Vocal Chord surgery - podcast aftermath

Gavin is on Vocal Rest Podcast

Places listening - after the US, Canada, UK, Kenya, France, Romania, Bermuda, Sweden, Colombia, Indonesia, Angola, South Korea, Greece, Austria, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Vietnam and Barbados

the top city listening Paris, Montreal, Nairobi Kenya, and Ploiesti Romania

unofficial sponsor of the week: "Text to Speech" App from apple store (more on that later)

Also shoutout to Two Scoops Creamery in Charlotte for featuring Gavin in their “it’s friday, this guy knows how to party” IG Post.

Freestyle is now on Spotify so follow it and for those of you using the french service Deezer - you can subscribe to the Freestyle there, too.

Why Gavin is on vocal rest - and how hard it is to communicate

biggest development of the week - becoming a Damien Woody fan - First Take

Gavin selected a British Accent version named “Daniel"

Fake Band Name Speed Round

Questions I can answer ‘yes” or “no” with a Ding.

Do you miss drinking a pot of coffee a day?

Do you find it difficult to not talk out loud to yourself?

Do you wish you’d paid more attention to American Sign Language in the 6th grade at Johnson Middle School?

Is it true that your cousin is Bob Piano of Axis Mundi Records?

Should people go download his music on Spotify ASAP?

Were you shocked to find out that the thing that Bob Piano and Cindy Harrington have most in common is an incredibly passionate interest in 90 Day Fiancee?

Can we do a deep dive podcast on that show co-hosted by Cindy Harrington and Bob Piano?

Cards against humanity style answers to questions - Gavin can only use phrases he’s already used to answer the following questions:

What is the recurring joke in Mike Birbiglia’s Netflix special the new one? (I saved your best friend’s life)

What’s the first thing you thought of the day after surgery? (Am I allowed to Drive today?)

What’s the second thing you thought of? (Want me to go to Trader Joe’s?)

WWE Comes to the US Open w/ Daniil Medvedev playing the Tennis Heel role

Pro Wrestling has come to The US Open:

Places listening - Australia in 2nd place, followed by Brazil, UK, Mexico, Vietnam, amongst others.

#1 City this week, Gosnells Australia which is a suburb of Perth out there in Western Australia.

The introductions of the players on the main court — they now dim the lights and play music when players come out

Star Singles players are now pairing up for doubles and playing before sellout crowds - like Tag Teams

Andy Murray is playing - Coco Gauff is teamed with Katie McNally - they’re 15 and 17 respectively

Kristie Ahn is a local kid born 2 miles away in Flushing hospital. This is storybook stuff.

Naomi Osaka brought Coco out for post match interview - going for the Tear Jerking moment on live TV - whether spontaneous or planned - it was both authentic and made for TV.

Djokovic gets booed because he has to withdraw from the match against Stan Wawrinka. “Joker” is in the midst of a run in which he’s won 4 of the past 5 majors and injury bug finally catches him.

People Booed because they wanted a longer match — but he handled it great.

13th mid-match retirement for Djokovic, 6th in a major

Now openly stating his goal to break Federer’s record - this has got to be killing him.

Stan Wawrinka seeded 23 - finally seeded again after a few rough years of injuries. Two knee surgeries. He’s just 6-19 against Joker but has now won 2 in a row including when he won the US Open against Joker. Stan is a 3 time major champion and the crowd is going to be ALL IN on him in his next match.

Because Stan’s next match is against the guy who we’re actually here to talk about today.

#5 Seed, Daniil Medvedev of Russia. Perfect wrestling heel behavior. He was rude to a ball boy in public. He gave a thinly veiled middle finger during his 3rd round match.

Crowd started booing him and in his post match press conference.

He basically went all Ravishing Rick Rude on them.

Told them in a very sarcastic / mocking tone that the energy they gave him motivated him to keep pushing, and that if they keep that same level of energy for him, he’d have enough energy to win 5 more matches and take the title.

He followed that up against a German Qualifier, Dominik Koepfer, who played at Tulane. Crowd was literally chanting “Let’s Go Koepfer” in unison like it was a Yankees Game.

He got down a set - and then came back to win the match in 4 sets. He again mocked the crowd in sarcastic fashion and essentially is “DRINKING IN THE BOOS”.

But. this is genius. The guy is #5 seed in tournament and nobody outside of tennis circles knew him or was talking about him before this. In a world in which everybody is talking about the Big Three and Serena… he’s a top five player in the world toiling in anonymity.

My take is, he’s seen how much attention Nick Kygrios (sp?) gets for his antics, and he’s like - I’m way more consistent than that guy - I’m as good as pretty much anybody. If they won’t love me, and if they won’t acknowledge me as a really good player… i’m going to brand myself as the heel.

And that’s working this week. The interesting part will be if he embraces this long-term and how that plays out if he does.

Luke warm take - if he wins the US Open - I bet the President congratulates him on twitter, and might even invite Medvedev to White House.

But Stan Wawrinka looks like he’s all the way back - so we’ll see if he even gets to the Quarterfinals. NYC loves a hero, but they also love a villain.

Last thing, How about Nadal and Federer have never met each other in the US Open ever, in any round of the tournament.

Westworld, we're breaking up with you!

Westworld Season 2

Episode 10 June 23, 2018

Watching the USGA Senior Open — that’s right over 50, men’s golf right now — and it’s more compelling than West World Season 2

I always look forward to speaking with my guests, especially Andrew Patterson, but recapping the final 2 episodes of West World has me stressed out. 

places listening: Heidelberg Germany, Hanoi Vietnam, Pirassununga Brazil

Outlandish predictions for what will happen between now and season 3  // I think President Trump will sell Alaska back to Russia

Things we could’ve podcasted about instead of west world over the past 10 weeks - The aforementioned senior PGA US Open, The Triple Crown, The NBA Draft, The fact that we’ve got a full scale border crisis and humanitarian disaster on our southern border. 

We acknowledge that 1) People talk to themselves 2) People talk to their pets, as if their pets can understand human language verbatim 3) people talk to their plants - this show was basically a really complicated version of “what’s the least weird behavior of those three. 

Cuz Westworld has Hosts, created by humans that long to be human/ have free will, Humans that long to be immortal, and the study of human behavior yielding research that humans can’t be hosts because they’re only hardwired to survive, but that makes them un-replicibale, which actually means that our survival instincts are precisely why doctor ford/ delos can’t make us immortal. And my answer is WHO CARES!?!?!!? 

They set up a potentially terrible or potentially interesting season 3 — but essentially none of the stars will be on the show — or they will, but they’ll be rebuilt. 

There’s no struggle that I care about, there’s no remaining charter that I care about — I feel as disappointed and angry as when Jeremy Johnson comes on and talks about Politics and the deep state and the corporate takeover of america — that’s not a good thing HBO

11,927th trial of delores on bernard is the opening

Delores confronts man in black. 

Maeve makes a comeback in a big way with the help of a ton of hosts. 

Delores / man in black / Bernard meet up. william tries to shoot delores but she’s immune - pretty much leaves him for dead

Deleores is with Bernard / but so is Charlotte Hale (well some version of Bernard) 

They are “in the forge” - 4 million guests “lives” are on record.

Here’s the deal: 

Maeve saved her daughter

Ake and many others are “safe in their new world” 

Man in Black is stuck in a cell forever like James Delos (has he been dead this whole time)? 

Charlotte Hale gets shot by her own “host” twin - who says if you want to live for ever, be careful what you wish for

Delores is dead (in terms of Evan Rachel wood version

Bernard is still going to be “at odds with Delores” on the outside

Handsome security guy let’s Charlotte Hale/ new Delores “Out of west world” — she has the “mind database orbs” of 4 or 5 of the key hosts. 

Is this their way of trimming all of the fat? Long way to go.

Season 3 will either be riveting or a spectacular disaster — but somehow, I think I’ll watch. Don’t think I’ll podcast about it — but it might be the train wreck I need to see. 

Overall season 2 was more disjointed and confusing than season 1 (which was a tall feat) and they unfortunately achieved it

Episode 9 June 16, 2018

Man in Black and his daughter:

If the man in black is such a miserable piece of crap to his family and in the real world — why did he choose the black hat role in west world all the time? 

Why’d he even mess with the white hat role in season 1 ? 

If Man in Black always knew that west world was a data mining expedition, why’d he even partake in it? 

Man in Black’s story of how/ why his wife committed suicide is a long way to go, but at least there’s a tie in — he kills his real life daughter in a fake place because he thinks she’s a fake.

The mother was some type of substance abuser - mainly to make up for the fact that Man in black was the worst. He’s called a virus and a phony. the daughter wants to have the mother committed to a rehab facility.

the mother gets william to spill the beans though. and then kills herself. but that’s a long way to go, to end up shooting his daughter in west world. 

we keep hearing that william is a lie — whats his lie  

Delores and Teddy: Teddy kills himself instead of going to the valley beyond with Delores — that was very surprising - what’s the use of surviving if we end up like them. 

Clementine gets “suped up” with Maeve’s powers to get the hosts to kill each other  — seems to be Charlotte Hale’s plan to destroy the remaining hosts.

Ford and William at a reception in real world - Ford gives him his “data history” and cryptically says “perhaps one more game.” 

Why don’t we like doctor ford more??  Also, he’s using bernard to leave Maeve a message. If Ford and Maeve team up — i like it. Ford talks to Maeve about how he wanted her to escape. she was “his fave” 

Ford basically tells Maeve to keep fighting

Bernard ditches Elsie - cuz of course he did - cuz ford wanted him to kill her. 

2017 Winners & Losers plus Big predictions for 2018

Winners and Losers of 2017 

Places listening: Top City this week Bagong Kalsada in the Philippines, crushing it. Mountain View, CA #2 and Los Angeles #3

Dubai of the United Arab Emirates cracked the top 5 for the first time as well. 

First time places — Laos, Vietnam, Luxembourg - over 27 countries listened last week — THANK YOU TO ALL, please leave a review on iTunes and please keep spreading the word

Bud light and Game of Thrones were both winners in 2017 and you need to look no further than the “Dilly Dilly” ad campaign to prove that both were winners

Losers - in some ways Micro Brews — for about 10 years the hipsters fave been leading the “Marco Brew” renaissance with Pabst Blue Ribbon — but in 2017 it felt like commercials started poking major fun at Micro Brews. 

Example one — the Honey Mead Wine guy getting sent to the pit of misery in the Dilly Dilly ads

Example two - Actor Danny Trejo is in a series of Sling TV commercials - there’s one in which he’s a bartender and some yuppie guy is like i’m looking for a microbrew no, a nano brew… and he carries on, and then Danny says, I made this one in my bathtub. And the customers takes it but says something like “That’s so gross”. 

HBO is a loser in some ways too — Peak Game of Thrones only highlights the following - they’ve got nothing ready to replace GOT, people are likely going to turn on GOT during it’s final season, because at least 50% of audience won’t like how it ends

Puerto Rico  is a loser of 2017— the commonwealth of Puerto Rico was decimated and so little has been done about it, that they should have the option to pick a new country to become a territory of. Or better yet, Yankee Swap style — they should get to swap “aid packages” with another part of the country that go aid this year

Also fun fact — Yankee Swaps are called “White Elephant” gift exchanges in North Carolina — and when I was in Philly it was called a pollyanna  

Lavar Ball - despite how many people don’t like him — is a winner — since he came from obscurity. With that said, I’ll be shocked if he’s a winner in 2018 — i think he’s slated to be one of 2018’s biggest losers. 

Winners: Rose McGowan and everybody associated with the #MeToo movement who came forward

Losers: Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey Jerry Richardson and dozens of others who clearly were abusing their powerful places in entertainment, sports, and business

This clearly goes much deeper - but from a media standpoint - does this keep going? Who goes down next? I feel like this could absolutely destroy washington is we let it

ESPN got trounced and the NFL got trounced — post peak front runners getting dismantled is a theme i think will continue in 2018

Gender Reveals and Gender Reveal / Guy in American Flag Jorts in Southie

Possible winners in 2018

Possible losers in 2018 - The Tea Party / radical right — I’m not sure if I can ever bet against republicans wholesale again — but i feel pretty good about “establishment republicans”, independents and left leaning democrats mobilizing en masse in the midterms against the Tea Party. 

Joe Biden Mania — 2018 — I only hope that it doesn’t peak too early

Onesie Christmas Pajamas — the cast of Premier league on NBC are all wearing them today — the amount of matching onesie pajamas on instagram, facebook, snapchat is off the charts — i think the backlash is coming

Jimmy G and the San Francisco 49ers — if this guys stays healthy and they can sign him — as long as he stays healthy and can avoid the “Johnny Manziel pitfalls of fame” — they are going to the playoffs in 2018 and likely for most of the next 7 to 10 seasons