We talk about a wide range of topics on The Distraction, and one of our goals is to eventually broaden it to include areas of interest beyond sports, aging, and lunch sometime in the next few years. Of the many possible options that we’ve discussed, a pivot to “true crime” had ranked pretty low. It’s not the energy we seek to cultivate, and hearing Drew honking through the details of a high-profile unsolved kidnapping would be pretty upsetting regardless of what those details were. So it’s likely that this week’s episode, which begins with Jasper Wang’s perplexing Montana real estate mystery, is as close to true crime as we’re likely to get.
And honestly, it’s pretty close. It’s an old-fashioned housing nightmare that plays like a locked-room mystery, with a number of tantalizing and ominous clues—the proximity of a frat row, a mysterious coffin left in Jasper’s backyard some time earlier—and some gnarly property damage resulting from a mysterious bit of criminal mischief. We did not solve this case on the pod, although a listener has already emailed with a plausible solution to the coffin bit, but it’s a good story that keeps getting better every time I hear it. We discussed not just the events that led to four inches of standing water in Jasper’s Missoula residence, but the real-world benefits of him Thinking Like A Poster, the experience of getting moved to Major Claims by your insurance company, and the classic homeowner lament of “who let me buy a house?” This segment concludes with Drew confessing to some decently serious hijinks, decades after the fact. It is safe to assume that he will never be held responsible for his crimes.
From property damage it was an easy transition to New York Jets Chat, as we checked in with Jasper for an assessment on the state of the Jets fan mind, the thrill of escaping the vampire’s castle of Aaron Rodgers, and circled back to celebrate the nightmare rich-kid antics of Brick Johnson, the overbearingly present and empowered child of Jets owner Woody Johnson. We didn’t stick with the Jets for too long—long enough to discuss the Jerry Jeudy/Mitch Trubisky youthful-tweet disasters duality, but not much longer than that—because there were other bad teams to talk about. We did a speedrun through the Steelers and their upright and stubborn aimlessness, the Saints’ long stay in salary cap purgatory, the Seahawks putting Sam Darnold in the worst possible spot, and the Browns pivoting to uh Kenny Pickett. This naturally led to a conversation on sports ownership and oligarchy, again, initiated by Jasper and not by me. We talked about how having a bad owner gives a fan base something like half of class consciousness, but not necessarily the fun part. Which, I noted on the pod and will reiterate here, are The Tribunals. Nice to think about!
After the break, Drew teed me up to explained the strange standoff between MLB’s owners, commissioner Rob Manfred, and Rays owner Stuart Sternberg. I did it as quickly as I could, which was less economically than Ray managed earlier this week, but we also discussed how this concentrated attempt to shove aside an owner who is not nearly the most egregious in the sport underlines the things you can’t do and the things you can when it comes to ownership fuckery.
From there, it was into the Funbag, where we fielded a pair of listener voicemails. One asked how out of shape Noah Lyles would have to get before we could beat him in a race. This mostly just wound up with us talking about Lyles tripling in size due to eating sandwiches and drinking blended scotch at night like I do, and imagining the experience of getting absolutely dusted by a circa-2025 Albert Haynesworth in a 40-yard sprint. Jasper, in a principled move, simply refused to answer the question; “the limit,” he said, “does not exist.” The second question was from a listener who is still mad, and seemingly also a little sad, about our Buffalo Chicken Dip conversation from several episodes ago. I will reiterate here, as I did on the pod, that I will never really care about this, but that stance softened some over the course of our discussion. We addressed our respective relationships with chicken wings and the Buffalo flavor space, and Drew’s wariness of creamy dips; I learned the terrible truth about artichoke dip and, more terribly still, had to hand it to Drew. I will have to wait until Jasper’s next catered event to get all the way there, but this conversation brought us closer to peace with honor in the Buffalo Chicken Dip conflict.
If you would like to subscribe to The Distraction, you can do that through Apple Podcasts, wherever else you might get your podcasts, and Spotify if absolutely necessary. Thank you as always for your support.
