If I Were You - 582: AOL Instant Messenger

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

In this episode we discuss Padel Ball, cheese puffs, and screen names. Advertise on If I Were You via Gumball.fm.See omny.fm/listener for privacy information.

This is a hip-gum original. That's what they call a perfect theme song. It's one for everyone. Really? Yeah. Because it has the bossa nova style lounge jazz. Yes, I'm smoking a cigarette in Havana, but then all of a sudden I'm in the mosh pit at Radio 104 Fest.

I was transported to two different worlds. Yeah. Yeah. A little twofer. Yeah. And speaking of twofer, this guy uploaded the links to Sound Cod and Google Drive just in case I wanted one or the other. That's really nice.

That's professional. He provided a WAV file. He provided an MP3. He did. Yes. All over the place. That's preparation. Neil Reed.

Mm-hmm. That's his name. Neil Reed. Cool. Thanks for the hours of entertainment and getting real. Speaking of Koi Jews, why that became like a theme song thing, but I don't know why. Yeah. I mean, I think for a while we were into the word Koi because it's funny.

Yeah. I don't think we were Koi divas maybe, diva roach. We just like sometimes we do it with tacky. We find a word that we really enjoy and we say it a lot and I think we just got into calling ourselves, for a while we were calling ourselves Jews, which is fun and I guess at some point Koi Jews and that stuck. Yeah. So, no, I don't remember the origin, but it's kind of ambiguous.

It's Koi. It's Koi. And it is tacky. Yeah. And it's Jewish. All right, sweet. Thanks, Neil Reed. This is a fiery, the only advice show on the web hosted by us.

Yep. I'm Amir. I'm Josh. We're still in New York City. We are. I feel like I've been here for a month at this point. It feels like that for me. It's been a while.

Yeah. When people visit you, even though your life still feels familiar, it's all, it's all rocked. It all goes by the wayside. Like when I'm in New York, your, your schedule, your, your routine, it's all upended. Yeah. Because normally most of the people I work with are in LA. I have my mornings for free.

Nobody bothers my ass before noon because that's like 8 a.m. in LA. Yeah. So I'll go to the gym early. Handle emails, errands, chores, things around the house, around noon. Cheeky. Cheeky fat. Yeah. Cheeky fat before noon.

Yeah. Yeah. And then a luxurious fap if I'm starting by 10. Your 10. A two hour tease. An edging session that lasts till midday. But when you're a visit, that's all, it's all off. I'm, yeah, I can see your rock card and I guess you haven't like had no release yet.

My pre-game. Yeah. I had a wet dream for lunch. I bumped into you and you, I think, exploded or something. Yeah, it's weird. It's really weird. It's tough. I don't like, I feel all, all over the place.

Loopy. Yeah. Strange. But I guess this is a more balanced effort like you often come to LA, I rarely come to New York. Right. When I come to LA, does, does it feel like it's all, all go for you? I guess it feels a little bit different, but you split your time between NADPOD and

if I were you. So actually I'm busy when I'm in LA and you're kind of the same. You're busy when you're in LA, but you're also busy when I'm in New York. Yeah. It's sort of a lose, lose. For sure. We should meet somewhere, a third party city. That's cool.

Me and you in Kansas City. Damn. I don't think we've ever been there together. No, no. I've been there a few times, but without you. A few times? Once with Jill on our cross country trip back to New York City when we were moving away from LA to get away from you.

And then another time I went there to direct a commercial with Bobby Lam. Lam and I on the lam. Yeah. One of your good friends. We actually, you would have loved it. We're on a casino. Shot in a casino. Yeah.

Bobby and me. Where was I? Um, I imagine you were in LA just jerking your gherkin like I do in New York. Yeah. Good damn. I feel like whenever you go to places without me, it's fun to escape from you, to be away from you. Right.

Yeah. And now that I'm here, I want to leave. Yeah. You want to go somewhere else? No. Getting away for the afternoon. Yeah. I'll, to get space just to, yeah, you're, it's not a big deal.

You're just, you're a lot, you're grading. You're tough to be around for an extended period of time because, you know, you're needy, you're needy in a way and you, it's not even just being needy because you expect the attention and it's also. I don't think so. It doesn't feel that way to me. Right. Well, nothing feels that way to you because you are you.

Right. Do you feel like you're all like this coffee? That's easy going. That's easy going. We were supposed to record the podcast. You said I need caffeine and we're like, well, we have to get this podcast out of the way because the engineers are coming into training the studio. We're going to set it up and then you're like, well, I'm not doing anything until I've had

my coffee. Yeah. I said, don't talk to me until I had my coffee. Yeah. Which is like a funny way to say that. Okay. Let's go get your coffee, but then you wanted to take a nap because you didn't want just the jolt of caffeine.

Right. Because I crash out. Right. So now it's 11 p.m. and you made everyone stay late. True. True. And we should say it's December 31st. That's right.

That's right. Everyone else had plans. Right. And we're probably releasing this late February, early March. It's like, why are we doing this to ourselves to accommodate you? But like, is that even to make you, it's not even to make you. Three, two, one. Happy New Year.

Yeah. I'm going to focus on the episode. Right. Yeah. I didn't want to do too many production jokes. Okay. Like we said, if I were you, advice show, let's see if we can answer some questions. Let's do it.

I found some pretty insane ones. Really? Some pretty salacious, kind of fucked up ones. These ones are dark. Like, holy shit, I can't believe this person had the audacity to think this let alone write it down. Wow. All right.

I called mine the games. Mine games. Love it. So we'll call this person David Blaine. Oh, that's good. I'm going to visit my sister for a few days in about a week. I'm staying with her for about a week while I move. My concern is actually about her boyfriend.

They've been together for a while now and I used to think he was a really nice guy, just a bit on the quiet side. My feelings for him changed after the last time I sated with them. Stayed. I mentioned to my sister that I can't stand Cheeto Puffs. Where's this going? The next day he showed up from running errands with a big bag of the cheesy snack. For the entire rest of my stay, he always had a bag nearby.

It just seemed really off to me. Like, who does he think he is? Is this some kind of dominance thing? My sister doesn't even seem to notice or care. Is it just me or is he trying to spite me by eating Cheeto's puffs? Please, tell me I'm not that crazy and that this collar popping douchebag is being a dick. Love. I was going to say it's real.

I'm like, can you imagine? David Blaine. David Blaine. P.S. I was FaceTime with my sister and I saw him in the background eating Cheeto's puffs. Well so then he might like them on his own. What? It's like you don't like this very popular snack.

Yeah. A lot of people love them. Yeah, but they're not too popular. You haven't probably had them in years. We have some in the kitchen. Puffs? Yeah. Cheeto Puffs.

I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Really? A big blue bag? I don't know if it's a blue... Well, they're individual and I mean like Pirates Booty or like anything at Trader Joe's.

These puffs are... They're still popular. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid we used to have like the plastic tub of Cheeto balls. Oh, the cheese balls. Yeah, the cheese balls. I used to like suck on them until like the cheese went away and then they like became like rock hard.

They went from like thick sponges to like... That's so gross. Yeah, I used to do that. They were called cheese balls, like C-H-E-E-Z. Cheese balls, yeah. Yeah, a fucking plastic wheelbarrow or a keg. Yeah, I love the... What's it called?

Yeah. Bucket, the plastic bin. The plastic. You know, in the old West, the like Donkey Kong through them. Barrel. The big plastic fucking barrel of cheese balls. Yeah. I love those too.

I didn't do the sucking thing. This guy's making me want to eat Cheeto puffs at this point. Yeah, what you did was basically just remind him that he liked Cheetos or Cheesy Puffs, Cheese Puffs, whatever they are. Yeah, the Cheesy Puffs. Cheesy Puffs. Remember that from South Park? Cheesy Puffs.

Beefcake. For the back of my throat. Yeah. That show is good. It's great. It's been co-opted by like needy tweens, but it's still funny. Still hilarious. Beefcake.

Cheesy Puff. That was actually my aim name for a little while. Cheesy Puff? Yeah. Wow. Not bad. I was a fairly early adopter. Yeah.

Cheesy Puffs are pretty good. No numbers. No extra letters. Just Cheesy Puff. Yeah. Do you remember the password on that? It was, yeah. It was Spade.

Like David Spade. Remember there was Justin? Justin Lett was a programmer at Vimeo whose screen name was Refrigerator. Oh, yeah. That's pretty cool. That's a pretty good screen name. It's like, you know, you were sitting on these like awesome AIM names. I don't even think AIM exists anymore.

Yeah. Could you possibly sign into AIM or AOL right now? Did they park the domain names or could I now get a great AIM name? Right. Like are they gone forever? Do they expire? Is ChillDude22 available? AOL Instant Messenger.

Like could I download AOL Instant Messenger right now? Do you think yes or no? Oh. I guess I do think so. You do think I can. Yeah. I feel like they adopt. They've made some kind of new version.

AOL Instant Messenger redirects me to cancel.aol.com. Interesting. I guess aol.com still exists. Like you can use it as a mail client. AOL. Yeah. This is the AOL front page right now. It looks like Yahoo or something.

Oh, wow. They really rebranded with like the minimalist Helvetica AOL. It looks like a coffee shop in Copenhagen. Right. It's Hygi. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to try to log into my former AOL account and see what's going on there.

Bob Rooney. Yeah, my Bob Rooney. But this is not Instant Messenger. I really think they killed AIM. AIM Slack Killed The AIM Star. What do you think? Slack Killed The AIM Star in my AIM and in my star Slack Killed The AIM Star. The TikTok with three views.

Look, product sunset on Mark. So it came out in 1997, which is basically the highlight of my life. And then in 2012, AOL ended employment of AIM's development staff while leaving it active. And on 2017, it was announced that the AIM service would be discontinued. Wow. However, a not-profit team known as the Wildman Productions started up a server for older versions of Instant Messenger known as AIM Phoenix. That's cool.

Yeah. What a fun little nostalgic thing. Goddamn. The noise of the door opening and shutting. It really would be so fun to just like, if that account still worked, and I could just open it up almost like it's a time machine and see what that list of people looked like. I want to see what my buddy list was junior year of high school. Oh, that's really cool.

I don't talk to, oh god, I mean I have almost any of those people. I guess just Jeff, Dave, and Mike. Wow. Phoenix things look like you can talk on AIM, ICQ, MSN chat, G-chat, it's all the old types of chat. Wow. Group chat service have retained conversation history. Huh?

I wonder if Phoenix can fucking access that shit. You got to look into this thing. Man, to read your old AIM transcripts, would you want, if you could get them printed out almost as like a book, like an encyclopedia, would you want that? Yeah. Probably. I mean worst case scenario is I don't read it. What about you can get all of your AIM conversations, but you have to tweet a link to them.

God. No. You wouldn't want anybody else reading it. No, because someone would read through them much more carefully than me, and I'm sure I said some pretty nasty shit at age 14. Yeah, for sure. In 1997. Yeah, yeah, it's not good.

I wouldn't want that. I wouldn't want that out in the world, I don't think. I'm actually accessing, what was yours, 38 Jake or something? Not even close. I bet it's really close. Big Jake 38. Way off. It's way off.

What was it? You were right the first time. All right, we'll look into this later, but what should this person do? I assume maybe the Cheeto Puffs thing sort of reminded him. Yeah, I think the only way to know for sure is to go stay with them and eat a bunch of Cheeto Puffs, just get over it just for that weekend and just eat them nonstop and see if he says anything. If he's like, I thought you didn't like Cheeto Puffs, then he was doing it to fuck with

you. But if he doesn't notice, then that's also how you big dog hit back. That's cool. He's like, I actually love puffs myself. Yeah. Break young hives. No, it's really fucking good, actually. I'm not allergic to the cornstarch.

Okay. Don't take it so personally, ultimately. I think so. All right. In either way. Don't take it personally, and if he meant it personally, then you're fucking him over, and if he actually didn't, then all is good. Yeah.

Honestly, if someone is mean to you, that's fine because you're in the right. The goal is to just not be mean to other people. Right, exactly. Right. So ultimately, anybody could be mean to you, and that's okay. That's on them. Yeah, that's sort of making them look bad, and you look cool by not caring or evidently caring a lot.

Yeah. But hiding that. All right. Let's take a break, come back, answer some more questions after these messages. Okay. Thank you to Helix Sleep for sponsoring this episode of our show. Hell yes. Thank you for making the sleep test, the sleep exam, and letting me ace it and become the

doctor of the mattress. Yes, sir. Yeah. Helix makes a really great mattress line, and you take a little sleep quiz to see what mattress is right for you. Yeah, right. Jake's been bragging about completing this two-minute, honestly, like BuzzFeed Lite quiz.

I don't know how you sleep for the better part of a decade. Excuse me, I don't brag about completing it. I brag about acing it. Because you got the mattress and it was great, or? Yeah, I got the perfect mattress. Thank God. Thank God I took that test. That's right.

And if you want the perfect mattress, you can go to helixsleep.com.com if I were you for 20% off all mattress orders and two free pillows. Amazing. Free pillows? Come on. Yes, this is their best offer yet. And no, it won't last long with Helix. The better sleep starts now.

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No, we have too many questions to answer. Yeah. And people to see. Yeah. That's true. This is like a robust thriving urban metropolis and I'm not going to spend it in this room talking to you about like what we should or shouldn't be doing. Yeah.

I can go within 10 minutes be at the Natural History Museum. And you could. Yeah. You can be at different museums. You could eat at world-class restaurants. You could be going to shows to Broadway musicals to concerts at the drop of a hat. And what have you done since you've been here? I yesterday we had the day off.

So what did you do? I had breakfast at Chipotle at two. Yeah. And then I passed the fuck out. I think I'm jet lag or something. No, I think you have food poisoning because you only eat at Chipotle. And then I'll shoot. Yeah.

You basically just eat it. You wake up and eat at Chipotle and then go back to bed. Yeah. I had this barbacoa outbreak allergy thing. And then I went to bed at 4 p.m. and I woke up at one in the morning. Have we talked about paddle tennis? Have we talked about paddle? That's because that's something we did do.

That's what we should do. We can't fully endorse it while we'll get into it. So Micah, your brother, played paddle tennis about a month ago here. Padel. P-A-D-E-L. Paddle tennis. That's how it's pronounced. He was calling it padel, but also paddle.

Right. There is paddle tennis, which is like more of like an open source sport that anybody can place. This is seemingly anywhere. Evidently some kind of proprietary sport called padel, P-A-D-E-L. Yeah. It's a very specific sport that like you have to build specific courts to specific like dimensions slash some of the wall is a glass wall, some of it is a cage.

It's very specific. There's a lot of, there's pickleball, there's tennis, there's squash, there's racquetball, there's paddle tennis. There's paddle tennis. But they're all, so basically just racquet sports, but what he found is that there's this place that's basically like a huge indoor paddle court arena where there's several different courts. Should we talk about what the court looks like?

Yeah. The court is sort of like a carpeted indoor tennis court, but instead of with like a string racket, it's more like a flat metal racket that you play, but with a real tennis ball. Yeah. Yes. No strings, real tennis ball, kind of like a firm carpeted ground with some sand on it for friction. Sometimes there's sand and then it kind of reminds me of racquetball because you can

like hit it against the glass wall in the back and it bounces off the wall and goes to the other side. And there's, there's three quarters of the court is covered in like, or is walled by a cage and the rest is glass. And there's three squares. There's like a forehand side, a backhand side, and then kind of like the baseline. Back-reacting. Yeah.

But there's not really any in or out as long as your serve goes cross court and into one of the service boxes, and it doesn't bounce and hit the fence, then the ball is in play. And after that, as long as the ball bounces once on the other side of the court, it can go off a fence, it can go off the glass. You can play the ball, like it can bounce and you can hit it off your back, your own back glass. Yeah. And then it flies to the other side.

So yeah, it's, it was a fun tennis hybrid racquetball thing that we played. Yeah. Yeah. And you and I played on a team. Yeah. We talked about how we need to play each other, but we played on it, we played on the team. And we beat Mike and his friend. In kind of a glorious fashion.

I wish we videotaped the whole thing though, it wouldn't have gone down that way. Just a slight variation would have tilted the entire game off. Because yeah, we went, we went down early in the first set to nothing, came back one side of that two, two. They went up four, two. And then we ended up winning six, four, of course. Next set, it seemed like they turned it on and switched sides. They, they jumped ahead for nothing.

That's right. And I, and I was like, great, well, we're going to have to split sets and play a third. We went to see who, that's right. We got to get it out within the hour. But we stormed back, come back, we won six, four. So it was very fun to play, but the reason I hesitate to endorse it is the, the expenditure. The pricing was, I was stunned. I was shocked.

Yeah. I was taken aback. It's, I mean, New York is an expensive place. Yeah. Everything is like 1.5x more than you would think in another city. Like for instance, my climbing gym. I think it's like $30 for a day pass and other places I've gone, it's like 15 to 20. Exactly.

A salad is $18 instead of 12. Yeah. But this was, this was beyond the pale. I, I think. Right. So the only thing I had to compare it to is what I paid a rent to court in LA for tennis, which is $8 an hour. And then Mike is like Paddell tennis, which is really fun is 55 an hour.

So I started laughing. I'm like, well, that's 4x what I usually pay for the court. And I guess this is also a different kind of tennis variation, but so I guess you're telling the truth, 55 an hour seems extreme. Right. And he's like, yeah, but it's per person. Yeah. So there's four of us.

And then I'm like, okay, so you are fucking with me. We're obviously not paying $220 an hour for a court, because that's like how much you pay for like a helicopter ride. And it's true. We weren't paying $220 an hour. We actually had to pay a little bit more because. Exactly. It didn't include the rentals.

It didn't include the rentals, which, and you need a racket and you need the balls. But actually you can't rent the balls. You have to buy the balls. Right. So it was $60 per person. There was four of us is $240 for the hour, which is unprecedented hourly rate for anything. Even therapy is cheaper than that. And it comes with nothing.

Like you don't, it's not like going to the paddle house gets you access to a juice bar or a sauna. Like a locker room. Yeah. You can stand up for the whole day. Yeah. No. Yeah.

You just one hour. Literally $240 for the hour. Yeah. Which is like a really nice dinner, but you get to spend a lot of time at the dinner. This is like, you got to be out of here at five. Yeah. Because you're here at four. But look, I will say, I will say that we had so much fun that we considered going back.

Yeah. Yeah. So like it's insanely expensive, but it was essentially worth it. $60 per person. It's funny how expensive it was, but I think it was worth it. I don't have any regrets. I don't have regrets for doing it once. I don't think I could afford to do it every day though.

So this gym for... It's called the paddle house. Paddle house. You can join and be a member for, what was that, $120, $150? $150 a month plus a $490 initiation fee. $500 initiation fee, which doesn't get you free access to the courts. It gives you the privilege of paying $35 an hour to rent the court. So $450 an hour plus $500.

You can get $20 off your hourly rate. Which you'll break even if you play eight times a month, which will cost several hundred dollars. And are you allowed to bring guests? We didn't even ask that. Of course not, I assume not. You can't bring anything. So I would pay $35 an hour, but if I brought you, it's not $35 an hour for you.

I'm still paying the $55. I would think so. It's a very expensive hobby slash sport. Very fun, but also $240 an hour. It's hard to justify every, and it's like, oh, we should have reserved the court for two hours. For sure. That's what?

$120 to exercise per day? But then you start saving money on the rental because you're not renting per hour. Yeah. Because you're renting like the equipment rental. Yeah. That's an overhead one-time rental fee. Yeah. So activity good, actually somebody DM'd me, they live in Dublin, and he pays nine euro

an hour. Yeah. So what we need is more paddle houses to flood the market so the price can go down because it's very, very fun. There's not even one in LA. Yeah. Like that's how rare it is. I think they're going to take the world by storm because pickleball is fun, but it's

too free. Yeah. And we need something. Pickleball is already over because everyone's playing it. People are annoyed with picklers. Yeah. So we're going to- At least this is a contained place.

There's a place for paddle. What we could do is just hire someone to build two padel courts in like an empty warehouse somewhere. Yeah. And then we would be the ones charging. We should shutter head gum and do that. Yeah. Because this could be a court.

Yeah. It's not that much space. Or this could be the area where you charge for the rentals. Oh, that's cool. And so for the racket, how much do you imagine? Well, what does paddle do? 15? 10 for the racket?

I think $5 per hour for the racket. Oh. We shrub that because we don't have the court. We need to make our money on the racket rental. Yeah. It's a racket. Nice. Nice, dude.

You think people would rent the racket from us if there's no court, though? Yeah. Because then they would take it to the paddle house. So you rent it from us? Yeah. Because we rent it by the week instead of by the hour. That's cool. Yeah.

It's kind of like surfing in that way. Exactly. My other expensive hobby. But the beach is free, man. You'll never see someone charging the ocean. Yeah. But you have to pay to park. Really?

No. Shit. No parking is free, too, actually. Imagine hanging 10 and charging 10. That's good. That's like impossible, right? There's no way, right? Yeah.

I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud. Yeah, you are. Actually, someone wrote us an email saying that they're in a pickle. Well, let's hear it. And it's about sports. Great. A sports pickle, literally.

I love that. I'm a junior in high school and I come from a family that lives and breathes football and I was pressured into playing at all my childhood. And this year, I finally decided to quit. And my whole family is very disappointed because it was the only sport I played. My question is, should I play this year for my family or just shake it off and find another activity? Did you ever play a sport just for your family?

Yeah, kind of. I think everything I ever played was because my parents were making me in the wrong way. Yeah. Not that I think about it. Every kid before the age of probably 13 is just like, I was not like, take me to basketball tryouts. My mom's like, yeah, basketball tryouts. Yeah.

And then you'll play the team. And then you'll play the thing. I imagine like, yeah, I think I was presented with choices, you know, like, and I was most resistant to some of them and less resistant. Like I really hated soccer for some reason. I never played Little League soccer or baseball. I wish I played more because now I love soccer and I wish I were better at it. Yeah.

Now that we're closer to the age of the adults, I'm like, now I'm thinking from their angle. Like, if I have kids, I'm just going to make them play all the sports. Like, yeah. So they're a little well-rounded when they grow up. Yeah. And then you can be like, yeah, even if you suck, it builds character as an adult that you were really bad at this thing and you learned how to adapt. Or if you're really awesome, it's cool because like, hey, look at my fucking kid, you just

scored 10 points in basketball. Right. Maybe you like it. Yeah. I mean, I remember, I remember being like pushed to play. Wait, shut up a second. No adult wishes they played sports less as a kid. You know what I mean?

All right. I don't know. That's also not, it's not true. I like, I have friends who were like. I wish I didn't play that much. I take it too seriously. Yeah. As it was like, she was doing gymnastics like 30 hours a week at one point.

And that's like, well, I mean, at the time she did, but now she's grown up and she's like, wow, I like really, I have, yeah, like Nick, Nick Rad was like a world class wrestler in high school. And he's, yeah, it feels like that was, you know, too much to put on a kid. So some, yeah, there it goes both ways. Yeah. For sure. Also, you interrupted me to have this kind of like, milk toast, ill thought out take.

Yeah. That didn't need, it didn't justify basically. You told me to shut up. You said shut up for a second. No, I thought I said stop for a second. Really? Well, I'm going to say shut up for a second, but it wasn't like, shut up. As it was.

It was like, it was basically like, shut the fuck up for a second. Yeah. That's exactly what it was like. But not in like a, in what? I mean, way. I'm telling you how you felt. Yeah. What were you saying even?

I don't remember now. Right. Yeah. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. As much as they think they are. And, and yeah, like, I think maybe it's like, let's a parent down to be like, I quit football and I don't want to do anything, but like if you're, if you want to, if you have a good

reason for quitting football, um, I'm into this other thing, you're parents can get into that. I think parents just need to find a way to support at least good parents need to find a way to support you or like show their like, their love for you. That's cool. So it's almost like a lesson to your parents. I'm not going to play football now. What?

Right. Right. I used to play little league basketball growing up, but only because I had friends who played basketball My friends were really good and I was bad right my friends. Dads were like the coaches and like when your dad is the coach Did you ever play like? Youth basketball you basically have tryouts and yeah coaches watch you do play and then you they literally have a draft Where it's like I want this good this good this good so there's like some parody and I said I played like JCC basketball And that was not how we did it. Yeah, and so

Because you're his my friend my best friend growing up his dad was the coach He always got the that player. Yeah, son. Who's really good, right? And then also they would throw in me Because they're like nobody wants this other kid. Yeah, oh, that's like the key to be the star and then I would always be Yeah, all right, like you get the star because your son, but that's not totally fair Yeah, you have to have this dead weight. Yeah, and Amir has to fucking start and then all the other coaches would giggle Yeah, and then the dad the coach and be like alright I could start them, but I don't have to play him equal and then one summer you spent every single day

Practicing yeah, and you're in your and I had a great way Yeah, you had a growth spurt and you came out and you showed everyone because you still sucked. Yeah, and it was Did you think I'm bad at basketball now man what I wanted to show them I can shoot nice the rock awful I'm not a part of this by shooting a single rock, which was ultimately fine It was a lot of noise, but nobody hurt that day. Yeah in this fucking metaphor you rescued this weird joke But I have no actual Experience playing real sports like football wrestling nothing combat. Yeah, you ever put on pads and stuff like that for football Yeah, no never wrestling. Um, I don't think

So no, yeah, yeah, it seems hard. Definitely. I played flag football. Oh, you know what I did one time because one of my So my high school football team Basically my high school. I was it was a really small school So you were required to play two sports who yeah a year so like wow I think in the year year one I did like cross-country and then tennis But the next year I didn't want to play anything because I wasn't good And one of the one of the ways I could get out of playing sports was by being the athletic manager's assistant Okay, so I was just kind of like I would go to the athletic fields

After school and I would just like drive around in a golf cart and like I'd bring The soccer team water or I'd go and like if a football player was injured. I'd drive them to the boss or whatever Yeah, you were a de facto. I was a gopher. Yeah I was in it. I was just an assistant and I it wasn't a real sport But it counted because I was doing something. Yeah, and I remember The football coach like needed me to help like them run a play to kind of like show them How they're supposed to block or whatever. Yeah, and I was so inept that even when he was like 10 like he was like setting things up He's like, alright, so like just yeah run towards me

And I like was like walking and he's like and I juke left and I was like didn't know what to do I don't know. Yeah, everyone on the football team was just laughing at me Trying to run a fake football play so the coach could fake tackle me to understand what they were supposed to do Didn't you spend a summer as a jockstrap like your team didn't have enough jockstrap? Yes, and you had to literally protect the quarterbacks balls during a drill So they would long snap it into your face. Yeah, just to like check but I was able to put that on my resume And I got into college. Yeah, I was a cup because yeah, you know, it's an ex the student government being a cup Here, let's test the cup you wear a cup and Hurwitz you put your teeth where that guy's balls are

I'll kick you people need to they you need to have like that like volunteering really good for your college resume Yeah, being a towel A towel boy. Yeah, no, no, no, you just be a towel. So yeah, they'll use you to wipe their face after a play I was a drawing rag. I did the same thing because there was a once one semester a year The PE was aquatics, which is like swimming stuff. Oh, yeah And I did not want to do that at like 7 30 in the morning, right wasn't good at swimming It was really cold. I had to deal with like changing the locker room so you could sign up for a PE elective So I took badminton

So like all these guys are to go like swimming in the morning And I would like I don't know do nothing and then I would take badminton and that's why you're so good at Pat L Exactly, which is back to the Pat L. Yeah badminton is another fun racquet sport. That's true. Yeah a lot of running All right, you don't have to play football there. We said it. Yeah, are you happy you are? absolved But everything else you have to do Parker yeah Pat L being a cup. Yeah, it's a towel being water You have to be at least water. Will you at least be water this is water?

All right, let's take another break. Thanks Amores, and we'll be back after these messages Thank you to stamps.com for sponsoring this episode of our show Visiting the post office and dealing with shipping and handling is probably one of the most stressful parts of owning a business But with stamps.com all you need is a computer and a printer and they can bring the post office in your office So if you need a package pickup, you can easily schedule it If you need to sell products online stamps.com seamlessly connects with every major marketplace and Shopping cart running a business isn't cheap. So stamps.com has huge carrier discounts We're talking up to 84% off USPS and UPS rates holy smokes and for 25 years stamps.com has been

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In our family right now, but they are they're great Really easy way to like stay in touch with your family You can upload as many photos as you want directly into my parents kitchen. It's really nice Oh, that's cool So you take a photo of anything perhaps a baby and then it goes to their digital photo. Yeah frame This is actually how we how we told Jill's grandma. She was pregnant We got her the aura frame. We plugged it in. Jill's grandma was pregnant. Really nice asshole This was actually a really sweet moment for me and my wife, and you're trying to make a joke of it

I was just being goofy a little bit like this is how I told my grandma. She was pregnant. Yeah Yeah, kind of like a she misheard it or something like that or the way you said it was kind of like could go either way By the way, Jill's grandma is pregnant. Oh my god. Jill's grandma is 90 and pregnant It's pretty cool. And you told me with a digital photo frame. Holy smokes, and we let her know with an aura. Yeah Thank you the aura announcement So you can instantly frame photos from any device anywhere and invite the whole family in on the fun through the aura app Add me to your aura app I'd love to upload just a picture of me like at a pool or something that could be funny

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Okay, go get your parents something. All right and use the code head gum for $30 off plus free shipping Thank you, aura and now back to the head gum podcast you were listening to All right, we've returned this we have one last question to rule them all that's right This one is sort of about Politics so let's tread lightly. Yeah, we'll call this guy Hunter Biden. Thank you Long time watcher slash listener and I need some help recently my best friend and I were talking about politics And she said that we should send all the immigrants home because they were stealing our jobs and our money

When I say immigrants she's talking about every foreigner She also dropped some pretty extremist right-wing views recently like how working-class are subservient to the upper class She's basically a neo-nazi. The weird thing is she comes from a family of first-generation Immigrants no British blood in her and both her parents work. So she's technically working class Before this she also had really was a really good friend to me and helped me through loads of stuff And I used to think she was the nicest person before I found out she was mental How am I supposed to react to this and should I stop contacting with her before she starts healing? Sorry hailing. Yeah, right. Am I?

Overreacting to stop talk to her just because of this I Think not necessarily. It's fine to be like this is so fucked up. I don't even want to change your opinion. Yeah Like some people are so far gone. There's there's nothing doing there I mean, it's I don't know it think for me it'd be hard like if one of my best friends just started Saying that I wouldn't feel like I had a connection with them anymore You would feel like I can't even get through to you. Yeah, but I also don't know. I don't know. Yeah I think it kind of depends on how important Like how often you having these conversations because people have to live with this within their families and stuff, you know

Like oh, I got the one conservative uncle Yeah, and I'm lucky that I don't really have that but I know that people you can't just like completely Caught people out of your life sometimes. Yeah as your entire family even extended family a Bleeding heart liberal cock. I don't think entire extended family bleeding heart liberal like we had some Conservatives in like some second cousins like some some very far-off cousins So you don't have to interact with very much But they don't I mean they like we're conservative, but don't vote for Trump, right? You know not like I think that's like a different level now a Mitt Romney Republic. Yeah

Yeah, this lady seems to be like a very right like you know, yeah. Yeah, that's that's rough and I think I personally would Excommunicate just about anyone for my life wrapping those thoughts. Yeah I remember that when we were talking about the when Trump was first elected Billy was on our podcast He's like, yeah If they're my friend I'd want to like get to know them get to the bottom and try to change their mind Yeah, we were more like no if you actually think this stuff I want nothing to do with you. Yeah, that seems to be the gamut of what you can do. Yeah, right? So and Billy's a better person than me, so I maybe take Billy's advice

But for it also how is the equivalent of them trying to change your mind like it's that not gonna happen. Yeah, I don't know What is it? It's you? God, I forget the metaphor, but like meetings meeting like debating somebody. Oh, yeah Debating someone that's stupid. They bring you to their level and then beachy with their intelligence or something like that. Hmm interesting So, yeah, I don't want to get into these conversations, right? It's always weird when someone who's like open with experience Yeah, whatever when you're like debating with someone and they like they know a bunch of like minutiae that you don't they're like, well, what about the thing that happened in 1979?

You're like, I don't know what that is. Yeah, see. Yeah, you don't know what happened in 1979 Imagine you don't either because whatever it is you live your life fueled by hate and I don't but it seems like someone changed This person's mind or at least someone formed like nobody has this opinion from birth. They have to have been Mind changed at one point and I guess we have too. Yeah Yeah from our friends slash television shows that we were all in our own corners, but one of them is the right one Yeah, we're in the right bubble for sure. Yeah We're extremists, but for the correct side So

Should I stop contacting with her before she starts how like how do they say this is a best friend was this like Recently my best friend. Yeah, I feel was your best friend Yeah, I really don't know. I think it if that's my best friend. I start looking At my other friends and being like maybe your new best friend and the old best friend is kind of just like Close acquaintance, you don't have to like fully cut that person out, but it's like all right. Well, I think that your takes on Politics are so bad that I think I can't spend all my time with you like I would a best friend Yeah, but maybe you're good in small doses and my other best friends We can hang out and like anything is on the table because I know that I I'm feel more comfortable around them

Yeah, also when it comes to my like best friend, I don't have like a singular person I have like a group of friends you do me as I'm would say you I'm your Best friend, but you mean like after me Or do you mean like I was trying to figure out because you were like you said you don't have I barely know you Like I'm sorry Record scratch Yeah record scratch

like We go weeks months without talking sometimes. I don't care to know you on a personal or interpersonal I don't know your opinion about this kind of stuff. Yeah, we have no deeper meaningful conversations literally So I just level yeah, we make each other laugh and we bring each other a lot of joy And I think ultimately I was gonna say I think ultimately that's what matters to right and I disagree even with that. Yeah Right I see that But so we do have I was gonna say what we do have is history because we you know We've known each other for a long time and you can't even the only thing is that we've known each other for a long time

You can't take that away from us. We've known each other for a long time That's history and that's meaningful and I think that's what makes us closer than Say any of your other I was gonna say if there's a group of friends Someone's gonna feel like your best friend if they're hanging out with like nine people. Yeah, then it's weird if they're all on the other side of her like I Think one thing and my eight friends in this friend group don't yeah Don't you then start second-guessing one your friends and do whether you're actually correct about your thoughts

Mm-hmm, or do you just think oh all my friend like do you have a do you have an opinion that? Eight of your closest friends all disagree with I don't think so. Oh I remembered When we went on a camping trip, this was like 15 years ago. I said that you could cheat on someone you loved and everybody said that you couldn't really yeah Because by definition you don't love them. Yeah. Yeah, and then you're like no you could still love them Yeah, and I remember everybody was kind of aghast. Yeah, and I was like well, I think that's true And so I guess they could think that about foreign politics or you know immigration or

Some things are just taboo and then you don't want the things to be taboo with your best friend But like if I got in the back of an uber I wouldn't just like start talking politics because you're like this won't be fun So maybe that's kind of the thing that you do with this friend now You sort of push that stuff fade away from this best friend on these topics and I think inevitably That that person will become less your friend because you're not talking about every single thing It's not all on the table. Do you think that you think you're cheating thing? You still believe in your friend still disagree with her you guys have sort of come in a common ground

I I Well, I don't talk to these people about that anymore. I like well, I haven't talked to them. I think it's still true Yeah, I think it's still true. So it's up to them if they've changed their mind. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure yeah I've got a lot of people think they're wrong Yeah, I mean I guess that's how it works with anything I think some things that other people disagree with yeah, I'm sure if I had listed all of my opinions there would be one some that are 99% of people that I'm friends with disagree. Yeah, yeah the fact that I think beer is any good, right or the the the what's it called the

The mafia story. Oh, yeah, where I thought I was right playing the game a lot of people Yeah, you don't take my side Yeah, but I I do take your side on that and I take your side on the cheating thing best friend Maybe we are You could find common ground anybody can exactly all right sweet. Thanks for writing in thanks for watching We're on YouTube right now. So you can watch us this video or this podcast is a video Yeah, or you can continue listening on the go. That's right. You ever watch a full podcast episode on YouTube? Not me. No, I think we're old school like that. Yeah newer fans like watching stuff

Yeah, you watch passively well while your work a window. That's open. Right. Yeah, I see that yeah So thanks for if you're doing that if you do that Thank you And if you have your own questions or theme song send them on down to if I were you show threat at gmail.com Let's hear that theme song again. Shall we not and you can watch more of us on our patreon patreon.com slash j a job We're watching old jake and mere episodes classics classic jake and mere episodes well some of them are pretty bad Yeah, actually for sure some of them are old some of them are classic some of them are awful and we shot some new ones now

So there's probably new ones potentially on the headcum channel. Yeah the time you watch this Yeah, so definitely subscribe to the headcum channel do that for watch our new episodes check us out on page John Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching one last time. This is Neil Reed I believe it was Neil Reed With a theme song that was the bossa nova slash Punk a rock a Blink when I did two theme song. Yeah, I was way off Neil Reed was last week. Okay, this is holy smokes I didn't read this at all. Oh

My god, I was way off really. Yeah Just threw this theme song together today I hope you guys like it and use it for the show if you end up using it would love a plug for my Spotify slash Instagram Oh, come on Ethan sermon. Who do we plug up top Neil Reed? Why maybe that was the last episode. Oh my god, and my band The neighborhood watch we're from Toronto and have been loving your comedy since I was too young to know awesome We should probably use this song next week too so we can promote him properly. Yeah, holy smokes Ethan sermon. We're sorry, and I was about to fucking let this play out as a Neil Reed original

Doing too many episodes. Yeah, it's too much. We're at capacity our brains are fried. Goodbye forever Later Thank you That was a hit gum original