Month: March 2022

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Listen to me

Picture this: It’s Batman, the whole way through, with the dead parents and the Bat Cave and the double life as billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, but instead of being played by some young actor with a razor-sharp jawline and a brooding demeanor, blammo, it’s Jack Black. Yes. Yes, we are doing it.

The Batman of it all is fun to consider, mostly because of Jack Black in the Batman costume doing karate moves in an alley to incapacitate a slew of goons, and also because of the “one of our finest physical comedians getting into and out of the Batmobile” thing, too, please don’t discount the Bruce Wayne angle, too. Picture Jack Black in a tuxedo at some fancy Gotham charity ball, popping cocktail shrimp into his mouth and unleashing the whole Jack Black Charisma Bomb right there on the screen. It’s a good idea. I’m not crazy.

The only problem here is that now I’m angry. Again. I’m angry again that Batman isn’t fun anymore. We just got another new Batman project with another new Batman and it’s still all dark and emo and heavy, and like three full hours long. You can watch like eight episodes of the Harley Quinn cartoon in that time, and at least in that you can see Batman doing stuff like this.

That’s good. Great, even. Topped only by the thing I just mentioned about Jack Black playing a live-action Batman. I can’t stop thinking about it. Just now, while I was typing that last sentence, I got this image in my head of him in the Bat Cave trying to work a supercomputer and getting frustrated and spilling a whole Diet Coke on it and just shouting and raging around in the Batsuit and it’s making me so happy. He has just the suit on, too. Not the mask. We need to see his face for this. It’s a good idea. Picture him fighting Bane. Take the whole weekend on it if you need to.

Anyway, if all of this sounds a little familiar, like maybe something I wrote a little under a year ago with a similar headline, there’s a good reason for that: It is a lot like something I wrote a little under a year ago with a similar headline. That was titled “We Should Let (Or, If Necessary, Make) Jake Johnson Play Batman” and touched on many of the same ideas, regarding Batman being fun and an actor I like getting to try it. But there is an important difference here, and one I think you should note before yelling at me for being a derivative hack: This time I said Jack Black instead of Jake Johnson. Very different. Jack Black as Batman is at least 60 percent more chaotic. I think we need and deserve that.

So let’s get Jack Black on the phone. Let’s ask him to play Batman. A full Batman, too, with a massive budget and special effects and another chaotic star as the villain. Let’s pencil in like Eric Andre as The Joker. And let’s make another one with Jake Johnson as Batman, too. Let’s just have two Batman franchises running at once, maybe one on television, both goofy and weird as all hell. Batman has been dark and brooding long enough. It’s time to switch it up.

Let Jack Black play Batman.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — I am so worried about Kim Wexler

This is the trailer for the first part of the final season of Better Call Saul, which will presumably take us back to the start of Breaking Bad, which premiered over 14 years ago now, which is a lot. It’s also how prequels work, so, like, fine. A little of the drama of it all gets removed because we know how this all shakes out for a lot of the characters, if we’ve seen Breaking Bad or rushed to Wikipedia in a panic. Saul does the Saul thing, Mike does the Mike thing, at least for a while, etc. But it does make things really stressful when it comes to Kim.

Kim Wexler is the love interest and law partner of Jimmy/Saul. She is very prominent throughout Better Call Saul, arguably the second most important character. And she is never mentioned in Breaking Bad. Not once. Which means one of at least two things is going to happen:

• Kim dies, which will devastate me
• Kim gets fed up and moves away and leaves it all behind

I need it to be the latter. Like, I need it. I will not do well if it’s not. A part of me wants to skip the entire season and just pretend she moves to California and changes her name to Ellen Swatello and becomes her character from Franklin & Bash, meaning that all three shows exist in the same universe. I’m fine. I’m doing great.

I’m also worried about my beloved Lalo Salamanca, a ruthless villain who won me over forever with blistering displays of charm like this…

I did Wiki Lalo, for the record, which is where I discovered/remembered this from Breaking Bad.

Season 2
When Saul Goodman is kidnapped by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman and taken to the desert, Saul assumes that it is Lalo who has abducted him and starts begging for his life, blaming Ignacio for what happened, swearing he’s always been friends with the cartel. After realizing Walter and Jesse’s confusion, he understands he had mistaken them for Lalo’s men and sighs in relief.

Season 4
After conquering the cartel, Gus visits Hector at Casa Tranquila and sadistically informs him that every other Salamanca is dead, which suggests that Lalo died at some point in time.

Which means Lalo, in all likelihood, also survives Better Call Saul. This is surprisingly important to me. I love him very much. And I’m so excited for the show to return. But also very worried. Again, it’s fine.

I’m fine.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Please pause all existing television shows until this one gets made

Important business here: Jon Hamm was interviewed by Tara Ariano for GQ, and, because Tara is good at her job, she asked Jon Hamm about his dog, and then asked this relevant follow-up a bit later.

Since you are a noted voice actor, when you talk to your dog, and your dog answers you back, is there a specific voice you do for him?

I feel like his inner voice is Greg from Succession. He kind of is like, “[in a Greg voice] Wow. So wait.” He’s kind of confused and amused at the same. “But wait, so I get a treat, but are we going to go for a walk? But wait, I’m kind of sleepy. What?” Anyway, that’s how I feel my dog talks to me.

I need it. I need a show where Jon Hamm has a dog who speaks to him with the voice of Cousin Greg from Succession. I want them to solve crimes together. I must stress here that I am not joking even a little bit. It can be live-action or animated, on any channel or streaming service, preferably co-starring, oh, let’s say Regina King as a jewel thief and Luis Guzman as the police chief and Gonzo from the Muppets as the narrator. Please. For me. Please make this television show. I’ve been very good.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — This is… kind of incredible

The important thing to note first here is that The Righteous Gemstones is a good show. One of the best. A reasonable argument can be made that it features three of the funniest performances on all of television, with Danny McBride and Edi Patterson and Walton Goggins just doing a weave every week to decide who gets the crown. It’s so good. It’s been off the air for less than a month and I’m already despondent. Please make new episodes as soon as possible. Thank you.

But that’s not the point here. It is, kind of, but it’s also not. The point here is that Cassidy Freeman, who plays Amber Gemstone, revealed this week that she was secretly remnant during the filming of the entire season.

Unbeknownst to the majority of her cast members on the megachurch-focused dark comedy “The Righteous Gemstones,” created by Southern native Danny McBride (“Eastbound & Down,” “Hot Rod,” “Tropic Thunder,”) Freeman was pregnant during the majority of Season 2’s filming. “Well, no one knew minus my roommate and my bestie, Edi [Patterson],” Freeman says. Hot, mosquito-ridden days on-location in South Carolina, COVID-19 protocols, and some stunts here and there didn’t slow down Freeman, she adds.

Three things are worth noting here:

• This means that she was pregnant while filming the scene I screencapped above, in which she pops off a dozen or so gunshots at a crew of motorcycle assassins who tried to take them out, which rules
• I would absolutely watch a movie about a pregnant assassin
• I would absolutely watch a comedy where Edi Patterson helps her best friend hide a pregnancy

Please get to work on these last two things after we get the “Jon Hamm and a dog voiced by Nicholas Braun” show together. I feel like we can have all three of these wrapped up and available for me to watch by early 2023 if we hustle. Take the weekend to brainstorm, but let’s get cracking first thing Monday morning.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — I need to see Denzel on acid

Denzel Washington did a wide-ranging interview with the Los Angeles Times, one that touched on music and religion and his career and just a whole lot of stuff that you are welcome to read and discuss on your own time because, right here, right now, we are going to focus on the thing where Denzel Washington did acid with a bunch of prep school kids.

Not, like, recently, though. That would be weird. And probably less of a fun anecdote than a national scandal. “Hollywood Star Denzel Washington Does LSD With A Bunch Of Teens” is not a news story any of us are really ready to comprehend. But he did do it many years ago, when he was also a teen. Here, look.

Washington had been remembering when he went away to boarding school in upstate New York as a teenager, following a youth spent in the house of his Pentecostal minister father, Denzel Washington Sr., where secular music wasn’t allowed.

“Listen, you’ve got to understand,” Washington tells me. “I get up there … my mother is trying to save me from the streets and heroin. And they sent me to a school with a bunch of white kids with acid. So I was introduced to the [Beatles’] White Album on some orange Owsley or orange sunshine or some blotter. So it expanded my experience.”

I absolutely must know what a teenage Denzel Washington was like on acid. If you went to prep school with Denzel Washington — or know someone who did — and can elaborate on this, please contact me at once. I won’t even publish it. This is all off the record, just for my own curiosity. I’ll buy you dinner and pick your brain and then we can just never talk about it again. But I do need to know. As soon as possible. Thank you.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Zack:

Just saw the trailer for the “Nicolas Cage as ‘Nick Cage’” movie. I am so happy for you, dude.

This was not technically an email. It was a Twitter DM. But it still counts because I want to talk about this beautiful film. Look at this trailer.

And look at this description.

Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the fictionalized version of Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan (Pedro Pascal). Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative (Tiffany Haddish) and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones. With a career built for this very moment, the seminal award-winning actor must take on the role of a lifetime: Nick Cage.

It’s perfect. It’s just laser-focused to my insane sensibilities in a way that almost feels uncomfortable, but in a good way, kind of like eating really spicy food. I’m so happy for and proud of everyone involved in the making of this movie. I can’t believe they pulled it off. The whole thing seems like a bonkers high-wire act and I suppose that means there’s still a chance it could all topple over and go splat in the execution, but that’s a conversation for later. Just doing it is impressive enough to me. Good for them.

And good for me, too, because Nicolas Cage was interviewed about it all and the discussion featured an extended riff on his cat, Merlin, which I am going to post here without any context because I kind of like it better that way.

I think the key is to respect them. And to let them come to you. The hand is very important. When you pet them, that connection is the great reward. When they start purring, you know they genuinely appreciate you being there. Lately, Merlin and I have had some issues because I got a little Pomeranian and he’s not happy about that. But Merlin is an unusual cat. It’s not the same as the other relationships I’ve had with cats throughout the years. There’s a real, almost human level of affection emanating from him which is almost like a son. It’s pretty intense.

Let’s go ahead and tie this into the show about Jon Hamm and the talking dog. Let’s have Merlin voiced by… hmm. Let’s go with Henry Winkler. I think that plays. And let’s also make a note to keep asking celebrities about their pets in every interview. Maybe just ask them about their pets. For the whole interview. It’s worth a shot.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To… the entire East Coast!

An invasive species of spider the size of a child’s hand is expected to “colonize” the entire East Coast this spring by parachuting down from the sky, researchers at the University of Georgia announced last week.

Hmm.

I hate it.

Large Joro spiders — millions of them — are expected to begin “ballooning” up and down the East Coast as early as May. Researchers have determined that the spiders can tolerate cold weather, but are harmless to humans as their fangs are too small to break human skin.

I suppose the good news here is the “their fangs are too small to break human skin” thing, but I absolutely cannot condone any situation where climate-resistant spiders are flying through the sky.

No.

Thankfully, after that fear-mongering article from Axios terrified me in a deep and unsettling way, NPR put out a much more comforting fact-check that made me feel a little better about the massive flying spiders.

Despite their startling appearance — and their namesake — Davis noted joros don’t appear to be harmful or have much of an effect on local agriculture or ecosystems. In fact, he said, they may be beneficial to native predators like birds as an additional food source. And, while they kill their prey using venom, scientists say they are harmless to people and pets because their fangs are usually too small to break human skin.

Which is better. I still do not think spiders should fly. And I have seen enough movies to know that this is just how it starts, and that they’ll evolve rapidly and grow massive fangs and start dive-bombing from the heavens straight into our necks by 2024 at the latest, but still. This is helpful. I feel better.

Or at least I felt better until I read this from an old article in The Atlantic.

Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field. When their silk leaves their bodies, it typically picks up a negative charge. This repels the similar negative charges on the surfaces on which the spiders sit, creating enough force to lift them into the air. And spiders can increase those forces by climbing onto twigs, leaves, or blades of grass. Plants, being earthed, have the same negative charge as the ground that they grow upon, but they protrude into the positively charged air. This creates substantial electric fields between the air around them and the tips of their leaves and branches—and the spiders ballooning from those tips.

THE DEATH SPIDERS ARE RIDING ELECTRICITY THROUGH THE SKY AND COMING FOR YOUR FAMILY WITH THEIR SMALL BUT PRESUMABLY GROWING FANGS.

The lesson here is to never read anything. Just watch cartoons and YouTube compilations of idiots trying to do stunts. And eat donuts. Inside. Away from the electrospiders.

Please be safe.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is still remarkably good after 15 record-breaking seasons, including the recent highlight, season 11’s “Charlie Catches a Leprechaun.” (One of my favorite things about Sunny is you don’t have to explain the episode plot. It’s right there in the title.) It’s the closest the comedy has come to doing a full-blown St. Patrick’s Day episode, which is surprising for a show about a bunch of drunks owning an Irish bar in Philadelphia. But the Gang is going all out for St. Patrick’s Day this year.

“This was the dumbest and most fun thing we’ve ever done together,” Rob McElhenney tweeted on Friday, along with a teaser for an upcoming episode of The Always Sunny Podcast. The podcast, hosted by creators McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Glenn Howerton, along with writer and producer Megan Ganz, is an episode-by-episode look at the FXX series. The next episode, for season three’s “The Gang Gets Held Hostage,” will be uploaded on March 14, three days before Saint Patrick’s Day.

I think you can see where this is going.

“I think we should do an episode of the podcast, and I don’t know where everybody is with their drinking these days, but we should do possibly a podcast where we are annihilated. Very, very drunk,” McElhenney suggested. Smash cut to everyone doing shots, Charlie holding guitar for some reason, and Rob and Glenn (jokingly) threatening to fight each other. Hopefully no one brought a plate of their famous mac and cheese.

You can catch up with the podcast below.

Disney is currently being raked over the coals for its tepid response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which is on track to be signed into law and do significant damage to LGBTQ+ students. However, now, the House of Mouse is also being hit from the right as the conservative Parents Television and Media Council (PTC) released a press release blasting Disney for its plans to add the slate of TV-MA Marvel Netflix series to Disney+.

While PTC “applauded” Disney+ for its plans to include a new suite of parental controls to coincide with the Marvel series arriving on the platform on March 16, the conservative parents group warns that adding mature content to the streaming service “destroys your brand.” Via the official press release:

The company’s eponymous platform Disney+ logically marketed itself as a family-friendly streaming service, and parents have placed their trust in Disney to deliver just that. It seems wildly ‘off-brand’ for Disney+ to add TV-MA and R-rated programming to this platform, ostensibly to increase subscription revenue. So what comes next, adding live striptease performances in Fantasyland at Disney World?” said Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television and Media Council.

Wow, they went right to strippers at Disney World. That’s certainly a choice. As the PTC continued to make its dubious case, the group argued that Disney+ will end up losing subscribers as parents reject the addition of mature content.

“There is no need for Disney+ to compete with the explicit content on other streaming platforms,” the PTC said. “Disney is already at a competitive advantage with a streaming platform that is the safest one out there for families. Its foray into TV-MA-rated fare will forever tarnish its family friendly crown.”

Considering the Marvel movies and live-action series have been a massive hit for Disney, it’s safe to assume that a lot of people aren’t going to balk at the inclusion of the Netflix shows even if they are grittier (and sporadically more provocative) than the usual Marvel fare. Not really seeing a mass parent exodus over that one.

(Via Parents Television and Media Council)

Not everyone was enthused to hear about Travis Scott’s proposed Project HEAL initiative, which the Texas rapper announced earlier this week. Travis donated $5 million to local community-based funds such as HBCU scholarships and mental health programs, as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors Task Force on Event Safety. However, the family of one of the victims of the Astroworld Festival disaster was unimpressed, calling the move a “PR stunt” that he could later use to make himself look good in court when the combined slew of cases against him goes to trial.

Bernon and Tericia Blount, the grandparents of Ezra Blount, the youngest of the Astroworld attendees who were killed as a result of the crowd crush during Travis’ headlining set at the festival, aren’t convinced Travis is just giving out of the goodness of his heart. Tericia told Rolling Stone, “It’s a PR stunt. He’s pretty much trying to sway the jurors before they’re even assembled. He’s trying to make himself look good, but it doesn’t look that way to someone with our eyes. What we’re seeing is that he’s done wrong, and now he’s trying to be the good guy and trying to give his own verdict on safety.” Bernon agreed, “Every time he does something like this, it’s an ongoing reminder.”

Meanwhile, the lawyer for Ezra’s father Treston Blount, who filed a separate lawsuit from the 9-year-old’s grandparents, believes that Travis’ Project HEAL announcement may have flouted court orders, violating a gag order instated to ensure objectivity from the jury. “Blount and the other plaintiffs herein do not have the high profile ability to sway public opinion as defendant Scott — an international music star — and his sophisticated media team do,” wrote Blount’s lawyer, Robert Hilliard, in an emergency motion to “immediately clarify” whether the gag order “applies equally to lawyers and parties.”

Meanwhile, Travis’ spokesperson, Stephanie Rawlings Blake, called Hilliard’s statement “shameful and beyond cynical,” continuing, “It is also disappointing that Mr. Hilliard would attack Project HEAL, a series of philanthropic gestures designed to give students and young people a leg up. Project HEAL is a continuation of Travis Scott’s longstanding work, including academic scholarships and creative design programs for underprivileged students.” Travis’ lawyers have since filed their own statements defending the star’s right to “make public statements about his ongoing philanthropic work, even as it relates to public safety.”

Bridgerton‘s second season shall arrive within weeks, and thankfully, the Shondaland show has already bestowed us with a trailer that’s filled with scandalous moments and touches upon the steaminess to come, hopefully beyond the “jizzing in blankets” so prominently highlighted (and as pointed out by John Oliver) in the show’s debut. No Duke Simon shall be found, but Anthony Bridgerton is around, smoldering and falling into bodies of water while looking for a match, and the show’s newest leading lady, Simone Ashley (top left, above) is doing the rounds to discuss her experiences.

Simone spoke with Glamour UK to discuss her role as Kate, who is unafraid to let Anthony know what she really thinks when he gets all wrapped up in Anthony’s courting of her sister, Edwina. Things get complicated, as this show tends to do, and we can all guess who really ends up with Anthony (though we may not be correct). And as Simone indicates, this show’s dedication to following the female gaze (particularly in sex scenes) doesn’t extend to all aspects of what’s ideal for women. Yup, there’s one convention that the show really insists upon holding onto, and that would be those corsets. Simone doesn’t hold back on discussing how dreadful (and potentially injury-causing) those contraptions turn out to be:

“On my first day, I was like, ‘OK, first day as a leading lady, got to eat lots of food, be really energized.” So, I had this massive portion of salmon and that’s when I needed to be sick, basically because I was wearing the corset. I realised when you wear the corset, you just don’t eat. It changes your body. I had a smaller waist very momentarily. Then the minute you stop wearing it, you’re just back to how your body is. I had a lot of pain with the corset, too. I think I tore my shoulder at one point!”

Yeah, yikes and no thanks. The odd thing about those omnipresent corsets, too, is that, for a lot of the dresses on Bridgerton, they don’t really appear to be necessary? In the above photo and the one below, the dress designs don’t include cinched waists.

Perhaps the corsets are the one thing that the show’s hanging onto in order to remind everyone that, even though this is a reimagining of the Regency era, it’s still a period piece. But heck, I doubt anyone would complain if they altogether burned those corsets.

Bridgerton returns on March 25, and after that, three more seasons shall follow.

(Via Glamour UK)

If we looked 60 years into the past, there are a lot of things that were accepted as “normal” that today most people find abhorrent. For example, people used to smoke cigarettes everywhere. They’d light up in hospitals, schools and even churches.

People also used to litter like crazy. It’s socially unacceptable now, but if you lived in the ’70s and finished your meal at McDonald’s, you’d chuck your empty styrofoam container (remember those?) and soda cup right out of the window of your car and onto the street.

It’s hard to imagine that just 60 years ago spousal abuse was considered family business and wasn’t the concern of law enforcement.

It makes me wonder when people in the future look back on the year 2022, which things will they see as barbaric? Almost certainly, the way we treat the animals we use for food will be seen as cruel. The racial divides in the criminal justice system will be seen as a moral abomination. And I’m sure that people will also look at our continued reliance on fossil fuels as a major mistake.

A Reddit user by the name u/MEMELORD_JESUS asked the AskReddit subforum “What’s the weirdest thing society accepts as normal?” and the responses exposed a lot of today’s practices that are worth questioning.

A lot of the responses revolved around American work ethic and how we are taught to live to work and not to work to live. We seem to always be chasing some magical reward that’s just around the corner instead of enjoying our everyday lives. “I’ll get to that when I retire,” we say and then don’t have the energy or the inclination to do so when the time comes.

There are also a lot of people who think that our healthcare system will be looked at with utter confusion by people in the future.

Here are 17 of the best responses to the question, “What’s the weirdest thing society accepts as normal?”

1. Work-life balance

“Working until you’re old, greying, and broken then using whatever time you have left for all the things you wish you could have done when you were younger.” — Excited_Avocado_8492

2. Rest in comfort

“That dead people need pillows in caskets.” — Qfn4g02016

3. I.R.S. mystery

“Guessing how much you owe the IRS in taxes.” — SheWentThruMyPhone

4. You get the leaders you deserve

“Politicians blatantly lying to the people. We accept it so readily, it’s as though it’s supposed to be that way.” — BlackLetyterLies

5. The booze-drugs separation

“Alcohol is so normalized but drugs are not. It’s so weird. I say this as an alcohol loving Belgian, beer is half of our culture and I’m proud of it too but like… that’s fucking weird man.” — onions_cutting_ninja

6. Stage-parent syndrome

“People having kids and trying to live their lives again through them, vicariously, forcing the kids to do things that the parents never got to do, even when the kids show no inclination, and even have an active dislike, for those things.” — macaronsforeveryone

7. Priorities

“Living to work vs working to live.” — Food-at-last

8. ‘The Man’ is everywhere

“Being on camera or recorded any time you are in public.” — Existing-barely

9. Tragic positivity 

“‘Feel-good’ news stories about how a kid makes a lemonade stand or something to pay for her mom’s cancer treatment because no one can afford healthcare in America.” — GotaLuvit35

10. Credit score

“As a non-American, I am amazed at their credit score system. As a third-world citizen, credit cards are usually for rich (and slightly less rich) people who have more disposable money than the rest of us and could pay off their debt.

The way I see people on Reddit talk about it is strange and somewhat scary. Everyone should have a card of his own as soon as he becomes an adult, you should always buy things with it and pay back to actively build your score. You’re basically doomed if you don’t have a good score, and living your life peacefully without a card is not an option, and lastly, you’ll be seen as an idiot if you know nothing about it.” — BizarroCullen

11. The retirement trap

“Spending 5/7ths of your life waiting for 2/7ths of it to come. We hate like 70% of our life, how is that considered fine?” — Deltext3rity

12. Yes, yes and yes

“Child beauty pageants.” — throwa_way682

13. That’s not justice

“The rape of male prisoners. It’s almost considered a part of the sentence. People love to joke about it all the time.” — visicircle

14. Customers aren’t employers

“Tipping culture in the US. Everyone thinks that it’s totally OK for employers not to pay the employees, and the customers are expected to pay extra to pay the employees wages. I don’t understand it.” — Lysdexiic

15. Staring at your phone

“Having smartphones in our faces all day. This shit isn’t normal…imma do it anyway…but it is not normal.” — Off_Brand_Barbie_OBB

16. Homework on weekends

“Students being assigned homework over weekends and only having a two-day weekend. The whole point of a weekend is to take a break from life, and then you have one day to recover from sleep deprivation then one day to relax which you can’t because of thinking about the next day being Monday. And the two days still having work to do anyways.” — MrPers0n3O

17. Kids on social media

“Children/young teens posting on social media sites. I’m not necessarily talking about posting on a private Instagram followed by friends, I’m talking about when kids post on tiktok publicly without parental consent.” — thottxy

For many people, meeting someone new is an uncomfortable proposition. Even if we want to make new friends, getting to know people from scratch can be hard. It feels like there are all kinds of unwritten social “rules” that make meeting people awkward. Are there certain things you shouldn’t share or ask about when you first meet someone? When do you move from small talk to something more meaningful? Will people think you’re weird if you tell them how you’re really feeling instead of the standard “fine”?

The die-hard social butterflies among us may wonder what all the fuss is about, but many of us share the sentiment my fellow writer Jacalyn Wetzel described so eloquently: “Meeting people makes my armpits spicy.”

If meeting people makes your armpits spicy, here’s some behavioral science research that might help.

In a series of a dozen experiments, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago analyzed people’s feelings about chatting with strangers, and what they found was eye-opening.

Most of us, apparently, underestimate how much we’re going to enjoy talking to strangers. How about that? And we especially underestimate how much we’re going to enjoy having more meaningful, substantive conversations with people we’ve just met. We tend to be overly pessimistic about how those conversations are going to go.

“Because of these mistaken beliefs,” the authors, Amit Kumar, Michael Kardas and Nicholas Epley, wrote on The Conversation, “it seems as though people reach out and connect with others less often and in less meaningful ways than they probably should.”

The experiments the researchers conducted were designed to test the hypothesis that conversations with strangers can be surprisingly satisfying. The researchers asked people to write down topics they’d normally talk with new people about, such as the weather, and then to write down questions that were of a deeper, more intimate nature. They also asked people to anticipate how they were going to feel after discussing decidedly non-small-talky topics such as “What are you most grateful for in your life?” and “When is the last time you cried in front of another person?” versus typical small talk.

Participants were particularly off base about how uncomfortable the more meaningful conversations were going to be and underestimated how much they were going to like having those conversations with strangers.

“These mistaken beliefs matter because they can create a barrier to human connection,” the authors wrote. “If you mistakenly think a substantive conversation will feel uncomfortable, you’re going to probably avoid it. And then you might never realize that your expectations are off the mark.”

The researchers said their findings were “strikingly consistent,” even across different demographic groups, both in person and over Zoom. “Whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert, a man or a woman, you’re likely to underestimate how good you’ll feel after having a deep conversation with a stranger,” they wrote.

Participants told the researchers they wish they could have deeper conversations more often in their everyday lives, but the experiments also showed that people underestimate how much strangers are actually interested in them. As it turns out, we’re quite curious about one another and actually do care about one another’s feelings and thoughts. Again, what we think a conversation is going to be like isn’t what they generally are in reality.

So here we are, wanting to have more meaningful conversations, yet overestimating how uncomfortable and underestimating how interesting and enjoyable they’re going to be. Our fears are holding us back from connecting with one another, which is kind of a bummer.

Perhaps we can use this research to try some experimenting of our own, reaching out to people around us to talk about more than the weather. Ditch the small talk, ask people substantive questions about their lives, keep it real and see what happens. We may find ourselves becoming more social as we get to know people on another level—and maybe, hopefully, experience a little less spiciness in our armpits. ​

When people enter the court system, as a plaintiff or a defendant or a witness, there is often a lot of stress involved. The process of going through the justice system itself is stressful, but the circumstances that bring people to court are often marked by tragedy or trauma of some sort as well. There is a clear need for mental and emotional support, especially for kids, in the courtroom.

Thankfully, society has figured out that animals can be a helpful source of stress relief and comfort and the idea of animals in spaces like a courtroom is being embraced more and more.

Though another county has an unofficial support dog, Aroostook County will be the first county in Maine to have an official therapy dog onsite at the courthouse, according to Bangor Daily News. That dog is a yellow Labrador retriever puppy named Holiday, who is currently in training to work with people who have been through traumatic experiences.

Holiday was donated by local breeder Karley Allen, who told the Daily News that part of her mission is to donate puppies for therapy and service work. “I believe wholeheartedly in the power of a dog,” she said. “They are truly heart healers that give endless love and can give so much back to our communities when placed in these roles.”

It will take two years—208 hours of training—for Holiday to learn all she needs to know for her important job, including learning to be still and silent in the courtroom, walking and sitting on command and staying seated in one spot for an extended period of time. She’ll also be trained to go with the district attorney on investigations to help people who have been hurt or traumatized.

Aroostook County, Maine to have dedicated courthouse therapy dog https://bit.ly/3IWUtEwu00a0pic.twitter.com/OS3VR70dPE

— KAKE News (@KAKE News)
1646449211

Holiday actually lives with Aroostook County District Attorney Todd Collins, and both he and Holiday are being trained so that she will be able to follow his commands.

Collins told Bangor Daily News that his goal is to help survivors and witnesses who are reliving traumatic events in the courtroom relieve some of the stress and psychological damage they may experience.

“Courthouse facility dogs can provide a sense of normalcy during juvenile and family court proceedings, and can accompany vulnerable crime victims, including children, rape victims, developmentally delayed adults and the elderly during investigations and court proceedings,” Collins said. “They can also provide emotional comfort to family members during the trial and sentencing of the offender.

“A courthouse dog can provide emotional support for everyone,” he said.

The use of courthouse facility dogs like Holiday has increased greatly in recent years. Superior Court Judge Jeanette Dalton of Kitsap County, Washington, told PEW that the yellow lab that has been deployed in her courtroom numerous times has helped child witnesses who have been abused have an easier time testifying.

“Sometimes they need the leash in their hand. Sometimes they need the dog touching their feet. Sometimes they just need to see the dog,” she said.

Some concerns have been raised that having a dog with a child on a witness stand may sway a jury by making a child appear more sympathetic or more credible. But Dalton says she’s seen how the dogs can actually help witnesses stay calm, which can create a less intense emotional situation for both the children who take the stand and the jurors.

“I’ve seen jurors visibly impacted by kids so stressed on the witness stand that they start crying or shut down. Jurors look like they want to leap over the jury box and cuddle that kid,” Dalton said. “So having the dog there helps everybody on both sides.”

Collins also pointed out that it’s not just witnesses, plaintiffs or defendants who experience trauma in the criminal justice system. First responders, people who work with victims, detectives who are exposed to violent scenes or images and others whose work puts them in close, constant contact with human trauma also need emotional support. Having an animal trained for such purposes around can truly benefit everyone.

Watch trainer Tyler Jones working with Holiday as she starts her training. Such a good girl.

“It’s not going to be boring.” That’s Bomani Jones‘ answer to my question about what his new late-night show, Game Theory (which debuts on HBO this Sunday) is not going to be before adding how it also won’t be a debate show, won’t be exclusively about the cross-section of economics and sports, and won’t be like anything he has done before on television. What the sportswriter turned star in ESPN’s constellation, podcaster, and contributor on HBO’s Back On The Record With Bob Costas has planned is a full execution of his creative vision with interviews (in-studio and remote), pre-recorded deep dives, and the potential to create field pieces. It’s a kind of freedom he says he’s only really had with his podcasts, one bolstered by ample resources and a team of writers and producers.

While having the keys to the kingdom and being empowered to do your show your way might kick up a bit of anxiety in some, Jones tells us fear isn’t on his mind as we discuss the show, the illegitimacy of right-wing beefs against him, social media’s impact on sport, and why the NBA might be the league most disconnected from its fans.

You talk about bringing your own vision to the screen, which is exciting. But what’s the level of fear or vulnerability in doing that?

None. I can’t think of what there is to be afraid of. The only thing there is to be afraid of is that people might not like the television show and that’s just really not the worst thing in the world for me. I’ve been on a TV show that got canceled. Most people I know who’ve done television have been on TV shows that have got canceled. That happens. So for me, the vision that I’m putting out is really a culmination of all the stuff that I’ve been doing for 20 years in this business. I have affirmed over time that I am at my best when I’m leaning in on what I find to be interesting and leaning into things from my perspective, rather than me trying to figure out how to fit that perspective in something else that somebody else is doing, which is by and large, what I’ve done on television for most of my TV career.

I feel very good about what this is going to be. And if the audience doesn’t accept it in the same way that I would like them to accept it, that is their option. So what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to make a television show that we can be proud of and that the people that I respect will view and then ultimately view with some measure of respect. But that other stuff is so far beyond my control. If the audience doesn’t accept this show in the way that I would think that this show should be accepted, I’ll learn from it. I’ll keep it going. But I’m not built to view that as any reflection of myself as a person. It may be a reflection of me as a professional, but that’s only a part of me.

From what I’ve read this is very much taking a look at sports through the lens of economics. How do you make it so… not necessarily that an audience gets it, but that they feel it?

The way I’ve been doing it forever, to be perfectly honest. I think the emphasis on economics is a little bit overstated. If we had named the show something else, people would be a little bit less inclined to view it through that lens. Game Theory is just a cool name given that it’s sports and given that it has a connection to my background. But I’ve always said that you do some graduate study in economics, it’s like going to law school. It becomes part of who you are and just part of the way that you view the world. It’s an indoctrination process as much as anything else. So everything that I’ve done has been from that standpoint.

We’re not going to have every week, like this week in sports business. It’s not going to be that sort of thing. But when we talk about a lot of this stuff, the perspective is going to be informed by those understandings. And we’ll be able to get, I think, deeper into some of those issues than a lot of people will, but I know how to talk about that stuff in English. I used to have to teach it to college freshmen. That’s a great test for you is talking to college freshmen about economics, which tends to scare them to death off the top and get them to realize that they see all the stuff around them already, they just use different terms. And all they’re doing when they get to their economics classes is applying the jargon. And so I’m just going to talk to people about this stuff in English. And I’ve never had any problem getting them to understand those ideas in any other setting. And I don’t think this one would be any different.

You’ve had some instances where you’ve been pulled into conservative media tweets and stuff like that. How does one get used to just having to deal with crap on social media and stuff like that when you’re trying to just do your job and say your thing?

So I got on Twitter I want to say in 2009, and I was doing local radio and then I went from there to doing satellite radio. And then after that, I started doing Around the Horn. And I immediately was able to recognize how different the responses were just because you were on television. I wasn’t saying anything terribly different than I was saying at these smaller outlets. I noticed it also from doing radio, like crazy emails I would get from people before the social media thing became the issue. And I just became ultimately fascinated by the mentality that people had where they just, you are an avatar to them. You’re not an actual person. And they just purge whatever their anger is and all this stuff towards you when people started coming up with the fake accounts and all that. And I was just like, “Wow, this is strange, bizarre, anti-social behavior. I wonder where all that comes from?”

And so as I did more and more television, I realized that for more and more people, it wasn’t even about who I was. It was about something that I just represented to them. The other part of it was I was really good at turning their nonsense around and making it humorous for me and the people who follow me. Then one day I looked up and I realized most of those people weren’t even actually people. It’s bots, it’s trolls, it’s all these different things. And that’s when I started backing away from it because I realized these people aren’t actually people. So when the conservative news people take my stuff and try to make something of it, it never turns into anything or it very rarely does. I see all the times that people would harbor something that I had said, and then it sits there on their site and it doesn’t have any comments and it doesn’t seem to have any traction.

That stuff gets out there and people get charged up. But I don’t even know how many people actually read it. And so for me, it’s not difficult when it’s somebody that I firmly believe is just trying to use me because I represent something they believe to their audience. It’s not like they’re coming at me out of any measure of respect. And then I look and I realize they don’t have that many people that follow them and actually care about what they say either. And so they can go ahead and say it. It only turns into a thing if I say something about it. If I just leave it alone, it’ll die. And so now it’s just easy for me to leave it alone because I know it’s not personal. I know it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I’ve actually said. They just figured somebody who looks like me with the name that I have and the way that I present things, that’ll be somebody that can charge up their audience. What I know about a lot of their audience is they’re out there in front of each other saying how much they hate me and then they sneak in and listen to me when ain’t nobody around.

Is social media, in your opinion, a net positive for sports and sports personalities, be it people in the media or be it LeBron and athletes trying to grow their own brands?

No, it’s a net negative for just about everybody at this point. Now I do think… and I want to be clear because I think I’m speaking from a position of privilege being able to say that because people know who I am now. I definitely used social media to make a name for myself. I definitely introduced myself to a whole lot of people via Twitter. A lot of my career has come because of some of the things that I did and the ways that I got people to pay attention to me on Twitter. So I don’t want to pretend as though there hasn’t been a point where you could get something out of it. But I look at it for the athletes, the idea, hey, your fans want engagement. I’m sure they do. I just don’t know if they necessarily need it. I still think that there’s a value for people who are as famous as they are to scarcity. This idea that you’ve got to give them a glimpse into what your life is. I’m not sure that you have to do that. I’m not sure how much…

For LeBron James at this point, I can’t imagine he would lose a single thing if he never got on Twitter or Instagram again. I just don’t see how. What would happen? Are we going to forget who LeBron James is? No, we’re pretty locked in on that one.

Yeah. I think it’s this myth that we just feel like we constantly have to feed it. People just feel like they need to constantly comment on everything, and like you said, give that much access where like you’re saying, if it’s somebody at that level, it’s not really needed.

Yeah. I used to think that, and I wasn’t totally wrong. I had become a brand as someone who had opinions on stuff. And so when stuff came out, I was going to give you an opinion and it was a broad range of things. Because some people come to me for sports. Some people will come to me for music. Some people come to me for the world. And the next thing you know, you’re out here and you just have an opinion on everything. But what happens when you do that is it really stands out when you don’t say something about a thing. And they’re like, “Oh, so you said something about da da da. You can’t say nothing about this?” And you start feeling obligated to have something on everything for that reason. And ain’t no fun in that. And I don’t even necessarily know how much it helps.

At least for me, I’ve reached a point where it’s I just don’t need to do this anymore. Maybe if you’re younger and you can figure out how to make a name like that, you can do it and you can get something out of it. But yeah, I think at first, one of the charms of social media was that famous people acted like regular people. So you got access to rather than seeing the brand of somebody, you felt like you got a glimpse into who that person actually was. But then what happened on the back end was regular people started acting like brands. Everybody’s Instagram page is like their own magazine. Everybody’s Twitter feed is like their own newsletter. And you think about it, you’ve got 5,000 followers on Twitter. You have 5,000 people who care about what you think. That’s a pretty big number when you stop and think about it. And so I feel like everybody then buys into it. “Hey, my audience,” because everybody has an audience now. And everybody feels like they’re serving their audience. And part of serving your audience as a brand is, it’s Veterans Day, you’ve got to say Happy Veteran’s Day because that’s what a brand does.

Fom a fan perspective, which sport do you think has the hardest time right now connecting with its audience? Which sport is losing its audience?

I’m starting to wonder if it’s the NBA, to be honest. I think that people are more connected to NBA players than they ever were, but they feel more disconnected from NBA basketball than they’ve ever been. And I can’t really understand it because there are so many incredible players right now. And there are really so many interesting storylines and the NBA got what it wanted, which is some legitimate parity where we’re going into the finals and nobody’s really sure who’s going to win. Nobody has a great answer for those things. But there’s an excitement around the NBA that used to exist that I don’t really feel like is there anymore. It’s just weird.

Are players too good at creating their own brands and islands? There are so many players who have their own off-the-court interests and are outspoken and bring a lot of attention to issues. Not that that’s a problem, but in terms of what you’re saying with the league, is that a problem that so many players are a country unto themselves?

Yeah. I don’t think it helps. And I don’t blame those guys for doing that. This isn’t a judgment. But looking at how it affects the larger product, no, I don’t think that helps. I do think that people prefer it if they could associate players with teams rather than the idea the guys are going to bounce around in the ways that they have. I do think that people would rather somebody stick around somewhere 8, 9, 10 years and build a relationship and then go from there. They like teams that they can get attached to in those ways. And I get why guys handle business the way they do now. But I don’t know if that’s better for the larger product.

Is the moral compass of certain things overstated in sports? Obviously, there are athletes that have run into various off field problems. There are leagues like Major League Baseball, which pays minor league baseball players pennies on the dollar, which is really morally reprehensible. Is it overstated the impact of that on fans and their interest in these sports?

I think that there is a general societal… Best way to put it. Basically, we as a society are losing faith in all institutions. Trust is at as low a level as I can think of it ever having been before. And so it’s hard to be disappointed in something you never believed in in the first place. And I just don’t think that very many people in American society right now believe in very much. What does it take for something to be a scandal in 2022? That applies to sports, that applies everywhere else. I was thinking about it the other day, the first scandal that I remember as a child was Iran-Contra. Can you imagine trying to make a news story out of Iran-Contra right now? Could you get anybody’s attention to care enough about that? Or have anybody say anything other than, “Well, what else do you expect from them?”

‘Game Theory’ premieres on HBO Sunday, March 13th at 11:30PM ET

On Thursday night, Reggie Miller was in Philadelphia to call the highly-anticipated showdown between the Sixers and Nets on TNT, where he watched James Harden pass him for third all-time in three-pointers made as the Nets routed the Sixers on the road.

Next week, he’ll be off to one of the NCAA Tournament first round sites for CBS and Turner Sports’ coverage of March Madness as his attention shifts from the NBA to the college game for two weeks, calling games along side Kevin Harlan, Dan Bonner, and Dana Jacobson. It’s the culmination of a months long multi-tasking process for Miller, as he starts to split his focus between NBA and NCAA hoops in January so he’s ready to dive headfirst into his assignment once he finds out where he’s headed on Selection Sunday.

Along with his presence on game broadcasts, Miller will also frequent appear as the star of Wendy’s March Madness campaign, and earlier this week, we got to talk with Miller on behalf of Wendy’s. The Hall of Fame inductee talked about his shift in assignment and preparation for the Tournament, the teams he’s most excited to see, the fun he had shooting this year’s Wendy’s commercials, and why he feels it’s important to support and uplift the next generation of basketball players rather than being “bitter or a hater” like some stars of the past become.

First off I gotta ask, does Cheryl even answer the phone from you after UCLA beats USC?

[laughs] No, she does not. In very much the same vein, I would not answer my phone from her if USC beat my beloved Bruins. Look, we’ve had this rivalry going on for years between her and I, and I tell people all the time I am partial and do have a little bit of Trojan blood rolling through my veins because of Cheryl D. And she’s very much the same way, but when we go head-to-head we more so trash talk not so much in basketball, but it’s the football games we trash talk more so in. You know, they only play one another once a year. So that’s kind of when we trash talk more than the basketball game.

Okay, okay. Because obviously y’all got it done on Saturday.

Yes, we did.

It’s conference tournament week across the country — some teams are finishing up and others are just starting. As a player, what are your favorite memories of the conference tournament? Because I think we all focus on the NCAA, but for so many teams the conference tournament is the main goal of the season, right? You want to win the conference because that’s what punches your ticket to the Big Dance.

You’re absolutely right. And there’s two objectives, really, for these college teams. You want to be playing well late, which as you just mentioned, leads into conference play. Number two, to win your conference tournament gives you that automatic bid. But even getting to the championship game almost can kind of punch your ticket as well, unless you’re one of those underdog teams that have a sub .500 record and you absolutely need to win that conference tournament.

But I think even getting to the championship game puts all eyes on you. I only played in one conference tournament — it was the Pac-10 then, the Pac-12’s first (conference tournament). But it’s a chance to have rubber match games because you may have split your games against a conference rival, and you get a chance to settle the score in a conference tournament, which is kind of cool. Or get pay back if you lost both games, trying to salvage a win against a particular team. So I think that’s why conference tournament games are so important because it gives the team a little bit of a boost of confidence hopefully leading into the tournament.

For you, how do you navigate this month? Because obviously you’re shifting gears from NBA to tournament time. How do you go about the process of changing your approach and making sure you’re keeping an eye on both things?

Well, that’s the key there. If you’re a basketball junkie, it’s pretty easy, which I am. So you’ve got to watch a lot of games. I do a ton of reading because obviously there’s more colleges. There’s 300+ colleges, so you’ve got to do your research and your reading. But the cool thing about it is because of technology, every game can be seen at some point. So if you are a basketball junkie, whether it’s the high school, college, or the professional range, you have eyes on it already. But I think come middle of January, for me, I start to shift a little bit in terms of watching more college stuff. Because for the pros, you pretty much know that like the back of your hand. Thirty teams, you know all the players, and you’ve been doing it for so long.

But starting in January, I start to shift my focus a little bit towards the colleges. And personally for myself, I call the games a little bit different because this is a Cinderella moment for a lot of the team come tournament time — especially the lesser known teams, so I want to make it special for them. For Kevin Harlan, Dan Bonner, and myself, for us to be calling their games, I want them to be like, “That was kind of cool how, Reggie Miller said my name this way or he talked about me this way.” I think in the professional ranks, we’re a little bit more critical because these guys are making big money and it’s a big business. And so is the NCAA, but the kids aren’t seeing any of this money, the institutions are. So I try to be less critical and speak more x’s and o’s and try to uplift the kids a little bit more and make it fun for them. Because I want them to have a Cinderella experience if our crew is calling their game.

Yeah, and I think the having fun part of that is something that is important to you and you can tell on your call for NBA and NCAA. I mean, if you’re in the basketball gym, you seem like you’re having fun, right? That for you is your happy place, and it is something I think is appreciated as a viewer that you are happy to be there, and it comes across on the broadcast.

Well, I want people to understand at the end of the day this is a game. It’s a game that we all love and enjoy, that we’ve all sweated and put a lot of time in, and I want fans and people at home to be appreciative of the young men and women that have sacrificed to try to reach the highest level: Winning an NCAA Tournament and hopefully eventually going pro in the WNBA or the NBA. This is a lifelong dream. So, I do want to have fun when I’m calling games because I’ve got the best seat in the house, center court where I can see everything and hear everything. And I want to pull back the veil a little bit and let the viewers see and experience what I’ve experienced. And that’s I think the cool part about it.

Absolutely. And going along with that it seems like, when you’re picking out opportunities and things to do off the court, like with this Wendy’s campaign, it seems like a thing that you have a lot of fun with. How did you come to this partnership and why is this something that you wanted to continue now for a third year?

Well we started in 2020, and the first year we had such a blast. I knew in this third year that Wendy’s and the producers were so happy with the first two, they were going to kind of allow us — when I say us meaning the actors — they had a script. But they were like, “We are not going to stick to the script. We want you guys to kind of wing it.” All of our eyes went kind of like, really? This is cool. More improv, and to date, I think this is arguably been the most fun I’ve had on a commercial shoot probably ever. The men and women I’ve worked with, the actors, the comedic timing was fantastic. We worked off one another.

I would be remiss not to, if you don’t mind, if I can mention them to you that would it be great. Kathryn Feeney, she’s the only one that’s done all three Wendy’s commercials with me. Chris Kleckner, Willie Earl Jr., Ericka Kreutz, and last but not least, Bill O’Neill. I would be remiss not to mention them because I like to give love to everyone. And I know people see my face, but they don’t even know who these great actors are. And they uplifted me, and hopefully I tried to uplift them, and I was entering their world of comedic timing and improv, and we had so much fun doing it. So by far I think these will be the best commercials because they’re just, what you see was literally made up right then. We were just working off one another, and that’s what made them so fun. So fun.

It’s interesting that you said and you do that, and I think it kind of speaks to how you approach a lot of things because we see some players are more critical of the current generation where you seem to take the approach, like Allen Iverson, like Isiah Thomas, of trying to uplift and really celebrate the current generation and celebrate those that you work with and come before you. Why is it that you find it important to do that when you’re talking about, specifically on the basketball court, the guys that have come after you? And lifting them up and celebrating them and doing that as opposed to maybe being more critical of them?

Robby, I was raised and mentored by Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Byron Scott, and Michael Cooper, the heyday of the Showtime Lakers in the ’80s. So when I got to UCLA, those three guys, during the summers when we would have our workouts up at the men’s gym, they took me under their wing each and every summer and they taught me life — life after basketball, life during the league, how to conduct yourself, how to be respectful, how to be on time, how to have interviews like this. I wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for Magic and Byron and Michael Cooper. And I know a lot of former players, they become haters. It’s all about them. “This is what we did.” That’s not how you turn over our game. And if you want this league to be successful, which it is, there’s always a turnover effect. And people come up, “Aren’t you upset or bitter at Steph Curry?” Absolutely not.

Stephen Curry, when he was a little boy, I was his favorite player. Why would I hate on what he’s doing right now? Maybe I inspired a little bit of that in him. And there’s so many kids that Stephen is inspiring now, that Ray is inspiring now. You can’t tell me Ja Morant — look at old Allen Iverson tapes, Steve Nash tapes. Absolutely. So why be bitter or be a hater? We want the game to rise, not stall. So I think that’s why I’m so open-armed with a lot of these young players in today’s game. Because we couldn’t shoot the threes! We weren’t allowed really. We played inside-out in the ’80s and ’90s. Today’s game is played outside-in. So how the game has evolved, and hopefully I had a small fraction of that by the way I played and shot the basketball, maybe I inspired Klay, Damian Lillard, Stephen Curry, Joe Harris. Maybe I had a small part in that. So it’s all about uplifting, my friend.

Shifting back to the to the tournament, what teams are you most excited to see? Not necessarily the ones that you think are gonna — we’ll get to predictions — but the teams that you’re looking forward to getting your eyes on, possibly in person depending on how the draw shakes out?

First, let me say this. I think there are 10 to 15 teams that could literally win this tournament. Remember, neutral site, no home court advantage, and we kind of talked about this, if a team gets hot late. For instance, Memphis is hot late. We know that they’ve got the pedigree. They’ve got a lot of young players, but the way they’re playing defense. Penny Hardaway, Larry Brown, a former coach of mine known for his defense, Tyler Harris, Landers Nolley II, and they’re without Jalen Duren and Emoni Bates, too. I want to see Memphis. I think in a tournament like this where defense is key, and you’ve got to have good guard play, Memphis is one of those teams I want to see.

Purdue and Jaden Ivey. If you have great guard play, that can carry you for six games. Jaden Ivey is one of those players, if he gets hot, who can carry the Boilermakers. I might be a little bit of a homer because it’s an Indiana team, but I like Purdue.

And I will go with the interesting game tonight that I want to see, because I do believe Gonzaga. I have them in the Final Four. I’m leaning towards them winning it all this year. But a team that has always been a thorn in their side has been one of their conference rivals, St. Mary’s, in the rubber match game tonight, that I’m excited to see. Again, neutral floor. St. Mary’s just beat them by 10 a couple weeks ago. St. Mary’s is one of those teams because they can shoot, and they have floor spacers. That’s going to be a fun game to watch, to see who wins the WCC. I’m not saying St. Mary’s gonna go deep in the tournament. But if I’m gonna pick Gonzaga to win it all, a team that’s been a thorn in their side, St. Mary’s is one of those teams I’m keeping an eye out as well.

I’ll close with this. You mentioned that Gonzaga is in your Final Four. Obviously we don’t know the bracket yet, but if you were going to pick four teams that you would expect to be there, I know you said it does feel wide open this year, who would be the four teams, before we know the bracket, that you would think we will see that first week in April?

Gonzaga. Kentucky. Auburn. I like Auburn. And, wow. I will go with … see, to me Kansas is going the other way. I don’t like how Kansas is playing right now. I will go with … I’m gonna surprise you again like I did with Auburn. Kofi Cockburn.

Ooh, the Illini.

“Ooh the Illini!” Such a surprise. Such a good team turned around here, Robby.

They’re playing well late if you’re looking into a team that’s starting to play better.

Kofi Cockburn.

He’s a beast.

He is. He is. But see, here’s the problem. You’ve gotta spoon feed him. Big men, they’re almost like a dinosaur now. That’s why, you know, their guards are good, but he can get in foul trouble. But I don’t know, if you’re gonna guard him one on one he’s gonna score.

It would be fun, I mean, you talk about a matchup like him and Chet (Holmgren). Polar opposite big men. But that would be fun.

Ooh, Chet and Drew (Timme) versus him? I would love that, right? Wouldn’t you love to see that? Or all those bigs for Kentucky? I would love to see it.