The Press Box - Pete Buttigieg vs. Everybody, the SEC on CBS, and ‘Cats’ Reviews | The Press Box

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Pete Buttigieg coming under fire from the other candidates during the debate (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (22:45), the terrible reviews for the new movie ‘Cats’ (25:00), the SEC leaving CBS (33:00), the winter vacations of Vogue UK’s editors (40:45), and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Over the holidays and into the new year, we'll still be publishing new shows to keep you up to speed with the NFL playoff race, the NBA, and award season. We've published some great episodes in the month of December, including two rewatchables on Happy Gilmore and The Godfather Part 2. Chris interviewed watchman showrunner Damon Lindeloff on the watch, and the Ringer NBA show ranked the top 25 players of the 2019-2020 season so far. Lastly, happy holidays from The Ringer. David, both Skip Bayliss and Stephen A. Smith had very public Dallas Cowboys takes after the Cowboys lost to the Eagles on Sunday. What I want to know is what other possibly non-sports media personality would you like to see have a public football take? Oh my gosh.

I would love to see Chuck Todd doing a victory dance. over the background of get up in the morning. Coming in with a cowboy hat doing kind of a strut. Oh, my gosh. Eagles won again. Why do our minds go directly to anybody on network news? Why is that funnier? Well, I mean, I think as the setting,

I mean, we both watch a lot of network, like cable news at a bunch of ESPN and Fox Sports or whatever. And I think the sets are so similar, but the presentation, at least between like, you know, pardon the interruption, or the, between, you know, Stephen A. Smith and Chuck Todd or whoever could not be more different that the juxtaposition is sort of funny. But that, but yeah, I mean, it would be, occasionally they do try to drop it in, right? Some of me watching Morning Joe and somebody will just be, like, well, not infrequently on Morning Joe, they'll come on with, like, like, kind of like, elusive comments about the, about the Yankees or something, whoever, whatever, whatever team Mike Barnacle's Red Sox or whatever the hell it is. And that just seems

just like really just kind of icky. I don't even, you know, it's like I don't need, I don't need my, those two things to mix, but. Yeah, it has to be somebody who's almost not on Twitter because if they were on Twitter, we'd already know their sports takes, no matter what they covered for a living. I'd also like to nominate

Steve Croft. Did he retire already? Be a good one. I think he's transitioned to a different role as everybody does eventually. Judy Woodruff would be kind of an interesting person to have a very public sports take. Anybody that's moderated a debate?

Yeah, they should turn the debates into forums for just like, just, you know, sports grave dancing. That would be hilarious. We are the shit-talking Wolf Blitzer of Media Podcasts. This is the press box. Part of the Ringer podcast network. Fantastic work. Hello, media consumers.

You've got Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. Today we're going to dive, pause first into the terrible, terrible reviews for the new movie Cats. We'll talk about the end of the southeastern conference on CBS. We'll also talk about the winter vacations of the world's last living glossy magazine editors. All that plus the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David let us begin with the aftermath of last week's Democratic debate, which got almost lost by the story of an aging politician rising from the political abyss.

I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Emperor Palpatine. In any case, the debate turned into Pete Buttigieg. one of the frontrunners in Iowa versus everybody. Maybe surprisingly, everybody included Amy Klobuchar, listened to her defend her senatorial experience against Buttigieg's relative youth. When we were in the last debate, Mayor,

you basically mocked the hundred years of experience on the stage. And what do I see on this stage? I see Elizabeth's work starting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and helping 29 million people. I see the vice president's work in getting $2 billion for his cancer moonshot. I see Senator Sanders' work of working to get the veterans bill passed across the aisle.

And I see what I've done, which is to negotiate three farm bills and be someone that actually had major provisions put in those bills. So while you can dismiss committee hearings, I think this experience works. And I have not denigrated your experience as a local official. I have been one.

You know, I just think you should respect our experience. When you look at how you evaluate someone who can get. You may be a Midwest centrist, but damn it, I'm a Midwest centrist with credentials. Oh, man. I mean,

it started off sounding like, uh, like she was making a play for the vice presidency. You know, a lot of, there's compliments to go around, but, um,

I want to compliment all my opponents. But it, but it, but it, was interesting because I think what stood out in the big picture when you know we've had some chance to reflect and the big picture standouts from the debate were you know buddhajudge taking fire and responding pretty well um and and weirdly it was i mean amy klobuchar's performance and a lot of that was based on um the fact that she didn't need to or didn't decide to go on the attack in the same way that some of the

others did i mean maybe it's her disposition um maybe it was just the the word choice but it did seem like in being conciliatory and being a little bit more, it seemed like in this debate because the tensions were raised, her sort of, I didn't come here to have a little, have a silly argument, M.O. played a lot better. Well, she went after just about the most elemental political issue you could go after, right? She was like, you don't have any experience doing this. And you are doing this trick where you, because we sat there and took all these tough votes and we've been a part of a dysfunctional Congress, like you're saying, oh, well, these people, we don't want more part of Washington like these people. We want me who's fresh and new and different. And that's like the

oldest political trick in the book. That's what Obama did. That's what Trump did. And I've always found the Buddha judge attack so funny because it's like the reason the government is a mess and Congress has been a mess is not because of Amy Klobuchar, not because of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. It's because of Mitch McConnell and the Republicans and other people too. But this idea that you're blaming the experience and she's trying to kind of reclaim experience, right? Like, wait a second. You have done anything. And turn that argument.

I'd say it. I agree with what you said about Buttigieg being very good on his feet during this debate. He's become a much better debater, I think. let's let their exchange play and we'll hear his side of that argument. You actually did denigrate my experience, Senator, and it was before the break and I was going to let it go because we got bigger fish to fry here. But you implied that my relation...

I don't think we have bigger fish to fry than picking a president of the United States. You're right. And before the break, you seem to imply that our relationship to the First Amendment was a talking point, as if anyone up here has any more

or less commitment to the Constitution than anybody else up here. Let me tell you about my relationship to the First Amendment. It is part of the Constitution that I raised my right hand and swore to defend with my life. That is my experience. And it may not be the same as yours, but it counts, Senator. It counts. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Senator Colbuchar, you 45 seconds to respond.

I certainly respect your military experience. That's not what this is about. This is about choosing a president. And I know my view of this is I know you ran for to be chair of the Democratic National Committee. That's not something that I wanted to do. I want to be president of the United States. And the point is we should have someone heading up this ticket that is actually won and been able to show that they can gather the support that you talk about of moderate Republicans and independence as well as a fired up Democratic base. And not just done it once, I have done it three times.

I think winning matters. I think a track record of getting things done matters. And I also think showing our party that we can actually bring people with us, have a wider tent, have a bigger coalition, and yes, longer coattails, that matters. Thank you, Senator. I love that rhetorical tick she used early in that. We don't have bigger fish to fry than running for president of the United States. I'm going to start wielding that on this podcast.

David, we don't have bigger fish to fry than the freedom of the press. and protecting journalists from harm just see how you see what you make of that any thoughts on that exchange I mean

I think that she was again because I because she's not I mean other people I mean that's particularly when Elizabeth Warren Senator Warren went after Buttigieg

it seemed a little bit I don't know I mean it just it seemed a lot more forced and I think Klobuchar was able to do it because something about her disposition, but also because she's, you know, she's fighting from underneath

further underneath, I guess, in terms of the Iowa polls, but way far in terms of national polls. I was going to say every poll. Every poll, yeah. But, and, you know, she gets to be, she gets to play moral conscience because she's, you know, not seen as a,

I mean, not seen as quite as viable as some of the other people on stage. who it's really easy to see them as just sort of getting into spats over, you know, just trying to court a few votes on the margins or whatever. But I thought that they both, I mean, I thought that of all of Buttigieg's, of all the fire he took, that was certainly the most effective, that his response was definitely seemed more sort of calculated and, and, yeah, calculated there than in other spots.

But Klobuchar, you know, came off really, really well. One thing that's really striking to me, I may have said this before, is how much better Klobuchar and Buttigieg have gotten at running for president during the campaign. I think Elizabeth Warren stepped into this campaign as a really, really good debater. Bernie Sanders stepped in with an enormous amount of skill, partly based on the fact that he'd done it before in 2016. Budajaj and Klobuchar, you can see how much better they've gotten at navigating the debate. Buda judge in the early debates was like everything he said was really good, but he wasn't good at punching and counterpunching. He's gotten much better at that. Klobuchar, same thing, kind of didn't really register as much early on.

Last couple of debates, she's gotten really good at sort of digging in. And what you have to do, especially with a bunch of candidates out there, say, pay attention to what I'm saying. don't let me get lost in here. Pay attention to me. The other big rhetorical flourish from this debate, that may be paying it too much credence, was a wine cave gate in which a California wine cave became a stand-in

for different approaches to campaign fundraising. The target once again was Pete Buttigieg. Here's Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren going in. The mayor just recently, recently had a fundraiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals and served $900 a bottle wine. This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass. Have you ever been in a wine cave full of crystals? I don't know. My 20s are a blur, but I was there for your 20s.

Pretty sure you wanted any of those. I thought that, I mean, I think that that attack was real, I mean, I think the political term is weak sauce. And I don't, I think that the only, the only upside for that line of argument was sort of as a kamikaze mission that like, no matter what, no matter how it's going to reflect on the Warren campaign right now, that that, that Wine Cave is going to be a phrase that sticks with Buttigieg, you know, it's going to still be there. month from now or two months from now. But I'm not sure that it was effective. And I'm not, I mean, at this point, recording voters who are particularly, you know, aware and dedicated. And as much as there might be some who agree with getting money out of politics, I don't

think there's that many who would fault the candidate of their choice for doing what it took to get elected, right? I mean, the defense, which Buttigieg, I don't think mounted, which I, you know, is, And maybe it's just admitting one thing too many. But the real common sense defense is like, listen, you guys trust me and trust my personal conscience. I'm not going to do, I need money to run for president, but I'm not going to do anything that violates that. And I don't, I'm not sure that that, especially coming from Warren is, you know, the right. At least it was particularly helpful for her campaign.

She's trying to take his image, his mantle, whatever you want to call it, as a. squeaky clean Midwest relatively small city populist and smear it up Wine cave Wine cave This guy's not a man of the people

It's wine cave he's wine cave guy I know exactly what she's trying to do Because this is the conversation That we've been having at Pete Buttigieg for two months I feel like every time something new comes out about him It's just like wait what the like This is so separate from the story that the media has been telling us for so long but the wine cave thing seems like so insignificant compared to I mean and maybe there's no way to

say it up on the stage in a way that's really coherent and brief but like man you like were Harvard roommates with Colin with Colin Jost you worked for a major political consultancy in DC that you're not allowed to disclose who your clients were you know you you are buddy buddy with like high level Facebook employees like this is like those are the things that I think that that that that mean much more to me than like where he held a fundraiser, you know? I mean, the, the, the, the, the worst case scenario for me is that his campaign staff wasn't smart enough to not have an event at a fucking wine cave.

But, but, like, I don't think that reflects poorly on his, on, I think there's a lot of things that reflect more poorly on his character than, than that. It's, I mean, really what they're having right is an argument about campaign finance. Right. And Wine Cave is the catchy way to start. stand in for a debate that most people would find really boring. Warren does not do closed-door fundraisers. I do not sell access to my time, she said during this debate.

And she has made that a plank of her get money out of politics approach to this race. Buttigieg argues that Democrats can't beat Donald Trump by forswearing the kind of fundraising that Trump himself will do. And Buttigieg further points out that Warren didn't always observe. the rule she's now observing. For instance, she's transferred $10 million plus from her 2018 Senate account into her presidential coffers. And he's like, wait a second.

That money was raised like this. And why are you now coming back on me? I also thought, when we talk about Buddha judge's ability to debate, listen to how carefully and gracefully he turns Warren saying, you're paling around with billionaires

in wine caves. to her own wealth. This is quite the trick. Let's let it run. Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine. Now, supposing that you went home, feeling the holiday spirit, I know this isn't likely, but stay with me, and decided to go on to pforamerica.com and give the maximum allowable by law, $2,800. Would that pollute my campaign because it came from a wealthy person? No, I would be glad to have that support. We need the support from everybody who is committed to helping us defeat Donald Trump. I like what everybody brings all the clubs in the golf bag to the debate.

You want to accuse me of big dollar fundraising? Well, let's look at your net worth, Senator. Can we also do some kind of comic backfill on the wine cave while we're here? Please. It is called Hall Wines. its owner is Craig Hall, who is a big Democratic donor and whose wife was Bill Clinton's ambassador to Austria. So Wine Cave may be this kind of weird pejorative, but these are the kind of people we're talking about here. Got an ambassador donated to the president, got an ambassadorship.

Craig Hall tells the New York Times, I'm just a pawn here. They're making me out to be something that's not true. And they picked the wrong pawn. It's just not fair. in that New York Times story, Carol Pogash and Nicholas Bogle Burroughs write very dryly. I mean, a dry wine of a sentence here.

Wine is stored in caves around the world and Mr. Hall noted that the Romans followed the practice. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, I did, yeah. I'm glad that we know all that now. We can wine cave. There was also Washington Post opinion. piece by getting

Bill Worley who was at the wine cave and pushed back on the idea that $900 bottles of wine were served there.

He said it was a more modest like $185 bottle of wine. There's also an amazing correction appended to his column.

An earlier version of this column neglected to include the value of the writer's home when he wrote he was not a millionaire. This version

has been updated. We are just we are just bathing in in levels of of of wealth conjuring here also the inevitable story you and i could have predicted this david turns out elizabeth warren when she was running for senate running for re-election in 2018 had a fundraiser at a boston winery the api reports there were treated two songs the guess that is treated the songs by grammy winning artist melissa ethridge dot dot dot But for the top donors who could contribute $5,400 per couple or $2,700 per person, there was a VIP photo reception and premium seating. So there you are.

In other news, Buttigieg accepted Kevin Costner's endorsement this week. Oh, man. I was just thinking about Kevin Costner. You were probably watching a rewatchable episode. You're listening to Rewatchables episode. You're not too far off. Buttejudge also got the, I mean, got the endorsements from a whole lot of, um, kind of members of the political establishment, including a lot of people who worked in the Obama

administration, sort of a direct, um, attack to the Biden campaign. I think. I mean, that's certainly the way that any, anybody should, would presume to read it. Um, and I think it's interesting, I mean, that's interesting in the sense that he's, I mean, I don't know if it's a deliberate campaign signal or, or that's, if it's what the campaign is really interested in doing, but they're sort of moving on past the squabbles of the debate and taking their, taking on the, you know, the biggest squabble that lies ahead of them. And that's one-on-one with Biden. I think that the debate in, we can get back to that,

but I do want to say that the debate, one of the things that stood out to me with the Buttigieg war in exchange was that, you know, we had kind of talked about, and I think the presumption, the zoomed-out presumption had been that this was a sort of, like the ideological lanes are what was going to matter, right? that it was going to be it was going to be Warren versus Sanders and Buttigieg versus Biden. And I mean, obviously there were other people that were mixed in along at various points in time. But what, you know, what we saw on the debate was, was that it's still sort of old guard versus new guard, right?

I mean, the Buttigieg and Warren are fighting for the sort of new, I mean, the fresh face on the ticket, even though Warren's been around for a long time. I mean, for relatively compared to Buttigieg a long time. And Sanders and Biden are just sort of entrenched, you know? And I guess that just goes to say, I mean, all that adds up to Iowa being really meaningful for Buttigieg and Warren in a way that maybe it's not for, you know, Biden and Sanders. There are fascinating gradations here, aren't there? That Bernie, for however sweeping his ideas it are, is somehow a, quote, old face in this just because he ran for president four years ago. and that Warren had didn't decide not to run against Hillary Clinton, so she's the new face in this, sort of.

You know, it's difficult. I mean, obviously Biden has a huge boost from being a vice president. That's its own thing. But running for president a second time, as Sanders is doing, is it really, I mean, I think in the modern era is a very difficult thing to do. Sanders also has some mitigating factors and that, you know, a lot of his voters perceive that he probably won or he should have won four years ago. But yeah, I mean, it's, normally I would think it'd be easier to be someone running for the first time.

But that's not what we're saying necessarily right now. David, it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Please send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. I need a ruling on this. If someone tweeted something in 2017 and a different Twitter user. joked about it last week. Does that, can that still count as the overworked Twitter joke? Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so this tweet is from a 2017 from a Canadian TV station, quoting here, $43 million in cash found an empty Nigerian apartment. 43 million in cash found an empty Nigerian apartment. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. I bet the owner tried for years to share it, but nobody would reply to his emails. Thanks to cheesehead sports nut. Newly impeached person, Donald Trump, David, tweeted that county by county map of the 2016 election, you know what I'm talking about?

The one that makes America look incredibly red. Yes. And wrote the message, impeach this. Like if you come for me, you come for all my voters. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, done. Thanks to the mysterious Dr. Z. Mark Hamill actually made that joke on Twitter. tweet about the movie Cats, David, which we'll talk about more in just a second.

Oh my gosh. The tweet reads, quote, first reactions to cats call it, quote, way too horny and, quote, bewildering. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Did my Tinder bio write this? Thanks to Royal Rerick. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a little gizmo on its website, David, allowing you to see which countries are free trade partners of the United States. One of the countries listed was Wakanda. This is not a joke.

The fictional home of Black Panther. Oh my God. Made it on to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It was an award. Twitter joke to write. We're two weeks away from vibranium tariffs. Next to Kirk A. Beto. And finally, a really, really ill-advised New York Post headline.

Like more ill-advised than the normal New York Post headline. Oh, man. It read, flirting with. co-workers helps reduce stress study says flirting with co-workers helps reduce stress it was an overworked Twitter joke to tweet a

gif of Admiral Agbar saying it's a trap thanks to B-Train if you were the first person to link Admiral Akbar with the Me Too movement congrats you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week all right David time for the notebook dump

I want to talk to you about reviews for the movie Cats that same instinct that once led us to search Roger Ebert's archive so we could just read his zero star and one half star reviews made me want to peruse the reviews for cats which is at 18% on Rotten Tomatoes. Oh man. I don't know what your experience with Cats the musical is

but when I was in middle school I went to New York City with my mom. It was my first time there. It was my first time anywhere like there. We went to see cats at the Winter Garden Theater where he had had run for years. And it was the best thing I have ever seen in my life. Really? I mean that with no irony, I loved it. I was transported to use the cliche.

In the lobby on the way out, I bought the cast album on cassette. And for the next 12 months back in Texas, I listened to nothing but cats. For instance, this song. If you offer me, pheasant, I'd rather. have grouse. If you put me in a house, I would much prefer a flat. If you put me in a flat,

then I'd rather have a house. If you set me on a mouse, then I only want a rat. If you set me on a rat, then I rather chase a mouse. And the reason that they need for me to shout it. Party will do this. No, doing anything about it. Now you might ask,

what the hell was that? I don't know. It's the rum-tum-tugger doing what he do-do. That is Katz. Oh, my God. And reading some of these reviews, you've found the writers sort of grappling with the idea that though Katz is based on T.S. Eliot source material. Mm-hmm. The actual Andrew Lloyd Weber musical is really just about cats.

right that's what it's about this i saw this great quote tweeted from broadway producer harold prince when lloyd weber first played the score of cats for prince he said quote i looked at him curiously and said andrew i don't understand is this about english politics are those cats queen victoria gladstone and disraeli he looked at me like i'd lost my mind and after the longest pause said how this is just about cats that's it it's about dancing cats. David Letterman used to say. A couple of choice quotes to that effect.

Scott Tobias, our pal, and NPR writes, it did not seem likely that a plotless review in which cats either introduce themselves or introduce other cats would ignite public interest, or that Grizzabella's ascendance to the heavyside layer would last longer than the acid trip that summited it to life. Clarice Lorry and the Independent there are breakdancing felines that which when rendered in

CGI's seem to lose the stiffness in their joints and turn into undulating tubes of cat meat to my experience that is correct. Manola Dargis in New York Times Taylor Swift as Bombolarina by the way every name of a cat is absolutely

ridiculous in this. Yes. Bombolurina executes a joyless burlesque shimmy after descending on a on the seen astride a crescent moon that ejaculates iridescent catnip. I'm reading that sentence verbatim.

Oh, man. So some of this, right, it's just people coming to grips with the idea that, oh my gosh, this thing I've sort of heard of, or maybe I even saw as a kid, it is really fucking weird. I mean, it is just like, it kind of can't ignore its weirdness when it's put forth in this CGI-laden movie, right?

It took CGI for us to realize how weird it was. I mean, how... Um, yes. I mean, I don't know. I would love to do a deep dive and actually talked about, was kind of had been mystified by cats and the cultural phenomenon that it was right up until they announced this movie. And then I was just sort of like, oh, okay, someone will put out a long-form podcast. that'll explain it to me. I don't believe that exists, but maybe. It's just,

it's inexplicable. Very few things are so inexplicable. You know, if the, if Cats mania had swept the nation today, I'm sure there'd be, the Cats movie would be received differently, and we'd be talking about the Cats Expanded Universe and everything else.

But it is, all the reviews have just been such a joy an awkward uncomfortable joy to read they're sort of like like we all knew this was going to be nuts when we started seeing that when the first trailers came out it was clear that this was nuts but you know

we talk about the lack of a monoculture many critics many critics cry complain about the lack of a monoculture but criticism sometimes creates its own monoculture and that's when a movie

like cats come out and everybody joins around the campfire to dunk on it as creatively as possible it's just I mean what a on the movie

I mean what a what a misfire and we haven't even we didn't talk about the fact that the CGI wasn't finished when they put it in when it came out and they had to like

resupply footage without real human hands on the cats did you see that or Dane Judy Dench who plays old Deuteronomy is wearing her wedding ring in a picture somebody to him? The wedding ring would have been, almost as forgivable if the suit, if there wasn't like a giant

like wrist hole, handhole of the suit that was exposed to. Like you can just see, like it was just a costume, you know? I mean, this is so crazy. But yeah, it was a, that was just bonkers. And then the movie, I mean, obviously there's a lot of decision making there. but I think what really matters is our cultural response to it and how much fun everyone has had just indulging in its weirdness.

So to your point, when we first saw that, it was a trailer, right, that first made everybody lose their shit about cats? I kind of thought, oh no, this is going to be one of those movies that's unfairly maligned

because the trailer looks kind of bad and people don't understand it and it's a cheap Twitter gag. and what if the movie's actually good? Because I could imagine a not terrible version of this movie, I think. And it turns out that the movie was actually terrible. So it's kind of like, it's one of those things like we've talked about Twitter, you know, pander culture and this and all that stuff is exactly right.

But this is where Twitter turned out to be right. Totally right. It stunk, apparently. I haven't seen it. To your point, the other weird thing is the fact that they made this elaborate So if you watch the movie, they're wearing, or excuse me, watch the musical, they're wearing these very cheapo 70s disco looking suits. And they are recognizably cats, but they look like people. So they made a decision in this movie to really CGI it up, which Tobias calls it the uncatty valley, which is a phrase I really wish I thought of.

Also made a decision for the cats to all have the Barbie doll crotch, you know, they kind of. of smoothness. I love this from Justin Chang in the LA Times to round out this nightmarish anatomy lesson. Hooper Tom Hooper, that's the director, often directs his actor to display their legs and bear their flat undifferentiated crotches for the camera, none more frequently than Dench's old neuteronomy herself. Another thing you see in the reviews is people like Stephanie Zecherich in time asking, is this one of those movies that's so bad that it's also amazing? like you must you must

you does it push into the bad zone of you must see cats like you want to you want when people ask were you there you want to be able to raise your hand there was a time

there is a time where we would complain that people were making these sorts of decisions about well in a more earnest way it's right right the new Tarantino comes out and immediately we rank the Tarantino Uvra you know and it's like well maybe we should let

once upon a time sink into the public consciousness a little bit before we make the decision We're past that. They're going to be ranked the moment they come out. Now we're basically talking about ranking, this is like the room. I mean, this is like ranking so bad it's good, ironic movies

and putting it into the pantheon of just like Nutso get high in college and watch this movies. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's there. It very well could be. It certainly has some sing-along potential. Yeah. I also don't wonder, you know,

so bad you have to see it. I wonder how that much, how that just plays in the streaming era where you're like, actually, I don't have to see it because I can just wait and see it in my, you know, in my room at some point. Yeah, I mean, that is true. But I don't think,

but as far as like becoming a legendary so bad as good movie, I mean, it doesn't matter if you see it in your room, that's exactly the kind of movie. I think people will toss on when they're like vacuuming and then get wrapped up into if it indeed is, you know, enraptuous in that way.

I think there'd be a lot of people watching cats on airplanes. I'm just going to make that prediction. Please, please don't show me the neutered crotches when you're, if you're sitting next to me. Finally, David, in Cats Review News,

there was sort of this battle for everybody to get off the incredibly memorable line, which often happens when you have a terrible movie, like this you want to have the couple that I wrote down Hana Woodhead who writes for website called Little White Lies writes that a cat of hers once the real cat one of hers once directed his explosive diarrhea all over the bottom shelf of my bookcase naively i assume this was the most

abhorrent cat related incident i would ever bear witness to i suppose in some twisted way i should be impressed tom hooper has managed to best this dot dot um i liked alison wilmore new york magazine. Director Tom Hooper devoted his 2012 take on Les Mis to the proposition that movie musicals are best experienced through handheld camera work, uvula-friendly close-ups, and live singing for greater realism or something. He repeats his approach in cats, a property designed to repel realism with every fiber of its being with the added complication of dance numbers. And finally, Adam Graham in the Detroit News, for simplicity, I think he may win. He says, it's battlefield earth with whiskers.

So anyway, congrats to American, even the world's critics on their terrible cats reviews. Big news, David, from the world of sports media rights. John Ahran over at Sports Business Journal broke this. He says that starting in 2024, CBS will no longer show football games

from the Southeastern conference. The SEC on CBS had been a mainstay of that network since the 90s. he reports that CBS will walk away from the SEC when the contract ends. All indications are the package will move to ESPN ABC. CBS decided to exit the negotiations for the most watched TV package in college football after making an aggressive bid in the neighborhood of 300 million per season, a massive increase from the 55 million.

It pays annually. I wanted to talk to you about this because CBS has had the SEC since 1996. It made that deal in the ruins of losing the NFL rights back. in the day. And what is it about the way a network attaches itself to a particular sports package that we like? Because I still feel nostalgic for the NBA on NBC. Yeah. John Tesh music. Yeah, even if ESPN's coverage is as good or better, I'm sure. What is what is it about the way that kind of branding, wraparound brand name worms its way into our heart? that's a really good question

I mean they I think that I mean you know with the at the risk of getting too much into stick to sports territory so much of the way we watch sports now is based around nostalgia right

I mean that watching football on Thanksgiving with their families or like you know watching you know watching at the exact same time on Saturday or Sunday or whatever else and and you know

the announcement we talk a lot about announcers on this show I mean some of the great announcers of you know, the modern age, their greatest skill is evoking a sort of nostalgia. And that's also not incidentally why some announcers stick around for decades and decades beyond when you thought they might retire. So I do think that sort of like the NBA on NBC, the SEC on CBS, I do think that there's a certain nostalgia that's built into that. I also think that it's a, you know, there's a comfort to it and it's not the, you know, there's not the, there's not the,

sort of fear. I mean, you know, that football more than anything else has a, there's, there's the, there's the kind of niggling fear that it's going to disappear someday, you know, and so every change has to be read through some lens, even though it's, at this case, it's the opposite direction. It's then making billions more dollars, millions more dollars. But I don't know. I don't know. We definitely are stuck with it. And it's definitely going to be, I mean, maybe the fear is that, that going to ESPN signals a sort of sellout for the SEC, certainly taking in that that volume of money puts them in an entirely different place than they were, you know, this year and seasons before. Yeah, well, there certainly was, it was incredibly underpriced at $55 million.

I mean, that was just an amazing bargain. But yeah, I agree. It's, it's the nostalgia. It's the way, even the network theme music worms its way into our heads and hearts. You mentioned John Tesh that, how about that CBS music. becomes part of it. I think also with the CBS SEC thing, that always felt like a almost local or regional telecast that was being beamed to the world because it was so involved in Southerness

and the SEC obviously being so good during this period, Alabama being so good, the SEC chant. It just felt didn't it like you were watching, or it felt like you're watching a very regional wrestling broadcast or something. Like this world is a part of America, but it has its own traditions. It has its own way of thinking. It has its own incredibly overweening pride and, you know, and whatever you want to say about the way it feels about that football is played better there. I don't know.

There's a certain like kind of eavesdropping element to it to those telecasts, I think, too. Yeah, yeah, I can totally see that. I think if you're a SEC fan, you talked about the SEC chance, and I know you wrote about that a while, some time ago. But as an SEC fan, there's a comfort in that and the knowing and the feeling that you're part of this

and that they understand you and you've been together for a long time. Mm-hmm. It does interesting to me the amount of money, and every time you see somebody walk away from a sports rights package, you know, we all think of, we all think of, with the various NFL movements over the years. I mean, is this going to be a situation where the CBS comes back, you know, crawling on its knees to beg for one SEC game a year at some point?

Or are they going to, you know, are they going to find another conference to sort of to try to champion and build up to that level? It's always interesting the way these things sort of work together. Yeah, and I think, you know, the immediate thing is the CBS trying to renew its NFL deal. And now that you're not going to be paying $300 million a year of the SEC, you're probably like, oh, there's something we really, really can't lose if we could ever lose it before is our NFL games on Sunday. David, let's talk about the extravagant winter vacations of journalists. Because a guy named Benjamin Tassie brought the world's attention to the Vogue UK roundup.

This, I had to make sure this was real. It's called How the Vogue editors are spending Christmas this year. Let me read to you a few selections. about how the Vogue staff intends to spend the holidays. Sarah Harris, deputy editor and fashion features director, writes, I will be heading to the Cayman Islands

to stay at the newly opened Palm Heights Hotel, hyperlinked to the hotel's website, for Christmas and New Year. I'll pack a bikini for every day, since they take up almost no room in a suitcase, my go-to is always heiress, an oversized cotton shirt as a beach cover-up, sandals by the row,

another hyperlink that work by day and night, I never take heels for a holiday. Okay. Ellie Pithers, fashion features editor and senior associate digital editor. I'll be in the French Alps for New Year's. A dose of icy alpine air always seems to sort me out after the excesses of Christmas.

She's going to a resort that she says is only accessible via ski lift because it promises superlative stargazing and fresh powder before breakfast. and finally Olivia Singer executive fashion news editor where will I be for the holidays to counterbalance the abundance of December I am taking an ascetic approach

and heading to Lanzerhof which is either in Germany or Austria I couldn't quite tell to embark on a seven day detox program it's the best I found and I've done my research um I got a couple of reactions here.

This has obviously gotten clowned on Twitter repeatedly. Yeah. A couple things. One is, is it amazing to you how the Vogue staff writes like the front of the book? Yes. Like, nope. If I asked you like, tell me where you're going on your vacation. You would probably tell me that in your normal, David, I'm going to New Jersey.

voice, right? I mean, I'm going to go. I see families, sit around the tree. You wouldn't tell me that in a stilted, here's some kind of vaguely uncomfortable plugging language. No, I presumably would not. I always trust hurts from my car rentals this time of year, and I'll be taking my sensible wagon up the highway down the BQE and heading toward Jersey. So there's that part of it.

there's just the unbelievable extravagance. Like everybody, I guess glossy magazines aren't dead. Because everybody here is absolutely living their best life. I don't remember climbing the rungs of journalism and just going around the office. Like, where are you going? Everybody's going to the French Alps. Well, I mean, the flip side is that it's gone. I mean, it's the only people who can afford to work at,

maybe it's possible that the only people that can afford to work at these magazines are people that already have money coming in. Yeah. So I think the vacationers that I've that I've worked with were certainly in that category. Right. So it is telling of the state of journalism in that way. But I mean, go ahead. Well, I'm just going to say, I see this getting made fun of a lot on Twitter because, oh my gosh, this is not, this sounds so impossibly fabulous and given the state of journalism and everything.

Aren't these people, don't the readers of Vogue UK or Vogue anywhere, isn't this the dream they want? don't they want the people who publish the magazine telling them that they're going for the perfect spa treatment? That they're going for the place where you can only reach by ski lift and the powder is before breakfast is amazing. Where Jamaica, another editor writes, is fun, fresh and full of flavor. That's the dream. And if they said, you know, I'm going to Manchester and running a, you know, cheap boat, cheap motel. that that wasn't going to work. That's not what those people want.

So I think in a way, if you're saying, well, this seems overly fabulous and impossible to deal with, yes, so is vogue. Yeah. If you read the magazine, you're going to find it is also the same way. I agree with you on that front. I do think that the ridiculousness of the premise has in some ways overshadowed the fact that This is not like, I'm not accusing it when I say this. It's clearly SponCon.

I mean, these hyperlinks are not free. But I want to challenge our listeners and maybe you in a slightly different way. As much as I want to clown the editors of Vogue UK as much as the next person. What if we look at this as just like a creative writing contest? What if they said, you know, we have. have to fit we have we have like 12 hyperlink ads that we've promised our advertisers before the year is out we have to find a way to put them online within the span of 2,000 words everybody write your best 250 word vacation idea that's totally farcical and see how many of these

hyperlinks you can fit in and by the way see if you can make people online believe it's real yeah oh yeah the true test of fiction right mm-hmm I think you might be on to something. And they've actually executed this at an incredibly high level. I agree. And I mean, for my mind, it's,

I don't know who won. I think Ellie Pethers did a great job of putting the most words I don't understand into, you know, one very small paragraph that I presume are real. I don't know. I mean, this is all,

all of the work in this tweet is very, if it's, if it's, if it's, if it's fiction, it's, incredibly high level. And I look forward to reading the full novel that they undoubtedly have earned with this short story submission. Tyler Buchanan of the Ohio Capitol Journal,

aka Not Vogue UK, tweets this, local newspaper staffer, Colin, I'm working only three quarters of a day on the 24th, which is nice. Then I'm driving a few hours home for Christmas, then heading right back that night to get in for an assignment the morning of the 26th. How the other half lives. And by the way, David's going to New Jersey. and I'm going to Albuquerque. So I'm going to detox by ordering the Christmas, you know, half red, half green chili on Mike Carney, out of Votta. Yeah.

How about that? Yeah. I'm going to spend, I'm actually spending Christmas Eve in New Jersey and then Christmas Day in the resort town of Tullytown, Pennsylvania, Tullytown, where all your dreams come true. Can only be reached by ski lift. Fun fact. All right. Time for David Schuemaker.

Guess is the Strain Pund headline. Yay. Friday's headline. about a wistful love letter to Star Wars was looking for love in Alderan places. As usual, our readers were funnier than we were. Sam Doom and Garen both thought the headline should have been Flowers for Alderan.

Flowers for Alderan. That is fantastic. J.R.R. suggests Alderan pretty forces. You get extra points if you combine Kormant McCarthy and the right. of Skywalker. Well done. J.R. This week's Strain pun headline comes from the Twitter account of AP oddities where the much respected

Associated Press lets its hair down and smokes a joint. All right. It comes to us from Chris Olson, David. It's a Christmas story. As the AP reports, a family in Georgia brought home a real Christmas tree from Home Depot and found a live owl nestled among its branches. the AP reports.

Quoting here, Katie McBride, who is the mom and the family, she says, it was surreal, but we weren't really freaked out about it.

We're really outdoorsy people. We love the wilderness. So we've got a family finding an owl in its Christmas tree. And I want you to think of the title, David,

of Beloved Christmas Carols, what was the AP's strained pun headline? Wait, beloved Christmas carols I think this counts as a hymn too so one of those Christmas carols

I mean is there a difference between a Christmas carol and a hymn yeah so this is not like I'm dreaming of a white Christmas this is more like a way in a manger yeah there you go away in a manger not jingle bells a little town of Bethlehem um

me three king little drummer boy dang, I'm coming up blank Do you hear what I No Mm-hmm Mm-hmm Oh come all ye faithful

Oh come all ye Oh Oh Oh come out O come owly faithful I think that would have been slightly better Unfortunately it is

Al come all you faithful I'll come all you faithful Owl come Oh, ye faithful I would just double it up Forget making sense Al come out ye faithful Is it?

Right. It's Christmas. Why not? Oh my God, that's terrible. That's terrible. I can't imagine having an owl in your Christmas tree. I can't either.

I think that's kind of cool. Doesn't that sound like a Bernstein Bears story or something? Yes. It definitely happened on like curious George's of various curious Christmas or something.

Speaking of Christmas, we are going to take a little time off. We're back Friday, January 3rd. We're going to do something like a year-end show and we'll do all the year-end things in media that caught our attention. We'll also hopefully do a massive listener mail segment. So send us anything you'd like to ask at the press box pod about media, about life's mysteries, about David's now famous. I think that's right.

Catchphrase. Till then, he is David Shoeaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris on Made a Production Magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back in 2020 with more lukewarm takes about the media. Happy holidays and happy New Year, David. Same to you, Brian. David once directed his explosive diarrhea all over the bottom shelf of my bookcase.

That is true. But we weren't really freaked out about it. We're really outdoorsy people, fun, fresh, and full of flavor. What the hell was that? I don't know. It's the rum-tum-tugger doing what he do-do. Oh my gosh. This thing I've sort of heard of, or maybe I even saw as a kid,

it is really fucking weird. It took CGI for us to realize how weird it was. I mean, how... Tell me where you're going on your vacation. That's a really good question. I... Pay attention to what I'm saying. Don't let me get it.

get lost in here. Pay attention. I will be heading to the Cayman Islands to embark on a seven-day detox program. It's the best I found. And I've done my research. Taking my sensible wagon up the highway down the BQE.

I'll pack a bikini for every day since they take up almost no room in a suitcase. The Barbie doll crotch, you know, the kind of smoothness. Yay. I never take heels for a holiday. I agree with you on that front. A dose of icy alpine air always seems to sort me out after the excesses of Christmas.

Only accessible via ski lift. Please don't show me the neutered crotches when you're, if you're sitting next to me. Yeah. Did my Tinder bio write this? Yeah. Oh, man. I was just thinking about Kevin Costner. Hmm.

Dang, I'm coming up blank. This has obviously gotten. clowned on Twitter repeatedly. That is fantastic. And by the way, see if you can make people online believe it's real. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a trap.