Share & Oddjob & Tell with Domonique Foxworth and Charlie Kravitz

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Labatard and Katie Nolan.

No question.

In the sports media power ranking, it was the worst text.

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The concept of going abroad in college was like, I was like, I can't miss a semester that's going to be the most fun semester of all time.

That is so real, though.

I never visited like Boston.

We stayed in Harvard Square the entire time.

We did very little adventuring to like adult worlds.

Yeah.

Do I regret not going all across Europe?

Because I applied to an abroad program.

We got into it and didn't do it.

A little bit.

Probably be more traveled, but don't regret being there.

Ruled.

I love when Charlie turns into a bro.

Hammering natty lights and having like all of Nash.

What did you

give me the just the physical scouting report on Charlie Kravitz Vanderbilt student?

Hawaiian shirt, three buttons unbuttoned.

Sunday, Sam Sports Bar.

Watch football and drink.

Monday,

Monday, we went to, I can't remember the name of this fing bar.

Tuesday, we had this thing called Newsday, which is like a weekend party

where you go on.

Wednesday was trivia at Sam's.

Thursday was out downtown Nashville.

Friday was like fraternity party.

Saturday was

remarkable how precisely he's recalling all of this.

I made it.

I was like it was like a class schedule for him.

I want you to bring back the Hawaiian shirt.

I was, yeah, definitely.

I really,

minimum.

Minimum.

A girl once called me the face of the Vanderbilt social scene.

Not the body of the Vanderbilt social social scene.

Not the brain.

Not the brain.

Just the face.

Oh, God.

You see your stupid fat face everywhere.

Red.

Red, reeking of stale beer.

Ruddy, ruddy-faced, drunk

face.

I should see the

photo.

This is good.

I want to introduce

Photo Charlie, in case they don't know of his previous work.

There was religious protesters that came to protest partying at Vanderbilt.

Protest partying,

like a foot loose situation, more or less.

They were like, they're like, this is a life of sin.

And they had like gigantic signs.

And of course, we just

went up to in front of them and shotgunned in their face and threw the beer cans down.

And we're like, eat it, weirdos.

Such a bro.

By the way, when I saw Dominique on the field at this playoff game in Baltimore.

Oh, yeah.

Ashley posted some.

Yeah.

What do you ask?

Some.

It was you and Declan on the field together.

I mean,

this was awesome.

It was sick.

Declan dapping up Derrick Henry, taking pictures with two chains.

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

He met a bunch of players.

Yeah, it was cool for him.

I forgot when we compliment Dominique.

No, it's not about me.

Come back.

What do you want me to say?

It was cool.

Yeah.

If I was an 11-year-old boy, like, I've taken him on the field before and Debo Samuel came over and introduced himself to him on a Commanders game that he went to he played um at halftime of the last commanders game against the falcons he's been on the field a bunch of times he's been on the field for um college football games it's pretty cool but this was the coolest because he's uh it's funny because he like he likes to be on the field and he's also at an age where he tries to be cool

But this was and all the other times he was like on the field, but it's kind of cool.

So oh, yeah, that's neat.

Debo, oh, neat.

I'll take a picture with him.

But this time, because he is a Ravens fan, he like lost all his cool.

He got knocked right out of him.

He's grinning like a fool.

He took a picture with John Harbaugh, who was incredibly nice, and came over.

Took a picture.

He got the high-five Derrick Henry.

He kept doing more and more things that I told him not to do.

I get why Declan doesn't listen to you.

He does.

No, he doesn't.

I wanted to start with this Jerry Jones thing.

Are you a watcher, Dominique, of Landman?

I'm not a watcher of Landman.

Is the way I say Landman, Charlie,

persuading you that maybe I am familiar with the show?

Definitely not, but I'm familiar with the show.

I've watched all of Landman, except for the finale.

I haven't watched the finale yet.

So, Cortez loves Landman.

He does.

John Hamm?

I don't know.

I was just trying to spoil the finale for you.

Who's Landman?

What's his superpower?

Landman is someone who buys mineral rights to plots of land in Texas and then sells and then drills on them to find oil.

The reason, though, I am talking about Landman is because this Paramount Plus show, which is a Taylor Sheridan show, which is to say it's in his cinematic universe, which is to say that it's very popular among a sector of America that is quite populous, it turns out.

Oh.

That's the Yellowstone guy?

That's the Yellowstone.

I'm the one that said he is.

This is his most maximalist show.

It's filmed in Texas.

It has some of the vibes of like a successor to Friday Night Lights without some of the depth.

It has Billy Bob Thornton, John Hamm, Demi Moore, and it's completely over the top and like a very fun watch that has shockingly good acting, despite the fact that it's like filling the old soap, network soap things that we used to show, while also sort of glorifying fossil fuels.

So it's a give and a take.

You hosted the out of his show.

Good job.

He's our white America correspondent.

And what Landman went viral for recently is this scene with Jerry Jones.

And this has been everywhere.

But I wanted to actually get behind the scenes of this scene, which we will show you in a little bit here.

And so what we did was we called up the cinematographer of Landman, Robert McLaughlin, who is a veteran of shows such as Game of Thrones, Ray Donovan, Westworld.

Brian Cortez, by the way, texted me just now, quote, it's Friday Night Lights mixed with Sicario.

Oh, Landman.

So

that's a great call.

And if the cinematography by Robert McLaughlin is is anything like that, a compliment to Robert McLaughlin, who sounds like this.

You know, when we were handed the script, I thought, oh, that's cool.

You know, Jerry Jones character comes in and delivers this huge long monologue.

And, you know, I came to work and I said, so who have they got to play Jerry Jones?

You know, I've done this a long time.

And, you know, usually bringing in a non-actor to do something long like that is like you're really treading on thin ice.

But

the day of his scene came, we were shooting in a, in a, in an unused wing of a new hospital in Fort Worth, and

we heard a helicopter, and somebody said, oh, that must be Jerry arriving.

He'd flown from wherever, Dallas or someplace,

and arrived with

a small entourage.

And they had a room set up for him to set.

We weren't quite ready to shoot with him yet.

And

the script supervisor, who's been doing this a long time too, kind of looked at, she looked at me and kind of rolled her eyes like,

boy, you know, that's a lot of words for a non-actor to do.

And so Jerry Jones enters this hospital room in which John Hamm, give the visuals here, is

unwell and in a hospital bed.

He's had his fourth heart attack.

And Billy Bob Thornton is there, Oscar winner and Emmy winner, respectively, in reverse order.

And Jerry Jones proceeds, in case you haven't seen it, this non-actor to do this.

I just know it's not going to be this time, but you're going to be sitting here sometime in the future, laying here sometime in the future.

And this room's going to be full of your business associates and the people you've worked with all your life.

And more than likely, your children and family are going to be there because they're your children and your family.

But you could have them there because they're the people you spent your life with, you worked with, you fell down with, you got up with.

I mean, he crushed that.

It's incredible.

Sue that up.

His eyes, eyes, the sniffling, his eyes getting watery.

That man can lie.

That man has been lying for so long.

You know a good liar.

A good liar convinces themselves that they are telling the truth.

See, it's the same thing about an actor.

Jerry been lying his whole life.

That man believed it in that moment.

Jerry was the landman.

He's a method landman.

Oh, he's been doing bullshit like this all his whole life.

You called him up.

It's like, hey, you want to act?

And he was like, you mean lie?

Oh, give me a microphone and a camera.

In the hallways, by the way, the cinematographer, the people who doubted him working on the show, on the set, were all blown away.

This was a script.

There were several takes because they got to get coverage and it's just standard Hollywood stuff.

Dominique Big Hollywood, Big Shot knows this, of course.

But the point is, what the cinematographer also said to us was, but he pretty much nailed every single take.

Like, he was just crushing it the whole day.

Wow.

I wonder how many times he's given that speech in his life.

So, what we did also was we asked for Jerry Jones himself.

We asked for the king to visit us.

The Cowboys head of PR responded this way, quote, appreciate the interest.

Jerry was fantastic in the landman scene for sure.

He's also in the midst of sorting out our head coach situation.

So we'll need to pass on this.

And then shortly thereafter, Mike McCarthy was

consciously uncoupled uh from the dallas cowboys dominique you negotiate you could do it cry on command no i mean just like deliver a monologue in a way that was believable i don't think i would be anywhere near as good as him i wouldn't be close dominique is batting his eyes that dominate thinks he can do that i mean i think i can do everything this is the irrational confidence of dominique saying he'd also do stand-up comedy is that is that is that a thing that we can test that's a take he thinks that's an episode of the show and why it agreed no because no charlie Dominic gets encouraged.

No, Charlie has cooked it up into like, I think I can be a stand-up comedian.

The point I made was we were talking about open mics.

I could do five minutes and get a couple chuckles.

Like, open mics are not like, I'm not a stand-up comedian.

Like, I don't think I could be

Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock or anybody.

So you're saying you wouldn't be the greatest stand-up of all time?

I'm saying short of that.

I'm saying anything possible.

I'm saying that I could show up at an open mic.

And like, I'm not saying that I'm going to be Roy Wood Jr.

who said I show up at an open mic and cook.

That's it.

That's it.

However, if I committed myself to it, people just should know this: that Dominique does believe that his superpower as

Foxman.

There's a better superhero name for you.

That was bad.

But there is a belief that Dominique has that if he were to try hard at anything, he can accomplish it.

Supported by evidence.

I've done it.

I've done all of it that I wanted to do.

So, there's, I look at this two ways.

He's shockingly good in front of a live crowd.

Like, we did our live show last year.

We're doing another one tomorrow night.

By the time you're listening to this, we've already done our live podcast.

Some people have gotten a Netflix special off on the strength of that.

But, Counterpoint, not funny.

Tough for a live for an open mic.

Wow.

That's nonsense.

Blunt.

A blunt scouting report.

He thinks I'm not funny.

That's crazy.

Not that funny.

Okay.

So I want to bring this back to Jerry Jones briefly for a second here.

Because

he was so good that lots of people who worked on the show started wondering like, who's better than this?

And it's a hard question to find an answer to.

They even wondered if Jerry Jones had hired an acting coach at one point.

But it brings us back

to this general idea of like

These people have seen a lot of cameos on prestige television.

And

apparently, quote, there is no comparison to Jerry Jones from the cinematographer in question.

I didn't do the Game of Thrones episode with Ed Sheeran, but we did have, you know, when I shot the Red Wedding episode, we had the drummer from Coldplay there.

We had some other, you know, various celebrities who would fly themselves to Belfast just to show up and have a piece.

Sometimes they had a line, sometimes they didn't.

You know, I was doing a huge battle scene in Spain, and we had

Noah Sondergaard from the Mets showed up.

He was a huge fan and they gave him, put him in a full set of armor and gave him a big close-up throwing a spear.

And

that actually took three or four takes because on action, he kind of freeze.

He froze up and didn't throw the spear.

So boy, you've got to watch that episode really carefully to catch that two-second close-up of Thor throwing a spear.

So Jerry Jones, naturally charismatic in front of the camera.

Noah Sindergaard, former Mets would-be star pitcher, looked like this.

And if you can just get the freeze frame of just Noah Zindergaard, yep, there it is.

You would think throwing would be something he wouldn't get nervous about.

It's like, just throw.

His name is Thor.

Couldn't throw shit.

He's a pitcher.

You should be able to throw.

You've negotiated against Jerry Jones.

You've covered him.

You were just on TV.

gas bagging about him.

I'm so thankful that he's around.

He's a font of content.

Yeah.

The guy does radio shows.

He's a billionaire.

He then argues with the radio hosts, giving us content on top of content.

He just

essentially de facto fired Mike McCarthy because Mike McCarthy wanted to coach his team for longer than he wanted him to.

And now he's feeding us in Hollywood.

It's just a remarkable thing.

Do you have a sense of humor about him or does he seem, is he getting away with stuff?

Because he is also the guy who is charming everybody in all of these rooms, me included, it turns out, from a farm.

I don't know.

He's incredibly charming.

Is he getting away with stuff?

I mean,

what makes him charming as you've experienced him up close?

He's a politician.

Like, it's just that he's got that politician charm and that he remembers your name and he's affable and he's like, like, he is what you see.

Everyone, like, he seems like fun to be around.

He's kind and

like generous with his attention and conversation.

And so, then, because he is a celebrity and he's worth so much money, like, I think it's having that along with it.

It's like people obviously fall for it.

When it comes to the power of wealth and how much of charm is just being rich and famous and powerful, it's a lot, it's a lot easier.

I present to you, I present to you

a counterpoint because the other NFL owner, of course, who has made, I think, a very memorable acting cameo

actually did this on tape.

It was an audition submission for his girlfriend, now about 15 years ago, or they're about 2012-ish.

And I'd like you to just witness the theatrical charisma of Bob Kraft and his actress model girlfriend at the time, Ricky Noel Lander.

Hi, I'm Ricky Lander, and I'm auditioning for Mary Elena.

Okay.

Yes,

That is burned in my memory.

You can stop now.

You.

No.

Final.

Oh, God.

So that was an audition tape submitted and then leaked and then shared on the internet for the internship,

the Vince Vaughan Owen Wilson movie.

Bob Kraft was doing Owen Wilson's lines.

Bob Kraft was on camera, though, which isn't typical about a submission, an on-tape audition.

Dominique,

what?

What?

I just hated it.

Every second of it.

Beginning to end, start to finish.

You didn't like the end of it when he punched the guy?

He called him

a P-word?

Yes.

No, we can't say that.

Okay.

I believe that we have the technology to do this.

So bear with me.

I believe we can actually show you this video because there's a green screen where we make this into the landman hospital scene.

This is Bob Kraft auditioning for the role that Jerry Jones submitted for.

Hi, you were really good up there.

I didn't mean that in a sexual way, but not that it wasn't erotic.

Well, now we're even because dancing in front of you was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life.

Bob Kraft said, quote, I never intended that it would be made public, and I regret that it has.

End quote.

I think Bob Kraft has some regrets of things that have gone public, for sure.

We broke Dominique.

This topic broke Dominique.

I'm not broken.

I have nothing to add.

It was a bad audition.

It was uncomfortable.

She was...

weirdly sexualized and Bob Kraft was a poor actor.

It just like made no sense.

That's the question.

Do you think she wanted him in the screen or do you think he wanted was like...

I do think that this was clearly something something where she was like, Would it help you if you knew that I was potentially romantically entangled with one of the richest men in America who happens to own the dynasty of our time?

And it turned out the answer was no,

because she did not get the part,

nor did he.

That's a tough scene for them.

It's a real tough scene.

A tough scene in every possible way, actually.

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Charlie, let's bring it back to the world of actual

journalism.

Yes.

What did you bring us?

Okay, I brought you guys a story from the New York Times that came out on December 26th by Zachary Small called Video Games Can't Afford to Look This Good.

The basics of the story were that throughout all of our lives, there was a boom in technology and video games became more and more hyper-real.

And it used to drive sales and interest that games looked way better and more realistic.

I'm sure you had this moment.

Like for me, I remember seeing the first map in N64 with Mario.

Oh my God, this doesn't look like a Game Boy.

Well, it turns out they're diminishing marginal returns as these maps have gotten more and more extreme.

The graphics have gotten more and more hyper-real.

The games games have become less fun to a lot of people and replaced by something that seems too much like real life.

And for the first time, the video game industry is shrinking because of that.

Spider-Man 2 has been like a case study in this story because Spider-Man, the video game, you can see over time, it becomes really, again, like you're inside of a movie.

Its whole thing is hyper-realism.

And then you sort of also begin to notice, and this is another just like funny thing that I think any video game player has to make peace with, is that at a certain point, the money you're dropping for the new game doesn't get you the proportional increase in terms of like, wow, this is so much different than it was before.

There's a plateau, there is a diminishing returns just on the technology level.

And what I didn't know until Charlie was like, I want to do this story, is that the entire industry has gone so far in the direction of trying to Hollywoodify everything.

Yes.

Now they're realizing, wait a minute, the thing that the kids are actually playing and are obsessed with, their graphics are terrible.

Yeah.

It's Roblox.

It's

Minecraft.

And it's about community.

It's about people want to have fun with their friends and video games became something that can replace some social interactions and the map and the hyper-realism and having to like play like play NBA 2K and have it be way more realistic than it was in 2012 actually wasn't driving stuff.

I thought this was really interesting for a number of reasons.

One, and immediately connected to, I'm sure, what you felt.

Dominique might have been at the where this was age appropriate, but despite the fact that there was Xbox and PS3 or whatever, whenever we were in college, there was, there was an N64 in any, every dorm because people wanted to play games together.

And it wasn't about like having the best graphics or the best stuff.

It was about like a sense of community and normalcy.

And the games were supposed to be fun.

I found it to be a really interesting thing that

they're now realizing that, that there's no reason to make Spider-Man look like Spider-Man.

I didn't realize it until I read this story.

Like I knew, I felt it intuitively.

I was like, do I really need the PS5 Pro to get some marginal advantage in the Spider-Man 2 graphics?

The answer for me was no.

But now I'm just realizing, oh, like what people actually want out of this experience, Dominique, is just not what video game studios and their studios now

ended up spending a bulk of their cash on.

I mean, I guess I should.

I shouldn't pretend like this is something obvious and something I knew, but like it feels like it's something once you see it,

it seems incredibly obvious because it happens.

Yeah, I mean, because it happens in every industry, it's like bingo, yeah.

I mean, it's classic like disruption theory, like it's the definition of it is that you get to a certain point to where you think that this is the paradigm on which this industry is competing on.

And then everyone in the industry gets to a point where the diminishing returns from that paradigm and you have to switch.

And the industry or the company or the game or the

whatever, the product that takes over is one that recognizes that that's not how we're going to compete.

And now they're competing in a different way.

It's similar to like when three-pointers took over the NBA, where it's like, all right, we compete with centers, centers, centers, centers.

And then we got to the point where actually,

because the three is the place that we're going to compete, your inability to move becomes a problem.

And then the game evolves in a different way.

And the same thing for every other industry where there's the same thing with phones.

Like at first, we're like, all right, I want to be be able to call.

And then we watch how the phones went from a big suitcase to a phone that had color and a phone that you could type on, a phone you could text on.

Then we get to a point where it's like, all right, this does enough.

Everything feels just like a pendulum swinging back and forth in general.

But now what we're seeing in this economy of video games is that studios are like closing down.

Layoffs are happening for the first time.

Layoffs apparently have affected more than 20,000 employees in the past two years, more than 2,500 Microsoft workers.

And the point being that what

you actually want out of this product the entire time

was, it reminds me of just like, and it's funny to say this in the same like month that we finally got new cameras in this studio, but like, look at internet video.

Look at what goes viral.

Like, people actually have such a tolerance for the worst production values.

And we have been trying to spend to attract something that's not actually why people are here.

I'm glad you brought this up because this this is the exact connection point I thought about.

There's a line in the article that basically talks about theories of why people have stopped wanting the hyperrealism and that it's an investment in graphics that creates a hollow experience.

You don't feel anything.

You don't connect with people on it.

That to me, you just brought up something that's happening in video, YouTube videos.

People crave authenticity.

They crave real conversations.

It's like you look at the best podcasts, you look at the best shows, the things that have lasted forever, whether it's a PTI or Dan Labatar show, the communities they create, pardon my take, whatever, all that stuff.

They create people who really want to engage with that stuff.

I want to connect this back to something.

The last time we were all together in Miami, Pablo went miniviral.

Oh, yeah.

Because he talked about, you know, the take.

It was not a stolen take.

It was.

I'm sorry.

I'm authenticity.

That's what I'm trying to make your show better, being authentic.

Mine and Pablo's take was that Pablo articulated better, which is that football media, particularly, I mean, it's in all sports media, but football and basketball and football in particular, they want to watch the tape and they want to tell you about the EPA and they fetishize jargon.

And that pissed off a lot of ball knowers online.

And Twitter people are like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

This is the most complex sport.

Still trying to win Brett Coleman back.

But here's the thing: you were right because a real expert can explain something and make it seem simple, not explain it and make it seem more complicated.

And the reason that the word hollow experience, I thought was really interesting was there was this incredible shift in football media from the caveman jacked up, which is kind of dope.

Not going to forget, like it was John Taylor hitting that punter was pretty awesome.

It was.

To this really specific EPA per play DVOA.

And if you disagree with it, they're like, you don't get the stats.

You don't watch the tape.

And

instead of having this community around a show that's something that's fun, that drives discussion, something that Dan does or PTI does, it gets people who are like, this feels like talking about sports with a friend.

And the experience has moved really far.

And then you see how it's shifting back is people actually don't care about having this graphic with everything explained to them being like, there's no possible way I'm wrong about this.

They want to talk about sports like normal people.

Does it feel social?

Does it feel like the experience that you're here for?

To be clear, I think that Charlie is not saying that all the stats are bad.

No, they're good.

Yeah, no, but I do think that he's making a point that I agree with to some degree, but I think I would be further on the

ball knower slash nerd spectrum.

Cause I guess it's not a complete spectrum.

It's more like a graph that you, or a triangle chart.

I don't know what that's called, where you find in different spots.

Because I think there's, no, it's not a Venn diagram because the Venn diagram is like the overlap.

It's like there's...

like film watchers there's like stat nerds and then there's like you're describing a graphic that stat nerds would love currently so i am a stat a triangular heat map yeah and then there's like fans and i think where you find yourself on there could be any particular place.

But I think where Charlie is right is,

this feels like work.

This is like a spreadsheet.

This feels like a job or a homework.

People who don't know anything and they're just like spouting off about like clutch gene and like that.

It's like, all right, that feels stupid.

So it lands somewhere in all of this.

But I do think we have, to your point about the pendulum, is like we have a, it's just like a natural phenomenon where when something happens, everyone's like, oh, this is it.

You swing all the way over to it.

And you swing all the way over to it.

And then eventually you come back to some equilibrium.

And I think we did spend some time and those people still exist.

There are some people who love to live in the spreadsheets and some people who want to clip film and put it on and break down.

I think the only thing that you were really offended or not offended by, but you took

umbrage with is the

idea that people are using jargon that's exclusive, that like blocks people out from understanding and i think that what's happening is a lot of those people are insecure yeah and i think they're using the jargon to express to people that they are on the inside and it's also the certainty of it to me it's like when you when you say something so definitively it just it takes away all the conversation all the way normal people wants to want to think about it it should be an invitation we shouldn't be boxing people out of talking about sports or being interested in these discussions simply because there are certain people have access to tape or stats that other people don't.

It's not a direct answer.

They're supposed to support your opinions.

Right.

Why would you need a supercomputer to run a video game?

Yeah.

Are your kids into like Roblox and stuff?

Yeah, on and off sometimes.

Yeah, they like it.

But just like, it's my niece, who's 10.

I'm just like.

There's a quote in this piece about one game, and essentially, like the JPEG that they used to advertise

was a bigger file than the actual game

it's just like this is not the point like the point is amusement when graphics got better it was awesome it was like i remember this but and when the when um madden got more complex it was awesome because i hated playing a football game that didn't feel like football however it got to the point where i stopped playing madden in uh in college because i was like oh this ain't fun no more this feels like work i gotta read coverages.

F ⁇ out my face with that.

You know what the turning point for me with Madden was when I stopped playing it?

The passing cone.

I was about to say it was the vision cone.

Yeah, the vision cone was.

The worst.

But that's exactly it.

It's like, hey, did you guys want to simulate the feeling of being like a fighter pilot who needs to do tons of homework to figure out how to pass the ball in a football video game?

No.

Yeah.

I mean, have video games ever gotten better than like...

Halo 2, Blood Gulch, Battle Rifles with your friends when you're 14.

Energy sword guy.

Yeah.

Either way, another simple, an even more simple version of it.

Video game murder.

Energy sword.

That stuff was awesome.

I mean, I still remember when you had Game Boys and you could get the cord and trade Pokemon from the red and the blue thing to complete your set.

That was just literally building in community to the easiest game.

That was the exact same, except for the color of the cartridge and like a couple Pokemon you could get.

And that stuff was awesome.

I have such stupid nostalgia for like just GoldenEye.

What was your

disappointing?

I've got one of those emulators a couple years ago and I've tried to play GoldenEye.

It didn't hold up.

Doesn't hold up?

Maybe it was just a bad emulator, but it didn't hold up.

How about the music?

Oh, yeah.

Music.

Music is great.

You're telling me that

being odd job and hiding inside a bathroom stunned a lot.

Every time you have a bad thing.

Every time.

Oddjob was banned from any games that we play.

Yep.

Go ahead and say it.

Because you are just against Asian orientation.

Of course not, because it was cheating.

It was cheating.

Oddjob, Michael Vick, and Madden.

Obviously, like, you knew who my favorite players were in Golden Eye and Madden?

I job and Michael Vick, respectively.

Yeah, this is.

Duh.

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So there was actually a long discussion about what Dominique was going to bring to the table here.

And then

participate in that discussion.

And that's how the topic got decided.

So the article that was decided for me, which I read on the way to the studio today, is The Agony of Texting with Men, which is by Matthew Schnipper from The Atlantic.

And it was actually a really good article.

It talked about like

how everyone needs community and relationships.

And because of the way that the world is changing and we're all more text message focused than we are having a third place a bar or wherever guys hung out in the past that and men are particularly bad at texting it's made it so they've had a difficult time developing and maintaining relationships and

i see why you guys sent me this because you responded to zero of the texts on the group chat about planning for this segment yeah because it's a hollow experience.

Okay.

Texting with each other is a hollow experience as the article lays out.

So, like, I'm sorry that I want to have genuine interactions with my friends and I don't want to live through texts.

Excuse me.

He responded to zero, right?

Zero texts on this thread, Charlie.

You're welcome.

To be fair, he was working the entire.

Yeah, again, he was between Stephen A.

and Shannon Sharp on first take.

I understand that.

But he responded to zero texts.

I think that Dominique Foxworth is the single worst texter in sports media.

I disagree.

I think he is the Bryce Young of texting.

He is the most improved texter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

He's sending, he's sending.

He's created his own

expectations and gifts.

He's responding to everything.

Boom.

He's starting conversations via text.

Three touchdowns.

No sex.

He was the worst, though.

And he also used to be.

He used to be the anxiety-inducing texter, too, because he just respond, okay, that or yes, that.

I recognize that I didn't understand what was implied by some of the messages that I sent.

Yeah, just because okay with nothing else around, which to me means okay.

Yeah,

there have been a couple of times where I've called Dominique after an okay.

He's like, Yeah, no, it's saying okay.

Sorry.

That tracks.

That's very literal.

Can I work on myself?

Try to get better and understand these new this new world that you kids are living in.

I don't get it.

I find, I do find a terrific.

Me and I talk on the phone a lot more than I do with anybody on the chat

every day.

Which is great.

We can chat

like some real adults.

So Dominique does like a phone call.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

It's, in fact, praiseworthy that he wants to have a conversation.

I don't call you anymore.

But he's great at the group chat.

I'm disappointed, Dominique.

Yeah, he is.

He is incredible.

He's an elite group chatter.

Doesn't overdo it.

Well, that's my thing in group chats, though, is that

I'm not going to lead the team in field goal attempts, but I'm going to have a pretty good percentage.

By the way, invariably, Mina is always leading the league in attempts.

And like, she's a good percentage, too.

I'm not saying that.

But like, that's where I'm like, oh, I'm the guy in the article.

Like, I can't keep up.

Yeah.

I can, I, I, I told Mina recently, I was like, I think you are in, Mina, the two most active group chats on my phone.

And she looked at me like, really?

Those are the two most active on your phone?

As if like,

I am, I, yeah.

She's definitely in my most active group chat, hands down.

And she runs that group chat.

God.

So who is worse than, than Dominique if you're saying that Dominique is not dead last?

I want to build a power rankings here.

Labatard and Katie Nolan.

No question.

In the sports media power ranking, it was the worst text here.

Katie had the two phones thing.

It was impossible.

That's right.

She, like a professional athlete, had two phones.

I mean,

like a quarterback.

You got two phones.

You don't got one.

And then

I don't know what that means.

And then it seemed right.

Dan either doesn't respond or sends a way too long text.

Yeah.

And she's, you read it and you're like, God, I suck at everything.

Thanks, Dan.

It's just like, Dan, you should just be emailing people.

And then you get an email from him and you're like, Dan, don't do that.

Not be emailing people.

Do you think when he sends an email, it's like he's voice dictating it because of lack of punctuation?

It kind of

no way.

It would be

such

a clarifying detail if, in fact, he was just dictating it.

Instead, I think that's just his brain.

Yeah, I like it.

I like a no bullshit.

You like a giant, unbroken block of text that is not even being vaguely considered to be broken into paragraphs.

Love it.

So do you?

Gives me joy.

Do you have a power ranking of worst sports media texters?

Dominique's dead last.

Dead last.

Perfect.

Dominique's again, because today

we had other options for this story.

And I'm like, I guess we're going to do the story that most accurately describes the guy who's supposed to bring this in.

I'm not in very many

group chats.

I consider Mina one of my closest friends, have zero group chats with me know um

and maybe i should rethink that but i think i was in i i'll leave a group chat i love that i love that for you i'll leave a group chat right out of here the little the little tiny text that's dominique foxworth has left the chat i'm gone bro you will leave i am in group chats that i have not contributed a single thing to but i'm just lurking do you like silence them yeah oh hell yeah so like i hell yes i don't like having the red bubble so like i can't silence the group chat because then it says 300 and I don't know when I've gotten a new, you got to go.

You're out of here.

You're out of here.

If your group chat is like too aggressive, you're out of here.

I have one group chat that, and the group chat that I love the most is my favorite group chat.

And it's three other guys and me.

And we all have the proper ratio and understanding of each other's time and respect for each other.

So it's like, if somebody falls off from the group chat and they miss something, it's cool.

And if it gets super engaged, it's cool.

If we don't talk for a couple of days, it's cool.

It's a

bunch of dudes my age who see the world similar to me.

And

sometimes they're like, even it'll be a group chat that we deal with like real things.

Like the thing, this article was talking about guys.

Text is a tough place to like be vulnerable.

It's a group chat where guys are like, hey, I'm dealing with this.

There's an anecdote in this piece in the Atlantic about a guy who, I guess, abandoned his group chat also because nobody acknowledged that his mom had died.

Yeah, that's bullshit.

That's nuts.

Which one?

Which part is nuts?

Exactly.

Yeah.

I think the,

I know that you guys think the other part is nuts.

You think that he put it on the group chat is the nuts part?

Yeah.

You left?

Because I ain't acknowledged your mom died?

F ⁇ out of here.

I guess I have questions.

I mean, that's stupid.

Yeah.

It's a stupid reason to leave the group chat.

Not even a thumbs up.

I guess you can't have a thumbs up.

What the f ⁇ are you talking about?

No, I'm sorry, man.

If there's anything you need, hit me up.

So the reason why that

anecdote resonates is because I'm like, I don't want to be able to do that.

Yeah.

No, no, that shouldn't be in the group chat chat chat chat chat

where we're handling this.

That shouldn't be in the group chat.

Exactly.

But at the same time, it is weird to be in a continuous flow of conversation with some dudes and a traumatic thing happens to you and you're like.

You name the group chat.

Yeah, gotta name it.

But also, once it's in the chat, someone has to

be there if you need me.

The group chat is titled,

Everything's Gonna Be Mean About This Guy Dying.

No, I mean, no, I'm saying a group chat has a title because it doesn't, what belongs in there is not, like, the group chats always fun titles.

It's like, oh, we're in a very fun title group chat, the three of us.

Are we?

Oh, yeah.

Rush Belt Strip Club Enthusiasts.

Oh, that's right.

Because Dominique was an enthusiast as a teen.

I was not.

That's not true.

Do you remember the

Dominique was being recruited by the University of Pittsburgh?

Yeah.

And he was taken to an establishment in which

the quality of entertainment was surprisingly high.

No, it was not.

It was expectedly low.

And so then that became the title of our group chat, which is not an active group chat at all.

Respect it.

Stay out of it unless you got some to say.

It was active until

debatable ended.

We have not texted each other in the me, Charlie Kravitz, Dominique Foxworth, Kevin Clark group chat, Rust Belt Strip Club enthusiasts, since April 24th.

Perfect.

Don't start now.

I got a question about the group chat stuff.

Because Pablo is on the most liberal side of this.

Can you betray the confidence of the group chat for content?

What did betray mean?

Use it publicly without everyone know.

without everyone knowing it's going to be content.

Of course not.

You think I need a permission slip to be like, hey, I'm going to talk about this in this specific way.

Here are some jokes I'm planning.

No, no, no, no, no.

You just need to ask for permission.

The sanctity of the group chat.

I would never say anything to Pablo that I didn't want.

There was a time when I might divulge something personal to Pablo.

That's a personal chat.

That's a personal text.

Long gone.

Personal text.

Long gabbling.

In the group chat.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

There is nothing personal going to Pablo because Pablo's first thought is,

how can I make a show out of this shit?

No.

That's your second thought.

See, I would say.

My second thought is, how is my friend doing?

No, it's not.

My second thought is, how can I make a show?

How can my friend do this on my show?

So she's like, no, I'm good.

Pablo and I are not those type of friends.

See, I would text something personal to Pablo on a side chat.

But once it's in the main chat, first of all, I would never text something personal on the main chat because it's for chat dynamics

too much, though.

I guess that's a more interesting question.

Actually,

no, no, but I mean, like, when you go to the group chat, we all have done this, obviously, is when you have a group chat, you side chat someone, one particular person from the group chat about something that someone else said in the group chat.

What the f ⁇ is Pablo talking about in the group chat?

Is that so the ethics on that, you guys think that's completely fine?

I mean, you can't stop it.

I know.

It is.

That's my favorite thing.

It is a fear, though, that I think we all have.

That's my favorite thing about my group chat is if they got a side chat, the group chat that I love the most, if there's a side chat on this, then what the f ⁇ are we saying?

It is, because all the comes out, as soon as someone says something does, you get cooked or it's silent for a long time.

Then you realize that you've said something that deserves cooking.

I've said, I've sent bad texts that get silent.

It's not bad, just like a bad joke or like, damn, that one bombed.

It might be the worst feeling in the world.

Yeah,

when you're the last person to text something and there's no response.

For a day.

A day in an active group chat.

Yeah, they're chatting without me now.

The other thing about the group chat is like, it starts bigger and then there's splinter smaller chats.

And I always wonder, like, what's the number where I know I got to the terminal ending of the smallest chat?

It's the opposite of college football alignment.

Yeah.

Everything's getting smaller and you're just like, I think I got, I think I got booted out of Pac-12.

I'm in the six-person chat, but there's probably a four-person chat.

Okay, so.

Final rankings of sports media's worst group chatters/slash texters.

You're saying that Katie Nolan, Dan Lebetard are both worse than Dominique.

Definitely.

And I give Dan more of a pass because of age.

Because Dan does it.

I'm fine.

You know how to operate technology in general.

That's right.

He was putting his AirPods upside down, and Mike Ryan had to turn them right side up for him.

So, yes, tracks.

He gets a pass.

At the end of every episode of Pablo Tori Finds Out, a show about finding stuff out, Dominique, I don't want to go far, regain consciousness.

We are going to say what we all found out today.

Charlie Kravitz, we'll begin with you.

There was a theme for this show.

Oh.

That theme was

being genuine and having community

and i found out that you guys are my community and i really like that wow it was great to be back here with us

that that um that thing you found out is feels like pablo's sweater it's very like cozy it's like a hug

hasn't been washed oh never mind

but definitely uh authentic i found out pablo's dirty wash the sweater Dominique's hungry again.

I know.

What I found out is that Dominique gotta eat every couple hours, man.

Need some protein.

God.

naturally charismatic.

Dominique Foxworth needs to be refueled.

Apologize.

I think the most offensive thing anyone has ever done on my show is actively simulate snoring.

I'm sorry.

I'm out of gas.

Been talking about football since five in the morning.

You motherfucking get off my back.

God damn.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.