The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode ???, the Mystery Podcast Contest!

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

Listen to the first 17 minutes of our next podcast. If you can guess what the fuck we're talking about, you win!

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred hot dog. Our podcast slams with maximum hype. Say hot dog podcast word. Yeah. When you taste that nitrate power, you're in the dog zone for an hour. Come on.

You know the number. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero zero.

Yeah. Nine thousand. Welcome to the dog zone. Nine thousand. The official zone of one nine hundred hot dog dot com. The only remaining comedy website. Give us money on Patreon. Every dollar you don't give us means one more gigabyte of joy

killed by chatbot. I'm enduring web favorite Sean baby. And I'm here with my co-host third runner up for Bobby magazine's beard history month hunk. Robert Brockway. Coming for the number one spot. Here is a relevant Brockway fact. I once worked at a department store

where my job was tasting things that weren't food. No follow up question. Damn it. We are joined today by sports writer and defector editor Dan McQuade. Welcome to the show. Hey. Thanks so much for having me.

It's a pleasure. Now for people who don't know much about defector can you give our our listeners. It's a very it's a very rare modern Internet success story. So I want people to. Yeah. You know I I tell people I'm not you know I'm a journalist. I like to tell the truth.

I did not think this was going to work when we started it. We started in. I think we announced it in like July or August of 2020. We all used to work at a sports blog that I won't name. That is a you know probably the most famous sports blog there. There is. And we were in a dispute with management. They were we had new ownership.

It was some private equity doofuses and they they were you know trying to ruin the site. And I think violating our union contract. You know that sounds familiar. Yeah. You know you know I mean this has been in like most places I've worked has violated my my contract. Maybe not most several and and they we like pulled a little stunt

and they fired the editor in chief and so we all quit. And that was at the very end of October 2019. I was pretty confident I could pick up a bunch of freelance work right away and I did and I think a lot of other people did too and then COVID hit and freelance budgets disappeared. And so we decided to start our own site. It's a worker co-op which is really cool. I own like five point something percent of it.

And we've done really well. You know we have about 40,000 subscribers. You know one thing that's great about the site is we sort of are allowed to talk about our own interest. You know like work on things that are we are interested in ourselves. One of our writers Kelsey. She started a podcast called Normal Gossip last year and it was like a huge hit.

Like if you look at top podcast of 2021 it was like number one or number two and like every list and not just that it was on list it you know it's a really good show and so I'm really hopeful we can continue to create sort of more interesting content and yeah it's the most stable job I've ever had in my life which is great and I run our merchandise store which has been really fun to you know I'm a writer by trade but I've had a pirate copy of Photoshop since I was in like fifth or sixth grade

and yeah I hope Adobe isn't listening. I have a legal one now so we're all good. It is probably the best ten dollars I spend every month is on Adobe. I think that's the most money or the most worth I get out of my money of any subscription. Oh absolutely I do and you get like like I have like their fonts and like their stock photos you know and it's DLC. Got all the Adobe DLC.

I have the DLC Adobe Creative Suite. He's got that pay to win shit. I actually I followed David Roth there who I think is one of the great Trump writers I guess. Now he's a great Elon Musk writer and a George Santos writer. He has a way of kind of maintaining this really level-headed contempt for that right-wing stupidity and hate that like we kind of rationalize as an instinct and he just through the whole Trump era

just maintained this like no this guy's fucking stupid and anyone who can't see that's fucking stupid and that was like the tone of just 5,000 words every day and just it made me so happy that he could maintain that like just anger just that burning like this fucking guy is shitting on our world and you're watching him. I don't know. Yeah he is my direct editor so I work with David you know

I talk with David every day. He's like a great writer. He's also a really good editor. I believe he pushes my like me in the right direction when I'm doing stories. I can actually plug one that I will be out by the time this podcast runs. So I recently went to the John Bon Jovi rest stop on the New Jersey's Garden State.

Congratulations. This used to be the cheese quake rest stop but they've announced like in 2021 they're like renaming all the rest stops on the Garden State Parkway after like famous New Jerseyans. How are the casual hand jobs at the John Bon Jovi rest stop? You know pretty good. You know I haven't gotten one every time but you know occasionally there

it's not quite as good as the Celia Cruz rest stop down the road or Tony Morrison is at the very bottom of the parkway now. I don't put my mouth on anything at the Tony Morrison rest stop. I'm just saying that rest stop has been turned into basically the flagship location currently of the New Jersey Hall of Fame which is so appropriate. So they are currently building like a real Hall of Fame. Hilariously it's at the American Dream Mall.

I don't know if you know anything about this mall. It's like at the Meadowlands. It's like cursed a helicopter like a decorative helicopter fell on people at the mall like a few days ago. The last story I read they have like $80 in the bank and they're just like constantly negotiating with their creditors. I love a dying mall. But it's like brand new.

That's the thing. It opened in 2020. And so but anyway but so at the rest stop it seems like the premise of the New Jersey Hall of Fame is like New Jersey has a lot of famous people and they all want you to follow your dreams and there are like just pictures of famous New Jersey people and they're like you know up on the wall next to each other

in no rhyme or reason like Gloria Gaynor is next to Albert Einstein. Dick Vitale the college basketball announcer is next to Walt Whitman. All that seems appropriate. You say that like it's ridiculous but that sounds that's exactly what I would put them. So what's interesting about the quotes is you know there's sort of that typical like pithy inspirational quote thing where like it's some sort of boring saying

but because a famous person said it it's supposed to be you know like I don't know. You got attributed to somebody. Why not? Dick Vitale. Well so the quote that Walt Whitman is given is be curious not judgmental. And that is a quote actually from Ted Lasso.

The character Ted Lasso says it as a quote from Walt Whitman in the show but Walt Whitman did not say this. It actually originally comes from an advice column in a 1986 Charlotte newspaper that was about like a mother who had written in saying that she had found birth control pills in her daughter's bedroom. Okay. Ted Lasso is often written to be kind of like

the way I read the characters he's an idiot like he doesn't have a shit together but he's pretending to have a shit together. So was that so that was intentionally wrong by the writer of Ted Lasso right? I'm not entirely sure. It is a quote that is passed around. You know it's on all those quote websites as something

Walt Whitman said. He did not say it. And there's like a couple of those there where it's like this is on all the quote sites but I can't really find a citation for this of some of the other famous people. But there's one quote that's incredible and I couldn't find it anywhere. And it is from Ed Harris who grew up in North Jersey.

And the quote is acting is like scoring a touchdown. That's the whole thing. That's the whole quote. That's the whole quote. Acting is like scoring a touchdown. No second thing. Harris out. That metaphor any direction you want it works.

Yeah. So I spent a lot of time like thinking about it just trying to figure out like what could this mean? And like sort of the most reasonable answer I came up with is like oh acting is like such a great profession that like every day is like scoring a touchdown. The only other guess I came up with was like acting is like scoring a touchdown.

OJ Simpson has done both. You know like that works. Yeah. And so I contacted Ed Harris's publicist. And she was very nice to ask him about my silly question. And it turns out that he gave a quote somewhere. I'm not entirely sure. I think maybe to the New Jersey Hall of Fame where he talked

about how you know he had played football for his high school in Bergen County. And he was like you know like once I saw my football career was over. Well like I saw like a great actor in a play and you know I thought oh maybe they'll applaud for me after acting like they used to applaud when I scored. Which feeds my insecurity.

Hi I'm Ed Harris. And somehow they like shorten that to acting is like scoring a touchdown. This does happen sometime. There's that Martin Luther King mural in or a monument in Washington D.C. that had the quote on it when it opened that was like I was a drum major for truth justice and righteousness. And like the quote is actually like Martin Luther King saying

like you know some people have called me just a drum major. Well if you want to call me a drum major you know call me a drum major for truth. You know like it's like one of those great you know speeches of him. I did a really bad Martin Luther King impression there but that's probably better. Probably better.

To sound like him. So they just sort of condensed it into like a nonsensical quote. So this does happen sometimes. I don't think I've ever seen one as funny as this. It is fantastic. It's a real legacy media move to actually call us publicists. Like my instinct would be to make fun of it and nothing else. And you're like I'm going to I'm going to call a real person

with a phone and get to the bottom of it like with journalism. Yeah you know I mean I mean I listened to this podcast and I've been reading you know both of you guys work for a while. What I really like about both of you guys work is that you do research things you know like lots of comedy on the Internet wherever that exists anymore. Not on the web but somewhere. It's just sort of like nonsense you know like it may be

nonsense it may be funny but like you you you have always like researched things you know really well. I think you know whether it was like old Nintendo power letters or you know the film mannequin. And so I like had to call up because I was like I had no I could not fathom what this could possibly mean. You know if you search the quote on Google the only result is like a dude replying to me on Twitter when I first posted

about the wall Whitman quote being like I was there to acting is like scoring a touchdown. Ed Harris's publicist has now asked the New Jersey Hall of Fame to remove. This is the most New Jersey story. I may have ruined like Governor Phil Murphy's electoral chances you're an enemy of the state Jersey Hall of Fame. But yeah you know I've done some other accidental things in

the world in my career in New Jersey now. I just like to picture Ed Harris like after every movie I just being like hey hey you guys seeing the abyss touchdown touchdown like football like some way. He just grabs a boom mic and throws it into the floor. If you subscribe to defector media you can read that story. If you don't subscribe you can I think you get a couple for for free.

I don't I don't hit the paywall but you know I've been told you get some fantastic plug. Yeah that was what a journey for a plug. I forgot we were even plugging anything like I was listening to this episode in like like Lydia plugged the book and whoever you had during the Cleveland Browns episode plugged the book. So that was totally the time and place to plug.

I'm just saying I there was such an odyssey we went on that I forgot it was a plug like four different times in there. I needed to do something special since I didn't have anything you know. We went to a dying mall and avoided a helicopter. We found out the backstory of Ed Harris. Amazing. Nobody's ever going to plug.

So the the John Bon Jovi rest stop has like a gold record and like his guitar or something. And what's amazing is that it actually was a great idea like when I sat there writing this you know when I was there I've been there several times now to like investigate it and because that's the type of journalist I am. People are always stopping and like taking photos of the Bon Jovi stuff taking photos of the quotes like standing next

to his gold record and getting like their you know their husband to take a photo. It's like it worked. I just wish they had used like real quotes but there's another thing there about a there's a quote from Plato Aristotle and Socrates. Yeah Plato wrote Madison famous famous New Jersey residents and and they it's like it's it's a quote about like a term

that isn't isn't their work but like is is not it's said that it's a quote said by them in twenty five hundred B.C. which is not when any of them live. Great start. The the like summary of the of the the concept is right but it's like a quote that the New Jersey Hall of Fame made up. I talked to a professor of ancient history and he gave me the low down on this and was like actually it's really great like New Jersey

is a town that is a state that like invents its own mythologies and loves like Courtney kitchen crops. So these fake quotes are like perfect for for the state and I really do think he's correct. Yeah. Wait wait wait before we do anything else I would like our listeners to stop right now and I fucking dare you to picture what this podcast is about.

Oh that's a good idea. Oh you write it in I want to see I want to see your guesses I want to see what you think but still so far. What are we talking about? Not to title this in a way that will give it away. Yeah we did we did mention what we're talking about twice but it was so off hand. Yeah no we've given you clues like somebody could get it.

I want to see if anybody does. I'll put together a prize for you. Nobody hold me to that. I'm completely lying but do it anyway. I will give you if you are successful in guessing what this podcast is about I will send you a defector t-shirt from the defector store. Another plug is defector store.com.

There you go. Official. Official contest. It's not your pro. What a fucking plug. Never seen anything like it. I like that you also went to a history professor and you're like you got a debunk things I found written on a wall at

John Bond show me rest stop. He's like fuck yeah I've been waiting for my life for this. I don't have a training for this. It's hard because you got to find somebody who will like play along a bit. Yeah. You know like sometimes I've gone to academics for you know really silly stories and they're basically like you know like

stop wasting my fucking time. I'll tell you sir. But fortunately there are lots of academics. You got to find the ones that party for the job story. We do not impure Ned Harris at this institution.