Reply All - #137 Fool's Trade

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

Yes Yes No returns and Alex Blumberg takes us on a journey from secret celebrity love letters to the biggest, strangest rock band you’ve never heard of. Also, basketball. See the tweet here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Vote. Welcome once again to Yes Yes No, the segment on the show where our boss, Alex Bloomberg, comes to us with something from the internet that he doesn't understand in the hopes that we, internet, internet, explain it to him. I know, it feels pretty bad to say that. for you. But this is

something that I sometimes do where I have a tweet that I believe I understand that you guys are not going to understand.

Is it a tweet that is about sports? It is. I want to show it to you because it's like one of these ones that's like

sort of captioned. I can try to read it. Okay. It's by somebody named Michael Cayley at MCA of A and it's like a split screen image

on the left is Natalie Portman and the like it's like grandpa meme font, you know, where it's like impact font with like white letters with a black outline. Grandpa meme font. Yeah.

Like the fonts that like people's like old relatives use when they're like passing around stuff about like killeri and like also Trump. You know what I mean? Like it's like your most, it's like meow cat meme font. It's like yeah, the can I has cheeseburger. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, it doesn't matter. It's a font.

By the way, it's I can has cheeseburger and it's lull cats. Okay. So on the left side, under this month. much-discussed font. It's a picture of Natalie Portman, and it says NBA superstars, they'll now offer Max on tracks. It's like contracts without the C. Max on tracks. And then the other side is, I think Jonathan Saffron Fower, the author.

And then on his forehead it says, the Knicks. How could you identify Jonathan Saffron Fowar by sight? I don't know. A life spent occasionally reading books. That's way more embarrassed. Also, he came to my high school once in time. Then not knowing what lolcats are. So, and it has 88 retweets and 646 likes, and I have no idea what this is about.

Alex Goldman. Yeah, I'm clueless on this one. Ask me, ask me, ask me. Alex Bloomberg. Do you understand what this tweet means? Do you understand this tweet that you brought to us so that we won't understand it? I do. We're in sports, sports, sports, guys.

Okay, so what? How do we do this? So here's what's going to happen. Ready? Yeah. So this tweet actually encompasses two different worlds. And we're going to, and the one world that is professional sports specifically, the NBA, and I'm going to handle that part.

We're going to get to that later. I'm very excited about that. But before we get there, we have to take a tour through this other world. And that is the exotic world of New York literary publishing. Okay. And for that, I have a special expert who's going to come in and help us. Reply, I'll producer, Jessica Young. Nice.

Hi, Jessica. Hey, Jessica. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, of course. So, Jessica, I told these guys, you are going to handle the first part of this tweet, right? So we just kick us off here. Yeah, yeah, sure. As you guys know, I used to work in book publishing, right?

Yes. I actually worked at this one publisher that had, because there are few, I guess, literary blogs that kind of gossip about the industry. And one of those blogs was at this publishing company I was working at. And so we just loved to talk about Jonathan Safran Foer. Why? Before that, as someone who's never read a Jonathan Safran Foer book, who is he? You never read a Jonathan Safran Foer book? I know that he wrote a book called Everything Everything Is Illuminated and that's it. Oh my God. I'm so excited to bring you guys through this. Okay.

In 2002, he came out with this book called Everything is Eliminated. Yeah, and he came to my high school. He came to your high school. And which, okay, by the way, this book was his undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton. Wow. This is where I remember it was one of the first times where I realized that there were going to be a lot of people in the world who were like a lot smarter and more accomplished than me. Because he was like, this guy that came to our high school, he'd already written this book. and he was like as old as people who I knew.

And everybody was like, oh, the books a genius book. And then he very quickly becomes this guy that's just the epitome of successful young writer, right? He marries Nicole Krauss, who's also a very like commercially successful, critically successful writer. And then he starts to just get like seven figure advances on all of his novels. That's insane. It's insane. And this is kind of a side note, but there's something. I feel like this is probably common in other industries too,

but there's something in book publishing where everyone's like obsessed with real estate. They'll like post blog posts of people's houses if it's like on street easy or something. And I... And say what? Look at how much this person's house is worth? Yeah. Got it. Yeah.

I still remember all of the rooms of his house. Can you talk us through some of the rooms of his house? That's like, it's creepy. I mean, it's crazy. Okay. His house, which he got in 2005, very soon after everything is illuminated, has the biggest private garden in all of Brownstone Brooklyn. Whoa.

Right? How big is that? Do you want to see it? Yeah. It's not that big. I feel like this is like a very short turnaround. It's as big as an average garden in Savannah, Georgia. But look at that.

Oh, that is crazy. Yeah. It looks like the grounds that someone would like stride around when they were convalescing. Like, it looks like, you. You know, like, olden days when people had to go to wards. Yeah. So he has, like, a good amount of fans, but there were also a lot of people that started to resent him. Because he was, like, the successful person who everything seemed to come really easily to.

And he had a house with a football state, says garden. Yeah. Yes. And, I mean, I think it's also just like he became the emblem of everything that people resent about the literary industry, which is that it's skewed towards, like, a certain kind of person, right? People from Brooklyn named Jonathan. Yeah. Like a white dude that lives in Brooklyn that went to Princeton. Yeah.

And I mean, there was so much hate towards Jonathan Saffron Foward at this point that there was even a term for it. It was Shaddenfauer. Enjoying the pain of Jonathan Sackenfauer. Yes. Any kind of downfall people were just cheering on the sidelines. So Shottn Fowler really hits its peak around 2009. He publishes this book called Eating Animals. It's his first nonfiction book.

I remember this book. I remember not reading this book because it was like. why you should be a vegetarian with all the horrible like PETA stuff. I was just like, I do not need this book in my head. Yes, that's exactly right. I read it when I was in high school. Did you become a vegetarian? Okay.

You know my eating habits. You know, like, I... You could be a vegetarian now because mostly what you eat is like... Candy. Breakfast candy or candy. The only meat you eat is like gummy hot dogs. Wow, this is turning to like a huge shame session now. No, no.

No, this is just what it's like to be behind the mic with us. It sucks. You feel naked all the time because people are always pointing out your weird flaws. Welcome. I would just call these attributes. No, I call them weird flaws. Well, I read it when I was probably in ninth grade, I think. And I...

The only thing that I feel like it feel similar to is, like, when I discovered what hell was, you know, when I was a kid and I was like, I need to be... I need to be a Christian. Or else I'm going to be a bad person. You just felt like a moral... Yeah, totally, exactly. And so I mean, I think that there were people that were like that these are really good moral arguments. But then there was this other group of people that was like, this totally overlooks, you know, class and money and how expensive it is to be a vegetarian or a vegan. Also, just like the successful person whose success comes easily to is now writing a book telling everybody what to do.

Yes. It would be a not super terrible way that one could feel about it. Right. So there are people that don't love him, Don the Saffirvogar. But there is one person that does love his work. And that is Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman. I know a little bit about this.

Oh, yeah. This is like one of my favorite horrible things that has happened in the world. Oh, yeah. Me too. I don't know anything about this. She also seems like in a very different way and on a very different level. I think a lot of things people feel about Jonathan and Southern Forward, they feel about Natalie Portman. Like, she's this very unenively talented person who's also, like, has just had all the success and had a lot of privilege.

Like, she went to Harvard. She, like, she does all these different things and she does them really well. Like, someone who from outside, it seems like things have always come easily to. And, like, either you really like them or that drives you crazy. Right. Like, they're from the same fancy island in the sky. Yes. Yes.

And Natalie Portman is really into his new book, Eating Animals. I mean, she even writes this article in the Huffington Post where she says, I used to be a vegetarian, but because of this book, now I'm a vegan, they announced Jonathan Savenbrower and Natalie Portman that there's going to be a documentary made out of eating animals. And that Natalie Portman would be the producer. I didn't know about this. Yeah. And so soon after there's this gossip site.

that publishes this rumor that Natalie Portman and Jonathan Sabin Fowar have just been writing emails back and forth. And then, according to this gossip site, Jonathan Saffin Fowar went home, told his wife that he was in love with a very intellectual movie star, broke up his marriage, without telling Natalie Portman first, then went and wrote an email to Natalie Portman, confessing his love, to which she said no. I don't like that. Because she was married, and it's still married, to the dancer, Benjamin Milipied. I don't like that.

Like, to do that, you have to assume that, like, the feelings are reciprocal, right? Right. Well, it's like he did assume the feelings were reciprocal. I think he was maybe too confident. Yes. Yes. And his love. He had a lot of success in his life.

Hubris, I believe is the word. But, I mean, I just want to be clear. this is a rumor. Jonathan Saffron Fowler himself has denied it. And I mean, like, the emails between Jonathan Savron Fowar and Natalie Portman, nobody's seen them. So nobody actually knows if they exist. But there was a lot of talk. Then it's, you know, everything's kind of quiet for a while.

And this is my favorite part. This is, I think, the part I know. This is a very intense part. So that was 2014, right? Okay. In 2016, Jonathan Saffron Fowler and Nally Portman are both working on new projects. Separate new projects. Yes, separate new projects.

And so they do this promotional piece in T Magazine. The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Magazine. In which they are going to write new emails, Jonathan Saffron Fowler and Nally Portman, to each other, you know, talking about their outlooks on the world and the projects that they're working. on. Weird. Yeah.

And I mean, it's just so painful to read. Is it two people trying to impress each other with their intellects? Yes, and everyone else. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean... Brooms me out. Do you want to just read a section?

Sure. Okay. Okay, so this is John and Zaventfauer. It's almost 6 o'clock in the morning. The boys are still asleep. I can hear the guinea pig stirring, but that might be the residue of a nightmare. People often refer to aloneness and writers block as the two great challenges of being a novelist. In fact, the hardest part is having

to care for guinea pigs. Oh, boy. I want to crawl under the desk. It just sucks because I was like, I feel like I wrote letters like this in like sixth grade. Yeah, but you had the good sense not to publish them. Well, no one was offering. It's not a email. Right. Nobody writes that an email. It's like you can hear the scratch as a quill. No, I disagree. I totally would have written that in an email to try and impress someone, but I definitely would have been like, if someone, there's Someone, if the New York Times came to me and was like, hey, I want to publish this. I would be like, hard pass on this. The hardest part thing, like that's not like a fucking email.

Here's another one. Here's Natalie Bortman. An ex-boyfriend of mine used to call me Moscow because he said I was always looking out the window sadly, like Moscow, like some Russian novel or Chekhov play. I have that longing, yearning, it's better over their tendency. Ali Borman, what are you doing? Oh, God. That makes me think that maybe, whatever, I don't want to speculate on the lives of other people. But doesn't sound like they had an emotional affair and then he just overread it?

Just like stay away from that whole country. Right. Moscow. Longing. No. There is a part where she kind of out of nowhere writes about how Amilipied, her husband, makes her laugh a lot. Right. The way you bring up your boyfriend at a party when you run into someone who's flirting with you too much.

Yeah, someone flirting at the end of the week. I get that, like, they're... rich and famous people and like their failures are fine to love at. I feel bad. Like I feel bad for him. I feel bad for her. It's just like, oh, man. Yeah, that's tough. And like again, I mean, nobody knows if Jonathan Safferfow or even had feelings for Natalie Portman in the first place. But people know about this rumor. And I think that people were like, if everyone knows this, why are you guys writing emails in the New York Times? Yeah. Right. Like you guys got bad advice. Yeah. Yeah. And how is there not somebody close to you to just be like, don't do this? Don't do this. Do not do this. This is the worst. Also, I feel like in particular, the New York Times, one of the things that they know how to do as a newspaper is like they'll have things that it'll be about like a rich person's wedding.

And the text of it is like, look how grand it is. But they know that this is just for everyone to read and hate. And they will like completely set up somebody like this. And I feel like this is just that. Like the person editing this must have known that. like this is this is like the new york times's version of a reality show yeah they produced them into into like doing something that everybody would hate watch sit down front of the camera and talk about oh man the residue of your nightmares it's gonna be great big there you go okay so wait so just like

slightly going back to the tweet i feel like what i now understand like like the thing that john the however far away and Natalie Portman represent. It's just like the relationship between somebody, like they want somebody. They foolishly think that it's going to happen in like a crazy, like active hubris, and it's not going to happen. I don't understand how that relates to basketball in any way. Right. What does that have to do with the New York Knicks? Yes. All right. Well, that, okay, I'm now going to explain that part to you after the break. Okay. So now we're at the sports part. Also, it's so weird that this tweet is like, crossover of whatever.

No. That's why it's like such a it's such a crazy sweet spot. Like Nabil put it in our basketball Slack channel with this note saying that the audience Venn's diagram for this incredible meme is so small. But it is Nabil.

It's Nabil and me. Because I'm not even sure Jessica knows the whole. Yeah, she's only on one half of it. Okay. So now you know that in the world of this meme Natalie Portman is NBA superstars, they'll now offer Max on tracks.

And it's supposed to be on tracks. No, that's not. That's just, that's just, it's supposed to be contracts. He just, he got so excited that he had such a fire out of his hands. He got so excited with his meme that he forgot to put the C in contracts. And then the Jonathan Saffron foresight of the picture is the Knicks. All right.

Let's start simple. Do you know who the Knicks are? I feel like you can presuppose a certain life. lack of knowledge, but this is just insulting. PJVO, do you know who the Knicks are? A New York City-based basketball team. Yes, exactly. Blue and orange font.

Yes. Kind of a purply blue. So, Knicks fans, they are the saddest fans, I think, in the entire NBA, because the Knicks last won a championship in 1973 and have not won since then. Which is weird because they're in New York. sports team, you think they would just have a bunch of money and buy all the players? Yes. So, which is, it's crazy. And it doesn't make any sense because the Madison Square Garden is one of the most storied stadiums. It's like the limelight. Like, everybody wants to play in the garden. It's like, there is no reason that the Nix should not be on the same level as the Lakers.

Is there, I mean, is there like one thing that has happened? There is one thing that has happened. So what is the one thing? Do you know the family that owns the Nicks, the Dolans? I know something really wonderful about the Dons. Now, I'm afraid to say. So this is the level of Nix fan. There are Nix fans in this building who, like Cedric, if you're out there, I know this is painful. And part of it, don't come at me, all right, man.

What are you afraid to say? But it's so painful, like being a Nix fan is so painful that he's just, just going to like, I know this is going to be like an hour and a half long conversation where he's like, yes, everything you said is true, but like we're fixing it, we're going to address it, we're going to dress it. But it's not like art. Like you can tell if a sports team is bad because they don't win. I'm telling you.

All right. So the Dolan family, they are this family. They originally came from Ohio, Cleveland. And the senior Dolan moves his family out to New York City to pursue his dreams. And he starts this small cable company that grows to become cable vision, you know, an enormous cable company. And the family becomes super powerful and wealthy. And they go on to purchase sort of famous landmark New York City institutions and

real estate, such as Madison Square Garden. They purchased the Rangers, the hockey team. They purchased the Knicks. And then in 1995, the senior Dolan Charles hands the business over to his son, James. And James is sort of developing this reputation as sort of like this blustery, brad. guy, his hobby is like racing yachts, like the full on New York rich person sort of. Master of the universe. Yes, exactly.

So just as an example, let me just give you a question. If you were the wealthy scion of this big family that had moved to New York to pursue the scrappy ambition of starting this cable company that had then been acquired for billions of dollars, and you had your own passion project. This is what I know about. What would that passion project be? I know about this. This is the one thing I know about sports or James Old is like one of my favorite things that exist in the world. Are you about JD in the straight shooters? I'm talking about JD and the straight shooters.

It's so good. It's so good. Okay, so Alex. Yeah. Every once in a while, a huge band will come to New York City. Like, Flewad Mac. Sure. Or the Eagles.

And when they get to New York and only New York on their tour, this weird thing will happen, which is that. The opening band. Oh, my God. Are you serious that his band plays with them? The opening band is JD in the straight shooters, which is James Dolan. And then just like a bunch of session musicians who are like young. And him who's this like old CEO guy playing like horrible like him trying to do boomer rock at Madison Square Garden. Right.

Yeah, you're right about everything except one minor correction is J.D. in the street. shot. Jady in the straight shot. In answer to your question, if I had a passion project, it would be to make a pinball museum. So much less offensive. So do you guys want to watch his most recent music video? Yes. Okay, so this is like one of their I can't believe we're going to talk about this. In the morning, I get the news. It's a, it's a montage of people looking at their phones and newspaper press. Telling you how to feel what to do. I know you care and it feels unfair, but all this hate will never repair. The great goodbye.

So it's like, it's all these, like, all these images, these split screens of like Trump versus Hillary. Trump versus Hillary. Occupy Wall Street versus like magnet. And it's this sort of like boomer plea for, I guess, the healing power of billionaire rock. A billionaire rock. What I'll say about the song you just played is like the musicianship's actually good.

And then he starts singing and it just sounds like garbage. Well, why do you think that might be? I don't know. He didn't auto tune enough, I guess. No, but he also hired probably really expensive musicians. Well, that's what I. I know. I know.

The best musicians out there. I know. They're like, they get to play Mazze and Square Garden, but they have to play karaoke tracks for Mr. Burns. Oh, man. So, okay. So that is James. Dolan, and in 1999, he is the person put in charge of running the New York Knicks. Okay.

Singer, songwriter, basketball owner. Exactly. And I'll just say this. Like, before 1999, the Knicks had been in the playoffs 12 straight seasons, the previous 12 straight seasons. After James takes over in 1999, it's a train wreck losing streak of epic magnitude. Huh. So what kinds of things does he do?

All right. So so many things, but just to give you a couple of examples. Like one, so he wanted to hire this big-time NBA star Carmelo Anthony, right? And so he traded all the good players on the Knicks in order to bring on Carmelo Anthony. And then Carmelo Anthony is by himself, like, this one lone superstar on this team of like really lousy players. And the team sucks. And Carmelo Anthony is sort of mired in mediocrity for the better part of a decade. He's like the one star on a team that can't win.

He's like literally someone to pass a lottery. Someone else. Someone else has to be pretty good. Otherwise you can do it. one person alone can't do it. Another thing Dolan did, he hired his friend Isaiah Thomas to coach the team. And Isaiah Thomas had been this big star as a player, but then he turns out he's not a very good coach.

And they just go in this huge extended losing streak. And then Isaiah Thomas has all these personal issues and he gets involved in like a sexual harassment scandal. I saw headlines about that. Yes. It was just like all these horrible headlines and all these horrible things happened with Isaiah Thomas. And like Dolan would just for the longest time refuse to get rid of him.

Just stuff like that. So this is the guy who's in charge of the Knicks. And we're about to get to the part where this meat of this thing. This Natalie Portman, Jonathan Safran, for NBA crossover. And Knicks fans have been living this with like decades now, decades of obscurity, like futility and like this poor management. And we come now to June 2015. Okay. The NBA draft.

Okay. So the Knicks, because they're bad, the one good thing about being bad is that you get to get a high draft pick. We know this from Chester Process. Exactly. Yeah. And so they have a pretty high draft pick. They're going number four. And by this point, everybody's prime, like, Dolan's going to screw it up because he always screws it up.

Okay. So in 2015, this is who they draft. With the fourth pick in a 2015 NBA draft, the New York Knicks select. Christatz Borgingis. Porjingis. Everyone's booing? Yeah. Look at the reaction.

All the Knicks fans are covering their faces and just doing every physical expression of exasperation. Look at the little boy. Is it a little boy? Yeah. The kid that's crying. He's giving the thumbs down. This is a compilation of like reactions to this. NBA track.

The New York Knicks selects. Christets. Oh my God. A guy who just collapsed in his home in his apartment. What the fuck did they do? Who do fuck is this? Don't try with this fucking kid. Okay.

So it's a random seven foot three dude that nobody's ever heard of. And Chris stops porcingas. And so like, and they're just like, oh my God, Dolan's done it again. Yeah. All right? So like people are really, really mad. But then something amazing happens. which is Christophe's pershingas turns out to be amazing.

Really? Yes. He turns out to be this like one of these like new kind of players. He's 7-3, which is a really tall. I know. Yeah. And I always forget what I have to explain. But you know about like.

Most people aren't even 7-1, Alex. You know about the average heights of humans. Right. When they're babies, they're even higher. here. Anyway, he's 7-3, but he can like move like a gazelle. And he just becomes this amazing player. Here's a highlight reel. Let me just, you want to watch some

some Prisina's greatest hits? Yes. All right, here we go. I wonder if I'm going to be able to tell that he's good. Lekina finds Borzingis. He's got a vizky on him, a couple of fakes. So that's him. Porzengis with the slam. He looks like a grown-up playing in a kids league. Yeah.

Like he's just so much large. and faster than everybody. He becomes this, like, icon. He's like this idol. Yeah. For next fans, right? Yeah. And then on January 31st of this year, they traded him. Why?

I don't know. Why? You know, I'm not a sports fan, but I feel really. really mad for them. That is exactly what every single Knicks fan in existence asked. I feel like Alex is going to become

a sports fan just because he realizes there's one more place he can be angry on the time. I know. I know. Because you love that righteous resentment that you were feeling right now. But I know. So we don't really know what happened. There was a lot of talk at the time that like that Prozingus was

really unhappy. Possibly because of how badly mismanagan the Knicks were and how bad they were playing. And, you know, he didn't want to end up in this sort of Carmelo Anthony situation where he's just like the one lone good player on this struggling team. Whatever. We don't know for sure, but whatever it was.

From the point of view of the person who made this Natalie Portman, Jonathan Saffron, for a tweet, once again, the Knicks have squanded their chance to be actually good. Now I know what my parents felt like every time I was like, hey, guys, I enrolled in community college again. And this semester, I've got my shit together. I'm going to study.

I'm definitely going to do a good job. Right. I know. So what the Nix management is saying is that, like, this is okay because now Porzingis's contract, we don't have to pay Porzingis all this money. So now we have cap space. We have room. Because the whole thing with the NBA is, like, in an effort to make it the rich teams don't just win,

there's like a salary cap. But you can only spend so much money on your players. Yeah. So what NIC's management is saying basically is like, it's okay. We've gotten rid of Porzinger. So we can spend his salary. What we would have been spending on his salary, we can spend that on other really good players. But then people are looking at that and being like, well, you're not going to be able to attract those players because everybody's going to feel like Porzingis.

Nobody's going to want to come and play for you, James Dolan. Have we reached yes, yes, yes? Yeah. This is a real sad one. That's what makes me feel really sad. I know. It's just like all about like hope and disappointment and striving. and looking like a jackass.

Yeah. Do you guys want to run it back? Yeah, Alex, you run it back. Okay, so this is a tweet by Michael Cayley at MC underscore of underscore A and it is a picture of Natalie Portman and Jonathan Saffron Fower. And underneath Natalie Portman,

it says NBA superstars, they'll now offer max on tracks. I think it meant to say max contracts. And on Jonathan Saffron Fowers' forehead, it says the Nix. And so in the world of this tweet, Natalie Portman is all of the incredible professional basketball players that the Knicks supposedly are going to get now that they've traded away Porzingis. But since they are Jonathan Safran Foer, they are dramatically overestimating their ability to attract good players.

Right. And also, I guess the Knicks have like traded Porzingis away before they've actually found the players they're going to get. So it's like one more way than they are. Oh, yeah. So they think it's going to work out. They also could just, like, end up alone in their sad apartment. Exactly. The remnants of a nightmare. All right. Thanks, Alex.

Thank you. Reply all is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruthy Pinnameney, Fia Benin, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our show's edited by Tim Howard. We're mixed by Rick Kwan. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Christina Ayel.

Lé de Josa. Special thanks this week to Nabil Cholampot and Cedric Shine. Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Build Buildings. Matt Lieber is a random interaction with a stranger where afterward you don't feel awkward. You can listen to the show on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in two weeks.