Top Shelf Stories
In a world that often shuns the uncomfortable, we embrace it with open arms—and open laughs. Our candid narratives around our stories assure you that awkwardness is a shared human experience. Tune in, enjoy the ride, and maybe learn a thing or two.
Top Shelf Stories
Two Brothers Learn To Fight, Then Learn When To Stop
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We stumble through a chaotic cold open and land on two raw stories about brother fights: a bank-lot standoff born from bar talk and a stairwell brawl that ends with cuffs, mud, and a lesson in restraint. Training shows up, pride takes over, and forgiveness has the last word.
• messy intro banter before settling into the story
• joining a Muay Thai gym and early training highs
• bar-night needling that tips into a parking-lot faceoff
• the standoff, quick combos, apology, and a cheap swing
• a second fight at home, a broken gate, a stairwell tackle
• police split-up, drunk tank reunion, and lingering guilt
• short-guy dynamics, bullying, and how training shapes restraint
• comic relief via the Tom Brady roast and crypto tangents
• ETFs, pensions, and why hype feels like a fight crowd
• closing reflections on brotherhood, control, and walking away
Chaotic Cold Open And Setup
SPEAKER_04Top Shelf Stories with Jay, Chris, and Tony.
SPEAKER_02Brothers fight. Brothers love each other. And this story on top shelf. Ah, fuck it.
SPEAKER_04Why do you want to make it like this perfect interlude? Like, how about hey everybody? Welcome to the show. My name is Chris. I'm gonna tell you a story about when I got in a fight with my brother. Okay. I'm here with Jay and Tony.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02All right. I don't know. I just thought maybe hey.
SPEAKER_04You like want to write it like it's like on today's episode of three. An inside edition. Three criminals, one cup. Like, what the fuck are you trying to do? Write the beginning. Write the beginning at the end, like we used to. It's way easier because then you could be like, I tell the story about how I farted on my leg and I thought it was a fart, but it was a chart. True that's okay, fine, whatever.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Welcome everyone on today's.
SPEAKER_04All right, guys, is here's my story. There you go.
Framing The Brother Fight Story
SPEAKER_02Why are you cupping one ash cheek? Because it's cold. It's cold. Stop looking at my butt. My butt cheek is cold. You got a cold haircut.
SPEAKER_04Sitting on his chair with his three uh phone books, and then he's up to the table and he's got his legs crossed.
SPEAKER_01It's like you're pulling one butt cheek out to release a good part.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you fuck. He looks like a yoga pose in a chair. Alright, so here's my top shelf story, guys. I got in a fight with my brother years ago. And here he is. Alright. He won. No, okay, so I'll just go down to the nitty-gritty. So I would say about 20 years ago, before I had kids, maybe even a little sooner than that, uh, my brother and I took up a um start over. This is a bumbling mess.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So how do you want me to do it then? Just say what you're saying without so many ums in it. It's super easy. It's be like 20 years ago, me and my brother. You more ums than me joined a moy thai class.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, hey Jay, have you ever done moy thai with your brother before? Is that enough? Hey Jay, have you ever taken self-defense classes in a guy's basement? Shush shush. In a world. Self-defense. In a world where you got carjacked in his penny shooter, didn't cock. Twenty years ago in Wisconsin. The year 1898. The scene. So okay. New Berlin, Wisconsin. Both of you my dad's all right.
SPEAKER_02Both of you guys have brothers. Am I right? Yes. Absolutely. I have multiple brothers. Okay, how many fights have you gotten with your brothers? Zero. Hundreds. Really? Zero for you and hundreds for you. Have you ever connected face to face? Probably. Really? Never?
SPEAKER_04I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I Tony, I already know you are no, you haven't gotten a fight with your brother. Yeah. Okay. Not even a wrestling fight?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, one time we were fucking around like wrestling. I think that's what they called it back in the 90s. We were wrestling. I wouldn't say it like that. And it kind of got made into a big deal because my uh little brother, who at the time was much bigger than me. You're okay. So yeah, well. My little brother that's bigger than the big brother. He's kind of still bigger than you. Yeah. Yeah, he goes about 330 right now. I'm not striving for that, if you know what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_02You guys, uh, you guys familiar with the local celebrity, Duke Rufus? Yeah.
Joining Duke Rufus’s Muay Thai Gym
SPEAKER_04Is that the Melverine? Do you know the Melverine, right? Is that who that is? I don't think he ever taught himself to Duke. Lucas Duke, Duke Rufus. Duke Rufus? Is he a uh WWE superstar? No, he's not wrestling. Once defeated Macho Man Rat D.
SPEAKER_02Savage. He trained uh fighters for the the Octagon.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's let's just start with the fact that he used to fight in the octagon. Yes. When it wasn't even he was a fighter who, when he retired, he decided to become one of the greatest coaches Milwaukee has ever seen. Yeah. He's in the top 20 for sure. Okay. But it's not the Mel Vermeer.
SPEAKER_02I don't know how you even got that out of the Milverine. So he has a gym down in Milwaukee. My brother and I uh decided to to join this gym and he teaches Mui Thai kickboxing.
SPEAKER_04And to this day, Jay still pays$39.95 a month to give a girl.
SPEAKER_01He should have never gone on the auto pay.
SPEAKER_02Chris, help me out with this. My finances. That's right. I have never I guarantee I still am paying. I don't think it was$39.95, but yeah. So uh he he and I took classes for um probably close to a couple years. Um but when we first started taking it is when we really got like jacked and crazy. We got really excited about it. And we would practice on each other.
SPEAKER_01We would did you guys ask when they when they put open sparring, did you say, can I go against him? No, they never did that.
SPEAKER_02They just did the um classes where you would they would show you how to kick fucking you know the the the shin kick and the tip kicks. Um it was it it was it was a good workout for for uh for the price of$39.95. Basically you're saying you you went to the first session. Well my brother uh had a roommate, Jason. Uh he's actually Bourne. Is it Jason Bourne? Yeah. Nice he's he's actually uh he's pretty famous, actually. He he trains UFC fighters now, he lives in New York. Anyway, so um so we got into this fighting shit to learn you know self-defense. We're small guys, people pick on us, so we gotta learn how to fight back. So this was the perfect opportunity.
SPEAKER_01Plus, you don't have to learn anybody would fuck with you.
SPEAKER_02You don't have to learn, it doesn't take movie tie kickboxing does not take years to master.
SPEAKER_01It's not like something like Wing Chung or some type of martial arts for three easy payments of$39.99, you too can become a black belt. You're talking about uh that movie Napoleon Dynamite.
SPEAKER_02So I complete you my my brother and I we practice on each other, we would, you know, just uh spar a lot, do kicks, blocks, this and that. So one night again it has to do with us drinking. We're at the bar, getting wasted with friends, and driving home from the bar, my brother just sometimes when he drinks and get annoying as fuck. Just I get after irritated because I've been around you drunk before. Yeah, I I guess. Well, I was also kind of buzzed or and drunk, and I was getting irritated.
SPEAKER_04Your sober driver person must have been so frustrated with you guys. That's the problem.
Bar Night Tension Boils Over
SPEAKER_02I was driving. So I was driving, he's in the back seat with a couple other of our friends, and he just just won't stop talking shit. Won't just be like, Jay, you know, you you're not you're not good at your your high kick isn't as high as my kick. Your your low punch uppercut is just you wouldn't stop.
SPEAKER_01So you guys have all been trained on the exact same moves.
SPEAKER_04It's really hard for me to keep up with all this technical jargon.
SPEAKER_02Um so at a certain point I was like, fuck this. I pulled over, and and uh for some reason it was it was a bank. We pulled over at a bank, and it was really lit up. It was almost like a street fight event, like it was perfect for us. I said, get the fuck out of the car, meet in the front.
SPEAKER_01I turned my headlights on. So you two just like kept smashing each other's shoulders against the other one's shoulder until a circle of people formed. Are you talking about outside or in the car? No, it's like in high school. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02When you didn't want to actually fight the person. No, but we ended up on the bank in 76th Street and uh National. What bank is that? You guys ever been there? Uh whatever bank it is. It's got the fucking great lights. So it was like if it felt like a uh a fight scene in one of Van Damme's fucking kick kickboxing movies. So I turned the lights off in the front of my my my car, and I just said, get out of the car, motherfucker, let's go. I kicked my shoes off, I waited for him there in a s in a muita stance, and he's like, Alright, I'm coming. Took him a couple of minutes to get out of the car because he was so wasted, and then we stood side to side in our stances for five like three or four minutes, just waiting for one of us to throw a swing or a kick or a punt or something.
SPEAKER_04You're just standing there bobbing back and forth like the video game character selection screens with your little mitts off.
SPEAKER_02Like who am I gonna pick?
The Bank-Lot Standoff And Spar
SPEAKER_01Who am I gonna pick? So yeah, we keeps frantically changing shorts.
SPEAKER_03Puma. Yellow, yellow, puma, red, puma, screen, puma. Your sponsor is Puma. So we were wet, we were there to Puma hat, Puma coat, puma pants, puma pants, child size, child size. Ready for fight.
SPEAKER_04So all of uh our our buttons, you guys standing in the headlights, just sit next to each other with your dukes up, popping back and forth.
SPEAKER_02After a couple minutes of standing there with our fucking our our our ready stance, we uh we start to do we start to do some of the practice moves, like about five feet away from each other. Fucking string, swinging our legs, fucking punching in the air. And just like for like 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_04Practicing special moves.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for 30 minutes we're practicing what we're going to do to each other.
SPEAKER_01I I could just see you in the corner practicing the crane kick for karate kick. Yeah. But you don't see this coming, motherfucker.
SPEAKER_02So Dan finally comes at me, runs at me, just ah. So I what I did is I lifted my foot up and did a tip kick. If you guys don't know what a tip kick is, it's something to it's where he kicked someone in the tip of their dick. Of course. It's where you take the the bottom of your foot and you hit them in the chest to push them back for you to get into stance to punch them. So I tip kicked him, dropped him back about a foot, and then I just right a right cross to the side of the face, and he went down to the ground. Came back up and he took a swing at me. I went underneath it and uppercut him in the face, and he dropped to the ground. Damn, double KO. Double KO. Well, I didn't knock him out, but he's pressing up to me. And uh knocked him down two times, and he's like, Okay, I'll uh bleeding out of his nose. I'm done. Fuck you, I'm done, I'm done. Just come here, man. Sorry. So I walk over to him. I'm like, dude, I'm sorry too, man. This was dumb. Walk over to him right when right. Right when about to to put my hand on his shoulder, he takes his swing, a fucking the slowest fucking drunk swing anyone's ever done in the history of fucking bar fights. I saw the swing coming from fucking when he fucking took it, he bring his arm back behind his back and just ready to. So I ducked under that and then just pushed him to the ground. So he took a like a little cheap swing at me. I dug, I ducked under it anyway.
Quick Fight, Cheap Shot, Cool Down
SPEAKER_04And then uh it's not very tai chi of him. No, it's not. No karate.
SPEAKER_02Uh so it was a pretty short fight.
SPEAKER_01And that was that was uh um the way you explained it, it took 45 minutes up to this point. No, the actual fight. You guys had a whole training.
SPEAKER_04It's like a pay-per-view event. You pay a bunch of money to watch commercials for the first half hour.
The Apartment Stairwell Brawl
SPEAKER_02That was an actu the actual fight, Tony, took three minutes. The most. Alright, so that was done. I'm just gonna tell you quick about another one that happened because this one was a little more extensive. Um is this the one where you got stabbed all those times? Yeah, my brother stabbed me with a fucking one of his side knife. No, we were at my uh uh another apartment and uh uh I was upset about something, and for some reason he was getting in my face again, this and that. And I told him, get the fuck out of here. So he he started to leave our apartment. He kicked down, so our kit, my kid was uh, I think probably like two years old, so I had a gate at the stairs. Kicked the gate down, this foot, like just fucking destroyed my gate. So I was pissed. So I just ran at him, fucking W E fucking tackled him. We rolled down the stairs, hit the bottom or hit the door at the bottom of the stairs, and then I just started punching him in the face. Just one after another, after another, after another. And then my cousin comes running down the stairs, and she starts punching Dan in the face. I'm like, I got it, Lee, get away. If I can control my brother, it's just taking out some old school aggression. Yeah, it was I feel bad. I do really feel bad about this though. I I I don't I don't like the fact of of uh uh remembering the fact that I just kept hitting him in the face and just seeing his face going ra and just you know smacking around. So I got him outside the apartment, and then uh we were wrestling in the in the streets, and then I started slamming his head on the ground, and then the cops came and the cops uh split us up, and one of the cops was a fucking huge dickhead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, obviously they arrested him for fucking up your gate.
SPEAKER_02No, no, they uh I told him what the argument was about. I told him it was about my wife's brother dying. I was sad about that, this and that, and he did he like dismissed it, and I said, You don't give a shit about nothing, man. You're a fucking dick. And then he handcuffed me, arrested me, and then that's when Dan turned around. When I got handcuffed, Dan turned around and ran into the fucking into the fucking forest, ran away and tried to get back to my parents' house. He saw you get arrested. He took off and ran.
SPEAKER_01One quick cheap shot at you, and then fucking turn around with the wind.
SPEAKER_02With handcuffs on, yeah, he punched me with handcuffs on. No, he ran away. Um, and then the fun the best part is when I was we were in the drunk tank at the or I when I was at the drunk tank at the fucking jail, um the uh I think I was there for like 30 minutes and all of a sudden Dan, he's got mud all over his face, grass in his shoes. He's like, I didn't get away, they got me. And then they put us in a tank next to each other and we're just fucking talking shit to each other the whole time. Um, but yeah, this is just brotherly. I mean, this is one this is two fights out of probably 50 that we did. I mean, but that's what teaches you, you know, fighting skills that you know that you self-defense shit they need to know when you get older. I don't want my kids.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad I didn't learn any fighting skills because I haven't needed them so far. No, yeah, because you're like seven foot tall. I'm five nothing. Well, is that gotta do anything?
SPEAKER_02Your nose is three times the size of mine. What are they gonna do? What are I gonna do? Pack someone's eye out with my nose? Good. No, no, people don't people people fuck the size have to do with it. People pick on Hey, people pick on someone smaller just because they think or know they can beat you in a fight.
SPEAKER_04I think it's because after three beers you're grabbing dudes' asses at the bar.
SPEAKER_01That could be that could be it, that could be it too. My ass has been the ass that has been grabbed by a drunk Jay.
Cops, Drunk Tank, And Aftermath
SPEAKER_02But before I could drink, I was picked on as a kid because I was short. So what happened in those days? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Do your kids get picked on because they're short?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all the time.
SPEAKER_04Damn. It sucks. I guess they don't even go to school. It's Jay.
SPEAKER_01Like he's like, I'm taller than you, bitch. Jay drives by his kids on the bus stop and throws shit at him. It sucks.
SPEAKER_02It sucks to have your kid upset and mad that someone else is teasing him because of his height. And I can't help him because I'm fucking short and I was short my whole life. And what am I gonna do? Go beat a dress up like a little like a kid because I'm their fucking height, go in there and beat the shit out of the street.
SPEAKER_04You'd have to check out while walking in.
SPEAKER_01Speaking of short, did anybody watch that uh roast on Netflix? Tom Brady? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Three fucking hours long. Dude. Katie listened to it.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever seen somebody as short as Kevin Hart next to all them football players? It's great, yeah. It was fucking crazy. It was great. It was it was a funny roast. There was there was uh the big dumb one, drunk. Gronk. Gronkowski. Drunk, yeah. Drunk told Kevin Hart you could suck my dick while standing. You know, that was real funny to me. Because Kevin Hart looked real sad about it.
SPEAKER_02There's a there's a really funny part in there where uh the uh the the the chick comedian says um so they keep talking about uh uh Tom Brady losing money in crypto. Crypto, yeah. And the the uh Grunk know that that not real money. The uh Chris Glazer, what's her name? She was she was teasing about him being stupid, and he's she was like, Grunk know that not real money. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Kevin Hart was part of that too. He was the host. He was the host. No, he was part of the FTX. They got paid for with the crypto promotion thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What how did what did Tom Bra how did Tom Brady lose money?
SPEAKER_04Uh he was he bought in as an investor in the company, FTX, of like a hundred him and Giselle were investors, like venture capitalist invest investors in the beginning of like 190 million of dollars or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I said that they lost 30 million. Maybe it was that much number.
SPEAKER_04They didn't they didn't get shit for it. They were they got stocks and then the stock went to zero because I just love the fact that people just say, hey, yeah, you lose money in crypto.
SPEAKER_02Crypto's not real. And I mean, in some aspects it's not, but people are making fucking shit tons of money.
Short Guys, Teasing, And Parenting
SPEAKER_04Well, I'll tell you that the state of Wisconsin's investment board bought$160 million worth of Bitcoin ETFs this last quarter, and they were the first state to do it.
SPEAKER_02What the fuck's ETF? A picture of the code.
SPEAKER_04It's not legal. An electronic traded fund that basically someone holds the Bitcoin and you buy a share of what they hold. So it's not it's not ETF picture of a frog. No, that's an NFT. NFT. But they bought they bought$160 million worth of Bitcoin basically for their investment fund to pay the this the state employees' pensions.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, that was my story about brother fighting, and you know, I'm very excited.
SPEAKER_04We all fight with our brothers, Jay. I'm glad you got to tell the two stories where you won the fight. I never maybe next time you'll be honest and tell us some stories about the actual fights that you had. We'll have Danny come in sometime, maybe tell us a little bit about it.
SPEAKER_02I'll call him up, but he's he's gonna say the same thing.
SPEAKER_04Shout out to Takodoro Dojo on 27th Street with that guy who uh who did I say that he was? Uh the Milverine and his his uh Taekwondo shop out there on 35th Street. Also selling prophylactic legs out there now. It's 21st century. They're overselling, they're no longer selling the uh the crutches. I guess that was last episode. But thanks for tuning in, Jay. Great stories, man. I appreciate your stories. I tried comments.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you know what? I'm not very good at telling stories. I'll get better at it though, okay? One of these days. See you guys later. That's my own language. There you go.
