The Dumb Zone FREE - DZ 3-23-26 | NFL players destroyed at flag football and Frank Hamlin for his new book

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Get every episode of the Dumb Zone by subscribing at DumbZone.com or Patreon.com/TheDumbZoneWe all went to see the Akaash Singh show at The Majestic over the weekend. The NFL players thought they'd lap the Team USA flag football team and were quickly dismissed by the guys who actually play flag football. And we have a special guest in studio, former GameStop executive, Frank Hamlin, on his new book detailing his career and what it was like in the building during the short squeeze in 2020 titled Skinny Dipping at Low Tide (00:00) - Open: Akaash Singh show at The Majestic (30:10) - Weekend check: Dan out on Dinosaurs (45:00) - Frank Hamlin: Skinny Dipping at Low Tide (01:33:06) - NFL players get embarrassed at flag football (01:55:31) - News: RIP rainbow crosswalks (02:17:51) - VM birthdays/Today in History ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hello, I'm professional broadcaster Dan McDowell, letting you know that you were about to hear one of our free podcast. But if you'd like to subscribe at dumzone.com, you'll get four shows per week plus the weekend wrap-up and any bonus sods like our business Wednesday interviews. So if you forgot how to use the 15-second rewind, that's dumbzone.com to subscribe. Now, on to today's program. Jake? Daniel. Did you notice the searing heat this weekend? The heat was searing.

Yeah, well, they say just wait a minute. It's back. I was thinking about all those poor souls that didn't understand how to buy a vehicle here in 2026 or how to get in a vehicle, I should say. The people that were out at car dealerships. Sunburn. Driving everywhere. Sweaty. Matching this offer against that one.

and just killing your whole day. Or you could just shop at Fairlease. Fairlease.org. Cut out not only the dealership, but also the middle man, because they are back by the credit union of Texas. Community Bank, you're going to get a better rate. We've heard from a number of listeners who were in upside down loan, bad lease situations from COVID or perhaps just a bad deal they were in with perhaps DNM. Fairlease hooked them up and got them out of that situation. You know what I think about that bad? Hold on, that bad lease at D&M? What, unfair?

Here's what I think about it. Oh, hey, don't be the donkey of the day. Yeah. It's on notice. I'm not going to officially give. That's the D and D&D. No, I don't know. That might be illegal to say. Fairlease.org. We have a special phone number for you if you want to roll that route. 972-705-4815. As for Connor or Nick, they will be handling all the dumb zone leases. Commercial is a big part of their game as well.

well if you got a business you need a box truck whatever it is fair lease 972705 4815 fair lease when you don't know what to do about a car because car stuff is hard but not with fair lease you don't need a dealership baby it is a Monday this is the dumb zone I'm dan McDowell I'm jake kemp I'm blake jones today we are oh and foodie cK we are in the Day Men's Health Studio, downtown Dallas, the Big D, the windy city. The Big Apple, baby. The mirrored city. Yeah, we're in downtown Dallas, Fox 4 building.

For now. Game Day men's health studio, gameday.dumzone.com. You don't want to feel like ass. When Fox 4 moves studios, the Game Day Men's Health Studio will also move studios and in my mind it's kind of like uh well maybe this is a bad analogy because some people would say what i'm about to mention sucked i quite liked it but like when saved by the bell went to college and they had a different background and a bit the same characters but like the show just looked different there was a lot of shows that try boy meets world they moved in together

and it's just a different little setup same characters it's going to look different can we do all new like probably sound the same kiss fm did all new for seven years? We have to. They will. Expiration date on when Fox 4 stopped saying, from the new Fox 4 studios in Las Kalinas is like 2040. Oh, wow.

Just track that. Yeah, anyway, a nice weekend. Actually, we usually like to do a weekend check, but I want to start today with a weekend check that most of us can take part in. It is reviewing the Akash San. comedy show. Akash was in town Friday night at the Majestic

which I found is a 12-minute walk from the Fox 4 Game Day Men's Health Studio where I took advantage of a little weekend parking. Weekend availability. Why not do weekend parking? Get a little steps. Sure. You hold hands?

Did not hold hands. There are many couples out there who will hold hands including this morning, I feel like I saw a homeless couple holding hands. Or they were just very dirty. Yeah. These people. I've told you about the people in my neighborhood, and I've seen them holding hands. They're not homeless.

They look at, though, well, that's mean, but they look homeless. They walk to get 40s together. It's pre-8 a.m. every day. I mean, it's a tall can in a bag, probably 24, 32. That's beautiful. If you had one of those ladies, you wouldn't. they had to quit drinking. I know.

They look at, dude, and I know where they live, too, they're walking. They're getting a good amount of steps. I was drinking at 8 a.m. Right. No, don't say, that's not. I don't know if you were about that. I mean, it's still been impaired, but. We won't experience that kind of love.

And I'll tell you this, too. I'll tell you this. They look more spry than I did then or now. They have a bounce about them, and they go every morning, and they're in it. Because they don't have someone bitching about them about they're drinking. Teamwork. And I've seen them hold hands. It's kind of beautiful.

Oh, before we even get into Akash, though, let's just promote Thursday, just to mention, Zoli's Pizza, Fort Worth. We've got to make sure we get people out there. Zoli's Pizza, Fort Worth, this Thursday, 1130 to 230. We will be there. Julie Dobbs will be there, and pizza will be there. So we don't get to Fort Worth very often. Or a tear and tear.

Yeah. So, yeah, Akash had a show. The Majestic, pretty big time. time. Yeah. Right? That's where we saw Kevin James. Yeah. Once upon a time, I think I might have seen... Louis. Oh, was it Louis or Shane? Probably both.

Okay. Yeah. That's a big room. It's a big room. Sold it out. Should we do... Is there any backstory here at all? Very nice... Oh, go ahead. What? Just like, do you think there's anybody who listens to our show that doesn't really know, doesn't have any idea who this guy is? Go ahead. Lay him out.

Well, he's a stand-up comedian from Plano. and he's about my age 40 and he grew up, went to Plano high schools, his family's Indian and he did not, yes, well I was going to say he did not pursue the route of medicine. Dude, how

funny would it be if you ran into, like, you're in a doctor, places, it's like, oh, no, it's chill. You got an Indian doctor in a Fah. Is Akash? No. Oh. It's a Cherokee. You're like, I don't know, dude. You guys aren't exactly no.

for, he's like, here. No, but he took the comedy route. Yeah, he's got some ancient. Right, you just thought it's, no, so. Speaks to the gods. Akash took that route, and I remember, it was probably 10 years ago now, I was really into this podcast called Deezis and Miro. They've both gone on to do, like, different huge things in Hollywood, but one of them,

Deezis was on a show called Wile and Out. And it was kind of like a Night at the Apollo sort of improv type of roast jam show that MTV had. And there was a guy that kept popping up on my Twitter feed that was on that show with Deezus or with Mira, I can't recall. But he was on there and he was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan. So I started following and I realized he would like tweet it Bob. And I'm like, who is this guy? He'd go to his account. I started following him.

I think one of us reached out and we had him on the station at some point very early on. Like he was, he wasn't huge at that point. He didn't have, he certainly wasn't doing anything like the majestic, but this is like very early on. Wait, Akash was on that show? Yeah. As like a, I don't know, maybe 28, 25 to 30 year old. He was on a show called Wild and Out. Wild and Out.

It's a Nick Cannon Show. And a couple of other things like that. He was on those shows. Okay. I never knew that. Yeah. I mean, he has, you know, like everybody, he's 40. He's doing the Majestic now, which is big, but it ain't like, you know, he's not at AAC level.

He's been grinding for 18 years. We've only known him for what, eight? Yeah. So before that, he was doing that. And so anyhow, we reached out. He was a huge, huge P1, grew up a P1, stayed at P1. And then when it came to our situation, he had recounted some stories to me about his success. in the world of podcasting.

I had recounted to him some doubts that were expressed to me by our leadership at the time when I said, I think I could make good money podcasting. I told him that we brought that up on a show after we had left

the station. We had Akash on our new podcast at the time. He recounted that story in colorful terms and then they played that tape in court. So he's all over our evidence packet. He's all over our court transcript.

He's, yeah, he's inextricably tied to this show now. Right. Part of the suit was you didn't control Akash. Yes, and our defense of how can we. But anyhow, yeah, he hosts a podcast with another comedian called Andrew Schultz, named Andrew Schultz, called Flagrant. And now he's touring the nation. He's got a couple specials on YouTube.

He's trying to put one together right now. So this was a home show for him. So it wasn't just like seeing Shane or Louis. It was somebody playing, you know, short of an arena, the most prestigious venue in their city. Like the last time I saw him, I think it was at the Addison Improv. Okay.

And then Houston, or wherever we were. Yeah, he had, it did feel from the audience like that was a more special night for him. It had kind of a returning hero. a little bit. He seemed a little pretty emotional in different times of the show, but also that's how he laid out the show

with some more... It was more than just comedy. I almost cried at this freaking opening. I want to tell him. Don't do that. Don't put that little sad thing in the beginning, or happy sad. I know it was probably to honor his mom

and his dad seems like an asshole. But, like, You know, it was just a cool little whatever. It was a nice. You could see, though, it all came together. Oh, yeah. It was a, there was a theme throughout his show. One of the main things I want to say about Akash,

and what was the initial YouTube thing that kind of blew up was the bring back Apu? Yeah. Or we like Apu. It's thumbs up to Apu. I think it was Bring Back Upu. But Akash had a comedy special, right? Yeah. Because there was a documentary a guy made or some sort of social commentary about how Apu Apu was racist.

Yeah. Yeah, it was Bring Back Apu. And then, you know, Akash's, a lot of the thing in there was, you know, that was like, at least we had some representation. Yeah, that's how you get Rogan. We get rid of Apu and now we got nothing. Anyway, from watching that, my analogy here is. when you go away for a week when your kid is very little, like pre-1, pre-2, definitely pre-1, first 12 months,

you can go away for a week and you come back and like, whoa. I can't believe the difference in my kid, like just a week. A couple weeks for sure, you know, it's, they change so much so quickly. So our viewing of Akash over the years, though, in his stand-up starts probably with a poo for me. But then we went to Houston to see him a couple of years ago, drove down there. This is post-Dum zone. And then to see him again last two nights ago, Friday. His develop, like, don't you think it's amazing?

Just his stage presence, his confidence, his confidence, his. And a lot of that has to come with the fact that he's, his, the, the, uh, mastery of the craft that he has achieved to make it seem like he's doing things for the first time ever. He's just having this thought now. And, uh, I don't know. Like I thought, I thought the Houston show was a lot. I thought he relied more on the crowd work to get him into the rhythm. Like this time, he still does that. He'll do some crowdwork in the beginning.

and it kind of just kind of gets him flowing. And then all of a sudden he hits into, you know, you could tell then now this is his thing. But you also can't exactly tell when this is his thing. Like, so that's, I think in the past it was like, oh, I can tell now he starts set. Yeah. He was doing crowd work. Now he's doing set. Now he's doing this.

But I don't know, man. Yeah, that's a good point. I just think his development, it's been a really cool thing to watch. and it's amazing. I'm glad you're saying that because I feel the same way now. I guess we're both in the same boat of bias. So if I'm looking for someone to tell me,

no, you're not just biased because you're cool with him. It's not you or you. But I think the same thing. I did tell him that in as least awkward way as I possibly could. But it's also because, and you can read this from his set,

he's gay like me. And maybe, you know, he's, He'll accept you being like, hey, hey, I think I want to tell you, like, you've really come a long way. And also, like, that sounds like I was saying, like, for example, you know, I thought that it took a lot to do the show before when we were at the station. I think it takes more now. But I thought back then I was doing everything I could. You know what I mean?

So just back then it wasn't like, oh, this guy's got a long way to go. But seeing him now, and I think it's marriage probably is part of it. I'm excited for him to have kids because I think he'll have great sets. on having kids. Like, I think he's a dude who just is, is a more observational adult and fits better in that role, and it's super comfy for him.

And it's, it's cool. That's what I was going to say, is it, I enjoy his comedy because it doesn't feel like it's an act. Like with some openers and some other people, you know, they start, what's the deal,

you can kind of sense that they're getting into their comedy routine. I just felt like Akash talked to us for an hour and a half and was extremely funny. Like, kind of lose, you lose back. That's a show. Yeah.

Yeah. To be able to put that all together. That is something that I don't think I would ever, ever, I've contemplated. Could I, like we all have, I'm sure, could you refine five to ten minutes and wrote just every memorization? That's eventually what you would imagine most people are doing. But to be able to get to your beats while also, how are you doing tonight, Mr. that's a level of versatility that I think very few people could ever attain. Well, you're probably looking at 10,000 hours, man.

Oh, yeah. That's what we're not seeing. I was talking to the guy afterward that was his opener, who I missed at a family thing. I felt like an asshole for being late. But. Yeah, everybody was asking about you. There's a lot of people wondering. You're the biggest jerk in the world.

I told you. We were way back. Nobody could notice you were gone. Well, the guy afterward, you don't want him to be like, what did you think of my set? Oh, yeah. But he was like, yeah, I've been in about six years. I'm like, yeah, it's not nothing, dude. That's, he's like, yeah, Akash was at about 18.

Yeah. So, you know, I feel like I've been doing it at a time three times longer. But it was a great evening. Quick interlude. I have more on Akash because I have a goal. But we must mention Trident, Access Services. and I was pretty confused. Why are you called Trident Access Services?

And they're like, I thought you were a garage door company. And they're like, yeah, we also do gates. I'm like, yeah, okay, garage doors and gates. What does that mean? And they're like, yeah, that's how you access. That's how you get in. You're like, oh, okay. So these guys are smart, number one.

Now, it's important to- What you have to know about TXTrydent.com. It's important to point out that while they do deal and access, the Trident is more of a metaphorical thing. here. There is no actual weapon involved. There's a Trident tattoo as Jeremy's a veteran of the Navy. Oh, it's not the gum? No, the Trident gum also not involved in Trident Access Services. Oh, because my garage door is sticking and I thought they were doing that bit. Man. Anyway. Dumb Zone clients will get a 10% discount whenever you roll with Trident access services,

gates, garage doors. They can help you. You can also get you out there right. right now for a little bit of a tune-up type situation. What are they doing right now? I know it's not called the fall tune-up, but they have a situation where you come out and have them inspect everything. Yeah, service your garage door, check the springs, the opener, the track, the weather stripping. The winter can affect that. Wind, darling.

Yeah, the wind can affect it. So, yeah, mention the dumb zone. Motorized gates. sliding gates, swing gates. Hell yeah, baby. Love doing some swinging. I just love running the swinging gate.

Bring it back. TXTridant.com is how you contact them. Please do tell them the dumb zone sent you 817, 512121212. So do you think a good goal for me? I've had a variety of goals in life, haven't hit them all, haven't even started on trying to hit them all. What are some of them? Perhaps I wanted to be...

One day I had this dream of being able to fly a helicopter. I've also had the goal of owning a generator. I just want to... Yeah, I mean... I just want to show that I'm better than others when they're out of electricity. I think a marathon... I want them pounding at my door. But you've done more than a marathon in a month

in other forms of exercise. So, like, it feels like you've surpassed that one. I would take the under... I had to guess on the year that you said you'd have sex once a month for a whole year. Well, it had, right, now we hope to be there. This is where you get if you're, as you age and your kids get older and then you get, you know. Not me, man. I would never.

We are, if we can get one a month, my goodness. So new goal? I'd be so. To work on stand-up. Yeah. To try and get out there. To get good enough just to be able to open for Akash. Whoa, that's a pretty significant goal.

How about just in his hometown or to be on the, can I get somewhere in the list? Yeah. It's, I don't want to be Akash. I think he's great. I feel like I'd like to be able to get to be, could I be the first or the second guy? Maybe the guy that's just introing him and I get to do three or four minutes. Then we bring up the heavy hitter. He's more, he's funnier for sure.

And then we get Akash. The point is, what I'm trying to do is get into this pipeline to get some of that sweet Indian chicks. Dude, that audience. Yeah, Dan was. It was my. I didn't think about that. Oh, my God. It's all I was thinking about.

And I was, I went with my wife to the show. and I was just happy that she never listens to the show and she doesn't know the heaven that I found myself in. You think it's great to walk into our dirty gas station that we both love. Try being in the audience. Yeah, you're in hog heaven. For Akash Singh. It was really cool.

I don't know if they eat hog. What an effing niche, niche? Yeah, it's pretty good. That he has. What a lane. You know, there are different guys who you've seen develop different lanes, you know, Jeffrey Ross became like

the roast comic. I guess Jeselnick was just like It's just as dark as you could get. But the Indian comic, not that he is that though. The thing that's great about him, the other

night I thought it was, was he can just go do 20, 30 minutes or whatever on, it's just regular it's comedy. But then he'll give a nice 10 or 15, like hardcore, but he mixes it in throughout the show that is right at you, these people that are going to buy these tickets no matter what,

because I am an Indian comic. And I'm laughing my ass off at all that stuff he was doing too. And I didn't even know what I was laughing at. Like he'd talk about how he went back to India and took a trip and then this and that and he says a few foreign words and like half the place laughs. And I'm like, yeah, that's hilarious. Whatever he just did is hilarious because everybody here thought it was hilarious. And I'm good friends with him and everybody here now.

I wonder if that's what it's like whenever you always hear of comics going to other countries. That's the dumbest thing I've ever said. But you hear of guys you wouldn't think are like big enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can go over and like, is people just going to know? And I guess they know just enough in the crowd to laugh. Right. There's got to be a lot of people at crowds in Europe or Asia.

They go see an American comic, and they're not getting a lot of what is being said, but they're still laughing. So you're just kind of, you know that there's, you kind of can read the situation a little bit. And you talk about giving representation to that, like, that crowd, that is their guy, man. They are, they can't believe it that they have this. Like, he's their guy. And he's, because he's legit, it's not Christian rock. Right. You know, hey, I'm going to go see.

and I kind of know it sucks, but I'm supporting it because of what they stand for. They would go see him, I think, if he sucked. Yeah. And they're probably elated that he's actually like just regular grade. Yeah, to be honest, you run into this a little bit with Nate Bargazzi, with, in my experience, going to see him. I'm not, I've never been very high on a Nate opener. But there are a lot of people in the crowd that are.

Because they have to get, quote, clean. Right. Like, I don't think Nate Bargazzi was sold to me as clean comic. was just funny guy. Yeah, I didn't know. And then all of a sudden you kind of picked up later. And Bob's like, I bet him at a church conference. I'm like, uh, I don't need it.

Yeah, I guess he doesn't swear, does he? Yeah. It'd be like labeling Seinfeld a church comic, kind of. Back in the day, he was the guy that was clean. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a very, again, it's a fine line to walk to be able to work your stuff in, but also not make it your whole bit. It was an excellent time.

we went and uh i'll just put it to you like this blake when i woke up on saturday my little why hillary lost sleep tracker uh said uh how was your nap oh man because i was asleep from about four 15 to seven four i think i that's when you got home yeah about four yeah three 45. Did you have kids? No. And my wife went to the show, all of our wives did. And we went to the restaurant that we had been asked to go to if we wanted to hang out afterward.

And after about 15 minutes, I got what I would describe as the book club information on all of the game day men's health peptides. When my wife said, I think I'm just going to take the. car home if you want to stay you could just Uber home later whatever you want or whatever like I'm getting tired I'm gonna head out I'm like oh yeah you took her up on that yeah I'm like go for it well okay when you were telling me you got home at four I thought oh she stayed out with him and part because she was with you no no wow she was like I want to go home I'm tired wow gosh wasn't even there yet you know he was the show was later than people said we'd been there for like 30 minutes my wife is like I don't really want to drink anymore. I don't know, you know, and she's like, my wife likes to sleep.

Women be sleeping, bro. Oh, my God. They really are, especially on the weekend, man. They learn it young, and I feel like it just stays with them. But in any case, that was awesome, because then I could just sit and saw a good friend and noted James Hardin fan club president Brian DeMaris. Yep, saw DeMaris. Oh, you know what? It was great. Dude, it's crazy. Damaris is the radio guy with Coop now. Like, I, I'm just asking him a million questions about Coop all night. I'm like, dude, it's what's Coupe like? You work with Coop every day.

It's like he came from a, I don't know, that's a very non-traditional route. Like, regardless of what you think of the guy, that's, uh, it's interesting to me. Sorry. I would say Coop, I've only, I've just met him. I've never really spent a lot of time with him. But I would say he's not funny, Bob. Bob is funny. Coup is funny to me and I think you should leave type way.

He doesn't know he's funny. If he doesn't, maybe not. I don't care. I just think he's... But I think he's just like Bob. They're very similar, argumentative. They're always right. They know everything about sports.

Yeah. But he's not funny at all. He doesn't really have any... Okay. He doesn't seem to have social skills and awareness, whereas Bob, I think, does. And I think Bob's very funny. I think it'd be...

There's some people who would find it weird if I just called a colleague autistic, so I won't. But instead I'll say, you may not say he's funny, but he's made you laugh as much as many people that you consider to be very funny. What do you mean as far as like when he argues with... Just coop being coop is just funny.

His ability to just Kool-Aid man into something with no... It is funny. Right. I don't want him opening for Arcage, but I laugh. He's entertaining to me. He's entertaining. So, yeah, it was a great time.

And then, yeah. Yeah. Got home and was tired the rest of the weekend. Did you say he's playing New York's... He is doing Radio City Music Hall next month. And I am strongly considering doing the one-in, one-day drop-in, go home. I don't know why. That was always...

At the end of his tour? No. Oh. It's not the end. But I've always won... wanted that always seemed to be to be like an advanced thing if you can go to a place for like a football game or something for a day and go home like so i remember soror well like mike and cash just did right like i'm just gonna i just want to go to this other place for a day for like sports or

whatever i feel like now's the time feel like i can trust in your life i'm going like by myself to just be like dude i'm gonna fly to new york for a day just to go to this thing that is not something I've made a habit of ever no looks like Akash is in san antonio at the end of the year if uh dan thinks he can kind of hone this in and oh man i don't know i might need maybe maybe just host maybe you could host that night what is that yeah what is that it's at a club it's not like at a theater so it would be a smaller crowd just dip my toe into the san antonio uh indian lady scene the san antonio 711 oh wow they'll be there

Spicy of all spicy So what's the best lottery ticket you've ever sold? I'm trying to work on my Okay, yeah. My lines. Sure. Who are you usually talking to on that thing? Who's a...

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How about we say it's GameStop stock fiasco related, but from an insider's perspective, inside the company. Adjacent. GameStop adjacent. I mean, listen, I've got a lot of, I forgot. I was going to ask you guys if you wanted to play some sort of corporate speak game show with him. Because he's certainly seen it all. He's a vet of that game. We'll double click on that, though.

A lot of that. Are they really saying that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let me just give mini TiVo. Because I started a couple things that I bailed on fairly quickly. One is called dinosaurs on Netflix.

Have you seen this? Have you seen this, folks? No. I did the same thing. So why did you bail? Oh, they all die in the end. No, it was just... Don't spoil it.

Yeah, seriously, spoilers, brother. No, I just, I couldn't, I mean, normally Morgan Freeman's my guy. Like, I can listen to him talk all day, but like just him talking about dinosaurs and It's a nature show about dinosaurs. Yeah, it just wasn't that great. And it's, the thing is that I know that the dinosaur roamed the earth 60 million years ago. I know that because like that's the first thing they put on the screen. And so I know where.

we're using our imagination on a lot of this stuff on what they look like because you found bones and now you also have the bird and maybe they were planted there and you have the bird to try to compare it to and say like oh okay I know birds have lasted long right

sorry now I just hear Trump voice whenever you and now you have the bird well the point is this dinosaur show starts with a small dinosaur who has lost his family and now he's looking around, he's doing it. And they're doing this whole story about this little dinosaur. Like if you ever saw the Tina Faye voiced over monkey movie where this little monkey.

Steve, meet Steve, the penguin. Well, at least those, you're kind of, you might be on the right track because you've been filming the monkeys and you know what they're doing. This dinosaur thing, you're making it all up. Don't make up a dinosaur. Don't make up stuff for me. to try and pull up my heartstrings? First of all, I don't have any heartstrings.

You can't get me that way. Unless you're Akash and I almost cry because a little picture of you and your mom when you were like four. But yeah, so it's purported to be kind of a documentary on how dinosaurs lived, and then they'd show them in a pack and they'd show them running across the Serengeti or something

as if, like, well, I mean, giraffes do it, so probably dinosaurs did it. Like, wait, no. I can't, I bailed. within 10 minutes. So maybe I need to stick with it, but I didn't want to. My guess is it doesn't change much. I doubt there's a plot twist.

But this is not the first time this has been tried, obviously. Apple TV had one a few years ago called Prehistoric Planet. I got pretty fired up about it. I've tried to watch it with my kids. Just doesn't work, man. It's like reading too much fiction. At least the book we're about to read is a guy's insider account. you know, with some stuff change for drama.

My thing, when I see the dinosaur, when I see the dinosaur is always, there's no way, it looks like they're in Minnesota or like Iowa, and it just, there's no way we can conceive of what the environment looked like. Right, trees are just normal. I just don't think. Trees look like trees. Really?

Did they? I guess 60 million years ago, you're pretty sure of that, huh? There's no way. The goal, I guess, is to make you think of the dinosaur in some sort of a sympathetic way. Like, oh, it's got a family. Like they do with the nature shows. Yeah, maybe. Why is big dinosaur behind this?

But maybe they did. Maybe they were all assholes. Maybe they were really mean. That's what I was going to say. Yeah, who knows? We just need them to come out or mean tweets or find out they're racist or something. How far did you make it? Episode and a half.

There's just like, there's 20 million year jumps that they just do. Yeah. And it's like, it shows, it's like now Pangaea is different. And I'm like, you just showed the same shoreline. Like, it's the same. It's very, it's very, how do we make a dinosaur movie that kids will want to watch longer than five minutes? And that's why they're trying to do it. It feels like that's why they're trying to make it a story.

Like, oh, here's this family of dinosaurs. So what you're going to need is an island with some entrepreneurs and a scientist. Can I pitch you gold bloom? You can get Goldblum? Or land before time. And that's really, yeah, lane before time is a car. But to your point, that's why I say if you're going to use a CGI, rip the brakes out, get the military involved. Somebody in Israel's trying to weaponize the dinosaur by the end of the movie.

They have COVID of some sort. Get Michael B. Jordan in there. Yeah, with his shirt off. Might as well do that if we're going to do it. Can I tell you that for a very brief second, I thought you. you were about to tell me that for some reason you were going to watch the early 90s ABC sitcom Dinosaurs. Not the Mama?

Not the Mama. I'll put that on right now and just not stop it. It's so good. Really? So it's... The Sinclair family? It's a cult classic. Like there's a fall.

It's a cult favorite. There's a sitcom called Dinosaurs. You've never seen... I've seen clips. I've seen clips. And I didn't know when I was watching it at the time, but it's coded, super heavily.

What does that mean? Well, like, like Sinclair, the head of the family. I guess the context is, like you've pointed out, no. Well, somewhat, but not really. The sun kind of has an urban vibe. Yeah,

but it's kind of like you've talked about with shows in the 90s and 80s that would do drug PSA type thing. So there was a message to a lot of them, but a lot of it was, environmental types, like they get it wiped out at the end. So there's some, and there's a lot of like anti-corporate messaging in it. A lot. Like he works for a company.

Like, I think they chop trees or something. And he's at odds with them all the time. It's a, I wouldn't say it's a liberal. It's just a very like worker populist type show. And it got canned. But it's really good. If you ever go back and watch, there aren't that many episodes. It's good.

Let's put it on the list. More than I thought. And then the other thing will upset some people, what I'm about to say. So dinosaurs are not back. I don't think so. Okay. We'll upset some people pretty close to me. Because I made it through, I don't know, three quarters of an episode,

and then I'm just like, this just isn't for me. And perhaps the bar was raised too high because that will happen. Oh, no. Not our girls. Who are you thinking of? Jennifer and Reese. No. You can raise the bars as high as you need on them.

Okay. Although I did see somebody interviewing them. It was like Vanity Fair. Tell me if this is a bad bit. Yeah. Did you see the bit? No. I don't want to hear you.

I just mentioned. No. Vanity Fair? Okay. Call her daddy. I want to see their characters, not them necessarily. No, what if we see, we're interviewing Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Anniston about the newest, the upcoming season of the,

the morning show. We're going to interview them, and we had them sitting in this room, but we're going to bring in 10 puppies. And then they, so while the puppies are kind of... That sounds like a family guy bit. Running on all over them, and then she's like trying to gather one, and they're like, well, what about your relationship with Corey? Oh, yeah, that's good.

I would give that production person a promotion. It's eight minutes of that. Why not? They're talking to them like, oh, look how cute. Oh, my God. Give him some ice cream. No. So it's, it's kind of the,

it's what, the hot wings or what's that show? Hot ones, yeah. Hot ones, yeah. Like, hey, let's, okay, I'm not really good at interviewing. What if I interviewed you while you ate at a week? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Well, that adds a twist to it. The show that I bailed from neighbors on HBO. Oh, wow, controversial. I was about to push play. Now you're going to have to with two different... Everyone loves it. I know. Everyone.

Everyone loves it. And I just think I can't watch reality TV. Oh, then I should still be in then. I'm just not... I just, I don't... It's all... It just feels not real. I don't know.

These people are in it that at least the first one is... What was the first one, Clayton? Because I know you're juiced about this. the guy that put up a fence in the rural area or the uh yeah two people that moved to escape the city and then one guy puts up a fence because he's tired of the horses running all over his property yeah and it just feels it just feels manufactured it's a reality tv that per episode documents a dispute somewhere in america between neighbors it left two different sets of neighbors yeah and then it goes back and forth between them and i found myself caring less and less as it went on

and wondering why I'm just sitting here doing this. Can I tell you why I am extremely interested in this? It's because I'm white trash. And this just scans to me like, you know, I just, somebody was always like taking someone to these small claims court or something. It's like there's no way that the amounts of money or the disputes that are shown in this show are that serious.

It's not like somebody's dying. Yeah. It's like little, hey, he won't stop fucking with me. Like, just this guy, older guy who gets pissed off and gets on a mission is one of my favorite characters in all of culture. Yeah, see, I'm not really interested in this TV show, but I was interested in my in-laws. Do you remember this? Their neighbor was flicking cigarette butts over their fence. Yes, I would have watched the show about that.

And I would, too, but, yeah, no, others, I don't really care. Maybe it feels just centered around Haltam and Richland, I'd watch it. This is going to be tough, though, if Jake has to watch it and then give an, honest review because will he would he rather disappoint me or would he rather disappoint T.C. and Clayton? Because those guys are hard on that. Like I heard

T.C. saying he can't wait until Friday night for the next one. Like if he could, he'd watch them all. And I'm like, oh my God, I can't wait to see this show. And then I'm watching. So that's where I say, was the bar raised too high? No, I think it's less that and more. I think it's less that and more that

you are as far out of the reality game as somebody could be. Like, I've watched, I don't mind some reality TV. I really don't. Now, to the degree that it's scripted, can be bothersome. But if there's at least some kernel of truth at the core of it, I can do it. Well, I guess we'll see. Like, if there's a difference between that and something like cheaters to me, which was just actors, I think. He got stabbed once.

Well, if you get stabbed, remember Frankel and Frankel, personal injury attorneys. There's a non-zero chance that guy called the Frankles. That was a local case. Oh, yeah? It's 214 and then dial all threes. 3333333. When you call the Frankles, you will talk to a partner. One of the Frankles are Gene Burkett.

And they will fight for what is rightfully yours. So like we said, if it's a personal injury situation, if you find yourself in a situation where you are fighting those insurance companies, they know the tricks the insurance companies will use. They have people who used to work for the insurance companies. So they know what they're doing. Frankl and Frankel, personal injury lawyers, 214 or 817, and then dial all threes.

Any other weekend stuff before? Oh, no, but it looks like he's right on time, so we could just... Oh, slide into that? Sure. Okay. Well, let's tell you about Ownwell then while we're waiting for Frank to sit down. Ownwell is... Big time enough to have a billboard.

Ownwell is a billboard now? I saw the other day. I was like, man, we work with a real company. They have a real website for you. Ownwell.com slash the dumb zone. That's where you can go to save money on your property taxes. Like Dan was saying with Frankl's not fighting the insurance companies. With Ownwell, you're not having to fight.

or local tyrannical authorities when it comes to protesting your property taxes. They'll do it for you. You only pay you own well if they save you money. 86% of customers see a reduction. What's the name on that? Do you remember the name? Because you always got to write their name. What are you asking me?

The tax assessor. Oh, isn't a person, right? Yeah. I don't remember this year. Like you have to write a check to a certain person. I don't like it. It feels like a comptroller. Yeah.

Yeah, but why don't we just send it to the county or the, but we actually have to write out their name. That's interesting. I smell fraud. Are they cash in that check? Potential fraud, I'm saying. You see the calculation I'm doing in my head is making sure that this is legal to say. But I think in general, if we just go to ownwell.com slash the dumb zone, we can help you save money on your property taxes. There you go.

And joining us in studio right now, it is. author Frank Hamlin. The front of your book here, it says M.F. Hamlin. Skinny Dipping at Low Tide. My first thought is, is this like with serial killers where you get your middle name put in whenever you do a bunch of crimes? How do you arrive at initial initial last name for the front of a book? There's a footnote in the book that goes exactly through that, which is every great

English author went by initials. There you go. My initials are FM, but I thought for the book it was more appropriate to. flip-flop those two things. Okay, we can get into the need to flip-flop if you'd like. How do you want to set this up, Blake? We, through mutual friends, I heard about this book, and we're very interested in the GameStop short squeeze,

and you were obviously at the center of it. But I was really impressed with your book because, you know, you go through your entire life and business, and GameStop part is actually just a small part at the end I felt like. So, I don't know if you just want to begin with your story. I wanted to focus on your time digitizing music. Music, oh, yeah. Which was amazing, which I think Dan will like.

But yeah, which correct me if I'm wrong, but these record labels wanted to better track these songs. And he was using them for ASCAP and BMI. But then in turn, kind of created this pirating system with the songs. I just thought that was kind of funny. So if you wouldn't mind, just start with there. Happy to start there. I mean, the whole thing is a bit of a long journey, and there was no way for me to write the book. It felt like without understanding sort of the context.

And the context of GameStop is identical to the context in the record business, which is digital disruption. And the reason I put that sequence in there is I actually worked in the record business, the Erster Records. I was there when we broke Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson, dating myself. but, you know, early 90s country music. And my first job right out of college, I'm a failed songwriter. I was a music major in college, got there, realized I was the least talented dude there. But was able, my first paying job in the record business was working at Sony Publishing,

taking their analog tape library, which was quarter inch analog slave tapes of every songwriter's demo. And that catalog was a gold mine. It was the Merle Haggard catalog. It was the Willie Nelson catalog. It was Harlan Howard, the guy who wrote, I Fall to Pieces for Patsy Klein, et cetera, taking all of those and transferring them to that. And I remember saying to the guy in the tape room,

who was this co-caddled guy who'd been there for quite a long time, dude, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen anyone do. And he was like, why, this is awesome? We'll be able to, you know, run these tapes off digitally. And we can take these tapes and pitch them to, record executives and producers, et cetera, if we have a song and you want Garth Brooks to record it, you know, immediately snap off a recording of it. And I was like, there's no generational loss. And it was very prescient. And, you know, eight years later is Kazah and then Napster.

I ended up going to business school because I thought, you know, this thing is going to be toast. I went back for two years at Arista and it was, you know, went from a rocket sled on rails to a complete austerity and I was the I was the hatchet man that got to lay everybody off and that was a moment in my career where I realized I'd rather grow revenue than cut costs. So I thought it was interesting where you sit down and you portrayed in the book like you've got this room full of these slave tapes that you have to do and you calculate okay I have to do all of these I have to digitize everything it'll only take me three and a half years. Yeah exactly. You had to run them off in real time. I mean you can't take an analog. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You

got to listen to every song, which as a songwriter was an amazing entree into, you know, some amazing music. And there was a lot of crap too. You have to sit and listen to everything? You can't press play and walk away. But I was there. You didn't want to waste time than having to go find the end of it. So I'm sure it's like you guys running a radio station. I don't know what a DJ does during a song, but they got to be present enough to know when it gets to the outro to be back on air. Yeah. And I guess if you're saving that forever, you got to make sure that there wasn't something else dropped in the middle of that song. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you say, though, digital disruption that was the GameStop concept, isn't that what hurt GameStop?

100%. Okay. No, that was the big threat. That was the existential threat to GameStop. Okay. It was digital distribution, and that was why the company was so heavily shorted starting in about 2014, which was my first tour of duty there. Yeah. Okay.

So that's what killed your first company, too. Uh, well, yeah, it's what killed the record business. The book business, interestingly, you know, books, music and movies, uh, it's all about file size. Books was the first to go. Although books is interesting because, uh, you know, now that I'm, I'm a new author, I'm a total babe in the woods in this thing. But, uh, it's 40% digital is all the share that digital is taken of book reading, Kendall, uh, etc. And for music, it's got to be something. Music is now 100% almost, except for LP.

You know, people. And then you got movies is by far 100%. I mean, that's the biggest. And the big question on GameStop was these file sizes were hundreds of times bigger than a movie. You know, Call of Duty in 2019 when it came out, if you wanted to download it, even on a high-speed fiber connection would take you nine hours. It was 170 gigabytes. So we'll get to the short squeeze here in just a second.

but I was curious in the beginning parts of the book, do you think GameStop did anything wrong? You know, we often hear the tales of newspapers or Blockbuster that could have done something. Was this just inevitable for them? Yeah, I do think, I think every company that's in this circumstance does something wrong,

and the problem is they hold on to their legacy profits too long. That's what Blockbuster did. That's what GameStop started doing. The first tour of duty that I did, the management then wanted to diversify and they rolled up AT&T stores and thought that was the way forward is to own somebody else's brand and try to sell AT&T plans. And I personally and Nick in the book, you know, goes off a tirade on that. And he ends up getting fired, as did I.

And then the chairman of the board ended up calling me back with the idea that I was working on. Yeah, no, it's a consistent talk throughout the book. the idea that a lot of these companies, I think you phrase is, profits now are always better than profits later. Yeah. So the idea of investing in a project like the one you had. And I did read a good bulk of the book, so I don't know how this portion of it concluded. But I did think that, you know, the idea you had for this pilot program in Oklahoma City, tapping into the passion of gamers and having a vision for what the company could be in an in-person space,

I would like to talk some about the particulars of that, but did that essentially just get waylaid by COVID? Is that one of those things? Yeah, it was 100, those poetry. You launched like the week of, right? Because our show started like February 2020. Yeah. No, no, no.

This is you can't make this up kind of moment. You launch this thing. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. Tons of people worked on it. It wasn't just me. Two tours at the company to get it done. Two tours of the company to get it done. You're pounding against thick-headed people.

And finally you get enough cash. to go try the thing. The moment it gets launched, COVID comes out, and the whole deal was about in-person experience. Yeah. Now, would it have worked? Who the hell knows? But it is, you know, the, you know, there's the old Chinese proverb of the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And a lot of these companies don't do that. You know, and they wait until they're sunburned before they go look for shade. And that was sort of the instance with GameStop. So, I mean, even through COVID, it was holding certain percentages, at least it was portrayed that way in the book. I mean, did it get the acts entirely? You know, I don't know what it's where it is right now. I know that the current management is just shuttering stores left and right. No, it didn't get completely shuttered, but it morphed into kind of just the old business model that they knew how to run.

And the program was a dozen or so stores that were, you. really got, because I'm 40, I grew up around the time that people started to, GameStop became a punchline. And your idea was to actually invest in foot traffic and to put people in the store, make an enjoyable experience, tap into, like I said, that passion, and then really kind of see what happens from there. But what you have is people who are fired up. And if you can get them to a place, let's see what happens.

That was kind of the idea. Yeah, well, at the time, e-sports was burgeoning. And, you know, the whole deal was competitive in a sports metaphor, if, say, if the NFL, you have Pop Warner Leagues. For e-sports, we felt like GameStop could become the Pop Warner leagues of, you know, competitive that's right. Yeah, exactly. And so every one of these stores had, it was super cool technology. The company just declared bankruptcy that was a very similar to GameStop in the UK that did something similar to

this but theirs was just PC gaming and what we did which was super cool was built servers that distributed via high high speed USB any console game to any station in the store every store had a minimum of 12 stations which the biggest e-sports game was 6 v6 at the time which was overwatch and you know so you could hold these little you know and we had dungeons and dragons after dark we did all of the geek culture stuff but And people really, really enjoyed it. It was an investment, you know, and there's, you know, hot sports opinions around, you should you, you know, should you charge for the gameplay? And my opinion, you know, like when we're planning trees here, let's see where stuff grows before you start putting a paywall in front of it.

And that kind of thinking at a legacy company that had a really, really good mousetrap is a tough thing to overcome. Yeah, I thought it was a wonderful idea because the same era as Jake. I remember, you know, being at GameStop overnight for the overnight releases and the consoles and what have you. Get some pizza. For sure. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, there were lines around the door. Good game.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think I ate a Gears of War cake one year. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But anyway, but, you know, I loved your idea just, you know, because you opened up the tabletop games and what have you and it just became a collection of people where you could just go hang out. You know, there was a story in the book about, hey, you and your, you were talking to your son.

If you and your buddies could do this somewhere else, would you? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I was like you spoiled a little shit. I'm not going to do this in your attic. But what if we did that in GameStop? Right.

But you seem to be fighting one guy in particular for most of the book. And, you know, as this business has grown, these two went through a lawsuit, which maybe they'll tell you about. But I always thought there was an interesting dynamic between they had a safe lawyer. and an aggressive lawyer, and you needed both. And so obviously you or Nick being the visionary, there was this guy to always kind of, you know, bring you back in. So in business, is this common? Because this really just, it upset me the more I read the book.

It's super upsetting. And the reason I, you know, I did fiction. I think a lot of people think I did fiction because of fear of a lawsuit. The book is not a tell-all. It's not a, I don't think anyone did anything wrong. There's no malfeasance. But I think every one of these characters is an archetype in every business. And so that's right, you know, it's almost, it's a fable, you know, and it's what happens with, you know, conspiracy and chaos theory and all of these things collide in this magical weird thing.

And you couldn't make up the story, but, you know, I did it as a Romano Clay because in this day and age, I don't think anybody believes the truth anyway. So maybe if you write fiction, they'll believe it. But yeah, and so that guy in the book is a fellow named Jeff Claggart. He's the CFO. I do believe that the CEO win. And most CEOs do exactly what you're saying is they'll hire a black hat. They'll hire a white hat and watch those two people fight it out and see who wins and they're happy either way. Yeah.

Yeah, I felt like I was just reading a business instructional book about, you know, marketing guys get axed first. The CFO always hates the marketing guy running into the business. the issues you did regarding innovation. I also thought trying to wrap all this together with the squeeze and with the market, in a sense, a lot of the people, I didn't know this until I watched one of the documentaries on the financial part of it. And I guess I didn't realize that some of the people who were involved in the initial putting, you know, accelerant on that fire were hardcore, like, legacy GameStop fans, like the initial

investors were people that were like, I grew up with this brand and I love it and I don't care if people think it's lame. I want to own it at a dollar a share. So in a sense, like, it's interesting to me that what you were trying to tap into, which was there's some people that just love the shit at a GameStop.

It may have died with COVID, but it's the same thing resulted in the financial squeeze to me. Oh, 100%. I just thought it was a bunch of people dicking around on Robin Hood. I didn't know. No, the initial Reddit.

Yeah. Yeah, the initial Reddit investors were huge nostalgia for the brain. Yeah. And they knew when, you know, this was what they did when they were 13 years old is they got mom to take them, trade in their new game and get a new game. And they had great love for that. And they felt, you know, hurt that this thing was being as shorted as it was.

And then you do the math and you become a financial technician. And you realize, oh, wow, if we can scare these shorts out, we can make a lot of money on a quick trade. It's almost like the gaming or the that nerd gaming version of like, I don't know how big of a sports fan you are. A decent sports. I'm wearing my Virginia sweatshirt to just in agony over. We couldn't hit one of like 800 layups last night. He's your March and Madness guy.

But there's a, Blake and I like to say it's interesting because in the NFL now, a lot of guys who grow up playing Madden seem to be in charge of all the NFL teams, the coaches. Like it very much mirrors the way. that we, you know, fourth down and all that sort of thing. Yeah, you have guys who were mad that they were getting, uh, rip off prices at GameStop keeping the company afloat. Oh, no, those, I love the, I mean, we loved those memes.

There was a meme I remember that, that some guy had taken a picture of thousands of games in his room, and the meme was GameStop be like 32 cents. Yes, yeah, yeah. But that's just a half-priced books. That same passion that you were trying to. to get after being involved in the stock part of it was, was fascinating to me. Well, it's, it's a totally bizarre thing we went through. And I felt like I had a right.

And let me say, as a human, it was completely disorienting. You know, I was raised to work hard, do something by the fruit of your own labor, your own blood, sweat, and tears. If you were successful, you'd get rewarded. And this rogue wave hit and, you know, all of a sudden you're surfing and you don't understand why. And I had no idea how to surf. So it's, and, you know, you have suicide thought. I understood why people who win the lottery commit suicide.

What was the number at one point when you looked down at your, you're like trading app or something? Well over $100 million. You had a lot of game stock stock? Yeah. Well, I was one of four named executive officers. So it's all public. You can go look it up and, you know, you can do the math. Yeah.

So we had, you know, as an executive, you were awarded RSUs, which is restricted stock units. And, you know, the hope is that the stock goes up. And the other real maddening thing, though, is the earnest person who cared about the company and the long-term viability of the company is not only was there the shorts who are putting out a message of doom and gloom and have a huge financial stake in seeing the demise of the company. You also had all the people that were just rooting for a short squeeze, which is very much a short-term notion. And in fact, Michael Burry called the company. I don't know if you know

Michael Burry is, but he was the Christian Bale character in the big short who said this is the greatest opportunity for a short squeeze since Volkswagen. He made a trade. He made a trade. he recently was out in the news that his trade he only made four X's money only and he got out you know and then the thing went to 400 and had he held on it you know he would have made 4,000 times of money but you're restricted as a as a executive and you can't sell once you're in a blackout window there's a scene in the book that I do a boot camp with darrell johnston's one of the buddies we do it with every Monday Wednesday Friday and the day after the short squeeze, I show up at the boot camp and everybody's like, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. And I'm like,

yeah, I can't sell. I'm in a blackout window. I couldn't sell until March. The, you know, the peak happened. I think it was January 28th, 29th, something like that of 2021. And so the stock had then gone through a huge roller coaster ride. The Robin Hood thing had happened where Robin Hood stopped trading on it. The stock had gone down below 40 bucks at that point. And then it accelerated right back up. And by the time I was out, it was $180. Why do you say that you know why people who win the lottery would commit suicide? Well, you have to be somebody who is self-loathing. People say, oh, wow, Frank, you're so humble.

I'm like, I'm not humble. I mostly can't stand myself. And so I, you know, and when that happened, I view that as this huge negative. And everyone says, oh, my God, cry me a river. You know, what a nightmare. You just made a bunch of money. You view looking at $100 million in your account that you can't touch. That you can't touch.

Not that nightmare, the nightmare of I didn't earn it. Like just all of a sudden. All of a sudden. And the thing I was working on ended up on the cutting room floor. And it's just like, well, what the hell are we doing here? This makes no sense. You know, and the lesson is that markets are, they have no morality. They're not moral.

They're not immoral. They're amoral. And the markets just do what the markets do, and you can't make sense of it. And, you know, I've got, you know, capitalism is, all it is is about transactions. It has nothing to do with merit. And you want it to be about meritocracy. I've got a daughter who's a third grade teacher. And, you know, she's so frustrated at what they get paid.

And I was like, there's no transaction associated with you educating a third grader. Well, you should tell her that she does get three months off. Yes, she does. She does. I do tell her that. And that goes over well? Yeah, yeah, you got a big FU. FU MF.

Yeah. Yeah. No. It could be a lot more for the teachers and the state wouldn't even notice it, but that's a whole other. Yeah. That's a whole other topic. It seems like shorting, like, because I've seen the documentary on, or one of the documentaries. Or dumb zone.

There was a movie dumb zone. Yeah. Yeah, it was just the, how is shorting legal? How is a lot of that stuff? Like, I just don't even get. it. I have a line in the book. It's no more moral than Michael Vic betting on a dog to die, you know. Or to live. Or to live. I guess he's betting on one to live. I'm an option. Yeah, you take two sides of that trade. Yeah, exactly. How did you decide to write the book?

I, you know, my whole life has been this, I don't know, you guys feel the same way, but you have stuff happened to you. You're like, I, you know. And I was, you know, I was. I was on the board of another disrupted retailer Tuesday morning, and the CEO that we fired, he and I were going to breakfast when we were both on the bench after I'd left GameStop. And he asked me what I was doing. And I said, well, I've written a chapter of a book. And he's like, Hamlin, that is the lamest, most old white guy thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah.

And I said, well, I've done it. And he goes, well, tell me what it's about. And so I told him, you know, there's this real self-effacing thing. and he's like, all right, send me the chapter. I send him the chapter. And he's like, holy cow, this is good. And he goes, and I went to college with a literary agent. I want to introduce you.

And he introduced me. And so then I realized, oh, you got to have an agent, blah, blah, blah. She was smitten with the books. She said, this is the dumbest thing I've ever done because the only people who read are females. And nobody's buying white authors right now. Once again, the white man is held down. And then you want this to be fiction? Yeah.

Yeah. I know. So, yeah. It was a bit of a... But it was therapy. You know, it was really good therapy. It's less expensive than therapy. The illustrations are better.

They're not, you know, pieces of paper with a creased ink blot. But, yeah. Well, I don't know, just from my perspective, I don't know if you give yourself enough credit. That's probably a universal statement, isn't it? Speaking of therapy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because you've worked in some really, you've done some cool shit.

Like, and to me, you know, it's very, very cool. And I think it almost serves as like a business, like lesson learned memoir. There's a lot of, like, there's a lot of valuable stuff in here. Your time at, what did you call it, did you call it Guitar Mart? Guitar Mart, yeah. Yeah. Guitar Center, I would imagine. Yeah, that was the dream job.

But the, you know, the poetry of that was the day I got the job offer, this is in the book as well, the day. I got the job off of her. The headowner called me. I called my wife. She was at MD Anderson with her dad, who for seven years had courageously been fighting stage four colon cancer, and she's getting the news that there's nothing else they can do. Okay. So this brings up a part in the book that I feel like we're friends now. Okay. Cool. If you want to be friends with itself, loathing, you know. You're at work. You're in some sort of a negotiation type.

situation and your wife calls the company. If you'd like to add further context, go ahead. It worked out for him, but I just imagine if this happened what Dan would say to me, your wife's got a lot of balls. She more than I do. At 5'2, I always say she's the biggest person I know. Explain that. So, well, the story is, and this is the actual story, I get the job offer.

It's the dream, you know, I was a music composition major. I'd worked in Nashville for nine years. I realized I better go get a real job because of digital disruption. I get into Harvard Business School because I'm a diversity candidate, you know, a guy who sold Hayseed Records. I almost fail out of Harvard Business School because I've had zero confidence. And the whole deal was about class participation. And then I go off and do all of these normal kind of businessy things.

And then along comes this opportunity to go have a real business job. job at a real business, but it's based in California, and that's guitar center. And the headhunter calls, and so I, I, you know, he said, get on real estate.com or realtor.com or whatever it was. And I call Sarah and I said, I got the job, you know, we need to start thinking about moving to California. And she said, I can't think about it because this was going on with her dad. And so I called back to headhunter. And I said, would they consider a commute scenario? And the answer was not no, but hell no.

You know, this is pre-COVID. It's so interesting. You know, now everybody's remote working. And this wasn't that long ago. This was, what, 2014? No, 2010, 2010. And I said, well, I'm going to have to turn it down, you know. And we fought like mad my wife and I over this, you know, and I'm like, you know,

I said stupid things. Like I thought life was for the living, you know, et cetera. Put it on a throat pillow. Oh, yeah. That's a good one. And so three months pass, and this is exactly what happened, Dan, it's bizarre. I get a call from the headhunter and says, a guitar center wants to talk again. And I said, well, what happened?

And he said, well, they can't get you. You were the perfect candidate. They loved everything you were about. They've talked to a bunch of other candidates. And, you know, so that's one thing. But the other thing is your wife called the CEO. and I was like, what? She said, yep, wife called the CEO.

And I said, well, what in the hell did she say? And I, you know, immediately she said that she would stand by you commuting. So I called her up and I was like, what she said is the dumbest thing I've ever done. I don't know why I did. You know, and she, we almost got divorced over that four years of me commuting. And I'd fly out every Sunday night, fly home every Thursday or Friday. Maybe she secretly wanted that. Maybe she did.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a good question. That's a good point. I don't know what was going on in Dallas, yeah, for those four years. Wow. Maybe you do, Dan. Yeah, Dan.

Yeah, what are you up to? You say, though, you almost got divorced because of the commuting. I thought you meant you almost got divorced because she called the CEO. Oh, no, no. Behind your back. No, I thought it was a great act of love, honestly. Okay. And she said, look, I'm not a willty.

If you think the commute is going to end because he's got some whiny wife at home that's going to say, you know, come home every day. you got the wrong woman. So, you know. Yeah, boy, I'd love that. That's a dream, right? Did they pay for your travel back and forth? Yeah, I think a nice, you know what it is? It's just a different version of two separate bedrooms.

Yeah. As is all the, are you forced? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bedroom divorces. Jay Moore and Jeannie Bus. Yeah. Do you know about their deal? Your throat pillow would get you a bedroom divorce.

Yeah, no, my wife was just telling me the other day because we have separate. blankets. Do you do that? No, I wish we did. I run hot, so I like everything cold and sleep. And yeah, she wants weight. Yeah. No, we don't. She told me that's called the Scandinavian way. Interesting. She said, oh yeah, they do it over there. That's their regular way. Yeah, I'm with him. And she thinks I'm really weird because I want to have two separate blankets. So you spent a lot of time here. You're obviously not from the area, but we know. We know. We know. that if you're by coastal and living in cool places, nobody wants to be in grapevine. Nobody wants to be in Frisco.

It's reminded quite forcefully in the... I live in Grapevine. No, I'm from here. Oh, okay. I guess I didn't know you were from there. I was born in Atlanta, but I was raised in Dallas. Okay. You know, Q. Your Vivaldi.

I went to Highland Park High School. My dad was an EDS executive. And, you know, I'm the youngest of three boys, and I was the black sheep. and, you know. Okay, well, see, now I want to, I don't know if this still applies, but I want them to reach out to you as a consultant on the new show, Frisco King. Have you heard that they are doing? No.

Seriously? Taylor Sheridan has a show. Tulsa King. How many shows does this guy have now? All of them. Tulsa King is the one with Sylvester. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're now doing Frisco King.

Fabulous. Which there's a non-zero chance, some sort of GameStop-like story, would be in there, like a company like that with a short squeeze or something. I love it. I mean, there's a big gap in the market for that. Yeah. I'm sure they've done a lot of research. Yeah, we need, yeah.

What did that $100 million turn into then? Once you did cash it out. It was about, it's not DAC money. You know, it was about $50 million and I had to pay almost 50% taxes on it. But it's enough to say I don't have to work anymore. enough that you could have this cool printed book and like yeah no no no the book is is honest it's a you know i i i'd a lot of people i was like you could self-publish you'll make a lot more money it's like a it's not about the money and all of the book goes to a thing we established at virginia

which is all part of my guilt um but um to help them win more games yeah but i was like i am not going to self-publish if there's not a company out there that's willing to co-invest in this thing with me it's not any good was that a hundred Like, because I've, I got a buddy who's been trying to write a book. Oh, no. And he had a, dude, rip it apart. Hyperion, which is Disney's imprint, almost took it. But for, you know, you get it.

I mean, this is the way these companies think is, oh, we thought this was going to be a rags to rich's story. This is just a, you know, upper middle class kid got really rich. Yeah. Which is still pretty good. I guess. I'll just, I'll second, Jake. I listen to this book on audiobook, and I just thought your life and, career path was fascinating.

I'm sure you have more HBS stories, Harvard Business School stories, but just it seemed like you worked yourself into a really good position at GameStop twice. Yeah. Because you were let go differences in leadership, and then it turns out everyone in the building liked you and wanted to bring you back. And I just think that hard work put you in a good position to succeed. But my question about the audiobook, I loved the narrator. Oh, man.

I don't know how much directing power. you had, but zero. Yeah. I mean, that thing went out into the ether. I got a thing. It was over the holidays. I got a thing on LinkedIn, a direct message from a guy named Daniel Henning, and it said audio book narrator.

And I was like, well, this is interesting. On LinkedIn, I was like, I'll accept that. And said, hi, how are you? And he said, you may not know this, but your publisher has put off your book to a audiobook publisher. And I have chosen your book because I love its righteous indignation. and so then this is kind of funny this is a gay not gay moment I go look him up he's an LGBT

activist and my own insecurity is oh god this whole book's in first person narrative and he's gonna be reading me is am I gonna come across like a gay guy yeah immediately a gay guy who found a book that he thinks is sassy yeah he's like I just love the right he's like all right my lane let's lean in so that was That was so, I haven't met him yet in person. We're working on, you know, we're working on going out there and doing a junket.

We think we'll make a, you know, funny ham and egg show of him. You know, and most of his books he reads are like fantasy or he's read, you know, LGBT self-help books, that kind of stuff. But he won the audio last year for the best-selling audiobooks, sold over a million copies. He chose this book out of the ether. I have no idea how he found me. And it's a very unlikely. partnership but he is he is a phenomenal reader the only thing i don't like is the way he reads my dad i

offered to read my dad because my dad's accent is so unique um my dad's name by the way was jefferson davis hamlin the character in the book is stonewall jackson holler uh and it's important you know for for many reasons because he's a he's a complete uhximeronic kind of character um who uh is genuinely loved in the south by most african americans and in the North, they think, how in the hell could that ever happen? And you also asked, why did I write this book? That's the book I want to write. Is Dad's best friend growing up was they, the family had a little tobacco farm.

And the sharecroppers on the tobacco farm, the son of the sharecopper was his best friend. And I have these great look like they're from the Library of Congress photographs from that whole deal. And it's haunting and interesting and in this world where, you know, after the George Floyd rides, how did we get here? you know it feels like it's worse than it was in 1990 uh yeah anyway well you said only females are reading i'm a part i feel like i i i represent that i i'll read if it has an affair and a murder i'll read it um i typically just read fiction and i try to listen to uh you know more stuff like i was just i was blown away that's an amazing amazing tale yeah it's a it's a bizarre tale and uh we all lived it and we're all trying to make sense of it

Is this just your first book then? First book. Yeah, no, I very much. You're thinking, I'm going to write more now? The serendipity on that is amazing. I have a, I'm a duck hunter, and I have a buddy that we have a, it's the best, if any of you are hunters, if you ever want to go, let me know, it's the best bed to blind. It's 20 minutes from the center of town in Hutchins.

It's horrible duck hunting, though. Anyway, we never get ducks anymore. But one of the guys who's in it with me was duck hunting in Mississippi, and he had a buddy from D.C. who he found out was from D.M.L. Virginia, that's where my dad's from. Long story short, this guy who I never knew has bought the house that's in the picture that I was describing and has offered me to go stay in one of the sharecropper cabins as I start to do research on the book. and then I just had lunch with there's a fellow by the name of Tom Luce who was a very esteemed lawyer in town who had read the book and reached out to me and said how much he loved it

he's elderly and so I went and took him lunch and we sat down and talked about it and I told him about this dad thing and Tom I knew him because he was a lawyer at EDS when my dad was there and he said there was a case from 1975 where it was like an ambulance chaser case where they were trying to extort EDS for $100 million of fraudulent data processing.

And dad was the lead person on this insurance account. And so he was the key witness. And this was right after LBJ had put African Americans in judge ships, et cetera. And the woman who was the judge was a black woman named Constance something or other. and the plaintiff's attorney, dad gets on the stand and he refers to him every time. My dad went by Davis, refers to him as Jefferson Davis Hamlin, knowing that he's got, and anyway, apparently dad charmed the pants off of the judge and the case got dismissed. So these two serendipitous things have happened and they make for a really interesting,

you know, how screwed up are we in this world over race issues when, you know, people can get along. and anyway. That's the next book I want to write. You talk about you would stay in the sharecropper cabin. Let me just say that you could make that cabin much better if you went to Flooring Direct. DFW.com slash DZ. Yes.

You wouldn't believe the deals that you could get. I know. I know you're trying to stretch a dollar. Yeah. How about buy now and pay later? Zero interest financing for 36 months. Sharecropper special. And nothing down.

And here's the thing. Yes. Now, Flooring Direct has a showroom in Addison. And now you're from here, so you know where Addison is. Yes. They will, though, come direct to that cabin. They will come out to the cabin. They will have different little flooring samples.

Kind of lay it down. How does this look with the motif? How does this look with the wood, with the log? Oh, this looks great. This one really goes well with your butter churner. Flooring direct, dfW.com slash dZ. You should mention you heard about them on the dumb zone. They treat you much better.

Treat you like shit if you don't mention that you're from the dumb zone. Yeah. 972-449-9456, but it's great. Five-star installation package, they clean as you go. Now it's a sharecropper's little cabin. I don't know if they got a lot of furniture in there. But if you do... They'll put it back.

They'll leave the house cleaner than when they found it. And it comes with a lifetime guarantee. So from sharecropper's cabins to mansions in humbling Highland Park. Do they have linoleon that looks distressed? They could do that, yes. That's what we need. Flooring direct, dfw.com slash dZ. So as a business executive.

No longer. No longer, but you're well-versed. Not hirable anymore. Yeah, you're well-versed in business executive things. Because we are, you know, we now are in the world of business. Yeah. We used to be on the radio. You guys are entrepreneurs, yeah.

We kind of are. Yeah. But we've found this. So now in this world of business that we've never been in before, we find that people are wasting lots and lots of time. When we have a meeting, it's like 15, 20 minutes to kind of get ramped up and get going into this thing. It's like A lot of bullshit

A lot of BS A lot of just talking A lot of uh I want to meet for lunch No I don't want to meet for lunch What if we meet on Zoom And just get right to it And then we don't have to drive

And then sit And then wait And anyway Do you concur Do you say You guys are the wrong You're in the wrong You just got to

You're talking to the wrong I mean It's funny All of the companies I worked at I was either The crazy hippie or I was the buttoned-up, you know, straight businessman.

So when I was in the record business, I was the buttoned-up straight businessman because everybody else was the crazy hippie. GameStop, guitar center, I was probably more of the buttoned-up. I don't know. Game-stop, I was definitely the crazy hippie. In all cases, though, I will say that the people matter. And I, as far as meetings are concerned,

I think, you know, I have ADD, but I will go off on any tangent in any meeting, to keep things light. I get so bored in most meetings. So you would probably fire me too. You would extend the meetings. Well, I don't know.

I like a good, crisp, efficient meeting. Don't get me wrong. You're amusing yourself. No. No, you amuse yourself a lot. I've noticed this. I love listening to you because you know you're funny. And you come up for something.

It is a problem. No. It's just convincing everyone else. It's just convincing everyone. Yeah. I think really... And I'm the same way. I'm not for everyone.

But I enjoy, you know, cutting it up in a meeting every now and again. You know, it's how do you feel, though? It's just the idea is we just... He doesn't really want to have interpersonal relationships. And I get that. He just doesn't want to hear about your kids. He doesn't want to hear about... Well, there's business time and then there's hear about your kids' time.

Yeah. And I think it was news to us that... I don't need that... Everyone who tells us are so busy working in business is just... just dicking around half the call being like, I almost shot my, a, I don't, whatever, some golf thing.

Yeah. You're just screwing around a lot of times. Small talk sucks. There you go. You have a true business meeting we're going to do small talk. But if you're going to do way out, like we just,

I've got a group of people that are helping me with PR for the book. And we were on a Zoom call. And I said, we're not doing a good enough job of tapping into the Reddit community that, you know, was a huge fan of GameStop,

and there's a video actually out there of Roaring Kitty describing the real market was Tulsa. And he talks about me. I was mentioned in an article, and he's like, this is super cool. And this was in August of 20, you know, five months before the short squeeze. And so I said, I think I should go to a furry convention. And then, of course, that went off on a whole tangent. And we had a good time with it.

And the PR guy has AI keeping notes. and we're like, no way in hell furry is going to come up in the notes. And we spent a lot of time talking to that. And it did actually come up. So that is not a wasted meaning in my estimation. But talking about your kid's sports is a horrible waste of thing. I thought the consulting group was a pretty big waste of time. Yeah.

At least your character. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And they all wear vests, you know, in Dallas, in, you know, the hot summer. Yeah. Dude, that's what you need to do. what's that start being a consultant

that's easy money right no no no you go in just shit on other people's stuff leave this is not it I don't how off color can you be here I don't know it's the Frank Hamlin show I have a son who works in client services and I'm not going to mention him I probably I didn't hear it it's a friend of a son of mine

he says you know what I do all day I gargled dicks yeah And that's, I don't want to do that. I don't want to, I mean, I've at least earned enough money that don't have to do that. Well, it just seems like you just got to tell companies to cut costs. That seems like all that. It's always, dollar saved is always a dollar earned.

That's an algorithm and it's fact. And you can save your way into, you know, complete irrelevant. Well, yeah, that's where you started here, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly where Jake. Or what did you say? Profits now versus profits later? That's, yeah.

I like that one, and I also liked just the innovation. It may be just slang or jargon, but we're not going to pave any sidewalks until we see where people walk. Yeah. I stole that from Thomas Jefferson, who was the founder of the great University of Virginia. Also very controversial character.

I thought you were going to tell me who Thomas Jefferson was. I'm like, I'm like, not that. Yeah. I'm really printed poorly here. He famously on the lawn at UVA. Have you ever been there? He didn't put sidewalks in because he said. said we're not going to do that until we see where people walk.

And it's a great metaphor. Interesting. Yeah. Well, Frank Hamlin, we want everybody to go buy your book, Skinny Dipping at Low Tide. I want you to tell us when your next book is done. How close is it from being? It's a ways off. This book took me a year and a half to write, but I think I've figured out sort of the way to do that.

I'm hoping that I'll have a first manuscript by mid next year. And you are going to stay. You will be with Floing Direct. You're going to stay in the cabin. Stay in the cabin. Yes. Or at least do research in Danville, Virginia, which it's a classic. The town itself is a classic American store.

It used to be a very thriving textile factory town that, you know, all of that went overseas. And they're the first town in Virginia where the state government has allowed them to open a casino. I got news. Oh, isn't that great? Yeah. If you think that you were doing the ultimate white guy thing when you wrote a book, going to live in a mountain town and a small cabin to get in touch with your genealogical roots and tell the story of your people.

I mean, that's peaking for you and me. Like, if I get to that, that's as good as it gets. It does get there. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, congratulations. I'm excited about it. Well, thank you guys very much for having me.

Enjoyed your story. Not worthy of the dumb zone. It's really good stuff what y'all are doing. and I like the fact that you're now entrepreneurs and you don't have to answer to the man. I'm in the same boat these days. Ditto, yeah. Let's double click on that.

Right back. Okay. All right. There's the great Frank Hamlin go by his book. How's DeMarre? Have you seen him? Stop. Jeez.

What? I was saving it. Kenny? Kenny is a good one. All right. The Dunza. Did Tommy ever turn about my painting? No. Look at this.

That's beautiful. I like this one. One dog goes, one way and the other dog goes the other way. One is going east and the other one is going west. So what? And this guy's saying, what do you want from me? Guy's got a nice head of white hair. Look how beautiful with the dog.

It looks the same. It looks like somebody we know. Without the beard. No, it's him. It's him. Holy come on. You're listening to The Dumb Zone. Hey, we're on last call with Steve.

Noviolo this week. Remember we recorded that like three weeks ago? That's exciting. You have a cough button? I do. Everybody's got a cough button but me. Would you like a cough button? Squeaky wheel, buddy. You know I don't like the cough button. I like being real, bro.

Just like Community Mechanical does. Fantastic. Community Mechanical, that's our HVAC company. Travis is our guy out there. I've already mentioned this before. Unfortunately, he could be your guy, too. Like, he'll treat you just as great as he treats us. And I don't like that.

No. I like to be treated special. You thought you and Brandon Aubrey would be in a separate tier of customer, but everyone gets great treatment. But that also might be because, just like with Qualis or Trident, everyone at community tells us all the dumb zone customers are the easiest to work with and the best one. So maybe that's why they're treating you well, too.

They may, like, people may call up and be like, hey, I'm with Gbag Nation and they're like, they just treat them like shit. Yeah. We don't actually know. We just know that if you're a dumb zone listener and you go to communitydfw.com, they can and will treat you well. Preventative maintenance. Do you remember last week he was talking to us and he was like, you know, I get a lot of people that were second opinion. Yeah. So he's like, they'll have their other company that they've dealt with for a while and they'll call us like, hey, I should probably get.

get another and then a lot of those people end up gravitating to community. Translation, your wife called someone. Yeah. They sucked. And now you're allowed to call community. Yeah, just give them a shot. Give them an opportunity to earn your business. Did you give the phone number and stuff?

CommunityDFW.com is the U.R. 469-66727290. Community DFTO. Travis and the team real cool You don't want your house to explode Don't be a bitch So pick up the phone Dan almost died Sports?

Sure What is the goal here? I like Frank Hamelin Oh yeah, I like that Oh yeah, I like that Oh, we did it turns out that Frank Hamlin is a lot more familiar with us than we would have imagined

Yeah, obviously hot sports opinion Wheels off. I was walking him out the door. Sometimes people will do research, you know? He didn't, it wasn't a research thing. Interesting. He was a... Well, I just want everyone to really salute me as the hero that I am,

that I waited until off the air to tell him that I wrote a thesis about his topic that he was discussing, the disruption of innovation. I didn't tell him all this, you know, so I just want you guys. But you made sure you to mention it now. Right. The sports for the weekend that I want to get into is, of course, the fanatics flag football classic, the relocated due to war from Saudi Arabia to Los Angeles. This is a joint that, of course, Tom Brady is very involved in. I don't know specifically his business relationship with fanatics, but it's substantial.

part owner something. So they've got to deal with Fox. This is Brady's brainchild, apparently, to, I guess, cash in and help promote the game of flag football as it grows in anticipation of the 2028 Summer Olympics, where five-on-five flag football will be a sport for the first time. That, of course, will also be in Los Angeles. So this weekend, yesterday, whatever it was, Saturday, they played sort of a round-robin-type situation where we had the U.S. men's national team for flag football, a bunch of regular, shmegular dudes with jobs on the side.

They played in a little round-robin against two teams of mostly current NFL players with a few former NFL players and a couple of former NFL players and a couple. couple of other guys, for example, or in total. I show speed, the streamer, who is a freak athlete, obviously. Logan Paul, who is a wrestler. A guy named... Oh, Logan is not the boxer? No, this was... Jake Paul.

This was the wrestler. All right. And then a guy named Bud Crawford, who is apparently a boxer. Oh, yeah, he's great. Not at coverage. Yeah, he's a boxer. Well, so I think that's going to... really drive the point home here.

It doesn't matter if you're a good athlete or not. What matters is whether or not you can play flag football. And so I was a little surprised this was on Big Fox. I was a little surprised it was live, but it was. And that meant that with Brady playing on one of the teams, we got Kevin Burkhart and Greg Olson returned to his rightful booth partner. And he's just fantastic. like I was expecting a weird like layouty type moment

but there was nothing. I was expecting this if I'm up Blake. Dave, thank you very much. Coming up on Rangers live, we've got all kinds of analysis from Steve Busby. We're going to hear the round Washington press conference. And of course, we will bring you the very latest on the Rangers activity in the draft today.

You know, Tom, I had the strangest dream that I was sitting up there with you for a while. But you know what? I was living the dream before the dream. I'm back on the Ranges live set now, guys. I'm back to you. Strike one to Austin Jackson. Yes, of course, that John Radigan, after a brief stint in the booth,

moved back down to the proverbial sideline. Dave Barnett? Mm-hmm. That's right. He sat there and told us about that, didn't he? They all have their stories on what happened. But this was like just two guys right back together in the pocket.

And I'm going to play you a little bit of audio from their broadcast. You tell me if you want to call BS on this or not. So we've got Kyle Shanahan coaching one team. We've got Sean Payton coaching the other team of NFL players. Quarterbacks on one team. You've got Tom Brady and Jalen Hertz. On the other one, you've got Jaden Daniels and Joe Burrow.

And this is from the start of the broadcast. There's no doubt. And I think one of the coolest things, at least for us, over the last three days, you're talking Sean Payton, Kyle Shan. Sean who? Peyton. You're talking Sean Payton, Kyle Shanahan, Jim Harbaugh, Robert Sal. We're talking some of the best football minds in the world.

They've spent a lot of time, weeks, studying film. No chance. No chance. There's no chance that Robert Salah is sitting down watching flag football film to prepare for this. There's just no way. So weeks. Hours a day. There's just no chance.

There's absolutely no chance. Like, wouldn't, if you are a 49ers fan, is he still the 49ers, D.C.? Salah? He's the head coach of the Titans now. Oh, my bad. Yeah, so even more. I think we have maybe bigger. Yeah, if you're spending time watching film trying to devise ways to beat the flag football team.

Yeah. I think that was all a lie. What if it was Shottie? Shottie would spend time. I think he might actually do it. We would kill him over it. So there's a new scene on this stage as far as a guy who's going to be the MC in your life for many, many, many years. This is Drewski, of course.

Drewski, who's got some funny sketches, but we're all going to get over Drusky. We just have to know now it's happening. If you don't hate him yet, you probably will soon. But he's like one of the emcees here. So he's on the sideline with who. the quarterback from Team USA who was on our show. Yes, sir, yes, sir.

And you from New Orleans? Yeah. I can hear it in that voice. Bonner, Ray. That's how Javier said it too. Bono Ray. You from New Orleans? Bonner, Ray.

All right, so tell me this. You know he got legends over there. How you feel about playing against some NFL legends? I mean, of course, growing up, I love watching some of them on both teams. But at the end of the day, this is my territory. This is my field. They're coming into different territory.

And we feel like we're going to show them what's the difference and show the world what's the difference between what they do and what we do. Okay, I like the cockiness. Get out there, man. Go warm up. Hey. And cockiness, it's just true, man. We're going to show why people undestimated. Straight up. Go warm up.

He's going to need it. Oh, my God, he's going to need it. Yeah, that was before the game. What happened over the next hour was... So the whole vibe was that these silly little... Dude, from Drewski... Flag football guys are going to learn what happens when you actually play with real people.

people. To KB. Greg Olson knew. Greg Olson clearly, he's got kids. He's around the game a lot. He's a scheme guy. Like Greg Olson clearly had come in prepared, but everyone else seemed to not be ready for this. You're going to play against Tom Brady? And it took, and I've seen this happen. Flag football is a deceptive game, and I've seen it happen. And it took about three plays to realize that this is a bloodletting in process. There was nothing America or is. excuse me, the other two teams could do to stop Team USA from scoring. They could score on any play they wanted. Was it 106 to 41?

Yeah, it was 88-22 at one point, though. But all three games or whatever. Yeah, it was a... That had NFL players on them versus the flag football team. And it could have been a lot worse. They scored every time, didn't they? Yeah. Yeah, they only didn't score because they knelt.

Yeah, right before the half. And they were trying... Every drive. Yes. There was nothing that they... could do to stop them. And they need some Christian Parker sounds like. It wasn't just

flag pulling like we talked about, but they were getting beat deep left and right too. They could not cover them. It's just... And our guy looked good? Our quarterback? He was unstoppable, dude. And he's like 35 now. He's not a young man, but they couldn't...

I don't know. I guess it's weird. I don't know how many guys there are out there, I guess, who just saw that for the first time and were like, what the... Because America was just running regular football plays, or excuse me, the NFL players. They're just running regular football plays. That's not going to work. So it seems like there was no preparation at all.

But then, like Jalen Hertz throwing pick sixes into coverage, there's nothing special about what the flag football team America defense did there. Jalen Hurst just do a pick. Yeah, he's not a good quarterback. That happened multiple times where you want to keep being like, Like, it's just the IQ of not knowing the game. And it's like, no, they just kind of passed the zone coverage off and Jalen Hertz fed one in there and it got picked.

Like, that's not anything special on flag football's part. So I was a little bit shocked watching this. And I knew you would feel vindicated as you should. A chance for validation. I don't think there's been enough trial and error with these NFL players. Because you're right. They just ran flood or whatever they have in their playbook. You could tell them watching what the Team USA offense was doing.

The demoralizing. For sure. And also they were trying to play their game. If you look at their touchdowns, they just out-athleted their guys with the OBJ catch, the Tom Brady cool play. I mean, I just don't think that they utilize their strengths at all. Have you seen the one Brady avoid the sack throw to the corner of the end zone? No. Is it great?

You'll get hard. It was incredible, dude. And at that point in the game, because I almost did. None of the NFL quarterbacks had avoided any pressure at all. Burrow, Daniels, Jalen Hurd, they were just getting sacked left and right. And Brady sidestepped a rusher, climbed the pocket, and threw a dart to the back corner of the end zone.

You need to see it. It was great, dude. And as excited as you got about that, that was followed up in pretty short order by what I consider to be the worst words in broadcasting. Down to the field we go again. Let's say hello to Kevin Hart. Give me Drewski. I know.

I know. They were 10-teving it. One day they'll be the same. They're getting there. They're getting there. So, yeah, you had Drusky and this is like, Hey, what's going on? This is Kevin Hart.

I'm standing here with the man, the myth, the legend. Of course, I'm talking about Joe Burrow. Cool Joe is what I call him. Cool is a... Okay, yeah, that's what you call. here's another one with your favorite. Let's go down to KH. Gronk.

I like Gronk. So when Brady's team got out there, they played second. They went to Gronk like three or four plays in a row. They were just feeding him the fact that nobody could cover him. And they realized they only need to get like eight to ten yards of plays. It was just Gronk run. Gronk turn round. And then they ran him to the like on a.

corner route. He caught the ball in motion, thing of beauty. And then when he was getting up on the sideline, slipped on some turf, and pulled his hammy. And they were all heavily miced up. So you could hear the second it happened. He's like,

ah, damn. Ah. And then he's over there on the sideline talking to talking to Brady. And he's like, we gave him one, babe. We gave him one. And now it's time for Drusky and grunk. It's just not enough to keep going, man. It sucks. I love competing. It was so much fun going. I was just

starting to get my engine going, man. Drewski, I just had too many bruskees. That's it, man. No, I got you. We got something we can shoot up in your knee if you need it. That's what I said. If you weren't listening. This ain't the NFL. You ain't got to, hey, we good. Come on. Okay. No, I mean, I'm just messing with. All right.

All right, man. We're all playing here. Uh, Drewski, appreciate. Cronk, it stinks, but feel better. You would never do steroids. Gronk's like, what do you? you're you're nark speaking of miced up you think Sean Payton's a chill guy to be around here he is at a flag football game that doesn't matter talking to the officials he's trying to call the official let's hear he says every flag's been on us I got an official telling me it's third down and at the staff he's saying fourth down down you guys got to be that's inexcusable that's awesome what did you relax God bless

Was he playing it up for this event? No, no, no. And I know enough to know. No, he's a hot head. That's fine. That's what makes him great. Every flag. Every flag's been on us because the-

You're holding them every. You can't pull their flag. I'll tell you why every flag's been on you is because Logan Paul is out here tackling people. Right. And like shit-talking. He's like, every flag's on us. Also, you say it's third. Then he says fourth, inexcusable.

It's a lady. She's like, I'm sorry. Sorry, Mr. Payton. I think I have a little bit of. Logan Paul here. It's coming on the far side. Hoosh has it. Is he in?

He is. It's a touchdown. And there's a flag as well. Okay. So this is now Hoosh yelling. Welcome to Flag football. Logan Paul comes over and throws his sunglasses off of his head. Off of Hoosch's head.

Sort of a wrestler. Hey. Hey. We're going for two. We're going to get yourself hurt. I got it. You heard who's saying this is flag football. Every single one of you little boys.

They're going to get a personal foulio, I think, on Logan Paul. He ripped Hoosha's glasses off and threw him on the ground. Anyways, yeah, Logan Paul's a clown, but it wouldn't have mattered if it was Logan Paul. It didn't matter if it was Vaughn Miller. They could not stop them. It wasn't NFL player or not. It was flag football player or not. So I just saw that Brady play.

And it was the first. drive. You need a minute? Oh, no, no, yeah. I've already calmed down. It's the first try. It was great. Yeah.

Like, yes, he's like a statue back there, but all of a sudden, move over and avoids the rush. Touchdown. Now their team is up, and it's the first drive of the game. Are they thinking it's a route there? Start out super positive. Yeah. Yes. And are the announcers like, all right, yeah.

Yeah, but you have to remember that was the second game. Oh, second game. In the first game, it was pretty clear. I mean, it was cool to see Brady, and it's like, okay, maybe he's going to be able to do a little something. They scored in two plays. The Team Jose guys scored, and it might have been one play, dude. They could score any time they wanted. They were doing things that I see all the time, and flag football people see all the time.

But if you do it in front of an NFL player, they were noticeably aggravated. Do you think this will be popular? Because it looks really. Okay. Do you guys remember a couple years ago when Carl Nassum came out as gay? And then a couple years after that, he was on a podcast and he was talking about the first time that he ever used the word gay on the field. And people were like, whoa, dude, not cool. It's a very funny story.

He's like, they kept running this little backside bootleg over and over on me. And after the play, I was like, stop running that gay-ass bootleg. And everyone was like, dude. And he's like, but I'm. if you see someone do what flag football dudes do to you and you're not used to it, it's impossible not to be like, that is effing gay, dude.

That is the gay, because it's just like salsa dancing, you're running karaoke, you're dropping your hips all the way to the ground, and then like, it doesn't look manly at all. But you can't stop it if you're not used to it. So it was a bloodletting.

However, I got a couple emails about this, one from Eric, who's a flag football guy, They just, they need to fine-tune the rosters also. There's a group of 24 NFL players that they could divvy up into 12s and could be way more competitive than these guys. The technique is a problem. These rosters are also a problem. It was amazing the-

Like go get Maris Leopal. Right. So this is name value to get you to watch this. You're not watching this if it's Maris Leophef. And they want to be competitive. but also entertaining, they need to find the middle ground. Like a guy who joined the booth for the third game to announce that he's been training with Team USA for 2028,

RG3. Okay. That's the sort of thing we need. You're right. Johnny Football. You're on a comeback story. You're going to get your people saying that that's taking the roster spot away from a guy who's really worked hard at flag football.

And that's possible that he will, but think about what I said, I don't think this is like Tiger going swimming with the Navy Seals for a day. Robert Griffin's training. He's become friends with them. He knew what was going to happen. He was in the booth like, dude, I've been working out with these guys for a few months. We all knew what was going to happen. And like if you get a guy like that, dude, I'm telling you, what if they get a Johnny football comeback story for the Olympics?

I'm in. I've seen, dude, he would cook if he got in shape. Who's just 35, 36 years old. Wow. Johnny football gets in shape. Let's settle down on Johnny football getting in shape. That's a great one, though. Dude, but I'm telling you, you don't have to get in shape for a long time.

You don't have to really learn a playbook. I promise you he's played. Well, you want to take that of the PGA tour. I think we've got a better shot at Olympic Johnny. I want Dan in a hell of a lot. Oh, I'm with you on that. Because he could do it. I turned it on to watch, and then I went from not carrying it

all to yelling, why is Luke Keekly out there? Because he was trying to chase receivers. Like, what? It's tough. You retired. Come away. I'm telling you the best version. Why is Luke Keekly out there?

I don't know. How did his name pop up? It's probably all guys who have deals with fanatics. And Greg Olson and Fox are fanatics. And Keekly and Greg Olson coach football together. But the part of the trial and error thing I was talking about is they were locked by position where Keekly is playing linebacker. Harrison Smith is out there.

there. You don't need positions. Yeah. Yeah, not at all. I mean, the guys that I play with, the South Lake guys, they're kids, are men now with children. The best version of that team, like the A team, played this team USA team right before I started playing with them, with whoosh, with these guys. They fared way better. They got doubled up. The South Lake team looks better than this team. Considerably better. It's a different game. So that's what I'm saying, dude, if we can just go get your favorite retread college players that are

that perfect height. Like, this is where you reintroduce Deuce Vaughn to the world. A good one. Kyler. They said that on the broadcast. They did. How about Turpin? Turpin would be great.

Would he be good? He's got to be small and fast, right? Yeah, pretty much. Not Devante Adams. Yeah. How about LVE? How about not? Am I not really following what you're saying?

I don't think so at all. Oh, hold on a second. Down to the 15. We go downstairs to Kevin Hart. That's not. All right. You guys want to do news? You want to do a little more weekend check?

What do we want to do right here? Let's do news. You say it? It's done. Here's Jay. And... I think you like the sponsor. Pancho.

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It's disgusting. You're not going to see those pit stains on these poncho shirts. They're breathable. They got SPF built into them. Poncho, outdoors.com slash dumbzone. 10 bucks off your first order. I got a bit of a Monday follow-up on the story we had last week. I told you that the man who crashed a truck into this very building,

the Fox 4 studios in downtown Dallas where the Game Day Men's Health studio is. The guy who crashed his truck into the front of this building almost 10,000. 10 years ago over really nobody knows schizophrenia. He was schizophrenia. He was mad about an accusation against a friend of his, thought the news was involved. Well, that guy was back in the news last week because he was arrested for abusing a corpse.

At the time, that's really the only detail we had, though, was that it was the same guy and that he was back in the news because he was arrested for abusing a corpse in somewhere around Bartonville. Well, now we know what happened. He threw a bucket of human remains that he had stole from a nearby cemetery over the fence of the FBI Dallas office. Maybe this would be a good little neighbors. Now you're interested?

Yeah, a little neighbor problem, throwing remains over the fence. So he stole, I would like a little more on that as well, if we can get a little more in depth. Exactly how, do you have to dig something up? Yes. Is there a... Yes. And then he's like, I'll just get like a hand. I'll throw it over there.

Yeah, they say he dug it up, but they... That's quite an effort. Yeah. That's a movie thing, right? Digging a hole. So hard, dude. Digging a grave. Like, you need a backhoe.

Incredibly difficult. To uprooted a tree. So his mom had called the cops. He tells his mom that he needed some money for a U-Haul and told her that he had a body that needed to be moved. And I guess his mom, not exactly on-the-team type, told the cops all of this. So she says no, he gets pissed off.

She calls the cops. And that's how they're able to start monitoring U-Haul, you know, facilities, and that's how they caught him. But he was also uploading wild stuff to YouTube. That's probably somewhat of a common thing in these type of stories these days, right? Just being part of social media? Not just social media. Updating and uploading videos to YouTube.

I always think that's an interesting look because it's someone who can't deal with reality, yet they are technologically savier than I am, I think. Fascinating and true. But yeah, he had made a YouTube video where he was ranting about someone named Elizabeth and how he would throw her remains over the FBI fence to try to draw them out.

Okay, I'd like to talk about his logic there. Yeah, don't know. I don't think you'd throw it over the fence into their terror. He just wanted him out there and then what? Then what we're going to do? There's no information on that. Yeah. He also had stolen an urn of ashes from Oklahoma City and was believed to have taken a coffin from a facility,

like a mausoleum in Denton. He's got a lot going on. Also... I wonder how he keeps organized. He was driving mom's car. And when mom, you know, clearly. capitulated to all police searches. They looked in the vehicle and he had searched cemeteries on the GPS in the car.

It's a lot of evidence, you know? A lot of evidence. I told you guys before that was a big crux of the poop dollar scandal. Was the parents involved got spooked when the cops showed up when I was in high school. They showed up at the baseball player's houses and said, hey, we hear your kids were pooping in a box and putting it on a dollar bill and film it. Where's the tape? The parents were like, yes, sir.

Gave it to them. Oh, your mom wouldn't have done that. Hell no. My mom spent the next like six months going full Aaron Brockovich trying to get it like dismissed, whatever the Birdville ISD version of that would have been. So these other parents just gave up the tape immediately. Oh, they were, oh, it's the cop. We do.

No. In that sense, I come from a, that's the libertarian, yeah, we were not trusting the government. No, sorry. Speaking of that, whether or not you trust the government. I do. There was a meteorite that rattled residents in the Houston area Saturday night. Oh, Houston, because I thought you were going to tell me about the Ohio one. No, what do you got?

There was one in Ohio last week. Mom told me about it. I was big on the news. I wonder if we need a weekly, you know, what's mom got? Oh, my God. Yesterday she told me I shouldn't be drinking protein drinks. At all? I was like, I got a protein drink for you.

Oh, yeah, Mom. It's Blake's. Blake will make it for you. So what's her logic there? She was telling me that something with the protein and if your body gets too much protein, then something happens, and then that actually can affect your, is it your kidney or your liver or something? And that's why you need to drink a lot of water.

And I'm like, well, I do that too. And then she said, all you need, she stated this as if this was a long time fact. All you need is two eggs per day. It has enough protein for the entire day, for any human. And it also has natural amino something and whatever, something that will help. the protein attached to your, like she had all this information. I was like, oh, okay. Because I was FaceTiming with her, and she saw me drinking a protein drink.

Aha. So, of course, she needed to weigh in on that. Yeah, but it was good. It was a good topic matter. Well, a woman in Houston who posted this on social media, she actually had, I don't know, galactic mass, like meteorite rock crashed through her home. There's like a football size rock or hole in the roof. Does insurance cover that?

Ooh, that's a good question. I would call it. Space insurance? Is that fall under act of God? Right. It's crazy, though. It looks like, I guess I've just never been up close with meteorite piece, but it looks like something from a sci-fi movie, like the rock.

Yeah. It just like falls in your house. But there were hundreds of people reporting seeing fireballs in the Houston. scenario. This is a big one. Yeah, sounds similar to the Ohio scene. Same thing happened. I mean, it's not that, like you said, it's only as big as a football, but it makes a pretty huge deal. And I mean, imagine, I just think of like, maybe it was bigger and then it burned up. If it killed somebody, what an insane story that would be. Like, I always think that about the shooting, you know, shooting bullets in the sky. That's how you get a donkey of the day.

That is how you get a donkey of the day. That's a great point. We had a massive gathering that had to be dealt with by the police over the weekend in Salina. Every once in a while, I will see a story that makes me miss being young. It doesn't happen very often. I'm generally very pleased, you know, life is good, parenting is fun. It's the good part. It's what you waited for. But when I see the story that due to it's spreading like,

wildfire on social media. There was a house party Saturday night in Salina where they think that 800 people showed up to arrest, reports of gunfire. Dude, this had to be just the best of times.

Save the date, summer event. Same stuff's going to happen. Dude, what if we just got... June 6th. Just did a house party. Just did an absolute rager or kegs, just TABCs, arresting people. Somebody's jumping off the house. Who's in the backyard?

We get a little bout going. Row and Wade. My buddy Roe, my buddy Wade. But you just know that this was insane. Like 800 teens and probably some of the guys who were in town from college at spring break, you know? Oh, yeah. That sounds great. And it just now on spring break can just go absolutely nuts.

And so what happened? Cops called? Yeah, I think it just made the news because it's that big of a party. Yeah. And they had a bunch of arrests. Are you saying, had you been 19-year-old Jay or whatever, 17-year-old Jake, you heard about this? I would have been upset. It wasn't at my house.

You would have headed to Salina. No doubt. And did such many times. And it's interesting for Salina. This ain't a party until Jake gets there. That's what Jake would say in third person. I still say that now. You know, but for the people in the town,

they've got to be like, that's just fucking good, clean fun. Come on. Yeah, especially recent. Everybody's closed. Nobody's doing jumping jacks. Nobody's getting forced to be jerks. There's just everybody, just a bunch of them having a good old time. It's no big deal.

It's just having a good time. This man, not having a good time. A 21-year-old guy in Arlington, living with his grandmother. Not ideal, but it happens. But apparently Friday is payday for 21-year-old Ron Trell Jackson. Payday on the allowance that he collects from his grandmother. And for whatever reason, she was unhappy.

Either the job had been unfulfilled, perhaps this was him asking for her to put something on it as a draw. any case conflict over the allowance, he kills her. Oh, no. Oh. Kind of an Angela concern. Yeah. Yeah.

This hits home. Bit of it. Officers responded to an apartment complex Friday afternoon, 68-year-old woman. They got to a heated argument, which led to the, okay, yeah. Because his room wasn't clean? It's a little bit confusing, but it says they got an argument which led to the loss of his allowance. which led to her loss of life.

Which led to him getting the money. Don't know. How do you kill her? Gun. They found a gun. When did allowance start in your house, Dan, for your children? Not for you. I don't think we ever had an official getting this amount of money every week.

Is it a bad parent thing to do? You looked at it that way? Are you already doing it? No, but it came up this weekend. From your wife or from your kid? I guess it depends on what they would spend the money on. Something came up she wanted to buy. And I just read this story.

I was like, yeah, you know, don't kill me. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think we ever had any official thing. I think we did a pretty bad job of parenting. That's why I can't wait to my... I hate when you say stuff like that. My next wife is we're going to have a... I'm going to do it right.

Nothing bothers me more than... So you're going to do it. allowance with your Jordan Hudson. Maybe. I'll let her decide. It's the Dan saying that it's not quite as annoying as I, as I've outlined before. The annoying parent thing I think is when they're like, I just wasn't hard enough. Like I just didn't, I just let you guys get away with too much. And I'm looking around like, boy, all my friends kind of think you were like the least lenient of all. Dan did a great job. His kids turned out great. It's a great. It's a all awesome. They're in great

shape, great schools, and he's like, what is the bad you? There's a great relationship with them. They are kind of mean. They are a little mean. I guess the reason is, is if he can't be happy with what he did, I have no chance. That's why it concerns me. I want to deeply

believe that he looks at himself and is like, I actually did this. And if he doesn't, there's no chance for me. Now, if they come back and need allowance from you or your mom at any point in the next little bit, let me No, I'll update the standings. A man in North Carolina.

Well, they need money now, yeah, all the time. Well, good point. A man in North Carolina, this is a case that's first of its kind. He's got to pay over $8 million. He pled guilty to criminal music streaming fraud. He was using AI music generators to make songs and then streaming them with bots. So the whole thing was made up. Earned a bunch of money off of royalties,

which, of course, in some sort of, you know, I know, it's not a class action, but you can be sued over that because it's taking revenue and royalties away from the pool for other artists. So he's got to give back the money he made. How much? 8 mil.

And he's got to go to jail. Oh. Does it seem like that should be illegal? Like you're, this is the playing field now? These are all the things available? All right, I'm going to use this. Like, I read a story about some lady who used AI just to write books. Mm-hmm.

And she wrote with AI and sold like 200 books last year, something like that. And it doesn't sell a lot, but it's kind of like the lady, it's lady porn books. Oh, interested. Yeah. And so they're real basic. They're real, I guess as far as AI is concerned, that's the easiest genre to replicate. Horny? Yeah, lady.

Horny housewife. Yeah. And she made a lot of money. Like no, not a lot of money on each book, but adding up all the books. Well, I think what got this guy in trouble is he was faking those numbers. He was using bots to stream those songs. Yeah, I mean, that, I don't know if Dan's defending that too or not. it's a full-scale scheme.

It's using AI to make songs and then making fake accounts to stream the music. It doesn't seem like it should be right, but I would, again, if it was your kid, you would be like, hey, wow. Yeah, you might be. Yeah, but I think the same thing about the, you know, ticket salesperson who was advertising. I'm still going to say it's. Yeah, good idea. It seems a little bit. Yeah.

But I think if you're Apple or your Spotify, you definitely have. an incentive, I would think, to police this. First of all, you don't want to pay fake money. You want to pay money to real people, uh, ostensibly who are going to keep paying. And they're not just being gamed into paying this other thing. Like, they're supporting your company. So you own it. I don't know.

I'm not surprised that they want to edge these people out of the pool. It's less money for the big company. They'll say it's because they want to take care of artists, but it's not. They don't want to get scammed. Yeah, artist. F's up their business model. I forget what radio station it was, but I heard one of their little generic voice guy things was all human all the time. Except for this.

I was going to say. No AI, I guess, songs, no AI DJs. It's authentic. So is that the next battle? It might be. We're real over here. There's a non-zero chance we have to use it as a selling point at some point. if we do this long enough.

Still human. Do I have to take my Grady song out? No. No, not yet. And here's a heartwarming story for Blake. No pets, no zoo animals involved here. Okay. But we have two longtime dart workers, long-time co-workers.

And one of them is giving a kidney to the other to keep him alive. Is it just like Craig Sager and his son? Was that bone marrow? It was bone marrow, which I believe is actually considerably more painful and onerous on the donor to spice up the Craig Sager story. But this is just a couple people who work together. Does it say what they do? What they do for DART? Yeah.

I mean, I think they work in what appears to be like a warehouse. Oh, fake. Fake? Yeah, why would they have a warehouse? Why does DART have a warehouse? They've got stuff they've got to, like, work on. Yeah. Trains and trucks and parts.

Must be nice to be protected back in your warehouse. You're not on the streets with these bus drivers and train drivers? Do you think the one guy's doing it just to get the time off that you get for... Hell yeah, he is. This long surgery. And he wants the news to come by and interview him. He just wants to be on TV. Yeah.

Screw this guy. He's a rail... One of them's a rail mechanic. Whatever. Oh, yeah. What is that? I'm sure that's real hard. I got to fix this one piece.

I need a half day to fix this. Big. A big piece of metal. I'll fix that. Backbone of the economy. Here you guys are. Does he stream? What's his TikTok? Yeah, no, I'm sure there's people.

It would be very funny if you found out that it was just a ploy to get time off, right? During March madness or something. I was talking to somebody at the ticket. It's like the bisectomy. Who's getting a... I think somebody at our old place of business is going to be having a baby. and they're going to get like, I think it was six weeks or, it was maybe a four week paternity leave.

Ah, shut up. And I was like, I swear Jake was like a week maybe? No, that's not even. I had three days. Yeah. You had three days? And I took my own personal vacation for those three days. Yeah, so he got zero is what he's saying.

I got zero. I used my sick time and then used two vacation days because of the NICU. So I don't know if they've changed their game over there or what? Well, if they have, I'm claiming it as R win. Yeah, sure. And I hope you had chance, Dan. I know you and Blake were telling me that it was one of your big dreams in addition to doing stand-up this year was for you and Blake to have sex on one of those gay sidewalks in Dallas

before they removed them. Hustle, today's the last day. Today? The rainbow sidewalks in Oakland. they will be starting to be removed today. God, thank God. I know. There's been a lot of shit.

I haven't been able to look at a guy without wanting to jack him off. Well, yeah, I drove. I drove downtown this weekend, and it just felt like there feels something wrong with this whole effing city. Yeah. And it's probably the gay street over in Oakland.

Yep. Good news, though. The powers and Paul. politicians at B, they got this out of here. So they'll be removed this week. You guys will have to do it somewhere else. Do people do that? There's no doubt, right?

The Dumb Zone News. Like and subscribe. That was a good news. Would it be a good bit if they just started having an orgy? Like, and they can't destroy it. Back to the pile. Yeah, they just made a big pile on the rainbow-colored side. blocks.

What if gay people, we need to find something that is so mainstream for gay people to adopt as their flag? Like there's no, like, there's no regular side. I'm just saying a symbol or something. Just because then it would be everywhere and. Happy birthday, thank you. We're trying to help the gay folks.

This thing is built on the backs of. Viewer male birthday is from Hello Fresh. Oh, no doubt. That is a food delivery service. It is a food delivery service. It's like they will deliver the ingredients. Yeah. You know how...

What's coming? Cuman? Yeah, it's cumin. All right, C-U-M-I-N. Always thought that's a very funny spice. Why? I don't know. I never tasted.

I always thought it would be... Salty, isn't it? I wouldn't go for that low-hanging fruit. But even now with all your protein desires? If you're going to buy... Ooh. But if you're going to buy that, that's like five bucks or whatever, and then you got to buy the other little thing for five bucks.

This is enough coming for an army. Right. I don't need all this. I don't need this. This is like a Rod Stewart-sized bottle. But what if with Hello Fresh, they'll deliver you like just the ingredients needed for this particular recipe. That's it. great recipes.

That's it. You no longer have to go to the store and say you just need one load of this spice or that spice. It's all right there for you at hellofresh.com slash dumbzone. You should let me get through, do one good read today. Dumbzone 10 FM. Get your 10 free meals and a free knife. Ooh. $144.99 cent value on your third box.

Offer valid while supplies last. Free bills applied is discounted at first box. New subbies only varies by plan. Hello Fresh. It's good stuff. Here's some birthdays. A couple viewer male birthdays. According to the group chat this weekend, it was B-L Brett Lieber's birthday.

Nice. Along with meat. You know, I'm in a fantasy league with a guy named Meat. No doubt. He seems like a meat, too. Like it's M-E-A-T-E. Oh, okay. That's fantastic.

Real name. So, yeah, meet. He's a Donovan guy, right? We saw the Great Donovan this weekend. No, he's not a Donovan guy. Okay. He doesn't know Donovan. Just, uh, but yes.

Lamb. I meant to mention that during our archives review. It was awesome to see Gordon and Donovan. I haven't seen the Great Donovan in so long, but I gave him a hearty embrace. It's very cool. So, yeah, happy birthday to BL. It is interesting that his son didn't, like, tell us or email us.

It's not surprising to me at all, but that might be just because I text with Jack a lot. God, stock keeps rising. Jack's a one-word reply. I love intern Jack. Me too. But he's just not the kind of guy to do that because Biel has given us a email for his son's birthday. Biel and Jack are different. They're just different.

One of them's a little more outgoing, perhaps. And, like, taller, the other one. Dear Emperor of the Eiff's Ditch. You think you'd be pretty proud if your son was a lot taller than you, or you'd be always pissed off. No, I think it'd be great. It probably says a lot about you as a person, how you react to that. I think it'd be great.

I would say also great, but, you know. Blake could probably say he'd better be. Right. Beat it into him. Blake's a tiny little guy. Yeah. Cute little buddy. Dear Emperor of the Eiffist Ditch,

today is the birthday of my older brother, Jameson Gray. Hey. You may know him from your little show. Please join me in wishing him the happiest of birthday's leaders are Caitlin Noblock and Hot Spice. He would like to hear a heart attack man joke, if indeed he has one. I love you from Brian. The Brian. Yes, shout out to good DF Ryan Payne.

And Ron Dane. Perhaps. Get him for the Olympics. What's he doing? It'd be great. Game Day Men's Health presents on this day in history. Ooh, I was texting with Dave from the Grapevine Game Day Men's Health. What did he tell me?

Looking good. Really hard this time? Let's see. Really hard this time. I gotta find it. Try not to come in with an erection. They just got some great things happening over there at Game Day Men's Health. All across the 12 locations.

Listen, man, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, but if you can afford peptides in your budget, you're a fool if you're not. I know it's not for everyone, but if you can, look into it. I feel like God. Yeah? Yes.

That's what Matt Grimm said. Matt Grimm was yelling at me to start the peptides. Just my joints, I can tell. Like, I just feel smooth. I would suggest giving it a shot. Akosh, peptide guy. Oh, yeah? So you want to headline the majestic.

Well, Game Day men's health is your place then. Game Day. Dot dumzone.com. Mention the dumb zone. You get 10% off your TRT for life. But it's not just a testosterone replacement. It's peptides. You know what I meant.

The vitamin shots, they're great. The wiener thing. All right, so I don't know the guarantee. I don't know the guarantees, and that's going to be important. But Travis Kelsey just signed a deal, Dan. With? The Chiefs. It's three years.

Three? So they say. Go away already. Well, obviously, it's to spread out the money on the salary cap. Yeah, don't know. No. But it couldn't even be $10 million a year anymore, could it? I'll say $10 just for the respect of Travis Kelsey.

Three years, $54 million. It's a good $18 mil. What's the guarantee? Don't know. That is your kicker. Or as I like to say, the G money. You do like to say that, Brackett, Dan. That makes me sound more like a real football guy, right?

Oh, yeah, gameday.dumzone.com. Monday, March 23rd is the day. On this day in 1775, Patrick Henry delivered an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he has said to have declared, Give me liberty or give me death. And everybody's like, oh, all right. Slow down there, Patrick. Settle down there.

That's crazy. I think he meant give me liberty or give these people that we will run to fight against the British to give them death. Like Patrick Henry's not out there with a gun, right? I don't think so, but I'm not a historian, you know? Like, in my mind, they were a lot more invested than like Lindsey Graham or, you know, Dennis Coussinich or something. But I don't actually know that.

You know, some of them were in the Army. On this day in 2021, a cargo ship, the size of a skyscraper. Suez. Ran a ground and became wedged in the Suez Canal. Hundreds of ships would be prevented from passing through the canal until the vessel was freed six days later. Big deal in your house, right? A very big deal in my house, but more importantly, a fertile ground for memes. Big ship, no turn was a really good time on the Internet.

It's funny to imagine the global economy can just come to a screeching halt over a, a situation akin to Austin Powers stuck in that hallway in that tunnel where he's just backing up and going forward and backing up and going forward. A great bit. Weren't all of our sex toys in there? Yeah, I think that was the thing. Is the Suez Canal the Strait of Hormuz? Is that the same thing? Yes.

So today is March 23rd this day in Dumb Zone history. So we were definitely in a disc track era, probably caused by Drake and Meek Mill. But in 2022, I had forgotten about this. Pusha T did one for Arby's dissing McDonald's. Does that ring a bell at all? Yeah, it does. And I actually know why. Because Puscher wrote, I'm loving it.

Oh. Okay. And I think he got maybe ripped off or something. Please don't turn this into a thing about how I don't know. I don't know. Okay. I don't know the details. But he did do some sort of like dish track on Arby's for or with Arby's for McDonald's not paying him.

There's a guy. Yeah, he wrote the I'm loving it. Yes. For sure. But I'm also correct on this one. He got 500K for I'm loving it. disgruntled by this, he later partnered with Arby's for a 2022 dish track targeting McDonald's Filo Fish. Very good.

Surgical. Let's see. In 2021, Dan said he shaved his armpits in college to avoid sweaty pits. Doesn't really work. I trim. Although it doesn't really work for me either, though. And I feel like this might be hard for me to describe. but in 2021, the ticket did a thing

where it put all of the personalities in a bracket. Get it because it's March and we got to do brackets. It's a good bit. Just to see who would win. Brackets are great. Go ahead. Just to see who would win. We didn't need to do it.

It was going to be Gordon and probably Julie, and I think it was. But wasn't this just like the tier system everyone got mad at before that? Like, I know I didn't need to be in there. Just your tier got. Your tear got mad. For sure.

We were going to lose in round one. We didn't need validation. Our validation was in our paycheck. Now you're going to throw this on it? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I've been in my own head about this lately, so I don't want to. But I guess that's what we do, right?

Tell people what's in our head. Yeah, what's in your head? Go ahead. Well, I mean, if you think about it, like, that whole thing is, I mean, Sir Roy said it, right? When he went on Gordon's Twitch stream kind of blackout? Like the kind of the tier system thing was like funny for two seconds. It's the sort of thing that Junior said in passing.

And it was like we moved on. But we worked for such an asshole that he thought it was like a great thing to like really hammer home. Like the people belonged in certain places. And for me personally, like, I don't know. The further I get away from working there, the more I realized like I did not want to work at a place like that. I didn't want to work at a place I thought it was cool to be like, yeah, I make X, but the people that work for me make 0.015X. And at the same time, I'm going to make sure they know their place and that's cool. That's fucking lame.

And it pisses me off the more I think about it. The other way to do it is like my wife works for a school, but she's like in the office, you know? So she may, like, if you think teachers don't make money, she makes like way less than they do. Yeah. She makes enough that we can just pay for insurance. She doesn't really take home money, like money, money. It's kind of crazy. So she makes so little.

But she has never, I mean, and this is saying a lot, that she won't stop talking about. Like, I've never heard her talk about something more because she talks a lot anyway. But it's like she loves to talk about how much she loves this job. and I guess they just they kind of like go out of their way to treat the lower level really low paid employees to make them feel good and I think it is a ploy to make to distract them from the paycheck which is over here and you don't make anything but like she got like an award or like she'll get recognized by the higher ups and then it's promoted across and then everybody knows that she's getting recognized type thing where like her boss didn't need. to tell everybody that this was for ride. Actually, what I'd like to do is I'd like to set up a thing where I have you, office worker, and I'm going to publicly have the most popular person in the school go up against you, and I'm going to have people vote just to see how much everyone actually, it's like, okay.

And then they showed the percentages by how much we lost. Yeah, hey, look, Job versus Deadie. Yeah. Or, hey, look, it's Mike Reiner versus Blake. Wonder who the people love. It's selfish. Well, and then that's a blurred line between because on-air content, funny is funny, and you can do that,

but then that's the debate. Is that funny? On-air content? Is your job on-air content? I would say if your job was... Is it staff morale? Going to be on-air content, you should have got into that. You know what I mean?

Because staff morale would be more your job. But my point is, though, that, yes, she's saying she works at a place because she didn't... The last place she worked was not like that. Or, like, always building... Like, if she had an idea, someone else might claim it as their own type thing. Whereas now, like, her boss will readily, like, tell everybody, actually, this wasn't me at all. This was her.

And then she feels great about it, and she'll come home yapping about it and everything. Which is like, oh, okay, great. It's a good trick, is what I'm saying. You can make all the weekend guys feel really good by, like, you can do sleight of hand to make you forget how little money you make. but if you all just glom onto it and accentuate that fact over and over, then it can... It doesn't always have to be that cynical either. Let's make promos about the tier one people.

Well, the tier one people should be brought up a little higher, I think. Yeah, but... Okay. Let's end on a higher bit of a note. Back in 2020, we were doing two segments of Tiger King. We were doing three segments a weekend check, just trying to kill COVID. But this was a good thing that came out of COVID. Here's Josh Lewin.

Shmooley the Doxand has once again, pooped in a neighbor's yard. Here comes the ever-patient daddy, poop bag in hand. Schmulli conveniently looks away, knowing full well he's been naughty yet again. Daddy flares the bag. He's got the poop. The poop is in the bag. And Shmooley, the Doxand is gone. Play-by-play of ordinary events.

That's what we thought was funny at the time. I'd like to check the tape and see if I... if I really thought it was funny or not. But in general, I think everyone, you get a COVID exemption. Okay, tomorrow at this very time. We're like, oh, man, Josh. You're going to pull out that tape? You should open for our gosh one day.

Where we reacted, we loved it. Yeah. You're saying we love that. Yes. Tomorrow. It was a tough time. Tune in. It was a really tough time.

Everybody was up against it. We were using glory holes. Hell yeah. Other birthdays today, Jason Kidd is 53. That means it today's Danny Bayliss's birthday. Oh, really? The fake Jason Kidd and Jason Kidd.

Well, I guess that's more Gordon, but... Yeah. Future GM? I say very complicit. You know what? I'll wait until tomorrow. I got all these LUCA numbers I want to look at. Boy, you want to talk so... Have you guys seen what he's been doing?

Jesus. my post-game activities Saturday night Damaris was or excuse me Friday night after the show Damaris was there as he knows Akash so Mavs are coming up

and then you've got a couple of other guys who are sports fans who are not from Dallas that are like damn just what's it like and I might have gone I will tell you that I was personally actually not close

to ordering a drink but there were two people there that were like, damn, dude. I was kind of worried about you for a minute. I was pissed. Like, when somebody's like, so what's it like, I just start going. Good thing Blake wasn't there.

He would have poured you the dream. I know, right? Come on, bud. Let's celebrate. Just hadn't gone back through the whole timeline again in a while. So what happened? I'm like, I did. I don't know. Kyrie Irving is 34.

Oh, good. Awesome. Yeah, I was looking at this this morning, like, could you mad like if that didn't happen we'd just be we'd be on the edge of our seat when's kairie coming back when's it like and now i don't even know if he's yeah like i would know the exact day or like we'd be asking how come they might already be back he might pushing for the playoff or pushing for the host in a series isaiah kiner fleafea is 31 bitch that has to be fantasy related.

No, he's just like, I don't know, he went to the Yankees and basically said the Rangers suck, the organization sucks. Oh. Everyone over there sucks. Screw you. World Series in the last couple years, Dan, before you have anything else to say. Mark Burley is 47. Today's war games winner.

Yeah, he had a fat-ass war, didn't he? A surprising 59. Yeah. Oh, my God. Damn, I didn't. Mark Burley. Wow. Clayton Tune is 27.

quarterback. Friend of Kevin Turner. He's from Carrollton. Ron Jorke is 75. Said Colin Kaepernick would be an MVP or something? I don't know. Had a crazy Kaepernick take. Brandon Marshall was 42.

Punted a ball at practice? Hilarious. To get traded. Yeah. Probably some mental health type stuff, but... Did have a 20-catch game. He was an insane, insane player. Maurice Jones Drew is 41.

Fat running back. Amanda Plummer is 69. She is Honey Bunny and Pulp Fiction. Catherine Keener is 67. She was the mom and get out, among many other things. Oh, man, I really like her. David Milch is 81. Mark that, Beth.

Creepy. Yeah. He created Deadwood on HBO. Great show. Actor Randall Park is 52. He's been in many things, but you may know him, Blake, as Asian Jim in the office. Okay. Good bit.

Kerry Russell is 50. Coppell Cowboy. Rapper Juvenile is 51. Absolute legend. Aisha Curry is 37. Oh, Aisha. She's a big nimbie, right? Oh, yeah, didn't Steph?

Yeah. Say we don't need that apartment over here. Why didn't even care? Just put a fence up. Build a moat. Your Steph. I was thinking about this, though. Where would you fall?

This is the classic nimbie thing, right? I had a news story about this we didn't get to. Like, you buy your house. I know where I'd fall. I would suck it up and be a good bleeding V liberal. But I think my wife would be pretty upset if they built a high-rise next to our house where you could look into our backyard.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that'd be a no-go. That's your real test of like, oh, okay, huh? You're a big, you're all for affordability, right? Build against, put your buy property next to an easement, I've heard. I'm sure there's people that use that, but there was a story in Houston about, like, people get very upset about these things.

Next week on neighbors. Perez Hilton is 48. Had a run. The gossip blogger. And Dumb's on birthday today. Reggie Watts, 54. I would love to go to a Reggie Watch show. I think that'd be awesome.

You ever see him? I've not seen him in person, no. But he knows bit. Oh, yeah, big fan. Big fan. Big fan, like of his talent. Rubier loves him. Oh, yeah.

I think that was probably a dream for him. Born in the Stay Now Dead, Roger Bannister. The first person, too? Five minute mile? Four minute mile. Four, damn it. Moses Malone, the first person, too? Dunk a basketball.

Go from high school right to the NBA. Oh. And Bo Diaz, the first person, too? The first Major League catcher, too? Catch all endings of a doubleheader. To die while installing a satellite dish. Yeah, just to trace it here. Former Indian catcher.

When guys were catching 18 innings in a day, they didn't have the last name Diaz. Megalicuddy. Yeah, pretty much it. Also born on this day, now dead, Joan Crawford. Dead in this day, still dead. Al Copeland, the founder of Popeye's fried chicken. Yeah, I was going to say, I knew the name. Obviously, you know our tie-in.

there. No. Well, he like owned Bill Soroy's boat or something. Like they raced for the Popeye's team. Oh. Yes, they were always around the fast life of Popeyes and his millions. Who's the guy that owns Super Salads? Good friend of mine.

Dear friend. Some more dear than others. Tim Taft. Tim Taft. That has to be a goal. We got to book Tim Taft. Dude, he's around. He's a local guy, obviously.

He's not dead. He was involved in some other really great franchises. I'm telling you. I don't remember, but let's see. Fiesta Restaurant Group. Here's Tim Taft. Can we do a mini GBL? Like, I want Tim Taft.

Like a local... Look, we had some names throughout this weekend. I've already heard back from one of them. Oh, you did? Oh, also Dead on the Stay Still Dead. Elizabeth Taylor? Bonar raised And Ken Howard

He was the White Shadow TV show And that's what happened You ever hear of the White Shadow On this day in history Well We can do it again tomorrow Let's try it

Audio from When we loved The hilarious Josh Lewandt Yeah I'm very excited Adios Mofo We gotta go before this becomes a zoo

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