceable in the entertainment business.