The Press Box - The Reign of the Three-Man Booth, Why ‘Mission: Impossible’ Is Getting a Pass, and More Sliding Doors Metaphors

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David come to you on this Press Box Monday (Tuesday) edition with some thoughts on the NBA’s gradual acceptance of the three-man announcer booth (1:30), Elon Musk��s media blitz (13:00), the coverage and criticism of the latest installment in the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise (24:00), more sliding doors metaphors in journalism (35:00), and more. Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, the Media Piss Test, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everyone? It's Rachel Lindsay, and if you love all things Bravo, then you need to be listening to Morley Corrupt. Every Tuesday and Friday, your favorite ringer podcasters and I dive into Bravo's biggest moments and dish out hot and always unfiltered takes. And guess what? Now you can watch us too. That's right, Morley Corrupt is now available in video on Spotify. So whether you're listening in your family van or watching next to your white refrigerator, don't be all uncool. and miss out. Catch new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, only on the Ringer Reality TV feed. David? Yes. Let's talk some NBA conference finals. Let's do it.

Last night, the Thunder took what Bobby notes must be called a commanding three games to one lead over the T-Wolves. It is obligatory that you use that adjective, yes. Pacers up to one over the next going into tonight's game. I'd like to begin with the Kevin Harlan's soundbite of the week. Oh, yeah.

This is game two of the Eastern Conference Finals. Jalen Brunson, the next guard, goes diving into the court side announce table to save a ball. You're going to hear some cross talk, but listen to where our man on TNT ends up. That's what I'm talking about. Good action right there. I'm wet.

I'm dirty. Stuff all over the place and here comes Brunson again. Have those words ever been uttered during a conference finals by an announcer? I don't think they've ever been uttered in anything close to that tone of voice either. No one has ever said, I'm wet, I'm dirty, unless they were aggrieved or otherwise stimulated. That's pretty incredible stuff. Another weird story from the conference finals, Anthony Edwards, of the T-Wolves, goes and does his post-game after game one.

And he says during that post game, I only took 13 effing shots. Yeah. He gets a $50,000 fine from the NBA for saying a bad word during his postgame media availability. Now, we know we're already in a precarious situation

with forcing players to talk to us reporters after a game. Should the least? be finding them for saying swear words? No. It's like my six-year-old son, he's kind of over this face, but when he was sort of like four and five,

if he would hear a bad word on the TV, he would say, watch your mouth, right? That was like his tick. Sometimes he would say it to his parents because we would certainly use some foul language without thinking about it around the house. But it was like every time he would say it, It was cute and everything, but like for the most part, I didn't even notice that there had been a curse word until he pointed it out.

And this is basically the effect of the NBA fine, right? It's like we are so inured to this as a society. It does not matter if a 25-year-old professional uses the F word about their work performance. This happens a million times a day in everybody's life, whether or not it's on TV. And the only, like, if he had just said it, it would have been like, oh, cool. And then just except, you wouldn't have even been talking about it now, except for the fact that the NBA fined him. And if Ann Edwards says it on the court during the game,

that's not finable. Yeah. But if you say it into a microphone, harming exactly zero people, that constitutes a fine. Just so I have that straight. And by the way, guess what happened after game two?

He skipped the media available. Yeah, a little wonder. I mean, what are they going to do? Just start, like, giggling. I remember when I was a kid, watching MTV and some like two members of guns and roses not it was like slash and Izzy or something said we're got said that we're answering a question and would have said

another shit and said another and then just sort of looked at each other and said stuff and giggled because it was clearly not the thing they would have said like I don't think we're going to get that kind of like 19 late 80s like giggly like look what we're getting away with sort of vibe from anybody right I mean it's it's this is just let them let them talk let them talk figure how to use the bleep button, you know, like it's, it, it, why would you do anything to make an athlete at even 1% more circumspect about the words that are coming out of their mouth in a moment like that? Absolutely. A final note here on the conference finals. I have a message for NBC and Amazon. And my message is, when you inherit the NBA this fall, please. Oh, God, I know what you're going to say.

do not give us a three-person announced booth. Please don't. David, I have some statistics for you to illustrate the degree to which we are under the thumb of a three-person announced booth in important basketball games. Both NBA conference finals are called by three people. 16 of the last 18 NBA finals have been called by three people. and you're like, what happened in those two years? I'll tell you, Mark Jackson was coaching the Warriors. And then he came back and went into the booth again.

The last 14 final fours have been called by three people rather than two. And you might think, wait a second, well, you know, they just had three people and it was kind of hard to fire somebody to get rid of somebody. No, that 14-year streak includes such random announcer pairings as, or I guess I should say trios, is Jim Nant. Steve Kerr and Clark Kellogg. Okay. That's interesting. The three-person announced team has resulted in some of the weirdest stuff I have ever seen just this season. For instance, when you're watching the TNT games, have you noticed that Reggie Miller is now announcing all fouls?

That's just his bit. That's his gimmick? Yeah. For a while, I thought he was stepping in when Harlan would miss something. Sort of like Gary Danielson used to do with Vernon Lund, but now he just seems to be announcing all the fouls. Stan Van Gundy, who talked way too much when he was announcing games with two people or just one other person, is now talking way too much when he's announcing games as part of a

trio. The other day, it's an amazing moment, this game three, it's in Indianapolis, paces are on a little run, you can feel the top is about to blow off the arena. Tyresee Halliburton gets a steal at half court. Here we go, open dunk, and I'm not making this up. The clip is on my Twitter account if people want to see it. As soon as he goes up to dunk, Stan Van Gundy says, hey, Tim should call a timeout right here.

The dunk has not even happened yet. I'm like, you know what? We could just lay out right now and maybe do teachable moments when we get back. But he doesn't have time to talk because he's got a partner, so he has to get his note in there while Tyrese Halliburton is dunk in the ball. And I'm sure you watched the game last night. There was an amazing moment. Very end of that weird free throw sequence that ended the Thunder T. Wolves game.

Shea Gilgis Alexander throws the ball away, just trying to waste time. And it goes out of bounce, but a fan catches it. The fan who has a foot on the court, it seems like, or at least certainly on the line. Which you and I would have absolutely done had we been sitting courtside. Yeah. in the moment that it happened I was just like anybody in his position would have done the same thing

because there's been some baseball plays like this right where you like catch a ball that's just barely barely but then there's the people who were like reaching into the hand like you know like blocking the mitt of the outfielder to catch the ball themselves and you know that's a problem the only I was on this guy's side until they showed the replay from the back and the guy standing next to him

has his hands up in the air and is stepping back like that like I'm not involved in this or like I know better than to reach my hands in meanwhile his buddy, I don't even know if they know each other, but the guy's standing next to him is like a full body further towards the court and grabbing the ball. But yeah, come on, ball goes towards your head, you catch it. Or you get hit in the head.

Catching it is usually the positive result of a, you know, between those two things. I would have said, was you going to be responsible rich guy at half court or are you going to be irresponsible rich guy? Just grabbing at that ball. Well, Doris Burke, when that happened, made the correct point where she said, hey, there's 0.1 seconds left on the clock, which was not enough time for Minnesota to get off one final shot. But the guy actually catches the ball with like 0.5.6 seconds left.

So she asked the question, does that matter? Because if it's when he touches it, then Minnesota may have caught a huge break here and they will get a chance for a final shot to win or tie the game. But what happens is Richard Jefferson, either not listening or not understanding. like, no, there's no way they can shoot the ball. There's only 0.1 seconds. And then it just starts rambling on. I'm like, this isn't working. This is not a good announcing team because you're not listening to what she's saying.

You're trying to make points about how long it takes to shoot a basketball instead of discussing the interesting thing that's happening. By the way, the rest didn't randomly put 0.3 seconds on the clock. I guess just to half it. Yeah, no, I know. That was great because I was sitting there watching with my son. And I was just like, he was like, what can you do in 0.3 seconds? And I was like, in my understanding that you can't shoot a ball in 0.3 seconds,

but the announcers, the announcing team was acting like they could. I thought that the, have we redone the math on this? Can you, you just can't gather and shoot in less than 0.4? But I thought 0.3 was still just basically like, like, tip in or like volleyball smash territory. Like, could you, is there? And then they threw it into the post. And it was just a wild throw that had no hope of getting tip. dipped in or whatever, but it's like, I don't think they really had any other option.

This is a cul-de-sac, but what did you make of all the discourse on Twitter about fouling when you're up three and forcing the team to shoot two free throws instead of trying to tie the game? This feels like it's the space, watching that game, it was like, it was beautifully executed, and it was about one foul, one deliberate foul away from becoming a national controversy, right? This was like, this could have, we were, we were one awkward, bit of gamesmanship away from the NBA having to like change the rules dramatically for the next

round of the playoffs because it was it was I totally get it's totally within the rules it's totally the right thing to do it doesn't really bother me that much but there was something about the exact number of seconds that were left at the end of that game and the number of points that were that you know that we're separating the two teams that it was just like oh we're just going to spend the next like 15 minutes getting through nine seconds of clock and also the The Knicks somehow, I'm sorry, not the Knicks, the Thunder somehow figured out, have figured out some new way to foul so that it's like literally the second they touch the ball. There's no hesitation. I guess just alerting the referees or whatever, but it was like the second Nasreid touched the ball, the whistles were blowing.

And we were saying they're watching just like, you know what's going to happen. Fake, shoot the shot. Like just toss it over your head or something, you know. But that apparently, I don't know. It was bizarre to watch. and it was bizarre to experience it, even being a proponent of this, of the concept. I mean, you go on, this is what you do.

You should always be fouling in these situations. It's interesting, it would be interesting to pull the coaches, though, to be like, is this always what you would do? And for those who say no, is it like literally just like the spirit of the game that keeps you from doing it? And if so, maybe that's it. Maybe that is a discussion the rules committee should have. If you were tied to a chair and you had to hear any of the following,

for like 12 hours uninterrupted. What would be the most torturous? Discourse about fouling up three. Discourse about SGA as a free throw merchant. Or discourse about SGA getting coached the right way in Canada and our guys here in America art coach the right way, which would make you crack. It might be the Canada thing. But that might just be really like American chauvinist of me.

You just couldn't stand the pro-Canadian content? Yeah, I don't know, man. That's a really tough call. That's really hard. I don't even, I don't have any idea. All right. Coming up on the press box, we have some less torturous things to talk about. We got headlines from Elon Musk's interview tour to a rousing commencement address from Scott Pelly.

Plus, the worst question ever asked at the White House, why the new Mission Impossible movie is getting a pass. a sports book you don't want to miss, and a great list are listeners put together of sliding doors metaphors. Movies or books we reference, but may not have actually engaged with. All that and much more on the press box. A point of the ringer podcast network.

Oh, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Bobby Wagner here. Let's do some quick headlines, David. you sent me a note about Elon Musk's interview tour. Yes. He is talking to everybody as his doge stewardship winds down. Well, Elon Musk occupies this weird space, as we've discussed before, where like nobody ever says no to an Elon Musk interview, right?

It's like he will always be a get, I'm sure, for the rest of his life, despite the fact that he's like literally on a media tour, you know? Like, it's not like it's some crazy exclusive or even some rarity. I guess he wasn't doing a ton Well, he was doing media when he was in the White House, you know, I guess just maybe he was being more selective.

But it's like you always say yes to the interview, knowing full well that he sort of sets the terms for the interview that he's like, he's, I guess he's always, I guess news always comes out of it, even if he says exactly what he goes in to say. And that's sort of what makes Elon Musk

in some ways so intriguing is that like he could, he could give a prepared statement and it would still, you know, he would have some. sort of gaff that would drive three news cycles or whatever. But it is interesting to see somebody like who's so transparently trying to reshape the image.

Usually these things happen what like with the press secretary leaves two, two, three years into a presidential administration or something like that. Maybe some very odd moment where a secretary of state or a UN ambassador or something leaves and sort of has to burn a service before they go work for the Hastings Institute or whatever. You know, it's like it's, but this is like a very transparent. image makeover that he's trying to commit in real time like just seemingly

days into the administration of which he was a part it's a total like mission accomplished sort of situation too where he's like I did what I came to do you know it's just like oh that not by any metric including your own you know it's like they're trying to pass a tax bill right now of which you're saving your your cuts you know factor like a fraction of a percent into the

the money that would be necessary to pay for them. And, you know, the headlines, separate from the ones that are just straight, you know, rehashings of the interviews are all about, just very straightforwardly about him trying to fix Tesla's following stock prices. You know, it's like SpaceX and like all the other stuff he wants to do. Meanwhile, he's still tied up in like the South Africa, like satellite situation. Anyway, there's so much going on at one time. But it's just clearly a man who has.

I think you probably saw the limitations of the most powerful seat in the world for what he wanted to do with himself and is now trying to sort of find his way back to his previous life without and and sort of undoing some of the damage. Although the damage that he did as part of, you know, as a special advisor to the president or whatever, is just sort of a continuation of the public persona. he had been living for some amount of time. So I guess probably the most notable thing to come out of all this stuff is he said he's done with political spending for the time being. We'll see if that, you know, ends up being true. What's your takeaway from all this stuff? Well, there is one note about the political spending, I will add.

There was a Politico story about that that our friend Stephen Elliott sent us. Uh-huh. And I'll read you a line, asked about Musk's decision to withdraw as a GOP donor. One Virginia Republican granted anonymity to speak freely. Oh my God. Go on. Said, eh, we'll see. Yeah.

That was the speaking freely part. That was what the donor really thought. Yeah. Thank goodness. Inanimity was granted for, and we'll see. I do agree. Obviously, Elon's trying to goose stock prices. Because, you know, what's the criticism, Ben?

Oh, you're not paying enough attention to your cover. companies. Yeah. Because your mind's wrapped up in Doge. Also, I don't know if he got on Twitter the other day and noticed he had changed his name. Oh, it's been a while. Okay. On the site.

And I was just like, why am I being fed these strange tweets from this purse? Like, what has changed about the algorithm today? And it was just Elon tweets about various issues in front of the nation. That was strange. Other headlines for you, David, NPR filed suit against Donald Trump this morning. I was listening to NPR as this was happening. Was it David Falkin Flick of NPR talking about NPR's own suit against the Trump administration? Best guy to do it.

Yep. Scott Pelly gave a rousing, only in journalism, commencement speech at Wake Forest. Brian Stelter pointed out this was actually last week, but conservative media discovered it this week. Here's a little of Scott Pelley at Wake Forest and just listen to how well. news announcer voice translates to a commencement address. And insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak in America.

Amazing stuff. Whenever he's doing his reads on 60 minutes, it always feels a little purposefully awkward and straight up when he's sitting in front of the graphic. That felt like Scott Pelley after hours. Yeah. I'm just letting it rip. In America.

In America. I learned today that Scott Pelley went to Texas Tech. Wow. That's a surprise. Would Texas Tech or North Texas have been more surprised? for you. Texas Tech. Okay.

Texans will get that joke. Finally, David, I want to alert you to the long-form article whose juicy paragraphs were screenshoted the most this week, often without credit,

which is a practice I abhor. But our winner this week, Michael Schulman's profile of Patty Lepone in the New Yorker. Oh, yeah. I hadn't even gotten around to reading it yet, but we live in a world where you just have served Patty Lepone breathing fire about other Broadway actresses.

Absolutely. Before you actually consume the article itself. And I had to look at out like, what is this? Because even our journalist friends, sometimes forget to include the link or even a note about who wrote the paragraph that I'm reading. Very, very good stuff, at least in paragraph form. It is interesting, though. It's like when you see the Patty Lepone, like, quote, popper.

up on Twitter. She's one of those public figures where it's like, there's a sort of limited number of places where this could be running, right? Yes. The New Yorker, the Times. What's number three? Long form Patty Lepone profile. I don't even know what the third one would be.

Maybe like, maybe the journal. Maybe. Maybe. Is there like a British? I'm trying to think. I mean, would Vulture? do Patty Lepone? I don't know that they would get Patty Lepone.

I mean, does Patty Lepone know what Vulture is? I don't think so. I mean, maybe just New York Mag. Yeah, I mean, that would probably be the thing. But, like, yeah, it's tough. It's a tiny group. I could see a British newspaper sneaking its way into that group, maybe. It's often like, wow, crazy quotes to the independent.

You're like, what? Yeah. They get that story. We have a feature here at the press box called the worst question. ever asked at the White House. It's still going. New listeners may think, don't you mean the worst question ever asked during the second Trump administration?

No, Bobby Wagner has actually gone through every question ever asked in any White House. And this we've decided as the worst one. It happened a week ago Monday. Once again, it was asked from that little new media seat. Yeah. which is to the right of press secretary Caroline Levitt. It's almost like you're riding in a motorcycle sidecar with the White House press secretary. It was a very awkward television.

He was asked by Liam Cosgrove, who is a reporter for zero hedge. Actually, a two-part question. The first was about Donald Trump saying he is America first and continuing to fund foreign wars. Mr. Cosgrove and I may have different political opinions, but we will allow that. is actually a question. This was question number two and our winner for this week. The truth social, a video highlighting what most people call the Clinton body count, which is the strange number of suicides that seem to happen in Clinton circles.

I have a headline here from the Washington Post that said, Trump peddles false conspiracy theories tying the Clintons to several deaths. So I just wanted to highlight real quick. This wasn't in Trump's video, but this is from the Arkansas Times. And it's the death of Mark Middleton. who was a former Clinton White House aide. All right, so we had the phrase that pays Clinton body count. We had the media criticism there of the post.

We had a reference to a third publication, the Arkansas Times. Kind of a long windup, David. I deleted a part of the quote there where he goes into this particular theory of the case, but I just want to show you where this question eventually wound up. So anyways, that's just a lead into my question. about the most famous Clinton-related suicide, which is that of Jeffrey Epstein. There it is. There it is, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, my God. We keep finding new frontiers of questioning or semi-questioning with this White House. That's just really incredible stuff. I spent Memorial Day weekend, David, at the movies. Oh, good for you. Took my son Owen yesterday to see Mission. Impossible, the final reckoning. Theater was absolutely packed, which probably had more to do with a lovable Disney

alien than lovable Tom Cruise. But we get into our seats. There's that little Tom Cruise intro where he thanks you for watching Mission Impossible in a theater. As it is meant to be watched, then the lights go down. We start the movie. And oh my goodness, dude, we have. 30 minutes to an hour of some of the most insane, incoherent plot exposition this side of the

rise of Skywalker. Go on. Not that bad. Nothing is as bad as a rise of Skywalker. But I would just love, you know, they do those audience surveys after a movie. Here's what the critics thought. What do you think of the movie? I would have just loved to have a 10 question, multiple choice test.

Like what happened in this movie? What happened? Who are the names of half of the characters that are on the screen in this movie? Yeah, it's a good question. Okay. Isai Morales, who plays Gabriel, who is one of the ostensible villains. Who is he and what is he doing here? Yeah, okay.

What is his purpose in this story? Also, what did you think of the woman they met on an Arctic island who later furnished the team with a sled dog team and then just was in the rest of the movie for reasons I couldn't quite figure out? this is not a good movie. That's some great action sequences, the thing on the plane, yeah, that's all awesome. This is just absolutely incoherent.

So I go home and I look up the reviews of Mission Impossible. As one does, yeah. One does. 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. 75% among top critics on that site. The New York Times calls it a model example of Blockbuster Entertainment at its most highly polished. New York Magazine, a mixed review, but ultimately positive.

Hey, you know, it's a little crazy, a little confusing, but pretty good. Uh-huh. Here is something that I believe, David, with all my heart, even if I can't prove it, Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible are getting a pass because Tom Cruise wants to save movie theaters. And it is very hard, even for some of our best critical minds to untangle these two things. that he wants to keep this sacred and awesome experience of going to the movies alive, but that he has made a crappy movie as part of his efforts to get us to go to the theater. I mean, the Times quote you read wasn't exactly fake praise,

but if you wanted to say, if you wanted to have a blurb on the movie poster for a movie that you hated, that's probably exactly how you would word it. polished isn't a you know is a it's not that it's not a compliment it's an interesting adjective but anyway

yeah I think there's probably some truth to that I mean there's also the thing a lot of those movies I mean I remember saying like like a different category but like you know like the Michael Bay Transformers movies

when they first came out where I would just come out to like I don't know I don't remember anything that happened. Like literally my brain is melted during the, you know, when that first movie came out, like, I don't remember a thing. I can't tell you anything about this. And I'm a big Transformers guy. Like, I know the lore.

You know? There's a certain kind of like action movie where there's so much going on, especially with the Mission Impossible movie and Chris McCorrey's involvement over the years where it's like, there is a lot of like, it's not exactly highbrow, but it's like, you know, there's layers to it. There's certain expectations of depth and whatever else. And I think sometimes you see a movie that's just like so,

frantic and full of things, even if they're not like profound ideas. It's like full of concepts that you walk out and you're like, it was probably me. Right? Like that movie was a mess, but maybe I'm just not in the right head space for a mission impossible today. You know, and you give it a little bit of the benefit of the doubt. And the aging, right? Jerry Seinfeld used to do a bit about that.

It's like, as I get older, I'm sitting in the movie going, you know, who is that? And why is they? why are they mad at the other person again? But again, I don't believe this is us being, you know, not 22 years old anymore. I believe this is incomprehensible to even someone who watched all the Mission Impossible movies in a row and then immediately stepped into the theater, like push pause on their phone and walked into the theater to watch this movie, that they would not be able to get through the lore.

I was also playing with this as a metaphor. Let's imagine there was a Tom Cruise character of journalism. who was hitting David and Brian right in the fields. They said, hey, you know what? Magazines. Weren't they great? A magazine story is meant to be read in a magazine. We're not, you know, using your finger to kind of skip paragraphs

and not really drink it in. You need to read the words. Not only that, you need great photography. You need just the right pithy caption. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring a magazine. back. We're going to do it like we used to do in the old days. And you and I, I think, would just be completely captivated by that idea. Even if we opened the magazine, it was like, wow, this is a C-plus feature well. Wow. This is a weirdly racist magazine that we've just put all of our hearts in

mind. Yeah. It's just a big disappointment. I think it would be hard for us to crush the magazine that I am making up in my head and crush the time. Tom Cruise of journalism, whoever that was, who was bringing it back. But that's what I think is happening right now. Yeah, I think you're probably right. To movie critics. 80% for that. Also, Tom Cruise getting way too much credit from all of us for promoting movies.

Remember Glenn Powell was getting this? Like, you know, Glenn Powell likes giving interviews. I was like, that's awesome. But you understand this is accruing to them, right? Like Tom Cruise showed up in Dallas the other day as part of his very odd media tour for this. And I love the media in Texas because they not only noted that Tom Cruise went to a barbecue restaurant, but they noted what he ate at the restaurant. It's like page six would do, you know, if you were at a famous New York,

like Michaels or something like that, it's like, oh, no, we, you know, we know what kind of chili hatch sausage Tom Cruise was eating at Pekon Lodge. in Dallas. But Tom Cruise gets all this credit. It's like, you know, he's out there. He's like doing it for us. Not just hanging on to the plane for us, but he's promoting the movie for us. He's actually also promoting the movie for Tom Cruise.

So we should probably keep that in mind as we're weighing the various merits of Mission Impossible movie. Just putting that out there. I've got a sports book alert for you, David. So in the history of the ringer, nine years now. Can you believe it's been nine years? I can't, but go on.

The nine-year history of the ringer, I have texted our boss Bill Simmons exactly twice and said, you need to read this book. Bill Simmons, only person who loves sports books more than I do. First time was the Armin Catan Jeff Benedict Tiger Woods biography. I did it again last week for the book Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson. Oh, yeah. by Mark Creagle, who's New York journalist of longstanding and then an ESPN journalist and commentator, I believe, wrote the intro for the first Netflix, Monday Night Raw. That happened right? In January, didn't he write like an intro about the history of wrestling and that kind of stuff?

I had the same, whenever I pick up a book like this, I'm like, okay, Mike Tyson, like Tiger Wool. woods. I have been, my whole life has been absorbing Mike Tyson lore. There's going to be a high bar here because I feel like I know the stories. I know that I know where else goes. I start reading this book and I'm just like, oh my goodness, this is different. This is stuff I didn't know or it's or it's told in a way I wasn't familiar with. And I know it's the ultimate cliche to say like a nonfiction book reads like fiction. You will trust me here. You will trust me here.

This reads like fiction, particularly like Don Winslow. Oh, cool. And not just because neither Winslow nor Mark Kregel or averse to one sentence paragraphs. Because it just feels like this story that just like is this kid, he's in Brownsville, and it just builds out. It's amazing. By the way, I think that you just inadvertently stumbled upon a meta-critique there. You're allowed to say that non-fiction. reads like a novel, but you just have to point out what author or novel it reads like.

You can't just say like generally it reads like a novel, right? It reads like fiction. That's totally meaningless. Just a total abdication of your blurbing duties. Tell me what it sounds. Tell me what this nonfiction book reminds you of. Yes. Is it Dostoevsky or is it James Patterson?

Yeah. This is a big range there between those things. All right, David. Coming up in just 30 seconds, what will be at the apex mountain of our list of sliding doors metaphors? But first, let's do 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. Send your nominees to add the press box pod on either Twitter or Blue Sky, where they will always, always be gratefully received. was kind of fish-tailing around looking for today's winner. We got two good suggestions from the conference finals.

Number one, here from our friend Nick Field, if you made a passive-aggressive comment about how fun it is to watch playoff basketball turn into a free-throw competition in the final minute, and from our other friend Andy Ross, if you think in honor of Game One's comeback, they should change the Naismith Hall of Fame to the Neesmith Hall of Fame,

fame. We will accept both of those. If you were watching the conference finals and you're bored, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump. Had this amazing moment on Thursday show where I told Joel that I was listening to, actually reading the transcript of Ezra Klein and Jake Tapper. Tapper was on Klein's podcast talking about what else, Joe Biden. And they made. mentioned the term sliding doors moment. And then both had to admit that they had not seen the 1998 movie sliding doors with Gwyneth Baltrow.

I don't think it's necessary to have that discussion. No, and nothing shameful because I have not seen that movie either. Despite being very aware of it in 1998 and beyond and Bill's columns and everything. I understand it, right? But it provoked a question, what movies or books are we? referencing in journalism without ever having read or seen the original. I threw that open to our listeners and they sent a whole list which I would like to read to you right now. Oh my gosh. We've discussed this before, but this really hits home for me because I worked at

a bookstore. I worked at politics and pros in DC. It worked a couple of bookstores, but that was, you know, that's the best one where you hand sell books, where you're just like every bookseller is intimately aware. And you read like crazy there. I read more there than I've ever read in my life. but there was a bunch of books that I pretended to read. And I think I really believed by the end of the time there that I had read them, right? And it's only in like the decade since, still to this day. My wife would be like, did you ever read this? I'm like, yeah.

And I still have like a paragraph of patter, you know, like I'm ready to talk about it. And then I pick it up and I look at the first page. I'm like, never read this book. I realize, you know. This is like a reading Mandela effect. Yeah, exactly. Because you just talk, you sell, you know, it's like how many times, how many times must I like, you know, hand cell founding brothers before like I just it's the same as having read it you know like I know so

much about this I know more than the average person who reads a couple of reviews in a Wikipedia page I'm intimately familiar with this book but no I've never read it all right here are a couple of our sliding doors metaphor nominees you tell me what you think of these first one actually comes from me because I was reading a story in puck over the weekend about media rights and one of the headlines was MLB's Sophie's Choice. Feel free to go look up the plot of Sophie's Choice and then tell me whether Major League Baseball Media Rights is the right thing to append to that metaphor. My dad gave me a copy of that years ago.

I never read it. This is from listener Josh Campbell. He gives us a couple Catch 22. Okay. Well, yeah. I thought about that the moment you said Sophie's Choice, I actually have read Catch 22, if you'll recall, and love it. But yeah, I mean, it's sort of unnecessary to have read it.

But I guess that, I mean, to make the point. But yes, no one, I mean, very few people have read that compared to the number of people that use the phrase. That's sort of the most notable thing about the book. The Apex Mountain, if you will. Rashomon, the Kurosawa film gets a lot of run. Also, Horatio Alger stories. Yes. Like what percentage of the people referencing Horatio Alger have read the works of the author who died in 1899?

Yeah, that's totally true. Like even read one Horatio Alger story. Adam Warenko gives us this. He says Machiavellian has to be a number one seed for terms used in journalism that the person using it hasn't actually engaged with. Yeah. on the flip side, I feel like Proustian might have the highest coincidence of having actually read Proust, right? I mean, I think, I don't think many people are just throwing Proustian out there as some sort of like secret handshake. Okay.

So, but I do think I have talked about like, you know, taking the bite of the Mataline is the Madeline. This is, I have not, this is me not reading Proust, but just absorbing Proust in the Machiavelli. in way, but talking about then like sliding into memory. I know I've used that term at some time, at some point in my life. Both Yankees bullpen and Juan Archela give us Orwellian. Yeah. Again, like Catch 22, a lot of people have read 1984. I was going to say that.

There's a story. I thought of Oliver Twist, too, and put that in the same category as like Orwellian. But enough people have read this that it seems like it doesn't count, but the usage is way overblown. I mean, like, no, I get, if we don't probably be shocked to realize, I'm probably not shocked to realize how many people just didn't read the books assigned to them in school and never went back. We would not be shocked. That's the politics and pros experience that most people have. It's just like, well, I wrote a paper on 1984.

I can't say that I've read it, you know. It got an A. It's amazing. AI would do that for you right now. Joe DeFazio gives us Rosebud. Oh, yeah. From Citizen Kane. I bet a lot more people referring to a rosebud than actually engaging with the full movie.

Daniel Prendible gives us Potimkin, not exactly a literary reference, but I know what Potimkin village means, but I don't think you and I could give listeners a ton of string on Gregori Potimkin, whose first name I had to look up before this podcast. A couple more great ones here. This is from Alex D. regarding metaphors that people use all the time without having seen read the original thing, I always chuckle when I hear a sports podcaster

refer to a player's contract as an albatross. Pretty sure most of them haven't been reading Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. That's a good one, yeah. It's a really good one. We don't even know what... Did that originate in Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Seems so, this idea of the albatross.

it's so out there that we've decoupled it from the thing that we pretended to read when we were in school. Yeah, no, no, I kind of would have assumed a lot of times in poetry those things predate the poem, but that's really interesting. And this is a great one from Jamie McClellan, who produces the Off the Pike podcast for the Ringer. Svengali is always an only in journalism reference

that always sticks out to me. comes from a character in George Dumarie's 1894 novel Trilby. No one has ever heard of this book. It means a person who manipulates or exerts excessive control over another. Yeah. Svengali. Wow. Once again, we didn't even know there was a book to be engaged with or not engaged with.

Exactly. We were just throwing it out there. All right. Final email here before we get to the headline from Brian Yama, Can I say one more thing about that subject? Please. I understand the books. I mean, we should all be reading, but there's a lot of books out there.

Books are off putting, but go watch Rasha Man. I mean, it's like, it's not that long. Watching a movie is not much of a commitment. Citizen Kane is not that long. Go watch Citizen Kane. Come on. Just like throw it on in the background while you're like doing some work. No, no, no, no, no.

Don't throw Citizen Kane on the background while you're doing work if you've never seen it before. It's the movie podcast producer. I'm not saying it's the ideal way to watch it. I'm just saying, you know, as a way to just turn it on. It's not that hard to push play. So you're saying specifically you'd like to want people to watch it on their iPod Nano from 2004 in a tiny little screen. It might already be downloaded and it's the only thing the nano can hold.

Should we go see it in the movie theater like Tom Cruise wants us to Bobby? Go see Citizen Kane like it's meant to be seen. I got some words for you about Mission Impossible Curtis, but we'll save it for off there. Finally, this is for Brian Yamasaki. You'll remember we referenced the critical review of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's book Original Sin the other day, which called like Shakespeare drama on steroids. Oh, yeah.

And we were saying, wait a second. It's impossible to go past Hamlet. Like there's not a level above Shakespeare is there. Well, Brian Yamasaki writes this. while it's amusing to imagine Hans and Franz doing their Germanic rendition of Rosencrantz and Gilden's turn, Baz Luhrmann's movie version of Romeo and Juliet

is the epitome of Shakespeare on steroids. I think Brian Yamasaki is absolutely correct. Also, F. Scott Fitzgerald on steroids. Bazelerman gave us that as well. Yeah. Thank you for making media piss test into a reality. All right, it's time for a feature that is always Potemkin that always contains a rose

bud. It's time for David Shoeemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about Trump's decision to accept a plane from Qatar was thieving on a jet plane. That was a good one. Today's headline comes to us from John Walters, a Vermont political blogger and longtime friend of this podcast. David, it's from the Morrisville News and Citizen. Okay. Certainly the Morrisville News and Citizen. first time on this particular feature. The story is about a lake there in Vermont and some unexpected company that might have appeared on that lake.

I'll reach you the first paragraph of the article by Eric Hanson here. Residents and birders observed nearly 40 adult loons on Lake Elmore last Thursday, May 8th. Then on Saturday, observers counted 74 on the glassy smooth waters. What is going on? and begins, thus begins the article, which explains why there are so many new bird friends. So I want you to think of some unexpected company.

And I want you to think of Lunes. What was the news and citizens? Strained pun. I was really hoping for an Elmore Leonard pun here, because it's like Elmore, but I guess that's not it. Okay. Unexpected company.

Unexpected company. Dinner sort of thing. Yes, or yes. You're not the only. person on the lake. Unexpected. Surprise guess. You're not out there in that kayak by yourself

or jet skis if they allow them. I may have to spot you some words here. Wait, you're not out there by yourself. I feel like this should be clicking. I think Bobby is sitting behind his screen laughing at me right now. He's actually watching Citizen Kane. We lost him.

Yeah, good. He found us Nano. It's something with surprise guest, dude, I have no idea. Wait, you're not the only... We are... Oh, we're not alone? We're not alone.

We're not alone. Is the right answer there. Some fantastic work from the Morrisville, Mermott News and Citizen. Yeah. I just want to confirm that if there's one thing that I've learned about becoming the producer of the press box is that I am terrible at David Schuemaker.

That's the strain pun headline, because I try to play along with you, and I was not getting that one. I know if I was a listener to this show, I've always known, I would think, I would laugh at how stupid David is every week. Like that, like, 100%. And it's, people don't know what it's like when the lights are bright. You know, the Riverside Light is blinking in front of your face and you're just trying to get to We Are Not Alone. Yeah. Yeah.

We had Justin Verrier and David C. one time, and I did the pun headline for him. And I've never seen Verrier sweat that much. Justin Verier, not a lot of vulnerability. You know, man, he was like, oh, oh, I'm in the deep water now. This isn't just Anthony Davis takes anymore, brother. I got the thunder defense attack of me and I can't get this shot up. It was unbelievable. He is David Schuemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Butaxi Magic by Bobby Wagner. Guess what? We're going to have some press box buttons to give away. David, and I'm winking at him, madly right now. Oh, yeah, I was just about to email you at this, but go ahead. He is working on the revision. because journalism won the pretense.

So we're going to have some very cool 2025 press box slash journalism the horse buttons to give away. Journalism, the horse. Should that just be the button? Journalism and then the horse? The horse finishes first. Oh, okay. See?

Play around with it. You got a lot on your plate. But if you have time, play around. No, it's open right now. All right. Journalism, the horse buttons. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, It's just contribute to this podcast.

It's all you got to do, send me an email, brian.curtishther.com, tweet at us at the press box pod, suggest a guest, a future 25 for 25 episode, a particularly funny, loon-based headline or overworked Twitter joke. If I see it and I say, hey, this is really good, I will write you, I will ask for your address and I will send you a button. The low cost of free, you get a button. Anyway, hit us up.

David, I cannot wait to talk more with you next Monday on the old press box. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.