Circling Back - Coffee Friday: Good Barbecue With Brian McGannon

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Brian McGannon of Postgradproblems fame joins Dave to talk about the issues of the day. Enjoy a free one-week trial on Patreon for additional weekly episodes: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/circlingbackpodcast Watch all of our full episodes on our new YouTube channel: ⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@CirclingBack Shop Washed Merch: ⁠https://www.washedmedia.shop/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay. Are you leaving for the day? Oh, okay. Thank you, Randall. There he goes. There goes the great Randall Trimbacchi. Is that your first time interacting with him, Brian? Yes, it is.

I think maybe he, uh, he might've favorited some of my tweets. I'm not too sure. Maybe. Okay. He's, he's an encyclopedia. He or I guess more of a what's the word? A historian of sorts of the total frat move PGP, touching base circling back world. So he's probably very familiar. But for the folks at home who aren't that familiar with Brian, let me let me give him an intro. It says here Brian

McGannon is a diehard Mizzou fan from Kansas City who revels in epic sports moments like dominating Ohio State in a new year's six bowl and believe sports betting is ruining the game's soul. Brian McGannon has been roasting bad baseball, pricey family outings and creative flops while cheering Royals and blues wins. Quote, I don't know what a bulk is anymore and at this point I'm too afraid to ask. Brian McGannon is our guest today. Hi Brian. Hey Dave. Grok always comes through. Always comes through with the good descriptions.

You got Grok'd. I sure did man. I'll tell you why. That's an impressive piece of technology. I'm big into chicken leg quarters and half chickens these days and Grok delivers some great, great recipes. Yeah, it does. I've been dabbling and leveraging AI tools and Grok is always a it's a top five AI tool for me personally. Yeah, isn't scalable though. That's the real that's the real question. That's what we're wondering. Man, I noticed you got that Bay Harbor Golf Club hat like, to come into the pod and like wear that on this week of all weeks, man, like everything reminds me of him. Why you got to do me like that? like everything reminds me of him. Why you gotta do me like that? I, you know, I saw it, it was laying on my chair out in the living room.

I said, Will DeFries gave me maybe the greatest rundown of any, it was like the traveler's digest of Harbor Springs, Michigan and Northern Michigan. I mean, the dude was giving me a record, probably two pages is a text like measurable and a page, but he sent me like two pages of notes on Harbor Springs. And it was one of the most helpful things I've ever seen. We did the Highlands Resort, we played Bay Harbor.

It was a lovely, lovely weekend, lovely town, quality people. Shout out to Will. When did you go? Oh man, the years are two years ago, I think. We do a boys trip every summer. We're going to Streamsong this summer, which I'm very excited about.

Central Florida, mid August, absolutely perfect. Just gorgeous weather that time of year, but, uh, we do it every year. We've done with Robert Trent, Trent Jones trail in Alabama for the Mizzou Bama game got absolutely walloped. But I saw Micah, it was nice. Um, but yeah, we did that two years ago. Uh, it's just a bunch of 16 year old 16 year olds. Yeah, it's about 16 dudes.

College, post grad friends, mostly Mizzou guys who just go to a golf resort run up a hefty resort tab and you know, drink and play golf. It's a blast. We do ours in August. So it's my college friends, fraternity friends, fantasy league. We do, we decided like, hey, what if we parlayed this whole like fantasy thing

into like a golf trip? And so we have to do our draft on it. Although the last two years we've managed to like forget to do the draft. So we get home and it's like, our wives are like, so how's your team look? And then you have to be like, well, I didn't, we didn't do the draft. And like, what was the point of that trip? I was like, well, if you haven't figured out by now, it's just kind of an

excuse to go out with the boys. We don't get out much male friendship at this age. It's hard to come by, you know? So we do one every year. And this year, I think we're, I'm trying to get Michigan, Northern Michigan specifically. And, dude, and you know, not to not to not to rest on, you know, the will to freeze opener for this, but just such a beautiful area of the country. Like those are my favorite places to go. Like

the places that you just huge sleepers and you almost never want to tell anybody about it. It's three hours from any airport. Like I flew into Grand Rapids, which was lovely. Drove in around like two in the morning. The boys are still up riffing. They're still up just shooting the shit and you know, maybe there were some substances going around but you know, mostly alcohol, too serious, but it's it's you know

A good boy's trip is good for the soul. I think a minimum of two boy's trips Is is what is really all you need? Yeah, I totally agree with that brian if you don't know How did we meet So there is an old blog that as i've learned today is no longer around postgradproblems.com. Brian, can I give your writer name, your original writer name?

Why not? Champ Stewart. It's almost impossible to find these days. It's Champ Stewart. If you do some digging, web archive, you can find it. And so PGP Post Gradrab problem started as a Twitter account when the site launched. Uh, Brian was a one of, man, you had to have been the first like remote writer. I don't really remember how I reached out to you or if I did, or if Madison

or Ryan Young did, but you were the guy, you were our favorite writer or contributor, so it made all the sense. You were our favorite writer or contributor. So it made all the sense in the world to get you more involved. How do you remember that? Yeah, well, you know, TFM started and you know, if you ask anybody who was a millennial dude in the 2010s, like what were your websites that you went to? It was probably a lot of Grantland, probably a lot of Bill Simmons,

little bit of Deadspin mixed in, and then TFM was like the biggest thing of all time. Like it was a cultural phenomenon, at least in my world, everybody was reading TFM. And you know, Rob Fox and I both went to Mizzou. We kind of knew each other casually from our days at Mizzou, doing various things from homecoming and Greek Week skits. Have that friendly rivalry type of relationship. And he, you know, I had a Royals blog for a couple years that I started my last year

of college, and they were just terrible. They were god awful. So there was a lot of good self-deprecating humor. At that point, Billy Butler was the best player on the team. That's, you know, country breakfast too. It was, it was, it was really dark times for the Royals at that point. And Rob found my blog, thought I was funny. And he said, you know, we're not going to pay you anything, but I'd love for you to write for TFM did TFM for a couple of years at the champs champions tour, which is classic, you know, that formerly known as the Hooters tour.

In my couch, I forget who the dude who my picture was, but it was a dude smoking a cigarette, just an old dude. God, what was his name? But anyway, it was awesome. It was the coolest Twitter Twitter avatar picture ever. The original Burnerverse was like TFM accounts and Gent accounts. And it was just the most pathetic display of dudes in their twenties misplaced testosterone. And Rob just reached out to me and said, do you want to write a few things, wrote a few things for TFM. I, you guys said I was a good writer. I like to view myself as a good fourth outfielder for, for, for TFM during those days. I think that was really my role there, but you know, you and Ryan wanted to start PGP as sort of the next iteration and me at that point as a 26

year old realized I was kind of aging out of my audience. Not many career prospects other than maybe being a comms manager for a minor league hockey team. But I think it was an interesting proposition. We started it and for me it was it was one of the most rewarding times of my life. I think to get to just show up every day write something that that could be funny, that could not be funny. But it was going to resonate with people one way or another. It was really, it was really aware of culture at the time. And I really enjoyed that about PGP, because I think we were all millennials who, you know, grew up with this, grew up with the internet, we grew up with endless possibility, and then you get to work and there's dudes making a quarter of a million dollars who don't know how to do excel spreadsheets.

And so I think it was a really good creative outlet for a lot of us. I think it was a right place, right time type of website that was super, super interesting. And then just my favorite part was recruiting the writers. Like, I think that was that was the most fun We had we had some really good writers five o'clock shadow. I can't even remember their names I know the real names and I don't want to dox anybody but Yeah, PGP you came in And we kind of ran the site together remotely for the for the first

I don't know three or four months and then I moved down to Austin Started just cranking out content with Ross. And that was, that was just a blast. Like that was so much fun. That pediatrician's office slash dentist office, the content that came out of that place, I don't know if anything better has ever been posted on the internet. And I don't, I'm not saying that facetiously. I think it was some of the best stuff.

I think the internet saw in the 2010s. Totally agree. God, I forgot about that. I think it was some of the best stuff. I think the internet saw in the 2010s. Totally agree. God, I forgot about, that was the yoga office, right? The one off 360? Yes, right next to Rudy's. Oh God, yeah, dude. Oh, I drive by it often. No, you had a column, I'm assuming it was published on TFM, but it may have ended up on PGP, but it

was, uh, long par five, the long par five. Do you remember that? I do remember that. It w what was that in, uh, it was like being, being post-grad frat star, something like that. I think it was about, um, either doing a victory lap or like your last semester of school and you the whole idea of it was comparing it to like like a long par-5 on the back nine and I remember that was that was the one thing that stuck out now you had a lot of like classics

but that that was the first one that I was like, oh dude, this is so good. I'm like, that's like a perfect analogy. Um, but yeah, I think a real, you know, when you, I hear you describe, you know, being in Austin during that time and like when I finally moved to Austin and started doing content day to day and working at Grand Ex full time, like my, one of my biggest regrets is just not getting a chance to. You know, I, we worked together for like six weeks, two months. And like, I was always like, the reason, part of the reason you got hired, a lot of the reason, well, a, you're, you're a good writer and you, you did a good job cultivating like a remote staff.

And also like, this is why we'll got hired too, for that, that job later is that I was like, could hang out with this guy like I like I think I feel like I know this guy I feel like he would be a friend of mine and I think he fits in and like that's that's something like career wise I'm like damn like we could have cooked. And I'm bummed that we didn't get more of a chance to and I'm I'm glad we we still get to chat from time to time I think is this the first time we've done some kind of like content together since then? Yes, this is this has been a long time coming. I literally looked it up. My last day at Grand Ex was March 13th, 2015. So the silver anniversary of Brian leaving and gosh, that was that was such a chaotic time in my life. But, you know, I'm glad things turned out the way they did. But I 100% agree.

You walked in the first day and you had a picture of Nolan Ryan being the shit out of Robin Ventura under your arm. And I was like, oh, it's it's on like this. This guy and I are, you know, we're going to get along great. We're kind of going to jive at the same time. Unfortunately, it didn't work out, you know, a lot of egos running around at that point. And I think that just it really wasn't, you know, it wasn't a good fit at that point. And I'm glad it turned out the way it did. Because I think, you know, at every point, somebody needs to check your ego. And that

is definitely what happened to me. And you know, I think what really made me happy was a couple of years later, getting to join up with you and Will. And I think Duda was kind of was in the mix at that point too. And just to get to rejoin and still write content, make a little bit of money doing it was. I mean, that was awesome. Like that was that was really cool. But, you know, for me, I think the worst part was, I feel like we were right there on the cusp of the podcast era. And we were all just all talking about, we got to start doing podcasts, we got to start doing that.

That was the thing, you know, I think nothing was really off limits on the blog, except for, I wrote an article about Peloton one time and they I think Madison actually was the one who nixed that because they were a sponsor at the time. Peloton. But I was just so I was I was like Peloton is a scam it's not it's not a real thing and guess who turned out to be right but for me it gosh, it was just such a really felt like there was a lot left. A lot of unplowed earth that we left behind. And you know, when you're that age, and you feel like there's an opportunity that you kind of miss that really sticks with you. And that really, but also in my opinion, it helped me refocus myself to really, you know, figure out what do you want out of life?

What's going to what's what's going to make you fulfilled? And I always always said, what's going to make you happy? And my whole thing is happiest for housewives. Like, I don't really care if it's going to make me happy. It needs to make me feel fulfilled. And so, you know, my career now in PR and marketing, moderately successful. But, you know, I'm fulfilled and I enjoy it. But at the same time, there's always that little voice in the back of your head.

That's like, man, what if things turned out differently? Yeah, at that time, I remember like, I think that the only podcast if it was even going then in the Grand Ex Network was Jared Fried or J train and he would, Jared Fried was doing the TFM podcast. Uh, which was successful, but weird because he didn't work at TFM, right? It was just like, you want to do it. You're good. You're a comedian. You're funny.

And he did it and he did a good job with it. And then I think the next, the next podcast you had was like inside TFM potentially, and it was Dan and Rob, I believe that's right. And then touching base, excuse me, that came about because of an EDM cruise. That story has been told a hundred times. And then, yeah, I mean, we were not early to the pod game. We weren't late We got in there. Um, and a lot of that is the aforementioned michael weiner who came down and was like

We got to get some pods in here Yeah, man, um that would have been that would have been really interesting but Judging by that bar cart over your left shoulder, man. Looks like things are going pretty well I'm very very jealous of that bark bar cart because of me with two boys under five I can't have a bar cart because it will immediately you know What happens to a bar cart with two boys like that? So yeah, I'm looking at that and I'm very jealous I mean, here's the deal like I

Love a good a good drink. a lot of that is from a stock to bar party when me and my wife got engaged last year so a lot of bottles that I would not ordinarily just buy a lot of top shelf stuff I think there's a yeah there's a Dewar's 18 up there maybe some some Whistle Pig Ben Holliday seven years bottled and Bond. That's a local distillery here in Missouri and that is some good stuff. But not as big of a drinker as I used to be. You know, I don't think, obviously, you know, you can see the gray beard, but you know, that was something that I, you know, I really, when you moved to Austin, that was a really tough keeping up with everyone

down there. That is a really, that was a real shock. Like, believe me, I'm from the Midwest. I went to then a big 12 school. The opinions vary on whether or not Mizzou is a party school. I would say it's a flagship university of a Midwestern state., therefore it is a party school. Yeah. And you have a bunch of, you have about 8,000 Brian McGannons who roll on to campus every fall and say, yeah, I'm gonna go spend my $60 allowance at Dollar Bottles this week. But that's something that I think that I'm not sober by any means now, but I think that, you know, I might get into that stuff here after this episode. But for me,

no, I 100% agree that once kids come around, a luxury like a bar cart will probably not be, will not be of use to me much longer. What's the pizza place around campus that, I don't know, is it at Mizzou that you wrote something about and you either loved it or hated it? You either might've ripped it or, it's like they serve it on like a very thin cracker-esque.

Oh yeah, so here's the big, big thing in Missouri, is there's St. Louis style pizza. And I'll be honest, it's a big, big thing in Missouri is there's St. Louis style pizza. And I'll be honest, it's a very, you know, and also Emo's is the big one and they're a big Mizzou and IL fund donor. So, I gotta be careful here. I gotta make sure that we're able to pay Kevin Coleman next year when he needs to make. But for me, it's a love-hate relationship with with Emos and St. Louis style pizza because in Colombia there was a three dollar pizza buffet every I think Saturday or Sunday. So that was a go-to hangover buster and it was just so disgusting. You could eat and eat and eat and eat and it just would not fill you up. But it was it was just it was it was cheesy. It was a little greasy. And it was good. But for me, St. Louis style pizza is a it's a complex relationship. There is a place in Kansas City

called Waldo Pizza that I absolutely love. And they have an insane st louis style pizza but for me not really a fan maybe it's me being a kansas city guy and just hating on st louis but um boy if you tell somebody from st louis if rob fox was on this call he'd probably be screaming at me right now about how how superior it is i i think it's fine i think it's I think most regional pizzas, with the exception of like New York style pizza. It's it's it's it's a little overrated. Just give me you know what? What happened to what happened to good pan pizza from Pizza Hut? Are we too good for that now?

Like everything's got to be regional. Give me give me a pan pizza, pepperoni, maybe a little jalapeno on. Totally agree. You said $3 buffet and it brought me back to riding my bike to CC's and doing the $1.99 buffet. Just going hard. Then just filling up a water cup with Coca-Cola, going into the arcade, playing Mortal Kombat 2.

Oh my God. Take me back is what they would say. Yeah. We should have brought the MD food boys on on for this podcast to talk about their favorite favorite pizzas. But shout out. I believe me. I love a good in my opinion.

The it there's there's like a fine. There's like a scale of sometimes shitty pizza is so bad. It's good. And I think that's what CC's and Emo's ultimately is, is that there's a fond memory that, you know, when you're at the bottom of the gutter, who's going to pick you up? Big facts. Did you get to experience any of the Austin barbecue renaissance? I mean, now you've got like Michelin stars getting tossed around in Austin. It's, it's kind of crazy, which is great for the restaurant.

Terrible for, I don't know, the day ones that have been going there since, you know, five, 10 years ago, and now you can't really get in there. Yeah. I gosh, when I moved down there, I think Franklin's had just been on. It was like PBS or something. He, he, he maybe bored. Anthony Bourdain was there something somebody a big name basically or maybe Texas Monthly had finally written the article about it but like it had all like started right before I moved there like Valentina's was super

was awesome that was one of the first places I went to down there can I tell you about Valentina's what's that do you know about Valentina's now I mean I knew I knew them back in the day I haven't been to Austin and I went to Austin like last year I think two years ago for a wedding we didn't get to do any of the any they have a new they have a new spot right so I I regret to inform you Valentina South they got a brick and mortar they got in in Abu's Buda yeah it was Buda Buda whatever and they got a really nice place in like downtown that area and lasted about a year and a half. Had some problems, ended up like not being able to cover costs. You had employees not getting paid and they shut down. And Valentina's, if you don't know, was like Tex-Mex barbecue. And it was perfect. It was my favorite

in town because those are like my two favorite foods, right? And you combine them, you know, you can fill in a tortilla and sadly like they have not popped back up but we're hoping because dude it was so good. Yeah, it was uh, but it was it was really interesting to be down there. RIP Valentinas. That's that's a real shame. I think I had read something about that but that was that's a real shame. I think I had read something about that. But that was starting down there. It was um, Nickelweight had just opened too. Um, and I mean, like, uh, gosh, what is the, the one that was downtown that was so good, not my heart. Um, but, but just like, I mean, coming from Kansas City, like you, you want to, you want to pound your chest and say, our shit's better. But like for me, I don't think in Kansas City, you can get bad barbecue.

Like, don't get me wrong. But there are some places that I would I would tell you 100 percent to stay away from them. But in Texas, I even go into Rudy's and getting some getting Rudy's getting getting Rudy's brisket. And I'm like, holy shit, this is this stuff is amazing. And then Terry Blacks, I think Terry Blacks, Joe Rogan stole everyone's thunder.

That was everyone's sleeper was was Terry Blacks and I came down there to visit one of my wife's friends and I rolled up. I was like, I'll just go to Terry Blacks. I'll pick something up really quick. And that was like the week after Joe Rogan had blown up at spot. You couldn't even you couldn't even get down the road. He ruined his line. There was a line out the parking lot that short stumpy bastard just ruined it all for us. So I can't I was all in on Terry Blacks that used to be the spot where it was like, Yeah, Franklin's is there's going to be a line around the block.

You got to get there at eight in the morning. But Terry Black's was always going to be also incredible. Mac and cheese, Terry Black's incredible side. I think that's that's really what makes the difference between a good barbecue place and a great barbecue place. One of my buddies in Kansas City, Tyler Hart, I put his stuff up against Franklin Barbecue, to be honest he because he his story is fascinating he read in Texas Monthly like gosh who's the writers what's the writers name for Texas Monthly who does the barbecue yes

oh let's find out. I'll find barbecue snob. I follow him on follow him on Twitter. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. But anyway, he wrote an article just basically slamming Kansas City barbecue, because our brisket was so terrible. And Tyler Hart was a guy who was slinging briskets out of his driveway and basically went down on this Texas barbecue pilgrimage basically. Went and saw Tootsie in what's the name of their restaurant?

Smith's? No. Snow's. Snow's. Went to Lockhart. And I still think that, you know, you see like Goldie's is huge and Barbecue is huge. Like that's that's one of those. It's one of the most fascinating turns I think that we've seen in the past 10 years in terms

of food because it feels like everywhere has had to step its game up because Texas has gotten so good. And I think it all started with Aaron Franklin. And so that's to me, that was really cool going down there and seeing just kind of that that that genesis of the the next generation of Texas barbecue. And it's literally come up to Kansas City and impacted us up here. There's a great place called Chef J heart barbecue stops kitchen. Some really awesome new places that really kind of outshine the older the older places that good pit barbecue like Gates or Oklahoma Joe's or Joe's Casey now whatever. But there's just so many places that it influences and yeah, it was interesting to see that started down there.

I'd never heard of a barbecue place having a line around the block. And so I think that's kind of how it captured everybody's fascination. Me working in PR and marketing now, giving people standing in line all day. That's the best billboard money can't buy. Yeah, dude, five years ago, That's that's the best that's the best billboard money can't money can't buy Yeah

did Five years ago if you would have said Terry blacks is such a ball no or spot like because it it really does everything you wanted to do like and You're right. You used to be able to go even on like a Friday afternoon like yeah There might be a little bit of a line, but it moves quickly now, dude We it's right around the corner from our office and it's like we'll throw it out there and be like, oh, it's 1130 It's too late Like you got to be in line at 11 and I don't even want to mess with that parking lot. It's a whole thing

So yeah, that's Terry Blacks is great Yeah, you know one of my one of the most pleasant surprises about Austin was it's a great burger time, great burger time. And I think that, you know, recently millennial burger spots have just been taken to the woodshed on Instagram reels. But for me, I think that was the best thing. P Terry's I wake up thinking about P Terry's pretty like probably. 30% 30% of the time, I just, I want a good P Terry's burger. It's a great spot.

There's one right there's, they're all over Austin and it's simple. I would recommend not even like doubling up on the patty, just get a traditional hamburger there. It's so good. Their fries are good. Shout out to P Terry's. I feel like it doesn't get, it gets overlooked

cause Austin's become like a Crazy burger town because now we've got like Leroy and Lewis is a new one They just got a brick and mortar and they're known for their burger There's one at the Butler Pitchin putt that's been revamped since you've been here. That's very cool. It's a little trailer I think it's easy peasy burger. That's probably my favorite in town, but don't sleep on P Terry's It's like a classic fast food drive-through all that they've even got two lanes it's so nice everybody's going everybody's pivoting to the chick-fil-a model you want to talk about scalability why why haven't we been doubling up on on drive through this drive through drive throughs this whole time oh man and you'll

know the amount of people who don't understand that that second lane is open and you'll just see and you're like you feel bad driving past them into that second lane you're like you'll know the amount of people who don't understand that that second lane is open and you'll just see, and you're like, you feel bad driving past them into that second lane. You're like, you guys know, you could have just some people, man. The thing that infuriates me now is, um, everybody's trying to get me to download the McDonald's app or the Taco bell app. I, I'm not turning over my data to those people. I've given them enough.

No, I don't want I don't want them knowing how often what my what my burger consumption pattern is. I don't want them knowing when I'm going to go with the cheesy Gordita crunch. Just know that I'm showing up. Have I never not shown at Taco Bell on a Saturday or Sunday morning? Feeling feeling the feeling the effects. 23 of me has already got all my data. and who knows who picks them up out of bankruptcy. But yeah, my shit's already out there.

It's great. They actually have two Dave Ruffs because they lost my first sample. And then I did another one for an ad deal at Grand Ex and then my second one showed up. So if you go look me up on there, it looks like there's twins. So I have two genetic profiles and it's just, it's very bizarre. And there's a lot of you have to worry about these days. There's just your, your standard old data. There's metadata and there's biometric data and it's everywhere.

Everywhere you look, there's just biometric data everywhere in the world. That was a, uh, that ad deal. I remember like, I don't think things probably weren't going great at the company at that point. And I was like, I didn't want to do the 23andMe. I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to, like, I was, I was in my big privacy era and I remember Brad Key, shout out, ad Brad,

love Brad, the best. And Brad was just, Brad was like, man, this would really be helpful if you would do this I was like, you know what Brad key? I'll do anything for you, buddy So I did it and now who knows there might be a third day of rough very soon We'll see I'm the joke in my head is that they're gonna use my second set of data to frame me for some For some crime at some point when I I don't know inevitably say the wrong thing on the pod. You know, something I've been, you know, now we can get into conspiracy conspiracy, Brian and Dave, I think is really what the people

probably when they click this is what they want. I think that's what the people want. And I'm going to give it to them right now. Oh, yeah. Clones. Where are we at? You know, we cloned a sheep, Dave, in 1996. And thank God we just stopped there. Thank God. We just, we stopped, we stopped cloning animals.

It was a bridge too far. It was on the cover of Time Magazine. And you know what? The good scientists, thank God, every scientist in the world is a good person. And they just stopped right there and said, we've gone too far. Yeah, that's typically what we as humans do.

And we discover some new, dangerous or just groundbreaking technology as we say whoa whoa whoa this is this is good but we got to draw the line somewhere and it's here let's just put a pin in it and we'll we'll just this is as far as we take the deal. Betsy was that sheep's name, right? Dolly, Dolly, Dolly, I was close. I'll tell them either way. I mean, that's that's that was it was like Dolly and Elion Gonzalez. We're really big. We're really big in 1997.

Oh, man. I remember that that was and you know, it was funny. People are always talking about, you know, we get way too political now. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure there was one family vacation where all we talked about was Dolly the sheep and Ellie and Gonzalez. Terry, Terry Shivo as well. Terry Shivo. That was that was a big one in high school, you know, going to Catholic Catholic high school. There were some spicy debate on Terry Shivo.

And, you know, that I think South Park had the best take on it. We're like, if I'm ever in this state, please do not put me on national television You're telling me South Park had the right take no way yeah, they were they were on the nose so What are you doing now? You don't have to give your you know, you're linked in profile But like what what's are you doing content in any capacity? What's up? Um, no, not really. I had the Monday morning power digest. I had dual one today.com. Those were some good, really good. Um, they had some, I did some numbers on the Monday morning power digest and on dual win today. Subscriber subscriber. There you go. I don't think I've written there in two years, but the

last thing I wrote was I will never stop going out to lunch. That was sort of a very public protest against my now wife who was complaining that she works from home and I worked in an office. And I said, well, no, like when you work in an office, like all you got is lunch. Like that's it. Like the lunch move. That is that is, that is one of life's simple joys when you, when you go to an office is sitting down 8 55, sometimes nine Oh five, maybe nine 15 and saying, what's the move let's move for lunch. And I think that was one of my favorite things I've ever written. It was about 200 words and that was, that was it.

Um, but content game, you know, my my career in terms of my PR and marketing career, it really took off in the last three years. And, you know, I worked for a theme park. It's now owned by Six Flags. So it was a year in which it was our 50th anniversary season and we opened a new roller coaster. So that was extremely taxing on the old content brain. And a lot of days you just want to come home and disconnect.

But for me, it's more of bigger projects now. I'm not going to tease anything that I'm not willing to actually do. There's quite a few books that I've started. There's one that I'm focused on right now. And ultimately that's where I'd like to end up is doing that full time. But there is a career move coming for me shortly. But it's not the ink has not I've not signed the papers yet. So can't really announce that yet.

But I will be moving to South Carolina here if everything goes through. But yeah, it's it's been kind of a crazy whirlwind thing. I think I kind of just lucked into a career where they're like, oh, you know, social media, so you know how to do marketing. Congratulations. You are now our director of digital marketing. And that ultimately rolled into a career in MPR and marketing and traditional marketing. And it's fun. It's nowhere near as rewarding as getting in and doing the content grind every day. But for me, that was really a lot of... God, I just saw a great

quote and it said, all chefs aren't great cooks. And so I feel like, you know, I kind of want to be in my chef era now. I kind of want to set the menu for some folks and let other people shine at this point because I feel like that's really where, you know, as you get older, you kind of lose that. I don't know that that maybe not zest, but you lose a little bit of that jump and you kind of get a little comfortable. And I feel like, you know, at this point in my life, I would like to do it on my do it on my terms, do it at my own pace, not have to grind out the content every single day. But working on a book has been really rewarding.

You know, it's it's my grandmother passed away a year ago and it sort of loops in kind of how ridiculous her condo complex was in South Florida and the interesting characters that she kind of ran into. But yeah man, just end the grind in a different way but you know always going to be And in the grind in a different way, but you know always going to be The king content even though it's it's not it's not my profession anymore You had a you had a quote one time it was Or you had I don't know if you tweeted it or put it in a column It was something about how you could never leave you could never stop being online Paraphrasing poorly, but it was something along those lines that I've

I've been thinking about a lot. Not a lot, but it's something that I think about from time to time because I'm always like, man, what if I wasn't online anymore? What if I just went back to the grind and I was like, man, I'm always going to be online. Aren't I? Fuck. I don't know. I don't know what it is these days about the Internet, but it's just you know, at the end of the end of for love of the game when Kevin Costner is like or it's the guy who plays Logan Roy who's the the owner of the Detroit Tigers and

he says the game stinks now and I kind of feel like I'm a little jaded in that regards I think you know it's you know it's a little it's it's just a vicious place and maybe it's always been maybe it's maybe the internet's always been a vicious place and i actually it has been like it i've been called a hard f a hard r a lot of things in the in the comments section but um you know i i it just it doesn't it doesn't really um you know gosh you know who's been doing a crazy media tour lately is Tucker Max and opinions vary on that guy. But, um, you know, he was, he, when I, when I think about, you know, the era that that was, you were just, you could kind of be an island of yourself. And now I feel like it's changed a lot to where if you're going to want to

grow an audience, you really have to draw attention to yourself. And that's never really been my strength. I always thought that, you know, my, my, my talent was going to be enough for, for people to want to, um, you know, enjoy, enjoy what I have to say. And I still, I still have a great audience. I still have, you know, and I remember, uh, Dylan or Ross on one of their podcasts and like, once you get to a certain number, you're always going to have an audience. And I think that I just never really leveraged leverage the

audience in the proper way. And you know, I again, it goes back to I still really enjoy what I do now. And I'm really good at it. So that's kind of where I where I've ended up in my career. But you know, writing is always going to be, you know, whether that's writing the great American novel man My beard looks incredible right now with with the Sun hitting it right now I probably sound so sound so wise right now, but for me it's It's a question of whether or not I want to and and honestly if you're really talented at something and I hate Everyone everyone tells me is like you're such a good writer and I'm like, do you know how many writers I see who just like have completely lose their minds or,

you know, just don't have it anymore. They're just completely gone between the years. But for me, it goes back to, you know, I think a question of whether or not I really want to do it anymore. And I think that, you know, in terms of it being a career, probably not going to happen. But in terms of still serving an audience, I think it needs to happen. And so, you know, I don't really necessarily rule it out as I get older. And the Breaking Bad director has a great quote about writing and he says, I hate writing, but I love having written. And so I think that's kind of the horrible relationship that I have with writing is that

it's for me, it's a painstaking process and I'm my own biggest critic and I'm never going to write something unless I truly believe that it's going to be the best thing. And I think, you know, towards the end at Grand Ex, I was really burnt out about just doing like we had quotas towards the end. And I was just like, you're going to tell me how much I can only write so many stories about Mia Khalifa's butthole. Like I there's, there's only, there's only so much you can do. Right. Totally get it.

I feel like, and you weren't just writing, you were editing and you were running a site, trying to find new talent. It's a lot. It was fun. That was probably the favorite part. My favorite part of the whole thing was just finding new talent.

But speaking of that, I gotta wrap it. I could talk to you for two hours. We're gonna, let's do this again. For sure. Let's bring on a guy you probably remember, the Sunday Scaries guy. I don't know if people forget Sunday Scaries, man. When it was Sunday Scaries was booming on PGP

back in the day. Was you scary? Who else got caught? What's our boy, Kyle? Uh, he's a lawyer. I don't want to dox him. He was not going to dox Kyle. Oh, sorry.

Oh my gosh. I forget everybody's name. I know I should have saved and I should have had him saved in my phone with their, with their, with their TFM and PGP handle, but let's get me use me. You and will let's let's get me, you and Will, let's do, we could do like a little round table sometime and just talk and talk PGP if you're down. Cause I definitely wanna do this again.

There's so many people out there when the site, either when I left in 2015 or when the site ended back, gosh, when was that, 2019? I think so many people reached out and they're like, man, I thought, you know, you guys were going to be around forever. And quite frankly, so did I. When you're in that moment, you think it's going to be forever.

But you know, for me, there's definitely some meat still there on the bone. And I always say, Gil Humpelstedt walked so things girls do after graduation could run. And I was so happy to, know, Will, Will was is it was he's not dead. Will is a great one of the I think one of the most talented people that I've ever come across on the internet like a dude that just is so plugged in to to the moment and congratulations to him. I know you guys will miss him, but

hopefully you guys recover. We're trying no pressure. Hope this is good. No shit man. No he's uh Wills he might be sitting out there right now. Um yeah let's do this again. Let's get together. Let's uh this is fun. I wish I wish I had more time but I unfortunately I've had a lot today and I've got to worry. I got to pick up the boys. You do it. It's all my dad had. Brian McGannon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Brian.

See you guys. Coffee's for closes only. You think I'm fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I am not fucking with you. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only.

Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Coffee's for closes only. Club of Office closes off. Club of Office closes off. Club of Office closes off. I'm Kajak.

I'm Kajak. you