
Not My Bear Talk Podcast Best Man
How one man and one dinner roll company nearly destroyed the Bear Talk Podcast
Saturday, March 11th started just like any other day. I woke up in a cold sweat with a general sense of dread, and a sinking feeling that I’m just not good enough to be the man society expects me to be. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I rolled over, popped my phone off its charger and launched twitter to check in with how voting for The Bear Talk Podcast Awards was going. That’s when everything changed. Looking at the Best Man category, I saw that the worst had happened. Something had gone wrong with the voting system. Hundreds and hundreds of votes were spilling in by the second for one candidate. Cole Riel.
“Wait, what? Did Cole…No, no he is a friend of the show, he wouldn’t…this couldn’t…how did this…” Thoughts raced through my head as I tried to piece together the “Who, Where, When, Why and How”. I would have to wait some time to be able to answer those questions, but right then and there I knew the “What”. The Bear Talk Podcast Awards election had been hacked.

In the early hours of that Saturday morning, news of the hacking spread like piss in a hot tub, a turbulent swirling mess that leaves everyone scared, confused and wondering who is to blame. We weren’t able to get out in front of the story, and it wasn’t long before members of the media began to postulate about our involvement.

By the afternoon, massive protests had formed around the country demanding an investigation of everyone and anything involved in the election. The Bear Talk boys. Cole Riel. Paul Rudd.

With President Trump having tied up the FBI’s resources in an investigation of Lori Beth Denberg’s post Dodgeball cameo disappearance, I knew that the duty of clearing Bear Talk’s name, and discovering who was responsible for this abhorrent crime, was falling squarely on my somewhat feminine shoulders. Like Stanley Yelnats IV on his first day at Camp Green Lake, it was time for me start digging.

As much as it pained me to admit, I knew that Cole Riel had to be connected to the hacking. Not only had it heavily favored his campaign, he had also sent out a tweet slandering other candidates Matt Farley and Paul Rudd the day prior.

In any election, a candidate has to spend some time down in the dirt flinging insults at their opponent. But the story that I began to unravel showed me that Cole was not a simply a pig who enjoyed a good roll in the mud every now and again, but rather a worm who lived and thrived in it.
It seemed tough to believe that Cole could not have pulled off a stunt of this magnitude on his own. He must have had help from some more powerful force. But who could it be? Well the Bear Talk Podcast does have a laundry list of enemies who wouldn’t mind seeing us fall from grace. First, there is popular blog website Total Sorority Move, who we have publicly feuded with on Twitter after they took exception to the criticism we levied towards their articles “What it Means if He is a Butt Guy or a Boob Guy” and “The Top 20 Fuck boy Names and What They Mean About Him” on Episode #9. Second, there is world renowned dinner roll company, King’s Hawaiian, who grew furious with the boys after we discussed our disgust with the their flagship roll. The boys all agreed that sweet, sugary bread has no place at the dinner table and declared themselves the first “Anti-Hawaiian Roll Podcast” in the lower 48. And Lastly there is President Donald J. Trump. In the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, the Bear Talk Podcast had given Mr. Trump their endorsement after he sent out a tweet recommending the American people “check out” a sex tape, that turned out to be…pretty hot.

However, things changed after he turned his back on the sex tape demographic during the second debate by telling Anderson Cooper “I never said check out a sex tape.” The Bear Talk boys were entirely shocked to see that this man would lie about something, and they quickly retracted their support. As we know, the Donald is a man who expects absolute loyalty, so needless to say, he wouldn’t mind getting revenge on the one podcast that dared scorn him.
I knew that one of these enemies must have worked with Cole to steal the election for him, but after hours of looking for any sort of tangential connection to one of these groups, I was coming up empty handed. It was then that Cole sent out the following tweet, seemingly taunting those investigating the hacking.

What Cole didn’t know is that, like the duct tape left behind by the intruders at Watergate, he had forgotten to clean up one important piece of evidence. Late that night, while pouring over his 1000’s of Google Plus posts I found these two pictures deep in an album entitled “Knee Deep in That Sweet Sweet Dough”:


I had my smoking gun. Cole had been working with King’s Hawaiian to tamper with the results of the Bear Talk Awards and undermine Bear Talk Nation’s sense of security.
Knowing that my wires were liking being tapped. I didn’t dare call or email this evidence to anybody. I thought it better to hand deliver it to congress. I grabbed the only paper I had in my apartment, several old crumpled Taco Bell napkins, slid them into paper tray 2 and printed off both photos.
It was 1:37 am when I sprinted out of my apartment en route to U.S. Capitol Building, with the proof needed to Bear Talk’s name in hand. As I rounded the street corner at the ended of my block…CRACK! I was stuck across the face with a blunt instrument. The blow sent me spinning towards the ground. As I collapsed, I stuck out my hand and grabbed onto something that was hanging around my attackers neck, yanking the necklace off as my head hit the hard unforgiving concrete. I felt my teeth separate from my jaw as my mouth pooled with blood. As I slipped into sweet unconsciousness, my attacker squatted down and whispered “Don’t fuck with the King” as he set a blaze the pictures I had been holding…
It felt like any other morning. I woke up in a cold sweat with a general sense of dread, and a sinking feeling that I’m just not good enough to be the man society expects me to be. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I rolled over, and reached for phone, only this time it wasn’t there. I rolled over and was blinded by whiteness surrounding me. Averting my eyes from the bright fluorescent lighting above me I mumbled:
“Where…where am I?”
“You are in the hospital. There was an incident. You have been in a coma for the past 4 months. Today is July 23rd, 2017.”
“Whaaa…how is that…”
“You were found unconscious on the street. You had massive fractures in your jaw and skull. It appeared you had been attacked. Here…you were holding this. Maybe it will help you remember.”
The doctor reached his hand towards me and presented a tattered and torn, orange lei.

The Bear Talk Podcast returns next week on July 25th.