In this episode of Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast, Craig Collins delves into the bizarre world of Florida Man. Listen as Craig recounts tales of a naked robber at a meat market and a man who decided a Salvation Army kettle was his weapon of choice. Not to be outdone, another Florida resident claims a toilet incident at Outback Steakhouse left him injured. Each story adds to the wild tapestry that is life in Florida.
Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast, sponsored by Kel-Tec.
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It’s his life mission to make bad decisions. It’s time for Florida Man.
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That’s right. It’s time for Florida Man on the Dana Show. Thrilled to be with you. My name is Craig, Craig Collins. I will be here today and Monday, and then Dana will be back on Tuesday. A couple Florida Man stories out there that I thought were interesting. The first one, a guy robbed a meat market. There are two things about this story that make it Florida Man and not just anybody somewhere in the world trying to rob a meat market. First, he was naked. He showed up there naked for some reason and tried to rob the meat market in the nude. A second, he wasn’t completely naked. Actually, he was wearing a face mask. I don’t know why. And I don’t know what the health benefit would be to the exposure of the rest of the human and the protection of the face and the nose. But he went that road. He thought, you know, I might as well respect people. Who knows what people might think I have as far as illnesses go. Who knows what illnesses other people might have. I might as well cover up my face while leaving everything else out and into the world. So I thought this was a uniquely funny dude, a terrible guy. I wouldn’t want to interact with him myself personally, but I just think that his version of masking is the most unique I’ve heard so far. And of course the guy is in Florida. Another story out there that I thought was interesting is, A Florida man was arrested at a Publix store, a grocery store, because he attacked the manager of the store with his Salvation Army kettle. For some reason, at some point, a man who was volunteering to collect money for the Salvation Army outside of a Publix got in an argument with the manager of the facility and then attacked him with the donation kettle that you’re using to actually accept the donations. I’m assuming there wasn’t a lot of money in it for you to start swinging it at somebody. But nonetheless, that seems like a bad decision to be made just across the board, especially if you try to go back from the attacking of the guy with the kettle to putting it down again and asking people to put donations in it. Because now it’s a weapon. It’s been used in a crime. So they’re probably going to have to confiscate it in some way. shape or form, but nonetheless, I just thought that was funny. The guy was like, nah, I’m sick of this. I’m done with you. It’s me versus you, mano a mano, and I’m using the only weapon I have at my disposal, my kettle that people are putting donations in. One final Florida man story, and this is certainly the most ridiculous of the three that I found. And I feel somewhat bad about this and even telling you about it because my assumption is the person involved, I don’t know what they look like, is going to be a pretty big person because there’s not a lot of ways that this story ends the way it does if it’s a smaller guy. But anyway, a guy in Florida went to a restroom at an Outback Steakhouse and said he got injured. This story actually happened at the very beginning part of this year, like the first few months of the year of 2025, not 2026, excuse me, of last year. But it didn’t really become a giant news until recently. The guy said that the toilet that he sat on at the Outback Steakhouse shattered beneath him. when he sat down on it, and it injured him in a couple different ways. This has also got to be a shocking thing to have happen when you sit down on the toilet. He said he was severely injured, and he was suing for $50,000 plus damages. The man’s name is Michael Green. Outback Steakhouse in Florida has said that it was not their issue, that the toilet should have operated just fine, etc., etc. I think this case is still going to be played out in court somewhere for the foreseeable future. And certainly, a part of me was amused by the idea that someone shattered a toilet. And I don’t know why. It would be probably juvenile reasons that I would laugh at this in any shape or form. But I also do feel terrible for a person who might go to the restroom in a public place and have this be the outcome. Because that can’t possibly be a thing that you’re going to have any sort of good memories of after that. And the only thing about it that would have made it worse for me and I apologize for making this low-hanging fruit joke, but I couldn’t help it, was if it was someplace like a Taco Bell. Outback Steakhouse is only so bad, a Taco Bell you would think would be even worse as far as shattering a toilet goes. In his defense, the man said that the toilet was just a terrible condition. It was something that seemed like it was it was very much destined to break. And he just was the unlucky last guy to sit on it that caused it to shatter into a million pieces. Again, I think that’s something that the restaurant is actually going to contest. What’s crazy about this story to me, though, is that it first happened way back in March. And it’s only really been a case that’s in the news now and in a courtroom at the tail end of last year. So it’s really something where someone I don’t mean to say it this way. This is not the pun I intended to be. sat on this story or sat on this case for a while before inevitably trying to make it a thing where they’re making some money in a courtroom. And I guess that’s the last thing that went through my brain about this topic. You know sometimes people sue because they see an opportunity for a lawsuit. Say somebody who gets burned by coffee pretending as though they shouldn’t have thought it was hot when it was obviously going to be really, really hot. And then there’s people who copycat that too and try to make money somewhere else. Whether this is the person doing it the first time or someone who thought they saw an opportunity for a lawsuit, I’d be really afraid if copycats happened. go this road. So I guess I’m telling anyone out there at any sort of restaurant, if you see a customer come in, ask to use the bathroom, and you’re pretty sure they have a sledgehammer hidden on them somewhere, that they’re going to try to shatter another toilet and then sue you. So if this guy makes a lot of money, copycat lawsuits, I feel like, are definitely a potential risk of all involved. But yeah, I couldn’t get over that. It’s not very often you see a headline in the news where someone went to the restroom and shattered something like a toilet. And so, again, I just feel bad across the board. That’s me being as nice as I can be about a story that I also find hilarious. Quick break. A lot more. Craig Collins filling in on The Dana Show. This is The Dana Show. My name is Craig Collins filling in. Thrilled to be with you. A bunch of stuff to talk about. CBS News new evening anchor Tony DeCoppo talked about. Hold on, Tony. I talked about how honest he’s going to be about, you know, reporting the news to you. And he said how many people have talked to him about how dishonest a media was before it. So let’s go ahead and play on his big intro to being the new anchor of CBS Evening News.
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has changed since the first person sat in this chair. But for me, the biggest difference is people do not trust us like they used to. And it’s not just us. It’s all of legacy media. Yep. And I get it. I get it because I’ve been hearing about it from just about everybody for more than 20 years as I’ve traveled America on this assignment or that. My mom’s neighbors in West Virginia, my own neighbors in New York City. Thousands and thousands of conversations in between.
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Sometimes, by the way, it is interesting that he admits his own neighbors don’t fully trust him. That doesn’t sound good. I know that he was handpicked and many say that he has much more integrity than the average person at mainstream or legacy media right now. Continues.
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People want to talk to me about our coverage of NAFTA or the Iraq war. Other times, it’s all about Hillary Clinton’s emails or Russiagate. Or more recently, COVID lockdowns, Hunter Biden’s laptop or the president’s fitness for office. The point is, on too many stories, the press has missed the story.
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Because we’ve taken… Right there, by the way, I’m pretty much fully on board with him. The press has absolutely missed the story. They neglected it. They ignored it. They purposefully silenced it. There’s a bunch of ways to change the word missed to be the honest version of what’s happening. But missed the story is fine. Now, he gives some excuses I don’t love as much.
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…into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you. And I know this because at certain points I have been you. I have felt this way, too. I felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn’t reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my own life and that the most urgent questions simply weren’t being asked. Yep. So here’s my promise to you today and every time you see me in this chair, you come first. Not advertisers, not politicians, not corporate interests. And yes, that does include the corporate owners of CBS. I report for you, which means I tell you what I know, when I know it and how I know it.
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All right, here you go. Here’s the thing about that. I don’t love when he couches it on some of the misses in news media of not involving enough the opinion of the everyday person. He says that we didn’t often enough rely on your version of events here. And I know he’s not necessarily trying to say it that way, but I just want the truth. I just want him to tell me the things that are real, which is the promise that he makes at the tail end of this video. I don’t need him to couch it in any kind of opinion by anybody or any version of narrative from anyone. I just need the version of events that is accurate. And the problem with mainstream media is is so very often you can get a more thorough description of the actual things going on by going beyond it, by going to some independent news person or person who claims themselves to be an independent journalist who is actually showing up and knocking on doors at places that news media isn’t going. People like Nick Shirley. And you get to judge for yourself when you see the totality of the video, even though you know they’ve edited it. And even though Elon Musk has now just recently said that they’re going to up the amount of money they give to their content creators on X, which might actually be more money than you make per video on something like YouTube. And sure, money will always corrupt people. There are people who will just 100% try to get things that go viral for the sake of that. and won’t necessarily be reporting anything new to you. It’s easier to corrupt one individual than it is to corrupt a whole organization. The problem, though, is these organizations are already fully corrupt. None of them actually are independently capable of preventing this, and I think it’ll wind up that CBS is still among those groups. I think no matter how much good intention… How many people are involved from the higher levels desiring to make things that are not as one-sided as they’ve been in the past? You’d have to do a full bottom-up version of recreating the employee structure at these places because for so long they’ve hired people on one side almost entirely. I’ve told this story before on this radio show, filling in for Dana Lash and other places. I’ve worked at organizations like this. Organizations where a decent amount of the people, no matter what the product was on air, all had a differing opinion than the on-air product and all crapped on it constantly. There were people that even though, you know, the strategy of the company seemed to be one way that behind closed doors would tell you how much they hate it, how terrible it is. And you don’t think those people end up having an influence on the inevitability of the product that gets put on your platform, whatever your platform might be, please. I’ve even told the story several times of a meeting I was in, a large meeting with a lot of people in it, where one of the leaders of the group said that they were no longer going to hire any white people, especially any white guys, to be producers, which is the job I held at the time. And I looked around at the other people there and I’m like, that’s a weird thing to say out loud. Now, granted, it was woke and it was probably popular with the people who weren’t white dudes like myself. But you shouldn’t say that out, even if you do it, which I think is still wrong. You should just hire people who have the most merit for the job. You should hire people who are deserving. I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care who you are, man, woman, white, black, none of that should matter. If you’re the best candidate for the job, you should get the opportunity to have the job. That’s the right way to say it. The wrong way is I’m going to be racist against some employees or I’m going to be unfair in some way. And yet it’s so commonplace. So many places do it. And when you hear leaders say stuff like that, you know that there’s a certain amount of things you might say or believe that are not going to make them happy. And so at places like CBS, the whole point of telling you my own anecdotal experience is to convince you that it’s not going to matter if someone at the top of the food chain is willing to have the product be something that maybe it hasn’t been before. You need all the levels to go. And I know that that means that Barry Weiss or anyone else can just spike down story after story and just say no to this and no to that and keep going that direction. But it won’t matter. At the end of the day, it won’t matter because you’re going to need a whole lot more people to create the product you want. And Tony might be the start of it for CBS Evening News, but he won’t be the end of it. He won’t be the tell-all.
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And now, all of the news you would probably miss. It’s time for Dana’s Quick Five.
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That’s right. It’s time for a quick five on the Dana Show, D-Lash, Dana Lash Radio, and X on Twitter. Great ways to stay connected to her and everything going on. Anthony Joshua’s driver has officially been charged with four different crimes in the crash that killed two of Joshua’s coaches and injured him. The person who was responsible for driving the vehicle has been charged with negligent driving, dangerous driving, driving without due care, all things about just driving in excess speeds and driving in ways that are truly reckless. And then finally, driving without a valid driver’s license, which seems like that’s a bad thing. But this is the driver of the vehicle that caused the accident that Anthony Joshua was in the backseat of a car and it actually killed two of his friends. Just sort of a shocking story coming out of Nigeria days after Anthony Joshua had beaten the crap out of Jake Paul in a fight. He then wound up in a pretty horrible car accident that injured him and took the lives of two of his coaches and two of his, it appears, best friends. Another story out there that I saw that I thought was interesting. People are doing a California sober January, which is different than a dry January. A dry January is where you drink no alcohol at all and you remain sober the entire time. A California sobriety is where you’re high instead of drunk the entirety of the month. Apparently, a lot of people plan on having a whole bunch of pot if they’re not going to have any sort of actual alcohol this month. And they think that’s a pretty good thing. They’re saying this is better than the drinking. I’m not going to weigh in and tell you which one is better or which one is worse. I just don’t think you can call yourself sober if you’re not sober. And any version of being intoxicated and or high feels to me to be the antithesis of what sober is supposed to be. So I just think it’s kind of interesting that people want to take that version of what other people are doing and change it ever so slightly so that they can also feel good about themselves, even if the reality is they’re doing a profoundly different thing. And some of the people who claim that they’re going to do this actually barely ever smoke. So they’re going to do this instead, I guess. Another thing that I thought was interesting… I mentioned it very quickly earlier, but one in eight Americans have now tried or are actually being treated with a GLP-1 drug. This is causing a lot of things to be surprising within our society. One of those is the amount of people who are spending way less money on groceries. There are more people who are just having far less appetite than they had before because of GLP-1 that are buying less at the grocery store. I think the version of a take on this story that I don’t necessarily need to go down, but it’s out there, is that this might mean that grocery items become more expensive because there’s not enough demand and there’s too much supply. And then grocery stores are trying not to lose money from all the wasted product Unlike other industries, we’re saying when items don’t get bought, prices go down. In this world, in the world of certain food products, since things are finite and they go bad, the expectation might actually be that some of the costs go up, which seems weird because supply and demand usually goes the other way. But that’s a take, again, that I’m not committing to. I just thought it was out there as a thing. And then finally, one last one that I thought was amusing. Rock star Mick Jagger’s workout has gone viral. The man does a whole lot of stuff to keep himself in shape. I’ve seen the Rolling Stones in the last few years in concert, and I can tell you, Mick still behaves a lot like the guy you heard of him being when he was in his 20s, even though he’s now in his 80s. These include ballet lessons that he still takes, yoga, Pilates, meditation, all kinds of stuff, and then just regular workouts, too, a few sessions a week at the gym. He also does swimming and kickboxing regularly. So the man stays in about as good a shape as anybody in their 80s can stay in, who’s also lived a heck of a life. I think Mick Jagger has also done some things and maybe had some California Januaries himself that may have taken a different toll on his body, but apparently still doing okay. Still doing fine and proud of it. And many people now would like to do the fitness routine of one Mick Jagger, which I find amusing because I don’t think you’re going to do everything that Mick does in his life. You’re just going to do the working out. And I would actually go even a step further. I don’t care how good a shape I’m in. I’m not doing ballet. It’s not something I’m doing. I’ll do some of the other stuff. I’m not going with the ballet thing. It’s not for me. Quick break. A lot more. Craig Collins filling in on the Dana Show. All right, let’s do something that I plan to do later in the show, but I might as well do now. CNN is very proud of its very drunk New Year’s Eve show that it’s been doing for years. Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper are the two main hosts of it. Andy Cohen at one point broke real bad with Mayor Eric Adams, who is leaving, well, now has left the office of mayor in New York so that Zoran Mamdani can be sworn in over a Koran, which is also crazy that that happened and not a Bible. But nonetheless, here’s what Andy Cohen had to say about Mayor Adams when the rest of the show seemed to be begging him not to say stuff. But he said things about pardons and, you know, don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. Basically, he didn’t say those words, but they’re basically the tone. I’m no defender of Eric Adams. I just think it’s weird CNN is so proud of their New Year’s Eve show that’s so uniquely terrible. I don’t think that many people watch it, but a whole lot of us see clips online of how bad things probably got during the show. Here we go.
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I would like to say, watching the final moments of Mayor Adams, chaotic, or are we going on a de Blasio style? I just want to say, I mean, he got his pardons.
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Andy, Andy, we’ve gotta cut you off. I’ve seen this happen.
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No, I’m just saying, great. You got your margins. Go off into the sunset. We’ll fiddle with what we have, with what you’ve left us with.
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This is so weird. And again, they’re proud of this. They put this on every year. And yes, at some point, Cohen, whenever there’s an outgoing mayor in New York, also breaks bad on that mayor. But they just get absolutely blitzed on television for some reason. There was another moment that went very viral. A lot of people on the left are up in arms. They’re upset about this. Both of the hosts seem to not like this joke. But Amy Sedaris made what I thought was one of the best jokes of the night when asked a question about where the best place would be to find a man. in 2026. Of course, she’s standing there with two gay men who are the co-host of the show. And the joke she made, uniquely hilarious in the world of all the things we talk about, about men saying that they’re women and then going to women’s restrooms and whatnot. I’m burying the lead here. I’m ruining the joke for you. But a lot of people all over the internet and a lot of the people on the far left thought this was a deeply insensitive and wrong I don’t know. If you’re going from the rules of humor, this is genuinely funny, I thought.
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Where’s the best place to meet a man in 2026?
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Oh, really? Well, where’s a good place to meet a man? I’d say in the ladies’ room, but… I don’t know. Where can you meet a man? Maybe… Silent.
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And I like that you actually even see her cheeks get a little rosy. She’s a comedian, so she probably didn’t care that much about the swing and the miss with the audience that was there. But that’s a great joke. That’s all the levels of a thing that you want in the world of humor. It is surprising. Not what you were expecting the answer to be. And it’s definitely grounded in a lot of the conversations people have been having over the last couple years. One of the biggest one being that people on one side of the political aisle would rather not have people be able to declare that they’re women and then go to have, you know, go to the restroom in the women’s room, even if they’re actually biologically a dude. That feels like that’s wrong. Somehow that’s controversial in the society we live in to say that, though. And the left thinks you’re mean and terrible. which, of course, they thought Amy was during that part of the show. I thought that was really a good and funny moment on the show that, again, I didn’t actually watch, but saw later via all the reruns. I actually saw headlines of news articles talking about that joke. which is kind of funny because, again, the CNN audience itself I don’t think is that large. So most of the other people who wrote about how offensive it was probably also saw it as a clip and not as a real thing they watched on television at night, like live. But when I read the headlines, I then went to go search for the clip, saw it, and was like, no, that’s hilarious. Every part of that is exactly what humor is supposed to be.
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Thanks for tuning in to today’s edition of Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
