Episode 185: Big League Baio
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Transcript
Time Crisis back again
This week we talk about baseball
the sport and
The bubblegum
We also listen to great music from the Doobie Brothers Kim Petras Sam Smith and Barbara Streisand
All this plus special guest Chris Baio on this week's
Crisis with Ezra Koenig
♪ To make my picture clear ♪
♪ Everything seems so easy ♪
♪ And so I delve to the floor ♪
♪ One of us had to go ♪
♪ Now it's different, I want you to know ♪
♪ One of us is crying ♪
♪ One of us is lying ♪
♪ Even only pain ♪
- Time Crisis back again.
Got Jake and Seinfeld.
Oh, and here we are.
- What up?
- In the first minute of the show,
joined by Chris Baio.
What's up?
- How's it going?
Can you hear me?
- Yeah, loud and clear.
- Beautiful.
- Yeah, beautiful view behind you.
- Where are you?
- I'm at home.
- Okay, cool.
- I'm at Los Angeles, California.
- Los Angeles, sunny Los Angeles, California on my deck.
- Nice.
- Welcome back to Time Crisis.
We had the idea to have you call in
'cause to talk a little bit about baseball,
time it kind of sucks,
but actually maybe it's perfect.
We can reflect on this season.
So first of all, for people who don't know,
your first cousin Harrison Bader is on the Yankees.
- Yeah, yeah.
So appreciate the invite, honor and a privilege
to return to this show as always, no question.
But I've never, I don't know if we've ever,
if I've ever come on this show to discuss sports.
Have you guys had a lot of sports related guests
at this point?
- We've never had a guest just to talk sports.
I mean, the show definitely veers into sports talk.
I think just because it's like adjacent to music,
you always get a little bit of sports,
a little bit of cars, sometimes whiskey on rare occasions.
But you're the first time we've ever had somebody call in
just to talk sports.
And I will say that I definitely think of you
as a major sports guy in my life,
'cause I don't know too many guys who truly follow sports.
I guess before we even talk about Harrison and baseball,
anybody who knows you knows that what you're really
passionate about is hockey.
- Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
And I grew up a New York Rangers fan.
My dad had season tickets, went to so many games.
And I kind of had like a relative lull in following it.
Like, you know, we got super busy.
We'd be touring all the time,
but I'd still always like check out how the team was doing.
But sort of since the pandemic started
and I really had very little to do
for long stretches of time,
I've become truly obsessive about hockey on a level,
even beyond, you know, what it was like growing up,
I would say.
And I remember like the Rangers were
on their Stanley Cup run in 2014
when we were on tour for "Modern Vampires of the City."
And I got to like fly to New York on a bunch of off days
just to go see some sports.
And I would say even since then,
I'm like more hardcore about hockey,
but I was still pretty diehard Rangers fan, definitely.
- Can you name everybody on the team?
- Very easily.
Yeah, yeah.
- You know that-
(laughing)
- Wait, I got a question for everybody,
for Jake and Seinfeld.
Can you guys name one player in the NHL currently
in the whole NHL?
- No.
- Not a single?
- Wow.
- Can you?
- Seinfeld, you're Canadian.
- I know.
I never, I didn't really watch a lot of hockey.
I played hockey when I was a kid,
but we didn't really, I didn't really watch it.
But I did want to ask,
do you remember when Fox made the decision
to highlight the hockey pucks
when you were watching television, highly controversial?
- Absolutely.
It was the scourge of hockey
and it set the game back years and years and years
by having like trying to do like a strike zone
or like a first down line.
They tried to do it with hockey,
but they put like this glow globe
to make the puck look bigger,
but it just looked insane.
And the game is too fast for it to like
actually translate to television.
So it was a despicable decision by Fox
that should live down in shame.
- It was basically live animation on the-
- Yeah, around the puck.
- They just should have made the puck bigger.
- Wow.
- As somebody who wasn't really a fan of the sport,
I think I was like the one person who liked it
'cause I was like, oh, now I can see the puck.
- Yeah, I get what you're saying.
And it's tricky because we're living in the peak era
of high definition television
and it's only gonna get better and better.
So, you know, thinking about 90s resolution
and 90s animation,
I do understand why that was attempted,
but it just, you know, it made,
it was more alienating than inclusive,
ultimately, I would say.
- Thank you.
Anyway, that was a departure.
Yeah, neither Jake or I can name the current player.
- A single NHL player.
- Is Mark Messier still on the Rangers?
- Now he's been retired for about 20 years,
but it's good that he-
- So he's retired, but so you're saying he never suits up?
Never stops by and suits up?
- He doesn't stop by and suit up,
but he does do between period analysis on TV.
So he's still a good presence.
He looks exactly the same as he did when he was a player.
He looks incredible, but-
- Good for him.
- Yeah, yeah, he looks great.
- He was the Lays spokesperson for a little while
or he was doing a series of Lays potato chips for a bit.
- Oh yeah.
Yeah, it's, you know,
we're getting into like large scale hockey culture,
but after the Rangers won in '94,
which was a very exciting time for me, I was nine years old,
you would see, you know, Messier and the Rangers
being so many TV commercials on like a cultural level
that it feels like will probably, you know,
never happen again for the sport, I would say.
- The cultural ubiquity kind of peaked
in the '90s for hockey.
- Yeah, and you know,
the people talk about the game growing
and they're trying a bunch of different stuff,
but I would say that's probably the peak.
And granted, that's coming from a diehard Rangers fan,
like, and I try not to be like a New York chauvinist
in general, you know what I mean?
- Right.
- But yeah, I think that's probably fair.
- 'Cause people really hate New York sports teams.
- I think that's fair to say, yeah.
- It's the evil empire
and people particularly hate the Yankees,
which has always been a little bit hard for me to understand.
I guess when I take the big view,
I can see, oh, there was,
the Yankees were also like excellent in the '90s.
That's when people really started to hate them, right?
- I think it's a combination.
Now, one thing I love about hockey,
and we can get deep into sports, it's a hard cap league.
So that means that every team can't go over a certain number
whereas in baseball,
if you want to spend as much money as possible, you can,
there's like a luxury tax, but you know,
some teams have quadruple the amount of money
fielding their players as other teams
kind of at the discretion of the owners.
So the Yankees would just spend the most
and had the most sort of like dominating run
of any baseball team.
I think they have the,
and again, I'm more of a hockey guy,
ultimately before we go even on our deep dive on Harrison,
but I'm pretty sure by a long margin,
they have the most World Series titles.
- 23, I think.
- Yeah.
- Crazy.
Well, yeah, of course that's going to rub
the rest of the country the wrong way.
Even though to me, when I think about the Yankees,
I guess people also picture New York's,
they picture like rich Wall Street guys or something.
Whereas--
- Pinstripes.
- And the Pinstripes.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Pinstripes on Wall Street executives,
Pinstripes on the team.
Whereas I, and I imagine you too, Bayo,
growing up, you grew up particularly close to there.
I always think they're the Bronx Bombers.
I always think like, I don't, I understand it,
but I always think it's like the Bronx.
Oh, that's like where, that's where my dad's from.
That's where my grandparents lived.
You know, you see the subway go past the stadium.
It felt more like, kind of like funky and cool or something.
Not like, like Madison Square Garden, for instance,
that's like on top of Penn Station.
It's in the middle of Manhattan.
You can kind of feel like you're in the center of the world.
I always felt like with the Yankees,
it's like they're from the Bronx.
It's cool, but of course I recognize they have a lot of money.
- It's a complicated dynamic, definitely.
♪ I stay up all night ♪
♪ I go to sleep watching Dragnet ♪
♪ Never sleep alone because Jimmy is the magnet ♪
♪ I'm so rogue ♪
♪ They call me Mr. Robo when the troubles arise ♪
♪ You know I'm the cool copa ♪
♪ On the Maca score ♪
♪ Just like the Yankees ♪
♪ Get over on this country like my main man Snaggy ♪
♪ Just be the young lady I know ♪
♪ To trouble you ♪
♪ You look so fucked ♪
♪ Inside, jumpy, I'm over you ♪
♪ I got lucky ♪
♪ I brought home the key ♪
♪ Before I got busy, I slipped on the meat ♪
♪ Can't get better odds ♪
♪ 'Cause I'm a shorty ♪
♪ Primary kids are turning and rolling like a ring thing ♪
♪ Jump the turns down there ♪
♪ But play the toll ♪
♪ And in the new identity ♪
♪ You're busted with the free roll ♪
♪ Customs jails me ♪
♪ Over in Urban City ♪
♪ I'm your brat, I'm your boy ♪
♪ Over some rat weed ♪
♪ And out of your back door ♪
♪ I'm into another ♪
♪ Your boyfriend doesn't know about me ♪
♪ And your mama ♪
♪ Not perfect grammar ♪
♪ Always perfect timing ♪
♪ The Mike stands for money ♪
♪ And the D is for diamonds ♪
- All right, so let's talk about Harrison.
So I guess my first question is,
have you done any press
about the fact that your cousin is on the Yankees
or been asked to?
I only ask this because I was kind of surprised to see
that Harrison going to the Yankees is such a big deal
that even some music publications
wrote about your connection to him.
- Yeah, so to answer a question you asked me
a little bit earlier,
my first cousin is Harrison, Harrison Bader.
He grew up in the same square mile town as me, Bronxville.
He's 10 years younger than me,
but he made it to Major League Baseball.
He played for the St. Louis Cardinals.
He got called up in 2017, I think,
and he was there for five years,
putting together a very impressive career.
He won the Gold Glove last year,
which is the best person in his league, in his position.
He's a center fielder.
But yeah, then at the trade deadline,
it's kind of interesting.
In June, I was talking with my dad
and he told me like,
oh, you know, the Yankees are kind of interested in Harrison.
And like, I have no idea on what level,
like how a player knows
if another team is interested in them.
But I was like, oh, wow, that'd be kind of cool
if they traded for him or whatever.
But I didn't think much of it.
And then he got injured and he was in a boot for a while.
So I kind of thought he was just gonna be on the Cardinals
for the rest of the season.
And then we were on tour in Japan this summer.
And I just, I woke up like the day
of the baseball trade deadline.
And I had like 20 different texts
from like friends and family.
And it was people just sort of like talking about how
at the trade deadline,
St. Louis Cardinals sent Harrison to the Yankees
in exchange for a pitcher.
And it did get picked up a bit in the music press.
Pitchfork wrote an article about it.
And I think it is the distinction
of advanced baseball metrics being on Pitchfork
for the first time in the publication's history
because they started talking about some of his
like advanced stat numbers.
- Wait, for the non-sports nuts,
can you just look more slowly explain what,
I think I understand,
but what are advanced baseball metrics are?
- Like money ball, you know, people have seen money ball
but the kind of things that are weighed
and I don't even know what this,
there's so many of them.
You can go to like baseballreference.com
and there's letters that I have no idea
what on earth they stand for.
- War.
- What, yeah, war, I know war,
but do you know what WRC plus is?
- No.
- I don't either, I have no idea what WRC plus is.
- When you're talking about advanced baseball metrics,
I think you're gonna say like RBI.
- No, that's not advanced, that's basic, bro.
- RBI is a basic baseball metric.
- Basic AF, RBI's go back to the beginning of the game.
We're talking (beep)
like the-
- You get a joke in the dugout.
- The money ball era, the kind of like supercomputer era.
- Exactly, the stat revolution.
So one example is war that Jake brought up
is wins above replacement.
And basically what that means is how many wins
a player is worth in the overall season to his team.
And like, if you have seven or eight,
you're like one of the most elite baseball players.
Like I think, you know, Aaron Judge's war number
was something kind of crazy like that
on the Yankees this year.
So that one I can kind of wrap my head around,
but WRC plus, which was in the Pitchfork article,
I don't understand what that is.
- Wow, that's amazing.
The Pitchfork article reference WRC plus.
- It's weighted runs created plus.
(laughing)
That doesn't help me.
- Weighted runs created.
And it's funny because I said,
you guys are telling me RBI is entry-level basic,
but in my community of people
who only vaguely follow baseball, RBI,
and maybe you guys have had these conversations too,
RBI is famously a talking point where somebody will say,
"What the hell is an RBI?"
You know what I mean?
Like people who like, "I think I understand baseball,
but what the hell is an RBI?
You're speaking Greek to me."
So it's funny to imagine the people
in the I don't understand RBI community
being confronted with war and RCW plus,
their heads would explode.
- Yeah, it was interesting to sort of see
those advanced stats.
And I would actually be curious
if someone could find previous examples
of advanced baseball stats being in music news stories,
but it was very, very cool.
- There was a Hold Steady review from 2007
that had a, there was an extended metaphor
that involved advanced baseball metrics.
(laughing)
- Do you guys have a guess on who has the highest WRC plus
in baseball history?
- Baseball history, Barry Bonds?
Nope.
- I thought you were gonna say in Vampire Weekend.
(laughing)
- It's Babe Ruth.
- Okay.
- Babe Ruth has the most career weighted runs created.
- All right.
- 2,727.
- And you know what's sad?
Is that that man went to his grave not knowing.
- Babe didn't know it.
- Not even knowing what WRC plus meant.
- That is the true tragedy.
Picture Babe like wailing on a hot dog,
smoking a cigar being like, what the hell?
(laughing)
What the hell is WRC plus?
- In my day, we just hit the ball.
- RBI runs, whatever.
- Wait, have you guys ever talked about how George Harrison
will never know that Here Comes the Sun
has the most streams of any Beatles song?
(laughing)
- No, but.
- Okay, sorry, I don't mean to derail.
Yeah, yeah.
- Sad, although he did, I guess he had the,
George would have known that in the first two years
post Beatles, he had the best selling solo album.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- So he had that feather in his cap.
So hopefully in the late 90s,
if he ever met kind of like a tech futurist who said,
you know, man, one day, one day your record collection,
all your CDs, it'll just be in a little application
on a smartphone.
He might've been able to kind of picture that.
And they said, so what do you mean?
You'll be able to just click any song you want.
And he was like, yeah, absolutely.
So he said, maybe he might've said,
so some songs will have more streams than others.
Yeah, man, I would keep my eye on Here Comes the Sun
if I was you.
And he was like, all right.
- There you go, yeah, totally.
♪ Here comes the sun ♪
♪ Here comes the sun ♪
♪ I say it's all right ♪
♪ It's all right ♪
♪ It's been a long, long, long day ♪
♪ It feels like since it's been here ♪
♪ Here comes the sun ♪
♪ Here comes the sun ♪
♪ I say it's all right ♪
- Due to your familial relationship with Harrison,
advanced baseball metrics got into pitchfork
for potentially the first time.
And I think that speaks to not only the fact
that it's just cool that two talented guys
in wildly different fields in the same family,
but also, but here's the thing,
here's what's interesting,
is that Harrison had been a baseball player for five years
and there hadn't been, of course I knew about it.
It was, you wore his jersey when we played St. Louis.
There was like an excitement knowing that your cousin,
who also was a young kid in the Oxford comma video,
another fun fact, had made it to the MLB.
And yet there's something so crazy
about him being on the Yankees
that it really kicked it to the next level.
- It's truly like a dream come true for everybody.
And, you know, the season, now we're talking,
the season ended on Sunday night.
They got eliminated by the true villains of baseball,
the Houston Strohs.
But like, he had an unbelievable playoff.
So he had five home runs in nine games.
He like played the baseball of his life.
You know, when he got traded,
'cause he got traded in, I guess, end of July,
beginning of August,
you can't buy like a Harrison Bader Yankee jersey.
So when he got traded, my dad printed up a bunch of them
and he and all my aunts and uncles would,
they went to like every single home game,
all wearing Bader jerseys.
And people would come up to them being like,
"Oh, where'd you get that?"
And my dad was like, "Oh, I got them made."
And they were like, "Oh, do you know him?"
And they were like, "Oh yeah, we're his family."
Like, you know, it was just a very, very cool thing.
But I don't know, my uncle Louis,
I just, he was so baseball obsessed.
He was so like really, really athletic.
And it's been like, you know, it's been interesting.
There've been all sorts of articles
about him playing for the Yankees.
Now there was like a really great article
in the New York Times about his sort of like travel team
and how he got into Dominican food
when he was in high school.
Like sort of stuff I never knew about him
or knew about my family, like talking about, you know,
my Aunt Janice was apparently a really good basketball player
when she grew up.
And I'm like getting this really cool opportunity
to learn more about my family.
And like, I don't know, it's just,
it's really, really cool.
And not that Aunt Janice knew
that I was gonna be talking to you this week,
but like on Tuesday, she sent me a text message
and it was a picture of Harrison and my Aunt Janice
were driving to Yankee Stadium to pick up all this stuff
'cause his season's over.
And there was like a little picture.
It was him driving with the stereo
and they were listening to Oxford Comm
on the way to Yankee Stadium,
on the way to like get all this stuff.
And I'm just like, I don't know,
it's, I get a little emotional talking about it
because it is like a dream come true
and it's really like wonderful thing for our family.
And, you know, I didn't have the opportunity
to go to any of these playoff games,
but like next year I'll definitely like go to New York
and, you know, see a bunch of games and stuff.
- It's really amazing.
I've got so psyched about it too.
I was like waking up in Japan,
just like first thing in the morning,
like looking at the score, telling everybody about it.
The Yankees are exciting.
And this is a Yankees program
because Jake supported the Yankees.
- Oh, hell yeah.
- What era was that Jake?
- Dark days, dude.
I mean, late, late eighties, early nineties.
- Oh yeah.
- 1990, they lost over a hundred games.
- Oh wow.
- You know, my childhood hero was Don Mattingly.
- Same.
- Who, you know, really Nick, that was your guy?
- Yeah, I was really into the Yankees.
And I grew up in DC, as you know,
and the Orioles were our team,
but my family was from New York and I was,
yeah, I think I really identified, you know,
as a New Yorker, even though I wasn't, you know,
but my whole family was there and Mattingly was my guy.
- That mustache.
- Get out of here.
- And he, you know, he had an amazing run for a few years,
but by the time I was really into baseball,
when I was like 12 and 13, circa '89, '90,
he had a bad back injury.
He never really recovered to his mid eighties glory.
And then yeah, in '96, when they went down O2
against the Braves in the series,
and they came back and won four in a row,
like I was a freshman in college
and it was like very emotional.
I was very fired up.
- That's also before Jake,
you had fully completed the transition to a West Coast guy.
So you're this young dude from Connecticut,
East Coast, Tri-State guy in a dorm in Portland, Oregon.
Just so excited about the Yankees.
- Oh yeah.
It's beautiful.
- Yeah, it's really amazing.
And also like, just so people understand too,
where you and Harrison grew up, Bronxville,
I mean, it's, you know, obviously the name is connected
to the Bronx where obviously the Yankees play.
How long is the drive from your childhood home
to Yankee Stadium?
- Under, there's no traffic under 15, I think.
- Wow.
- Maybe 15, maybe.
And he went to Horace Mann, which is like--
- In the Bronx.
Like he, you know, and he grew up a huge Yankees fan.
It's like, yeah, it's unreal.
- And also just generally speaking,
one thought I had when you were talking about
how in hockey, there's a cap for how much
the teams can spend, but baseball's a little bit insane
'cause one team can have so much more money.
I've always had this thought about sports
'cause I love regional variety
and I love, you know, regional culture.
And I always wondered, it's never gonna happen,
but wouldn't it be cool if you had to be
from a certain radius of the stadium
to play for the team? - That'd be awesome.
- That'd be so sick.
- That'd be amazing.
- And the Yankees would still probably be really good,
but anyway, that begs the question.
How many like New Yorkers or even just tri-state guys
are on the Yankees?
- I have no idea, not many.
The first baseman is great player, Anthony Rizzo,
who like my dad made friends a bit with his family
'cause they were sitting together during some of the games.
He grew up in Florida, but he grew up a Yankee fan.
So I know at least one other player
like grew up as a big Yankee fan,
but like tri-state, I don't know how many,
like who from Westchester made it into Major League Baseball?
I'm sure I'm omitting somebody else
that's playing right now, but it is like not,
you know, not many.
- You might not be omitting anyone else.
It wouldn't surprise me if your cousin
was the only current Westchester County player.
- Suffice to say, it's an unusual story.
How many, like how many guys on the Astros
grew up 15 minutes from Minute Maid?
Is that what it's called?
How many guys on the Astros grew up 15 minutes
from the Minute Maid Stadium?
And also, yeah, so just to fully understand,
so when Harrison got traded,
the season was well underway, right?
So how many-- - Yeah, it was the trade deadline
and he was injured.
So there was still, you know, it was in August.
So there was still about two months left in the season,
but he really only came back when there was like 20 games
left in the last like three weeks of the regular season.
So the playoffs is really where he like,
kind of like came alive and like everybody
got to know him and stuff.
- And that's such a crazy story too,
just to be a new guy on a team and in the playoffs,
which obviously get a lot more eyeballs
and people are excited and nervous.
In your first playoffs on a new team,
to hit how many home runs?
- He had five home runs in nine games
and this season in the regular season,
he had five home runs in 82 games.
So he like played the baseball of his life
playing for the Yankees, you know, it's, yeah.
- And now his home runs are colloquially known
as baiter bombs.
- They do call them baiter bombs, definitely.
- Can you buy a baiter jersey now?
- You know, I'm sure they're gonna be for sale soon,
but not the last time I checked.
- Is your uncle selling them?
- Oh, no, yeah.
My dad, my dad, I'm sure my dad could have said.
Yeah, yeah, family bootleg, like a little bootleg stall
in Yankee stadium with my entire family
selling bootleg baiter jerseys.
♪ I've seen those English dramas too ♪
♪ They're cruel ♪
♪ So if there's any other way ♪
♪ To spell the word it's foul with me ♪
♪ With me ♪
♪ Why would you speak to me that way ♪
♪ Especially when I always said that I ♪
♪ Haven't got the words for you ♪
♪ All your diction dripping with disdain ♪
♪ Through the pain I always tell the truth ♪
♪ 'Cause by the Knoxville climber ♪
♪ I climbed the Darmstadt or two ♪
♪ I did ♪
♪ I met the high slimer ♪
♪ His accent sounded fine to me ♪
♪ To me ♪
♪ Check your handbook, it's no trick ♪
♪ Take the chapstick, put it on your lips ♪
♪ Crack a smile, adjust my tie ♪
♪ Know your boyfriend, unlike other guys ♪
♪ Why would you lie about how much coal you had ♪
♪ Why would you lie about something dumb like that ♪
♪ Why would you lie about anything at all ♪
♪ First the wind blew, then it stood still ♪
♪ In the meantime, we always tell the truth ♪
- All right, but so the season's over.
The Strohs are the current kind of like,
they're the evil empire now in baseball.
- Oh yeah, they're in the World Series
for the fourth time in six years.
- I have to admit, full disclosure,
that I have rooted for the Strohs before,
so I had mixed feelings.
(laughing)
Of course, my allegiance to the Bronx Bombers took precedent,
but when the Strohs played the Dodgers in the World Series,
I can't remember if you were there,
but I remember CT was,
I went to an event with a lot of people we know
to watch the game, and I looked around
and I saw people like our dear friend Ariel Rechsheid,
real LA guys wearing their Dodgers jersey,
and I just saw so many bandwagon Dodgers fans,
and I saw myself as like the East Coast guy living in LA,
and I said, "I can't root for these guys.
"That's bad energy."
It's not that I don't like the Dodgers.
I don't wanna be this, I can't root for them.
You know what I mean?
I don't wanna be like a-- - No, you want, yeah.
- So then it left me no choice but to root for the Strohs,
and I think I played a small part
in creating the spiritual momentum
to help them win that year. - Oh yeah, definitely.
- So what do we have to look forward to next year?
(laughing)
- Next year, oh, looking forward?
You know, a full season of healthy Harrison Bader
and Sender Field, which, you know, again, be amazing.
I have to go 'cause I'm leaving,
but I did wanna tell you very quickly
one other sporting event,
'cause the hockey season just started.
The Rangers, we're on a little bit of a shaky start
the last few games, but I think it's important,
you know, now that I'm the sports correspondent
for the show, the worst team in NHL hockey
is the Arizona Coyotes for many years,
and they were having financial troubles,
so the city of Glendale, Arizona kicked the Coyotes
out of their arena last year,
and so the Arizona Coyotes are building a new arena
that's gonna take like four or five years,
but in the meantime, they're playing this year,
next year, and the year after at a college hockey arena
at Arizona State University, and it just opened,
and it's called Mullet Arena, and it's, you know,
it's 25% the size of a regular hockey arena,
but the Rangers are playing there on Sunday,
and it's my birthday this weekend,
so I am gonna drive to Tempe, Arizona
to see the Rangers play in Mullet Arena on Sunday.
I've likened it, it's kinda like,
gonna be like seeing Rolling Stones at Echoplex,
just like seeing a (beep) hockey team in a small venue.
I'm like so beyond excited for it.
- This is like very New Jersey trasher,
was it, yeah, the trashers.
- Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
- The Connecticut trasher vibe.
- Yeah, definitely.
- And I also, I just love that, well, first of all,
I love an underdog story, so I'm gonna be sending
some positive energy to the Coyotes this season.
- Yeah, send some love to the Yotes.
The Yotes could use some love.
(laughing)
Shout out to the Yotes, but that's,
yeah, that's awesome that you get to see the Rangers there
and just to pay, I mean, honestly,
it's kinda like a Vampire Weekend experience.
We sold out the Garden, 360, two nights later,
we played at a club in Montreal, both great shows.
- Absolutely.
- And the Rangers, they played the Garden,
now they're playing a college arena.
- Mullet Arena. - Mullet Arena.
- All right, well, have a great time out there.
Thanks so much, Chris, we'll talk to you soon.
- Good to see everybody.
- Happy birthday, Chris.
- Have fun, man. - Thank you.
- Happy birthday. - Happy birthday.
- Peace.
- It's funny, I was getting excited about the Yankees
at the tail end of this season,
just talking a little bit with my family.
Like, you know, like I said, my dad's from the Bronx,
grew up going to visit my grandparents' apartment
in the Bronx, and so there's always a little bit of talk
about the Yankees, but we're not much
of like a sports family, you know?
So I remember my grandma would say,
"Oh yeah, I used to, I would listen to the Yankees game
"on the radio while I ironed."
And I was like, "Okay, just like something to vibe out."
So I was asking my dad, I was asking my parents,
like, 'cause they've probably both been to, you know,
a very small handful of professional sporting events
in their whole lives, and yet for both of them
being proper Tristaters, some of the only sporting events
they've ever seen were Yankees games.
So my mom had some memory of going as a little girl,
and my dad said that there's a famous story
with my older cousins who had a memory
of going to a Yankees game with their parents
and their uncle, my father, in the '70s,
when he was 20-something.
It became an inside joke for them
about how my dad brought a book,
and that was always their-- - Oh my gosh.
- Their memory of going to the Yankees game,
and their kind of like young uncle brought a book.
- Like he's sitting there in the bleachers
reading like "Froost."
(laughing)
- I had no idea what book.
Maybe it was a book about baseball, who knows?
- So needless to say, you did not go to Yankee games
regularly as a kid with your folks.
- Oh, definitely not.
No, 'cause my parents would be like,
what's the, it's a schlep, it's noisy, whatever,
but I still felt some allegiance to the Yankees
just being like, oh, that's where, yeah, dad's from,
Bronx, all right, you know, drive past the stadium,
that kind of stuff, and then just as time went on,
I didn't know anybody who was into the Mets,
so even just as time went on,
just like other kids in New Jersey or something
would have tickets.
So yeah, I remember going to a Yankees game
for my dear friend Wes, who's the singer
of "Raw Riots" birthday, probably it's like 11th birthday
or something, we all piled in a car
and went to a Yankees game.
That was exciting.
But all right, next year,
we can really follow the Yankees season.
This is a Yankees show.
Seinfeld, you got any reason
why you can't support the Yankees?
- None at all.
I'm all in.
You know, it's impossible to watch,
it's impossible to watch Dodgers games in LA
if you don't have cable, which I don't,
and I will not be getting.
So, but I could watch Yankees games.
I can get the MLB package and they won't be blacked out
because it's not my local market.
So let's get in on the Yankees next year.
- All right, very exciting.
Gonna buy four bootleg Harrison Bader jerseys.
Have them ready for next summer.
- Merry Christmas, guys.
- Yeah, Merry Christmas.
(laughing)
All right, so this is a baseball episode.
I guess it's also a Halloween episode, so.
- Yep.
- For people who are more interested
in the corporate food history side of TC,
we're not gonna talk about Big League Chew.
(gunshot)
- It's time for--
- Corporate Food History.
(gunshot)
Let's talk about it.
(mimicking gunfire)
- Big League Chew, it's one of those funny things.
So for anybody who doesn't know,
it's a type of bubble gum
that is modeled after chewing tobacco, right?
So it's like shredded bubble gum.
It's really sweet.
I always liked the grape flavor
and it comes in kind of a big pouch
with a cartoon caricature of a baseball player on it.
It's such a weird kind of product.
It's one of those things that,
it always felt like a little bit bootleg to me.
You know what I mean?
Like a product like Big League Chew,
it wouldn't shock me if you met somebody
from another part of the country and you're like,
did you like Big League Chew growing up?
And they'd be like, what are you talking about?
I've never heard of it.
And yet, I don't think that's the case.
It feels very regional and weird and small.
And yet everybody seems to know it.
So did all you guys grew up chewing Big League Chew?
- Absolutely.
I've never chewed a Big League in my life.
I don't think they have it where I'm from.
- Okay, so you think they didn't have it in Montreal?
- No.
Nationwide, I don't think they had it in Canada.
- Interesting.
But Jake, in Connecticut,
you were chomping on some Big League Chew?
- I have the opposite feeling about it.
I feel like it was like the coolest,
sexiest version of gum as a kid.
- The gum itself comes in, it is like tobacco.
It is in tiny, thin little strips.
It also has, it sort of like has this sort of dust over it.
So it's like, has an interesting sort of tactile feel
like you were supposed to pick it up like tobacco,
bunch it together and put it in your mouth.
- Right.
- How many times have you chewed tobacco, Nick?
- I would probably say three times.
- I'm right around there too.
- Never dip, I couldn't dip.
- Oh, I thought that was dip.
- Yeah, I thought that was dipping.
- No, no, dip is actually where you put it.
Dip is like a skull.
You put it underneath your lip
and it's sort of a tobacco you almost suck on.
- And chewing tobacco you use your teeth and chomp on it?
- Yeah, and then you keep it
sort of in the back of your mouth.
- And spit. - And spit.
- Oh, there's two different products.
- Two different products.
- Okay.
- And tobacco I've done, maybe have you dipped me?
You know, you'd also see people, you'd see them.
- The tin.
- You'd see the tin and they'd even have like,
you know, I remember in high school vividly,
like the cool kids would have the,
like in the back of their jeans,
they'd have like a circle where their skull tin would be,
you know, so the outline of that.
But yeah, chewing tobacco is like a baseball thing.
It's sort of like old wild west.
You spit out into the canister
some gross kind of like brown spit.
- I mean, you're spitting regardless.
Dip, you have the empty 20 ounce of Coke bottle
and you're like, you're in the back of math class
and you just have that like two inches
of just like black liquid in the bottom
of a clear 20 ounce plastic bottle.
- What are the rules in MLB now?
Are you allowed to dip and chew tobacco?
You can't.
- No.
- See, I always liked baseball
'cause I thought you let the players
have the most personality 'cause you could wear chains,
you can have jewelry, visible jewelry.
- The last guy I really remember dipping
or like chewing tobacco in a crazy way was Dykstra.
He was like, I remember in like mid nineties,
he had some crazy year where he was hitting like 400,
like well into like July.
Like he was really having a hell of a season.
And I remember just like watching like a Philly,
he was in the Phillies, watching like a Phillies game
and just like him, like he like had a base hit
and he was like leading off of first,
you know, just like egging on the pitcher
to throw back to first.
And there was just a shot of like this,
in North, like close enough his face.
And this is the enormous chunk of tobacco,
like dangling out the side of his mouth
and just like black liquid, just death juice,
just like, you know, just on his chin.
And he was just like the nastiest guy.
- There's a lot of positive benefits to nicotine.
Obviously there's a lot of negatives.
There's causes health problems,
but nicotine does, it makes you sharp,
gives you energy.
It's like caffeine, right?
Gives you focus.
- It's also got a smooth, cool flavor.
- Absolutely.
- TC doesn't like how people focus
on the negative aspects of nicotine.
- We're fighting back.
Was there ever a time where baseball players
smoked cigarettes?
- I was gonna say, I do like this idea of like--
- Probably in the dugout.
- In the dugout.
- Matt's nodding yes.
So yeah, 'cause I could almost picture it,
like kind of like Keith Richards style,
but you're like an outfielder.
You're smoking, you see the ball coming,
you got the cigarette in your mouth,
just like dangling and, or you're like a pitcher
and you're smoking a cigarette
and then you take the cigarette out of your mouth
and like stuff it into part of your glove for a second,
then pitch real quick, put it back in your mouth.
'Cause if you were allowed to dip,
it seems only right that other guys
could choose to smoke a cigarette.
- 2012 was the year that they outlawed tobacco.
- Interesting.
- Wow.
- I wonder if RCW pluses went down.
I wonder how that affected the stats.
- I mean, the few times I've done dip,
like it's like a buzz.
I mean, I'm assuming tobacco is the same way.
- Yeah.
- It's intense, man. - Well, I mean,
if you smoke a cigarette
and you hadn't smoked one
and you started feeling that high,
it's like that times like a thousand.
- Yeah.
- It's going directly into your bloodstream.
It's also disgusting.
- I remember like I was in a,
I was doing like an artist residency in Nebraska
and I was like, I went to this bar
in this small town in Nebraska
and I was like hanging out with these old dudes.
I was like throwing on all this like,
it was one of those like,
it was like early internet jukebox.
I was throwing on nothing but GPV in the jukebox
and it was like all these like 60 year old dudes
in Nebraska and they were like, "Hey man."
And then like we went outside
and like they gave me some dip.
And I just like-- - Whoa.
- Threw a ton of it in my lower lip.
We were like kind of like in the back,
like the back kind of area of the bar.
And I was just like down in these like Miller lights
and just doing dip.
And I was just like, "Let's go, let's go."
Like a weird Nebraska night.
- That's amazing.
- That was my thing. - I'm impressed
you didn't throw up.
- New Mountain Brews song, "Weird Nebraska Night."
- "Weird Nebraska Night," man.
- You got them into Guided By Voices
and they got you in a dip.
- I threw on "How's My Drinking," I remember,
'cause we were all pretty hammered.
(laughing)
♪ How's my drinking ♪
♪ I don't care about ♪
♪ Being sober ♪
♪ But I sure care about ♪
♪ The sound ♪
♪ And the sound ♪
♪ And my truth is ♪
♪ Leave me down with you ♪
- See, I always thought growing up in the era
of anti-drug education,
and there was quite a bit of anti-tobacco education
happening, at least at my school,
I remember something that was really hammered
into our heads was the idea that,
oh, so you don't wanna smoke a cigarette
because you're scared that you might get emphysema
or lung cancer, so you're gonna dip.
Oh, great idea.
No, idiot, you're gonna lose your whole jaw.
And then they would always show a picture
of a dude who had half his jaw missing.
So I remember, I feel like year after year,
they always wanted to remind kids,
don't you think for a second
that you could dip your way out of this,
stay away from tobacco.
And I remember even as a kid being like, yikes.
All right, if I ever have to, I'll be a smoker.
'Cause that seems worse.
Losing half your jaw just seems pretty brutal.
- Yeah.
- Back to Big League Chew.
The idea for Big League Chew came when a bat boy,
Todd Field, who was working for the single A team,
the Portland Mavericks, he had a pouch full of licorice
that he chopped up because he wanted to look cool
like one of the older ball players chewing tobacco.
Interesting, just a guy who wanted to look cool
like a baseball player.
He started kind of making his own.
- Don't you appreciate the sort of very dishonest
assessment that tobacco's cool?
Just out of the gate.
- I wanna be cool.
- Well, this is 1980, too.
I mean.
- I understand, but it's still obvious.
- Zero stigma.
- But even with the stigma, there's just a thing where,
you know, everyone always says,
but I like this guy going, I wanted to be cool,
so I made it look like I chew tobacco, like the cool guys.
- Right, mimetic desire.
- I actually wanted to be Joe Camel at the time.
- Right.
It was all about cool.
I mean, there's literally a cigarette called cool.
So I guess this guy, Todd Field, and the pitcher
for the same single A minor league team
started working on it together.
They bought a make your own bubble gum kit
from a company out of Arlington, Texas,
went to the supermarket and got flavor extracts
of maple and root beer.
Is that something you just buy at the supermarket?
I guess like in the spice aisle,
they might have some little concentrate.
- Definitely maple.
- Yeah, maple, maple and root beer.
- I made my first batch of what would become Big League Chew.
I baked it in Bat Boy Todd Field's mom's kitchen.
(laughs)
Just like, mom, the pitcher from that team
I'm the Bat Boy for is gonna come over on Saturday.
Why?
We're gonna make bubble gum in the kitchen.
All right, have fun.
- Todd Field is 16 at this point.
- Yeah, he's hanging out with 29 year old Rob Nelly Nelson.
- Nah, 22.
- Maybe, yeah, minor league team.
- Single A ball.
- He's like 21, 20.
- Young dude.
- Yeah.
- And they're just cooking it up in the mom's kitchen.
I mean, this is a classic story.
I don't think this stuff happens that much anymore.
Just a couple knuckleheads,
kind of like a kooky, weird origin story
and the first batch cooked up in mom's kitchen.
That's old school American ingenuity.
- That's classic.
That's real Glenn Bell.
- Yep.
Today you need to learn,
you need to know how to code to get anywhere.
- Today you need a PhD in chemistry
to get into the industrialized food game.
- So many gatekeepers.
Nobody's coming up with this stuff at home.
So the original shredded R&D concept samples
of Big League Chew were brown to look like tobacco.
- Oh, that's sick.
- And were created from cutting sheets of gum
with a pizza cutter.
So just make a big brown sheet of gum,
cut it up with a pizza roller thing.
That's sick.
So truly it was tobacco for children.
(laughing)
- Todd's, shout out to Todd Field.
- Then the idea was pitched to the Wrigley Company
and Wrigley gave them a three-year deal.
They thought it would be a novelty
to add to their bubble tape and ouch brands.
Well, 'cause what was ouch?
Ouch was like a fake bandaid.
- Oh my God, ouch.
I remember ouch.
- Yeah, ouch was shaped like a bandaid container.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, ouch was good.
- But the first year,
so they thought this would be a minor novelty,
but the first year they sold $18 million worth of gum.
And this is a long time ago.
So that's gotta be at least triple, quadruple.
Currently Big League Chew is manufactured in the US
by Ford Gum and Machine Company in Akron, New York.
Not familiar with Akron, New York.
After taking over distribution rights from Wrigley
and moving production from Mexico at the end of 2010.
Okay, made in America.
- Respect.
Reverse NAFTA.
They're going from Mexico back to the US.
I love it.
- In an interview with Esquire Magazine,
Rob Nelly Nelson said,
"I like to say that my arm's not in the hall of fame,
but my gum is.
It's not the way I thought I'd get in,
but I have no complaints."
- I wonder what that deal was that Rob Nelson
and Todd Field struck with Wrigley back in '80.
- I don't really understand what a three-year deal,
because it can't be like you work for us.
I guess it's like a three-year license of it.
But then they must feel like they (beep) the bed.
You can't renegotiate after three years
with an $18 million profit.
- Wrigley should have bought it outright.
- Yeah.
- Probably back in 1980,
maybe people weren't thinking that way.
Today, somebody brings you a new gum concept
with a lot of potential.
You're sending Todd and Rob home
with $5 million each, full buyout.
- Full buyout, yeah.
Own that in perpetuity.
♪ I wish I had a boy that talks so sweet ♪
I wish I had a boy to let my parents meet I wish I had a cotton candy heat
I wish I had a room with canopy I wish...
I had...
I wish...
I had some...
bubblegum
I wish I had some bubblegum, bubblegum, bubblegum, bubblegum
Can't get enough bubblegum
I wish I had some bubblegum, bubblegum, bubblegum, bubblegum
Alright!
Wow, Big League 2. I wonder what kind of numbers it's doing today.
Do you think it's like down or up?
I like that we're really like, kind of burying the lead here though.
What is the lead?
Todd Field. Do you know who that is?
Wait, somebody else has the name Todd Field?
Are you familiar? Okay. Todd Field is like an acclaimed American film director.
Todd Field?
He has a new movie out called Tar with Cate Blanchett, which is a very austere three-hour movie about a contemporary classical conductor.
So he parlayed his Big League 2...
Okay, like I went and saw the movie Tar. I'm a Todd Field fan because he released two movies in the early 2000s.
One was called In the Bedroom.
Oh my god, this is the same guy!
Yeah, and he made another movie called Little Children, which is an adaptation of a Tom Parada novel with Cate Winslet.
And then he kind of disappeared for a while. He's actually, he has a part in Eyes Wide Shut as well.
He plays the piano player that Tom Cruise is old friends with in Eyes Wide Shut.
I remember the movie In the Bedroom.
Yeah.
Right.
He disappeared for a while, whatever.
He has a new movie that I went and saw at the Glendale Americana on Tuesday night with my brother.
And it's like a two-hour, 45-minute, very tense, taut movie about a contemporary conductor of classical music that gets cancelled, played by Cate Blanchett.
Basically the opposite of Big League 2.
So then I got home and I was doing my classic, like, let me catch up on, let me read about Tar.
Let me read the review. Let me read the Wikipedia page.
Let me check in on the Todd Field Wikipedia page. What's this? Early life? Wait, what?
He was a bat boy for the Portland Mavericks and he co-created Big League 2?
Yeah. I mean, what a journey.
I'm going to see it.
You're going to see Tar?
I'm seeing it tomorrow. Should I bring some Big League 2 as like my movie snack?
I think you should.
How was it?
Absolutely.
I thought it was great.
Okay. There's Oscar buzz.
All right. So this is interesting. Over 21 years, he's directed three films, all of which have been critically acclaimed and he's been nominated for Academy Awards.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. So he's a major dude. He's just been kind of quiet.
So my question is, how much money does he make off Big League 2?
I pray that he gets royalty. Is it possible?
Is this the rare story that you hear about somebody with just an ungodly amounts of money who actually does it right?
What would you do if as a child you helped create a huge product and you just received millions a year of mailbox money without even thinking about it?
What would you do?
I mean, for some people, the idea might be, well, I think I would dedicate myself to an art that I'm really interested in, such as filmmaking, and I would only do it when I
want to do it.
I wouldn't get caught up in the bulls**t.
I would sometimes take 16 years between projects, and I would spend that time traveling the world on my yacht in my private plane.
I would do whatever I wanted. I would relax.
And when I really had a great idea for a film, such as Tar, about a canceled composer, when the muse struck, I would get to work and I would contact Cate Blanchett and we
would do it.
And then after that, I might disappear.
I might be in Sri Lanka for 10 years, renting a mansion.
But you know, that's what I do.
So maybe Todd Fields really has the ultimate life.
I mean, if I had to guess, I would say that he's not involved.
He doesn't have any royalty on it.
But I mean, I could be totally wrong.
I mean, listen, if I was a journalist at Cannes or whatever, the Venice or whatever, whichever prestigious film festival movie premiered at, I would be the first
question out of my mouth.
Mr. Field, Jake Longstreth from Time Crisis. I'm dying to know, what is your current status with Big League Chew?
Do you receive a royalty? Was there a buyout back in 1980?
I wonder if he keeps it close to the vest.
Oh, yeah. You find anything, Seinfeld?
You know, I was skeptical when Jake tweeted that fact because I went on the Big League Chew website immediately.
And Todd has not mentioned it all on the About page.
It references Rob Nelson and Jim Bolton, but no Todd.
And so we started talking about how this is sort of a bit of erasure.
It seems like he's been cut out of the story.
There's a CBS This Morning feature on their website as well, where they go deep and no reference to Todd.
Something must have gone down. There's a story there.
There's a few options here.
I mean, he was a kid when he created it, so it's possible that he just grew out of his love of bubblegum and baseball, like many young men.
And it's possible that even though he was receiving this insane amount of money, he had a good head on his shoulders.
And around the time he was 16 or 17, he's getting a little less into sports and more into cinema.
And he just realized, you know, maybe he's about to go to college or something.
And he just realized, I'm a cinema guy now.
If I go down to the local independent movie theater and I want to talk about, you know, Fellini, Kurosawa, whatever,
and people are looking at me as I'm the rich kid with the big league chew fortune, they're going to laugh me out of there.
I want to engage in cinema about the human condition.
I want to give voice to the voiceless.
I want to use the medium to explore humanity and existential themes.
And I don't think that being a 17-year-old billionaire who created big league chew is good for my brand.
So I'm going to debt it.
You know, maybe he dresses down, you know, like he's kind of like a film bro, probably not particularly fashionable.
And maybe sometimes people go back to his house or something and they say, Todd, I thought you were just a working class film bro like me.
How do you live in a mansion?
And they'll say, all right, let me come clean.
Here's my secret.
So I could see him wanting to downplay it.
And maybe they say, Todd, you want to do some press about big league chew?
And he said, of course, I don't want to do press about big league chew.
I'm going to save all my press for my next feature film that I've been, you know, working on for 10 years.
I'm not going to go blow that up, you know?
Yeah, it's hard to think of a product that's less sort of in line with a prestigious film career than big league chew.
Just the name of it, even.
He's sitting at Cannes talking to like Pedro Almodovar, who's just like, can you explain big league chew?
And he's just like, oh my God, this is so embarrassing.
He was like, I was nine years old and I cut up some licorice.
Oh my God.
You know, it's funny speaking of cinema.
This literally sounds like a story from Magnolia from like a Paul Thomas Anderson film.
In fact, actually, I'm going to, I'm going to try to find out.
I'm going to try to use my connections to find out.
Hey, Paul, are you aware of the fact that your fellow director, Todd Field, invented big league chew as a child when he was a bat boy for a minor league Portland, Oregon
team?
It just sounds like a story he would have made up.
It really is.
Yeah, like the first sequence of Magnolia when there's all those really short, like when like Patton Oswalt is scuba diving and he gets picked up by the plane picking up
water to put out forest fires and ends up like in the top of the tree and scuba diving.
Oh yeah, yeah.
That whole sequence.
I mean, I love, I mean, Todd Field apparently had some sort of relationship with Kubrick.
I mean, he was, he acted in Eyes Wide Shut and I think he had worked closely with him previous to that.
And I just love the thing about Stanley Kubrick.
I mean, at some point that must have come up.
At some point, Stanley Kubrick is saying the words big league chew to Todd Field.
And then Tom Cruise is like, hey, what's it say here?
You mean a big league chew?
I love that.
I think this is a more, I think this is a sadder story.
I think he got more sinister and I think he got f**ked.
I'm reading this other article that says Field couldn't have been older than 12 at the time.
No, this is all over the, he was born in '64 and big league chew, apparently this was in '80.
It came out in '80.
So this could have happened when he was 12.
It could have happened.
And that Nelson's.
Screwed him over.
Nelson saw him and was like, what are you doing?
He was like, is that tobacco?
I've never seen a 10 year old, you know, spitting tobacco.
Chewing tobacco.
And he was like, no, this is gum.
And he was like, interesting.
And that he just, I think, stole the idea.
And I think that no one brings it up to Field.
Because you could be the biggest director in the world.
You're telling me, Paul Thomas Anderson, you're telling me Jerry Bruckheimer doesn't want that big league chew money.
I mean, just, you'd have to be upset.
This is like an, what is it?
Like Breaking Bad.
You know how he like never did the partnership with.
Yeah, no, no.
It's like those entrepreneurs.
Yeah.
Then he's got to go ask for money for his cancer treatment for it.
At some point he was like, I could have been an inventor of that thing.
Right.
And I wasn't.
Right, right, right.
I think this is a different kind of traditional Hollywood story.
Yes, I guess it's totally possible that.
I mean, it's really sad that the first batch of big league chew was made in the Field family kitchen.
But it's totally possible that, especially back then, you could imagine that this guy was kind of like, well.
Thanks for the idea, kid.
Now the grownups are going to go see if we can turn into a business.
And he's like, all right, man.
Cool.
I mean, maybe it's a thing where like if you're if you're a journalist and you're going to do an interview with Todd Field, his publicist is like under no circumstances.
Can you bring a big league chew?
Todd will end the interview if you bring a big league.
He will walk out.
He's sitting on stage at Lincoln Center next to Cate Blanchett.
And they take some questions from the audience, just like some weird old New York dude holding like a plastic bag full of papers.
He's like, I have a question, Mr. Field, about big league chew.
And he's just like, I'm out of here.
And Cate Blanchett is like, what is big league chew?
What happened?
What is big league chew?
What is he so angry about?
Although I do also love the idea that Stanley Kubrick, who I believe is from the Bronx, maybe he was a Yankees fan.
Stanley Kubrick was a Yankees fan.
But I love the idea that Stanley Kubrick, also famously a cagey guy who would take years between projects and live kind of in isolation.
Right. He lived in the English countryside and he didn't do interviews.
I feel like he left America in the 60s and never came back.
Yeah, he was like, I mean, a true artist, checked out, obsessed with the work, probably not doing all that much socializing, living out in the countryside, working on
his Napoleon movie that never happened.
You know, obsessively planning stuff out.
I could picture him talking to this young guy and just be whatever the story is and just basically saying, do you want my advice?
The words big league chew will never pass your lips for the rest of your life.
It didn't happen.
End it.
And he's like, Mr. Kubrick, I mean, I'm kind of proud of it.
Cinema is my passion now.
And he's just like, never again.
They're watching you.
I just love that it's not like Todd Field grew up to be like, oh, television director.
He directed a bunch of episodes of Mad About You and directed an Adam Sandler movie.
No, he worked with Stanley Kubrick and has been nominated for like three Academy Awards.
I think the big league fiasco like probably pushed Todd Field to, you know, hey, you're going to screw me on big league.
I'm going to win an Oscar one day.
And I think that we see the high output without the big league.
I'm going to do it through making dark, independent cinema.
The juxtaposition is just like too insane.
When I saw it on the Wikipedia page, I was like, are you kidding me?
Like all the lawyers and business affairs and like Paramount or whatever, like we got to close this deal, you know, with Todd Field.
And they're like, I know, but he's being so difficult about the deal.
Like he's being such an ass and they're like, can't he isn't going to be reasonable about this?
You're like, do you know the big league juice story?
Like he lost like hundreds of millions of dollars.
He is so litigant.
He's, he's obsessed with the contract.
This is also such like a Seinfeld story.
Can you picture just like season seven of Seinfeld?
You find out that George invented big league chew.
He was a bad boy for the Yankees when he was 12.
I'm not talking about big league chew.
You can totally picture like a flashback where he's like, what is that kid?
Jerry's like, so you used to take a licorice and cut it up.
I wanted to, I wanted to be like the players.
You'd cut it up and put it in a, in a pouch.
Yeah.
I invented big league chew Jerry.
That's amazing.
You know how I'm at Rocky horror picture show.
It's like a cult thing.
Like people throw like toast at the screen and they're all these things.
Wouldn't it be cool?
I think it would be cool if like that happened with like tar, like anytime Kate Blanchett had like a meltdown, like people were throwing big league.
It could be like a fun, it could be fun integration, you know, like, Oh, I love it.
Guys, I do think this is like kind of a TC break, like journalistic break.
I forget.
We've had this a few times, right?
In our, in our career.
Sure.
Journalist.
This is just honest Wikipedia page.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, look at, listen to this.
Rob Nelson says in an interview, it was the summer of 77 and I was a pitcher for the Portland Mavericks.
And there was a teenage bat pointing Todd field.
He's now a writer, director and actor in Hollywood.
He wrote and directed in the bedroom, which was nominated for a few Oscars, including best picture and best adaptive street.
But clearly wants to say like how great the sky is seeming.
Okay.
Anyway, Todd had a pouch full of licorice.
So this is how he tells this is official narrative.
Todd had a pouch full of licorice and he had chopped up that he chopped up because he wanted to look cool.
Like one of the older ballplayers.
I said to him in the clubhouse, Hey Todd, what do you have there?
He said, don't worry.
It's not red, man.
It's just licorice.
And that idea just kind of stayed with me, I guess.
So then here's a quote from Todd field.
How he idolized the player so much that when Nelson asked him what he wanted more than anything in the world, he answered, quote, this is Todd fields quote.
I'd have tobacco, but it would be bubble gum.
So I could spit like these guys.
A year later, Robert bought a bubble gum kit out of a magazine and we were cooking it up in my kitchen.
That's part of our big league too came from, to be honest with you.
So Nelson is saying that never happened.
I never created the gum and cooked and fabricated the product with this guy.
And Todd fields like, Oh yeah, it definitely happened in my kitchen.
Like we did it.
And I was part of it.
By modern standards, you probably, people would probably still want the, the kid to have royalties, but that story makes more sense.
One day I saw this kid on the team. He was chopped up some licorice and I talked to him.
I said, why do you do that?
And he said, I want, I'm a kid.
I can't shoot tobacco, but I want something.
I want a candy.
I can do that with, in fact, I wish this was bubble gum.
And then I walked away from that and I said, I'm going to make that bubble gum.
That's a good idea.
I guess that sounds like more like an old school story.
You're right.
This image of Rob Nelson, the pitcher, then going over to the, the kid's house to make it together.
Why, why would you go because I believe you have a kitchen?
I think that Todd Field was like, this is a good idea.
Let's do this together.
And he was the ambitious one.
I don't know.
You're right.
Something doesn't add up.
Something doesn't add up about the story.
But they clearly have two very different stories where one guy is like, I saw this guy and I was inspired and years later I made it.
I mean, this is like such a classic.
Like we've done this, whether it's like someone stole someone else's, you know, music idea or whatever.
But this is like, literally he's like, I never in one story, they did not cook the stuff together.
If they, if they cooked it in Todd Field's kitchen, then they were like partners.
You're right.
This is the original Breaking Bad.
Older guy.
Actually, and also, yeah, very, very PTA.
It's pretty licorice pizza.
The older person and a kid starting a business together.
Yeah.
It's also, it's very Facebook movie too of like that guy Rob, the pitcher being like, well, if you've been in Facebook, you've been like, what's that quote?
Right.
If you invented Facebook, then you would have invented Facebook.
Right.
If you invented, if you invented Big League Chew, Todd, then you would have invented Big League Chew.
I mean, I think we should reach out to Todd.
I mean, Matt, maybe you could reach, it's probably, it's totally a long shot, but reach out to Todd Field.
Maybe he can call in next episode to clarify.
If it helps you can say the Time Crisis is an internet radio show that covers culture, including cinema.
And we're very excited to talk about TAR, which is Jake's film of the year.
Yeah, I'm a big fan.
And say, well, they might get into, you know, some life stuff and then, then he comes on.
It's just 90% Big League Chew.
Yeah.
I guess I got to say another, another thing is if you're Nelson, you hear a lot about these ideas where somebody kind of like stole an idea like this.
You might go out of your way to just cut the kid out of the story.
You know what I mean?
If you really, if you really knew that, okay, I had, I was kind of partners with the bad boy and then I kind of screwed him because he was a kid and I just wanted to go make some
real money.
Wouldn't you picture that guy like when he's doing press years later say, so how did this Big League Chew come about?
And he might say, you know, I kind of remember there was a bad boy and he always, he always said, I wish I could chew tobacco.
And I'd say, you can't kid, you're too young.
But then I thought, what could I make for a kid like that?
Anyway, I created, like, why would he even mention this guy's name and the fact that he's a director and stuff?
Well, that's the thing.
Yeah.
And like, I mean, it took Todd Field many, many years to come to prominence.
It wasn't like Todd Field was on a sitcom the following year where it would have made sense for him to be like, oh, well, that, that kid on that sitcom actually helped me
make Big League Chew.
It was like, he didn't direct a movie for another 20, 20 years.
He was biding his time lurking in the shadows, plotting his moves.
Big League Chew makes 16 to 17 million dollars a year as of 2019.
So this is still a lot of very real money here that Todd has been frozen out of.
I'm also reading that Todd Field is an excellent trombonist.
He could have gone to the big leagues in jazz, but he, his love of cinema steered him elsewhere.
If you cooked the first batch of Big League Chew and it was your idea and then it became this insane national, like, I mean, it really was this sort of overwhelming sort of
like, I don't know, like cultural thing.
Every kid has it.
You can direct Tar.
You can direct Citizen Kane.
I just got to think that that is eats at you.
He's not letting his kids chew Big League Chew, especially because he's clearly a very creative person and his greatest creation is Big League Chew.
Like you said, I don't, I haven't seen Tar.
I don't know.
It could be amazing, but his greatest creation is Big League Chew.
Could you imagine he's like with his kids and he's like, hey, you know, I invented that.
And his kids in the backseat, looking it up on Wikipedia.
No, you didn't dad.
Yeah, well, I guess conflicting story, dad.
Official narrative says you have nothing to do with Big League Chew.
I don't know.
This is brutal.
Dad, if you invented Big League Chew, then why are we living the lifestyle of a moderately successful indie director's family and not that of a corporate food
billionaire?
All right.
You're finally old enough.
I'll tell you the story.
I'm so insecure.
I think that I'll die before I drink.
And I'm so caught up in the news of who likes me and who hates you.
And I'm so tired that I might quit my job, start a new life.
And they'd all be so disappointed because who am I if not exploited?
And I'm so sick of 17.
I'm over this teenage dream.
Someone tells me one more time.
Enjoy your youth.
I'm going to cry and I don't stick up for myself.
I'm anxious and nothing can help.
And I wish I'd done this before.
And I wish people liked me more.
All I did was try my best.
It's the kind of things I did.
I'm relentlessly upset.
I don't get to know it.
They say these are the golden years, but I wish I could disappear.
My ego crushes so severe.
God, it's brutal out here.
It looks like Nelson tried to do a Big League Chew kind of like-- what do they call it?
Like a spin-off, I guess.
Like he did a chocolate bar called Big League Plug that failed, which to me just goes to--
without the brilliance of Todd Field, you don't know what you're doing with this product.
Truly.
Todd Field was the mastermind.
He's the magic.
Heart and soul.
And also, Todd Field seems like he lays pretty low.
He-- only to do press for this new film, Tar, is he doing interviews.
He hadn't spoken publicly for 16 years before that.
It either means he was sitting there stewing about Big League Chew,
or he was traveling the world on his mega yacht.
I'm not sure.
At some point, he was adapting the Jonathan Franzen novel Purity
into a 20-hour limited series for Showtime.
But apparently, this would have been one of the most expensive TV shows ever made.
The budget was $170 million, and so Showtime bailed.
And I imagine if Todd Field really had that Big League Chew money,
he just would have gone out of pocket and dropped--
$170 million would be chump change for him.
He would say, "You want to do a 20-part Jonathan Franzen series?
Here, I'll pay for it.
Just try to pay me back when you can."
Here's the opening scene of the movie, the Big League Chew movie that we're going to do,
is you start with a reporter, and their editor's like,
"It's the press for Tar," like you said.
You know?
Yeah.
And there's a young reporter, and they don't know--
You know, they're nervous.
This is the first time that they're doing this kind of interview,
and he's the director, and there's Cate Blanchett, and everyone's like--
And the editor's like, "Good luck out there.
Just don't ask the director anything about Big League Chew."
And then they ask, and the guy does--
You just-- No one's asked Todd in a long time,
and it does sort of start the story.
Oh, I love that.
It's kind of a framed narrative.
It's a press conference, and then over the next 3 hours and 27 minutes--
because this will be an epic film about America, about capitalism,
about meaning in the 20th century, about ownership--
over the next 3 1/2 hours, there'll be all sorts of twists and turns,
and occasionally you'll return to that same interview.
And this journalist who was doing just a junket,
is one of a hundred journalists that are brought into that hotel room
to talk to the director and Cate Blanchett,
who thinks they have a non-story.
It's just going to be some blurb in Entertainment Weekly.
He's like, "Holy [bleep] I have a book."
I love it.
This is Tom O'Neill starting to write Chaos.
He doesn't even realize what he's getting into.
This person spends the rest of their life writing about Big League Chew.
Cate Blanchett plays herself.
I also love the idea--
Yeah, because he's worked with some really big-name actors.
Cate Blanchett, Cate Winslet, they all can play themselves.
Oh, so good.
You know, normally I think in my mind we write our own movies.
We should ask Charlie Kaufman if he wants to write this movie for us.
The film is called Chew.
Just simple.
Chew.
Beautiful.
It's like Tar.
It's like Tar.
From the acclaimed director of Tar,
finally gets personal with Chew.
I also feel like that's such a classic.
And he can direct it.
It's such a famous director move.
You know, when you're one of the top international artistic directors,
eventually you have to make your film about your childhood.
You've got to make your Roma.
You've got to make your Roma.
Spielberg, right? Isn't the new Spielberg with Seth Rogen?
That's all about--
That looks insane.
That looks so terrible.
I saw the preview for it.
Oh, no. Is the trailer out?
I've never heard of this.
It was called The Fablemans.
I think it's called The Fablemans.
Oh, my God.
I was just squirming in my seat.
Oh, no.
Oh.
Oh, it looks unwatchable.
Spielberg's Roma is not looking great.
The magic of movies.
It's like a little kid at a drive-in.
It's being like, "Oh, my God."
He's earned it.
Making a super-hit movie.
He's earned the right.
You can't make a movie about yourself.
Like, write a memoir.
You don't make a movie depicting yourself as a budding genius.
People want to know the story of The Fablemans.
No.
I'm in for it.
It's brutal.
Just call it The Spielbergs, too.
But also, one of my favorite movies last year is the Paolo Sorrentino film Hand of God.
I love Paolo Sorrentino, incredible Italian director.
His movie Hand of God is very well done.
No spoilers, but some very difficult things happened when he was a young man in his life.
But it's still a cool movie.
But it is kind of about-- It's a coming-of-age story about himself, basically.
A young guy getting kind of interested in cinema against the backdrop of Napoli, where he grew up,
and soccer, and what was going on with his family.
And it really is a thing that most great artsy directors eventually do make their coming-of-age story about themselves.
It's 100% time for Todd to tell the story of Chu.
He came 'round here with his camera
And some of his American friends
Where the money is immortal
But the killing never ends
He set out from Cinecittà
Through the ruined streets of Rome
To shoot in Almeria
And burn the bodies whole
He said
I'll be rich or I'll be dead
I got it all here in my head
I was thinking about you guys last night a little bit because I saw Bruno Mars at the Tokyo Dome.
Wow.
I knew most of the songs, but I had some vague memory of like, "That's what I like, that's what I like."
That was like a big top five song for us for a while, right?
I think so.
Because we had the run about him playing it while it was Tom York on stage, and then it was like interrupting Tom York's frequency.
And Tom York got very angry that Bruno Mars was cutting into his performance.
Bruno Mars, hell of a performer.
Also, in case people don't totally realize this, he truly is like one of the biggest pop stars on the planet.
I don't know if he's extra popular in Japan, but the show that we saw at the Tokyo Dome, which is a baseball stadium,
it's where the Tokyo Giants play, keeping it very baseball themed,
today, it's got to be at least like 40,000 people in there, and he did five nights.
Wow.
Sold out.
Holy cow.
He's just a great performer.
I mean, like the worst thing you could say is that there's a little bit of like wedding band energy, but if so, it's the greatest wedding band of all time.
Just, you know, fun, keeping people really engaged.
I don't think I realize what a good dancer he is.
Just moving, just gliding across that stage.
He's a whole package.
I'm a fan.
He's great.
I actually, you'd probably have a good time seeing him live, and he's doing stuff from all over his, from his whole career, really having a good time.
Great night out.
And the crowd just going absolutely nuts.
But the amazing thing that I've always noticed about Japanese crowds is that it's not that Japanese crowds are quiet in that they don't, they don't cheer or applaud.
Of course, they can, just like anybody, get really excited.
But one thing that's awesome here, and I've noticed that when we've played shows too, is that in between moments when it's supposed to be quiet,
you don't have that din that you'd always have at a show in the U.S.
It's just people f***ing talking, and so there's these moments in the show where in a baseball stadium, 40-plus thousand people,
multiple times in the show, it's like a thing that the Bruno Mars' band do where he's like, they want to get really quiet.
And it's kind of cool.
Like, he goes, he's basically doing like, like, shout, like, "A little bit softer now, a little bit softer now," and they get really quiet.
And at a certain point, it goes full silence, and the dudes are just kind of like dancing on stage to nothing.
And it's so wild that in a baseball arena, truly, you could hear a pin drop.
Wow.
It was as if not a single of the 40,000 people were talking.
So Bruno Mars is like, "We're going to get real quiet now," and then you just go, you're just watching the guys kind of bouncing on stage without any sound.
And it was totally silent, and then he kind of brings it back up, and then, you know, people go nuts, but great vibe at the Bruno Mars show.
Damn.
Welcome to the Top 5. We're comparing the greatest hits of 1980 with the current Top 5 of 2022.
Why 1980? Well, that's obvious.
It's the year that Big League Chew hit stores, setting in motion a sequence of events that led to the film Tar in theaters now.
A complicated, strange story of cinema and bubble gum.
And I should point out that we're comparing Billboard to Billboard.
The Apple Music Top 5 was all Taylor Swift, which might have been fun.
Maybe we'll do that next time, but we're going Billboard on Billboard.
The number 5 song this week in 1980, the Doobie Brothers' "Real Love."
Do you know this song, Jake? Is this like a major Doobie's song?
I'm not recognizing it.
Kind of sounds like Bruno Mars to me.
It could be a little bit.
I wonder if this is the same record as one of Fool Believes.
I mean, it's definitely the same.
Yeah, it's Michael McDonald era.
It's got a groove too.
So can somebody explain to me, Michael McDonald was only in the Doobie Brothers for a certain period of time?
I don't know, man.
Yeah, because it's like the 70s Doobie Brothers.
Oh yeah, this sounds just like what a Fool Believes.
Listen to the music and stuff.
And like, "Oh, Blackwater." It's a totally different band.
They used to be like a rootsy...
Yeah.
A modern rock band.
Yeah, mid 70s, you know.
He was in the band from '75 to '82, then '87, then again in 2019 until now.
I mean, it's classic with a lot of these bands.
Like, you know, think about like Genesis, like what they were doing in the mid 70s as opposed to like the mid 80s.
It's funny because...
You know, or Journey or something. Yeah.
With the decline of bands being less of like a cultural force,
you have less opportunity for that because back in the day...
Like today, if like the singer of a band left the band,
probably they'd just start a new band.
Yeah.
Because they'd probably be like, "Who gives a s***?"
Like, "All right, we did our thing with this band. We'll do a new band."
But back in the day, these bands were so massive that the idea that you just like end the band, end Genesis,
it's like, "No, let's like do it. Let's take it to a new era."
So yeah, Genesis, Doobie Brothers.
Chicago is another example.
Chicago. Yeah, famously.
And it's funny because...
Yeah.
I don't know that much about these bands, but like a buddy of mine was talking to me about this new wave.
Like the past four, three, four years, been all these like new British bands.
Black Mitty, Black Country, New Roads.
Anyway, Jockstrap. He was just like kind of filling me in on all these bands.
Jockstrap.
Jockstrap album's good. There's some good stuff on it.
So I was like checking out these bands.
I'd heard about them and I know people like them.
But so I was reading about this band, Black Country, New Road, and it's like eight or nine people in the band.
And I was just kind of getting in and checking it out, listening to their new album.
It's critically acclaimed.
I watched a great performance they did.
And then I read, "Oh, the singer just left the band."
And, you know, he's this guy had like a lot of personality in his vocals and maybe he was the lyricist.
But they said they're going to keep going.
So I was like kind of interested to see that because that seemed like a real 70s move.
I love it.
I bet they're probably going to share vocal duties with whosoever's in the band.
Maybe a Phil Collins will emerge.
But I also love the idea.
They just get like a Michael McDonald type dude.
Just totally changes the sound of the band.
It's like if Father John Missy never left the Fleet Foxes and then like he became like the principal songwriter in that band at this point.
That would be amazing.
It would be like that kind of thing.
It's still the Fleet Foxes.
I'm thinking of bands real fast.
Sorry, I just have to do this.
Yeah.
November 4th, Los Angeles, Mountain Brews, vinyl record release show at Permanent Records Roadhouse.
Oh, hell yeah.
Getting the word out.
I forgot to plug it last time and plugging it now while we're thinking of it.
Well, I'm thinking of it.
Boom.
Live Brews.
Live Brews, seven piece.
We'll have the record there to buy.
We'll have t-shirts.
We'll have beer koozies, coasters, coffee mugs.
We're going all in.
I love it.
And anybody who hasn't seen it, the Mountain Brews vinyl looks amazing.
And also the Mountain Brews vinyl is your complete works.
Yeah, it's a double album.
It's all four EPs.
Love that.
And where are we at with the Mountain Brews brews?
Those are in route.
I was just emailing with them the other day.
We might have them there that night.
I need to interface with Permanent Records and see if they'd let us sell them.
Maybe they might not, but whatever.
Vinyl and beer.
The brews are leaving Dave Grohl alley in Ohio as we speak.
I think they're en route.
And coming to California.
And it's a little bit, it's still down the pipeline, but the next baseball season,
there's some talks that we're going to be seeing some Mountain Chews.
And that's a collaboration between Mountain Brews and Big League Chew.
Mountain Chews.
It's margarita flavored.
Yikes.
That's actually pretty good.
The worst margarita flavored Big League Chew Mountain Chews.
That's really good.
All right.
November 4th, come out.
That would be so '70s.
Your first few Fleet Foxes records, got a '70s tone.
And then somebody's just like, yeah, you know, like the middle period Foxes
records, there's some similarities, but just like, there's so much more like
satirical, lyrically.
And you're like, you know, that's not the same singer, right?
Oh, really?
No, it's like totally different songwriter.
That makes sense.
Okay, they're kind of similar.
It's different.
But I love the idea of just like, if a band like Black Country, New Road,
who's kind of got these like long songs, like kind of post-rock,
very indie, kind of like emotional lyrics and stuff and like tempo changes
and stuff.
If you're just like, if they got into like Chicago phase,
I can't think of the best example.
It would never happen.
Huge power ballads.
Yeah.
Bruno Mars became the singer for a few years.
That record sold 9 million copies.
And then they kind of went back to the indie thing and it was, you know,
the people liked it, but it just, that was a real moment.
No, it's like the bass player that didn't sing at all in the first two
records actually has like an angelic voice.
Right.
And is like incredible, you know, balladeer and wrote some huge hits for them
and then left and went on a solo career.
Right.
So there's, yeah, there'd be two records that were just like diamond status,
just full of like power ballads, three and a half minute songs.
Then that dude goes on to have a successful career.
And then maybe like the old guy,
the old singer returns and they go back to eight minute Prague indie jams.
The number five song Post Malone.
I like you a happier song featuring Doja Cat.
I like you.
I do.
I want to be a friend.
I'll shop in and I like you.
I do.
I hit you when I lay.
Can you fit me in your plans?
I like you.
I do.
We went to better friends and we woke up in Japan.
I like you.
I do.
Oh girl.
I know you only like it fancy.
So I pull up in that Maybach candy.
Yeah.
Your boyfriend will never understand me.
Cause I'm about to pull this girl like an animal.
Let's take a little dip.
Little lady.
Hit me.
See a trinity.
Hey, I've been thinking lately that I need someone to save me.
Now that I'm famous.
I got.
I need a good girl.
I need someone to call me.
So please be true.
I need someone to share this heart with me.
Feel you.
I got it back again.
Oh girl.
I like you.
I do.
I want to be a friend.
I'll shop in and I like you.
I do.
I hit you when I lay.
Can you fit me in your plans?
I like you.
I do.
We went to better friends and we woke up in Japan.
I like you.
I do.
I do.
Let me know when you feel.
Cause I've been trying to hit it out.
We.
I know that you want to.
I like.
I like posts.
He always delivers.
And I got to say, I love that this album is called 12 carat toothache.
That's pretty good.
Cause I think at the end of the day, Post Malone really is like a classic rock dude.
And he's bringing kind of like, it's kind of like the, the trap version of like,
like Aerosmith type humor.
Nobody had grills in like seventies classic rock, but if they did,
there would have been, yes,
there would have been an Aerosmith album called 12 carat toothache.
12 carat toothache.
He was totally picture.
Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan.
Also, even, but even the sentiment seems a little like great classic rock,
you know, where you're like, I got,
I know that Aerosmith must have songs about this, but his work, you know,
even all that money and success, you know, that it's not that great.
You also have a toothache, you know what I mean?
Like it's, it's not even a totally good hip hop sentiment.
You got that 12.
I don't know.
Aerosmith didn't really go that much.
At least that I can think of off the top of my head.
Like they wouldn't really go into like the sadness of success at all.
Yes. Other, maybe the Eagles would have gotten more into the sadness for them.
I think it would have been just more like the, the humor.
Yeah. Just like loving an elevator.
Yeah. Love that one of their album,
one of their late seventies albums is called night in the ruts.
Yeah.
You can just picture them just being like,
just kind of cracking up night in the ruts, right in the nuts.
I mean, dude, or like pump.
Yeah.
12 carat toothache.
I love this post Malone Aerosmith, a spiritual connection you're making.
It's very, I think it's, it's very astute, very accurate.
A sense of humor.
They can get, they can get emotional when the calls for it, but like,
yeah, a little bit of tiny bit of self deprecating humor.
You know what also it's pretty Joe Walsh.
It's pretty, uh, my Maserati vibes.
If Joe Walsh had been 50 years younger,
he would have had a grill and made an album called 12 carat toothache.
12 carat toothache.
I went to the dentist.
Yeah.
It's like a Warren's event song.
Right.
Oh,
I've been born in 1996.
Uh, yeah, definitely.
He might just be post Malone.
Yeah, absolutely.
Uh, number four song, Kenny Rogers lady back in 1980.
Speaking of the balladeer.
So this song was written and produced by Lionel Richie.
Kenny's voice.
And shining armor.
And I love you.
You have made me what I am.
I am you.
Yeah, pretty rough.
Pretty awful performance.
Kenny's always wrong.
So many ways I want to say I love you.
Let me hold you in my arms for evermore.
You have gone.
And made me such a fool.
This is a quote from Lionel Richie.
When I wrote this song for Kenny, I called my lawyer and said,
if I put my voice on this, it's going to be a smash.
I want it.
My lawyer said, if you give it to Kenny,
it will be bigger than you ever thought.
Now this was true.
What I did not realize was that not only did I have my crowd,
I picked up all of Kenny's following too.
And that happened to be the rest of the world.
I love that it's not his manager.
It's Lionel Richie's on the phone with his lawyer.
I'd never find you.
You have come into my life.
And made me whole.
And made me whole.
Forever.
Let me wait to see you each and every morning.
And hear you whisper softly.
In my ear.
In my eye.
A strange song.
Not great.
I got to say.
Not great.
It's kind of like dark, slightly medieval thing.
Yeah, I find this very depressing.
Also, it's weird to think about Michael McDonald and Kenny Rogers
basically being doppelgangers.
Right.
White hair, white beard.
I mean, it's funny too.
It's kind of like the all for one and the country guy
just sharing kind of like mid-tempo ballads.
Saying like, you do it, your voice is a little twangy.
I'm more R&B.
Right.
We're doing the same thing.
Your audience is more white, my audience is more black.
Pass it back and forth.
And beside me.
Is where I want you to be.
I don't like this song at all.
It's not a high point for Lionel Richie or Kenny Rogers.
Agreed.
Very quick Lionel Richie anecdote.
Yeah.
The only reason I happen to keep this next to my desk
is that there's this article that I have just cut this very small clip out of
from the Washington Post maybe 25 years ago or 20 years ago.
And it was when Naomi Campbell, I believe it was Naomi Campbell,
Naomi Campbell or Dallas Austin was kept in a jail in Dubai
because they had found cocaine on them.
Ah.
And there was no way for them to get out.
And this quote says, "Getting them released,"
and I believe it was Naomi Campbell released from this Dubai jail,
"This involved multiple ambassadors, a prime minister, a prince,
and Lionel Richie."
And it's because Lionel Richie is so famous in Dubai
that literally along with all these ambassadors and princes,
it really did take him coming to Dubai to ask for the release.
Like he is one of the most famous people there.
I mean, I literally keep that article next to my desk.
It's such a funny--
Wait, why?
Because Lionel Richie going to Dubai to speak on behalf of Naomi Campbell,
who I believe with Dallas Austin, I think if I remember the story right,
had had like a little bit of cocaine on a price tag and they kept him,
was that he is so famous that it didn't matter what princes,
it didn't matter what ambassadors, what other religious leaders,
they needed Lionel Richie to go--
No, I understand, but why do you keep that on your desk?
Oh, I just have--oh.
I understand the story.
Just to remind yourself that nothing is impossible?
And that you just never know what friends you may need.
There's something about--I don't know.
It just happened to be right here when you brought up Lionel Richie.
And yeah, it's just a story I think about not often, but that--
The only thing that would have made that more perfect is if the article said,
"To get Naomi Campbell out of jail, it required five ambassadors,
three princes, Lionel Richie, and surprisingly Kenny Rogers."
Kenny Rogers was in it.
Kenny Rogers made the call to finish it out.
We're going to pick up the pace now.
The number four song right now, 2022, "Lil Baby, California Breeze."
It's amazing how long pop music has been dominated by this vibe.
I know.
I don't even mean musically, drum beats, whatever,
some last longer than others.
I just mean specifically this vibe, this kind of--
Uber driver vibe.
Just a sad song called "California Breeze."
I guess it's all post-Drake.
Maybe that's reductive.
Just haunting, weird, reverb-y part, and then--
Jake, do you think an Uber driver will play this in their car?
Yes.
But I think--
Not that it speaks to the experience of being an Uber driver.
I actually think it more speaks to the experience of being an Uber driver.
That Uber driver can be playing anything.
You know what I mean?
But in the movie about the Uber driver, this is playing.
I mean, an Uber driver's life, like driving at night,
a lot of time to think, watching other people's lives,
it probably is a pretty haunting experience.
The number three song, 1980, "The Pointer Sisters" with "He's So Shy."
It's the same groove as that--
Wow.
--the New Brothers.
1980, such a classic, weird, in-between year.
Yeah.
Good song year.
Still basically the '70s.
This is one of those songs where the verse kind of sucks,
and then the chorus comes in.
Such an early '80s groove.
It basically is what a fool believes.
Right.
But like, yeah, a little more '80s, like with the synths,
production changing ever so slightly.
Is this Eileen's Car Music, Jake?
Yeah, it is.
It's right on the edge.
I picture being like 1980, being like late '20s, early '30s,
driving in kind of like late November tri-state area in like a van.
Yeah.
New Jersey-based radiator delivery company,
driving into the city, unloading it, kind of see your breath in the car,
listen to this kind of music.
There's something like the kind of melancholy of it
makes me think about that kind of vibe.
It's like 15 years out from like the sort of like height of like Motown.
Right, because it's such a Motown kind of chorus.
He's so fine.
It's not that far from like Martha and the Vandellas kind of stuff.
Right, yeah, totally.
Just a different production.
Number three song right now, Harry Styles' Mega Smash as it was.
Come on, Harry, we want to say goodnight to you.
All right, this is his version of the '80s weekend stuff.
Have you seen--what's the movie?
Don't Worry Darling.
Oh, the movie that he's in?
Don't Worry Darling.
Have not seen. You?
I have not seen it either.
You know, I'm going to see Tar, I'm going to see Triangle of Sadness.
I don't have time to go see Don't Worry Darling.
Oh, Triangle of Sadness, so good.
Amazing.
So good. He did 15 sold-out shows in a row at the Forum in Los Angeles.
Wow.
At the Forum this week. It was the last week.
15?
Yep.
What's his--is he playing One Direction stuff?
That's a good question.
I don't understand it.
Does he do like a One Direction mega mix?
He's got to, right?
Clearly a lot of his fans have been rocking with him since the One Direction days.
Of course.
Now he is one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
Bruno Mars had a moment in the concert where he sat down at the piano
and said, like, we're going to play a game called, you remember this one?
And he just started playing like songs that he'd written for other people.
And he made it kind of fun.
At one point in it, he started playing like a classic Japanese song and went,
I'm just--I'm just f***ing with you.
I didn't write that one.
And then he's just--
He is a real entertainer.
Yeah, he got a big laugh.
I'm looking at the set list.
I don't know any Harry Styles or One Direction songs,
but this does seem to denote one.
And it looks like he played 15 songs on October 23rd.
And one song--
That's it?
Well, one song, What Makes You--no, sorry, 19 songs.
Then there was--the encore was four songs.
So he did 15 songs in his main set, and one of them, What Makes You Beautiful,
that was a One Direction song.
And the other--the encore of four songs, according to this, were original.
I got to compare this against his other 14 nights.
Harry Style, no repeats.
He has two albums or three albums?
Three.
One night he played Alice in Chains' Dirt front to back
in tribute to that album's 30th anniversary.
He played Guava in its entirety.
He played Pure Guava.
Pure Guava by Wayne.
Number two song 1980, Queen, Another One Bites the Dust.
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah.
Sounds great.
Just thinking about how Todd Field was like, "I wrote this, too,"
and never got credit.
Somehow Todd Field wrote this.
Maybe the Todd Field here is Michael Jackson.
Freddie Mercury said, "Credit for the song should go to Michael Jackson
in many ways."
He was a fan and friend of ours and kept telling me,
"Freddie, you need a song the cats can dance to."
John introduced this riff to us during rehearsal that we all immediately
thought of disco, which was very popular at the time.
We worked it out, and once it was ready, played it for Michael.
I knew we had a hit as he bobbed his head up and down and said,
"That's it.
That's the gravy.
Release it, and it will top the charts," he said.
So we did, and it did.
Another one bites the dust.
And another one gone.
Another one bites the dust.
We're going to get you, too.
Another one bites the dust.
How do you think I'm going to get along with that dude where you're going?
He took me for everything that I had and kicked me out of my home.
I am a--
Are you satisfied?
How long can you stand to hear?
Just a classic, great song.
Yeah.
It's interesting.
The bass is so sick.
So this song, in terms of songwriting, is entirely credited to the bassist.
So it's not just that he came in with a bass line.
I guess John Deacon, the bassist, came in and was like,
"All right, Freddie, check this [expletive]."
And then he's like--
Another one.
Another one bites the dust.
I got to tell you, it was on a plane, and I think maybe I was drunk.
But in the Freddie Mercury movie, I believe that's how this happens.
And it almost felt unbelievable.
Like the bass player comes in with it?
Yeah, and everyone's like, "I don't know."
See, I love this.
This is old-school band style.
Like the bass player comes out of left field and writes a huge hit.
Yeah, I love that.
Another one bites the dust.
I'm kind of your waste, but you can have my hand.
I'm bringing it up to the ground.
You can beat him, you can cheat him, you can treat him fair.
You can leave him when he's downy, but I'm ready.
Yes, I'm ready for you.
I'm standing on my own two feet.
I'm the thug with the coolest feet.
The reason is I'm the bass player.
Yeah, I mean, you got to give it up for Queen.
That's pretty crazy that multiple members of the band just wrote huge songs front to back.
I love that.
The number two song this week--
Ooh.
Actually, I've been wanting to talk about this.
Steve Lacey, "Bad Habit."
I've known Steve for many years.
Friend of the show.
We've worked on Vampire Weekend, Father of the Bride.
Always loved Steve.
This song is number two right now, but a couple weeks ago this song was number one.
Yeah.
It's kind of like Harrison Bader hitting home runs for the Yankees.
Steve Lacey, number one single in the country.
The next generation is out here crushing it.
It's one Max, my kid, knows every word to.
I don't know if it's from TikTok or--
But he's just across the board.
Across the board.
This is a massive song.
Also, I'm looking at all the credits.
John Carroll Kirby, who's an amazing musician, great keyboardist, also worked on this song.
Shout out to John Carroll Kirby.
Love seeing this success.
Okay, the number one song this week in 1980, Barbra Streisand, Woman in Love, written by the Gibb brothers.
I think we've heard this before.
God, we always get stuck in that '79, '80, '81 window.
Just this kind of depressing pop music.
This is terrible.
This is very depressing.
This song is kind of good, but--
It's better than the Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers.
Yes, but 1980 is generally very depressing.
All right, hopefully, let's move on.
Hopefully, this song will be more exciting.
The number one song on the Billboard charts right now, Sam Smith and Kim Petras with Unholy.
Good Lord.
Okay, it's already more exciting.
Good Lord.
Wait, who is this?
Sam Smith and Kim Petras.
Oh, wow.
Check out it.
Unholy reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
It made history as Petras became the first openly transgender woman,
and Smith became the first openly non-binary person to reach number one on the charts.
Making history.
Also, Ezra, you may know that Father of the Bride graphic designer, Nick,
did basically all the early work, if I remember right, for Kim Petras.
Oh, yeah, Nick Harwood that we worked with worked with Kim Petras.
Nick Harwood, yep.
Crazy, this is a huge hit.
It's so minor.
It's not a spooky season.
It's not a fun hang, but yeah, I guess it is Halloween.
All right, congratulations to Sam Smith and Kim Petras.
Your number one smash, Unholy.
We'll be back in two weeks.
Let's start getting ready for next year's baseball season.
Don't care what happens in the World Series.
All right.
Happy Halloween.
Next time.
Peace.
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
♪ Dig it ♪
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