Wonderful! - Wonderful! 177: Zamboni Birthday

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

Welcome to this second dandelion episode of Wonderful! Rachel and Griffin discuss one of the most surprising changes they underwent in quarantine times: becoming sports fans.Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Support AAPI communities and those affected by anti-Asian violence: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/stop-aapi-hate Support the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund: https://aapifund.org/ MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, this is Rachel McElroy. Hey there, hosers. This is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. So... Eh? Eh? Hey there, hosers. This is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. So. Eh? Eh? This is our second sort of fill-in episode that we are recording.

Immediately after recording the last fill-in episode. So we're feeling loosey-goosey. I wish we could call them. Okay, so I have an idea for what we can call these. Okay. Because fill-in sounds like we're not really putting our heart into it. And we're not. I kind of want to call it like a dandelion episode.

Oh. We are just, you know, just like blowing into a dandelion and the little dandelions. I'm seeing the seeds. Good. Seeds are going into the future and planting flowers. Oh, that's good. So rather than fill in, can we call these like our- Dandelion episodes.

Dandelion episodes. No, I think people are going to hear that and they're going to go i know exactly what that means which is my favorite thing about it so but yes we did just finish recording another episode but we're but we're but now we're warmed up we're warmed up aren't we that's one way of thinking about i never think about it like that as much as i think about it as i'm now I'm exhausted and anything goes. We're going to get rough and raw in this one, which is appropriate. I wish we never described our show that way. Rough and raw? Yeah. Okay. Well, then it's not going to be rough and raw then. It'll be very manicured and buttoned up and cooked and cooked. Thoroughly, thoroughly roasted.

We talk about things that we like and things that we're into on this show called Wonderful. And a lot of stuff in our lives have changed during the pandemic, during this quarantine time. You've been pregnant for about 17 months now. I found out I was pregnant maybe three or four months into the pandemic I guess which makes it feel like the whole pandemic basically. The thing that has changed most I feel like in our lives during this time has been the rise of hockey as a thing that we now care a lot about. Okay. See, I don't know that that's fair to say. The thing that has changed most in my life during this pandemic is that hockey has become a thing

that I care about. Yeah. I would say if nothing else, I have returned to something that used to be a big part of my life. Interesting. And I had kind of stepped away from, really not until I moved out of my parents' house and didn't have a bud to watch hockey with. Right. And, you know, it's not the easiest sport to find on television if you don't have cable. And I didn't have cable or an app dedicated to hockey until very recently. And now we do. And now we do. We've watched St. Louis Blues games, as that is the team that you grew up admiring and

is now sort of our team. And I remember we watched, anytime they're in the playoffs, we would watch pretty religiously. But the idea of watching every game of an entire season of any sport is it is wild to me that we have done that. But like in this hockey season, we have watched every single Blues game without fail. And that's pretty wild. And so this episode is about hockey. This episode's about hockey and how it has finally clicked as I guess it's more about sort of like the concept of sports and why people like them because i feel like that's a big topic that i only kind of now just get uh have you have you had any passing interest in watching sports or

being a fan of a team outside of the the st louis blues i mean just baseball and that was largely because i am from St. Louis and the Cardinals are a very good team and have always been more or less. And so I went to baseball games like maybe once a year and I would watch it occasionally. But no, hockey is the only sport that I enjoyed and became knowledgeable about and knew the names and stats of players. Yeah. Yeah. I'm there too. And that's pretty wild also. I have had a couple flirtations with sports where when I grew up watching the Reds, by which I mean maybe a couple games a year. And then I lived in Cincinnati and went to a few games because we talked about this very recently going to a baseball game is is pretty fun watching a baseball game on television

is the opposite of fun uh even when they were like in the in the playoffs and it was like they were a great team that year it was a total fucking snooze fest so and your dad has always been a big sports fan dad has always been a big sports fan he was a uh commentator for uh for martial football for a while um and yeah i mean grew up because he bounced around a lot when he was younger i feel like he sort of adopted a bunch of different teams yeah i remember he was a bucks fan and a bingles fan and a browns fan to a lesser extent and then was a reds fan um and yeah has just had college sports too i feel like he like ohio less oh yeah ohio state for sure less so these days but but uh yeah definitely was into that but it didn't it never really rubbed off right so we all played

sports at different times in our life but but I feel like that's not uncommon. It just never, we never took it to the next level. Like it never became a, it never became a hobby, uh, either watching or playing sports. And I feel like,

and the, one of the main reasons I wanted to do this episode is the gag is like, Oh, sports ball. And like right now, now and and that comes from a lot of different places right of like not being a part of that world growing up and also criticizing and rightly so the many many things that kind of suck shit about that world on a professional level across so many different sports and i'm not saying hockey is perfect. I would argue that people like people that maybe aren't alienated by sports feel alienated

by some other interests like music, for example. Yeah, sure. Like the more time you invest into learning about something and kind of collecting information, the more likely you are to alienate the kind of casual fan who maybe at some point is just like, you know what? I'm never going to catch up. Forget it. Right. And I can't believe it's hockey that made me cross that divide, I feel like. Yeah, I can't really explain. So this is old. This is like an episode of Rose Buddies where we decided to talk about things that we liked

just casually for one special episode. And I talked about the early 90s with the St. Louis Blues, but that was like, that was Brett Hall. That was like one of the- Brett Hall, we have to explain who these- It's like one of the greatest hockey players to ever play the game. I was talking to Griffin the other day about the phenomenon in the 90s of 50 goals and 50 games, like this idea that you could score a goal, if not every game, multiple goals in one game so

that by 50 games, you had 50 goals, which is something that doesn't happen anymore. And like Brett Hull did this, you know, like this is a thing that like him and Wayne Gretzky and maybe if you've ever heard of hockey players, like these are the ones you've heard of. And like this was happening in my hometown and it was enormous. Sure. And exciting to watch, even though the team was not particularly good. He always was. And so this was a big deal like in my and growing up. And I don't know,

I just kind of fell into it in elementary school. And we would go to two games a year. We would go to a game around my dad's birthday and a game around my birthday. Oh, that's delightful. And this is when my dad started collecting hockey stuff. I waited in line to get a hockey player's signature at a Dillard's or something. We went to the Hockey Hall of Fame when I was in middle school. That was my first trip out of the country was to go to Canada to go to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Yeah, it is a big part of growing up for me but it was always difficult to find other hockey fans as i got older and so i just kind of fell off watching it is it is i mean the the

common thing i feel like that is said about hockey as a sport or a pastime in america specifically i guess uh because i don't think this would be true in Canada or probably Russia. I'm not entirely sure what cultural place hockey fills there, but I imagine it's quite important, is that it is sort of the less loved child of the family. It's not football. It's pretty cost prohibitive to get into

hockey yes you know like you can play football or soccer or baseball just like at a park somewhere yeah but with hockey like you know even if you played street hockey on rollerblades like you still had to have a net you still had to have sticks you still had to have a lot of gear right gear football you just need ball yeah exactly maybe pads so you don't hurt yourself baseball even is just two two things and some like i we would lay down jackets at the park to be our bases like yeah it's easy to input but hockey is yeah that's a good point i've never played hockey I have played most other sports at some point in my life, but I have never played hockey. Although now I have the bug. I kind of do.

I would like to play hockey. I think I said this to you, like, I want to play hockey once with children because I'm 33 now. I can't take my first hit now. Like my body is not toughened enough to sort of withstand that but i i do mostly i think just want to shoot a puck at a net and see if i could make it in we had a friend here in austin who no longer lives here but he grew up in minnesota and has since moved back to minnesota and he played hockey like in college like was was playing at an advanced like almost professional

level and he joined like a you know just kind of like an adult fun league while he was here in Austin. And we would occasionally go to his games. And I'm kind of bummed he's not here anymore now that we're watching so much of it. Because I just have a lot of questions. A lot of questions about what it's like. It's difficult. That's the other thing. Griffin will sometimes ask me questions about

the game. And there's a lot I still don't understand about it. Oh, sure. Because you can enjoy, you know, the goal scoring and such without really understanding why certain whistles are being blown. But it is, it is, here's the thing. My appreciation of hockey has developed over this season of watching every game because I have learned why the whistles get blown sometimes and it makes a lot of sense yeah see this is the difference i think between me and you like you're you're a man that enjoys to find out what the rules are right the strategy is uh i just like that they skate real fast and sometimes the puck

goes in the net i but there there are there are a lot of misconceptions i had about hockey and i think these are the common misconceptions uh that that you have that kind of keeps you from like caring about it i mean aside from the big reason you wouldn't care about sports which is just like i'm not a i'm not a sports fan yeah but what's helped me crest that hill is learning about the rules of hockey has helped me see it as a game first. And that has kind of like blown my mind wide open in that like I love games. I love video games and board games and I love competition in a rule set. whatever reason, I have always driven this firm divider between the games I play and my love of well-crafted games and sports

because of the like physical element of it. And it's really, really easy to write that off. Like, oh, well, that's, you know, it's a different thing because they are strong and hitting each other and doing all this other stuff. When really like the thing I like the least about hockey is the hitting of each other. Like it genuinely makes it tough to watch when somebody gets fucked up, which unfortunately for the St. Louis Blues, they are having a catastrophic season of injuries where a lot of their star players are just out of commission. I don't

like that i don't when they fight and they do fight in hockey it is so it's kind of weird it's to me like it's not the thing i'm like yeah it's not a bloodthirstiness like i don't enjoy that part of it and it's strange how they talk about it too because and i've noticed this a lot and this has been kind of fascinating to me as an adult watching they talk about that play that kind of rough play and fight as a way to like energize the team and energize the fans and it's like it's a strange way to kind of couch that like what is basically violence of just right yeah we did it to really get the team invested and it's like oh i don't know if I like that reasoning. So there's a lot about it that feels kind of like this is dangerous and maybe not something that people should be playing.

And I think that's true with a lot of sports. Obviously, any football fan would tell you, I don't know that this is actually something we should continue to support. Right. I don't know that this is actually something we should continue to support. Right. But like there's an elegance to the rules of it, you know, and how it works. Well, and also a lot of the violence that you associate with hockey, like a lot of those rules exist to prevent that violence. Yeah.

And once you watch enough hockey, and you learn about like, you can't trip people. Like you just can't trip people. You can't, you can't raise your stick up above the top of the goal. Yeah. Because that's,

just a stick being up like that could hit somebody in the face. And it does. Like people do get injured. And there are like immediate repercussions. You know, like if,

if you fight, you're out of the game for five minutes. You know, if you like trip somebody, you're out of the game for two minutes. Like they pull you out and sit you in what is literally called a penalty box. Right. And those are the biggest scoring chances that the other team has. Another thing that kind of helped hockey click for me is sort of boiling it down to brass tacks, which is like it is a game about hitting the puck into the net and then you can sort of see how everything else that happens in the entire game every rule that exists every strategy that exists is all about like creating

opportunities for that to happen so that's why like uh i used to not understand what icing was and it was like the thing I would always talk about when, why don't you like hockey? Cause it's just like people bashing into each other until icing gets called and nobody understands what the fuck that means. What it means is that like, if the other team is about to score, you can't just hit the puck as hard as you can away from the goal and not

like intend to play. It's like four square, you know, like no, no cherry bombs. Right. And square you know like no no cherry bombs right and then you think like well why not just have one person posted up by the other team's like goal and then just pass them the puck and get it in there well that's offside like that that would be breaking the rules so like the rules are very they make a lot of sense like

they are there to keep you from killing each other in in this sport where friction is an afterthought well and some of the stuff is newer so hockey has always kind of been an underdog and they have made changes to the game to make it more exciting and more accessible for like more viewers uh like you know a lot of sports i guess do this where they will kind of adjust the rules a little bit but like for example like the the crease is smaller for the goalie now and so they like there's there's less room for like uh monopoly for the goalie like there's more chances to score because of that like there's there's lots of uh lots of changes that delay of game thing is new yeah where like if you accidentally hit it out of the ice like there is a potential penalty associated with that so they they have made changes to make it like even harder and more interesting to the viewers i feel like you can't

really appreciate hockey until you sort of know why anybody on the ice does what they are doing and i feel like it's hard to understand that unless you know, like what, what it means for them to try and put an opportunity together. that and also the players, you know, I think that's the thing that I don't know if you really understood or if I really understood,

like following more games means that you have a better understanding of the players and what they've been through and how their talents have changed and how they work together as a team. Those are all things we've really spent a lot of time learning this year of watching from the very beginning as they try to figure out who do we put on the ice together? Who has the best chemistry? Who works best together? You watch the beginning of the season, you really get a good sense of, like, who brings what. Yeah, there's a story, there's, like, a narrative to each sort of player's performance on the ice.

And this is, like, another, like, you know, the cult of personality that exists around talented athletes is, again, like, a thing that I've also never really put much stock in until we started watching hockey like this. And now I feel like I know how each of these individual people plays the game. And that, even that, it must seem like the most basic thing to somebody who's been watching sports for a while. But I think it's just a thing that you don't sort of realize is something you could care about. I feel like that adds like a whole nother element to it. This is like personal investment angle in like the

people themselves, which then, you know, sports sort of create narratives that spiral out from that. And sometimes they're not great, but like Vladimir Tarchenko being injured and and then like his story is kind of all about that is like i don't know there's a lot of chances for for these narrative maybe i'm like dehumanizing like the actual players themselves but uh before we before we talk more about players should we should we steal each other oh we should definitely steal each other away? Oh, we should definitely steal each other away. We have a couple rumpled bombs here for you. And this first one's for Ron. And it's from Talia, who says, Happy belated birthday or possibly happy early anniversary.

In the ultimate act of love, I'll debase myself and present you with a pun it's like talia doesn't recognize that i am also being debased in this transaction i even made it a coffee pun just for you what's a barista's favorite exercise at the gym the french press. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I see you. My heart is racing right now.

Anyway, thanks for making the past eight years the best ever. Here's to many more. It could have been a lot worse. Could have been a lot worse. This was, I would say, it was good.

It certainly had entertainment value to it, which I would say is not true of a lot of just sort of right over the plate puns like this. But yeah, tricky needle to thread, Talia. And you threaded it quite neatly. Congratulations. Congratulations. And this is, I think, closer to the anniversary.

So happy anniversary. Can I read the next one? Oh, yeah. It's a message for the Brunch Squad. All right. It's from Ellen. a message for the Brunch Squad. All right. It's from Ellen. What's up, Brunch Squad? I can't thank you enough for all the support and love you provided while I finished grad school.

It's invaluable to me. I humbly request that you all remain powerful, unstoppable, and comprised of at least 50% mimosa. I can't wait until we are able to reunite in person. It will be one heck of a brunch. Love, Dr. Potato. I can't wait until we are able to reunite in person. It will be one heck of a brunch. Love, Dr. Potato. I mean... Friends of the show, Brunch Squad. Friends of the show, Brunch Squad. Pros of being

50% mimosa. Vitamin C? Yeah. Definitely. Cons? You'd be dead. You would die. The after effects of that. I think in... Scurvy would be an afterthought but so would consciousness yeah in the moment who doesn't love it but the next day oh boy yeah milosas are right up there with like buffalo wings for me of things i love at the time of their consumption and things

that i hate within a half hour of their consumption. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so 50% is too much. But you know, 1%, 2% is still probably, I mean, if we're talking about total body volume, that's still probably a lot. But I'm not going to tell you how to live.

Now, what if you go past 50 and then you cross over, like, let's say 69? That's awesome. Yeah. But you would still be dead because you need more stuff than just mimosa in your body you need bones and muscle tissue and things like that you know you can't turn into an alex mac mimosa puddle do you know what i mean i love that though yeah i do too that's fun where's that reboot we are the host of my brother, My Brother and Me, and now nearly 10 years into our podcast,

the secret can be revealed. All the clues are in place, and the world's greatest treasure hunt can now begin. Embedded in each episode of My Brother, My Brother and Me is a micro clue that will lead you to 14 precious gemstones all around this big, beautiful blue world of ours. So start combing through the episodes. Let's say starting at episode 101 on.

Yeah, the early episodes are pretty problematic. So there's no clues in those episodes. No, no, not at all. The better ones, the good ones, clues ahoy. Listen to every episode repeatedly in sequence. Laugh if you must, but mainly get all the great clues. My brother, my brother, me. It's an advice show, kind of, but a treasure hunt, mainly. Anywhere you find podcasts or treasure maps.

My Brother, My Brother and Me, the hunt is on! A player, the other thing that we've really become familiar with, too, is injuries. Yes. become familiar with, uh, two is, is injuries and, and how, like how much these players are risking every time that they go out and play, uh, and watching these players come back after missing a few games, the only to see them get injured again, you realize like how devastating it can be to, you know, really invest in trying to win. Right. And when you're using your body to do it.

Yeah. I mean, that's a thing about hockey, I feel like, is there are players who will throw themselves in front of a shot. Yeah. Which I feel another thing that I've come to appreciate watching hockey as much as we have is just the enormous physical toll that the game takes on you where a puck is not a – like from a ballistic standpoint, not a small object to be fired at your body at 80 miles an hour or whatever. Well, and that's the thing. Like to get the mobility you need to go up and down the ice, like you can't have pads over 100% of your body. Like you need some movement.

And so you need some space where your body is not covered. Yeah. So there's hockey players who are fast. Like Jordan Cairo is a fast little gentleman who can get down the ice really, really quick. But then he cannot throw himself in front of a puck and he cannot, if he gets hit into the wall too hard, he will fall down because he's a little gentleman. But then there's tough defenders who will,

there are people whose role it is on the team to do a fight. This is the thing we've learned about fights we're like if you see this person on the ice they are meant to intimidate you because if you are being a little too rough with the other players if you are checking them into the wall and like really going at them then they may put their fight guy on the ice and then you have to maybe be on good behavior because the fight guy may try and fight you. This was a thing when I first started watching hockey that I feel like was a lot more prevalent because I still remember there was Kelly Chase

and there was Tony Twist. And these were two- Why do they have such good names? These were two St. Louis Blues players whose whole job was to just like really, really stir stuff up on the ice and constantly had penalties. And it was just kind of the thing of like, you were going to send them out. And if you saw them on the ice, you knew what was coming. And that psychological aspect didn't make much sense to me until I put myself in the shoes of a player on the ice.

And this is a thought exercise that I find very engaging while watching hockey where you see the few seconds that somebody has the puck in the opponent's zone, trying to figure out how they can get that puck to somebody who can hit it in the net. But also there is a big man like coming at you very fast. And you know, that big man does not possess the facilities to stop. He can't, he won't slow down because it's ice and you're on blades. And so it won't be possible for this man to stop. So you're going to be hit in a few seconds, pretty hard and pretty bad and all you can hope is that it's a good hit and not a nasty hit yeah and also like how can i but what is the g i have to do this sort of calculation in my head of of

of the geometry of this pass i need to make It is a wild amount of focus required. Yeah. And also like, Oh, but they also have their fight guy on the ice. Oh no. Yeah. There are, I mean,

just like football, there are like, there are rules and guidance provided on like ways to do hits that are clean and are less likely to injure people. And people, you do learn this, but it doesn't always work out that way. And that's when penalties happen. But you will see sometimes like a player, if somebody is skating towards them, you will see a player just kind of lean down a little bit. And if that player isn't paying attention, they will just flip right over.

They will, yeah. They will be. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's so in my mind, I feel like I've started to categorize sports into two camps and they are the like a lot of stoppage of play camp like by design and the more sort of the clock just keeps ticking down camp like soccer and hockey in my mind are on this thing i still have not crossed it i still don't find soccer very interesting soccer is i think hockey without the ice and the as quite as much hitting and uh it just takes them a bit longer to go from one side to the other so maybe that's also the way like soccer is filmed like hockey they They have cameras all over. Right. And you're very close to the players.

I feel like a lot of time like you don't usually see the whole ice when you are watching a game where soccer. I feel like it's very hard for me to get attached and connected to what is going on. A lot of running. Because the camera is up really high. Like you are looking at the whole field just by nature of the way it is filmed a lot of times. And I don't know what's going on yeah but in the other camp is like baseball and football where like football the the in baseball like the stoppage of play is like inherent to the thing i mean baseball is

technically technically its own camp yeah baseball it's like just doesn't start baseball could last seven hours like there is no guidance around the time that's another good yeah hockey what's great about hockey is like the games usually take around the time for baseball. That's another good, yeah, hockey, what's great about hockey is like the games usually take around the same amount of time. You know, they go into overtime

and shootouts sometimes but those are over with very, very quickly. But baseball could be, holy shit, you could be in there for the long haul. That's another thing

they change. Overtime used to be a full 20 minutes of play. It used to be like a fourth period and they have changed it now. Now it's five minutes and then a shootout. Griffin hears me complain about this a lot because it is not what i grew up with no

no it's not um so like yeah i feel like you have to be watching the whole time during hockey because it's always moving yeah and once you start understanding like how your team plays and what it looks like for them to start putting like a shooting opportunity together that's when it all that's when it like really unlocks like that's what that's for me that was the final step that i needed to like enjoy watching hockey as much as we watch hockey now and it also helps this is a weird season where they've basically broken each of the like leagues down into like these tiny little clusters because of COVID-19. So we have mostly watched the Blues play the same, what,

four teams over and over again. So now I also know what it looks like for the San Jose Sharks to start putting something together and what it means for the Blues to try and break that up, which is a deeper understanding of hockey that is very rewarding. Can I tell you something kind of disheartening that I read today and makes total sense? So some of the best teams in the Blues division had a lot of COVID cases. Yeah.

And so they weren't playing at the front half. So the Blues were primarily playing teams that weren't ranked as well. Yeah. So the Blues shot up to first place. And it was like, they're having a good season. And now I like somebody wrote an article about how the back half of the schedule is focused a lot more on those like real expert teams and how their record may plummet. May suffer.

If they don't figure something out. Yeah. I mean, they're playing with half of their team at this point. So I think if they can make the playoffs, that'll be a triumph of the human spirit. Hey, here's another rad thing about being into a sport is that you have TV to watch a few nights a week. Yeah, so the Blues play almost every other day. So unlike football, for example, where you maybe get a game twice a week. No, once a week. I mean, if you're only, where you maybe get a game twice a week. No, once a week.

I mean, if you're only following one team, it is one game a week. Oh, really? Because I know there's like Monday and Sunday. No, once a week for each football team. Wednesday sometimes. Well, yeah, but that's just because there's a lot of teams and they break up the games like that. But, you know, if you follow one team, it's just one game a week. No, yeah, you'll get a game almost every other day, sometimes two in a row.

And there isn't a lot of television right now to watch at least that we're watching so this fills in the gaps quite nicely i told rachel the other day like i don't know what we're gonna do when there's no hockey on right now because we spend a lot of our nights watching definitely gonna start going to bed earlier i guess uh yeah that's a that's a i don't know that's a very rewarding thing there's there's this is i i think when we talked about like doing this episode like the the i i i wanted to send it back in time to myself when i was very much in that camp of just like you know oh oh sports ball how do how do sports why when like i like, I understand it as a pastime. I understand it as a like game

that you can appreciate watching. I understand it. I'm speaking of hockey specifically right now, but broadly, like I understand why people watch sports now. Yeah, and I recognize that a lot of people may not listen to this episode because if you are not interested in sports, it's not like two people talking about it is really going to push you over the edge. It really is an investment of time.

You can't watch one game and think, I am a sports now. You really have to kind of get to know how things work. But you know what's wild? There's not really resources out there that I have found to teach you how to get into a sport or a team. That's true. Do you know what's wild there there's not really resources out there that i have found to teach you how to get into a sport or a team that's true i mean like it is an ocean it is a vast ocean any sport even one with like the not as huge a following as hockey like um there's nothing out there to teach you uh is there like a youtube video that you go to to learn the rules of hockey there probably is but like the thought has never really crossed my mind to do that i don't know

how one we follow the blues and i feel like i know the blues very very well at this point but like how do you find out what the other teams are up to in like a succinct way is that is that sports center i don't know yeah no matter what it's a big commitment of time it's a big commitment of time that there's again not a clear path that's what i find really interesting about fantasy football because i feel like i have known more people and seen it happen more times where people will get into football because they have joined some league yeah and they have made arbitrary choices as to who will be on their fantasy team and then they start kind of following the sport because they're trying to like win that that piece like i'm gonna win fantasy football because that is a game that i can play on my phone and kind of

understand yeah that's an enormous one yeah i've stopped I don't give a shit. I don't really give a shit about football at all anymore or fantasy football. Yeah, I mean I did fantasy football and I actually did really well the year that I committed to it because it required a level of attentiveness. Right. And just kind of looking at ratings and making decisions. But I think about that a lot. Like we have a lot of friends and know a lot of people that are interested in board games. Yes.

And so the interest of game is there, but it just is difficult to cross over into professional sports. Yeah. I'm always saying that. I've tried so many times to cross over into professional sports. It is a different, it is destigmatized to me, like the concept of watching sports or

being a sporting fan, not to destigmatize like the apologetics that go into that for what is wrong with the league of whatever sport that you're watching. But like, I don't know, we did a live show the other day and the the producer for the live show was wearing a minnesota wild hat and i was like oh you're a wild fan he was like yeah uh i was like i'm a blues fan i was like congratulations your team is is quite good this year now that they're not all uh ill from covet 19 and he was like yeah and i had like a very short conversation about hockey and And I realized like I have literally in my life never done that before. Even when I was like watching every Packers game when I was living in Chicago,

I wasn't like confident enough to go up to somebody on the street and be like, ooh, a Bruins fan. That's a hockey team. That's another hockey team. Like a Bills fan. That was who I was thinking of. Like I didn't have that confidence to do it. That's another hockey team. enough about the other sports right to really say something about hockey that maybe isn't also true of other sports yeah no it's just for whatever reason i i i feel like i understand what it takes to be successful at hockey way more than i do it like what does that look like for baseball like how do you be good at baseball well you have to swing that bat really good enough to hit it out

and then you got to have the right guys out there to catch it. If it gets like, I don't know. I will also say, and this may be true of other teams, but some of it is the fact that the St. Louis blues announcers. Oh my God.

Do just a phenomenal job. I've not even taken the time to learn these gentlemen's names, but it's two of them. And one is Darren. Darren is the color commentary. Okay. He is the one that like gives us all the nice little anecdotes and just the real enthusiasm for the game.

And he used to be a goalie, I guess, because he talks a lot about what the goaltenders are choosing to do. But the other guy. The other guy is, he's just, he knows, he knows the game he knows the

game he's got a very great announcer quality to him true and he puts up with a lot of darren's bullshit is what i'll say because darren says a lot of uh two things you need to know about darren and this is i didn't know that teams had their own sort of announcers that kind of like followed them around depending on what like what network you are watching it makes a lot of sense sure yeah uh but darren likes to say holy jumping and but that's all he says that's like his exclamation which is weird i don't know how you get there i don't know what kind of life you lead that holy jumping becomes like your thing that you shout out um but the other thing about darren is he knows everybody's birthdays on the entire fucking planet earth yeah yeah and like that zamboni driver his son dylan it's his birthday today

like holy shit darren what like who's celebrating the anniversary i mean some of this is probably fed to him but he shares it with such enthusiasm yeah it's just like oh you know so-and-so's son you know just graduated high school this year you know and it's just it's just like oh you know so-and-so's son you know just graduated high school this year you know and it's just it's charming i don't know and then you see watch some other feed from some other team and these just boring ass like this is what has been this is what has been exciting for us about uh investing in an actual like app where we can watch the games as as delivered by the local announcers right uh so you get that like real commitment to the team which makes a big difference yes uh

it ain't cheap having a subscription to the nhl app but it is it answers a lot of those questions i posed at the beginning of like where do you watch hockey i mean that's the thing when i was growing up like this was on, like, network TV. Like, you could – and this is true of a lot of people who live in larger cities, unfortunately not Austin. Like, if you have a home team, you can watch them on just, like, if you still had an antenna, you could probably watch them on the television. Yeah. It's a shame. But we do not have that.

We do not have that, no. No. We could maybe go to Dallas someday to watch a Stars television. Yeah. It's a shame. But we do not have that. We do not have that, no. No. We could maybe go to Dallas someday to watch a Stars game. Yeah. Yeah, that's hockey. It's a weird thing to have as an honest-to-God hobby, especially since I genuinely thought I had passed the point in my life where I would even consider becoming a fan of a sport like this. And I'm so glad you did.

I'm so glad you did because it has given us kind of something to do as a couple in the evenings and kind of share excitement for and follow. And I've gotten to the point where like, I will see like sometimes just have on in the background, just like highlights, like the top 10 shots from the Western division this week. And I'll be like, I wouldn't mind watching 10 very good hockey goals. Yeah, I will like read articles and like look at the press conferences after the game.

Like I don't know that we can keep this up in future years, but it's been a really nice thing this year. Yeah. So I guess all this is to say, open your heart. Open your heart to hockey. I asked Griffin if we should like do some research because because I felt like you know should we really educate people on on how the game works and and the elements of it and the history and no we decided learn what icing is learn what offsides is yeah and then you can more or less kind of understand the flow of hockey um which is a good flow because again, there is no friction.

They move in such beautiful orbits around one another. It is, it's, it's, it's a very good sport. I think so too. That's it. Fuck all other sports though.

Wow. Yeah. Except high lie. I don't know anything about high lie. High lie is the hockey of balls. That's not true. Soccer is probably the... I thought we decided soccer was...

Hey, thank you so much for listening to this very strange episode. Hopefully we'll be back in the saddle soon. Who knows? Maybe next week. It would be nice. But babies, you know, life finds a way. Should you thank our partners in this effort?

Yeah, thank you to Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in the episode description. And thank you to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. Yeah, Maximum Fun, a real family-first network. Family affair. Hey, I don't know when this episode's gonna go up, but the Max Fun Drive is coming up soon.

Yeah. We will have more information to share on that back when we are going live and recording these episodes live, but it'll be soon. We're going to have a lot of fun bonus content for you that we're going to record, I don't know, at some point. We're going to record that

at 3 a.m. on Sunday nights, I guess. It's going to be the – no, we'll figure it out. But that's always a great time of year to show your support for, well, us and the other shows on the network. And we appreciate you. Maybe this isn't the right time. Maybe during the hockey episode is not the right time to start putting out the call. We're down to like seven listeners who are very excited about hockey.

Okay, that's it. We'll see you all next week and drink lots of water. But not too much water. You have to know when to stop. Money won't pay. What can I pay? Money won't pay. What can I pay? Money won't pay. What can I pay? Money won't pay.

What can I pay? Money won't pay. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported. Max Fun Drive 2021 is coming. It'll be May 3rd to May 14th. To get in the spirit, we asked folks like you to let us know what Maximum Fun and our shows mean to them.

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