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A Taylor Swift Fan Came Upon Signed ‘Folklore’ CDs And Surprised The Internet With What She Did Next

Taylor Swift’s surprise record Folklore awarded the singer an impressive feat: she became the first woman to have an album spend its first four weeks at No. 1. To celebrate, Swfit found a clever way to thank fans while also supporting record stores across the country. The singer sent boxes of signed Folklore CDs to indie records stores. Word of the exclusive copies spread quickly among Swifties, and one fan was lucky enough to find a full box in her hands.

Over the weekend, Swifties lined up in front of Exclusive Co. record store in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Manager Tom Smith allowed fans to wait outside the store before he opened, but UPS delivered the precious package 15 minutes before he arrived. Smith recounted the event to Today. “I walk up, and one of the people standing outside the store handed me the box and said UPS had her sign for it,” Smith said.

But instead of running off with the box and reselling CDs to make a pretty penny, the Swift fan asked herself what Taylor would have done. “I said, ‘Thank you for not walking off with this,’” Smith said. “She goes, ‘Taylor would have not wanted me to walk off with this.’” Smith said the box could have “easily” made the fan $9,000, but instead she chose to do the right thing. “It’s really endearing,” he said. “Taylor Swift does so much good with her celebrity, and you can see how it also trickles down to her fans.”

Folklore is out now via Republic. Get it here.

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Nas Admits That He And Kanye West Rushed ‘Nasir’

In a new interview with Hot97’s The Breakfast Club, Nas finally admits what many long suspected — that despite having months to work on it from when it was announced, he and Kanye West rushed through the development of their joint album, Nasir, which contributed to its lukewarm reception among fans.

While Nas has openly admitted a penchant for procrastination on his own projects the past, this time is seems he can pin the failings on Kanye’s distractedness as he tried to stir too many pots at once. “[Kanye] was working on a lot,” Nas says. “He had Cudi, Teyana Taylor, he had his album. I was the only one coming in starting fresh. So I had less time with him. We really did that album the week it was supposed to come out.”

He says that the reason so many of the seven songs from the project sound sort of incomplete is because they mostly were. “I don’t know what went wrong,” he confesses, “But I would say I did want to work more with him. I did spend some time there with him, but I was working on ideas. He would give me a few loops and I would write to them, but they wasn’t finished.”

Nas also explains the production of his new project with Hit-Boy, King’s Disease, which is receiving a much more positive response after getting off to a shaky start with “Ultra Black.”

Watch Nas’ full interview with The Breakfast Club above.

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Kristaps Porzingis Will Not Play In Game 5 Due To Knee Soreness

The Dallas Mavericks managed to tie their first round series with the Clippers at 2-2 thanks to the heroics of Luka Doncic, whose 43 points, 17 rebounds, and 13 assists in Game 4 was punctuated with a stepback game-winner for the ages, sending the Mavs and the entire NBA world into a frenzy.

It was the kind of moment that will live on highlight reels forever, and what made the Mavs Game 4 performance so impressive was that they orchestrated a 21-point comeback without the services of Kristaps Porzingis. While Doncic has been able to play through his sprained ankle, Porzingis was a late scratch due to knee soreness in Game 4, and on Tuesday the team downgraded his status to officially OUT for Game 5 with the same issue.

Given Porzingis’ knee issues in the past, it’s understandable why he and the Mavs would be cautious with any soreness, but it certainly puts a damper on their hopes of pulling off the series upset. That said, with Doncic playing the way he is coupled with the emergence of some of the Mavs bench pieces like Seth Curry and Trey Burke taking on much larger scoring roles in this series, they’ve been able to manage. The bigger issue likely comes on the defensive end, where Porzingis was, by far and away, their best rim protector. They’ll have to continue upping Boban Marjanovic’s minutes, but his positive contributions almost all come on the offensive end.

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JaVale McGee Explores His Alter Ego In His New Podcast ‘Finding Pierre’

Alter egos have always been creative tools of the masters, but they can get tricky. In literature, most protagonists are written in some likeness to their authors. Marcel Duchamp was one of the first conceptual artists to step out as a second self. Music has many prolific examples: Bowie did it with Ziggy Stardust, Nicki Minaj has several, George Clinton created an entire alternate universe out of them. And sports are rife with them because there’s something to be said for creating an in-game persona that’s capable of consuming nerves and doubt and converting them to confidence when it’s time to compete.

But a cross-vocation hybrid?

JaVale McGee’s alter ego, “Pierre,” isn’t a secret. He released a self-titled album with it in 2018, and continues to produce music under it, most recently on Justin Bieber’s February 2020 album on the track Available. McGee has dabbled in producing media with him behind or around the camera for just as long. He hosted the Parking Lot Chronicles during his time with Golden State, a funny and candid show where he interviewed teammates in the parking lot outside Oracle, and since arriving in Orlando for the season restart has been releasing his Life in the Bubble vlogs that chronicle the charming daily ennui of he and his teammates.

It’s clear that McGee is a true creative, in the sense that he is most happy when he is turning his gaze out on the world and producing something, free to try new things. For his latest interpretation, a new podcast called Finding Pierre, McGee’s turned all the way inward, going past Pierre as a veneer and attempting instead to find and simultaneously write the origin story of his alter ego.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSNpav4RTpA&feature=youtu.be

“Ever since I was little, I wanted to make music.” McGee muses in the opening line of the podcast’s trailer, over his own new original track, Round of Applause, “But when you can run the floor and protect the rim like me, basketball, it just kind of chooses you.

The story that’s promised to unfold is loosely based on McGee’s own trajectory into the league, a young first-round draft pick who was “picked from my mama’s house in Flint, Michigan and thrust into the big leagues.” McGee narrates the intro to Finding Pierre as himself, at first, but shifts in and out of person and persona in the way one would in their own head.

“Basketball by day, alone in a strange new city by night with nothing but my music to keep me company,” McGee recalls, delving into some of the stress that came with his success and self-interpreted doubt. “I was a lottery pick, Slam Dunk Champion, but I’ve also led the league in air balls and been traded three times in four years. My commitment to the game was questioned from day one.”

When McGee introduces his on-court alter ego, Sly Malone — the one who’ll be narrating the new Audio Up produced podcast — he slips easily into the story. We haven’t spent any time with him but he’s as fully realized as McGee, plucked directly from his brain completely whole, an NCAA basketball player living a secret identity by night as a music producer, navigating two paths at once.

“The real truth is, without my music I’d never survive the stress of NBA life. I needed an alter ego. A mask, to shield Sly Malone, the basketball player, from the scrutiny of fans and media. So I created Pierre,” McGee says sunnily. “Super producer. He saved my life.”

The show will feature new and original music by McGee in every episode, a chance to showcase what he’s done since he was a freshman in college. You can hear an exclusive snippet of one of his tracks, “Let’s Get Loud,” below.

On his venture into podcasting, following a handful of other NBA stars like his teammate, Danny Green, McGee says, “Podcasting is something that I’ve always been interested in. The way Audio Up and CEO Jared Gutstadt takes both music and stories, and turns them into something much bigger, is catching a lot of people’s attention. I’m excited to be a part of this first wave.”

“I’m creating a whole new album, featuring music by my alter ego Pierre. It’s going to be unlocked throughout the original stories within each of the eight episodes. It will be the perfect way for us to expand my digital brand and get some music out in a dynamic way. Folks discover music in all sorts of ways, and Podcasting could just be that new primary avenue. It could turn from being a podcast, into the next big summer blockbuster or animated series!”

Will Sly Malone ultimately pick basketball, like McGee did, will Pierre the producer prevail, or will both find a happy coexistence in each other’s heads, much like McGee himself has created a cerebral coalescence with.

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Joey Fatone Thinks NSYNC Would Beat Backstreet Boys In A Verzuz Battle

In recent years, there seems to be a trend of musicians putting their beef behind them. Katy Perry and Taylor Swift smoothed things over with a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and Rick Ross recently announced he’s willing to reconnect with 50 Cent if the rapper agrees to promote his partnered brands. Some feuds, though, still live on — like the infamous rivalry between ’90s boybands NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. But NSYNC’s Joey Fatone wants to settle things once and for all with a nostalgia-inducing Verzuz battle.

TMZ caught up with NSYNC star Joey Fatone and asked the singer who he thought would win in a Verzuz battle. “Well, first of all, there’s no contest, between Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. NSYNC will always win,” Fatone quipped.

Fatone then detailed the possibility of a Verzuz battler happening, saying it would be pretty unlikely: “What I will say is it would be hard to do because, believe it or not, a lot of our writers and producers are the same writers and producers as the Backstreet. Let’s be real here — It depends on where we’re going, what outlet, because then if we go with Justin too, Justin also wrote a couple of his own albums, the same thing you could go with AJ [McLean] too, he wrote an album or two. But I think it would be a tough decision of really how that would go down because of the style.”

Though the singer doesn’t believe the battle would be possible, he still thinks it would be a “fun” thing to do: “I don’t think it would be a good thing to have. I think it would be fun, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t know if everybody would agree. That’s the thing with us — the five of us always have to agree on it together. If we don’t, we don’t do it.”

For now, it seems as though fans will have to keep an eye out on the Verzuz Instagram page to see if the battle between the two boybands becomes a reality.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shared Some Helpful Tips To Avoid Reading ‘Misleading’ Stories Online

Last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez replied to a “blatantly misleading tweet” from NBC News, which reported that the congresswoman “did not endorse Joe Biden.” While technically true, this was standard procedure (AOC backed Bernie Sanders) and, as she noted, her remarks were shared “WELL in advance” to the media, including NBC News. “This is completely unacceptable, disappointing, and appalling… @NBC knew what was going to happen & that it was routine,” she wrote, adding that the tweet “sparked an enormous amount of hatred and vitriol, & now the misinfo you created is circulating on other networks.” To reduce the amount of, well, actually fake news (shudder) online, Ocasio-Cortez shared tips “for consuming media and staying informed” on Instagram.

The tips include “don’t rely on only one source,” “get an idea for each outfit’s slant / vibe / perspective / whatever you want to call it (in other words, never trust anything on Breitbart), “identify journalists whose work you respect and trust.” Ocasio-Cortez also noted that “many journalists are not responsible for the headlines above their work,” so even if you don’t like the headline, that doesn’t mean the story isn’t worth reading.

AOC then added a few more quick-hit important tips, like “support local journalism,” “don’t fall down the ‘fake news wormhole but still keep a critical eye,” and (the all-caps emphasis is hers), “PAY FOR A NEWS SUBSCRIPTION (if you can). News outlets that don’t have to chase click ads as much can invest in investigatory journalism.” You can probably get a subscription to your city’s newspaper for around $10/month — use the money you’re not spending on a Quibi membership to support local journalism.

You can find all the tips below.

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Elton Brand Insists He’s Not Trading Embiid Or Simmons, Wants To ‘Complement Them’

The Philadelphia 76ers entered the offseason on Sunday evening after being unceremoniously swept out of the first round by the rival Boston Celtics. Head coach Brett Brown was fired a day later, ending his seven-year tenure with the club and ushering in a coaching search to begin what figures to be an active offseason for the Sixers.

The first step for the Sixers is figuring out a plan for their roster and what they want their identity to be moving forward. Last offseason’s swing at creating a monstrous lineup with Ben Simmons, Josh Richardson, Tobias Harris, Al Horford, and Joel Embiid led to roster imbalance and a lack of shooting and spacing — without the expected benefit of being physically dominant on both ends. Now, Elton Brand and company must figure out what their approach to this offseason will be, and what recourse they have to undo some of the wrongs of last summer.

As Brand told the media in his exit interview on Tuesday, that will not include trading Embiid or Simmons, but instead the plan this year has to be complementing them with the right players being put in place around them.

It’s interesting to note that, while this would seem to be somewhat intuitive to how you build a team, it’s not what happened last year. Their past signings have always been a bit of a hedge against injury concerns for both of their young stars, whether bringing in a ball-dominant guard like Jimmy Butler to assist Simmons in handling the rock or Al Horford as an insurance policy for Embiid missing time.

This year, hopefully, Brand has seen the light and simply goes all in on surrounding his young stars with the best possible teammates rather than trying to thread the needle of bringing in capable replacements that would also need to play with them. What that looks like remains to be seen, the Horford for Buddy Hield swap remains a favorite of just about everyone on NBA Twitter, but the obvious trade rarely happens for a variety of reasons. In any case, one would think there will be a focus on spacing and shooting this offseason, in whatever form that comes.

When GMs make declarative statements in public press conferences, such as “we’re not trading Embiid or Simmons” it’s always wise to take those on-record declarations with a grain of salt. However, it would serve Philly right to give it at least one real, honest shot with those two as the centerpieces of a team built around them, not built with them seen as both foundational pillars and potential obstacles.

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Brandon Flowers Says Vampire Weekend Inspired The Killers To Not ‘Just Phone In’ Their New Album

The Killers have mixed feelings about their 2017 album Wonderful Wonderful. For example, Brandon Flowers recently said of lead single “The Man,” “We experimented a little bit on the last album. We’re proud of ‘The Man’ and all that it did, but the heart wasn’t quite there.” Flowers seems much more fond of the band’s new album, Imploding The Mirage, and he thanks Vampire Weekend for that.

In a recent NME interview, Flowers said Vampire Weekend’s 2019 album Father Of The Bride made him and the band want to be better: “That really helped to propel us into the right direction and realize that we couldn’t just phone in The Killers’ record. We had to do better. I told Ezra [Koenig] that. I’m grateful for people like him.”

He was then asked if the album started a healthy competition with Vampire Weekend, and Flowers responded, “Yeah! It reminded me of how I felt when The Strokes’ Is This It came out.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Flowers said his move to Utah, where he spent many of his formative years, was also an important creative inspiration:

“I wasn’t getting disenchanted with music, but it was becoming my job and something that I just did. I hadn’t forgotten, but I did need to be reminded of the power that it used to hold over me. It was magic, y’know? When I first turned to music, I was living in a place called Nephi that was almost like being quarantined. It was 2,000 people, no stop lights — a rural country town. Some music almost made it possible for me to dream. It turned this black and white town into color. Just being here, having these mountains around me and the seasons, and hearing a lot of that music again, paired with the smells and sights of Utah, was kind of an awakening for me. It reminded me of being 13 or 14 and wondering what a service it did for me.”

Read the full feature here.

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Biggie’s Iconic ‘King Of New York’ Crown Goes Up For Auction At $200K

Once upon a time, The Notorious B.I.G. declared himself the “King Of New York” in a now iconic photoshoot, the results of which have graced magazines, canvases, mixtape covers, and even the villain’s lair in Netflix’s Luke Cage series. Now, you can own a piece of hip-hop history — but only if you have a spare $200,000 laying around.

Sotheby’s auction house announced a new auction today to take place September 15 in New York, where Biggie’s plastic crown from the King Of New York photoshoot — his last photoshoot before being killed in 1997 — is expected to sell for between $200,000 and $300,000. Of course, it wouldn’t be right to auction off Biggie paraphernalia without also putting some Tupac up for sale as well.

An archive of Tupac’s handwritten high school love letters is also available, estimated between $60,000 and $80,000 in value. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Queens Public Library‘s hip-hop programs, as well as Building Beats, a music-based non-profit focused on DJing and production.

Earlier this year, Biggie garnered headlines as a new, unreleased verse surfaced on a new project by Statik Selektah. More recently, Snoop Dogg recalled his last conversation with Biggie in an interview with Fatman Scoop, revealing Big’s thoughts on Tupac’s then-recent murder.

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Travis Pastrana Explained The Nobility Of Being A Daredevil Guinea Pig On Quibi’s ‘Life Size Toys’

Travis Pastrana’s career has led him to doing a lot of interesting, perhaps even reckless, things. But concussing himself on an oversized version of a toss and catch was never on the radar when he first started riding bikes. Still, when his Nitro Circus built a larger-than-life version of the velcro children’s toy, someone had to test it. And he wasn’t going to let anyone else be the “guinea pig.”

“I wasn’t supposed to get on the toss and catch,” Pastrana told me last month as part of the press tour for Quibi’s Life Size Toys. “I thought, this is going to be awesome. This is going to be so much fun. Then I woke up in the water.”

Like everything on Quibi, it happened fast. The show’s handful of episodes all last fewer than 10 minutes, as crews build out some impressively large toys that Pastrana’s Nitro Circus crew then tests out for themselves. Go Karts get fitted LEGOs, an oversized Radio Flyer wagon and some more dangerous toys like a toss and catch catapult and jumbo-sized stomp rocket all get some run in the show’s first season.

It’s arrived on a Quibi platform that’s seen struggles in its early months, no doubt hampered by a global pandemic that’s kept people in their homes and perhaps not relying as much on mobile devices to entertain them on city commutes and other travels. But the BMX and extreme sports legend explained that there’s a nobility in going first, even if it could be painful to say the least. Uproxx spoke to Pastrana about Life Size Toys, how Nitro Circus and Quibi came up with the series and how the show’s unique format makes for a wild ride with some very familiar, very big playthings.

Quibi

Uproxx: I wanted to start by asking how you ended up on Quibi. I know they had a lot of money to seek out new content for the platform, but how did you guys come together here?

Travis Pastrana: It’s really interesting, actually. It kind of came along through Nitro Circus. Quibi reached out and said ‘We want to do something in the action sports world.’ We have a lot of comedy, we have a lot of different variety shows. Who do we reach out to?’ So they reached out to Ken Block, and they reached out to Nitro Circus.

So Nitro being most of us are pretty all across the board. Ken is more kind of car-related, not an older audience, but for action sports sort of the older side of the audience. Nitro’s still, well, playing with kids toys.

So they said ‘put together a group.’ We don’t need all young people, but it could be. But what do you guys think you could do that would be relatable, would be super fun for a younger audience. And we were actually in the process of building some contraptions and they were all, like, trikes. And we were talking about Radio Flyer and some of the guys were like ‘What about building all of your favorite kid’s toys bigger? And it kind of took off from there.

It’s a really interesting show because it’s a manufacturing show by nature, but because of the Quibi format and the time restraints it’s not a typical crafting reality show. No added drama or troubleshooting. That was definitely refreshing to see, but was it an intentional decision or something that came from the format itself?

Well, to be honest at Nitro we got out guys together who are actually really good builders and fabricators. For the most part, like all motocross guys we work on our own machinery. All BMX guys work on their own ramps. It’s surprising how much of a do it yourself — everyone assumes action sports, well who builds ramps? We do. Who builds bikes? We do. That’s all us.

But with this we just really didn’t have the time and most of us were doing other projects so it went from the original Quibi concept was a build show, which we had signed up for. And then it ended up I was strapped to an Acme rocket like Wile E. Coyote and I knocked myself out on the toss and catch. And I’m like, wait, wasn’t this a build show? (laughs) Why are we doing what we always do?

I think that’s a combination of planned and just the fact that we, one thing I didn’t want to do with Nitro Circus and our brand is to make it not stand out as action and excitement and not pushing ourselves. We’ve built our brand on ‘That’s a horrible idea. What time?’ You know? Sign me up. So we kinda took the build show concept and talked our way into building things way too big so the build stuff was kind of cut. Not cut completely, but that wasn’t the premise.

It really works in that way, though. A lot of reality TV sort of inserts this manufactured sort of drama but you didn’t do that here. It’s going to work, it’s going to be fun and we’re going to showcase our skills here. Was that the idea once you started filming?

Yeah, I mean, we’re not actors. It’s really hard for us. We had more fabricating stuff, but when the guys weren’t really involved in the ideas and concept that enthusiasm just wasn’t there. We’re an excitable crew but it’s very difficult, especially in this new world where Quibi is living in and why they’re coming up with these short episodes. It’s very easy to see through, and I think especially the younger audience — they see right through things that aren’t real. That aren’t authentic. And even some stuff that is real, they think it’s fake. So we have to be really careful as Nitro Circus, our brand, to make sure that if we are excited about something it’s genuine excitement.

And because we’re not actors, we had to kind of push ourselves to really take this stuff to the level that it could be taken.

You played around with the format of the episodes a bit. The LEGO car racing one in particular was more sketches and a true contest of sorts. Is there anything you learned filming this season that you would use to change a Season 2 of Life Size Toys?

Yeah, for sure. I think that we will definitely be more involved with the building. There was a lot of things where in Hollywood we were just under a time crunch where everything was shot. They’re used to building these awesome things and super extravagant. And Nitro is a very budget — I wouldn’t want to say redneck but that’s what we are. We get things done with high horsepower, low safety. And we have a lot of experience but don’t rely a lot on numbers and physics calculations just as much as an understanding of what things do. So we would have had more horsepower in the Barbie Jeep. But with the time we had and people trying not to kill us, it’s hard to put a V8 in the Barbie Jeep and go ‘oh yeah, go drive that.’ But if you’re the one driving it, yes it’s going to be awesome.

So I think we’ll be more involved in the builds. We give them direction, but for us to kind of understand what they’re going to be used for and how big we can go, I think that will be huge if we go to Season 2.

You got hurt on the toss and catch episode and needed to get checked out. I was asked to ask you what the dumbest thing you’ve ever done was. Did anything from the show make your list?

You know when I was sitting on the stomp rocket and it’s freezing cold and I feel like when you’re cold everything is just kind of. It’s December, January. It’s California but the lake is snow runoff.

But I was sitting on this thing and I’m like ‘Wasn’t this a build show?!?’ They’re trying to get the other guys to do their acting pieces done and stuff, and all I’m thinking is ‘this does not work out well for the coyote.’ And the one test run the we did must have gone 200 feet in the air. And they’re like ‘oh, OK we used calculations to get it down and we got it. This is the last one we have left. Get on it, it’s going to work.

I like having control. I’m a horrible passenger. And I just thought ‘man, I’m going to get ripped right off the back. I’m going to get the styrofoam fin straight up the butt. And I’ll be knocked unconscious and not even clear the pier.

So it went slightly better than expected. And the calculations they made were very good but I was just thinking ‘Man, I’m going to be 200 feet in the air without a parachute wondering how I was going to get off this tube of death. But for the most part, this was fairly within our capabilities. And it was, at the end of the day, supposed to be fun. It was a kid’s toy built up.

And I wasn’t supposed to get on the toss and catch. I thought, this is going to be awesome. This is going to be so much fun. Then I woke up in the water.

That was a good show of leadership, though. You went first, they made some adjustments from there. And then the rest of the episode went great.

The first one is always… the first one never gets the credit and gets most of the injuries. In this case, on the show it does get credit but usually the first person crashes, everyone else does big tricks over the same jump. So in Nitro it’s definitely a big honor to go first, it’s well-respected and something that if you’re outside our little circle you don’t know but inside the guys are called the guinea pigs. They’re definitely the ones that make the rest of us look good.

At the same time, Johnny Knoxville was the best guinea pig of all time. If someone else wanted a stunt, he would always step down no matter how much he wanted to do it. And if no one would step up, he was always the first one there. I learned a lot from him and how if you really want to make something work, you have to lead by example.

But I really thought that was going to go much better!

Your career has been so interesting and as action sports have sort of evolved you have, too. I wanted to ask you to reflect on that for a moment. I don’t think when you first started riding bikes that you thought you’d have a Quibi show, because it didn’t exist. But it has been fascinating to see how sports have developed and the opportunities they’ve created.

Definitely I was born at the right time. I was 14 when the first ever freestyle motocross event was held. So I was able to jump in from the very beginning. Which, now at 14 not saying you couldn’t do it, but your upbringing would have to be very different. You’d have to be a gymnast. You’d have to do everything just to be able to compete at the top level. Even the X-Games weren’t around when I was growing up. So it was cool to be at the forefront of that.

Not to get too far off subject, but my uncle was the quarterback of the Denver Broncos for two years. He’s a great athlete, best in our city and definitely in our county and possibly in the state of Tennessee. And yet still when he was done with football he worked as a health teacher and they call him Coach P. He coaches lacrosse and football at Anne Arundel Community College and spends summers with my other uncle and my dad working construction. My dad says ‘you’re never going to make a living doing what you love. But any day that you can do what you love for a living, you ride that train until the wheels fall off.’ So definitely I never look at the money as a driving factor. And I feel like chasing my heart the whole way and just being there at the right time with the sports that I’m into has really helped me to keep every time I had a career ending gave me the opportunity to get into cars or something else. So I’m very fortunate, and very fortunate to have parents that allowed me to chase my dreams.

The LEGO episode looks like it was the most fun, both to watch and maybe to film for you guys. That was probably the best overall episode in terms of format and execution and it was definitely funny. I think I’d start with that one if I were trying to convince someone maybe skeptical of the show to give it a try.

It’s funny, I was able to show my kids that episode and very rarely are they into anything that I do that they will want to watch. And the fact that they were laughing all the way through made me feel really good. Because they’re my harshest critics at times.

But I think that was the one chance where (Trevor) Piranha and Josh really shined. We were there all day at the go kart track. And we just love riding go karts. But we were there all day and those two were on that couch for six hours and they eventually stopped remembering that they were on film. Most of the stuff we couldn’t use because it was either inappropriate or inside jokes or really off the wall. But they just had so much fun. That was the episode where those two really came together as kind of a comedic asset instead of saying ‘I have to say this line and do this.’ For the rest of the episodes it really set their tone which set the driving force of the show. Instead of me talking about what was going to happen, after that those guys kind of drove the comedy and the fun.

I love doing stunts, but I’m not an actor. But I feel like Piranha and Josh are really fun and love to do that. It’s funny, a couple guys from Quibi came out and said ‘Man, we’ve gotta get a show commentating on other stuff going on.’ So it was really cool to have. Piranha is a car mechanic and a builder and Josh, he’s a handyman he can do anything. If there’s a job out there, he’s had it. He was a Chick-fil-A manager of the month all the way to running a drag strip. And he was a swim coach at a naval academy. So he’s got personality and a lot to offer.

I also wanted to ask about the tone of the show. You’ve said a few times it’s supposed to be fun, and it plays as very silly. And this hasn’t been the best year in terms of, well, everything. Is there something to be said for making something in a tough year that can give people a distraction to enjoy themselves?

Honestly, I think this whole Quibi platform has been great because there’s so much going on and so much, I don’t want to say hate. But financially and with crises and everything that’s going on, it’s been a tough time. So for Quibi to come out and you can take anything in literally 10 minutes. Like, our show, just go and have a laugh. There are some pretty exciting stunts, but they’re not built up in this ‘oh my gosh he might die’ way. Yeah, that’s a fact and you can see that when I’m getting launched 100 feet off a barge. But at the end of the day, it’s kind of what we love to do. It’s a creative group of friends coming together to have fun. And although we filmed this pre-COVID, the timing of this could not have been better to put a smile on a few people’s faces. If we can be a part of that, and just Quibi being short format, it’s great timing.