The Press Box - A Report From the Tom Brady Roast, Pat Beverley Stiffs a Reporter, and Kristi Noem’s Memoir-gate.

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Bryan and David start by recapping Bryan’s experience at the roast of Tom Brady. Then, they discuss the reports and negotiations around the upcoming NBA media rights, and what it could mean for the ‘Inside the NBA’ on TNT (23:37). They also talk about Milwaukee Bucks guard Patrick Beverley not allowing a media member to participate in a media scrum for not subscribing to his podcast (29:11). Later in the Notebook Dump, they talk of Kristi Noem being “misquoted” in her memoir, followed by The Old Guy’s Still Got It, The Tad Friend Rule, and Only in Journalism (39:02).Plus the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And together we host The Big Picture, The Ringers Film Podcast for new releases, career retrospectives, director interviews, movie drafts, top fives, and so much more. Twice a week, we break down the latest releases, argue about whether movies are doomed, and debate our modern film canon. Listen to The Big Picture on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David?

Yes. I'd like to tell you about a special event I went to in L.A. last night. Oh. The Tom Brady roast. Oh my gosh. Not what I was expecting. Actually, I didn't know you were there. But if you're just going to go with L.A.

events, that wouldn't have been the first thing they came to mind. I can't believe you got a ticket. I got a ticket to what they unfortunately called the Groat. The greatest roast of all time. And it came because my wife and I were looking for tickets to this Netflix as a joke comedy festival, which is sprawled all over L.A. for a couple of weeks. And I'm like, well, You know, I do talk and write about the media.

And Tom Brady is a sports announcer. Therefore, credit card, Tom Brady Roast. I am absolutely in. I arrived there at the forum at about 5 o'clock yesterday. I got there two hours early, dude, and there was a huge line of people to get in. Lots of couples, some kids, which would prove to be kind of a weird decision by the parents. And this was observation number one. What should you wear to a celebrity roast?

I don't know. This is an ongoing issue with kind of basically every public. I don't even know a category to put this in. But there are many events such as this, particularly in Los Angeles. Big cities all around. But L.A. is probably amongst the biggest cities in the country. By far, it was casually dressed, right? I mean, there are people that dress up in fancy suits.

every day, but a lot of people are just going to work in, like, you know, cutoffs in a tank top. And a lot of the time you don't, especially in a big city, you don't go home between your, whatever you're doing during the day and whatever you're doing at night. But then when you're going to one of these things, you know, you're going to be surrounded in public by people in tank tops, but the people on stage are going to be wearing tuxitos or, you know, suits or whatever they're going to wear. So what do you do? I don't know.

It's an eternal question. I think you, you know. You dress for the job you want, not the job you have. So if the job you want is to be a roaster, maybe you dress up. I don't know. So all the guys that showed up wearing Brady jerseys want to be the quarterback of the Patriots with Tom Brady more specifically? I mean, do they not?

I wouldn't wear a Brady jersey, but I would take that job. We did have that kind of unstable situation where people were wearing the Tom Brady number 12 jersey, but their own name was on the back. Oh, yeah. It was a little weird. I did see one guy in an Aaron Rogers Jets jersey as well. Waiting in line. I'm like, well, that guy's going to be a heckler.

Maybe he was just wearing that anyway. I don't know. You're just wearing that around on a Sunday afternoon. It's like, whoa, it's time for the roast. I got to go. Do you think he was wearing it because that's like his favorite or only football-related shirt and he thought that would be appropriate? I have no idea.

It feels like a troll dude, Jets jersey to the Tom Brady roast. So I'm sitting up in the seats as in like where people watch the Lakers play at the forum. Second level right at the front of the second level. And the layout of the thing was fascinating because there were a bunch of us in a similar position. And then right around the dais where the roasters were, there were these semi-fancy banquettes set up that were filled with everybody from Jim Gaffigan to Dana White to I believe I saw cousin Sal down there as well. So we're sitting in the seats and we're watching people watch the roast,

which was a very funny way to consume things. Yeah, you're, yeah, there's like, you're, you're watching the roast, but also you have bird's eye view of the, the actual invited guests of the roast. Yes, the VIP guests, which was kind of a different way to watch an event. Five o'clock comes and they make an announcement over the speaker that, one, nobody should be offended by anything that's about to happen.

I believe the term was cancer culture bullshit that was used. What? We'll get to that more of that in just a second. And then number two, we should refrain from going to the bathroom because this would be broadcast live on Netflix. I seriously doubt if I had stood up and gone to the bathroom that anyone would have noticed watching the live stream, but I guess there was the people in the banquettes that they were worried about. I thought that was kind of funny. Here is observation number two for you from the Tom Brady Celebrity Roast.

Did we know that an entire celebrity roast is read from a teleprompter? I mean, every single person that speaks is that that's the revelation? Not just Rob Grancowski's material or Julian Edelman's material, which you'd probably expect would need to be up there somewhere. But like all of Kevin Hart's material. Yeah. All of Nikki Glazer's material line for line would be from a prompter. I mean, it doesn't shock me too much, right?

They write or co-write whatever of the material and then they perform the material. But this isn't a Broadway show. They don't have to memorize everything. That's kind of asking a lot of people for one night at work, right? No, not a scandal. Just did we know that? Yeah. No on the prompter.

I thought it was kind of interesting. observation number three I went back and watched a little bit of this special on Netflix when I got home last night and they left out something that was very important that we got in the arena which was there was a big screen up above the stage and at all times on the screen

we got two views one of the roaster and one of Tom Brady's face just continuous they didn't have to cut away they didn't have to go to a two shot it was a continuous look at Brady's face. And dude, if you ever wanted to see three hours of continuous frozen smile from Tom Brady, I mean, I think this is the hardest part of enduring the roast if you're him. There'll be jokes.

There'll be a lot of jokes about your ex-wife and who she's dating now and your crypto dabbling and all that kind of stuff. But just think if we were doing the David Shoemaker roast, wouldn't you constantly be worried about the expression that you were making, joke to joke? Yeah. Like, should I laugh at this? You got to make a decision, but yes, you can decide that ahead of time. For sure. Like, if it's just crushing me, okay, that's fine.

If it's crushing my ex-wife, okay, you know, maybe I smile a little less. But what if it's what we would call blue or risque material? Okay. Is anybody ever? laugh at that? Has anybody ever gotten in trouble at a roast for just laughing uproariously? I think the worst they could say is like, I mean, they just say he has a good sense of humor, right? Or he has a sense of humor, which is, you know, I think Tom Brady's goal here. Well, this is what's funny about this.

It's like the people at the roast are usually comedians or the people we're talking about are comedians who are kind of immune from everything. But Tom Brady's a little different, right? like he's a famous entity outside of comedy. He's going to be on Fox next year. He's a guy. It was just funny to see him one foot in that world where anything goes and one foot in the world of television,

of potentially buying part of the Raiders, all of his endorsements. Every time I saw that smile, I'm like, he's figuring out what he can do. do. He's figuring out what's okay for Tom Brady to laugh at moment to moment. Yeah. Yeah. It was a joke that was like tangentially about Texas's abortion policy. I think Jeff Ross made it. I'm just like watching Brady like, is this okay to laugh at? I don't know.

Observation number four, David, do you think Tom Brady in his adult life has ever had as little control over things as he did during that three hours last night? No, and I think that's certainly not why he went into this. And we can talk about the motivation in a moment, but that might be the most significant part of it, right? When someone, when, you know, the AI version of Walter Isaacson writes Brady's biography in 50 years, this might be the turning point where he realized he doesn't have to have control for everybody to have a good time. I really want to hear the interior monologue of AI Walter Isaacson. was going through Brady's mind at that moment. It came to a forewin, Jeff Ross, the self-described

Roastmaster General. Do we capitalize Roastmaster General when using it in print? Wait, I think other people call him that too. But I guess self-described. Okay, who has been dubbed the Roastmaster General. He is. Made a massage joke about Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots.

Who was sitting there? Mm-hmm. And Brady gets up, walks over to the podium, and says, don't say that shit again. That's always funny, isn't it? Where people draw the line. Did you hear Bill's theory that that was staged? It could have been.

Not just that it was not that like, like, I mean, not that just for the, not just for the social media reaction, but basically just like to diffuse all future massage jokes. Like we're just going to, we're going to do this one time and it'll take it off the table for everybody else. So I'm going to say this because we know everybody's thinking about this with Bob Kraft.

at least in a roast environment. I'm going to do one mild version of it. You come and cut me off and then no one else will go there. That's the theory. Yeah, or at least, or maybe, I mean, maybe it's just like no one's allowed to go there. But the only way that we can legitimize this is to make a spectacle of it once. And then that's the rationale for no other comedians going there. It makes sense because in some of the aggregation, I saw that this was caught on a microphone.

I mean, Tom Brady standing up on a stage at the forum and walking over to the day, which is very miced and saying this, he cannot possibly think that would not be caught on a microphone. No. But again, it's funny where people draw the line, right? Lots of jokes last night about race and sexuality and all kinds of things.

But this, this true thing that happened with an NFL billionaire, this is where we must stop the roast in its tracks. And to get upset about it, you're almost entirely missing the point, which is the joke is not about, is a joke is an accusation towards Robert Graham. It is an acknowledgement that when people think of Robert Kraft, they think of this thing.

Absolutely. I was thinking of constituent parts of a celebrity roast as I was sitting there last night. There's the cutting of the celebrity down to size. There's the joy you get when you watch comedians in each other's presence. Oh, yeah. So Kevin Hart, who was the host last night, very funny, by the way, is not only making fun of Brady, he then goes up there and makes fun of Jeffrey Ross and Nikki Glazer

and then they make fun of him Will Ferrell came out as Ron Burgundy it was all these just comedians sort of crossing back and forth Yeah Part of the fun was sports and comedy coming together in the same place Yes

There's a lot of crossover but it's not always a you know Chocolate and Peanut Butter sort of harmony No and if you want to talk about the stand-up of Julian Edelman and Gronk. I'm happy to go there.

I thought they were fine. I thought Edelman had a sort of rustic charm to what he was doing. I mean, he had some good jokes. And Gronk seemed like, do you have notes on Gronk before I dive in? I mean, first of all, Gronks seemed to be deviating from the teleprompter more than just about anybody else. Randy Moss, too. So I could see the teleprompter from where I'm sitting.

but I don't want to look at it too much because then I'm just ruining all the jokes one second before they happen but it was paused for big chunks of Gronk's address and Gronk was another one I mean, gronk is on Fox. I know we think of Gronk is kind of a citizen of the world but he has a television job

and he was, you know, making some jokes and I'm like he knows this is being shown to the world, right? Yes. Ronk is aware that this is on Netflix? It's funny because I don't think about, I don't think of Grunk as a television personality. And I think that is probably the central allure of Grunk that he is,

you know, that he deflects any sort of categorization. I'm not sure you can really hurt his brand because he's got the TV job because he is an anti-public figure sort of. Also, to me, gronk just seemed like he doesn't have many funny friends in his real life and that like whoever he was working with to write these jokes, he was just completely enraptured by, you know?

Like I did, like, this was just that, like, the, like, the, like, the, like, hearing these jokes in like, you know, in the writer's room just probably, it was probably the greatest moment of his life and the ability to go out there and tell them as if there is own, it's probably the greatest, the second greatest, you know, it's like, what, like, why have any filter at all when I get to share this madness with the world? How many gronk brothers do you think we're in the gronk writer's room? That monologue was put together. Other big thing that happened last night, and this was in a very stagey show business way,

but it was the healing of the New England Patriots. Oh, yes. Bill Belichick shows up. He does a monologue. We mentioned that Bob Kraft is there. Brady and Belichick did a shot together. Belichick and Robert Kraft did a shot together with Kevin Hart's encouragement on the stage. Yeah.

And it was interesting to me because obviously we've talked about on the show before. Like there are three stories to what happened with the Patriots. There's Bob Kraft story, which you can see on Apple TV Plus. There's Bill Belichick story, which will allegedly come out in a memoir sometime. And then there's Tom Brady's story, which we may never quite know in full detail. Sure. Obviously, a lot of friction beneath the surface, a lot of hurt feelings. but last night was in a way, if a roast is an unsafe space by its nature,

it was the safest space to paper over all that. Yeah. To come together, right? Just the outrageousness of it made it the perfect place for them to come together. Oh, we're just all making jokes here in this show busy way and at least pretend that all is forgiven and forgot. I don't even know if there's a big distinction between pretending it's forgiven and it being forgiven, right? Sometimes you just got to say something out loud, right?

Sometimes you got to, or in the case of a celebrity, here are the rapturous response from the crowd or that, you know, the great reviews that this is inevitably going to get to know that, like, it's not that big of a deal. You're talking about not, we'll never hear Tom Brady's side of the story. I think that's probably true because I don't think there's ever going to be a moment where there's any upside to him, for him to tell the story, you know, I mean, unless he's, you know, desperately in need of a $20 million book deal when he's, 50 years old or whatever, but like,

and even then are we getting the truth? Who knows? I think for all of Tom Brady's detractors, I think his place in the, in the, you know, New England Patriots soap opera is not really in question. You know, I mean, unless he was out there,

well, I can't really make any jokes about Tom Brady and the New England Patriots because it'll sound too much like something that really happened. But, yeah, I think that there's just the, the, in terms of sports, sports, he's sort of bulletproof, right? I mean, it's just like he was this, he was one of the greatest, if not the greatest quarterback of all time. And he was, you know, whatever he did, that was part of that job. The interesting thing is that his new job is as a totally different description.

And he is no longer a god. He now needs to be humanized while also being a god. And that's why you go and do something wild like setting yourself up for the roast. Boom. That's it, man. You were asked about motivation earlier and that's it to me. He has scoreboard not only over the NFL but over humanity. I won the most rings. I'm handsome. I've got tons of money.

I'm Tom Brady. But the one thing he is not at this point in history is particularly human. Yeah. He's not a tangible human person. Like he's admirable but not likable. You know, like and I don't mean he's like dislikable. I just don't have a lot of context

there, you know? Yeah. He needed to be more invincible. And last night, making, letting people make three hours worth of jokes about him. Yeah. You're like, okay. Okay. I see what you're doing here. Mm-hmm.

And I was reading the ESPN rundown this morning and I'm like, all the stuff people would have said if we had not heard from Tom Brady until he calls that first game with Kevin Burckhardt in the fall, a lot of stuff got out last night. Yeah. release of tension. That humanizing all the jokes about Giselle, all that kind of stuff. I think it, if not totally neutralizes it, it definitely pushes a lot of them to the side. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like the M&M's last performance in eight mile or he just like runs himself down.

He's like, no, what do you got to say? Tell these people something they don't know about me, right? I can't do any of the jokes from last night's roast without sounding like Michael Scott doing the Chris Rock routine on the office. One of your many failed podcast podcast pitches. Brian does Michael Scott does Chris Rock. Brian does famous comedy routines.

But a couple final observations for you. Jeff Ross was announced upon his entrance to the stage as being quote, straight from hell, which is a birthplace I had not heard outside of professional wrestling. I'm going to say, you've heard it before. Straight from hell. thought the football people by and large really held their own last night. Yeah.

Bill Belichick was funny. Drew Bledsoe was funny. You mentioned Julian Edelman and Gromk. Bottom three roosters last night for me, Randy Moss, Kim Kardashian and Ben Affleck. Some words so funny. Sorry. Not funny.

And then at the very end, David, Tom Brady himself gets the mic. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you remember this, but there was a really, really random headline in Radar, which is itself a really, really random publication at this moment.

But Radar had a headline last year when Brady was pushing off Fox for a season that said Tom Brady to chase stand-up comedy dream. Oh, yeah. You got like a day of Twitter jokes. As soon as he took the mic class, I was like, oh, my God, here is Tom Brady's chance.

This is his big moment. To chase his stand-up comedy dream. I was also looking at the prompter when Brady was talking, and there was definitely a like parenthesis confused, like read this in a confused voice. I wish I had that in life. That would be great. What was funny last night is, of course,

this is what you do at the end of the roast, right? I get my revenge on everybody who's had the mean jokes about me. Yeah. He plays the heel. And by playing the heel, he leans into, I am more successful than all of you people are. Yeah. I wonder if that's the last time we ever see Heel Tom Brady

because I don't think that's the most attractive Tom Brady Well, no, I mean, it has its place in the roast Place in the roast world But don't you think by the time we see him on Fox And all the future television commercials, he will have retreated to student And football Tom Brady Probably so, although it would be incredibly funny If he was just like, who's he calling games with on Fox?

Kevin Burckhardt. Oh yeah, Burckhardt. That would be, wouldn't they be incredible? funny if any time that like Brady just misdiagnosed a play call or forever, whatever, any other reason was shamed if he was just like, Burkhard, here's $100 go get me a coffee, you know? What have you done with your life, pal? Yeah.

I would, uh, I would watch that, uh, television broadcast. Burkard, I will pay you a million dollars to shut the hell up right now. Oh my God. People would love that. Final note. I'm walking out of the form after three hours. This was a very, very long event.

Not a lot of slack periods, given that it was three hours, but it was three hours, about 245 by the time Brady got on the stage. Yeah. I'm walking out. A long time to not go to the bathroom. I did not go to the bathroom, full disclosure. Walking out of the forum and these two guys are with me, right? So I'm just surrounded by people in Patriots jersey at this point.

I don't believe these two had one, but I'm surrounded by those kind of people. The people that came to see Tom Brady, TV. 12 in the flesh. And I swear I'm not making this up because it's a convenient button to this segment. The two guys walking out with me who are on the phone trying to get their car service to come find them.

One says to the other, dude, that was my Super Bowl. Had themselves a fine time at the Tom Brady Roast. Yeah, that's your real audience, right? All the Pat's fans who've been making these jokes to each other on the couch for the past five years anyway. Oh, my God, it's an absolute dream. And you and I should note here, we are non-denominational Tom Brady observers.

We are not Pat's fans and the Pat's did not really hurt either one of us all that much. No. Just appreciate him. Watch him. Yeah. See how he grows and chases that stand-up comedy dream. All right, David, coming up on the press box, the future of Inside the NBA, Patrick Beverly Stiffs a reporter.

A politician with her eyes on the vice presidency says, she was misquoted in her own memoir. And does the old Autour still got it? All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis David Shoemaker and producer Isaiah Blakely here,

who's sitting in for Brian Waters. NBA playoffs are marching along, David. We got Nick's Pacers game one tonight, along with Nuggets, T. Wolves, game two. And we are still churning through this NBA rights story. Mm-hmm. ESPN's got a piece of the rights that kick in after next season. Amazon's got a piece.

Yeah, yeah, just quickly jump in to say this. They have the outlet. What is the term of art they've been using? They have the broad strokes, an outline of a deal. The only in journalism where you're looking for is the framework of a deal. But the framework of a deal absent, like, I think all the media reporters, if the framework of the deal was like, you get the NBA on. exclusively on Tuesdays and Thursday, I feel like that would be reported.

The framework of a deal absent any sort of concrete information is not a deal. Now, I don't doubt that there will be deals with these companies or why would this be leaking out. But this is a really loose definition of framework, right? It's like if we're just talking about filling, if we're having our lawyers of you the contracts, you think that would be the substantive information would already be reported. I agree, especially with Amazon. You know, ESPN, as fuzzy as the details have been where we've heard, and Bill mentioned this on its pod, they're going to get the finals every year. Yeah.

That's the key detail there. Maybe they have fewer games, but they're going to get the finals. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Amazon one is weird because it's like, this is a huge deal, man. Amazon's in on the NBA, which is a huge deal. But is it the Thursday night football? Is that what we're talking about?

Or, and again, we've heard these fuzzy details. Will they have finals games or excuse me, conference finals games mixed in, playoff game. mixed in. How many of those? When do those kick in? Like that's what's key. The point I'm just trying to make, I guess, which I wasn't making at all, is that it feels like that the media rights conversation is in itself a sort of PR or push slash negotiation tactic for the NBA because stories about frameworks just seem to be more significant for driving up the price or spurring on other pieces of the negotiations than it's actually meaningful to any fan or NBA employee.

I think 1,000% especially when you get done to, uh-oh, there's one package left. It's going to be yours, Turner or is it going to be yours NBC? Boy, isn't that helpful in this whole conversation.

Speaking of which, inside the NBA has been one of the big subtopics of this negotiation. Turner could lose the NBA. That's certainly on the table. And then people say, wait, what happens to my favorite pre-and-post game show?

that stretches hours and hours into the night after an NBA game is. Well, we got a report by Tom Friend in Sports Business Journal that says, thought that the whole show was going to transfer seamlessly to Amazon or somewhere else, maybe not. Friend writes that Ernie Johnson would remain at Turner, according to sources. He says, sources said Johnson, who has been the lead host for inside the NBA for 35 years, quote, would stay at Turner and likely continue his role as the lead studio host for the NCAA men's basketball tournament as well as do MLB play by play. He is Turner Sports, period, a source set.

Source also tells friend that Shaq may not do TV if Turner loses the rights and may just go do his many, many business things. So maybe we have elements of inside the NBA transferring somewhere else. first of all, we'll see. I think is the important thing there. Shaq saying he might just do his other businesses. It sounds like a negotiating tactic out of Charles Barclay's playbook. I'm going to retire. Yeah, exactly.

Because, yeah, I mean, who knows? I mean, yeah, like, Ernie is, this postseason, I don't think there's anything he's losing his fastball at all. But there was, there have been a couple of times watching him already this postseason where I'm just like, how many more years does he have? Like, yeah, like, he's, he could comfortably do this for the rest of his life. He can't do this for 30 more years or whatever. But like, you know, there's a lot of announcers that just will dip out as soon as they,

in early, I mean, he's made tons of money, you know? And if he can, and this might be the perfect opportunity for him to sort of gracefully bow out. Oh, I can just kind of be a studio host and not have to be the sort of night and night out face of this, of this sports operation. Right. that doesn't shock me too much. But like I said, the beginning, let's just put a pin in this until we see how many millions of dollars

Amazon's going to fork over to try to get this team to stay together. Well, and Turner could also still get the NBA, and this is not a conversation. And Ernie Johnson could be a Turner person and also still be an inside the NBA person. It is interesting when they say Turner person because his dad worked there, Ernie Sr.,

I mean, he is very much of that company. An interesting question is, what is that company? Does it resemble in almost any way the company that he's worked for for three plus decades and that his dad worked for? Yeah. When it's getting passed around, you know, through various media mergers like a, like a monopoly piece. Mm-hmm. I don't know.

That brand loyalty was interesting to me. Another big story from the playoffs, David, Patrick Beverly. Oh, Lord. So the Bucks got closed out. in six games by the Pacers on Thursday. According to Shams Sharania, a fan started yelling Cancun on three at the Bucks Huddl. It's become a very overworked NBA joke. Patrick Beverly, on camera, throws a ball into the stands, apparently misses his

intended target and hits someone else in the head, gets the ball back and throws it again before he's restrained by teammates. So that happens. And then after the game, Patrick Beverly is in the locker room. Now, naturally, reporters are going to want to talk to him about two things. One, the whole throwing the ball into the stands part of his evening. And also the bucks getting eliminated. ESPN producer Melinda Adams was attempting to interview Beverly when this happened.

All right. for I'll subscribe to my pot. Do I subscribe to you? I do not. You can't interview me then. No disrespect. Jamal is here. You subscribe?

You subscribe? Okay, cool. Again, there were a couple times within a bucket or two. In previous games, you all have been able to kind of get over that hump or maybe. Was it anything they did in particular? Was it just one of those where the bucket didn't go down?

There wasn't the stop. They made one. What kind of prevented that you all from be able to get over like you haven't in the past? You move that mic, please? Or just get out the circle, please, for me, please, ma'am. If you're not subscribed to my pod, I appreciate that. Thank you. Well, I guess that's, you know, another alternative to be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star review on iTunes, right? The worst subscribe to my podcast advertisement ever.

Yeah. Yeah. He could have at least just like showed her how to like just say, yeah, well, let's do it right now. Let's show everybody how easy it is. Remember when that was the big push for podcasts? It's just like, can, like people do little PSAs convincing people how easy it was to subscribe. People didn't see this, by the way. Patrick Beverly was wearing a knit hat that also said subscribe to the pod.

Yeah. In case the message was missed by anybody. I got a couple questions about this. Was the assault of viral marketing ployal? for the podcast? Is that your question? No, it is not. My question was, let's say you're one of those reporters who's standing there. And Patrick Beverly is making this absurd ask of a reporter. In this case, it's Melinda Adams of ESPN. He will not talk to her unless she subscribes to his podcast. Right. Did you keep asking questions to Patrick Beverly? Or is that a really good time for a walk away?

I mean, you're talking about journalistic ethics here. I'm not talking about so much journalistic ethics is journalistic friendship and, you know, working as one. Again, I'm not even... Should everybody else have just walked away? I was like, listen, whenever that... Whoever asked that next question, I would have just walked away out of sheer boredom when that question got asked. I mean, that would have been the appropriate time of the walk away. dude just threw a basketball at some

innocent person's face and we're just like what do you have about them defending their home court out there? I mean look you and I you and I at least in the context of this podcast are not out gathering raw materials like beatwriters are we're sitting here in the confines of our home commenting on the raw materials gathered by others

and I understand there's like a big moment if you're in a Bucs beat writer and your editor says hey what did Pat Beth say about the whole, you know, night and whatever happened, you're like, yeah, well, sorry, he wouldn't talk to somebody. So I just walked away. Yeah. I'm not sure that's a valid excuse in everybody's newsroom.

And I wasn't there. So I don't know the circumstances of exactly what was said and when and everything like that other than what we've watched. But I don't know, man, you know, can also just be like, all right, good night. Yeah. I mean, unless your editor and then hypothetically. is Pat Beverly's father or Doc Rivers. I'm not sure that like anybody really cares what he has to say

when he's not outside of talking about his ball throwing incident. He did tweet about it later too, right? And saying the fan was riding him and stuff like that. And also offered a kind of some words of contrition, which he later did to Melinda Adams herself. The other point about this is this is yet another reminder that the thing we have going on, we meaning sports writers with athletes in the locker room,

is completely unique. Yeah. They do their thing. And then we have the right to question them in the locker room afterwards. Yeah. So if there's an actor that makes a movie, I don't have the right to question the actor afterwards, except in the guise of promoting the actor's film, right? Like an actor's not just going to pick up the phone and talk to me on a Tuesday,

unless there is something very direct about, I am promoting my movie. I will talk to you while promoting my movie. That's how it happens. What you're seeing here is like, oh, you didn't subscribe to my podcast while I'm not doing this interview. Sports writing in this weird place where we get to talk to the athlete. We just have a right to talk to them. It's in the collective bargaining agreement.

Moving, at least in the case of Patrick Beverly, toward this model of, oh, but if we're not promoting my podcast here, what are we doing, talk? well I mean in that situation it wasn't even just that it was she was he was using her as a tool to promote his podcast right I mean he knew that that clip would get out he did I'm sure but it's just funny to me right because again it it just exists in this very very strange spot that almost nothing else sort of like a public servant exists in yes athletes are going to reject more and more just reject this idea like wait what am I doing? Why am I not have the, you know, the, the spoils of every other famous person? They're going to just walk away from all this stuff. Two more quick ones for you here. We talked on Thursday's podcast, David, about student journalists covering the protests. About the war in Gaza. I mentioned that with Andy McCullough on the pod on Thursday. New York Magazine has a new cover story, which is an oral history of the encampments and the police crackdown at Columbia.

Oh, yeah. Magazine says was written and photographed entirely by the undergraduate staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator. Which is very cool. There's a funny tweet I read on Thursday where somebody who's like, you know, all the journalists calling me, this is somebody at the J-School of Columbia, you're all calling me for interviews. But you could also, you know, assign a story to all these would-be journalists. Yeah. Good for New York Magazine for doing that.

And then a note for you on Sports Illustrate. since you and I participated in the is-SI dying again genre earlier this year. They've got a new publisher, Minute Media, which replaced the arena group as their previous publisher. I heard this week that not everyone, because I saw Rohan Nodkarni tweeting he was leaving in April, not everyone, but many, perhaps most of the writers and podcasters that made up what we knew as good as I have gotten offers from the new publisher and are carrying forth, writing and podcasting, as they were before. Great. So the thing we knew or know as good as I has survived largely, not entirely, not without

emotional hell and torment, et cetera, but has largely survived intact after all the awfulness earlier this year. Great. Well, here's the hope. hoping that they succeed and then we won't be having another is SI dead segment in the next six months. But I'm not optimistic. Yeah, we don't know much about what the new publisher is going to do. We don't know about whether the union support and protections they had in the old place will carry on.

But it's probably worth saying since we like to, you know, light a flare and wave our arms when there is bad news, that there is temporarily. No, this is a good news. This is a good news. Good. All right. Coming up at 30 seconds, David, what happens when a politician with her eyes on the vice president? is misquoted in her own memoir, or so she says. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrated gag.

It was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod, where they are always, always gratefully received. Some news from the animal kingdom, David. The U.S. House votes to remove wolves from the endangered list. Wolves. There's an overworked Twitter joke to write when Anthony Edwards said the wolves were back. He really meant it.

We would have also accepted Kanye finally fixed wolves. Thanks to homemade Pepsi and slash Mike Egan for that. If you're waiting to see just how many games the wolves win against the Nuggets, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke

of the week. All right, in the notebook dump. David Falconflick, esteemed media reporter at NPR. called his shot the other day. He said, David, that South Dakota Governor Christy Knoem was going to pull a Charles Barkley and claim that she was misquoted in her own autobiography. David Fulkenflick was correct. Christy Knoem has a new book out called No Going Back.

The first controversy you heard from No Going Back was a dog story. She's a gnome had a dog named Cricket, a 14-month-old wire hair pointer. She took Cricket on a hunt, and Cricket was, quote, out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life. Later got loose and killed the chicken that belonged to another family. So, Christy Noem, she writes in the book, Put Cricket down in a gravel pit, which is a real cormit McCarthy detail that was stuck in there. Also killed a goat in the same gravel pit, another macabre touch.

She was trying to illustrate her willingness to do things that are, quote, difficult, messy, and ugly. So that was different. But then, David, there was a whopper that was found in the book. Christy Noem wrote, I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders. I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I'd been a children's pastor after all.

Turns out that Christy Nome did not meet with Kim Jong-un. And this was the way she tried to spin the story on CBS's Face the Nation this Sunday. Did you meet Kim Jong-un? Well, you know, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at this passage. And I've met with many, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world. As soon as it was brought to my attention, we went forward and have made some edits.

She used the phrase, David, as soon as this was brought to my attention to describe a book that she had purportedly written. Now, we're all okay with ghostwriters, right? We understand how that thing works. Mm-hmm. But can something be in Christy Nome's book and not be her fault? No. I mean, so, yes, I'm sure there's extreme, extreme circumstances, right? A rogue copy editor could just alter something right before the book goes to press, just for fun.

Slip in a meeting with Kim Jong-un. I don't think this qualifies. I think the book stops with Christy Nome in this case. book stops here as it were. The book stops here. Yeah, as I was trying to think of the pun. That would be most appropriate.

No, I mean, this is absolutely crazy. Even if there's a, even if there is a ironclad, you know, for editorial production excuse for this thing, this is still a borderline

disqualifying situation, right? Like you allowed something, like a major error to appear in your, in your memoir, under your name. Like, and you're,

we're going to let you run the country. You know, I mean, just like, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. I mean, anything goes post Donald Trump, but I mean, this is, this is evidence of poor delegation. This is evidence of poor management. You know, this is like, what else do you, what else do you need? No, and also it's a huge, like, you know, international affairs problem, too, of this

kind of stuff is just appearing in error. Like every time that there's any international incident, there's going to be everybody around the world making jokes about her pretending. It's like Sarah Palin's thing about Alaska and Russia except like more true, actually. So it's just a mess. There were two funny little features of this controversy. One was, and I saw them talking about this on CBS mornings this morning, she had a very specific memory of looking at Kim Jong-un of staring down little tight. not just in a list while I met, you know, the president of Paraguay and I met Vladimir Putin and then I met Kim Jong-un. It was, I had this idea of us looking at each other face-to-face

and me not being scared at him because I was a pastor. I was a children's pastor, she said. That's funny. The other thing people found is that Christy Noam narrated the audio book. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, she did. Ridiculous, all right. So not only did she have these words written for her, she actually spoke them into the audio book. What did she say about that?

Well, she said the sentence. She said that she said the sentence. Did she get asked about that yesterday? Well, she just keeps talking about like when the inaccuracy was pointed out to me, I ordered to have it fixed or whatever weird passive voice construction. Why do you need to point out to you? You said it out loud. that's that's the point yes the wild uh chris ahho and mitchell tyler point out the politico headline

nome dogged by new claims of inaccuracies also by the way looked up the charles barclay reference here which even i'd kind of forgotten was this 1991 book outrageous which was written by a guy named roy johnson in berkeley when the when it started the revelation started appearing Barkley tried to have the publication of the book stopped. It's like, I didn't say that stuff and then decided that most of the book was right. It allowed publication to proceed a pace. A couple more quick things for you. We often do the old guys still got it watch here at the press box.

This is when the press does handsprings to celebrate an aging master who has one last great work in him. a Martin Scorsese, a John La Carae, a Bob Dylan. We've got an old guy still got it weather system developing off the coast, David. Oh, what are we got? 85-year-old movie director, Francis Ford Coppola. As a new movie, Megalopoulos, premieres at Cannes on May 17.

There was a trailer that came out over the weekend. Maybe you would call that a teaser. Let me give you his old guy still. got it next-gen stats here. Francis Ford Coppola has not directed a movie at all in 13 years. His last great movie, I don't want to enter the uteur argument zone here,

the first take of movies, but 40 years ago, the outsiders, I mean, I'll listen to your arguments for the Rainmaker or Brom Stoker's Dracula or Tucker Amanda's dream, but I think 40-ish years for the Consensus Last Great Movie?

That's a long time. Yeah. This could be a mega old guy still got it situation. Matt Bellany reported on the early screening of Megalopolis here in L.A. And somebody said there are zero commercial prospects and good for him. It's unflinching and how bad shit crazy it is. So maybe not. We also, David, from time to time, cite the tad friend rule of celebrity

journalism? It's been a while, yeah, but go ahead. It has been a while. This is named after the New Yorker writer who would write these fantastic celebrity profiles and then seemingly all the time the movie or television show he was using to write about the celebrity

would just absolutely tank. Well, I got wind of a possible Tad Friend Rule invocation this last week when I saw Jerry Seinfeld doing serial interviews with GQ. with David Remnick in the New Yorker on their podcast. He did a full hour of the Rich Eisen Show.

A full hour. And then the reviews of his movie about Pop-Tarts came out and seemed to have a tad friend rule situation here. Somolian journalism for you. Thanks to everyone for sending the tweets about embattled ABC News president Kim Godwin. stepping down. Yeah.

Jay Doge pointed out this tweet from Politico reporter Natalie Ferdig. See if you hear a kindred spirit here, David. Political reporters, she tweets, why do we write so weird? Why are things a marked change and why do tensions ease? Why do we say there's been a recent spate of these are all phrases I would never type or say to someone, even in a deeply professional discussion. Listener Justin Bray notes that Sham Shirani had tweeted that Darwin Ham's future was in peril.

Yeah. Peril is a good only in journalism word. And then finally, Christina Lance sends us a good one, crepuscular. What? Broadway had a crepuscular revival of cabaret. Did you remember what crepuscular means? This is definitely from the SAT prepuctor.

and no, I have no recollection of what that means. I didn't either, so I looked it up. Of resembling or relating to twilight. Okay. I was like a good crepuscular remake. What does that even mean in the context? I don't know. A late stage reproduction?

Is that the idea? The lighting on the stage, perhaps? Oh, okay. But isn't cabaret in a club? Like, what would be the, what would be the? I'm not going to sing this on. But let's do, it's time for a feature that is always crepuscular. It's time for David Chewmaker.

Guess is the Strain Pun headline. Yeah. Last Thursday's headline about Fish playing a big concert in Vegas was Sphere is the Mind Killer. Today's headline comes to us from Alex. It's from the Portland Press Herald up there in Maine for the second week in a row. Great stuff, Portland Press Herald. David, you'll be delighted to know that Birdwatchers are gathering on a mountain in Portland or in the Portland area for a day of education about birds of prey.

Okay. Okay. So these bird watchers, they're learning about birds of prey. And they are very into it. They are paying very close attention to this gathering. What was the Portland Press Herald strained pun headline? like Birds of prey

Otherwise Eagrid beavers Oh like That's pretty funny By the way Eagrid beavers Osspray Birds of Pr raptor

Raptor attention Rapt Rapt This is The guide is taking them around And they're paying very close attention So it's a Wrapped

Rapt Rapt Rapped audience No. A wrapped tour. Rapt tour. What? Is that the answer? They're on a tour. Yes. A rapture instead of raptor.

Okay. Rapture. Portland. Just a note to the Portland Press Herald, David Shoemaker, not impressed. By your fine work. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Black to Magic. By Isaiah Blakely. Thank you, Isaiah.

Thursday's guest host of the press box, David. A pal of yours, a pal of mine. Julia Turner. Oh, wow. Former editor of Slate hosted the Slate Culture Gab Fest. Recently had a number of huge jobs at the L.A. Times. She's going to be on the old press box. I cannot wait to welcome her.

And David, we'll be back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.