Naked Mike Rowe Pulls 12 Gauge On Drone

I’ve met quite a few celebrities in my nearly 40 years of broadcasting – some are kinda stuck up and self-centered, others are as grounded and ‘down-to-earth’ as you and me. Someday I’ll tell you the story of the rock and roll star that offered PB&J sandwiches and cold milk to us locals on his tour bus after a big concert along with ice cold milk served in mugs from the freezer. But today’s story is about a guy I’ve never met, but I think if I ever met him and got to know him some, I’d have to put him in the PB&J ‘down to earth’ category.

Over the weekend, “Dirty Jobs” TV star Mike Rowe was sleeping peacefully in his San Francisco apartment in what he called his “non-existent” pajamas when he was awakened by a buzzing sound outside his bedroom window. In his sleep-haze he thought it was a swarm of bees outside, but the buzzing continued and grew louder so he got out of bed nekkid and went to the window to have a look.

There just outside his window was a quad-copter hovering with a camera, the camera’s red light was glowing and Rowe instantly knew he was being filmed, in his birthday suit. Now, many celeb’s would have just screamed and ran for cover, hastily calling their agent – but not our every-man hero. Rowe grabbed his trusty Mossberg 12 gauge from under his bed and his cell phone and raced back to the window. By that time the drone had moved away and Rowe pointed the business end of the shotgun at it but decided not to shoot. In part because firing shotguns outside in his San Fran neighborhood is frowned upon, but mostly he said because he didn’t want to appear as ‘crazy as Gary Busey or Nick Nolte’.

I’ve always enjoyed his programs, and I think in person he’d be a likeable guy. But I don’t know what I like best about this story:

a) Mike Rowe owns a 12 gauge that is loaded and ready in his bedroom
b) Mike Rowe has the nads to point it at a pesky prying drone
c) Mike Rowe thinks Gary Busey and Nick Nolte are the poster boys for ‘crazy’

But since this is my story, I’m gonna go with “all of the above” and I can’t say that I wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing. If you’re a friend of Mike Rowe’s on Facebook he did post a photo of the drone that he took with his phone as it flew away.

Shooting pesky prying drones out of the sky, it’s a Dirty Job but somebody has to do it.