Wright Thompson
Appearances
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, I mean, it's funny because, yeah, there's a huge ceremony. You get the big Pope hat and, you know, by the way, this is a total aside, but I just found this out. Do you know when they get down to like two or three possible Popes, they go to this store in Rome, I think it's called Gamarelli, and they get fitted.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
which means that there are two people who look at themselves in the mirror dressed like the Pope who don't get to be the Pope.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Yes. Yeah. Like that. Think about being in triple A. Three of you go up, put on pinstripes and then two of you are like, nah, you're going to go sell insurance now.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Yeah. Yeah. For sale. Baby shoes never worn. Yeah. Yeah.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
So, yeah. So how do you become a senior writer? Well, they just sort of name it. I mean, it's pretty funny. You know, my oldest friend in the world is Seth Wickersham. And I worked in a bunch of newspapers. He started at ESPN magazine, like as a fact checker. And we both ended up being named senior writers randomly on the same day. So that was fun. Yeah. I don't know what that means.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I think that means you're old and overpaid. Sort of like, you know, executive producer is a Latin phrase for taking credit. You know, I think it's some of that.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And then some terrible fucking cliche.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Dude, if I worked in the NFL and I saw him come in, I would turn and run. Yeah. But, like, no, I mean, I think, you know, I'm incredibly biased, but I think he's the best sports writer in America. But, yeah, we've known each other a really long time, and...
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Uh, I mean, as you guys know, it's a lot easier to do this job with a tribe, you know, with people who sort of understand, you know, I'm, I'm in New York chasing Aaron judge right now. And I could call Seth and he completely understands, uh, you know, it's just, it's just helpful. Cause I mean, this is otherwise a soulless, lonely place. So I'm, I'm super grateful.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Michael Jordan. Okay, so he's the GOAT. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, I mean, one of the books you talked about called The Cost of These Dreams, which is a collection of my ESPN stories, you know, two of the sort of tentpole stories in that book are a profile of Michael Jordan and a profile of Tiger Woods. And I always thought it was, I mean...
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I feel really bad for Tiger Woods because he comes along. They have a model for what to do with a star. It's the Michael Jordan playbook. It's Nike and Phil Knight and Tiger's parents. And they did what they thought was best. And it's always astonishing that no one in that room at Nike, not...
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
tinker hatfield not phil knight nobody it occurred to no one that the playbook had been built around michael jordan who is an extreme extrovert and they applaud it to tiger woods who is an extreme introvert and like honestly it feels like they broken yeah you know but there's that great john updike quote i love the mask eats the face and uh that happens to so many people in public life
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I mean, you know, it was happening to Jordan. I mean, one of the interesting things about Jordan in the last 10 or 15 years is that he's been doing real work on how to deal with the existential problem of you created yourself to be the perfect basketball killing machine. And every one of those traits that you elevated at the expense of some other trait or some other person you might've been, uh,
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You basically prune the ability to enjoy having been Michael Jordan. Right. So I think these are doing like real, real work on the, you know, on how to be happy.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know, it's so interesting. You go read Bill Russell talking about being a star, and it could be a modern guy talking, and he talks about the loneliness. You know, I'm in New York right now doing Yankee stuff. I was one of the last people in the old Yankee stadium. Uh, like to the point that major league baseball put one of those holograms on my notebook the night they closed it.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And I'm wandering around during the game. And this guy sort of comes out of the shadows who works there and is like, come with me and don't tell anybody I showed you this. And he walks me down this hall into a room that is full of chairs that have been like unbolted from the, it's like a storage room. He's like, you know what this is? And I'm like, what?
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
He goes, this used to be the Yankees clubhouse used to be down here. And this is the room where Lou Gehrig would sit by himself after he knew his diagnosis and no one else did. And like, this is the room where Lou Gehrig would sit and get ready to die. And, you know, if you think if you're Aaron Judge, you're not just competing against Otani. You're competing against Ruth and Garrick.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You're competing against DiMaggio and Mantle. I mean, the ghost that these guys have to wrestle with on the way to being the thing they want to be. I just find that incredibly compelling. And I also think that if I were in their shoes, it would crush me. I mean, I would end up on page six doing dumb shit out in New York City.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like the guys who, you know, I mean, the guys who do this well are really amazing.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
No, like, yeah, go cry on your $300 million sort of thing. Right, right. I mean, like... It is... You know, I mean, I... I've profiled a lot of athletes and almost none of them are just happy. You know what I mean? Like the guy who, you know, the guy who was probably more, you guys remember Dale Murphy who played for Atlanta Braves? Yeah. Like time MVP.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
So Murph is probably the happiest former athlete I've ever met. And it is because he very intentionally, when he retired, set about killing the avatar of famous Dale Murphy. And most of these guys try to hang on to it. You know, he went and ran like a Mormon mission in Boston after he retired, like not a ceremonial job. You know what I mean? Like a hard job dealing with young people.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
you know you're someone's parent and there's a tremendous amount of responsibility i think the guys who were happiest are the ones who understand what it means and what it doesn't mean and are able to you know cash their checks and walk away and you're like hey whatever happened to that guy i don't know man i think he's down at key west he has dinner at manja manja every night yeah yeah like
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like those are the, the ability to kill the avatar, not let the mask eat the face feels like, like I don't have any special, I just have been around a lot of guys. That's the only sort of knowledge I have.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
It's not like, you know, but it, it does feel, you know, like when you go through that collection, the cost of these streams, that collection of stories, and if you're looking for a through line, I mean, that's what, you know, the song's named after, the book is named after a drive-by truckers lyric that I really like. And it's because it's,
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
When I went and read those stories for the first time, they spoke to each other in a way that I certainly didn't intend for them to. I'm not nearly that smart, but I read them and I was like, oh, shit, this makes sense as a through line.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, one of my favorite details is that, you know, people have to be protected from themselves. If you've ever been in the Duke basketball office, uh, All of the coaches in the team meeting rooms were on the fifth floor of that building. And Coach K's office was on the sixth floor.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And if you walk out of his office, like around there, there was a stairway that led down to the fifth floor so he could sort of pop in and pop out. And it's my understanding they bricked up that stairway. So if he wants to go to the fifth floor, he has to take the elevator like everybody else. Right. I think these guys have a hard time letting go. You know, there's a scoreboard.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know, it's hard for me to know. Like, I'm going to have a story come out next week. And some people might really like it and some people might really hate it. I'm going to have like a definite point of view. And some people might agree. Some people might think I'm an idiot. But there is no binary story. zero some way to be like, this story is a success or a failure.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You guys do a show, you know, shows probably what five days a week and you get metrics. But like, sometimes I bet your sense of how a show went is very different than the audience's sense. And with sports, there's a scoreboard. And I think people get addicted to the simplicity of it. That like, I know whether I won or lost today. I got two kids. I feel like every day I'm taking L's. Yeah.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Four to seven year old. I just got a text message. The seven year old asked about makeup. I just wanted to kill myself. Oh yeah. Yup. I was just like, what? That's starting already?
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
No, it's funny. I got a book that's out called Pappyland about the history of Pappy Van Winkle. And, you know, my wife jokingly calls it eat, pray, love for dads. I used to think this book is like it's full of parenting advice. And I realize it is, but just not what I meant. The advice is just start drinking in the morning.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know, yes. And I mean, you have to be careful with that because you don't want to be totally self-indulgent. But, you know, the longer you do this, the more you want it to be something you're interested in. Yeah. Like I've been on this crazy rabbit hole in the last two weeks of I can tell you about a 300 year history of the land beneath what is now Yankee Stadium. Yeah.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it used, there was a Creek there called Cromwell's Creek that ran down into the, what's that? The Harlem river, I guess. And, uh, uh, or the Bronx or, I don't know, man, my New York geography, I'm from Mississippi. What do you want? And, uh,
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like I've gotten really interested in the idea that there were worlds and worlds and worlds that are now just in the dust beneath this thing that feels like it's always been there. One of the two of them sort of between like 157th and 164th and River, that whole sort of complex of the old and the new Yankee Stadium. So I'm just really into the fact that.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
There is this whole other history of this square of land. I have no idea if anyone else is going to be interested in it. I have no idea how that's going to fit into a story about the Yankees Red Sox, if it will, other than it's the thing I'm most interested in. And so I've been way down a rabbit hole. So it's some of that.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
It's like, well, I just hope that there's someone else who thinks this is interesting and not just like totally out of left field.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, you know, I mean, the hardest thing in the world, I'm told, is to sell books to men. And that's what I'm trying to do, which is odd. You know, but I mean, it's... These are the... You know, I think about the conversations with my father and the things we bonded over. And it was baseball games and college football games and whiskey and James Bond movies and the Guns of Navarone.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And those things to me, the way I feel about the movie, the Guns of Navarone and the way that I feel about an Atlanta Braves game. I feel like come from very much the same place. And, you know, all of these things we're talking, when you're talking about sports, you're always talking about tribe and community and inheritance.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And, you know, it's that great Jerry Seinfeld thing, you know, you're cheering for laundry and it's sort of like, you know, I don't, My relationship with the, like I have Ole Miss football season tickets. They were my father's season tickets. He and I have the same name. So when he died, I just kept paying for him. And now I've been grandfathered in, I think.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
But if they – Ole Miss was talking about tearing down that grandstand and building a new one. And they were going to move the seats. And I wasn't going to renew them. I don't give a shit about going to the games. I want to go to the games and sit in those seats. Right. And if I had to move one row – I'm not interested in writing that check anymore.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And I think a lot of people feel that way about, look, man, go into a game of a team you really care about, that your father cared about, that your older brother cared about, that your grandfather cared about. It's communion. You know, I love that thing in the liturgy, the Catholic or Episcopal liturgy. It's like we do this in remembrance of you. Like that feels very real to me.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I have not talked to him. I really liked him. I thought he was really smart and thoughtful person. You know, that story was written before he got hurt, basically. Right. And so we sort of had to redo huge swaths of it. You know, I... I...
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I don't know if you ever met Wick, the owner of the Celtics, but during all those Dead & Company shows last year in Vegas, I started doing these lunches in the Venetian every day at 4.30. And so everybody was in town, come to Smith & Walensky or wherever we were, and we're going to eat a steak and drink a great bottle of wine, and we're going to go on over.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And interface with Jake Plummer, et cetera.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And so I'm just confident my mom is not listening to part of my take. You'd be surprised. Yeah.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And so at one of those, Wick came, was like the guest of a friend. And I was so utterly charmed by the way he talked about the Celtics, because if I owned a sports team that I grew up caring about, this is exactly how I would want to talk about it. He was so pumped to tell me sort of, you know, he bought Bob Cousy a championship ring, just like the one for the current players.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And he was pumped that in 08 when they won, he engraved Red Auerbach's name on the inside of all the rings. And like he, you know, just if I owned a team, that's how I would want to be about it. And so it really pulled like, you know, I spent a lot of time around the Celtics. You know, I grew up a Lakers fan. I don't know about like if this was true where y'all grew up, but
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
you know, Lakers Celtics in the eighties was very much a code, especially in the rural South for whether you were racist or not. And, you know, like the, the things people use to describe why they liked Larry Bird versus magic Johnson were like super dog whistle. So like, I always grew up kind of hating the Celtics and then found myself just utterly charmed by their culture.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And by the way that they are like so proactive about their making sure that the, the ghost and the legends feel welcome in a way that like, you know, a lot of other teams don't. And so I don't, I had a great time running around with the Celtics for a season.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I walked into a press conference and the guy next to me was like – he comes in and the guy – it's clear I don't know anything. And the guy looks next to me and goes, watch this shit. And it was like – I was watching. I was like, this is like, oh, my God. This guy is the head coach. Like, oh, my God. I love this guy. He was totally insane. I mean like –
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
just in a flat monotone, you know, almost like sped up, like outfit in the chipmunk speed talking. And I was like, this is great. I love this guy.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, it doesn't always work. I mean, you know, Tiger Woods just would never, ever, ever talk to me. Uh, sort of other than in like group settings. You know, I think like you want to... I think you want to... I mean, I'll tell you, like with Jason Tatum, I wanted to find, you got to find some tiny postage stamp of common ground.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I mean, I think if you go read the stories in The Cost of These Dreams, they all sort of have that starting place of here is something that me, human being on planet Earth, and you, human being on planet Earth, despite the fact that our jobs are very different, Here is something that we share in common on like an existential level.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And, you know, so for Jason, with Jason Tatum, it was this idea of there is a window and it's closing.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And I think everybody has that. And so I just try to find a way to connect with people. It doesn't always work. I mean, there, you know, I've walked out of interviews. I'm like, that guy hated me or thought I was insane. Or you also like, I don't know if you got like you reach a certain age and just don't care.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
yeah i don't really care if jason tatum likes me yeah like at all and so that's how that's a helpful energy of you know i'm respectful i'm in awe of your work i don't particularly care about your weird modern celebrity and i have a bunch of questions that either will or won't be interesting
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, I don't, I like to let people, you don't want to hide. That's chicken shit.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I mean, here's the story. It's a weird move because I don't want anybody to think I'm A, fishing for compliments or B, trying to sort of lead the witness. I mean, one thing that is interesting, why I want them to have the story is most people hear from people who've read it. And it's like that game of telephone, like their description of it.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know, but I mean, I've had somebody call me furious after a story ran because their wife took the hard copy of ESPN magazine into their regularly scheduled marriage counseling session, threw it down on the desk and said, see, I told you.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like the receipts, you know, I mean, like, like, uh, so I don't know. It's a weird thing. I'm not trying to be buddies with anybody. I sort of think the thing I owe you after being this invasive is that if you don't ever want to see me again, you don't have to, uh, you know, like maybe the only person I keep in touch with that I've written about is Pat Riley. Oh, interesting. who I just love.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I think Pat is hilarious and insane. But mostly I don't. I sort of you know, slide in and slide out.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I mean, I think the origin story – I mean, you guys have all obviously seen Hoosiers where Dennis Hopper sort of stumbles drunk out onto the court. That really happened to Pat in Schenectady, New York. His father, who was a failed Major League Baseball player – he had four at-bats, I think, and almost hated his son for his success. And Pat –
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Pat was shooting free throws and he heard something behind him. And, you know, you can tell. And he turned around and his dad was drunk on the court screaming at the official. And Pat's high school basketball coach, a guy named Walt Prisbelow, who Pat just idolized, got Pat's dad off the court and got him on the bench and let the game continue.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And, you know, I think one of Walt Prisbelow's sons was a Miami Heat scout for a long time. I mean, Pat's one of those guys when his first Kentucky teammate died. I forget who it was. Might have been Frank Rams. I forget who it was. The the heater on the road playing and the family goes into whatever the Catholic church is in Kentucky where the mass is going to be.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And the only people in the church when they walk in are the priest and Pat Riley. And he has gotten on an airplane somewhere out in the American darkness and flown into Kentucky like that. You know, he's the guy who shows up. And so I think when you know that about him, everything starts to line up. I mean, this is a guy for whom basketball was a family. You know, I love this story.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
He grew up in a real Italian neighborhood in Schenectady and there was a big upstate New York mob. And so these guys would just feed Pat, you know, like he would eat as a guest in their kitchens and in and out of the back door and played with their sons. And after I think his freshman year at Kentucky, one of these guys who was a big mob boss said, Patrick, you can't come here anymore.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And he was like, what do you mean? And he was sort of like, where you're going, you don't want to be associated with me. We love you very much. You'll be family forever, but you can't come here anymore. And, you know, so he just grew up surrounded by a very strict, I mean, this is, you know, there's a story in the book on Pat, but like a really strict code about how a man behaves in the world.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And you just, I think, see that play out in weird public ways with him over and over and over. Yeah.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I think he'll die in that job. I mean, we had this thing where he was talking so much to me while I was reporting the story about retiring that one day I just called him. I'm like, hey, you're not trying to tell me you're retiring, are you? Because I don't want to have just missed all the signals. And he laughed. And then they got eliminated from the playoffs on the last day of the season.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I was down in Miami and he texted me the next day. And we went to like that Smith and Walensky down on South Beach. He lives in that big tower next to it.
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
and uh he was like you want to get a drink i was like yes and we sat there had a couple of drinks and he's like you know what you want to know what the greatest lie ever told is and i'm like what he goes that i'm going to retire to malibu and i'm like oh that's it you're never ever going away you know his wife chris is great and the way she describes it she's also a professional therapist i don't think it's an accident that he married a therapist but uh she's like you know
Pardon My Take
Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Pat grew up needing to get his, you know, his cookies or praise and he needs it.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I mean, most of the time, you know, it's like that post hoc ergo propter hoc, like, you know, Bill Belichick without Tom Brady is a sub-500 coach. I mean, I just sometimes wonder, like, all a coach is is somebody who either lucks into a star player or gets a star player and doesn't ruin it.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know, there's that idea of, like, you know, how many Super Bowl titles would the Bears have won if it had been anyone other than Ditko as the head coach? You know what I mean? Like, as opposed to he won a Super Bowl, is there a narrative where, like, actually he lost four of them? Yeah.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
That's right. And those things are like it's luck. You know, I mean, I think about, you know, my career is probably very different if Michael Jordan doesn't say yes. Yeah, that has nothing to do with me. You know what I mean? Like it was, I got him on the right day. And so you, you know, and you think about that all the time about how much luck is involved in all of this. So, yeah, I mean, I,
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
They're teams that have cultures, and then they're teams that just have three really, really great players.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, I mean, you know, this is a guy who will be in the Bahamas and send staff down to the gift shop to get four Sudoku books so they can all race. This is a guy very, very, very good at the iPad game Bejeweled. It's almost sad. It's a long fucking way down from game six to bejeweled. I mean, like, so, you know, there is, these guys don't, you don't turn it off.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Nobody who's great at anything is normal. Like just some people hide it. But, you know, I find, you know, he's a very, very serious Marlin fisherman. I mean, I think a really great comp is Michael Jordan and Ted Williams. You know, because Ted Williams was an excellent fisherman. His family let me go down into his files. He has a huge, that is a huge room full of filing cabinets.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And in those are all of his fishing logs. It's his diary, though. I mean, you go through Ted Williams' diary. And, you know, you think about, here's your fun Ted Williams fact. Ted Williams' mother, who was insane, literally, lived through his entire professional baseball career, never went to a single one of his games.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And when she died after he retired, he flew home to San Diego like a dutiful, wealthy son. He paid for a very nice funeral. He then went to her house. He got every single family photograph and he burned them. Wow.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
He probably should have married a therapist. Wow. Ted Williams could have used some Chris Riley. I mean the, and so you, you know, the, like there's a story in the cost of these dreams about Ted Williams and his mother and his son and daughter. And the idea is like to try to understand the, You want to create a logical framework where freezing someone's detached head makes sense.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
That's the challenge is like, how does this happen? And hurt people hurt people. And Ted Williams grew up in a terrible situation and was an awful father, like truly awful father. And then he got really sick at the end of his life and suddenly he and his kids had this relationship that they had all sort of wanted and didn't know how to have.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And the moment that they got that relationship, he started dying. And now you understand like these desperate kids who had wanted this iconic father their whole lives. And then in the last 18 months of his life, they get it. And now they'll do anything for even the prayer of another day. So things that are totally batshit crazy start to make sense.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, I mean, I'm from Mississippi, which is one of, if not the only state in the country that doesn't have a Fortune 500 company. And so at some point... Like, Ole Miss and Mississippi State are going to run out of money.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
The pool is just smaller. You know, I'm one of those people who, like, if the SEC just broke off and played its own thing, that would be fine with me. Like, I don't particularly like, you know, I watch whatever the SEC game is. Like, I understand I'm part of the problem. So I don't it's always sort of been this way. But look, the South is changing tremendously. And the. You know.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I'm from a little farming town in Mississippi and our farm 50 years ago, we needed 400 families living on it to farm it. And now we farm it with, I think we have 18 people and that's because the tractors can't turn themselves around. Uh, they, the tractors are GPS control, but you have to have a person in them to turn them around on the pads at the end of the roads.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Rose, we're 10 years away from that being gone. And so now you can farm enormous swaths of land with 4 people. It's like the rural South. which is in many ways been the heartbeat of SEC football fandom, is totally emptying out in a way that sort of no one's really talking about. The farm economy, I don't know if you guys have been following this, but the price of cotton and soybeans
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I mean, might be destroyed for a generation. It's going to be a really, really hard time. Mississippi and parts of Louisiana and Alabama and Georgia. And so, you know, there is a at a time when the only thing that matters in college football is how much money you can raise. That's a scary thing if you live in the poorest part of the country.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I did get kicked out of school.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, you know, shout out to the Woodbury forest school. Uh, the, uh, you know, I just went and spoke there. It was really interesting. Cause, uh, they asked me to come talk and I was like, you guys know you, are you sure? Like, you know what I mean? Like you're going to give me access to your student body.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
At one point you decided that wasn't a great idea, but it was really, you know, it was a fun night. Uh, so a lot of people, but yeah, man, I, uh, It's interesting. I read a book by a writer named Willie Morris called North Toward Home after I got kicked out of school. And it really, I didn't know, well, two things. One, I didn't know that being a magazine writer was a job until I read this book.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And two, he talked about the South in the way that I felt about it, which is very much what Patterson Hood calls the duality of the Southern thing. If you only hate the South, you're kind of a jackass. And if you only love the South, you're kind of a jackass. And I mean, it better be both. And in the conflict of that and in the inability to sort of separate those feelings lies the experience.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And so, you know, it's sort of like being a Catholic convert. Like if you didn't go to a Catholic school and your parents didn't beat guilt into you, you're not Catholic. I don't care if you take communion, you know. And so like it's a tribal thing. And so I read that book. And before then, I just was totally lost. And that book really clarified a lot of things for me.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like, you know, I sort of thought, you know, I'm going to run this farm and never leave this town. And that book really opened a world to me.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, look, man, I mean, every time people start bitching about him, it makes my head want to explode.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like when the greatest guitar player in the world, not named Derek Trucks, falls in love with your favorite band and devotes himself to learning it note for note. You should be nothing but grateful. I mean, the only appropriate response to John Mayer is thank you. Yes.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know, I don't really want to write a story so much as I want to write a book that no one else seems to want me to write, which is I want to just randomly pick 25 bootlegs out of my tape collection and then write a memoir about listening to them over and over again and call it Nakamichi.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like after my tape deck. And so I got a great Nakamichi tape deck in my office and I have all of my old tapes and like, you know, so like in my car, I just go to re-listen and like whatever the day show is. Like today, let's see today, the show on YouTube, What is it? I'm pulling it up. Here we go.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
So today, the current Grateful Dead played 6-5-93 at Giant Stadium, 6-5-80 in Tempe, 6-5-75 at the rehearsal, 6-5-70 at the Fillmore West, 6-5-69 at the Fillmore West.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And they're also different. And you kind of go through phases like I'm very much right now and have been for a while on like a late Brent. phase. Yeah. 89 into early 90. Like to me, that's my favorite iteration of the band. My friend, David Ray Morris would slap me and be like, no, it's 74 moron. Go listen to those five nights at the winter land.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
And so like, I love the fact that one, there is no right answer, but you kind of go through phases. Like I like that.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, you know, I mean, those guys got really rich really quick. And I love the idea of... There's so many great – I just did all these voiceovers for the PGA Championship, and the number of Grateful Dead lyrics, I snuck into those things. Yep, I noticed. Yeah, we got a – you used to play for Silver, now we play for Life.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I got a totally apropos of nothing, Moses came riding in on a quasar or something. Yeah. I'm talking about sand traps, and I did Dark Star. I'm not even trying to make it work. I'm just like, no, this is what we're doing now. I'm turning this enormous sporting event into my own weird sort of deadhead insider crossword puzzle.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Sorry, the hotel they're trying to call me. Yeah, huge debt.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I would 100% buy it. Or like if somebody could turn the robot into Bertha, like the Fox weird robot. Is the robot still exist? I don't understand the robot.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know, I know I work for the competition, but that might be the dumbest goddamn thing in the history of civilization. Like, there's a football player. Yeah. All right.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
These are complicated things.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Well, I would in no way disrespect your deep love for Cletus. I would say I hope you don't get burned.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I just can't wait for the Cletus trial. They got this footage of Cletus in the hallway of a hotel. It's really bad.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
He got oiled up and short-circuited, electrocuted three R&B singers. Robots require a great deal of oil. That's true. That's a good point.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Look, I love you guys. If you write fan fiction about Cletus that is even remotely psychosexual, our thing is over.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I've done this to way too many people to let somebody do it to me. Hard pass. No, I mean, like I got asked a couple of years ago by someone who I won't name. And I was like, no, man, absolutely not. Like, no, that's we're not doing that. It's funny because I reached out to Gary Smith to profile Gary and Gary was like, nah. Yeah. Yeah, I was like, well, that's fair. That makes sense. You get it.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Yep.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Let me tell you, let me tell you, if he ever calls you and says he's doing a story about you, you should just tell him every shitty thing you've ever done. And maybe he'll be in a good mood when he cuts your arms and legs off.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
It's that great, like Robert Penn Warren line from his sort of book about the governor who's based on Huey Long. And it's like, man is conceived in evil and born into filth and passeth from the stink of the dighty to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
I want that guitar.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
You know what else he has? He has the Jerry Tiger guitar. No, he's got the original manuscript of on the road.
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Indiana Pacers Take Game 1, Wright Thompson, Mike Florio Talking NFL, Aaron Rodgers Is A Steeler + Fyre Fest Of The Week
Like that's crazy. Like the Kerouac, you know, that it was all taped. Like he has that. Yeah. Or he doesn't anymore, but you know what I mean? And, uh, I would like that. And I'd like Jerry's tiger guitar. Yeah. If someone's going to find a good home for it, uh,