Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Everybody Shout Potatoes | Ep. 350

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Daniel and Soren build their own baseball teams, beginning with the Albuquerque Weird Ants and eventually creating Potatoes, a frazzled mascot who sheds potatoes, carries backups in a briefcase, and never quite gets the win. Soon they’re designing stadium traditions and wondering why mascots don’t engage in more psychological warfare against opposing teams. Along the way, Daniel makes his case for bringing professional baseball to New Jersey and restoring the dignity of the Garden State name.Thanks to ASPCA for sponsoring this episode. To explore coverage, visit http://SPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION.  The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

A quick question for you all right. I think you'll have a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? How did you get? I think you'll have a great time. Soren.

It's a podcast. How you doing? I got something. It's coming. It's coming right now. Yeah. It's something real good. That's not real good.

Don't care of how I'm doing. Just asking and then answered. Yeah. A thing came up today that has made me rethink my own relationship to all of the work that I've ever created. Oh, no. In like a humbling way, it's just funny and interesting to me. It's the 30th anniversary of Weezer's album, Pinkerton. Yeah.

Which I don't think people liked very much. I don't know. At the time, I don't think I was paying enough attention to like any like consensus of reactions. I don't think anyone really was, probably just like music journalists were like, this is what the whole world thinks about Pinkerton. But that didn't necessarily scan. But apparently people didn't like Pinkerton, the Weezer album Pinkerton. Yeah, I'm looking through the songs on here. Well, that's what's funny to me, is that this guy I follow.

on Blue Sky, Dan Riley, who's a journalist and writer, put a sample of an interview he did with Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer and frontman and guitarist for Weezer in 2023, about the initial reaction to Pinkerton. And Rivers saying, it was not a mixed reaction. There was nothing mixed about it. And so I asked him how he reacted.

to that, and he said, poorly. And he's saying, no one else on earth liked it except this one guy, Russell Simmons, from the John Spencer Blues Explosion. I was so hurt and embarrassed, and I really, really disliked myself for making the record I made and for thinking that that was the right record to make. As often has happened with me and maybe with other artists, you kind of flip-flop. With each album, you try to go in the opposite direction you went on the last album. So if Pinkerton was about articulating the deepest, most complicated emotions with deep and

complicated songs. For the green album, I thought, I set out to make the simplest possible songs that are just pure candy that articulate nothing. And here's the thing,

Sorn. Oh. I heard this interview, like, I start this interview thinking, ah, poor Rivers. I like that album. You shouldn't feel bad by that album.

But then when he articulates that, Pinkerton was his attempt to make the most complicated emotions with the most complicated songs. And then it's like, El Scorcho and the Good Life and tired of sex and get you. Like, it's not,

it's still an album of Weasers songs. Yeah, it is. But I mean, I just look through it. I don't even know what the single is from there. I don't recognize the names of any of those songs. Um, butterfly, I think had legs. I feel, I mean, You're by butterfly, sugar.

Yeah, that's right. El Scorcho, for sure was a hit, no? I don't know. So, I've listened to so many Weasor songs so many times that, they're all kind of hits to me and they're also kind of the same song to me. Okay. So you're a big Weezer fan.

Turns out I am. They were, would you dare say formative? Were they seminal for you? No, they were not. Okay. Thank you, thank you for that escape hatch. You're welcome. They, so I've had a similar experience with,

ween has an album called White Pepper. and it's my favorite album of theirs. So ween, my favorite band, connoisseurs will note, my favorite band of all time. They are sometimes terrifying and sometimes we'll play songs that I'm like, this is the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. I don't know what this is.

This is a disaster. This is a nightmare. And occasionally they'll play songs that I just can't get into until I see them live. And then I'm like, oh, I get this song now. And I really enjoy it. White Pepper is an album. that I was like this front to back, tip to tail, this rules.

This is such a good album. And then to hear them interviewed about it, they would say things like, we just decided to make something really poppy. And I'm like, oh, my taste is bad. It's just the thing about it that's interesting to me is that in his mind, he tried to make, I mean, there's a couple of things that are interesting about it to me. He tried to make a complex and deep album. and was punished for it,

and it changed the kind of albums that he made after that. I think that's an interesting thing for an artist to do. The other thing that's fascinating to me is that he looked at this album and thought, like, this was my... You know, it's not like they suddenly released an album with a symphony behind them. It's not like they were suddenly doing, like, progressive jazz or something crazy like that.

It wasn't when the Beach Boys suddenly did pet sounds. It's a weas around. It's a music. It's a weas around that neither you nor I could immediately before this conversation, I don't think we could necessarily pick which songs came from Pinkerton. I still don't think I can.

I still think El Scorcia was the blue album. And I know it's not. But that's, this just got me thinking. about like anytime we on this show or I to strangers and young people and in-laws talk about the heyday of cracked and the cool stuff we were doing yeah it's it's just weas are talking about Pinkerton and thinking it's complex and it's really not I I think when you're when you're behind something you're so you're so uh you're too close to it. You're so deep in it that all the stuff that we were doing at Cracked in 2007 to 2018,

where we were like, this is every decision we make is intentional and correct. And we're doing all these things and no one else is doing the things like we're doing. I think anyone who went to look back on it now, if you could, anyone who went to look back on it now would be like, oh, this is, oh, it's BuzzFeed. Okay. The same way that I look at Pinkerton and I see Blue Album or Green Album. I don't think that's the same. I don't think that's a fair comparison. Good.

Granted, I'm on the inside and that stings a little to hear. But I think that if people went through and instead, if you talked about your trajectory through Cracked and like how you're writing advanced and what you decided was like good, what you decided your sense of humor developed and everything, I think people would just go through and they'd be like, I think. I don't know where in the Dan era this belongs. This could have been anywhere. Like, I don't think, I think in that regard, yes. I think that the minutia of how we thought we were writing at the time and how we thought we were shaping the site and shaping culture around it. Could have been overstated by us at the time.

I think especially, you were, I think, better at this than I was. You were kind of fully formed as a writer. of columns that like you word one felt very intentional and like locked in i this is this is a duchy cringy sentence i've i've felt more like writing was in a conversation with the audience over time uh for the stuff that i was doing in columns uh that is completely lost that that is uh and was probably never there it was probably just completely completely 100% in my head that like when I'm writing a column three years in, I'm just like, what are they, this is going to be a real payoff.

We're all, we're all paying the same amount of attention. I look back on the columns that I would write. And yes, you're right. My opening paragraph, first of all, in an article that's a list, no in the world reads the first paragraph. Everybody who sees a list title, they're like, well, let's get to the fucking list. already because you don't need that little preamble. It's like the beginning of a recipe where you're like, I don't care about your grandma's

apple crisp. Fucking give me how much butter I'm supposed to put in it. But that part was the most important part to me because that's where I was the freest. And that's where you could set up the whole premise and you could do so many jokes in the beginning because there's no information to convey really. It's just the fun of like a cold open basically on a sitcom. And so I spent so much time. time on those. And like some of those I'm still, I mean, I don't, I assume they're gone now,

but someone like my best writing, I think, in those intro paragraphs. I suffered from this from the other side. And I think it's just different philosophies on writing. I would make my, my premises so convoluted in my columns that Jack was like, this is a really good idea. Why did you, why did you add all this other, these other layers on top? I'm like, well, because that's, that's what smart people do. And he's like, just do the thing. Just do the straightforward thing. I get that now.

It's a very different thing. But whenever I'm trying my very hardest to use the internet to do something useful for me, it's almost always like, I need to restring my edger or I need to fix this thing in my sink. And you sift through a whole bunch of ads and AI telling you, actually you don't need to. And then finally you will click on a blessed video as I'm sweaty in my backyard trying to fix this fucking trimmer.

And it starts with like an opening sequence. Like somebody who has spent their life making their YouTube channel, God bless him, this free YouTube channel helping people out with their yard work where it's just like, Big John's channel. And there's like clip art going by

and all this stuff. and it's like a full 40 second intro. And then it cuts to him. What's up, guys? Thanks for checking out my channel. Today we are here to talk about the cold bolt edger. I love this product. It's great.

I'm like, this fucking guy. Why? This video needs to be 15 seconds, and it needs to start. And I need to be behind when it starts. I need to feel like I miss something. I want to click play.

And then I want the cap to already be off the edger. And for me to be like, oh, shit. Oh, no. I got it. I got to move. But is this poor guy who is, who probably,

like soren before him. It's like the intro is where I can really make... That's where I can let them know what I'm like, who I am. Yeah, that's your fingerprint right there. Why I'm better than just blueprints or an instruction manual. I'm like, I'm sort of a second character in this trimmer video. Yeah, I totally understand that impulse. And you want to, like, that's where you, you're free to play, man.

That's where you're free to, the promise has already been made by the title. You know what you're getting. But I have you now for a little bit. And you've got to fucking suffer through this thing that I think is good. You guys know me. You know I love my dog Jackson. I have had him for 14 years, thick and thin through late nights where he wasn't going to the bathroom. And he was uncomfortable and not sleeping through the night.

to early mornings where he was going to the bathroom. Too much. Those stories are the same story, by the way. And they all exist to illustrate just how much I love this guy. He is my rock and my world. I have known him longer than my wife and certainly longer than my son. So he is definitely in the top two most important people in my family going by length of time known.

I love Jackson, and if you're anything like me, you love your dogs too, or your cats, or your hamsters, or your whatever. They're the best. There are our little friends. Today's episode is sponsored by the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. If you've ever found yourself awake at 2 a.m., phone in hand, Googling things like, Is this normal for dogs, or do I need to call the vet right now? You're not alone. Those unexpected moments are part of having a pet, which is exactly why ASPCA Pet Health Insurance exists.

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This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and not engaged in the business of insurance. Sorry, that's not what I wanted to talk about today. Oh, okay. Well, I'm happy to keep talking about that if you want. All right.

No, just kidding. Go ahead. Tell me what you want to talk about. Soren, you just got a bunch of money. Yes. From the state. You got to pick a stadium name. You got to pick where it's going to be, what your team name is going to be, who your mascot is, what the sport is.

Oh, excellent. You're making a team. It's professional unless you want, I, I'll take that back. If you decide minor league baseball is more fun and you'd rather do that than you can do minor league ball as well. Yeah, I mean, there's a big difference between the names you're allowed to have in minor league than you are to have, allowed to have a major league. What do you mean? No, there's not. Sure there is.

Can't everyone be the bulldogs? What the fuck are you talking about? Oh, they, minor league baseball has gone crazy with team names. Same war There's teams There's a team called the yard goats Okay There's a team called the Rocket City Trash Pandas

There's They're not beholden to the same rules As As Major League Baseball Where you're like You gotta be something that's pretty benign Like they just go fucking for it Let me see if I can find some for you here

Um There's the Lee Valley Iron pigs what I didn't so the the confusion on my end wasn't what minor league teams could do it's what major league teams couldn't do because for a while and I'm talking about up until like a couple of years ago there were some pretty racy names in professional sports racy or IST um yeah that that's true That's true. But we've fixed some of that. I think.

I'm not entirely sure that we got all of them. I remember when the avalanche became an expansion team. Where, I guess they didn't. They moved. They moved to Denver. And everyone went nuts because the avalanche didn't fit with the ethos of the NHL. It was like, no, you're a plural. You're a plural name.

You can't just be like a wave of something. And people were upset, but the rules had been broken of, of team naming. Man. Yeah. I... I get... I mean,

I never want to hurt anyone's... I never want to yuck anyone's yum if they have special connections to things, but like, twins, jazz? What are we doing? Can I tell you?

Pick all new names. Come on. And also, your team's going to move at some point and it's going to look embarrassing. The fact that there's the Utah Jazz is humiliating. Yeah. The

Even like fucking orioles Let a kid name the team Kids are kids know way cooler birds than Orioles Even if it has to be a bird Give it to a kid Make it a contest for third graders Yeah I mean the fact that yeah

The Lakers live in Los Angeles That's like a insult to injury It's a twist of the knife To call us the Lakers Um I So when I was a child I was married to baseball

And was picking a team And Colorado at the time I'm old enough that the Rockies weren't an expansion team yet and so I just got to pick what I wanted and I landed on the twins because I was young enough and dumb enough to think that these were just two guys beating everybody in 1987

they were just running the mats in 1987 and I was like wow, if two guys can do that, I'm on board. Realized pretty quickly that had nothing to do with it. Twins is only because it's the Twin Cities. The Twin Cities. Stupid. I was like, well, I mean, I've already put my cart behind this horse.

I'll just pick a guy. And I pick Kirby Puckett, who is my favorite player. And I became obsessive about him. And it was all by accident. Yeah, you got it. I mean, you got to do something. You got to be obsessive about something. Yeah, you should be.

I'm really that my son is at the right age to be obsessive and he's not. I wonder if that's right. Oh, man. Get your son into Anthony Edwards right. There's no better time. I should. I should get him into something. It doesn't seem like it's good for his mental health

to not be crazy and obsessive about something. Yeah. Then without somewhere to focus it, you're just left with your thoughts. Yeah. And you can't. Left with you. There's too much, too many thoughts to have.

You need to push those thoughts out and fill that space with stats. Let me tell you some of these names, Dan. Before we even get started here, There's the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, the Montgomery Biscuits, the Biloxi Shuckers. I like Shuckers so much. Yeah, there's the Hartford Yard Goats. Yard Goats was one that really touched my heart in a way that I was like, oh, oh, that's a cool idea even.

Think about a, not just a goat, a yard goat. There's teams that miss the boat, though. There's like this one, the Akron Rubber Docks. Like they understood the assignment but didn't quite understand how to be funny with it. That might be too named by a child, I think. Yeah, there's the Rumble Pony's, that's right on. That's like a bull's eye. It's just amazing what they're allowed to do.

I'm jealous. Win surge. Wichita Win surge. Okay. Sorry, you asked me what I would name my team. Have you already decided what you're naming your team and where you're going to put your stadium? Not really. We're going to figure it out in real time.

I think. Okay, well, let's go in on this together. Definitely want to, I want a baseball team. That is first and foremost, even though I'm not a baseball fan, really. I'm not not a fan. I just don't care about it. I am definitely a basketball fan, but I don't want a basketball team. I think the act of going to a baseball game is so much more fun than the act of going to a basketball game.

even though I like basketball more. I've never been to a professional football game. But the preseason and the college games that I've been to is like fun. Tailgating is really fun. Going to a baseball game is a blast. So I want New Jersey to have its very own professional baseball team. That's where I'm starting. New Jersey.

New Jersey, yeah. And stadium name, I think I'm going Garden State because we are the Garden State. People often forget that. And we used to have Soren right down the street from where I grew up, this big, beautiful amphitheater where we had concerts and shows and stuff. Everyone would come to town. I've seen my first concert there, Steely Dan, saw Blinkin' Green Day there, Dream Theater. Anyone, Alanis, I saw two years ago.

Anyone you imagine, wean, maybe. Are you listening? They would come to the Garden State Art Center. What a cool name for a place. We're the Garden State. They come to the Garden State Art Center. And then it was renamed the PNC Bank Art Center. Yeah.

And I hate that every stadium is this. I hate that they're all named after some bullshit that makes everyone unhappy. No one is pleased with this. Maybe someone at PNC Bank once. But even then, I don't know. I feel like if I'm the guy at the top of PNC Bank, when I get the naming rights to that art center, I think I would still probably rather it be named after me than after the bank.

So I don't even know if he's happy. I don't think anyone is happy about crypto.com arena or PNC Bank or Verizon Go 90 Amphitheater or whatever the fuck any of these other places are called. But Garden State was cool and it was fucking New Jersey. So here's the thing that I don't totally understand. I'm just not realizing. Right around your area, you've got the Nets. New York now.

You did. Yeah. For a long time, you were the, it was in New Jersey Nets, right? Correct. Okay, so you got the Nets. We had the Nets. We had the Mets. We had the Mets as well.

Oh, that was a Jersey team. So they were doing this on purpose. This was like you named all the teams this on purpose. And then they all fled, even though the Jets and the Giants still play in New Jersey. we call them the New York football giants and the New York Jets and it's hard not to take it personally

yeah okay I want you to have your Garden State Stadium I know that CM's getting renamed after a crypto company within the first six months I know I know I know it's the fucking chat GPT Stadium sucks yeah I'm sorry man it's all right it's the GROC stadium Claude Arena

would you do it's a baseball stadium, are you going to do indoor and outdoor combo, or are you going to do an indoor baseball stadium? I have never been to an indoor baseball stadium. It's fun. It's fun. Okay.

Yeah, because occasionally the ball gets lost. Occasionally, like, the ball just gets stuck and it comes up and then just never comes down. Yeah, wasn't there a stadium with like white ceilings? And everyone was like, every time it was, the ball was in the air, I was like, fuck. Look, MLB had a lot of lessons to learn along the way. I want a digital ceiling That is moving constantly Oh it's like the sphere

Yeah So you're there for a baseball game But you're also getting like a U-2 concert Yeah same time I like that a lot Ooh that sounds fun Have you Have you been to a soccer game

Ever in your entire life No I have never been to a soccer game in my entire life So L.A. is as a glutton for teams. We've got the Galaxy and then another team called Shivas and then there's another team called L-A-U-F-C. Shivas like the L-A-F-C. Sorry, L-A-F-C. Shivas like liquor. Yeah. There's a L-A-FC team and I've gone to a few of those games because a good friend of the show, Sam Bergen, shout out to Sam. He has season tickets and he was smart and got those right away when they were first, when no one knew this team was even going to be anything.

and the games are more fun than any other sporting event I've ever been to. The soccer games, I know, it's a big statement. The soccer games are incredible. And a big part of that is all the pageantry around it. So you've got the game itself, which is genuinely fun to watch live. But even if you weren't into soccer, these games are thrilling. First of all, there's an entire portion of the stands that's just dedicated to this diehard fan base. And when you get there, it's confusing.

Because, like, I got there. It was the first season they'd ever played. And all of a sudden, there's, like, this entire, just wall of people with black smoke coming out of it. No one's got a shirt on. They all know the same songs. And there's somebody at the front drumming on this big drum, like they're in the Odyssey. And it's incredible. It's like, it's infectious.

Like, you go there and it's really fun to watch. Everybody. Here's my football question. Yeah. When could a, you know, person reasonably safely go to the bathroom, get hot dog and beer, and get up. Because my clumsy understanding of watching a little bit of the World Cup at home is that these games never stop. You're just always playing soccer. Yeah, even the World Cup was even different because they had

hydration breaks built into so they could show commercials. Everyone was so mad about that. Those don't exist in normal soccer. So you can go at halftime, I guess, but everybody else is going at halftime too. You just got to risk the chance that you're missing it. Same way when you go to a baseball game, you're kind of getting up in between innings, but you're really, you're angling to getting up

when your team's going to be on defense. So that way there's no, like you're not missing a home run from your own team, something like that, or like a big hit. So it's the same with soccer, where you're just like, you just gamble,

you just go out and you get what you want. The food there is very good. I want to quickly explain that this wall that doesn't make any sense because everybody knows all the cheers. Everybody knows every single song. And there's like so many. And again, there's like at the beginning, they bring out this hawk that circles the stadium and everybody goes nuts.

Live hawk? A live hawk comes out and just flies around the stadium and then goes home. And I was trying to figure it out. I was like, who are all those people? Like what is going on here? And they were like, oh, it was. the team even existed, they sent 400 people or something like that to Germany to learn how to be good football fans or good soccer fans. Holy shit.

And they went to all these games. They learned cheers. They converted some cheers and then like made new ones into and built everything as the stadiums being built essentially. And then when they show up the games, day one, they're ready. And they are on it. And so the experience is already built in. And I loved it. know if that's like a hollow way to do it if that's like an american idol type of way to

to build your soccer team but i was into it man okay so are you going to build a new soccer stadium and are you going to have another soccer stadium in l.A no i don't so here's living los angeles i don't want a single stadium here i don't want anything else we did it i was wondering if you were going to build in colorado i don't think so i don't think even colorado needs it i think so colorado's got every team every conceivable team But I have thought about other states that I feel like deserve one and don't have anything. I think New Mexico would be a great place for a single sports team. You get one professional sports team there and you get this everyone around there like flocks of this team.

You're going to get a little bit of spillover from Oklahoma, some people from Texas, just some disenfranchised Cowboys fans. or whatever. You'll get spillover from Utah even, I think. And those locals, I bet, are so happy to get anything associated with them that is not meth. It would be such a nice change of pace. Imagine you finally, you think, tooth and nail, you fight to get an MLB team in Albuquerque and you're like, we did it.

We got a team. And then they're like, we're naming it the Walter White. Heise and hers. Yeah, we're naming it after the show. We're naming it the Vince Gilligan's. You'd be like, fuck. The whole point of this was to get away from that. I don't know.

I, you know, isotopes is obviously taken by The Simpsons. That was a great name. Absolutely. And Albuquerque is so fun of a name to say in the beginning. So I want something, probably some alliteration. I'd have to think about it a little bit. I don't want to do the UFO thing either. I think that that's

That's like That's Lo Haynesville Yeah That's like the first thing That comes to mind I think See now I'm putting on my Jack O'Brien

Editor in Chief Hat She's like don't get too clever There's nothing wrong With the first thing Soren sometimes Don't get cute It's the Albuquerque turquoise Oh

Oh Um What you know If I could really have my druthers And I was like This is a minor league team. I'm going to name it the Albuquerque weird ants.

Okay. After your aunt, everybody's got an aunt in Albuquerque. Everybody's got an aunt somewhere in A-U-N-T. Yes. Okay. And so everybody can hear Albuquerque ants and be like, that's another animal. This name checks out. No problem. But it's the Albuquerque ants because everybody's got that weird aunt that was into witchy stuff who lives in the southwest.

And you know what's fun? Do you know what's fun, Soren? You know what's fun America? Dressing up. Dressing up in weird costumes and doing dumb shit like that. And so many of these sports teams, you dress up as a bird or you dress up as a giant green monster or an orange monster, depending on the case.

But if it's weird aunt and it's like fucking dealer's choice of how you want to style your weird aunt, then every baseball game is a little bit Comic-Con and that's fun. It's something else to look at when you're walking around and you see all these people with their weird ant costumes, that is a blast. You get to the game early so you can see the parade of freaks and they're having fun and you're having fun.

Oh my God. Soared. You can do a red ant head, but you can also do like an A&T, but you also have the option of just showing up in a ton of crystals and bracelets and being like some drapey clothing where occasionally a breast falls out. Sure.

That's your druthers. That's fun. All right. Yeah, this is my team. We are going to be a baseball team. I want outdoors. If we're in Albuquerque, I don't want to have a basketball team there. And it's an outdoor stadium. And oh, boy, it's going to be a treat. I think that is the problem with certainly a basketball team. Like, I don't know how OKC not only exists, but like thrives. Because you need to, the most difficult thing, your hardest job is. is to convince really good basketball players in their early 20s to move to Oklahoma. I just don't. I'm not exactly sure what incentives. No disrespect to Oklahoma. I mean, how can I say that?

Well, I'm dripping with disrespect for Oklahoma City right now. I just, I, how do you think you lost Kevin Durant? I think this is, this is only fuel for the fire for me getting my Albuquerque team. because yeah, they're hungry for it there, clearly. You've got this tiny little state, and they've got a huge market team out of nowhere. And you've got Texas right nearby, and Texas has got huge cities,

and you're not going to go put another team in Texas. Easily fit another team in Texas. Sure. Not going to do it. Not going to put it anywhere north of that. You're going to put it right there in Oklahoma. It's an insane choice. But I think maybe there's something to buying a team,

team moving it and the team has to be instantly good or you're doomed. Yeah. Like if a team moves from another city and is amazing right from the jump, then I think that's the only way to ingratiate to the entire community. All right. So weird ants. Your mascots got to be a weird aunt. I think it would just be called the Albuquerque ants, but they'd everybody be doing that

thing where they're like, oh, let's keep Albuquerque weird. Yeah. And so they'd be eventually called the Albuquerque Weird ants. Yeah. Yeah, it's my baseball team. I'm really impressed that you landed on something here on the fly. Thanks. I don't.

All I've got for a mascot so far. And this is one of those, sometimes as a writer, you have the idea before you know, what it is or why you have it or where it goes. And this might be one of those cases where the mascot is named potatoes. I don't know what the team name is yet. And it's plural. It's potatoes.

Yeah, it has to be. And he's a potato man. He's not like a giant potato. He's like a potato man. He's got a potato head. And like he's really bubbly, like almost like Michigan. man where he's like made of a bunch of things or like vector man except he's made of potatoes and he's in a little suit and he's got a comb over and he's pretty frazzled all of the time he's got

also part of his costume is actual potatoes that are falling off him the whole game and he's tossing him into the crowd as well so everyone's going home with potatoes everyone I mean a bunch of people are going home with potatoes. And things go wrong and he's like, oh, no. And he puts his hands on his head. And everyone's like, oh, potatoes. That becomes a thing that we all say. Oh, potatoes.

Oh, potatoes. You know, it's fun to make him race against whatever the mascot is for the other team. And no one has ever won. I mean, no one has ever lost to potatoes. Yeah. Potatoes is slow as shit. And he's dragging. And he's dropping potatoes and going back for them.

And he's got his briefcase. I can't remember if I mentioned he's got a briefcase, but he's got a briefcase, and it's almost always popping open when he's trying to do these runs, and his potatoes are spilling out, and he's trying to get them back in the briefcase? Yeah, what's going to be in the briefcase?

Oh, it would be really fun for him, too, when he loses some potatoes off of him, to go into the briefcase and just restock on his body wherever he's short on potatoes. Those are his auxiliary potatoes. I also think, and maybe some small team has done this bit, but I don't think they've done it. consistently. I think

win or lose potatoes is also part of the press conference afterwards. He is spotlit in fact. Like we get the coach and the teams and you know, whatever star players that day. And then we also bring out potatoes to ask him what went wrong. And he could talk about what

went wrong with the game or he could just talk about how he... Lose a potatoes. Just like he dropped the ball a few times in his masquerial duties. Duties. Yeah. I like that a lot.

I think you need him to, as he's wandering through the crowd, occasionally, anyone who's eating tater tots or french fries, he's very freaked out by. Yeah. Maybe even angry. I like it. Like, that's the only thing that angers potatoes is that is when he sees people eating french fries and is willing to just knock them out of their hands. Yeah.

But then he offers a potato in a recompense. Right. I mean, it's technically. an even trade knocking someone's french fries out of their hands and then handing them a potato you might get more you can't sue it's technically an even trade you have to go home and and manipulate the potato in your own fashion but no harm no foul baseball i love oh potatoes yeah it's good right oh potatoes i mean you're looking forward then if you have a bad team what a joy that is yeah every time they mess up they're

an error on the field. Everybody gets to shout O Potatoes together. And I love a mascot that is like a little bit Charlie Brown that he's always going to kind of screw up. And seventh inning, they bring him out to do something. And you're like, this is the, like the crowd gets super pumped that this is the time he's going to hit the ball or he's going to really get like a full home run. And then he chokes the last second and we all go O potatoes. I love it. I'm trying to think if there is, I mean, something close. Do we have a mascot who is, I mean, we're mascots who we're supposed to laugh at a little bit. We're supposed to laugh at the Mets, whatever the fuck that thing is.

Mr. Mett? Is that the one that's, no, what's the green thing? No, it's the Phillies. The Phillies have that, whatever that green thing. Gritty, yeah. There's not gritty. No, there's like a, the, oh, the Philly Fanatic. The Fanatic. So he's like, he's playing with his belly a lot. He's kind of got that nine-month pregnancy belly. And he's, like, he rubs it up and, like, moves it up and down. And yeah. There are the chaos agent mascots, which is a trend I personally don't like with gritty.

And you'll see a lot of gritty imitators out there. And then you'll also see the other end of the spectrum. They have like the sexy and tough and cool mascots, Benny the Bull. And Trent Thunder had a jacked bird. And then when that wasn't enough, they also got. a jacked cloud, which I kind of love. They have like a yoked fucking cloud because they're the Trent and Thunder. But these are like cool mascots.

And they come out and they do like flips and acrobatics and stuff. I feel we've lost some clowning along the way with these mascots. And I want poor hardworking. He's got six kids. It's too many kids. All boys. Poor hardworking potatoes. Just trying to make a couple of bucks.

just trying to do his job and it just goes wrong every game like he goes into it and maybe like hopeful like he's like this is going to be the one where I'm going to nail I'm due that's that's the general ethos of mr. I mean of potatoes not Mr. potatoes is yeah I'm due I'm due for a win every day can't be a bad day when I was a kid I wanted to be a mascot really badly um I thought it was so enticing to me that you could put on a mask. No one knew who you were and you were allowed to be an agent of chaos, that you were allowed to do all that stuff. There's something really exciting about that to kids. And I was a Charlotte Horace fan as a kid. And they were doing dunk competitions, the mascots.

I mean, incredible athleticism to be able to jump off a trampoline in those costumes and without even being able to see really, with having 30% of your eyesight fucking drive a ball home. And the mascot for Charlotte Hornets, it was a little bit unfair because he's just a guy in what, it looks like a green man suit.

It's a teal suit. He's got eyes of a hornet, but otherwise, I think that's all we're really going to do in terms of making him Hornet Lake. And he jumped off that trampoline and dumped the ball, hopped over the rim,

sat on the rim and plastered himself on the glass black backboard, so he looked like a fly on a windshield. And I was inspired. Yeah. I was a kid. I was like, that's so smart. That's art. You talking made me think of another idea for a mascot that,

because you said, what do you say the Hornet was a gray man? I looked at pictures of the Charlotte Hornet, and it's a guy in a Hornet costume. Oh, well, this was, the things have changed. Okay. Um, let me, Charlotte Hornet, Mask, uh, 90s, please hold. I do think, while you're searching, I do think there is room in the basketball and baseball

marketplace for like a truly terrifying mascot. Not terrifying in like the playfully chaotic way of gritty, but like slender man or the hush monsters from Buffy, just like a perpetually smiling, creepy, Doug Jones height, gray man in a suit who is, you never quite know exactly where he is, and he just pops up in the opposing team's pickup. I don't think mascots do enough psychological warfare against the other teams. He just might be trundling down the aisle behind you. No, there's no cameras on him or anything like that. He's just like, he's making his way around the stadium. Yeah.

And it's very uncomfortable that you're never quite sure where he is. Oh, boy. Did you find Charlotte Hornet's 90s mascot? Yeah. There's a morph suit of Hugo that I guess was only for the dunk competitions. Oh. The Hugo morph suit.

I don't, I'm just, I'm just seeing the Hornet, the Hugo Hornet itself. If you look up Hugo the Hornet, One of the first results is a guy, you see a guy dunking a ball and he's in a full teal suit. Yeah. He's wearing some purple shorts. That was the Charlotte Hornet one that I knew. A guy that like this could just be Larry Johnson.

This might just have been one of the players. Great fucking full. You did Vector Man earlier. You just did Larry Johnson. Like these are really outstanding. It's a four quadrant podcast. Okay. I like potatoes a lot.

Okay, good. Me too. I want to keep playing with potatoes. I, maybe all... And potatoes works for Garden State Stadium. The baseball team itself would probably need to be in the agricultural realm. There's so many names for potatoes. I mean, there's so many, like...

Listen to them just falling out of you. I was like, well, I don't actually know what you're growing there, but like reds. Russet Spud Like there's some fun names Around potatoes But I don't know if you're Are you guys actually growing those in

Yeah New Jersey I mean I don't It's a high elevation thing I grow sweet potatoes in my backyard You do? I do The yams

Okay Oh the team would be the yams Oh yeah I'm working on it I'm trying to figure it out Skins No way we did that No, no, no. The TGI Fridays loaded potato skins.

Okay. And it's a TGI Friday stadium. The Magic Johnson's TGI Fridays, because he took his name off the one in Englewood. We were going to put it here. I was thinking also silos for a while, because that's like a farm thing. The New Jersey silos, or I guess I would need to pick like a place because these minor league teams are all like the Somerset Patriots and Trenton Thunder.

So I might need to localize mine to a town. Okay, can I hear, how about this? Yeah. Can we call them the New Jersey nitros? Sure. You got alliteration. Huh? I mean, yeah, keep selling, but sure.

Okay. So if it's already sold, then I won't explain it. No, no, go for it. You've got the alliteration. New Jersey nitros just feels like a fun thing to say. It's short for nitrogen, which is like key ingredient. Any garden, any garden, you've got to get nitrogen in that soil. We need more nitrogen in my soil because our cucumbers are turning yellow.

There you go. You need nitrogen. That would be my pitch. Okay. The New Jersey nitros. and potatoes, I think they might be a nitrogen a nitrogen veggie. I think we can safely say they are without looking it up.

Well, there's something called the Sisters, which if you plant, if you have a very small garden, you can plant three crops, and they all support each other. One of them is beans, one of them is corn, one of them is squash, I think. And the way it works is that the beans climb the corn stalks because they're a vine vegetable.

And then within the soil, they're all working together. There's like symbiosis that occurs with the sisters. But I don't know if the, I don't think potatoes fit in that. I bet they need nitrogen. They do. I think we've got our team locked up. The New Jersey, I think this is great. All right.

Well, here's the deal. There's an area that I wanted to put the team in because the name is of the place is silly. But I'm learning now that it's not a town. It's a historic neighborhood. and section of a larger town called Nut Swamp, which is a place in New Jersey, and I pass Nut Swamp Road all the time. And like, when I was a child, Soren,

and I tell you the first time I saw Nut Swamp on a street sign, I fucking lost my mind. And Soren, 40 years old, still plays. Still works. I got the same sense of humor. I did when I was a child. This isn't a thing I've brought up just yet, but you should know this is a thing I do it. We do at our job, which is we've got the bazooka sharks and the sharks nest at American Dad, which is the football team in Langley Falls.

They constantly play other teams. And so we've got sheets of just like names for other teams. But they're supposed to be, they're not fun. They're like funny. Yeah. You know, like they would. And then there's a lacrosse team in Langley Falls that I think is called the Laser Rats. Excellent.

Maybe the cyan laser rats or something like that. But, I mean, I didn't bring this up. But at my show, we also sponsored a minor league baseball team last year. We made the moon mammoths. We took over a Pennsylvania baseball team and gave them a new mascot. But I wasn't assigned to that piece. So I'm having my fun now. So I'm saying this because in my most recent episode that's coming out, maybe in the summer, I don't know.

They're not going to tell you. What are you talking about? Whatever my next episode is that comes out. The beginning of it starts with a parley bet that Klaus has made in which the bazooka sharks are playing against the Chilhawie infection. And coming up with the Chilhawie infection was so fun. Man, that's great stuff. That's good. All right, everybody.

Thank you for listening to this podcast. Was there more that you want to say, oh, you know what? I didn't actually come up with my mascot. Let me just quickly say, since you're doing the, I don't want to call them Mr. Potatoes so much. Since you're doing potatoes, I'm going to go the creepy direction.

I'm going to just steal that directly from you. Great. And I want the aunt to be a little bit witchy. I want her to be skulking. Like, it's fun at the beginning of the game. She's kind of like into it. She's having a beer too. And then as the game goes on, it gets weird and like, it's not sure.

You're not quite sure if she's laying a curse on people. Right. You get to a certain point where it's like, we are behind by eight runs and our star pitcher is out for the season it looks like. And then you just look up and you still see this creepy witchy aunt. And you're like, can someone just tell her not now? Can someone, but no. she doesn't answer to anyone. It's in her contract.

And like that's part of the lore that everyone in the stands knows to, like whispering to each other is like, now it's in her contract. She's an independent, uh, autonomous. Figure. She's not liable for anything that happens in the stadium. It's, it's a free for all.

It's dangerous. She could be dangerous. We don't know. Um, but her speaking in tongues like, lording over the stadium and speaking in tongues. Yeah. And you're not quite sure if it's like,

she's calling on the help of a deity. or she's cursing somebody. I want it to feel a little bit unnerving. Yeah. Make it dangerous. Yeah. All right. That's mine. Yes.

Thank you, everybody, for listening to this podcast. This is a quick question with Sorin and Dan. You knew. Daniel. Who cares? I do. I do. I want to get it right for you.

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