The Press Box - TV Football Breakdown, Media Piss Test, and Netflix Sports Docs

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Bryan and David break down media moments from the football-packed weekend, including Drew Brees’s reporting, Troy Aikman’s Cowboys comment, and Dak Prescott’s reaction to his fans throwing trash on the field (0:28). Then they switch gears for another Media Piss Test, where they decide whether Mike Lindell soiled the bit, before reacting to the news of upcoming Netflix sports docs highlighting both tennis and golf (27:46). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained Pun-Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringers Charles Holmes and co-host Grace Spellman present the most notorious new podcast in the industry, the Ringer Music Show. Every Tuesday, they'll bring you the latest news, the hottest takes, and the deepest reporting about the wild world of music and the chaotic industry that creates it. Check out the Ringer Music Show exclusively on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of The Ringer here along with producer Erica Servantes. David, are you still climbing out of the coma of a gigantic football weekend? That's one way to put it, I guess, right? Yeah, it seemed like I watched a lot of TV and obviously just with the span of time, I think I Googled NFL scores on my phone more times this weekend than I have in quite some time.

So, yeah, it was a lot. I had the, this is not a scientific observation, but I pride myself on being able to watch tons of football on television. I have a higher capacity for that than anything but coffee during the day. And by last night, Monday night, I was flagging. I mean, it was just literally hard to make sense of what I was seeing on the screen because I had watched so much football over a three-day period. It really did hit that line.

I've got a bunch of notes for you. amusing and strange things I saw over the weekend. Note number one, David, is from the Saturday game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Las Vegas Raiders. It was announced by a relative newcomer to the sports television field, Drew Breeze. All right, Drew Breeze, Super Bowl winning quarterback in the New Orleans Saints.

He gets hired by NBC. He did the studio this year. He called Notre Dame games with Mike Tariko. This was, kind of his big coming out party as an announcer. And he was a real dud. I mean a real dud. And you know how there's awkward announcing like Jason Witten was awkward announcing

where you're kind of stumbling over the words and don't feel too comfortable in the whole thing? Drew Breeze was a different category in that he just didn't have anything to say. Right. Like they would be a play and he would go. Oh, you know, those penalties are really magnified during the playoffs. Like, yeah, okay. That's a good observation. Thanks for that.

And then they get down to the last drive of the game. The Raiders are going down trying to tie the game. And Toriko sets him up and says, you know, what should we be looking for? What's going on here? And he said, I think the Raiders should try to get the ball out of bounce to stop the clock, which is true for any potential game tying or winning drive. Yes. That's like saying the Raiders should try to make yards on their march toward the end zone.

It was a weird one. Yeah, that's strange. I mean, listen, you, maybe, maybe this, maybe he's victim to the fact that when you're a, you know, a Hall of Fame quarterback and you're hanging around with your friends or at the bar watching the game, everybody, everything you say comes off as genius. But, yeah, maybe, and it doesn't quite convey across the national airwaves. but it was a very bizarre performance. There's this whole thing of how do you predict who's going to be the next announcer?

And one way, the easiest way, at least for all of us who are outside the C-suite, is to watch the way these guys talk when they're interviewed. So like Drew Bree is giving a press conference back when he was a player, we can watch that and say, is this guy going to be good or not? And I remember watching Drew Breeze and being like he sounds like he is speaking very carefully, like quarterbacks of high profile NFL teams tend to speak in those situations. But I was assured by multiple people in the business that when they did those private interviews that the broadcast crew gets to do with the famous players before the game starts,

that Drew Breeze was just winning those meetings. Like Drew Breeze was awesome. You hear Mike Tomlin, the coach of the Steelers, awesome in those meetings. He was awesome. And that's where those guys find the next announcers. Because they're like, aha, see, this guy's talking to us. And if he's really good, he could be really good in front of the mic. Sure. Yeah. So Drew Breeze won the meeting. But then when he was actually put out there, it was, uh, it was kind of like, you know what? You know when you hear a bad podcast guest? And the host is doing all the work. Yeah.

That was Torrico. And we don't have those here on. on the press box pocket. Every, every, every, every guest we have is fantastic. We've never had to carry a show. You know, it's one thing to be, like, you know, fun in a room, right? Or, you know, in front of a small audience. And there's a lot of reasons why that could be. I mean, for one thing, if you're judging all your future, you know, announcers and color commentators by the people that come through the interview room at Fox, Fox Sports, you're talking about a pretty, necessarily pretty narrow set of options there, right? I mean, it's not like you're, you're, you're, you're talking about a pretty, You're just out there just like canvassing the wide world of people with voices.

But, you know, there's being nice off, I mean, there's being funny and entertaining when you're like talking off the cuff without a microphone on or without a recorder on or whatever. And then there's having to do it in front of a bunch of people. And the one thing that would happen between that time in the room with the Foxxexex and being on the air is a whole lot of training, right? As a whole lot of just sort of like on the air boot camping. And I always think back, this is it. we're on the press box so I can make this sort of like

just bizarre grab. But I always think of Al Gore, who everybody used to say was the funny. Al Gore was supposedly the funniest guy in the world in like in social situations, right? He was just like witty and jokey and whatever. And you put a microphone in front of him when he's running for office.

And he couldn't keep his foot out of his mouth. And part of me always wondered if it was just at some point you say something smart ass or you say something that you shouldn't have said, and your media trainers, your handlers, just read you the riot act for it, and you're just like, okay, fine, I'll do exactly what you say, you know? And you just internalize it in exactly the wrong way,

and you become the opposite of what made you so compelling. The thing we should interrogate here is whether somebody like Drew Brees or, in your example, Al Gore, really was funny off camera, or is that just something we say? You should see him off camera. He's really funny. Yeah. You're right. That could have just been, that could have been its own little, like the PR push from the campaign. That would, that would probably make more sense, you know, if you want to be honest about it. But as of just as a, as a parallel, I mean, I could imagine that Drew Breeze just got, you know, just being overly cautious, you know, or doesn't want to sound stupid or whatever it is, you know, and so you would just end up sounding just nothing. So that's the thing, right? When you're answering questions after a game, if you're a big famous quarterback or athlete,

the key is not to say anything. The key is to be vanilla. And then you get onto television like, no, no, no, being vanilla is not the goal. In fact, being vanilla is bad here. You should be interesting. And sometimes if you're too interesting, that's good for television.

We like too interesting. But being boring and vanilla, that's weird. Another note from that very same game, David, there was this amazing play where Joe Burrow, quarterback in the Cincinnati Bengals, runs right. He's right at the sideline. He throws the ball into the end zone. And anybody watching that telecast

could hear a whistle, a referee's whistle being blown while the ball was in the air. It was a really, really weird moment. And then the Bengals catch a touchdown. And we're like, wait a second. I heard the referees blow the whistle while the ball was in the air. And under NFL rules, you have to actually replay that down.

Touchdown shouldn't count. You just start over and say, whoops, that was an accident. Replay the down. NBC took a little while to see it. It took in a couple of minutes to come back and see it. But the reason I bring this up is because everybody on Twitter got mad at Jerome Boger, who was the head referee of that game. Does anything unite sports Twitter like bad officiating?

We thought the longform.org stopping publishing with something that united all of media Twitter. Bad officiating is such a. down the middle piece of comfort food for all of us, everybody can get in on that action. Yeah, there's, no one's going to come to the defense of a referee, right? I mean, unless you're just really going to doing it

from a very deliberate point of view, just to, you know, just to get, just to work everybody else up and do a frenzy. But yeah, of course. I mean, you can make fun of coaches. You're going to get a little pushback. You can make fun of quarter, you can get on quarterbacks.

You get a lot of, pushback, regardless of who they are. But referees are sitting ducks. Referees don't have a constituency. They have no constituency. Right. And guys like Mike Pereira on Foxy, the ex-referee who does all the

overseeing of the officials' calls. Even he's trying to undermine the referees in the game. So it's not even so even their former colleague isn't going to come to their defense because his whole job is to point out on television when those referees are wrong. Mm-hmm. Poor referees. Yeah, I guess Mike Prairie is the constituency for referees.

But no, but it turns out he's undermining them. He's saying, well, I know. I know. He should be the constituency. And if he's not under, it doesn't have your back, then what do you got? Note number three, David, comes from the Fox number one team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. So they were covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Philadelphia Eagles game on Sunday. They were not covering the Dallas Cowboys San Francisco 49ers game.

Yes. which was a better matchup, and by the way, is the most NFC matchup of all time. We associate the NFC with Fox because it's split up. Anyway, due to a very boring contractual thing, CBS, not Troy Aikman and Joe Buck,

got to do Cowboys 49ers. Troy Aikman let a rip on the air that he was very disappointed with that turn of events. That game coming up, which is on CBS, which is the Dallas Cowboys, hosting the San Francisco 49ers.

We saw San Francisco with that overtime win in L.A. last weekend. That's going to be a good game. It's going to be a great game. I'm in a really good game. I think there's a lot of people that like to be calling that game, but it should be a lot of fun. And I love trying to pull out of the dive when Joe Buck starts laughing there. But it should be a lot of fun.

Yeah. Calling that game. This is one of the ones where the deal, Hill's got all, all messed everything up because I want to hear Troy Eggman talking about the Dallas Cowboys in San Francisco 49ers, a rivalry he was a part of. Yeah. And I wanted to hear Chris Collinsworth, by the way, talking about what a big win that was for the Cincinnati Bengals, their first playoff win since 1991.

Mm-hmm. Former Cincinnati Bengals played in the Super Bowl for him. We just, we needed some, we needed like the fantasy booking of the announced crews. I just somebody, GM of common sense, as our boss would say, to just step in and go, I know what the deal say, but I'm going to come in and fix this. Got to have the right people in the right place. Here's another sound by David from our Dallas Cowboys, at least my Dallas Cowboys. They lost to the San Francisco 49ers.

Yeah. And they lost in the most embarrassing way possible, which is they were driving at the end of the game to try to tie the score, actually win the game. And the clock ran out. They ran a play in the middle of the field that were not eight. able to get a Hail Mary or any kind of final play into the end zone off. The crowd there, our peers there at Texas at AT&T Stadium, started throwing trash. Very wrestling crowd style there.

For the record, is the trash the most, make it the most embarrassing way possible to you? The trash throwing or just the play calling or lack thereof? I think the play calling was the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen. All right. That was the most cowboys thing I've ever seen. Dak Prescott, starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, was asked by the media afterwards, what did he make of fans throwing trash onto the field?

That's sad. I mean, you're talking about a team, you're talking about men that come out each and every day of their lives and give everything to this sport, give everything to this game of football. Nobody wants to succeed more than we want to succeed. I understand fans and the word fan for fanatic. I get that.

To know everything that we put into this day in and day out, try our hardest. Nobody comes in in the game wanting or expecting to lose. And for people to react that way when you're supposed to be a supporter and be with us through thick and thin. That's tough. I love that whenever we get into a question about fans, everyone is contractually obligated to point out that fan is short for fanatic. You must point that out at least once. What are the greatest little fillers of all time? You know, fan is short for fanatic.

Anyway, very standard answer there by Dak Prescott. Speaking of quarterbacks, not wanting to say anything inflammatory. Hey, you know, we're working hard out there. We're trying our best. And we're really disappointed to see fans throwing trash at the players. But then the funniest thing happened, David. What are the reporters there says, no, no, no, they weren't throwing trash at you. they were throwing trash at the referees.

And I want you to hear Dick Prescott's answer when he is informed and in fact the fans were throwing trash at the refs. Credit to them then. Oh, credit. Credit to them. Credit to them.

Find it totally unacceptable that the fans would throw trash at me, but if they're throwing it at those refes, you got to hand it to the fans at AT&T Stadium. You know? Yeah. I've never heard anything like that before. Well, I mean, what are you going to do?

What do you get to? What do you expect? I mean, he's probably really pissed off with the refs. I know. But, and again, I'm not trying to do the high horsey take here. Like, I would rather, Dak Prescott, be honest with the way he feels about the refs. But I did not. I've just never heard someone stand up there after a game and go, you know, actually, you're

throwing trash to the refs. I'm okay with that. need to improve our aim here at AT&T Stadium. I threw some bad passes today. Hey, so do the fans. They were throwing garbage at the refs. Final note is on the matter of Stephen A. Smith. Woo.

And also on the matter of the Dallas Cowboys. Because one of Stephen A. Smith's many corners, as they say in the sports media, is that he does not like the Dallas Cowboys, David. Of course, yeah. And because the Dallas Cowboys move the ratings, needle. Not only does he not like the Dallas Cowboys very publicly, Stephen A. Smith has Michael Irvin, former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver, Super Bowl winning wide receiver on his show on Monday so that they can have a public discussion about the ways that Stephen A. Smith does not like

the Cowboys. An airing of grievances. An airing of grievances, if you will, for one or the other. In this case, the Cowboys lost. And Stephen A, who recovered from COVID, and we're happy to hear that, comes out onto the set in a cowboy hat smoking a cigar to savor his victory such as it is over Michael Irvin. Here's a little bit of what he told the playmaker on ESPN. This franchise is an utter disgrace. Every big moment that arrives, they look at you, they look at Emmett, they look at Troy,

they look at everybody, and they say, we want a y'all but they ain't one of y'all they never earned it and fools like you grabbing Micah Parsons who's a stud on draft day

we got it we got the crew can I tell you what I found amazing about that? Yes please looking at Twitter on Sunday after the Cowboys Luz and then again on Monday morning the consensus

I think I'm safe to say of sports Twitter was, oh man, I can't wait to hear Stephen A on Monday morning. This is going to be an incredible bit by Stephen A. Yeah. A chance to do his anti-Cowboys thing on Monday morning. Oh, yeah. Can we just note, maybe for the umpteenth time on this podcast, what an incredible turnaround this is in the Stephen A. Smith discourse

that was going on in sports media and has been going on in sports media. if I had gotten a time machine and went back like 10 years ago and told everybody, all the reporters out there, everybody said, all right, here's what's going to happen. Stephen A. Smith will come out on television in a cowboy hat smoking a cigar and make fun of Michael Irvin

because the cowboys lost. The two responses I think I would get were, were A, I am not watching that for fellow sports media members. That is not my cup of tea. Or two, this is just like my idea of hell. That's exactly what people would have said.

Yeah. But Stephen A. Smith has won people over to such a degree, David, that everybody now, it's the obitillate. Why, I can't wait to see this. This is going to be a great Stephen A moment. This is going to be an amazing content opportunity for Stephen A. Smith on first take. And I'm not even judgmental about it, right? Even as a cowboy, I don't care.

Like, to me, Stephen A. Smith going out there, That's great. Whatever he wants to do. I'm just amazed at the way perception within the media, the general opinion of the media, if I can be so bold as the divine that has turned around. Yeah. I mean, I think it sort of took,

it just took a couple of people to sort of signal that it was okay to appreciate Stephen A in all of his glory. Mm-hmm. But I also think that it's, that it's um it's not just it's not just that he's taking a corner that would not have been something you would expect 10 years ago

I think it's just sort of like you know the kind of the shattering of the false idols of a lot of things in pro sports has gone on over the past decade right and it you can make it turns out you can make a lot more hay and maybe a lot more money out of talking shit about the cowboys and of like glorifying them than by glorifying them than by glorifying them.

You know what I mean? Like, it's like, there's a, as much as all these Cowboys fans, and you can say the same thing about any successful major market team, as much as they're used to the media being,

the local media being fawning and just sort of celebratory and everything else, more often than not, your emotional state is one of despair. And to hear that channeled on a national platform isn't necessarily the worst idea. Yeah. I guess it's also different just to have a,

taking a side on the Cowboys' boys. Like was that a thing nationally 10 years ago? I mean, there's certainly a lot of generalized cowboys. We're tired of this or I hate the cowboys or whatever it is. But the idea that like on my television show, I am going to be either pro cowboys or anti- cowboys.

Yeah. You know, I think we would have more approached it like I'm going to talk about the news of the day rather than I am going to glory in the victory or defeat of the cowboys. Yeah. Well, it's good content. So that's different. Yeah. Can I give you my other theory about why I think things have turned around?

Sure. 10, 20 years ago when we watched sports television, we meaning members of the sports media, we were writers, mostly. There were sports writers, and then there were those people on TV. Okay? We're doing the serious work, quote unquote. They're on TV and they're doing something else. Well, guess what happened in the meantime, David?

We all got podcasts. we kind of all started doing bits even between our quote unquote serious pieces. That's true. And I just think something happened where everyone's kind of from our writer's side of the world looks at the people on television now and goes, oh,

oh, that person is doing a more successful version or more high profile version of what I'm trying to do this week on my podcast. Yeah. Well, I mean, And listen, we've talked before about how fandom just goes part and parcel with sports trading these days, right? Go look at all the football writers that you follow on Twitter and try to find one who you don't know who their home team is, right, or where their rooting interests lie.

And this is just sort of the weird inverse of that, right? The comical Funhouse Mirror version of being, you know, a diehard Browns fan. Or, you know, whatever. This is just no, I have a team that I hate more than all the other teams. I was watching Twitter this week because I'm waiting for the Bengals fan in the media to emerge. Like I know who the Cowboys people are. I know, you know, the Bears people. I can kind of name like somebody from almost every franchise now because they're very public about it on Twitter.

Lots of Eagles fans. Do we have a Bengals fan? Do we have like an avatar in the sports media who we're going to be like, oh, somebody go check on so-and-so if they lose next weekend. is so-and-so doing okay and then they're going to have their reaction to share with us about what happens to their Bengals? I don't know

I certainly don't know the answer and I'm sure we're going to get you know, we're going to get made fun of for not knowing something very obvious but I just Googled it to see who the if there are any famous Bengals fans and the first person on the list is Woody Harrelson which okay

I'll take that and then the list sort of falls off the cliff. Gary Owen, Bootsie Collins. Oh, George Clooney's on here. Nick Lachay of 98 degrees.

He's, you know, he counts. Carmen Electra. Oh, Kirk Herb Street is a Bengals fan. Okay, there it is.

There you go. Dan Patrick? Is he? I had no idea, but now we know. Maybe he is. I know he's from, I know he's from there,

or from Ohio. Yes. And, and Jerry Springer. One of your personal favorites. Kirk Herb Street. It's his corner. We got you.

All right, David, 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 at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. I got some Texas news for you. This is from Rolling Stone.

Robert Earl Kean, the beloved Texas songwriter, known for songs like the road goes on forever, says he is retiring from touring. Robert Rolkeen is retiring from touring. It was an award Twitter joke to write. Turns out the road doesn't go on forever and the party does end. Makes to Senior Ches Perito for that one.

That's fantastic. I'm just, I want to go, I'm going to have to scroll back through Twitter and see if anybody I know made that joke because I'd be slightly shocked if anybody just had a Robert real keen joke in their back pocket or in their holster, I guess that would be the more appropriate way to put it. A note from the world of baseball, David, for you. The Blue Jays have signed Dominican

right-handed pitcher Eminem's Flores. Eminem's Flores. Spelled like the rapper, M&M, except plural. M&Ms. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, I guess this is his one shot, his one opportunity.

Another one says, I hope he doesn't lose himself in the moment. we would have also accepted his name is what? I like that one better. Thanks to Joe Healy for that one. And finally, David, a little news from the food world in the New York Times. The makers of greer cheese,

greer cheese in Switzerland and France are not happy that a federal judge cited with U.S. cheese producers and said the cheese, named for the Swiss town where it's been made for centuries, could be produced anywhere. Greer cheese can be produced anywhere. It was an overword Twitter joke to write.

It looks like this one falls into a greeria. Wait, how does that work? How do you just, how does that you could, like an American judge decided that they, that anyone can do it? Can we first be honest? Did either one of us know greer cheese had to be made in Switzerland or France? Or it didn't, it couldn't be called greer cheese? I'm not raising my hand right now. No, but there's a bunch of, and I don't, I'm not going to go to these.

You did not know. I know on your behalf that you did not know that. But you do know that some cheese, the cheese is a regional. Have you, well, listen, if you were a daily crossword puzzle solver, you would be, you'd be very aware of that because that's, you know, we work that in all the time. But I know there's all these weird laws about, about alcohol, right? That you have to, the champagne can only be from certain places. I know that there's, there's laws in the U.S. about the, the, the, the specific definition of

bourbon versus whiskey versus rye. I'm pretty sure we're all like kind of, you know, organized in some definitive way. It just seems a little bit of an unfair contest. So there's this longstanding agreement that like the grueyrians or whatever, have a monopoly on this cheese. And then some like, sorry, I'm going to get, I'm going to get kicked out of the country. But some like, Yahoo judge in America is like, now we can do that here. I mean, that's it just seems weird.

You're legislating from the bench, you might say. Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned the crossword puzzles. because remember we were talking about Wordle on Friday? Yeah. And we were saying, what was the thing that journalists did to brag about how smart they are?

Was it crossword puzzles? I was thinking about this yesterday. It might be, but somebody else had all the books they read on Goodreads. Oh, yeah. That was the other one. And by the way, I still saw that at the end of the year,

but somebody was like, here's the list of books I read in 2021. Mm-hmm. I'm sorry, did you just arrive in seventh grade and you're turning in something on the first day of school about all the books you read this summer? Yeah.

When did we start doing that? Anyway, thanks to Luke B. If you cannot improve on that Greer joke, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David, a couple of quick items for you. One is some sad news about one of our favorite bits,

speaking of bits, media piss test. This is where we examine who the media or what the media is saying is on steroids. Well, on Saturday in Arizona, David, Donald Trump had a rally and Mike Lindell,

otherwise known as the My Pillow guy who likes to talk about alleged electoral shenanigans was talking about a new way for people to vote that he said was allegedly safer

than the old way that people vote, which as we know is very safe. And Mike Lindell said it's paper, this is this new process, but it's paper on steroids.

Paper on steroids. According to Raw Story, He also said it's the most awesome paper you've ever seen. You can't copy it. It's better than money. So my question is, did Mike Lindell just kill the bit? Man, that's hard. We can let the bit live on.

But anything Michael Endell gets involved, I don't know. Anything Michael Endell gets involved with, I think you just, can we just take a mulligan on this one and just revisit the media piss test in a week or two? Got some news on sports documentaries for you. You know the sports documentary on Netflix, the series Formula One Drive to Survive. It's a big hit. It had an incredible effect on sports here in the United States. The effect was that everybody we know started tweeting about Formula One on Sunday mornings.

Just incredible to get those kind of results from a sports documentary. Well, Netflix has announced two more in the same vein, two more documentary series. One is about the PGA tour and the other is about tennis. so there's going to be a drive to survive of golf and a drive to survive of tennis. What do we think of those ideas? I mean, I'm sort of preemptively exhausted, but it's a good idea, right? I mean, the fact that everyone's tweeting about Formula One is not really negative for anybody, except people who are trying to get through their Twitter timelines without saying anything about Formula One.

But even then, I mean, who am I to talk? This is all the people who've been complaining about, you know, my wrestling tweets for the past decade. So, you know. It's interesting when the NBA had its little boomlet of attention over the last decade. And boomlet, I think largely meaning Twitter attention, right, whether it translates into ratings and interest in basketball is probably yet to be determined over a long period of time. But we can say like a lot of media attention that didn't have in prior years,

people always said it was because the NBA was a soap opera. You got players. You've got the woge bombs. You've got the trades. You got, you know, stuff spotted on the bench and halftime, all that kind of stuff or during the game. It's interesting to me how like golf and tennis like Formula One are trying to kind of reverse engineer themselves into being a soap opera.

Right. Golf kind of had it going on, you know, a little bit over the last. year or so. I don't think, I don't know if tennis other than Novak Djokovic had it coming on all that much. But it's just funny to think like, that's what we want to be. We want to be a quote-unquote reality show. So now we're going actually to be a reality show. Hey, it's worked for a lot of things in the past, you know. But yeah, it is, it is definitely very interesting. I mean, I, I, who knows if tennis and golf will get you, we'll get to the same spot. There's definitely like a

alienness and oddity to the Formula one that I think makes it sort of alluring and also a little, you know, getting it on the ground floor. It's practically unknown to a lot of Americans. It's totally new. Yeah. Before, at least before the series. Yeah. All right. One more note for you, David. This is from

Carl Bernstein. We recorded an interview with him yesterday. He's going to be on the press box this week. And I ask Carl Bernstein, what is your favorite media movie? we like media movies here at the press box and Carl Bernstein David uniquely qualified to answer because a movie has been made about him. A great media movie has been made about him.

His answer may surprise you as I used to say on the internet. Here is Carl Bernstein's favorite media movie. This girl Friday with Rosalind Russell. Great. Just a great, great, great movie. And it's funny, I was just asked, I was just asking in another, actually it was a Reddit interview online. And I was asked about being played in another movie by an actor named McCulloch.

And it's a great movie called Dick, which is a fabulous send-up of Watergate, of Nixon, and particularly of me and Woodwork. and Will Farrell plays Woodward. And as Man, McCulloch plays me. And they've got down every aspect of our doperness and anything else that Woodward and I are capable. They've got it just wonderfully. That was not the answer I expected.

Anyway, his girl Friday. Very good vote. It's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Friday's headline about Prince Andrew having his title stripped was Royale with Slees and the narcissist formerly known as Prince. Even better on the second one.

Today's headline, David, comes from Brendan Chisholm. It's from the Sydney Morning Herald. It is one more headline about the Novak Djokovic situation. Remember, it looked like his visa was going to get canceled because he's unvaccinated. When he arrived to play at the Australian Open, it led to the immortal. headline return serb. Return Serb. Now in fact, Novak Djokovic has left Australia.

We're still going tennis puns here. What was the Sydney Morning Herald's strain pun headline? Oh, gosh, I should have been working on these. I got nothing to go on here. He's back. Is it out of Australia? There's some finality to this. The end of the end of the match is over, you might say.

Oh, game set match. Okay, okay. Game set. I remember why he was. I know. Leaving game set. That's it? Game set.

That's it. Game set facts. Oh, man. David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production magic by Erica Zervantes. More from Carl Bernstein this week, David. David. As he mentioned, when we talked to him, he had just finished a two and a half hour Reddit AMA.

Oh my gosh. Do you think that Carl Bernstein was thinking of that when he was breaking all those Watergate stories? Someday I will sit here and let people ask me questions on Reddit. Oh, man. Coming up on Thursday and Shoemaker and I'm back Monday with more Luke Worm Takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.