Jay-Z: The Black Album (2003)

[00:00]I buy this new mic and it sounds fine and then I go up north in a fucking all wood cabin with the old mic and my audio sounds even better. What the hell? You got to build yourself an all wood cabin. I mean, this situation you're in right now isn't permanent, right? You're going to eventually buy something. Wait, weren't you in... What mic did you use last week? Maybe you move up north. I used my old mic that I brought up with me. Because I had you on my settings. Maybe that explains. I don't know what was going on. I thought you sounded good. Last week

[00:31]I think is as good as I've sounded in months. Well, maybe I'll just... I have to tweak the settings a little bit. Once again, try that one with your landlord. Let us know how it turns out. I sounded way better in my podcast before we moved in together. Hey, do you want to talk about my audio fidelity? I thought you were talking about tweaking your settings. That's what I thought too. Can I tweak your settings? Come on. Guys, come on. I know you're sleeping, but wake up. I need to tweak my settings. If I don't tweak my settings I could get really hurt, actually.

[01:01]It's an actual medical issue. It's a medical thing. It hurt so bad right now. I've read a lot of research about it. Yeah. Russell, you got another pineapple truly you want to open as you're going some? Oh, God. Let's try it again. I'm hoping that came over. We'll see if that came over. I didn't hear it. We'll try it. Stupid new microphones. Maybe we'll try this one instead. Thanks for having me, Matt and John from Edita for the recommendation. You know what?

[01:30]Long gone. Russell, when you say that about the microphone I recommended, that doesn't bother me. I'm not going to think about that at night right before I go to bed. Love his feedback. In 2020, four friends decided to listen to every one of the greatest 500 albums as decided by Rolling Stone magazine. This resulted in a text chain that celebrated the music, excoriated the order, and led us to making this podcast. We are far from experts. We promise to do almost no research. All opinions are our own unless you disagree that gong is still going. Please sit back and enjoy. Back did it better.

[02:00]We're up to album 155, and from 2003 we got J to the Izzo, H to the Lizzo telling you, hey, suck it up and be a better dancer or you're fired. Oh no, Lizzo. Why would you do that to me? Turns out you're a bad person too. I can't believe it. Another celebrity who is a bad person? It's almost like we should make heroes out of celebrities and politicians, only sports people. All right. Quarterbacks, for example, of Midwestern universities. Let's... Yeah. Yeah. Aaron's mad that the Iowa

[02:31]guy got caught gambling. Iowa States. The Iowa guy is fine. We're not going to get into this. Oh, okay. It's too much even for us. We're doing Jay-Z with the Black Album. Guys, the Enter Sandman on this one I thought was really good. Let's get right into it. Now, I have to say something. I'm a little nervous about this, okay? Because for the first time in a long time, we've got a parody song that I have not heard yet. You've not heard this yet? A special guest.

[03:00]Some people would say featuring, okay? Just like we got a new producer in every one of these songs. In this case, we've got a brand new person doing the... New rapper? Well, you know what? Let's just turn on the... You know what? Let's skip the parody song. Let's just turn on the radio and see what's on. How about that? Here we go. All right. Let's hear it. Let's hear it. This is a public service announcement sponsored by Russell and the good folks at Beck Did It Better. Fellow Americans, it is with the utmost pride and sincerity that I present this recording as a living testament and recollection of history in the making during our generation.

[03:31]Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Rob. R to the O-B. I move my plates in KGs. I want everybody here. You better call me CEO of the BDIB. I'm freshening my caftan. Nobody higher. I'll be the podcast game number one supplier. Comfy with a waterbed under my frame. Got the flyest chick in the game screaming my name. Rob. Not H-O-V

[04:01]but similar to the letters. Matt loves me like Eddie Vedder. I check knockers because my wife is a doctor. Always tell my kids, yo, eat up this egg strata. So that's what I'm a do. Take you back to the dude with the Miata. Fast forward. My swimsuit is a lotta. Let me tell you dudes what I'm about to do in the sauna. Give you pervs a glimpse of all my fauna. That's all you get. Just one bar. When you want to hear about the greatest album of all time. I tried. I did everything

[04:31]I could. Wow. Everything I could do. A song about me. Wow, Rosie. That was amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Aaron, that was so good. Did it better. I was inspired. I love this album. Now, Aaron, did you were you at all embarrassed doing that around your family? My family was gone today and I recorded that. No one was here. I recorded it, but I did I did email it to Rob. And Aaron's wife at gmail.com because

[05:00]she was she wanted to know what I was up to. So she got a little little sneak peek as well. I just I'm going to point something out. It is 1024 p.m. And we just found out Aaron's family was gone. So no, I mean, just like a regular work day. Like it was just like, no, like Anna was at work and while I camp. No, no, no. Okay. So regular work day for you. You got a nap in this afternoon. Yeah. No, I didn't. I had to pick him up at three from camp. No. And like I couldn't even do it. The thing is, I couldn't do it like Jay-Z. Like I wanted to do, you know, Jay-Z famously did

[05:30]all of his raps off the top of his head and I had to actually write it down. So I have a little notebook right. It's almost like Jay-Z is a better rapper than you, Aaron. It's surprisingly you'd find that rapping is actually hard and professional rappers are good at it. Well, I cannot tell you how great that is that you do that because I was going to do a song about instead of 99 problems, I was going to do something about don't throw rocks at me, son. But I thought that might be mean like to take a vulnerable moment you had and then do multiple songs about it. I guess that's okay. I was inspired to make one about Rob.

[06:01]I've got four. Well, hey, Aaron, anytime you guys want to talk about me or do things for me and about me. Actually, that was a double. Aaron did something for me, so I didn't have to do it. And it was about me. I loved it. I can't get enough, Aaron. Feel free to do that anytime. I've got four guys here for Beck Did It Better who after they heard that parody song, they realized we have a hundred problems. A hundred problems. I've got Matt up in North Dakota. Matt, how are you doing? Good, Rob. If you're feeling like a pimp, keep listening

[06:30]to this podcast. I've got Russell up in Minneapolis. Russell, how are you doing today? To all our listeners out there, are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is that not why you are here? Turn this podcast up. Turn all of Aaron's ultra-conservative right-wing podcast down and let's go get him again. Aaron wanted to do a whole... I cut out Aaron's spiel this week about how much he hated the Barbie movie. Okay, but that's... Oh, no. That's fine.

[07:00]And listen, I've got Aaron who lately, he went out and he took a poll and he found out that people hate it when their tents collapse. Took a poll. I've got Aaron in California. How are you doing, Aaron? What? Hello? I'm so confused. There's never been a podcast this good for this long, so after this note, we're leaving after this song. Let's talk about The Black Album by Jay-Z. Now, I'm not going to lie. We've had some long-ass episodes. Two hours. Two hours. And a lot of it is

[07:30]the dumb stuff we talk about in between the intros and the voicemail, so you know what? We're just going to get right into the voicemail. What a Matt's finest. Oh, I haven't heard this for a while. I did. I listened to like five minutes of this song today. It was so good. What the hell? Let it all play out, man. So good.

[08:00]Hi, this is Claire, Russ's cousin. I'm the cousin that Russ was referring to who recently had a baby, and he was like, why are you texting me? He just had a baby. The context of the text was asking if Russ or Matt were going to the Taylor Swift concert because I know Matt had really nice things to say about the 1989 album that is on the Top 500 list. Way better than Red. Before I unpause this, man, nobody here made it to the Taylor Swift

[08:31]concert, right? Except for me, seeing a little bit of it out in the parking lot in Philadelphia. No, I mean, the hype behind it, and again, if I'm going to be sitting in like the 300 section of US Bank Stadium, like, why even try? Right, Russell? Like, why even attempt to go see that? I don't know. Maybe it was good. It was in the round, all that stuff. I knew it was going to be such a hot ticket. I probably should have tried for my wife and or others to... Put my name in to see if I can get tickets, but... That's kind of cool. No. I did not.

[09:01]Yeah, it was in the... No, I did not see it. I think I would have felt bad if I would have went to that and taken a ticket that someone who was really into her, like, if people are that hard up to see that concert, I would almost not feel right taking a ticket for it. Does that make sense or not? Well, Russell, I would feel so bad that I would probably sell that ticket at, I don't know, five to ten times the face value of it. To a kid who doesn't really want to take them, right? Hey, Russell, not all heroes wear capes, you know? I don't know. I have found

[09:31]now that I love going to live shows, but I love even more going to intimate settings. So, like, first half. Oh, I like seeing it intimate as well, yeah. You know, things like that. I'm going to try that one these days as well. And so, I just don't know. I'm going to Pearl Jam end of the month here. They're at the X opening of their North American leg here this fall, things like that. Which will be a bigger concert venue that I've been to in a while, but I just don't know if I like the big venues anymore. I don't know. I'd rather try to find the small ones. It is much better

[10:01]to, I think, go somewhere where it's going to be a small place and you can see a band you love. It's great. I love seeing They May Be Giants. They play the perfect size places for me, where it's like 100, 200 people all on one level, no chairs or anything. It's great. You know what? If this podcast was revenue generating and we could have expensed those tickets, I would have been there. So, Rob, maybe if you want to send over the balance sheet for the last quarter, we could take a look at it and see where we're going next week. How's that T-Public's thing doing? I do want to remind you, T-Public's site, let me go check real quick. Two, we've sold two things.

[10:31]Although I did have somebody say to me, like, oh, I'm sad I can't get a shirt on your website. And I was like, no, actually you can. Obviously we're not doing a good enough job advertising that. They heard the one episode where I did the song about the online store being closed, and I was like, no, no, you should have actually listened to more than that episode. I would like to remind everybody, I did want to do commercials on this podcast for a little bit, and Russ said no due to some legal issues or whatever. We probably shouldn't actually make money on this podcast. But the only reason I want to do ads is because I think I would be really good at ads. I think I would do a good

[11:00]ad. I really do. I think we've been telling you this since this podcast started. You are absolutely wasting your talents as a teacher. You should be a voice over actor. You should be a comedian. You should be doing anything but being a teacher. Maybe you should do some ads, because then maybe somebody will hear you. They'll come to this podcast. You'll get fired, and you'll be forced to go be a stand-up comedian. I was a Lizzo backup dancer for a little bit, but I'm allergic to bananas. So I got fired right off the tour. Go look up that story, which

[11:31]actually my wife did do that in real life. Let's keep going here. Wait, fired a backup dancer or looked up the story? No, you can look up what happened to the bananas with Lizzo. I'll give you a hint. It has to do with Amsterdam and a vagina. All right, so try to put together that story if you can. Little Sherlock Holmes out there. It's a tough one. I have two questions for all of you. All right, Claire. Are you Barbie, or are you Oppenheimer? Now, to be fair, that's only like two questions,

[12:00]but that was only one of her questions. Can somebody explain to me and Rob, since I saw you, a picture of you in all pink at Barbie with your daughters and your dad who had like pink gloves on? That's pretty sweet. He had pink biking gloves, fingerless gloves. And then we got in, we got into the movie, and my dad, the movie, the preview started up, and my dad immediately pulls out two cheese sticks. Two cheese sticks, and unwraps them, goes like this to see if we want any, and then just bites him. And my kid was like, Grandpa brought in cheese sticks, and he just bit them? That's crazy.

[12:30]I think that's actually the better way to eat a cheese stick. I've been thinking about this, too. My son eats them that way, and I've been like, that's kind of weird. And then when you try to pull them apart, you never get the perfect pull. You don't get the perfect... No, man. Biting a cheese stick, I like it. I'm with your dad, man. Disgusting. I'm a Christopher Nolan guy, and I think part of it is, who is the lead actor in Oppenheimer? What's the guy's name? Dylan Murphy. Peaky Blinders. There is something about that guy that is, he's one of the creepiest dudes

[13:00]in the history of the world, and I don't know if it's because they make him lose a bunch of weight for these movies, but he's just got a face that, man, if you ran into him in a dark alley, you'd be like, oh, I'm screwed. Not only is he going to kill me, I'm going to go to another dimension or something. He freaks me out. If he said, by the power of Grayskull, you'd be nervous, because you'd be like, oh, this is pretty... You would look the part, for sure. Well, I mean, that's why he's so good in Peaky Blinders, right? I mean, he's like this... He's incredible in Peaky Blinders. He makes the whole show. He stares at you, and it's like

[13:32]your soul leaves your body. I would see Oppenheimer, but I would also... I think Barbie would be fun. I'd have no issue going to that one, but I would probably pick Oppenheimer. That's probably more my personality. I will say I went and saw Barbie. Highly recommend it. Okay? Thought it was very good. I mean, it's just a whole... I'm not going to talk too much about movies. It's silly for me to do it, but it's just a whole... It's just a movie with a vibe, and I thought the vibe was very good, and especially somebody you know. Somebody with

[14:00]two daughters, so I do respect women more than you guys, actually. Okay? Maybe that doesn't come through clearly on the playback sometimes, but it's actually true. Rob, I thought we had a conversation after like episode 17 that we were no longer making respect women jokes, because they didn't come off very well. Okay, well that sounds like I made a lot of weird respect women jokes, and that is not true. I just said I respect women. I think it was a euphemism for oral sex, maybe, which is now, of course, a John Popper, which I think is much more fitting. But I really enjoyed the Barbie movie. I thought it was great. The only thing was she gave a big, long speech on, you know,

[14:32]feminism and stuff like that, and why it's important to try to fight the patriarchy and a very emotional time, and then my dad turns to my kids and goes, I didn't follow that that loud. He said it that loud in the theater, and I was just like, he was really wild and out of this theater. He had on the pink white gloves. I mean, we had to kind of talk to him like that. Okay, here, we'll play the rest. Still more? Second, like Russ mentioned, I recently had a baby. At this moment in time, at this call,

[15:01]he is five weeks old, and so I'm up every two to three hours feeding this baby, which means I'm up a lot of times in the middle of the night. What movies or TV shows would you recommend? Because I need something to watch in order to stay awake. Thanks. Bye. I got two shows I really love. Both are Apple TV, if you're an Apple TV enthusiast, Claire. One is The Severance, only one season. I don't know if that season's coming, if the second season's ever coming, but Severance, I absolutely

[15:31]endorse. And the second one, For All Mankind, three seasons, every season's a banger, very interesting historical fiction, so I'm going to go with those two recommendations. Russell, what do you think? You've chucked a lot of your stuff. Would you say she should watch Rome? HBO's Rome? I think I edited it out where I made fun of you for having those DVDs, but... No, I think that made it. You know, the two shows that I've gotten into recently, one is The Bear. I don't know if you guys have watched The Bear, that's kind of the big hit show.

[16:01]The one thing I would say, though, is for people who haven't watched it, The Bear brings... It's about a kind of a new restaurant, this restaurant that's trying to kind of become the new award-winning restaurant. There's all this drama going on, a lot of family drama, a lot of family history. It really evokes a lot of anxiety in me, though. There's a lot of screaming and yelling, and there are parts... The music in the background is intense. It leads it to be intense, yeah. There are parts of the show that if you had a long day at work

[16:31]or whatever, it is just really hard to watch, and it's hard to get through, and there's points where I'm like, this is so bad. There are times where I think the show is so terrible because it's hard to watch just because it evokes this constant anxiety, this constant stress, but it's an absolutely fantastic show. I actually, after we were out and had a few drinks the other night, I came back and I re-watched one scene from The Bear, like 12 straight times in a row. I think the show's fantastic. Wait, which scene was it from The Seven Fishes? What the fuck

[17:01]are you talking about, Russell? Yeah, what scene, Russell? What are you doing? Are you okay? I mean, we had had some cocktails that night. Which scene was it? This isn't a spoiler. Is this the scene in Dumb and Dumber where he lifts up her dress? No. I've watched that 12 times in a row. It is... Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert? Is that how we need to do this? Sure. Fast forward a minute if you don't want to hear it. It is the scene when Richie has kind of finally made it through and he's a contributing member to the team and he sends the uncle the chocolate-covered banana as like

[17:31]the dessert, saying I heard what you said earlier, like it's not lost on me. I watched it. And the look on who's that actor's name? I forgot the gentleman's name. Oliver Platt. Oliver Platt. The look on his face, it just almost brought tears to my eyes. I thought it was fantastic. The good thing is, is they're only half hour shows, right? Or sometimes they're like 21 minutes or whatever. But they'll go from the... Fish is... Fish is like an hour. Yeah, that's an hour of... Well, it's different. I mean, but they had a whole bunch of, you know, they had

[18:00]Jamie Lee Curtis and a bunch of other people. But the one thing I would say, and I don't know, you guys, but you tell me when you were parents, like would you have a show on where there's just constantly people screaming at each other when you're trying to feed your kid or take you up with your kid at night? No, no, no. You know what? What I would tell you're... Again, congratulations on having a baby. That's big time. And Cripes, five weeks. I would just be in a ball of nerves right now if I had a five-week-old. So best of luck to you.

[18:31]I would pick something like New Girl or The Office or Grey's Anatomy or something just a little bit like mindless. Yes. You know, if I was in her situation right now or rewatched something that you wanted, I mean, it just feels like the opportune time to like catch up on some show that you didn't watch before. Stuff you can just enjoy and watch over you. I watched a lot of stand-up. I haven't watched a lot of Netflix stand-up since then, but I watched a lot of Netflix stand-up when

[19:01]Wallace was a baby. That one, and I remember my sister came out to help us out when he was a month old, and she is a real person. And we watched the Justin Timberlake... Wait, you have a sister? Wow. Yeah, it's true. She's real. We watched the Justin Timberlake concert, which I don't know if that's still on Netflix or not, but the Taylor Swift one is. I think that's a good choice as well. I know another one. Maybe, Rob, I know you got a recommendation coming here, but the other one that jumps out to me, and actually my upstairs landlord recommended this to me. They had watched it. Upstairs landlord. Things are getting worse

[19:31]and worse every episode. It's a they now? I mean, you own the basement. Is the basement yours? They recommended watching the show I've Made a Huge Mistake. Goodbye. So the upstairs landlord, they came up. They were up north with me at a family trip for a while, but they came back early. They had work to do. So they came back early, and I stayed up north, and I realized well, I hadn't really contacted this upstairs landlord in like a day. Because you know what, guys? I space out. We've

[20:00]talked about this before. When I'm out of town, I feel like I can just ignore all that. You're so busy on Tinder. Swipe, swipe. But you're swiping. No, that's the thing is that you're on Tinder, but you're like, I'm staying true. No. Especially up in the greater Cass Lake Bemidji area. It's just prime opportunities there. But anyway, so this is, I've probably broken like the 24-hour point of like, I didn't call or anything, made a mistake. All of a sudden, I get a text

[20:30]from the upstairs landlord saying, hey, have you watched this show, Quarterback? And so immediately, I'm like, I think this is just a text to get my attention, because they know I will respond if it's something about football or something like that. But the upstairs landlord plowed through the whole show, and she liked it enough to where she said, we need to watch this. And we started watching it the other night, and it's really interesting. It's really fun. It's kind of like Hard Knocks. I think even if you're not a big football fan, you could get some entertainment out of it.

[21:00]I cannot get enough of these documentaries that are coming out now. My kid loves them. Meghan Markle did one. We just watched the Arnold one, where it's documentaries for people, but it's also by those people. So they're like, it's a documentary, and Kirk Cousins is like, god damn, I worked so hard. And then he looks at the camera and he's like... That whole Michael Jordan thing was 10 episodes of his production company. Yeah, oh, totally. And he's just like, am I the hardest working man in the world? Yeah. Oh, no, I had to go through some trouble. I didn't give quite enough

[21:30]money to an orphanage. I better give more. And my kid eats it up because she's like, oh, they're so wonderful. I'm like, they're all making their own stuff. But yeah, Russell, my kids actually watched the quarterback documentary, and they liked it, which blew my mind. They hate watching football with me, and hanging out with me in general. Part of it, I think, is you're right. They're involved in making it, but I think it's a positive look at these people and players, right? Like, it's not constant negativity about, oh, this guy's not good enough. He's never going to win the

[22:00]big one. He's an anti-vaxxer. Like, they don't get into all that stuff as far as what I watch. Like, it's generally like a positive thing. And so I think people enjoy that, right? You know, your daughters probably, I mean, you're a football player, but do they know much about football? Do they watch football? No, not at all. You know, so you probably pick up a lot of stuff. They don't even know what cover zero is, man. And I yelled at them about that. Did they? Yeah, I was like, yeah, you got to make the hot reads. From what I remember, the St. Olaf defense didn't know what cover zero was either.

[22:30]That was the problem. The defense. Somebody get Greg, get the medic on the phone. Oh, sorry. I shouldn't say his full name. What were you saying, man? Oh, I was just, you know, there's all of these new Netflix, I think, has most of them kind of 10-part series. There was one about tennis, right? And it's kind of went through the part of the tennis season. There's one about Formula One kind of kick it off. There was the golf one. What else? Can I ask you? Tour de France. Yeah, you know, all this stuff where you just don't

[23:01]know, you know, and there was I think it was Prime had it first. There was all these soccer teams and rugby teams, things like that, you know, and when you don't have those sports as like the main sport in America, you know, you just don't follow form. I feel like I can understand Formula One now. I feel like I get tennis a little bit better. That's a little bit more mainstream for Americans and most, but you know, all of these Tour de France, like why is it such a big deal? Why is it so hard? All that, you know, you just don't know. And I think Netflix does a great job of having these documentaries. Speaking of Claire, Rob, I noticed you never

[23:31]congratulated her on her new baby. How big of a dick you're going to be, Rob? You're going to congratulate her? I noticed you didn't do that. I am going to congratulate her. It's every, I mean, it's, it's, a baby is a magical thing. It's a life altering. Is this her first Russ or is it? It would be part dude, not the second kid. Oh, well, then it's easy. I mean, by the second one, you're like, I mean, Aaron, Aaron, just picture another kid coming through and being exactly the same. You're getting two rocks thrown at you. Like this is, you know what I mean? It's easy. The second kid, she's got it down, Russell. Oh, you know what? Alone. We're watching alone right now. That's what I'm

[24:01]watching. History channel. I'm watching. Yeah, it's good. It's a good show. They know how to edit it. They know how to cut it. The only thing is does make you a little hungy because they are left out in the woods by themselves to fend for themselves. And it's a lot of them like talking about food and how hungry they are. And then I'm kind of like, do I want a second bowl of ice cream? You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. This guy doesn't even have a fish to eat for three days. That's what I would say. Let's get into rolling going. And I want to be very clear.

[24:30]Congratulations on having a kid. Rolling going. Oh, yeah. That voicemail did come in three years ago. That's on me, though. That's my bad. All I know is I was getting text messages from my cousin within like two days of her having the baby and she was asking about the podcast. And I was like, this is insane. This is ridiculous. Right? Yeah. Well, no, she's home. She's got, she's like three or four hours after and everything's fine. I mean, you're kind of like, what do

[25:01]we, what do we do now? And she's home and she's got a few hours, but only a couple of hours at a time where she's awake. And there you go. Russell, I would just say, you know, I would say this, according to the conversations I've had this summer, a lot of people talk about the podcast with you. If you bring it up first, a ton of people, they love talking about the podcast. In fact, they love hearing stories about the podcast. Rolling going. How is it going, Aaron? How's it going with you? It's going great. I am, I'm going to just start right out with what you want to hear, which is about something I ate today. And I made a realization.

[25:31]I'm not, I'm not a big salad guy, but we did go. It's not, it's not me. I'm not a big salad guy. My arms are coming out of romaine and my eyes are pine nuts. I'm a big salad guy. Salad guy. But we have a local My comm is ranch. Pub here in the restaurant. It's a poppy. Dressing in this one. And a local pub here in the neighborhood that is changing ownership. And we know the current owners and like them. So we thought we got to get

[26:00]to, we got to get down there tonight to have some dinner. And for the longest time I would have the rock on tacos or I would do a burger or the fried chicken sandwich. But I discovered they got this great salad, the intermezzo salad that has kidney beans and avocado and hard-boiled eggs. And you can add your protein on there and fried chickpeas. It's a great salad. So I go with the salad. But you know how with salad you always end up with just a bowl of lettuce at the end, like no matter what, like you're just like, you're so excited to get your salad. You eat all the chicken and the avocado first

[26:31]and eat the eggs. I know exactly what you're talking about. Right? So tonight I decided I was going to eat a few handfuls of lettuce, just big forkfuls of lettuce, just to start just right from the jump. Just get in there, get some forkfuls of lettuce, get those out of the way. You ate the lettuce first in a salad? Well, I tried. I tried to just like get as much lettuce as I could because then I can just enjoy the rest of the tasty salad. I don't know if it worked or not because I still, I feel like I still ended up with like a few forkfuls of salad. Can you imagine sitting in the next errand at this dinner and he's like,

[27:00]I'm eating the salad first so I don't just have salad at the end. You'd be like, oh god. Why am I getting a lot of lettuce down today? You don't end up with just a bunch of lettuce. So that's what I, that's something I discovered about food today. And then yesterday Can I tell you my trick? Yeah. Okay. Usually it comes in a nice little clump. Oh my god. You know? Okay. We have a visitor. So then you just if you kind of spread everything out a little bit and maybe eat like the fruit and maybe the, maybe it's got like walnuts or fruit. Maybe that's, you know, you can take a couple of those off, but if you just spread it out enough, it

[27:30]kind of looks like you ate a little bit. I like Matt's tactic. Matt, you're not a lettuce guy at all. Rob, I don't know if you have salad quirks. My quirk is I like this. There's a salad I like. It's from Panera and it's got cherry tomatoes in it, but I don't like tomatoes. So at the end of the salad, every time I've just got this bowl of these little tomatoes. Right. And even though I don't like them, I fucking eat them at the end. Oh my god. Russell, you don't have any self-respect. No, I'm so sorry. Take his medicine. I like

[28:00]it. I like it. What a delicious salad. I better end up eating something I hate. Well, I mean what would make me a true psycho would be the errant move of eating them all at the beginning, right? Eat them first. Eat them first and then you're good. I'm a piece of shit. I better take my medicine right now. So then the real thing is that last night was National Night Out. So this is our second year on this block with this group of neighbors. So it was a little more, we were all a little more social than we had been. So I learned some very fascinating things about my neighbors. I wanted to share well, about life and my neighbors. So I wanted

[28:30]to share three things I learned. One, I learned that one of my neighbors, who I know a little bit, but I hadn't talked to a whole bunch, went to the Killer Mike show at the Fillmore in San Francisco last week. And I should have like, right? I should have been going to the Killer Mike show with this guy. Killer Mike played at First Ave. Let's see. I went to the Killers on Thursday that Sunday. Yeah. He was going to play and I was this close to going, but I was so tired I couldn't go. Yeah, he's got

[29:00]his whole gospel choir. Seeing Killer Mike at First Ave, seeing him at Fillmore, that would be sweet. I know, I totally messed up. So I learned I've got a Killer Mike fan on the block. So I'm going to have to hit him up for future shows, but I really made a mistake. Second, I learned that one of my neighbors is from, let me see if I can get this right. He is from Senegal. His wife is from Tokyo. They met in Tanzania because he was giving a TED Talk. Okay, wait, wait, wait. Let me come up with a joke for this. Oh, please do not. Please do not. He was giving a TED Talk in

[29:30]Tanzania and she was in the audience and that's how they met. Like, can you, like, you hear that story and you're like, well, I don't have anything interesting to say to you. I'm just like, well, I, you know, worked at my computer today and now I'm here because I brought some watermelon and that's the thing. I'm looking up online Tanzania TED Talk and the only one I see is how I deal with my super huge dong. And the link is purple. It's my dad's computer. Oh, no. Genetics, why? I would imagine if you're a public

[30:00]speaker and you're doing a TED Talk, you could pick up a lot of action for the people that go to those events, right? Really? It worked for him. Like, he's married now. Like, they live, you know, I mean, they just had their second baby. My 10,000 hours is finding the G spot. Oh. And the third thing I learned, and I shouldn't even do this because you guys are going to, it's just too much grist for the mill, but I have to say this. I have been so frustrated with the grill grates on my grill for four

[30:30]years. I'm like, I don't like the shape of these things. I don't like how they're hard to clean. I would say grill, not grates. Yeah, exactly. These grill are not grates. So, my neighbor across the street pulled his grill out on National Night Out and I helped him bring it out and I said, hey, man, I like, he's got a Weber just like I do. He's got the bigger version, but, you know. So, I was like, hey, man, I like that. What a flex on Aaron. He's got the bigger. Aaron, how big is your Weber? I got this right now with your hands. How big is it? No. It's the two burner one. It's just a little guy. How small is your little

[31:00]green egg? Aaron. I don't have a little green egg. I just have the Weber Spirit 2. I've heard the little green egg is a meth. Charcoal one as well. Yeah, the green egg. And so, I said, hey, Jeremy, I really like the shape of your grates. Like, that's way better than mine because I don't like the triangle shape of mine. And he said, oh, is yours a Weber? I said, yeah. He said, well, just flip the grates over. I've been using them on the wrong fucking side for four years. And Matt knew where this was going the whole way. Well, I was going to say that or, you know, you can just get new grates.

[31:30]Well, that's what I've been wanting to do. But I was like, well, they're a hundred bucks. I don't know if I want to spend a hundred bucks. You know. Russell, can I ask you something? We all acted like we knew what the fuck he was talking about. Do you understand why flipping over gilt grates would make them a different size? Why is that? I don't get it. Different shape. Different shape. Yeah. I mean, I suppose if you'd put it on the wrong way and been using it the wrong way, it could be annoying. I've been using it wrong for years. Right. Aaron's like, my grill is just three little dots and there's a big black semi-circle on the ground. And the guy's like, well, you have your grill upside down. He's like, oh God, that makes so much

[32:02]sense. Aaron's just cranking propane after propane into a charcoal grill and he's like, what the fuck? Yeah. I think it's backwards or something. Oh, I knew I knew this would be some good content. Pro tip for your grates too. And I didn't figure this out for a while because every once in a while you got to take some olive oil, put it on a whatever you want to put it, but a plant. Apply it on those grates. Like a paper towel. That protects those bad. Yeah, paper towel. Cook it with that. That really helps protect them too. So make sure you're oiling your grates. Get them oiled.

[32:32]One of these next couple months here. I got to clean it before Friday because I think we might have some people over and it needs to be cleaned. And I got to flip the grates over. I can't believe you guys picked Oppenheimer after listening to this conversation. That's crazy. Well, we didn't even get to that. I would like to think that I'm a Barbie, but I would let other people weigh in on that. You and I are both Barbies, Aaron. I'd like to be a Barbie. Me too. Matt, how's it really going with Matt? Good. Text chain. Big text chain. A couple weeks ago

[33:00]we talked about what is the top American band or bands of all time? Remember this text chain conversation? And my phone is obviously listening to me because all of a sudden I get nothing but ads about how much I hate my boss. You know, these ads for people who hate their boss and different names and stuff like that. But no, I'm kidding. And then all of a sudden I got some article from some website had, click on this article to the top 10 American bands of all time.

[33:30]Okay. I thought maybe we could go through this. You know what I heard? Any of them Coltrane's second quartet, because that's the one. That's the best band. Matt, if that's number one, I'm going to lose my mind. No, but I think he was part of number four. All right. Say that again. Now, Matt, can I ask you, is this one of the top American bands you've ever heard? By the way, can you imagine buying a record and this is on there and you're like, what? What is this song? And does this website consider Ski Low an artist or

[34:01]a band? I was checking for this, but it's straight up. It's a little bit off, but it's straight up. There's some lead singers with their bands. Let's just put it that way. Does that make sense? It's hard to define, you know, like Taylor Swift's not going to be on there because it's not Taylor Swift in the Swifties or whatever, but you can get it. So should we just go through the list? Does anybody want to guess? Does anybody want to take one guess? Sure. What's the publication for this

[34:31]list? I have no idea. I texted it to myself and I should have texted. Random you know how you get those like email or the news feeds or whatever. It was just a random article in my news feed. So I thought I'll click on this and guess who's on there. Say that again, Rosie. We're going to guess that who's on there. Just guess one. It's not guess who they're Canadian. This is Americans. I'm going to go. I'm going to say if you guess the who I'm just going to say this. If you guess the who that's an English man. So don't guess that I know that oh

[35:00]replacements not on there. Oh, no replacements. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to throw up. They're not one of my favorites, but I'm going to throw out the Foo Fighters not on there, which is whoa. So this this is probably I think let me see if I can tell there's one band from the 80s one from the 80s. The 90s one from the 80s night. There's there's not a lot of new bands on here. John from the most the band is Canadian. So best American

[35:31]band best American band. The band is Canadian. That was a good back. Good Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers count. Oh, that's got to be they are on there. They are number five on the list. All right. All right. I saw John for me. Donna or I was thinking John for me. Donna might suggest guns and roses. So I'm going to throw that one out there as well. Not on there. How about how about what the fuck? Aerosmith Aerosmith not on there. No, let's go through the list. So then you guys can tell. Remember your list. Remember and see if and I swear to God, if you say that Franz list is on

[36:01]there, I know for a fact he's not American. Okay. All right. Is number 10 right said Fred from 10 to one. I think right says what Prince in the Revolution number 10. Oh, wow. Prince. Okay. Too low. I mean, that's a stretch. Okay. Funkadelic. Okay. Okay. Also not one band, but yeah. Yep. Number eight. Talking heads of both parliaments. Come on. Yeah. Wait. Earth, Wind and Fire. Earth, Wind and Fire is going to be on Ohio

[36:31]players. No, you guys. Stop this. Stop it. This is horseshit. Number seven. The Beach Boys seven. You got to be kidding me. I thought they were going to be number one for sure. Number six. The Grateful Dead. Okay. All right. Number five. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. No. Rosie. The Miles Davis Sextet. Is Coltrane part of that? I don't think so because I think they'd be from Birth of the Cool, but I'd have to. I don't know. Sextet

[37:01]was just what my when I was in Vietnam, I did a TED talk. Are you bringing sex and then the TED offensive? Yeah, Sextet. Well, it was Ted and I was like, well, let's be Miles Davis. We're London Bridgen. Okay. Yeah. Number three. The Allman Brothers. Allman Brothers. The Allman Brothers. So much water. Number three. Number two. Jimi Hendrix and his band. Some of them were British, right? I don't know.

[37:30]Hold on. It just is Jimi Hendrix and his band. Yeah. He had more than one band. Maybe his band of gypsies. Band of gypsies with Buddy Miles. I mean, I was just listening to that record this week. I personally, and I think maybe John from Edina will agree with this, but number one, they've got the number one band, American American band as Creedence Clearwater Revival. What? I like that action. I love CCR. There's no other country that could have made CCR.

[38:00]You know how we do all this all raking thing. If aliens came to earth and you said, give us your greatest band ever, that's who we march out. I think it's the most American band. Okay. CCR would not be playing for the CCCP. Okay. They could only make that music in the US. Don't know that. Maybe the most American sound, you know, I don't know. For sure. I love that one. That was one list from one website that I didn't write down of just, you know, again, maybe

[38:30]Neil from Lakeville will call in because he hates the ranking system or something. So yeah. Interesting. I got to say I'm a little surprised that Grand Funk Railroad was in there with their song. They're just, but they're not a top 10. They didn't say we're a top 10 American band. That's true. And they're on the list. Grand Funk Railroad. You fucked your Ted talk just like me. All right. Rolling going, Rob. The year was 2005. I'll tell you

[39:00]what. Listen, guys, I got problems. Okay. You guys know. You got problems. I got a hashtag problems and they're really bad this time. You guys know one thing I hate is learning things about me that I've done that are bad. Because at no point in my memory have I done anything bad or wrong. Okay. And I saw something this weekend that shook me to my very core. Okay. So I just want to show you guys this. I need to zoom in on this photo a little bit. But this is me at a wedding. We're doing a picture

[39:30]segment. This is me at my friend Kirsten's wedding. Okay. There's her husband. There's her husband Mike in the background. There's Carrie. There's Greta. Okay. Now if you see something about me that you notice. Now I'm wearing a maroon shirt with a gold tie. Okay. Now if you notice. Sandals. You are sandals to the wedding. Where's your left hand is another question. No. Don't say that. It's a bride. It's a beautiful bride. Do you think I would have. Your crotch is as close to a bride.

[40:00]Look at that bulge. There's a bulge against the bridal dress. In some cultures the dominant male would actually get the bed right. So it's something to think about. They talked about that a little bit in the Barbie movie. A little bit. Just a little bit. They said it was bad. Look at those shoes that I'm wearing. They were in sandals. Guys. I am wearing flip-flops to a wedding. This is a wedding. I was just talking to Kirsten about this. I said when did you get married? She said

[40:31]August. I was like why am I wearing. Guys. I wore flip-flops to somebody's wedding. My toes are out. Toes out? Toes froze out man. What's wrong with me? That's fucked right? Like what am I doing? That's dude. No. The shirt tie combo is way worse than those flip-flops. Are you serious? You're going to burn on me for something else? Come on. Just because you hate the University of Minnesota you don't like that color combination. Those are my high school colors. Let's talk about Iowa and Iowa State's finest

[41:01]people this week. Look at the shoes. What do you think? Do you think that I was worried that my feet were going to hurt when I was dancing? Like I saw bridesmaids do it and I was like that's a good idea. I should bring sandals. Why am I doing that? I think you're an attention whore Rob. You know people are going to see you and they're going to make a comment. I'm not sure what good can possibly come Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I think Russ might be right. Okay. I think I might have something where I

[41:30]want the attention. Hot of ladies wedding day. All these years later Rob has self-diagnosed himself. Well, no. He's accepted Russell's diagnosis. Where's attention whore in the DSM-5? I don't know where that fits. What's the ICD-10 code for attention whore? What the fuck are you talking about here, Aaron? What is he talking about? Anybody? Does anybody know what he's talking about? No idea. Thank you. You know what though? I'm going to look that up and maybe I'll edit in me talking about what Aaron was talking about there.

[42:01]Okay. I'll explain it later. What am I doing? Do you think it was just too hot? You're zooming in on your You're asking us what's up with your feet and zooming in on your crotch. It's the middle of the picture and that's where it zooms in. Okay. You can pinch. You don't have to just zoom anywhere. I did. That's why it looks like that in the picture. Sure. Like when I go through an x-ray machine. I pinch it first. Okay? You guys know I do. And I've had to be real discreet with it lately because I've carried a dog through the

[42:31]x-ray. And when you're carrying a dog and trying to give yourself a little bit of an erection, oh man. They do not like that at TSA. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was America. Hey, Rob. I believe we know why you weren't invited to Aaron's wedding. Even Aaron's wedding was what? Not too much of a dress-up affair, but yeah. Matt, Aaron, have you guys ever had a fashion faux pas like that? The worst one I had, I think, this is the one I always think back on and I regret.

[43:00]I once went, I went and I spoke at a funeral and I didn't wear like a dark suit. I just wore like a white shirt and a tie. And then afterwards we had like a family picture and everyone was wearing like dark stuff. I'm like, what the fuck was I doing? I don't really, you know, subscribe to that whole type of thing, but afterwards I felt like, I made a huge mistake. Excuse me, excuse me, waiter. Could you come over and be in our family picture, please? I had your white suit jacket. It wasn't a jacket. It was just like a white shirt, like a dress shirt. I didn't even

[43:31]have the jacket. Two I can think of, I know that I wore like fuzzy slippers to the L&M in college more than once. And then I remember a few times the year, first year after undergrad where people would go to Williams in Uptown. With the peanuts and all that. And I would get off work at 10, 30, 11 and like hear, oh, people are at Williams. And so I'd go and I had these like horrible, just gigantic sweatpants and I would wear them with my Allen Iverson answer

[44:01]basketball shoes and just go to Williams and like wearing that. And that's a, it's, you know, looking back, it probably was not the best more of a strip. Yeah, it was not going to get those sweatpants down to mesh, I'd say. I mean, I think, I don't know, I might have been wearing those the night that the pleasure principal met his wife though. So I don't know, maybe, maybe they were lucky for somebody when you're rocking the sweatpants. What are you doing with a wallet? That's just going in the side pocket. Like that's what's always awkward to me. I think

[44:31]it did. These were like really big sweatpants. So it was just like, throw them down. Okay, you keep saying that and I've tried to ignore it. What do you mean by big sweatpants? What are we talking about? Like very like, like baggy like. We're talking like MC Hammer style sweatpants. Yeah, like yeah, like rap video sweatpants. That's crazy. That's like my wedding pants. I, it happened again. My anniversary with my wife was lately so she put up a bunch of wedding photos of me and the fit on my tux guys. I showed it to you that one time. It's terrible. It looks like a hot air balloon after it's done flying.

[45:01]You know, it's on the ground. That's what my pants look like. But who had a good fit on their tux, right? I mean, it's like if you, if you had a good fit on your tux, you probably got married on Martha's Vineyard or something. Yeah. I think the worst is when you go to an event and you know, you, you don't really look good and someone's like, oh, you're looking great. It's like, I don't need to be patronized. Like I'm wearing Rob's red maroon shirt with gold tie. I don't need to hear that I look great, right? What the fuck, you guys? That was a baller look. The length of the tie. Let's check out the length of the tie too. It's a lot of

[45:31]solids. It's just like a lot of solid colors. Now I'm zooming in on everybody's crotch. Hey, wait a minute. What am I doing? Guys, my mouse is out of control. Let's look at the length of the tie. Let's see what we think. That's just. No, very short. The short side. Yeah, it's short. My belly button would be poking out if I wasn't wearing a shirt. That's a bummer. I see. To be fair, I am one of them, but bigger guys have different issues with ties than other people. So I think your tie looks perfect, Rob. It's true. You know what, Russell? Thank you so much. And Russell, rolling going. How's it going with you?

[46:00]Rolling going. I thought I was going to share a few of my experiences over the last week before we get to the next round of the DVD tournament that works out for you guys. That sounds great to me, Russell. The first thing I wanted to share is two things that really pissed me off over the last week. Yes. The first was there's, do you guys, have you guys ever gone to kind of these new food halls that are coming up there in Minneapolis? I'm sure they're in all the cities you guys are in. They've got, you know, seven, eight food options in one building. They've got drinks. They got bars.

[46:31]They got all that. Have you guys been gone to any of those recently? Just the one in Las Vegas. Yeah. There's one Malcolm Yards. It's on like almost the U of M campus. It's kind of just to the west of Surly Brewery. So it's like off of, what is that? Is that University and I'm trying to think. Oh my God. Where exactly it is. I don't even have a sound clip, guys. You don't know what I'm talking about, Russell? You can splice it in afterwards, right? No. How do you mean splice it in? I'm not

[47:00]Zapruder. I'm not doing it like that. But so anyways, there's another one in the neighborhood I'm living in probably four or five blocks I'd say northeast from where I'm at, Matt. So probably half a mile. So listeners, Magic Mike, if you can use those clues to find out where Russell lives, visit him and hand deliver him a knife that you have. He'd love it. We might not want to make jokes about that. I'll tell you guys the story about that after the podcast. Yes. Russ has a stalker from

[47:30]the podcast. Legit. Legit. Oh, yes. Oh, whoa. That would be just Russell's life where he could not find somebody to date for more than three times for his whole life. He has somebody move in with him and instantly gets a stalker and he's like, God damn it. Where were you? Two years ago. So anyways, there's this one kind of near my house and one of the reasons we were going there is they had a bar that was called a coffee

[48:01]and wine bar. So my upstairs landlord was like super excited. Oh, we can get a flight of wine. You can try different wines at a wine bar, right? Right. We get there. We go up and I'm kind of looking at the menu. I don't see wine on the menu, but my upstairs landlord is insistent. Let's wait in line. I'm like, hey, let's get up there. We'll see. And I'm kind of nudging her saying, I don't think they have wine here. But on the big sign right in front of it, they have two big signs. It says coffee and wine bar. We get up to the front. They don't serve wine anymore.

[48:30]What do you guys think of someone who labels themselves as a wine bar and doesn't fucking serve wine? Why? And why I've never heard of such a thing. That's total insanity. I don't know. Russell, that is a terrible like what if it says wine and you go in? I mean, what if there's no they don't need to have coffee like they don't need to have a bar. Okay. When I go to a TED talk and it's about, okay,

[49:00]I think it's something so dirty, Rob. What's the dirtiest thing you can think of? And it's about how actually some wives want to suck on toes. Okay. When they'd be at TED talk, it would be like, hey, does anybody here want to suck on toes? I know a new wife at a wedding you were at that would have had easy access to if she was into that type of thing. It feels like if it was going to happen, it would have been at that wedding, Rob. So I don't know. That would be the, but ironically, that's the worst time to suck on toes is when somebody's been wearing those shoes around. You know what I mean?

[49:31]Like you can get to the toes, but you don't want to get to them toes. Like instead of doing that garter belt fiasco, they do the Rob toe sucking thing instead or what? I thought maybe I was going to throw my shoe into the crowd and whoever caught it was like, yeah, I get to suck the toes tonight. Oh, so anyways, we get there. People keep saying, oh, am I TED talk? It's probably not the end of the world when you go to a food place like that because they've got other places. You can go to the bar and you can get a drink. There's

[50:00]other options. So it's not the end of the world, but I just thought many fish in the sea. It's pretty poor form. I don't know what you're doing. If you're advertising that this is who you are, you got signs up, then don't let me let me ask you, Russell, you're at the counter. Okay, this is what we want to know. You're at the counter. Yeah. Excuse me. Do we have wine? Okay. No, I'm sorry. We don't serve wine. Now, first of all, Russell gets a big smile because he was right and she should have listened to him in her line and he's like, yes, I was right. I was 100% right. But then there was no smile involved. I'll tell you that right now. Russell at that point. Okay.

[50:30]You are now talking about how mad you are at this situation. No. Do you get out of line or what do you order? Russell? Is there an order coming in after this? No order from that. We decided we're going to go. We're just going to pick a different, a different spot to go buy something. Right. Russell, you are a true hero. If you're looking for wine and the other option is coffee, you can't ice cream. That's not what you signed up for, right? Those are very different drugs. I mean, that's just not going to work. I got to say that's a wild combination of three things.

[51:00]Wine, coffee and ice cream. I mean, you're not going to do all three. There's no way. But you, but the problem is that you feel so good when you do that. You're like, yes, I'm not like everybody else. I'm walking out. I'm showing them who's boss. And then immediately you get outside and you go, shit. Now we got to go find somewhere else to go. And it's really really deflating. I find the other thing that really annoyed me this week. I, you guys know, I occasionally will go into a gas station. I'm going to, I'm going to buy a Gatorade or something like that.

[51:30]Russell, if there's one thing we know about you every once in a while, you're in a gas station. I do know that Russell will not go to a Burger King or KFC if it's part of a gas station. No, I do not do that. I really go to restaurants attached to gas stations. I'm out. Do you think if you think when Humpty said that he got busy in a Burger King bathroom, there's no way that was attached to a gas station. Like that's one thing, right? I'll just say this right now. If you do some of my TED Talk moves in a Burger King bathroom, okay, including one I call

[52:00]the Whopper. If that wasn't a normal Burger King bathroom, you'd be like, okay, that's kind of cool. And if it was like, oh, this is a Burger King attached to a gas station, you'd be like, that is so gross. You cannot be doing that in a bathroom attached to a gas station. Gross. So anyways, I go into this gas station. I buy a Gatorade or two. I buy three Gatorades. I'm going to bring them back to the house. I buy a couple bags of pistachios, flavored pistachios, Aaron. One was sour cream and onion, and one was still pickle. Oh, you're talking back to my heart. I love this. Russell's like, I can't

[52:30]wait to kiss later. Yes. I cannot wait to kiss. This kiss coming in is going to be hot. Now, Russell, what kind of Gatorade are we fucking with these days? And I'm going to say, are we thinking cucumber? Huh? The cucumber that you buy by accident, Russell Allen? I do not like the cucumber one. Well, the green ecto-cooler color does look good. Those do not taste good. I'm out on those as well. What are we fucking with, though? I get this stuff, and I go up to the desk, and I put it down, and the lady who's checking me out has her hand in a bag of chips, like a sour cream

[53:00]and onion bag of chips. Her hand is in the bag like she's been eating it. So I put everything up on the desk, or on the counter. Hand in the bag like she's been eating them. Yeah. What else was she doing in there, I guess? I'm just counting. Don't answer that. So I put everything up there. She doesn't take her hand out of the bag. She's holding the, like her hand is in the bag, and she's holding the bag. Now, is it possible, Russell, she had a cast on, and you were confusing this? No. Okay. So she's holding the bag of chips. I mean, possible? Yeah, possible.

[53:31]I guess technically, yeah. It kind of looks like a Pringles can, if you think about it. It's not zero. It's not zero percent. I don't know what she was doing in that bag, honestly, Rob. If you got a cast, and you made it look like a Pringles barbecue chip can, that'd be good. Good bit. So she's holding this bag, and so I put my stuff up there, and she starts to scan the stuff. She can't scan the pistachios, because they're in the bag. You kind of have to smooth it out to scan the barcode, right? Right. Yeah. She won't take her hand out of the bag of chips.

[54:01]She continues to hold the bag of chips, and I'm staring at her, thinking, what are we doing? Finally, I have to put my hands up there and smooth out the pistachios, so she can scan them in. And you've got to be careful, because if you did that, and your hand went just slightly over her hand, like this, and then you gaze into each other's eyes, and pretty soon you realize that this woman, who is also eating some whack-ass flavored chips, like you are, like when

[54:31]she saw you buying those chips, she's like, hey, I know what you're about to do, because I'm doing it right now. Russell. One, situation not good, but of the options, either you're the one who smooths it out, and you put that in your pocket and go, or she takes it out of the sour cream and onion, and then she's the one smoothing it out, and then hands it to you. It's worse. I mean, don't you want to be the one to smooth that barcode out? I jumped in and did it before she even had to get to the point where

[55:01]when she was struggling for five to six seconds, I just immediately did it. I didn't wait. And then the next thing came, so now she goes, would you like a bag with that? And I'm like, I need a bag. I can't. Okay, let's think about this. Think about this. Three Gatorades, two bags of pistachios. Yeah, you are going to need a bag. I'm going to say, yeah, but the three Gatorades, you got to be careful. Anytime else you would take the bag, I said no to the bag. I didn't want her taking her hand out of the chip bag and rubbing it all over.

[55:31]Yeah. You made the right decision. Smack it up, flip it, rub it down, oh no. I've got two options for you next time this happens, and I want you to think about this. Did you think about putting your hand in her bag of chips? This gas station near my neighborhood had a de-escalation officer in it, so no. This is also the place you buy ice cream at, right? Or is this a, no, it's new because you move now. Yeah, I've never purchased ice cream at this, and I don't think I will be after the sour cream and onion bag

[56:01]hand lady. And the other thing I would do is put your hand, take her hand out of the bag, put your hand in and show her a move that I'm actually teaching on a TED Talk later if you want to sign up. It's TED Talk in Vietnam from Rob. It's called the scoop. I call, yeah, I call that move a scoop. And you know what? And I say this, and I know I'm going to edit it out, but I just have to say it. It's on my brain, and I can't say it. Can I make a joke that you have to promise to edit if I say it? My fingers

[56:30]smell like sour cream and onion. I don't want to say that. Oh, no. Those were the two things that pissed me off. Well, Russell, I would say a few things, Russell. You're still winning at life, my friend. You're doing pretty good. I would say, Russell, anybody doing something for me where they have one hand in a bag of sour cream and onion chips, that's going to bug me. Like, if I got on a plane and I look at it and the pilot is, like, also is eating a bag of sour cream

[57:00]and onion chips, I'd be like, nah. Like, if you came in and was like, oh, I'm about to do your surgery, don't want them snacking on those bad boys, you know what I mean? Does she go home at the end of the night and she's got, like, a downstairs tenant that she lives with, or does she kind of come down with the hand and the chips and, like, kind of start getting frisky? Or no? Oh, where her hand smells like sour cream and onion? It's like one of those Dominate, like, BDSM things where it's like, oh, you got to keep your hand in these chips all day and then come home and tell me about it.

[57:30]Oh. Look at Rob's face. I think I could have thought of. Somebody calls her and is like, what? Where's your hand right now? And she's like, I'm eating those chips. Oh, no. It's so far. Into the chips. I'm so happy right now. I feel like are your palms sweaty? Yeah, they're sweaty. They're sweating on the chips. This is what it feels like Aaron caught an STD for me, honestly. Through Zoom. I had one other cool experience this week

[58:02]before I tell you guys about the tournament. I was up north and I went to another cool experience, just like the woman with her hand in the bag of chips. Cool ranch experience. This one was close. I went to another up north casino. We've talked about before the up north casino experiences. Oh, yes. I like these. I do like these. So I sit down and I sat with a great table. Let me tell you about my blackjack table. It consisted of four other individuals. This is so sad. Okay, so I just want to let everybody know the casino that Russell is going to.

[58:30]There has to be about 43 people in this building at any given time. When you go to a casino in northern Minnesota, it is the saddest thing you've ever seen. It's like the absolute worst. Okay, Russell, go ahead. Might as well be in Wisconsin, I suppose, right? Oh, wow. Geez. I don't know if we can... Okay, that's fine. Now things have really gone like that. So anyways, I sit down and here's how I would describe the lineup of players. I sit down. We've got a fun guy in the middle, clearly a local, wearing a cowboy hat,

[59:00]super fun to play, making occasional jokes, but not annoying. Great guy to have at your table, right? Grows in dark damp places. Fun guy. I didn't even make the joke. I was like, they'll be mad at me if I make that joke. We had another apparent tourist, an older gentleman who just seemed really happy to be there. He kind of looked like Rob Reiner. Who's Rob Reiner? Remember that guy, that old... The director of Spinal Tap? Yes. Also Jessica Day's dad in New Girl. So I almost asked if he was him.

[59:30]I almost asked him, but I didn't. He was just a quiet guy enjoying himself. But here's where it got fun. Third guy at the table. Long white beard, long scraggly white hair, and he couldn't talk, but occasionally he could gurgle. Oh. I thought for sure you were going to say every once in a while he just went, Elvaro. Literally never said a word, and about every 20 minutes would just be like... Now, let me ask

[60:00]you this, okay? When he went all merman on you there, did you think that was good or bad? Like, he just beat your ass with pocket aces or something? No. I think it was his communication, and at one point the dealer said, and I was terrified when the dealer said, the dealer goes, yeah, I hate when I get stuff caught in my throat. I was like, oh, no. This is like a serious... You can't say that, right? Like a tumor. That's a different kind of

[60:32]situation going on. And then the last guy at our table, I would call him the character. So he's the guy... The guy with just gurgles is not even the character? Yes. The gurgling guy was the gurgling guy, not the character. Yeah. So the last guy who comes is a buddy of one of the other guys. He's an older gentleman. He had won $2,000 earlier in the evening on slots. So he brings all the money over, and he's dropping it out. He's playing $100 hands, two hands. He's going for it, right?

[61:00]Right. So when he comes and sits down, he's had a few drinks, and he puts his wallet down on the blackjack table and walks away. And like 10 minutes later, he comes sprinting back. He had thought he lost his wallet and was running around the whole casino after he won $2,000 on the slots. And so he's literally like sprinting through the casino and everyone's kind of looking at him and then like the pit boss like holds, like here's your wallet. You left it at this table. Oh my God. So good. That's the character.

[61:30]So then did he sit down at the table? Can I just ask you right now? Yeah, he sat down and I think he lost all $2,000 he won on the slot machine. Russell, can I just ask you, what were the minimums at this table? I gotta know. Are we talking like $0.75? Like $0.37? Like something weird like that? Actually, $10.00 minimums, Rob, which I thought pretty high for an abusive casino, right? Abusive. For a northern Minnesota casino? Gross. You know the other thing I don't like? Only one blackjack table. Come on. We gotta get another blackjack. You can't have four tables there and only be running one of them, right? That's terrible.

[62:01]It makes no sense. I'm trying to eat. Please. I put my wallet down. I can't find it. Please, Russell, go on. I have no joke. That's gotta be edited out. Alright, speaking of no jokes, the most serious part of the podcast comes now. No, you can't say that because then I can't edit it. Oh. What do you say speaking of no jokes and it just cuts from nothing? They're gonna know I edited it out as a no joke. Oh, no, I gotta edit this out, too. Speaking of my fingers smell like sour cream and speaking of deleted jokes that were not funny by Rob. Mine smell like mooch, but it's because I was been swimming a lot.

[62:31]Stayed in my wetsuit. We gotta get backwards. We gotta keep moving forward with the DVD tournament, so I thought we could do we want to go through the winners from last week, Rob, with the poll, or do we want to go to the next regional? And I definitely did the poll. Where is this? Oh, here it is. Russell, you know I did the term. You know I asked online. Okay, and hundreds of listeners answered. Hundreds? And the answer was the pregnant girl. They got the wrong question, Russell. I don't even know how they got it in here. It was a multiple choice.

[63:00]Alright, last week we did the gap in the teeth action movies, and the first one that we did was the Karate Kid three-pack versus Young Guns. We had a 3-0 vote on here. How did the listeners come in, Rob? Russell, I'm gonna tell you right now, Young Guns coming in at 40%. Karate Kid one and two combo pack coming in at 60%. I had to then put in a slide saying Karate Kid three was also in that pack, so I'm not sure if that influenced it at all, but our listeners picked the Karate Kids.

[63:30]Matt, you said you and your kids were watching Karate Kid. Did you get to the bad boy Mike Barnes yet or not? We just finished number three tonight. We just finished it, so we're all caught up. Man can't see, he can't fight. Man can't breathe, he can't fight. Russell's watched this a time or two. Woman can take hand out of chips, can't scan my pistachios. Mr. Miyagi is very specific. Now, Russell, you do a great Mr. Miyagi impression. Can we hear that right now? Alright, the next

[64:02]matchup was between, I thought one of the toughest one was the 4-5 Fight Club versus Gladiator. Fight Club advanced. I think you guys gave it a three over Gladiator, which I was surprised about. No, I went Gladiator. I went Gladiator too, Russell. Yeah, I went Gladiator. And we've hit an issue here, because this was 78% Fight Club. Only 22% for Gladiator. Is Fight Club the better movie? Probably. But would I rather watch Gladiator? 100%.

[64:31]Yep. And the listeners are only one vote, right? Yeah. If that. Oh, right. No, I think they each get a vote, right? Oh, well then Fight Club won by quite a bit, Russell. How many people voted, Rob? Do we know or not? Russell, don't make me say it online, but it's hundreds, Russell. It's so many. Six voters. So who advances then? I think the fans take it forward. Gotta give it to Fight Club, right?

[65:00]It was 3-1 Gladiator if we go by the You set this up, Russell. Why are you asking us? Well, I thought you'd be able to tell me how many people voted. He doesn't want to, Russell. He doesn't want to. Move on. I just want everyone to look at the time on this episode right now. You're really pushing my... This album has like 13, 14 tracks. I don't... Russell, I honestly don't know how many people voted, but let's just say 78 out of 100. Well, if it's 100 people, then I gotta tell you guys

[65:31]Fight Club advances. Gladiator's out. Wow. Thumbs down, Gladiator. Alright, next one was Enter the Dragon. You guys voted 3-0 over The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Yep. And it looks like I forgot to put that one on line, Russell. I knew I was missing one. Chucks. That means Enter the Dragon advances. Nice choice, listeners. Come on. And then the last one, this was a controversial one. We had Kill Bill 1 and 2

[66:00]versus The Empire Strikes Back. If I remember right, it was a 2-1 vote, but I could be wrong about that, too. Rob, what did the fans say? Russell, Empire Strikes Back wins with 53%, so it was almost... an even pick. I don't know that that's enough to override your guys' vote, though, is it? I don't think it is. Not at all. Rob, how many people voted? How many people voted, Rob? I'm gonna look right now. Share. I cannot tell. It's 53. If it's 53,

[66:30]then what the hell? Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. I can, you know what, I think I figured out how to do it. I can go to activity. 53, a prime number? No. It's 53%. This is the part where John Furby-Dyda has left the listeners' room. Okay, so I just somehow clicked on do a girl wearing her underwear on Instagram, so I do not know what I'm doing anymore. Got distracted by that. Well, we'll say Kill Bill advances, then. 53%

[67:00]isn't enough to override one of your guys' votes. Perfect. Alright, so we gotta go to next week's, though. We're doing sports movies for this regional. Sports. First matchup was the 16th seed. Remember, all 16s advanced. Good rating. Versus the 9th seed, we have The Wrestler versus Major League. Oh, Major League. Major League. Major League. As much as I, when I got done watching

[67:30]The Wrestler, I said, that was one of the funniest movies I've ever seen in my life, and I can't wait to watch it again. Alright, next up is another baseball. This is a baseball versus baseball matchup. Kevin Costner versus Kevin Costner. Oh, fuck. Field of Dreams versus Bull Durham. I'll take Bull Durham. Still haven't seen Bull Durham. I gotta go Field of Dreams. And I know that Aaron is gonna go Iowa. Aaron, come on with me now.

[68:01]Taking Field of Dreams with Rob. Yes. Also because I don't want to have to admit once again that I also have not seen Bull Durham, so Field of Dreams right here. And I'll say this, Field of Dreams does have a very realistic scene that I am terrified of, of the guy choking the kid choking on the hot dog. I think about that all the time when I'm eating hot dogs. Field of Dreams. It's like when I see a bee's nest. Terrifying. I think of something very specific. Bee's plus. Or when I see a hot stepmom teaches teens. Did you guys ever see Field of Dreams 2 where he kept saying,

[68:31]if you build it, he will gamble illegally on Iowa State football? If you build it, he will gamble illegally on Iowa State football? The best part of the gambling, so I just want to this guy gambled and got in trouble, but he placed like 10 different separate bets on the same thing. I've never related to somebody more in my entire life. I was like, like every day you wake up and you're like, oh yeah, I'm even more fucking hyped about this under. I think this is a great idea. And then you're like, this is a great idea. I should put it more. Like, did I bet the under?

[69:00]I better bet that. Matt, which way are you going? Field of Dreams or Bull Durham? Oh, I will go in Bull Durham. So 2-1 for Field of Dreams from you guys. This should be an interesting one. We'd figure out the math next week. Right, Rob? That's all going great. All right. The next matchup right behind those Aerosmith videos. We've got hockey versus high school football. The 14 seed varsity blues versus the 11 seed Slapshot. I'm going Slapshot. It's a top three sports movie of all time.

[69:32]Very underrated as a sports movie. I'm going Slapshot. I'll go Slapshot, but I'm going to say it again. The ending makes no sense. Okay. They obviously ran out of ideas. Like they're just like, oh, it's naked. I mean, literally it's an idea. I would have this podcast was a video. I'd be like, I guess we're getting naked this episode. That's what's funny, right? Like, I don't know. I'm very happy to see Slapshot move on, but I'm going to go varsity blues. Just sentimental. All right. The last one. This might be an interesting one, too. I think this is a tough one. We got baseball versus basketball.

[70:02]The 10 seed Sandlot versus the 11 or the 15 seed White Men Can't Jump. Can I tell you guys something right now? One of my deep secrets. What's that? I have never cared for the Sandlot movie. You've said that before. I do not like that. You said that the last time. I don't care for it. I think it just the whole everybody in it is gross to me. Like that kid with the red hair and the blue eyes. He looks like a fungus. He just is gross to me. I think the Sandlot, I've said many times, the Sandlot is my favorite movie of all time. So I got to go Sandlot.

[70:31]Rob, we're going to have to just disagree on this one. I had a good buddy, Dan from Richfield, who grew up the same age, played Little League Baseball. He looked like Hamilton Porter. His nickname was Ham. It still is to this day, Ham. So that's I don't think he looks gross, Rob. I think he's a good looking guy. I'm going to go the Sandlot. Can I just tell you the Sandlot to me is the regular season Christmas story, where it's just like the gross, gross movie. Hate it.

[71:01]Hate the Christmas story as well. Rob, what are your Mount Rushmore movies that people love that you hate? It's Ferris Bueller. Yep. The Sandlot for sure. Okay. Movies I hate. I can't really think of any. Hey, Rob, we'll just delete all your bad jokes out of that segment, right? Don't do that. That is so rude. We were all staring there silently looking

[71:30]at each other, and I was like, well, Russell, it's Russell's turn to go. I forgot what he asked me, actually. Isn't this a music podcast? Am I a number in a direction? Oh, it's the music. Is that it for the tournament, Russell? That's like a good time to talk some music. So, Russell, let me ask you. At the end of this year, you're just going to have one DVD? That seems like a bummer. I mean, we could do a final. If we can keep the final four, I don't know. We'll figure it out. Well, they're your CDs. I mean, literally, you can do whatever you want. All right. Actually, he's giving me a big no. He's saying no, so I'm saying no. Yeah, you can't do whatever you want.

[72:00]We are talking about the Black album with Jay-Z. And then we back out at 2003. This is his eighth album, and it was advertised. When it came out, it was advertised as this is his retirement album. He is done after this. It was funny, because on Wikipedia, it said, parentheses, he resumed in 2005. So that's three years later. You could almost tell exactly when he had two kids. You know what I mean? The moment Beyonce gave birth again, he was like, damn, I better get back in the studio.

[72:32]I don't care what I said earlier. So the big deal with this album is he had a different producer for each song. That was his idea, including a lot of songs with Just Blaze, Kanye, The Neptunes, Eminem, DJ Quick, Timbaland, and Rick Rubin. This album debuted at number one, and it was his best-selling album of the 2000s. Let's get into the Black album with Jay-Z. Oh, we're going to go for it right from the jump. Yes. Interlude. You guys know.

[73:00]There's something about this time when everybody was just like, I better start this with a track that I'm not on at all, just to introduce you, right? But this, I mean, he's yeah, he's really going back to the Blueprint, Blueprint and to Illmatic. This whole thing of one rapper, no guests. I mean, Illmatic had one guest. No guests on here. Different producer every song. He was really going back to that original formula, but then updating it because it was the most expensive beats. It was every

[73:31]massive producer in the game. It was shiny. It was bombastic. It was majestic. This was a big fucking deal when it dropped. Can I tell you, Aaron, when you talk about expensive beats, that reminds me of a hotel room I stayed at when I was 23. I only watched seven minutes. You can tell that. Rob, have you ever ordered one of those films at a hotel? Of course. I got HD cable when I spent my first paycheck on that huge

[74:01]TV and I got HD cable because remember, I helped move that into your apartment. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I got HD cable. Jenny's like, immediately she goes, let's go for a walk. I was like, hey, you filmed that walk in HD. Put it on my TV. I'm staying here. I just put on HD. Kids today don't realize. When HD came out, you were like, holy shit. This TV looks like the real thing. Now you just take it for granted. But back then it was a huge deal. And one of the first things I did is I had all those channels where you just order porno and I'm like 25 in my apartment. I was like, let's see.

[74:31]I should buy some dress shoes for this wedding I have coming up, but instead and then you buy it and of course it's like some weird like soft core stuff where it's like the guy obviously is just like humping in a sock and you're like, well, I went with it. But have you ever done it in a hotel? I'm sorry. This is weird. We don't have time. I can barely beat off of this three times. Russell in a hotel. Yeah, I've done that too. You've ordered it in the hotel. Yeah. You know what?

[75:00]I'll go down and say, hey, read that bill out loud. Let everybody hear it. Okay, because I'll tell you what, if there's any nurses here, they better know they are. They could get disciplined by somebody today. I watched a really interesting TED Talk last night. I think I might be confused at what TED Talks is. I think that's my thing. Really confused. What more can you say on this, right? December 4th. Of course, Jay-Z's birthday. Gotta admit, you make an album and one of

[75:33]the songs is just your birthday. That's baller. That's a baller move. And this, I mean, Jay-Z and Jeff Blay is like perfect combination. Perfect combination. And Blay has two beats on this album, right? Yeah. Yeah. Pimp game. Yeah, a couple guys do. Kanye has multiple. So this is all about his life, which you know I love. I love a good autobiographical song. That's the problem is I would think my song would be like, I'm the biggest

[76:00]and the baddest. I grew up on the streets, you know, I was slinging cane, you know, all this stuff. And my song would literally be like, oh, I went to this wedding and I was wearing, first of all, the shirt and tie is fine, guys. Honestly. But you, I mean, the nice thing is you're like, you can rhyme, but you can rhyme flip-flops and hip-hop. So you got a multi-celebic rhyme up there. That's a great point. Good set. Yeah, you set that up. That's a great point. I will say when I put on that outfit for the wedding, I did yell at a bunch of kids and punish them for not doing well enough. So that doesn't remind me of anybody else. Guys, College Athletics is actually really cool.

[76:30]Okay? And it's fine. It's not weird. Okay. What more can I say? Now, Aaron, can you explain this to me? This was one that was released before the album. And part of the song is him singing about not stealing Biggie lyrics. Part of the template, right? He's got to fire back at the haters. Like this, you know, this album has everything from the template of a massive hip-hop album at the time. So he's got to, I mean, it's the same as Jordan, right? It's he's inventing people sliding

[77:00]him to keep him at the top of his game. I mean, nobody at this point was still coming at Jay-Z because the Jay-Z Nas beef was over and maybe some smaller time dudes, but like nobody was coming at Jay. Now he had the throne and he came out with this album, but you know, he's got all this stuff about fuck the haters. And if you can't, you know, get with that, then you know, we'll see what happens when he no longer exists, all that. Like there was nobody actually going at Jay-Z at this time, I don't think, but he had

[77:30]to do that to keep himself at the top of his game. What more can I, I will say this. I did nothing dated this album more than listening to the intro to this song. What more can I say? Right. Where it's just the gladiator. Are you to entertain that Russ reference earlier? I listened to that and I was like, boy, we all thought that movie was going to be like the Godfather. You know what I mean? Like who's going to win Russell's DVD tournament? Now we're not sure. Now we're not sure. Turn the mic up. Turn me down. Great. I don't get to keep that one. Thanks.

[78:00]Encore beats by Kanye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Far too kind. Far too kind. These are the drums that eventually people start like people on the internet started making fun of Kanye for using these drums over and over again. That kind of like shuffle with the snare. But at the time it worked. So what, what makes this like going? So he went mainstream like the previous album, but what's the, Aaron, like what's the big difference in the first two albums

[78:30]or first couple albums? And then I don't know. I don't think it's selling out. Right. It's just changing the style or what? I think, yeah, I think the huge difference is there's a reasonable doubt was his first album. He was doing longer, more intricate raps, more intricate rhymes. And then the In My Life Volumes 1 and 2, there's more guests. There's more kind of radio friendly hits. H to the Izzo is on one of those. And I mean, to hear him tell it,

[79:00]he felt like the radio wasn't playing his stuff anyway. I think once he gets to this album, it's back more toward Blueprint or back more toward Reasonable Doubt, not Blueprint. Although Blueprint's a great album too. It's more toward the Reasonable Doubt end of the spectrum, but now it's full on, you know, tight, bombastic beats that are, they sound like hits. They sound like they should be bumping from every car going down the street, whereas maybe Reasonable Doubt was more of a headphone album. Matt? I was just going to say, Encore, they had

[79:32]Wikipedia says the production samples the trumpet introduction to John Holt's cover of I Will by the Beatles. Therefore, there's a Lennon-McCartney songwriting credit on this song. Oh, fascinating. The Beatles, you know, let McCartney get credit for it. Finally. God, finally those guys are going to get some credit for something. I think they're going to make it. I think they're going to be big. Beatles definitely are no CCR though, are they? No. The lads from Liverpool would never go against the guys from Cleveland? Where are they from? Where's CCR from? El Cerrito.

[80:01]Oh, El Cerrito. Oh my God. El Cerrito. I don't remind me of that list. El Cerrito, California. I just drove through there two days ago. Just drove through El Cerrito. I think that's what inspired the list in the first time. Jay-Z, though, we're going to talk about the Grey album later, but the he did these, this is also I think very 2003s where they were like, we're just going to mash this up. And so Jay-Z and Lincoln Park, okay, which is

[80:31]what Lincoln did not do with his car because he had a valet. It was the play. Nothing could possibly go wrong. But Lincoln Park and Jay-Z teamed up to do Numb Encore. Where they combined them together. And Jay-Z actually re-recorded the raps for this. And they were going to do it originally. I mean, how 2004 is this? There was going to be a show on MTV called Ultimate Mashups. And so they're like, yeah, we'll do a song for you and just put it on the TV. Can you imagine that happening

[81:01]now? And he let Kanye put his voice on this one, which didn't happen on Black Album. There's no other voices on Black, no guests on Black Album. No features. Do you like that or not? Riddle me that. Do you like it or not? Do I like that? Yeah. I, no, actually. In listening to the album, I actually do want to hear a little bit more variety, but I respect it. It's not easy to do. And he did it for a reason. He did it to show that he could do it. I mean, he obviously was like really wanting to go out and show that he could do

[81:31]that he could be better than big, like he says. Like, he could do a Biggie album by himself. If you love, if you love featuring, like featured artists, you're going to love tonight's list because that song won the Grammy for the best rap sung performance. And I saw that and I was like, what the hell is the rap sung performance Grammy? Now, I'm just going to tell you, this is the rap.

[82:01]This was the Grammy that originally started to celebrate songs where there's both rapping and singing. And then in 2018, they have had, they had to change it. In 2020, they changed it to now it's called Best Melodic Rap because there's too many... Wait, don't they just give it to Drake every year now? Well, no, I mean, because Young Thug and Lil Baby and all those could do it. What the fuck? You know he's on my list, Aaron. Wait, Drake? Yes. God damn it.

[82:31]So this is... I didn't see that even. The best rap sung. I've got a lot here. So the first winner in 2002, Eve Gwen Stefani. Let me... I love this song. Let me blow your mind. Let me blow your mind. I love this song. Something, something, shake your asses. Yeah, drop your glasses, shake your asses. There you go. Like you're having hot flashes. Aaron, I think you might, you should check out the other songs that are on the rap sung Grammy. I bet you'd like them all. In 2004,

[83:01]Jay-Z and Beyonce won it, of course, for Crazy in Love. Yep, great song. They beat out one of my favorite songs of all time. This is the Manhattan Transfer. Which is Where's the Love? It is corny as hell. It has a black eyed pease. With Justin Timberlake. But I love it. People killing, people dying. Oh, so good. In 2005, the best rap

[83:31]slash sung song was also the longest running single in 2004. Okay. Guys, is there a better Bump and Grind song currently out there than this? This is an all-timer. It's the all-timer. I don't know how you could judge this. Maybe it's like weeks on the top hundred or whatever. When this song was hot, it was as hot as any song in the history of the world, right?

[84:01]Totally. Yeah, right, like if you could make a number one, the number one's number one's, the biggest hit. Massive. Absolutely play. It's played at every wedding from the time that came out and it's still played at every wedding today. Yes, I guarantee it. Can you imagine how many bags of chips Usher stuck his finger in? It's got to be crazy. If Usher was like, I want to finger you, I'd have been like, in 2005, I'd have been like, yes. You're hot as hell. Raymond Usher.

[84:30]Usher Raymond. I always forget. What was that? What if the lady at the counter at the gas station had a Cheeto bag? That would have even been worse, right? Then I would have, I would have had to insist that you not take your hand out. I don't know. You could be like, hey, let me, those spicy ones, let me have a little taste of that fingy. And you hit the ring finger, that would be the one she's not expecting, you know what I mean? Like she puts her hand out, which finger are you going to suck on? You go for the ring. She'd be like, damn, did not see that coming. The other thing about you wearing sandals to a wedding,

[85:01]Rob, when you take pictures, you look even shorter than you really are. You're like, you look like you're like 5'7-ish. Because everyone else is wearing, you know, shoes with big, you know, lifts and you're kind of, honestly, it's the same thing. Finding out I'm shorter than Russell destroyed me for like a week. I could not, that really did. In 2008, two years after the Numb Encore win, we have Rihanna, Umbrella, with, uh, who's on here? Foxy.

[85:32]I can't remember who she's with with that. Or maybe they just gave it to her. Matt, can you look that up? Does Rihanna have big albums? Is she on the list or not? Anti should be on the list. If it's not. Matt, research number two, is Rihanna on the list? Please. In 2009, Jay-Z comes back with Alicia Keys. We've talked this song once before.

[86:03]This is the one where, like, all of us were Googling, like, wait, what does it mean to pay LeBron instead of Dwayne Wade? Oh, he's talking about... He's talking about how much you pay for drugs. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe I shouldn't play this in front of my mom. It's such an anthem, though. So good. Rihanna's anti, anti, anti? It was number 230 on the list, so we'll get to it in the next year or so. Who is she with on Umbrella, Matt? Says Jay-Z. In 2010...

[86:30]I think there's a guest on that one. 2010 winner for best song, rap... All of the Lights. Yes. It's got vocals from... You've done it. You've done it. You've done it. You've done it. Drake, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Elton John. The Dark Trust of Fantasy. Kid Cudi, Rihanna. Here come the drums. Yes. What a moment. So good. Shooting stars. And, of course, Connie's going to come in on that. In 2017, this was changed to best rap sung song.

[87:03]This single peaked all the way at number two. You used to call me all night. Now... You used to, you used to, you used to. This is... When they changed it because there were more and more rap songs coming out like that where it was rap but also melodic. So it couldn't fit into a category. So this is the category for melodic raps now. Right, and this is just Drake by himself, right? Whereas a lot of these were a singer with a rapper on it, guest verse.

[87:31]Right. Drake took and put it together. Some people were actually going to wait until the end to learn that. Not spoiled in the beginning. And then in 2019, another great example of Childish Gambino. You know, This is America. Where it's both rap and, especially in the beginning, a lot of singing. Again, best music video of all time. I was going to say this is the one where Matt made us watch the end of that video. I still haven't gotten over that. That's really something. Literally three years ago.

[88:00]Pretty good list. A lot of great songs in there. I just love the weird Grammy categories that I never... I'm like, what's... I don't even understand what the category is. I love exploring that. And you guys have to do what I say. Okay. It's easily a top five list. Oh, thank you. One of the best lists I've heard tonight. Finally, somebody said that. Hey, Rob, we don't have to talk about all the bad jokes we deleted in that section either. Right? Why would you do that? Why would you do that? By the way, we don't have to talk about the bad jokes we deleted. You know what?

[88:30]Can I just say this? Jay-Z, obviously, Empire State of Mind, that was his first... 2009, that was his first number one hit, Jay-Z, with his name as the lead person. Something to think about. It wasn't until that Alicia Keys song. That's what he's singing about on 9-8-9 Problems, right? That if he doesn't play their shows, they don't play his hits. But he doesn't give a shit. So... But we're not quite there yet, Aaron. We're at change clothes. Change clothes and go. This got all the way up to 10 on the billboard. No substitute, it was just me.

[89:00]This is when it felt like Pharrell was on every song. Oh. He was huge. He was everywhere. Pretty sure, what's that Snoop song? It was probably the exact same year. You guys remember when we talked about the Neptunes, Matt? We've talked about that song on the Kendrick album. We did the best songs produced by the Neptunes. Ah. You guys remember we did Rump Shaker. To the East Coast with Hugh Spence. Got Your Money, ODB, Milkshake, Gwen Stefani, Hollabacker, which we just talked about,

[89:33]and then Snoop Dogg, Drop It Like It's Hot. The Neptunes. Oh, there we go. Russell, so good. Then we have Moment of Clarity. It was by Eminem. Right. This is an Eminem beat from 100 Miles Away. Oh, yeah. Is it drudgery? Is it morose? If this played when he walked into a mansion, would you be scared and run out? Yeah. But honestly, now listening, this song's good, man. This song holds up to me. Did we skip Threat?

[90:01]Oh. We might have skipped Threat. Threat was my favorite song on the album. We can't miss it. What a pimp, this Threat. I forgot. The thing I got. God didn't download those. Yeah, I'm threatening you. Yeah, I'm threatening you. I had to put those here. I'll throw a Molotov cocktail through your mama's house. So here we have Threat. This was my favorite one on the album. This was the one that I had previously liked on my Spotify when I listened to this before. And this is that reasonable doubt flow.

[90:30]This is that more floating, long phrases. This album is just a powerhouse, isn't it? You're doing whatever you want. Rocking out to these in the car, whatever. This is fantastic. Did we miss Dirt Off Your Shoulder? We did. And then, yeah, man, Dirt Off Your Shoulder. God dang it, you guys. That'd be a good one. We should hear that Timbaland beat. This is so... Aaron doing a parody song has really messed me up today. Yeah. I didn't want to say it, but I'm really unhappy about it. It messed me up.

[91:00]I was trying to help you out. I love this line. From the beaches they scream in. Who's producing this one? Timbaland. Oh, yeah. What song had the line, I George Bush the button? That was my favorite line. I just crapped up. That was Threat, right? Yeah, I think it was. That's Threats, I think. George Bush the button. And now back to... Did we do Threat?

[91:30]Did we make... Let's do it again. I think it's worth hearing. Now, this one, Aaron, does have a featured artist. Cedric the Entertainer. I let it sing you a song. Oh, is that him doing the... Yeah. I didn't know that. Not the kind of feat Aaron likes, but... Sing along, it's a duet. You wet. 99... Ninth on the album. 99 Problems, a beer on the wall. I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one.

[92:01]I got the rap patrol on the... Listen to this on my way down to Barbie. It kind of was a moment of... Rap critics say he's money cash hoes. I'm from the hood, stupid. This is the Rick Rubin one, right? I mean, it's gonna be the Beastie Boys beat, right? Yeah, it's Rubin. It could have been Beastie Boys. I read that this was Rick Rubin's first hip-hop album he'd worked on since Return of the Bumpasaurus by Sir Mix-a-Lot. Now, wait a minute. What about the Grindasaurus, okay? I do love when he says holes in your...

[92:32]I think grew up with holes in your zap-a-toes. That might be my favorite rhyme on the album. It's a good one. That won Best Grammy, Rap Solar Performance. Public Service Announcement. Are there songs in this album you guys don't like? There's one or two that I wasn't a huge fan of, but the rest of them, I'm into all of them. What do you guys think so far?

[93:01]I've never heard this album before in my life. Oh, wow. I love this album. Did you enjoy it, Rob, or not? I did. You know, this was not an easy album to listen to. At the Cabin, we talked about summer music, like how it's a little bit different. Like, I couldn't just put this on and be with my kids and explain to them why, you know, I've got so many problems. But I do have to say, listening with you guys now, I do appreciate it a lot more. And especially when you know, like, what he's going with, with the different producers on so many songs and actually changing up a rhyme scheme on every song.

[93:32]Matt, what do you think? Jay-Z, best rapper alive? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to pretend to know too much about every rapper that's out there. But I mean, I think the numbers speak for themselves and his longevity and everybody's calling him the best, right? I mean, nobody's, is anybody disputing it? Lil Wayne, right? Lil Wayne's got a best rapper alive song. Isn't he the one, Aaron, everyone's saying? I am the best rapper alive.

[94:02]I am the best rapper alive. I mean, so this album was from 2003. This was certainly Jay's claim on being the best rapper alive. Yeah. And Lil Wayne was best rapper alive a little bit later. Not much later, but I think Lil Wayne was probably the next to take that throne. Now, I think this is a good place to point out something that I find very interesting again, is that Danger Mouse actually came through and remixed this album. Oh, yes. And made with the Beatles' White Album. Now, so what he did is it's not really a mashup.

[94:32]It's actually he took just the instruments from the Beatles' White Album and put that with Jay-Z's vocals. That's very cool, yeah. Yeah, almost immediately, EMI, who we've talked about before, came out and said, no, you can't do this. Everybody needs to stop. Even though the Beatles said they're okay, even though Jay-Z said they was okay. So what happened is that they had a day in 2004 where all these websites just posted the album for free and got it out to everybody, which again is like a very early 2000s thing of like online music.

[95:00]Everybody's like, whoa, this is crazy. But I wanted to play for you 99 Problems, the Danger Mouse, great. Oops. Skelter, Skelter, right? Yep. So he would pick a different Beatles song for each one. And it really isn't even like, it's not supposed to be an album that sounds good. I saw somebody describe it as like, it's almost like an art piece where Danger Mouse is just showing off what a good like producer he is,

[95:30]where he could put all that together and make it sound good. His most recent one with Black Thought is pretty good too. Justify My Thug. Going over a Funkadelic song with The Wiz. I don't actually know this Funkadelic song, I have to admit. I think it's also, this is one of the, you know, he's got the line earlier about the DOC. He's got the line about, I'm what faces to Houston. Now he's choosing DJ Quick, who is a content legend. He's not Dre, but he's like a little bit more, you had to know some rap to know DJ Quick.

[96:00]I mean, he's doing everything for everyone. He's got some stuff in there for the rap nerds. He's got stuff in there for the radio. He's got stuff in there for, you know, Funk Flex or Hot 97 or whatever. He just, there's just like nuggets in here for everybody. Lucifer. Another Kanye beat. I don't think New York was the murder capital by then, but I'm not going to fact check it. Murder My Wallet. I mean, the price is outrageous here. Before you ask him what happened to you.

[96:30]Allure. Jay-Z has said this is his favorite, Jay-Z song. Oh, wow. Really? I, I, this is Russell. You asked. This is the one. I don't love the string. I don't love the beat on this one. So if there's a song that I don't love, it's this one. It'd be like us claiming that our favorite podcast was the Bob Dylan, Highway 61 episode, right?

[97:00]Hey, can I just tell you guys a great podcast I'm listening to now is a guy who reviews everybody's podcasts. Okay. Oh, it sounds horrific. No, I was kidding. He left a voicemail for us once and is one of the, can I just say this? He's the last Apple review that we have. And it bugs me every fucking time I look at it. Cause he's like, I reviewed this on my podcast. I was like, you piece of shit. So can somebody, a listener out there, just do me a favor. Can you go on Apple and leave a funny review? Okay. Just, just read a funny, leave a funny review.

[97:30]I'll read it. I cannot look at that guy's fucking review anymore. When I look at the reviews on Apple, please. All right. And that's a normal thing to ask for Rob. I'm going to, I'm going to leave a review, but it's going to take me a while to type though. Cause I've got my hand in this bag of chips. Oh, I knew what you're doing. One of my favorite bits that we don't do anymore was when Russell used to clang on the keyboard. I haven't had that in like a hundred episodes. I think his roommate said that it was too loud. It was keeping her up. Upstairs landlord. My first song actually has Biggie up at the front here.

[98:04]I have been accused by my upstairs landlord as a loud typer. I wouldn't be the answer. Yeah, but you got to have those clacking keyboards, Russell. You're not an animal. All right. He does the double time flow on this one. He's just like, yeah, I can do that too. Barack Obama came out and said, this is his second favorite song during the 2012 election.

[98:31]First, of course, being drones over Baghdad, which was a remix drones over Baghdad. All right. So that's a great way to end the album. It's such a great joke. I'm going to edit in maybe some other jokes from earlier at the episode that went really well. But right now let's get into our rating system. Jay-Z, the black album. It's time for everybody's favorite part of the show. The pattern of a very popular Beck did it better rating system. How many colored albums do we have?

[99:03]I would count Weezer's blue album, right? Beatles white. Metallica's black album. Black Metallica's black album. Spinal tap had smell the glove, which famously was just black on black Mitchell. What? No, Joni Mitchell, blue, blue. That's a good one. Three of them of all time. Was there a blue Miles Davis one? Always blue or whatever. Kind of blue, kind of blue. The modal jazz album, Rob, our most erudite episode.

[99:31]So smart. Did not compare digital sex with eating chips in that episode. That's for sure. Let's get into it. Let's get into the rating system. Blue lines, massive attack, black summer night, Maxwell. Yeah, we're going to have a lot of them. Kind of blue. Miles David, we talked about that. Oh my God. You're looking at the list. I'm not ready. I'm not ready for the rating system yet. We had this. This episode is not reached two hours. Oh my God. Pink moon by Nick.