Eric Bickel has had it up to here. With everything.
The Sports Junkies' resident geriatric had an on-air eruption for the ages on Friday, going stark raving mad over something that shouldn't have registered above a two on the Rickter Scale.
"Everything puts me on tilt by the way right now," Bickel shared. "I am so triggered over the last couple days (read: year), anything will trigger me. Anything. I will BITE YOUR HEAD OFF!"
"Oh boy," Jason 'Bish' Bishop responded. "Here we go..."
Here's what you need to know about this story Bickel's about to share, about his wife and daughters' unfortunate dealings with a rental car agency upon landing in Atlanta. Bickel's crawdad-boiling rage has nothing to do with rental cars. This festering anger has been simmering for — oh, let's call it a year.
On Friday, he finally snapped.
"So my wife, she sent me a text. Immediately she sent me a text and texted back the F-word," Bickel continued. "And not to her. But, you know what I mean. 'These f-ing...' And I don't do that on text with my wife. Now, I curse around my wife, but I try not to curse on text with my wife because that just seems rude."
"She says we finally arrived at 12:30 a.m., but when we get there, the rental car agency said they ran out of cars," he said. "WHAT?! My wife and two daughters are in a state they don't know where they are, it's 12:30 in the morning. They rented and reserved the cars. The lady said, 'Well, you were late.' LATE?! We were LATE because the f-ing plane had issues! ANNNNND... she called in advance and she said, 'We're having plane issues. WE'RE GONNA BE LATE!'"
"Ow. My ears hurt," Bish said. "Can you tell us the company?"
"No, because I don't want to lose an advertiser," Bickel said.
"Jalen," Junkies producer Matt Valdez chimed.
"IT'S THE WHOLE INDUSTRY!" Bickel calmly and rationally informed. "It's just like the insurance company."
"Look, I had to pull my cans off my ears," Bish said.
"OK, I'm sorry," Bickel said. "I am so.... I am so triggered. SAY SOMETHING TO ME!"
"You're not a big Jalen fan?" Bish asked. "Should they draft another quarterback?"
"The AIRLINES do the same thing!" Bickel seethed. "When you reserve your car, alright... What do I want them hailing a cab at one in the morning?! Ubers at 100 bucks? We rented a car. It's supposed to be there. So it's not there, because the industry sucks, like so many industries. Like the world, actually.
"And, finally they say, 'We don't have that. We don't have that. Oh, but we have this high-end import model. We have that. You can have that for $200 more.'"
"ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING?!" Bickel raged. "Are you effing kidding? We reserved a car. If that's all you got, you eat the extra 200 bucks. You don't charge me an extra 200 bucks. Am I wrong about this, Cakes? Am I wrong?"
"Absolutely not," Cakes replied. "If they ran out of the car that you reserve, they give you the silly and they eat the difference."
That's when Bish asked Bickel, had he been there in person with his wife and daughters, if he'd scream like he was on the radio at the rental agent.
"We would have had an issue. We would have had an issue," Bickel said. "I'm doing an entertaining show, but I would have been triggered. I would have been triggered. Trust me, EVERYTHING TRIGGERS ME RIGHT NOW!"
Bickel then began to rage over an imaginary incident that hadn't yet occurred.
"And this happens, by the way," Bickel went on to say. "I don't think this has happened in my lifetime, but this happens often to people. I mean I can't imagine this. I might commit homicide if this happened to me. Where I reserve a plane ticket and then the airline, you go and they say, 'Yeah, we've overbooked this. We're gonna have to kick three people off.' Are you kidding? I think you could kill someone and you don't go to jail for that. In fact, you don't even have a court case. They don't even charge you. They don't even charge you for that murder."
"I hope Jalen hears about this," Bish said.
"Something tells me they're going to," Cakes said, correcting himself to say, "He's going to."
"Hey, just tell me that I'm wrong," Bickel said. "Just tell me, 'You know what, EB, you're crazy. You don't know anything. You're a moron. You're a denier.'"
Are we still talking about car rentals?
Around this time, Drab became concerned that Eric, home alone and stewing in a pot of his own anger, might do something irrational in a blind fit of rage.
"Eric, can you stay in the house this weekend," Drab requested.
"What do you mean?" Bickel asked.
"Well, you're at your breaking point," Drab casually observed. "If you leave the house and something goes wrong, you're gonna snap and like fight someone or just wreck your car, just do something dumb."
"It's possible," Bickel agreed. "It's possible."
"Stay off the internet. Stay in the house," Drab suggested. "Watch basketball. You're triggered."
"Oh yeah," Bickel agreed. "I've got a hair trigger right now. I mean I'm cursing at my wife. Yeah. I'm triggered. You're 100 percent right. You come at me, I'm ready to go."
"No one's coming at ya," Drab insisted.
"Oh, people come at me," Bickel disagreed just to disagree, perhaps easing everyone's concerns.
Bickel was so beside himself by this point, Drab slipped in a murderous zing that sailed miles over Bickel's head.
"Is there a hashtag we can get going?" Drab asked.
"Uhhh, I don't know. The world sucks. I don't know," Bickel replied. "The country sucks. I mean, everyone sucks. Apparently I'm the only sane human with any common sense in the world!"
"You're just in a dark place," Cakes stated the obvious.
"By the way, I know what the root of all of this is. I know what the root is," Bish said. "And it rhymes with 'Bovid.'"
"I think there could be some credence to that," Cakes agreed.
"There's a lot," Bickel said. "There's a lot."
Bickel wrapped up the story by saying his wife agreed to pay "the hostage fee."
"They paid the ransom," he added.
"Every once in a while you gotta go nuts," Bickel said. "YOU CAN'T JUST BE A SHEEP! THE COUNTRY'S FULL OF SHEEP!"
"Insurance industry, they do the same thing," he said, again pivoting to a non-existent hypothetical. "Your house floods, they don't want to pay! You've got to have a hundred adjusters come by. They don't want to replace your carpet! They don't want to do any of that!"
"Airlines, they overbook and you go there and you got no seat on the plane," he continued ranting. "That's, by the way, grounds for free homicide, if they do that to you in the future."
"Drab, I'm with you," Cakes said. "He should stay just barricaded inside of his house."
"I'm worried about ya," Drab said. "I mean, if this was an isolated incident, you sound like a crazy person right now."
"You're condoning murder," Bish politely acknowledged.
"If they take away your ticket that you paid for," Bickel said. "I think a judge would agree with me."
Does this look like an individual of sound mind?
It was just another casual day at the office for Eric Bickel...
