The Bill Simmons Podcast - Chuck Klosterman on the Death of Monoculture, NBA Superteams, and Tom Petty's Passing (Ep. 290)

Episode Date: November 21, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by best-selling author and old buddy Chuck Klosterman to discuss switching to Sirius XM over the internet, the pop culture influence on politics, the lack of humor in media coverage, the potential of Ben Simmons, and the comedic genius of Jim Carrey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Your host is Liz Kelly. And that's what's happening on channel 33. Subscribe now. Coming up, we're going to talk to Chuck Klosterman about a whole bunch of things. But first, our friends from Pearl Jam. From the mean streets of Portland, Oregon, BS Report slash BS Podcast Hall of Famer, Chuck Klosterman. It's been a while since we've talked on this podcast. How are you? I'm pretty good.

I'm all right. Streets aren't too mean here. I would not classify these as very mean streets. How would you classify them? Pretty friendly streets, I got to say. Friendly. Don't seem dangerous. You've been in Portland this year.

You were in, uh, the New York hustle and bustle for years and years and years. I think you might've been like the third person to buy a place in Brooklyn. Um, and then you stayed there forever. No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. Uh, 15 years. I was there 15 years. That does seem like a while, but, and now you're in, now you're in Oregon.

You are, uh now you're in now you're in oregon you are uh you're you're listening to sirius xm and you're writing in a cabin and you're kind of back to the guy that you were once upon a time in the dakotas well i didn't have a cabin in north dakota but i'm in the cabin now in my surrounded by trees kind of like being in the woods for real. I can relate to a bear. What has it done with your writing? Has it made it weirder? Is it exactly the same? Are you more creative?

What is it doing for you? Well, it might be weirder. i guess it's hard to gauge i mean you can't you can't really try to be weird and a lot of times what might seem weird to you might not seem weird to someone else or vice versa um it is just i kind of like having this separate space that i go to though it's like just kind of in my backyard and well it's not big it's like 18 feet by 12 feet but uh i put carpet in it and i painted it and a little fireplace oh wow just kind of yeah well it has a natural fireplace but i didn't want to fucking start a fire every time I go out here. So I had them put in like an electric fireplace so I can just flip a toggle switch and it comes on.

But I can change the color of the flames. Like today is blue. Sometimes the flames are green. Sometimes they're red. This is incredible. I mean, what's the weirdest thing about just not being in New York city anymore? I remember when I went from Boston, LA, which LA obviously is a big city as well. But the biggest thing I noticed was I was always like kind of walking around and around people. And when you live in any city, you just see people. There's people all the time.

You run into people. They're just kind of in the middle of stuff. And then in L.A., you're in your cars a lot more. And you kind of have to make an effort to see people and be around people. What's the biggest difference in Portland? Well, people have asked me that. And I've kind of given the same answer every time. But it's true.

The biggest difference by far is that no one is sarcastic here. And it's just very confusing. I mean, it's the nicest people I've ever encountered. Nicer than North Dakota. I mean, really sincerely nice people. But there's just people are not sarcastic. It's very strange. And, you know, like there's no sales tax here

but there is kind of a conversation tax when you go to the store oh you gotta stay in and make small talk for a few minutes they will comment on every item you purchased as it goes over through the machine and it's

everyone will be like oh oh this organic pasta have you like uh what do you think of this well well you know have you tried this i haven't tried it i'm like well i don't know it was about four and a half feet up on your shelf which was where my arm was right and then they'll be sort of perplexed by that response then they realize oh what he's just saying is i didn't consider this at all i just grabbed it you know that's like i didn't really think of that um so that that's different but uh um you know it rains all the time now so i like that i like when it rains and now my kids love it my wife loves it it's kind of a just

just a different life but but it's true. Everything about me seems different. Like, I listen to SiriusXM radio constantly now. It has replaced the internet for me. So explain that to me. What are you listening to on SiriusXM? I listen to it, I listen to everything. I listen to, okay, the main channel I listen to

is Ozzy's Boneyard, which is kind of like an Ozzy Osbourne, I guess, branded station. So it's like classic rock from the 70s and 80s, but only hard rock. I listen to the Vegas Sports Network all the time, like Brent Musburger's show. I listen to that all the time. Seriously? Is that a good show? Should I be listening to it?

I didn't even know that. Because those guys, those guys know about like what's happening with like Tulane or East Carolina, the way, you know, guys on ESPN know about Alabama. Like they know everything about everything because they're actually putting real money into

play. They say it's like all the news that impacts the gambler, but all news apparently affects the gambler. Any sports news is part of this conversation. I listen to the Beatles channel quite a bit.

That's more diverse than I thought it would be. I listen to Volume, that's like the all-talk music channel, which seemed like a crazy idea because music is something you can just listen to. Why would I want to listen to guys talking about it? But I listen

to it constantly. I listen to Eddie Trunk's show every day. He has like a three-hour show on there, and then I think a two-hour show somewhere else. He's on the radio five hours a day. Maybe that's why I keep running into him. I listen to the Yacht Rock station sometimes. Sometimes I'll go to the talk stations, and I'll just kind of scroll through all of them, listening to 15 seconds of each, because they're usually talking about the same subject, so then they can kind of knit together one long monologue

about whatever the news of the day is. Listen to the jazz station sometimes. My kids are in the car because somehow I think that'll be good for them. I kind of listen to them all. It sounds like you're turning into my Uncle Bert. I don't know. Maybe he would be my closest friend. Do you listen to the police scanner?

I never listen to the radio. No, I don't listen to the police scanner. Okay, good. There probably is some maybe crime-oriented station. I don't know. I didn't listen to the radio ever. Whatever the years I was in New York, all 15 years, I guess. But you listen to podcasts. You listen to podcasts for a few years, right?

Podcasts are not, you know, podcasts are not that related to radio. I know it seems that way. Yeah. It's kind of the obvious corollary. But the difference is pretty profound although in some ways like these serious xm stations they're kind of like podcasts like there might be a 90-minute interview with todd rundgren talking about the production of that out of hell yeah and it does not really go at the pace you expect a radio interview to go at, but I like that. Yeah, I kind of wish there were more serious channels.

Like, I can't believe that, you know, they have the 80s channel, they have the 90s channel, they have that Boneyard one you talked about, they have Tom Petty, they have the Beatles. They've hit all these different pockets of music and yet the 21st century they've thrown away and I feel like enough time has passed now that the 2000s was something

that it should be well you know this is my wife's complaint, my wife doesn't like Sirius Radio because she's like I want to hear the new LCD sound system record or whatever, where is that? and there is like a doesn't like Sirius Radio because she's like, I want to hear the new LCD sound system record or whatever. Where is that?

And there is like a, there is, I think, sort of branded as like a college rock station, although not really. I think there's something called the Spectrum. Yeah. They'll play like the National. I don't want to hear any of those bands. So I don't care about that. I mean, I think the assumption is that the people listening

to serious radio are the people who are like old enough to buy a new car that has serious radio in it. Right. And those people are young. So it is as though the world kind of ended in the middle 90s. Right. But I would say I would say that was the case 10 years ago and now it's been 10 years. So now there should be this kind of 12 to 15 years later nostalgia boom for that White Stripes Killers era. Which is now kind of an era that feels really far away. You know? Yeah. There is, you know, if you look at Lizzie Goodman's book or whatever, there is a nostalgia for that period, but there is not a great nostalgia for the music that was recorded during that time. almost all of it was just pretty derivative of a source that's easily accessible.

So, like, if somebody who, it's odd to be nostalgic for the Strokes, like, be nostalgic for television. And, like, even if you love the White Stripes, and you love the way Jack White plays guitar, why wouldn't you listen to Led Zeppelin or any of these things that he was mining? Where prior to this middle 90s period we're talking about, even the derivative things seemed different

because the way they were delivered was different. Like hair metal or sort of like new wave music, those things weren't original ideas, but they were packaged in this way that seemed very disconnected from the source material. So it seems they seem more different than they actually are. Yeah, I wonder. I remember when I started buying music.

So we're talking about early 80s, right? I'm like 13, buying eight tracks. And then that goes through to when they had the compact days. You were buying eight tracks in the early 80s? I had some eight tracks. I think I still have. I might still have a couple of them. I might have saved a couple of them.

But why weren't you moving to cassettes at that period? I did. I'm just saying for whatever reason, I had a couple eight tracks first, then went to cassettes and CDs. But it's interesting, when you think about that era, there wasn't that many years of music to really go backwards and try to buy. And so everybody my age had the same kind of – it was almost a mortal lock that anyone in your friend group probably had, if there were 35 go-to albums that, you're talking about 50 plus years of music that people have been making and

that you're, you're the directions you could go with whatever you become interested in. It could go anywhere. You might have nothing in common with your best friend. You know, I think that would have been inconceivable in 1984. Well, and, and time has just, it's so different now. I mean, when we were young, Led Zeppelin seemed old,

Black Sabbath seemed old. Yeah. Now they still seem old, but they don't seem that much older than they did in the 80s, even though the period from then to now

is much greater than the period from 1984 to their inception. I feel like I end up talking about that phenomenon a lot, but boy, is it confusing. It's just a strange thing, and it makes me think that maybe this is why every generation of young people is annoyed by the older generations talking about aging. But the fact of the matter is the process of aging is so goddamn weird that everyone who experiences it can't help but to sort of be just staggered by the, how the weird feeling, you know?

Like, and so, so like, it just, it's, it's an unavoidable problem. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, I've certainly noticed that, you know, I've been watching a lot with my, with my daughter and the things that she's interested in because, you know, she's almost 13 and I remember almost being 13 and I remember what I was interested in and the, the, the different ways it can go because of YouTube and all these different things that they could just go online and find and the culture that they can consume, which I don't sometimes I wouldn't even know if it's culture. It's really bizarre to me. I don't know what they're going to. I don't know what they're 20 years from now.

They're going to look back at be like, oh, man, remember, you know, like we, like for me, it was in the, uh, I think eighth grade. That was when Thriller came out. It's like who, who our age didn't have an opinion on Thriller, you know, or my age back in the day with everybody that I was in school with. But now I don't know what that would be for, for people my daughter's age. Even if you look at something like Stranger Things, I'm not positive everyone in her class is watching that. But if Stranger Things was there in 1982, everybody in my class would have watched it. You know, we didn't have as many options.

So I mean, it's just, it's sort of a predictable sort of, you know, what's, what's the upside to the monoculture? Everyone has more, you know, the elimination of the to the monoculture? Everyone has more, you know, the elimination of the monoculture. Well, everybody has more choice. You can kind of create whatever identity you want. The downside is, of course, there's going to be less shared experiences. And when you look back on your life, you tend to gravitate toward the experiences you felt that were kind of more collective. I got to say, though, you say you remember what it was like to be when you were 13.

I'm starting to conclude that I don't. I mean, I remember what I liked when I was 13, but in my mind what I think I'm doing is I'm just imagining a smaller version of me now consuming it. And that couldn't have been the way it was. I mean, it obviously wasn't. I, you know, I just, when I see, I watch younger people now and sort of see the experience they're having with things, it seems real alien to me. And I think the natural reaction people have is to be like, well, kids must be different. But I think what it is, is the aging process and the process of maturation makes you become such a different person that even if you saw your actual self again, you wouldn't recognize

it. I have this fear that if I met the 13-year-old version of me, I wouldn't be able to connect him to myself now. It would seem, I would be like, this couldn't have been me. This must be someone doing a bad impersonation of me. Well, I think, you know, the one thing that really hasn't changed is sports. It's still the one thing that, you know, can unite people of all ages and everybody's going to have the same sort of, uh, not just opinions about good.

Like is Carson Wentz the MVP? Is Carson Wentz great? Can the Eagles win the Superbowl? Just these basic questions that we would have been asking the same questions 35 years ago, you know, and you can, you can kind of remember certain years by what would happen in sports. Back when I was a kid, you also remembered it by movies that came out and TV shows. I just think in general, culture was so much more important. I can't remember if I said this on a podcast before, but there was an SNL sketch, I'm going to say in 90, maybe 90 or 91, when Susan Day was hosting from the Partridge family. And it was basically Brady Bunch versus the Partridge family. Okay. And every cast member played a different member

of either the Brady Bunch or the Partridge family. And every single person in my age group understood that sketch. And then probably the people eight to ten years older than us and maybe six to seven years younger it was one of those things we just all got it we we got every joke every inside thing everything and then you think about like the Brady Bunch movie came out a little bit after that it was the same thing it was a nostalgia movie but it was for because we'd all had the same experiences with that show and now I I don't know what that would be, like 20 years from now. There's some SNL sketch where it's like blank.

What would the people in that age group get? I don't even think. There just can be nothing like that. Because back with Brady Bunch and Partridge Film, we were on all the time. We had eight channels, and everybody watched those shows, and that's kind of what we knew. Now you're just doing whatever.

It's weird. I just don't know how it plays out. It feels foreign. Well, I think that probably what is happening, and this seems kind of transparent, is that kind of the pop culture aspect of politics is a bigger part of people's lives now and certainly the deaths of people dying just the news in general uh because that is something that is is shared you don't really have a choice on that you can't you can pick what silo of news you want but you can't really pick the news itself yeah and i i wonder if if that, you know, like Saturday Night Live used to be mostly a pop culture

show with some aspects of political content. Now, I mean, I don't watch it, but the sense I get is it's mostly a political show with some aspects of culture. Yeah. That's, yeah, probably half and half. It definitely, definitely is a show that's trying to— Those are the only skits that seem to get traction. Outside of there was a skit a while ago about Mr. Pumpkin.

Tom Hanks was some pumpkin fellow. I saw that a bunch, even though I don't watch the show. All the other ones seem to move out. All seem to be politically based. Well, yeah, I think part of that has to do with the cast, though, because they don't really have just a superstar on the show anymore. Kate McKinnon's probably the closest. But they don't have those two or three force of nature performers like they used to have when Will Ferrell was on the show, somebody like that. Where they just by themselves, by sheer talent and personality would become this viral thing. Or even like the Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island guys

and things like that. Now it seems like it's mostly the political stuff that's going to take off. And even that stuff, it's almost too close to home. I don't like the Baldwin Trump stuff. I have trouble accepting Trump as a parody because the actual real-life version of it is such a parody. I don't know how you parody a parody.

We're going to take a break to talk about Delta Airlines. My favorite airline is Delta. I am platinum medallion. Oh, yeah. One of the reasons is I love the Fly Delta app. It allows me to book flights, check my sky miles, check any gate info, keep track of my bags. Well, Delta just took it up a notch.

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into the clouds. So we were talking about quarterbacks, and I was thinking about something you said about how the league kind of figured out that what Kaepernick, I think it was called the pistol. It worked for a little bit. They figured that out, the read option, and then it became tougher for him to do this stuff. quarterbacks that are a little closer to the Tom Brady style than maybe the Aaron Rodgers style, where the guys who are in the pocket more. I think Wentz is a really good example of somebody who's

tall, who can see over the line, who's got a good arm, who can move around and be elusive, but isn't somebody that makes a ton of plays with his legs. He's not like what we had last decade where everybody's like, the new wave of quarterbacks, here they are, all these unbelievable athletes. And what we're finding as it goes along is those guys that take a lot of hits and a lot of punishment, it's just too risky to have those guys

to build your franchises around them. Rodgers has been hurt a couple times now. People don't think of him as the scrambling elusive guy, cause he's not like Michael Vick in 2004, but he is somebody that makes plays with his legs. So is Russell Wilson. Somebody like Mariota who keeps getting hurt, who is somebody who can run around and do stuff. And I wonder if as football keeps evolving and the concussion protocol, all these different things, if we're going to move back toward this world where it's just like the prototypical pocket passers and everybody's going to be afraid of the punishment risks of these guys that can run around and do things. So it's almost like we reverted back to where we were in the Dan Marino era. What do you think?

That's an interesting thought. I mean, part of the thing about these guys who run around, I don't know if they necessarily get hurt that much more than pocket passers, but it's just that when they do get hurt, then part of their game is just gone. Right. I mean, you know, it's like Brady could be pretty immobilized and still be effective. I mean, Marino is the greatest example of that. Yeah, he was.

He could basically break his patella and keep playing. I'm sort of fascinated by, okay, so when Romo does games, okay, so when Romo is the color guy, you've got all this attention. Because the thing that Romo, I'm sure everyone who listens to this podcast know we're talking about, got all this attention because he would maybe come to the line and he could essentially predict the play based on like, especially if a team ran like a kill system,

when they brought two plays to the line, he would say like, well, they're going to run left or they're going to do this. Now he's in a position where he's in the booth, so he can really see that. It does seem as though now there's so little room for error that the difference between the handful of quarterbacks who are good and the rest who are just sort of trying to keep their job must be their ability to recognize these things.

Like, the speed in which that they can recognize sort of what is, you know, either depending on how you look at it, the obvious play or the only play that's really available against this defense, like the one thing that is vulnerable. It just seems like it's becoming more intellectually complicated. Yeah. And I wonder if that. Yeah.

And on top of that that like the quarterbacks i can go up to the line and just decipher what the other team is doing and have an answer for it in the moment that they have to do that now that advantage seems to be gaining there was a great replay in the pats raiders game that romo broke down of it was when amandola caught the pass right near the goal post um but br Brady went up to the line and there was pressure. And he basically saw it and he had three receivers on the left and he told them what to do. And then he looked at Amendola's side and he saw what that side was

and he made some gesture to Amendola that was basically whatever sign language they were in, which was basically like, instead of doing what I told you to do, curl around and come across the middle and the back and I'll hit you, which is what happened. Now there's probably five quarterbacks in the league who could go to the line and, and see all of that in three seconds and then do it, you know? And so when they talk about, I just keep coming back to 10 years ago when people were like, athletes are going to revolutionize the quarterback position. I think the defenders are just too big and too strong and too fast,

and you don't want your quarterback taking those hits. And if the people are playing that way in college, it's not going to lend itself to making a lot of money in the pros. I would almost like, if I was a high school prospect, I wouldn't want to play that way in college. I'd want to learn how to play the traditional way because I'd want to have a long career. I mean, another thing that's happening here,

and this has been happening for a while, but you really, really noticed it now in a way that's like it was a thing that happened gradually and then suddenly. It's that the difference from the college and the pro game now, the style it's played and the way they do it is so different that there really isn't much reason to, with the exception of a handful of programs, a lot of them are in the Pac-12, actually.

Stanford is like this. Maybe USC, something. The way the quarterback operates, it doesn't really have a relationship to how NFL quarterbacks operate. And I, they're, they're in some ways more ready to play in the NFL, but in another way they're, they're less ready because it's almost like they're changing sports.

Right. Well, on top of that, this is something Mike Lombardi always talks about. The linemen are always taught to, they're only taught to block one specific way. And basically they're taught to pass block the whole time and just to hop up and try to keep the quarterback fresh for two minutes. And they're not taught all of these different ways. And he thinks that's why the biggest reason why the offensive line play in the NFL has gone down so dramatically. And why some guy could be the second pick in the draft

and just be a complete bust. Because they have no idea if he can do block four different ways. I think with the concussions, and I'm not even talking about a future of the sports stuff just in terms of how bad how football is being played this has been such a fascinating decade with some of the things that have changed with guys being able to go over the middle now and not worry about getting beheaded basically you know and the whole middle is basically open up for any quarterback who's good enough to to throw to throw over the middle, but at the same time, quarterbacks who are much better protected,

but are also now smart enough to know that anytime they take off, they just got to get down as fast as possible. There's a lot less recklessness on that end. And then with the running backs, like every, every team has four running backs in the pros now, you know, you lose three guys and then here comes the fourth guy and then you're still going. And it's just a really hard league to figure out. I've never had less of a grasp of where things are going. And quarterbacks seem like they're even, you know,

they were always the most important thing. But now it seems like there's only like five or six or seven of them that are really good. And if you don't have one of them, you almost might as well not even play the season. Jacksonville is the best defense in the league. They have no chance of winning the Super Bowl. So I'd say it's a weird league to figure out. It's almost the opposite of basketball where in the NBA, there's just so much talent coming in. And every team, you have so much talent that you could argue that the league should go to 32 teams and the nfl it's the opposite it's like fuck we should probably get rid of teams they

won't but you know we don't need 32 but but that that's really only true for the quarterback position though like it it seems like right now it seems like you know georgia has three guys on their team who could play running back in the NFL. There's more receivers now. Offensive linemen, I guess this might be the other thing. But defensively, there's lots of players. So it really is just this one position that has really become outsized. When I moved to New York, this is right after Trent Dilfer had won the Super Bowl.

And the New York Times Magazine always had this issue called the Year of Ideas. And they had me write about the idea of the quarterback as a manager. That was the hot idea then. It's an old idea now. But then it was this new idea. Can you succeed just having a quarterback who just manages the game? And

I don't think anyone thinks that anymore. I don't think that there's anybody who'd like, even if we can start a team and you're going to give me Fournette and Kareem Hunt and Melvin Gordon,

three great running backs or whatever, I still don't think that they would think to themselves, all we need is a guy to just give them the ball and sort of play the way Wisconsin plays in college. I just don't think anybody would do that. I guess Jacksonville is the closest example of that, right? But even recently, they had a game where they seemed to be throwing the ball every play in the second half. Yeah, they're terrible.

It's getting hard to justify why teams run the ball at all, to be honest. The completion percentages are so high. It's because the quarterbacks are so bad. What I don't understand, so in the NBA, it's like a total talent boom, right? Where you're just having, it's almost like people have learned from the mistakes of the previous generation in a lot of different ways. And they handle themselves better off the court. They take care of their bodies better. They throw themselves into all the tech stuff of their job, basically, the dieting, the sleeping.

They come in as prepared, like Jason Tatum. These people in the class of 2017, they're almost adults and it's bizarre, but it all makes sense. It's just for all these different reasons, we have more good NBA players than we've ever had before. You would think that would be the case with quarterbacks. You would think we would have learned from different mistakes that people have made over the past 40 years. You would think that the training is better, that the mechanics, the ability to study your own mechanics, the coaching would be better, the ability to rehab from injuries,

the ability to add your arm strength and make your mobility better and all these different things that would seem to translate to this person could have been a B-minus quarterback, but now we're adding all this 2017 stuff and they're an A-minus quarterback. And yet we only have like eight good quarterbacks. I think it's the weirdest thing, the weirdest subplot of professional sports right now is that there aren't more good quarterbacks.

I don't understand it. It just must be harder. Like, it just must be harder than all of these other things. Even the things that we view as hard. I mean, for many years, they would always say, like, well, you know, you can have a debate over, you know, what sport has the best athlete overall. And you would never put baseball into that argument. However, the single toughest thing to do in sports is to, like, you know, hit a baseball coming at you.

That's a common thing you hear people say. I don't know if I believe that anymore. I mean, now it does seem like playing quarterback is the most difficult job for an athlete in any sport. In terms of what you need to do physically and sort of the risk involved and the intellectual component particularly, it just seems difficult in a way that almost contradicts everything else we think about football as a game. One thing I was thinking was football has become so much more sophisticated really since Bill Walsh.

So you're talking 30 years. And then Belichick comes in and the Belichick generation of just studying, studying, studying, game tape, game tape, picking apart, trying to figure out what everybody's doing, almost crossing the line in certain cases with studying game film and signals and things like that. But it might be like you might have tells as a quarterback, almost like a poker player or something. And people just know like the four throws you're good at and the four things when he comes to the line, this might happen. And maybe there, maybe there's this sophistication with defense and coaching, with breaking down quarterbacks and scouting them that,

that really kind of breaks down guys who 30 years ago might've made it, you know, like maybe Blake Bortles would have been awesome in 1984. I don't know. Oh, I, well, I mean, I kind of assume he might have made it. You know, like maybe Blake Bortles would have been awesome in 1984. I don't know. Oh, well, I mean, I kind of assume he would have been right. I mean, in 1984, people would have said Blake Bortles is the greatest athlete

who had ever played the position. Oh, yeah. I mean, if we literally took him, put him in a time machine, this would probably be the worst use of a time machine ever. Then we build a time machine to move Blake Bortles

back to the 1983 draft class. Right. He's at least Ken O'Brien. He's like a taller Ken O'Brien. But yeah, I do wonder, I wonder if like the scouting and all that stuff really breaks down dudes that might have, you know, that were 90% there and that 10%. Once it spirals out of control you don't get it back how many quarterbacks have we seen they just either from injuries or loss of confidence

or whatever and they're just gone Matt Schaub was basically a pro bowler a damn close for three straight years and he was in his 20s and all of a sudden he lost it it was gone it was like you know almost like a race car driver or something. He just lost control of the wheel, and that was it. Culpepper. We've seen Randall Cunningham was good, then he wasn't good, then he was. Jeff George was good for a bit, then he wasn't, then he was. It's definitely the most erratic position. I'm going to go John McLaughlin here.

Forced prediction. Tell me what good young quarterback you think is in the most jeopardy of falling off that cliff. Somebody that right now we sort of perceive as being pretty talented, pretty good quarterback, build the franchise around him, but that will not be the perception in 10 years. I would say the guy that I don't think is going to age well is Russell Wilson. I think that his style of play and he's always kind of on the tightrope of danger half the time.

And circling out of about to get crushed by three guys and a lot of the stuff's happening with his legs. And we just haven't really seen that style age well. Eventually you take hits, and it could either be your body starts breaking down or you get a couple concussions. Steve Young is somebody that was just, even when he was on his way out of the league because he was getting all the concussions,

physically he was still one of the best three athletes at that position, even in his 30s. I always look at these guys more like the injury risk potential. And I think Russell Wilson has the highest. Roethlisberger was another one that you would have said five years ago. Like, man, that guy, how many times can he get tackled by three guys? Eventually there's going to be repercussions. And now he's

starting to have it. The one that Wentz, who I think Wentz is great. Wentz would be my number one draft pick of any QB in their 20s. I think he's really, really good. And the one thing that he's got to get out of his system is sometimes he gets reckless.

And he'll try to be on the five yard line like i think i can score and take on three guys or he'll try to stay up as three guys are trying to bring him down and he doesn't have that brady sense yet of kind of seeing the forest through the trees but he's he's my number one pick for the opposite question which is who's who's the safest bet i think that guy's a stud uh the one thing I want to say about Roethlisberger, you just mentioned him, you know,

a few weeks ago when like he had just played terrible and there was all those, you know, guys around him and the, and he's like, I don't know, maybe I don't got it anymore. Maybe I'm done or whatever. That's fascinating.

That kind of, that kind of illustrates to me how, in some ways, the media has no sense of humor. Like, they just, they cannot recognize somebody saying something he obviously doesn't believe, and is just saying because he's like, I know everyone's thinking of this, I'm just going to say it. There is no profound meaning to him saying that. But in the week following that, there was a lot of talk like,

well, if you're saying that, that kind of means it's true, and that clearly is not the issue. Like, he was just playing poorly, and now he's playing okay. Wait, was your perception that he was kidding when he said that? Absolutely. If you really felt that way, you would never say it off handedly with 25 fucking microphones around you that would be a profound existential thing that would truly

concern you and you would do everything in your power to somehow not give that perception the fact that he said it it almost proved that he didn't take it seriously because I never saw the clip itself I only read the stories about it and I thought it was really strange that he said it but I didn't

know what the context was and he had been playing horribly he had been playing horribly and he came out and he was like okay guys here I am I'm going to answer these questions throw all the questions at me and they just kept sort of bombarding him with these questions and he said that

he said it in a really offhand way but I certainly did not think when i heard it that this is something he really is concerned about because i i mean maybe i'm just maybe i'm in some ways projecting some kind of thing onto him or something to me it would just seem as though if that has got to be as a a pro quarterback, maybe your deepest fear. Your whole life is built around you. So that if you really did feel that, that wouldn't be something you would say offhand. But it was definitely taken seriously.

Here's something else I wanted to ask you about, kind of unrelated, actually totally unrelated. In the NBA now, there was the creation of all these super teams, you know, sort of like the Thunder. Maybe they're the clearest example, you know. Now, I feel like as a consequence, this has really confused the regular season, because the Thunder, they're kind of struggling. I don't know, are they at 500 now? They were five and seven, I know, a little bit ago. Maybe they're maybe they're eight and seven i'm not sure what their record is but they're not dominant you know um but when you have three guys of that caliber on the team are they going to be better in the playoff when you get to the playoffs and they cut their rotations down and very often the fourth quarter is just putting your best guys on the floor will they then be very dangerous or does this does not does this just not kind of work in this way that it doesn't that if it doesn't

work during the regular season it won't work during the playoffs either the history of it says usually it goes badly there's been exceptions but for the most part, when you throw... The world, yeah. The Heat are the exception, I guess, but yes. But when the Heat did it, the guys were all in their primes. And this time around, Carmelo is not in his prime. Paul George... The bigger issue to me is it's more of a thing about when people get stuck in their ways at basketball as basketball players. And then you're putting them in this situation where they have to almost relearn this teammate slash sacrifice part of the whole thing.

How are they able to do it? Like you saw the 08 Celtics, they threw Garnett, Ray Allen and Pierce together. But even though it probably shouldn't have made sense on paper, it actually did because KG was such a selfless player. Ray Allen had been in the league for 12, 13 years, was starting to hit a different phase of his career, didn't need to score 25

anymore. And same for Paul Pierce, who just wanted to win, and they all made it work. In this case... It was pretty clear who was 1, 2, and three in that grouping. And I guess when you look at the Thunder, I just had this suspicion that maybe Anthony was going to react the way he reacted to being on the Olympics. Right. In which case, he would be very comfortable being sort of the third option for 85% to 90% of the game.

And then at the end of the game, he might be the best option. Yeah, he's not totally that guy anymore. Well, so you think that he literally can't do it, or he's choosing not to? No, I just think he's not 2012 Olympic mellow anymore. I don't think he's not 2012 Olympic mellow anymore. I don't think he's that guy. And the bigger issue for me,

I don't want to give up on them as a contender yet because I do think there's just not a lot of teams that have that kind of talent. But Westbrook, that year he had last year where he just did everything and was playing at the speed and the teammates were kind of like props for him, it's really hard to shake out of that. And I think he struggled. And I don't know, he might be a little bit injured. There's been rumors that maybe he was having an issue with his knee.

But he's been really bad for him. And it doesn't seem like he has totally figured out how to pick his spots and when to take over, when not, and he just doesn't have the same kind of mojo. It does seem as though going after that triple-double thing was maybe more mentally exhaustive on him than we realized. And I think that something that was really important to him that he sort of imagined would be

almost a defining thing, and it will be. I mean, my wild card kind of prediction going into the NBA this year was that Westbrook averaging a triple double was going to be like Roger Bannister running the form in a mile, and suddenly

everyone was going to do it. Ben Simmons would average a triple-double in his first year, and Lonzo Ball would come close, and there'd be a handful of guys. But that's not going to happen. I mean, I guess Simmons is not going to be. I think right now he's 18-9-8. I suspect at some point in his career he will average a triple-double, I think. Yeah, I was going to say, just for the record, it's happening.

He will do it at some point in his career. It's too easy for him to get the rebounds and the assists. In any given game, he should be able to get to 10-10. He has the ball all the time, and he's a good rebounder. Yeah, the rebounds come to him strangely easy because you watch him, you notice him. Also, he just takes so few shots it's just like he's not expending all that energy like Westbrook would take 27 shots a game

yeah it's like every time I look at Ben Simmons he went 11 for 14 or he went 9 of 13 it's like this is not he's not wasting a lot of fuel getting the basket and getting open he just you know and he can't even he can't even shoot yet he's unbelievable i i can't i'm just blown away by i did a column on friday about the winners of the first month and you know it's funny that people are throwing him and imbeed together and imbeed's overpowering he's amazing but simmons is the best player on that team i mean simmons sim Simmons is already one of the best 15 guys in the league. And even watching him play

against Golden State on Saturday night, it was just so exciting. We were talking in our NBA Slack about he's the best rookie since blank. I was trying to come up with who I thought he was the best rookie. Well, since LeBron probably, right? Well, here's the thing, though.

Blake Griffin was really good. Blake Griffin had a really good rookie year. Yeah, he was really good. That's true. And it was similar in that they both lost a year. Right. They did have a year, you know, a year of not playing, but a year of getting physically better.

But I think Blake's, you know, it's definitely the best since Blake. And depending on how the whole year goes for Simmons, then you have to start going back toward the LeBron, maybe LeBron in 03. He'd have to do it for the whole year, though. How many rebounds did Blake Griffin average as a rookie? Oh, he was, that first year, he was like, I think, 22 and 13 or so.

He was way up there, and a lot of dunks the team was winning was he actually getting four more rebounds a game than Simmons I mean this is kind of something that you job to remember this stuff but I felt he was in double digits in rebounds but in my mind I would have guessed

11 and a half now I guess we're sort of arguing over kind of you know negligible things, but he was very physically explosive, I guess, and that was part of it. And also, it seemed as though there was no

ceiling. With Simmons, it does seem like there's kind of a built-in ceiling that he's going to choose to build. He's never going to try to score 25 points a game. He's never choose to build. He's never going to try to score 25 points a game. He's never going to do, like, he's just going to be this, like, he wants to be the second best player on the team. Blake was 22 and a half, 12 rebounds a game,

almost four assists a game that first year. Pretty good season. Yeah, it's pretty good. But more, I mean, I was even thinking more, not just the stats part, I think what makes both of them really fascinating, and I keep saying the word fascinating in this podcast for me. What makes both of them kind of memorable...

You're easily fascinated. I'm like a cat. What made both of them memorable, I think, was more the impact. Just that they were things we hadn't seen. Blake was this guy who was just dunking over people and grabbing alley-oops, and you're watching these Clipper games. You don't want to miss that one moment when he decides to dunk over the center

or whatever, and it was this really unique kind of guy that we hadn't had in a while. And the same thing is the case with Simmons, where there's pieces of LeBron and Lamar Odom and Magic Johnson, and he's just all these different things. And then on top of it has that little baby skyhook that is such an old school crazy shot that nobody has anymore. And he's making it routinely.

I just love him. You know who else has that shot? Who? Working for the Lakers, Kuzma. Oh, Kuzma. Oh, Kuzma. Yeah. Yeah. Kuzma's good.

He's great. Yeah. Who would have thought? Um, I mean, honestly, if you asked me which rookie would I rather have for the next 12 years, Kuzma or Alonzo, I'd really have to think about it and study tape because I think Kuzma might be a safer bet for where basketball's going. It's an interesting thing, though, because I saw that you had tweeted something like,

I don't get them not playing ball in the fourth quarter. They've got to do this. Well, it's a complicated deal because for the Lakers, the Lakers I just think are, you say you're using fascinating a lot. I find the Lakers to be super fascinating because you watch that team and it looks like no one's actually that good, but everyone could be great. Yeah, it's a potential team.

Or even like Lopez. Lopez can be great for six minutes. They played a game against the Blazers. He was just awesome for this portion of the game. But, like, okay, so for the Lakers to be great as a team, it does seem as though ball has to be central to that. He has to be kind of running the show. It's got to be his team.

And if there's ever sort of this hypothetical world where the Lakers are in the Western Conference Final at some point, he's got to be like, he's that. But they're not terrible now. And if you're going to put your best five guys on the floor at the end of the game, he's not one of them. Like, so, I mean, I, I, I feel like Luke Walton believes that he can make the playoffs now. And I don't think that if he believes that he's an insane person,

cause they're not making the playoffs. I, well, I, my, my move on this is play, play young guys and let them screw up. You're not making the playoffs. For Lonzo not to be out there in a televised game, unless he's having a nervous breakdown, I don't understand that. The whole purpose of this season for them is to develop their young guys and make them better and get them reps and put them in positions to fail and succeed. First of all, two things.

First one's minor. I don't know what difference it makes if the game was televised. Second of all... No, it's an ESPN game. It's important. Well, to who? To Luke Walton? No, I think it's...

Why would he... I think it was important to Lonzo. I think that was one of the reasons he sucked. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting deal. I don't,

I feel like players of his generation are used to having, you know, their games filmed when they're seven. I don't think the idea,

I think their expectation is that everything that they do is being watched by someone on a television somewhere. I just, I don't think that Luke,

I bet Luke Walton believes they can make the playoffs and I don't think he's insane for thinking that. I think that would be very unlikely. Well, but when you watch them play against these teams, they compete with everybody. They compete against bad teams.

They can't play against good teams. They're not. They don't have it. They don't really have. Well, okay. So they can't compete with Golden State. Who is the worst team that you would say... Who would you say is the

worst team that the Lakers would have no shot at beating in a game? I would say... First of all, in the NBA, you never know. Anybody can come close to beating anybody in a certain game. Well, plus, every time I check the sanding, there seems to be an inordinate number of teams that are two games above

or two games below.500. They seem pretty packed together this year. I don't think the Lakers are very good. I think the one edge that they have is the home crowd is so grateful to have a team that they actually like again that they do seem to have an advantage at home that they seem to get. There's a real energy at those games, but that, you know, the Lonzo thing is a real conundrum because, you know, I,

my role with this stuff is you don't have to, you don't have to do what Ben Simmons is doing as a rookie, but you need to see, you need to see flashes. There needs to be moments like this was my Jalen Brown last year is a good example. Didn't, didn't, didn't he have a 39 point game? Who Lonzo? Yeah.

I didn't have one. Didn't he have one massive game? I don't know if that was, he had 29. I don't think he had 39. Let me just check. But like Jalen Brown last year in the playoffs, I really needed him to have a couple moments in that postseason because

if he didn't, then that's a bad sign. It's a bad sign. If you're going to be really good eventually someday, we would see a couple glimpses of it at some point when you're a rookie. And we saw it and it was encouraging. And Jason Tatum's another one this year. 29.

Yeah. 29 points. You're right. Okay. Lonzo. It was the second game. It was the second game of the year too. And it was against Phoenix.

And it was against Phoenix. And that's the thing. And this is why the summer league culture of people watching summer league games now, and they think this is how the guys are going to play in the real games. Like Lonzo's got a show that he can look like a really good point guard against teams that actually know what they're doing because the teams that actually know what they're doing they're throwing taller guys at them they're they're pushing them they're pressing them they're making them uncomfortable

and yeah he had a good game last night yeah, who is it against? 16 rebounds Denver They don't play defense either That's the thing, I think he might be one of those guys That if it's a certain style of play The other team's not playing that hard And they're not working that hard Then he's going to look okay

I still I think that his passing is so great that I wouldn't rule him out. I just wonder, is he Ricky Rubio? Is that who he's going to end up being? Is he like, is that his ceiling as a player? I mean, I don't, it's weird because someone asked me about Ricky Rubio.

I'm like, he's a pretty good player, but that would be a disappointment if that was the end result. I know, but I think that's... He's definitely going to but that was his disappointment if that was the end result. I know, but I think that's... He's definitely going to rebound. He's going to rebound well for a guard. Okay.

In a way that Rubio, of course, would not. I don't know if people are over or underreacting to the weirdness of his shot. I don't know if that is...

Well, his shot's terrible. It doesn't go in. Well, well, no, I'm not saying the result. I don't know if that's terrible. Uh, doesn't go in. Well, well, no, I'm not saying the result. I'm saying the release. That's not great either.

Yeah. He's going to have the release of the worst in the, it's like, but I don't, I don't think they're going to change it. I don't think that's the way people think now. I think that, I think the idea is everybody is John Wooden with Keith Wilks now.

The thinking is that if a guy has a weird shot, you've got to let him try to do it because it's just too late. Like trying to change a guy's free throw form now. I know that's been going on. Isn't it funny, though, with the NBA, and I think it's one of the reasons it's starting to feel like it's just more relevant, even if the ratings don't reflect it yet.

The Steelers-Titans was four times what Warriors-Boston was on Thursday. We talk about the players in the NBA more. We argue about their faults. We pick them apart. We're all like scouts. Like, nobody has, like, a 20-minute Le'Veon Bell conversation.

I don't know why that is, but... Well, I mean, I think I know why that is. I mean, like, this is a cliche, but people say, like, you know, guys who love baseball tell you they love baseball because they understand it. And people who love football love you they love baseball because they understand it. And people who love football love football and admit they don't understand it at all. Yeah.

And that's really true. The more you get into football, the more you realize it is an impossible sport to understand as a casual observer. It's just there's too much happening, and it's too complicated. Basketball is somewhere in between where the guy is so visible, and the thing that they're doing is something that many basketball players have done on some level. They've played some level in their life. They've played basketball. So it gives people a degree of authority to talk about it i uh you might i feel at times be going or not just you really a lot of people who kind of cover sports now i think that there might

be a little too we're going a little too far with this idea that football is losing its popularity and everything else coming up behind and passing it. I agree with you. No, I 100% agree. It's more like I want it to happen than it's actually happening. You do. You definitely do want it to happen. I do want you definitely do. I do. I do. Uh, like,

okay. There, do you, I'm sure you read this big story about, uh, about Goodell and Jerry Jones, right? The one that was in ESPN,

the magazine. Yeah. Uh, the thing, you know, the, the, you know,

okay. So at one point they talk about, you know, the NFL kind of got some, uh, some sort of, uh, public relations expert to come in and talk to the owners.

And his thing was like, okay, here are all the sports in America and their popularity. The NFL is on top. And, you know, some other sports like, you know, soccer are sort of climbing. And then basketball's success is eroding. And then apparently one of the owners was like, what the fuck is this is this guy talking about like not watch what's going on in the world um but what i i think what that guy's what that guy was trying to do not necessarily on his own maybe with a push from the league office but what he was saying is that even when it's at its worst point, I mean, this has been the worst year for professional football I can ever remember

if we're going to believe in the concept of luck. Outside of the concussion issue and then this completely unforeseen national anthem issue and then every significant player being injured, It's just real weird, right? So even in this, and the games haven't been that good. I mean, I watched the college game on Saturday and the program on Sunday, and it's just so much better on Saturday. It's not even comparable, but yet I'm still watching the NFL. And even at kind of Nader point, it seems as though if I'm going to have a conversation in an airport with a guy at the bar at TGI Fridays while we're staring and watching whatever on ESPN2, the likelihood that we can talk about pro football still laps everything. this guy was suggesting, this kind of PR hack guy, was that the NBA is sort of doing everything

it can to promote its players and sort of promote the idea of what it kind of represents in sort of this abstract way, and they still can't get around the fact that nobody wants to watch the second and third quarter of these games. They want to see the beginning, and then they want to check it out at the end, but they just can't get over the fact that the game at times, much like baseball, has this dull period, and football just doesn't have that as much. This is why part of the reason I think it's crazy that the NFL wants to expand to 18 games, which is crazy because obviously these guys have enough health problems as is, but the one thing that football has over every other sport is that the games seem more meaningful because there's less of them.

And that, you know, it's like there isn't many throwaway NFL games. There are no throwaway college games. So when you watch it, you feel like, you know, but it's a, cause you know, people get upset by like what's on Thursday night. Oh, it's a terrible game. It's dolphins again or whatever. It's like, oh, Monday's awful. It's because the expectation is that when you watch a football game, it probably will be pretty good because that's how people will, when you, I began watching football, probably

people who listen to this hate when we do this, but I feel compelled to do it. When we were watching pro football when we were young, there were three games. You watched the Patriots, and I watched the Vikings. They were the local team. So people were invested just because of the locality. And it was typically whatever those networks saw as the biggest game, usually the Cowboys. And then the Monday night game, which was often an inter-conference game and seems important just because it was the only game everyone knew everyone was watching.

Yeah. So the likelihood that you would watch these three games and at least you were almost definitely guaranteed that you were going to care about two of them. You know, but now there's many games on that put people in this position where they got to generate a reason to care. So if the teams aren't very good, if, you know, it's like, well, they're almost mad at the NFL. Like I keep people angry at the, at the idea. I think the red zone hurts it too. Cause the red zone is just something that's happening all the time,

but real football is not working that way. You know's like oh here's another play hey here's another great play and then it makes it seem like the average football game isn't as exciting but really uh well particularly since the red zone has no commercials yeah just it's not it's not so so you know the only time i stopped watching the red zone when it's on is when every game in the country is bad and no one's in the actual red zone. And you kind of look down or get up or whatever. When you watch the Thursday game, I feel like I'm checking my phone too much against my will because what am I supposed to do? I'm not going to watch the commercials. One more break to talk about SimpliSafe.

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people who are full of shit but nobody can compete with the comedic actor trying to take himself seriously jim carrey talking about his desire to become Andy Kaufman, and then also needing to method act and do all this stuff, and then kind of doubled by the fact that his sort of now sort of self-actualized position that this was all a waste of time, and that this was, you know, that this thing that he did that was so important to him is just an attempt to sort of escape from life. It is very strange to both see the old footage and to hear him talk this way. And, you know, I mean, he's obviously someone who's thought a lot about his life, but he's producing this, so what's in there is what he wants to get across.

But there's a real telling moment in this thing where he was like, well, initially, they wanted to film me, you know, when we weren't on screen and stuff, to kind of make like an electronic press kit. And I said, no, I want to get these real documentarians to follow me. And then the you know the studio wouldn't release it because they didn't want me to seem like an asshole i think he says but man does he seem like an asshole in these clips and it's just uh it's just very like i was i thought that i'd probably start watching it and and I would be like, ah, this is just something. But I was pretty intrigued by the entire thing.

So, one of my favorite things... It really increased my desire to talk to Jim Carrey, which I would have never thought before. I've never really been a fan of him as a... I liked Eternal Sunshine. I thought the Truman Show was good. I mean, that was an idea I was really into at the time.

But I don't, I mean, I didn't care about, you know, Ace Ventura. I've never seen The Mask. I've never seen some of these movies. But there are things about him now that I just, I feel like someone needs to ask him. So it sounds like in a world where all celebrities are completely self-aware at all times that Jim Carrey, maybe not that self-aware in this documentary. Well, I think that he perceives himself as being the extra level of self-aware.

But he's actually not. He's actually like self-aware as a human. Yeah. I mean, the self-awareness that like a lot of celebrities lack is, um, well, like, okay. Uh, I just read that young winner uh biography yeah i wanted to ask you about that that's the next question and that's a yeah that i mean that's like a that's a you know that's another thing that's interesting for all these

reasons like i would love to i mean the i i've never met the author jo Joe Hagen. We have friends in common, but there's things I'd like to ask him about because this book is awesome. I love this book, but it's so interesting how he has framed everything. There are quotes in this book from Jagger and from McCartney and stuff that I think if framed in a different way would come across as sort of charming or this is how friends talk about old friends. But the way it comes across is Mick Jagger essentially saying, I only pretended to like this guy. I just used him. He's a jerk.

Like every time. That's sort of like the quoted message in almost every quote that comes across. And the lack of self-awareness on John Wenner's part seems to be that he could not imagine that Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney or any of his old employees would say anything about him, except that he's just a great man who completely invented the culture and reinvented their relationship in any sort of negative sense. So the lack of awareness he has is about his perception. Jim Carrey does not seem at all unaware of how he is perceived. He has a high degree of self-awareness about how he's perceived. The awareness that he seems to be fixated on is the idea that he is now an actual self-aware human, that he fully understands why he exists, and sort of the hopelessness of that position, and this very kind of deep idea of how everything about his career was an attempt to escape from a kind of unhappiness that is inherent to being a person.

Okay. But the way he expresses it is just bizarre and idiotic at times. And that's the thing it's like i don't i don't think that that he is uh like a person confused about who he is but i do think that he has some confusion over what that means like what it means to be him although to be fair i, I'm confused about that too for myself. I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to be befuddled by. It's just odd to hear someone look at a camera and directly express those ideas. Mind Hunter you liked? Do you want to talk about that really quick or no?

Yeah, I've been watching Mind Hunter a little bit, although I have been sort of negatively impacted by a tweet from Errol Morris. I started watching Mindhunter, and I was like, oh, man, David Fincher's great. And there's some things about it. There's a few people in this who are bad actors, but there are a few people who are awesome actors. But then Errol Morris tweets, sorry, folks, Mindhunter got it wrong. And Errol Morris has spent a lot of time thinking about sociopaths and the psychology of serial killers.

And as a consequence, I have to say, I sort of trust him more than I trust David Fincher, who I think has an interest in... I don't know. My wife was actually the person who brought this up to me. She was like, you know, when you look at David Fincher's career and his filmography, it's always sort of based around this idea that a woman has wronged him. And a woman has wronged him, and that there is sort of like a perversity that comes from the feeling that you were humiliated by a woman.

And sort of placed into the political context of now, this is a pretty good idea. It's a pretty good insight she had. Now, I don't know David Fincher. I'm guessing he would, you know, I don't know what he would react. I don't know if he'd disagree or agree. Interesting. I still haven't watched it.

It's on my list. Oh, it's well shot. It's kind of, I mean, certainly you'll be into it because there's certain things about it that guys like us are going to be into. What's a little strange about it is it's set in the 70s, but it's kind of pushed through the lens of sort of woke America. Right. So it's like all these things in the 70s where we're saying, you know, like in Mad Men or whatever, it's just like, well, these things happened

because that was the time. Guys acted like that because that was the time and that's just part of the story. This is always like, well, these things happen and then the characters in real time sort of need to discuss what this really means. And like the main character, the guy from Looking,

he has a girlfriend in this series, and every time he sort of brings something up, she kind of makes him reconsider this with a certain kind of logic that not only didn't appear in 1977, like didn't exist in 2007. Like a certain kind of awareness about what these things are supposed to symbolize and reflect

that has really not become part of the culture until like two years ago. But I'm liking it. I'm still enjoying it. We never talked after the Tom Petty thing. I thought what was interesting about Tom Petty is I hadn't really thought about him or considered him in a while.

And he was just kind of there and just assumed he was indestructible. But then when he died, I was shocked, first of all, by how bummed out I was about it and then how much Tom Petty music I listened to for over the next few weeks after that and really kind of took for granted how big of a part of my life he had been in different stretches over the years but that was one part and then the other part was I was shocked by how

high of an approval rating he had compared to normal celebrities. It just seemed like everybody kind of liked him and was in. And it wasn't just people from my generation slash your generation, but also like people under 30 seemed to like him. And it was just a way more unique and special career than I kind of realized. But I'm sure you had already realized that. Or did you not realize it? Well, you know, it's interesting. Marc Maron made a stand-up special while Tom Petty was still alive.

And there is a joke in this stand-up special about how Tom Petty is like the most unifying aspect in the culture, which is an interesting thing to have made in the wake of him dying and this happening. Like, he basically was saying, like, how you talk to people who have completely different political views. Oh, you can talk about Tom Petty or whatever. So I guess that there was some recognition that Tom Petty was such a likable person. And that's such a big part of this. I mean, even compared to somebody who like uh oh somebody who clearly more you know musically important lou reed for example lou reed dies and his musical footprint is much bigger

but you could hate lou reed but you could say like i hate this guy i don't like the way what he did with art he's pretentious yeah people. Yes, it would be hard to do that with Tom Petty. He just seemed like just a real nice guy. And sort of time had no bearing. It's like Roy Orbison and Dylan and George Harrison liked him, but so did the Strokes basically ripped him off and got people to like him. Everyone sort of liked him. My personal opinion of Tom Pettit, I was never a big Mammoth fan.

I always thought that he was an interesting person in that he became a legend by being better than okay for a really long time. Like, he had a very long career, and I don't know if, like, you know, after he died, this so often happens, you know, like, you go, I'm going to go listen to Damn the Torpedoes now, or whatever.

It's like, I mean, he made many good records, like Wildflowers, I think is a good record, but I, he never meant much to me, but that's just like a personal thing. Although it was odd, when this happened, I'd totally forgotten about this, is like, I guess I wrote about him a little bit

in Frogger Rock City. I had no memory of this at all, but now, when something like this happens, people tweet that section to you. It's a very, it's just a strange thing. I basically talked

about him in relationship to both izzy stradlin and john mellencamp and i just sort of discussed why he was popular among middle kids despite you know obviously having no metal aspects um i'd totally forgotten about that so i guess i had been thinking about him for a while but you know i was struck when i i think one of the reasons people liked him is that he wasn't that complicated you go through his music i had made i had made this petty playlist a while ago i make playlists and like if i'm driving somewhere for an hour and a half i'll just usually listen to a bunch of songs from one person and you go through the petty songs and all of them are really

kind of simple. And I think that's what made them so charming. It's like, now I'm free falling. Here comes my girl. Don't do me like that. Even the losers get lucky sometimes. You got lucky when I found you. Don't come around here no more. It like very very basic simple messages but done in a really elaborate fun way and i i think it there wasn't anything to be against you know nobody's like fuck that guy fuck that tom petty i'm sick of him you know it just yeah he was he was he was somebody who just he made rock music yeah it wasn't that he was like, that was the thing he did. For his whole career, he was like, well, I'm a rock musician working in the genre of rock, and I make these rock songs. Somebody pointed out that in almost every one of his songs, the chorus is always exactly four lines.

And then sometimes there's a fifth fifth line but the fifth line is always a repetition of like the first line so it's like there was there was a certain modality to how he did this that he was like you know um and uh i mean one thing i think that that kept him from becoming polarizing is you know when he had issues it was like his issues with the record label or whatever, he had issues with his wife, but he never seemed to have an issue with what I do artistically. Like, there was not some point

where he was like, I need to really make, I need to make a concept record that sort of illustrates, you know, I mean, I think he could probably look at some of his records as concept albums if you wanted to, but it's like, he was never pushing that. He was never, he never tried to be, like he was always trying to be popular,

but there was never some point where he was like, well, now I need to, you know, like I make popular music, but I need to be sort of, I need to have the song of the year. I need to have this thing that sort of moves me into this next stratosphere. I thought it was cool that at one point he was like, oh, I used to be in this old band, Mud Crutch. Now let's get them back together again, give those guys something. I mean, obviously, they must have spent the last 25 years of their life watching me become famous. And they're like, ah, we could have done that. And he's like, I'll make you famous for six weeks.

So I was in the bookstore because my kids, I took my, your kids aren't old enough yet, but I took my daughter and a friend of hers to the Grove a couple weeks ago. And once I get there, they just want to ditch you for two hours. So I'm killing all this time there. And I'm in the bookstore. And I went to the Grove. To the Grove. I'm in the bookstore.

They have a giant bookstore there. Okay. And they have a really good art section because it's LA. Like just movie books and TV books and music books. And there's always some book that I didn't know existed. So I go up there and there's an Ed Burns autobiography that I had no idea existed. You know, Ed Burns wrote an autobiography. I did not. Yeah, there you go. So I'm like, I'm, I'm going to power read this Ed Burns autobiography. I guarantee I'll learn four things from it. I'm going to speed read this in a half hour. So I'm zooming through it and I get to the

part when, uh, when he's making, she's the one, which I'm sure you remember the brothers McMullen follow-up that was basically just brothers McMullen with a better cast. And, uh, and he gets to the part with Tom Petty. Cause if you remember the entire movie is Tom Petty songs. So the meets with Tom Petty and Tom Petty's like, here's this song, you can have this for the movie. And then he's like, and here's another one. And then Ed Burns goes back to him and says, hey, what if you just did a whole album of Tom Petty songs?

I'll just make that the soundtrack. And Tom Petty's like, yeah, cool, let's do it. And just was like all in. And I don't know what other artists would have done that, would have just been like, all right, random indie filmmaker who's made one movie, I'd love to contribute an entire soundtrack. But I just think that seems like the kind of guy Tom Petty was.

I'm not even saying he's generous. I just think he kind of rolled with the moment. And it was a cool idea. And he was like yeah fuck it i'll do it it also sort of just illustrates how naturally prolific he was in that when someone comes to him and says well we make a whole album where that's the entire movie the movie and the album are interchangeable the only reality in this movie is your music or whatever and his natural reaction is like, well,

what's the movie about? What are these songs are about? How can I do this? He's like, oh, sure. I can do that. I can write 12 songs. I mean, like, I can just do it. I can just do it. Like, you know, that there's it is. Well, you know, it did make me think it's a strategy

that I'm surprised more filmmakers haven't done. Where you go to one artist and be like, here's the idea for like, it's kind of amazing. The counting crows never were involved in a rom-com where they supplied all the music for it. You know, like you would think it would almost be like a,

an artistic slash, um, financial kind of play. I mean, it's a, it's a pretty big gamble. I mean, like The Graduate is like that. The Graduate is all Simon and Garfunkel.

So you have to feel, as a filmmaker, that this music is going to age in a way that's not going to alter the meaning of the film. You know, it's funny you mentioned that though, the graduate, that was Ed Burns's pitch to Tom Petty.

It'll be like the graduate. I mean, that's what people were feeling with Ed Burns in the mid nineties. Hey man, this could be your graduate Tom Petty. And Tom Petty was like, yeah, all right,

dude, do you have any weed? Um, the, uh, the, the, the Stephen King movie where the machines come alive,

that's all ACDC music. That was the Who Made Who record, where they used some of the older ACDC songs, and I had a couple. There are a few examples of that, I guess. It would seem like every eight or nine years There would have been an example But who knows

Anyway I thought that was interesting Particularly now though Because it's like albums don't sell that much So the idea that you could make A record for a movie The success of the movie Could actually allow you to sell a record In a time when that just doesn't happen.

I think bands now make, make music based on what might make a good Apple commercial. I think they sit in the thing and they're like, you know, there's certain sounds that just makes sense if it's an Apple commercial or a Beats commercial or something. And I'm convinced that bands go into the studio and try to figure out songs that they can just immediately sell. I think that there was like a pejorative belief in the 1980s that somebody would look at duran duran and they would say this song on their record was just a reason to make this specific

video and you know that was seen as somehow less authentic because you know but i mean that's that's what it is now it's just it's just like that's the only way that you can get music to people who don't already want to hear it. Like, you're already kind of invested is to get them in a situation. And the trouble is people barely watch commercials anymore. Right. So you almost got to have it be in a sporting event or, like, an award show. It's weird.

I mean, now it's like we're just back. You make music, you make albums, tour. That's the whole reason. And that was not the way it was in the 70s and 80s. Chuck Klosterman, let's not try to make it six more months before we do a podcast. Plug your book for the holidays. Oh, well, my anthology, Chuck Klosterman 10, which actually looks like Chuck Klosterman X. It's just a black book.

But yeah, sure. That would be what a wonderful, wonderful holiday gift it would make. Oh, my God. I can't imagine someone's ecstasy upon waking up Christmas morning. Put nice fits in the stocking. Could it fit in the stocking? I don't know if it could fit in the stocking. And we're going to come. Could it fit in the stocking? I don't know if it could fit in the stocking.

One of those big stockings. In the sled. And then this winter, we are going to do a two city podcast tour where we're going to come to Seattle and do a basketball slash Save the Sonics podcast.

That's happening. I don't know when the date is, but it's going to happen. And then we're going to come to Seattle and do a basketball slash Save the Sonics podcast. That's happening. I don't know when the date is, but it's going to happen. And then we're going to come to Portland with you, and we're going to make you come out, and we're going to do a giant Rewatchables podcast on a movie that we'll have to figure out what we're the most fired up about in front of a live audience. Okay, well.

That's happening. This is where I am. Yeah. If you have suggestions out want to have uh if you have suggestions out there people in portland for rewatchables podcast you want to hear us do um feel free to send those to us uh chuck closterman thank you so much always a pleasure you got it happy thanksgiving thanks again to simply safe don't forget about their special black friday sale protect your whole house for an honest and fair price.

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These systems will fly off the shelves, offer ends soon. Again, SimpliSafe with two I's. Go now. SimpliSafeBS.com. Thanks again to Delta. Now boarding on Delta. Free messaging.

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It's not worth it. Just trust me. Until then. On the wayside I'm a bruised son Never lost it I don't have To ever forget