Transcript of Hour 2: Little Green Doodie Balls New

This is the Dan Lebatard Show with the Stugatz Podcast.

The draft is where hope begins and bad decisions live forever. Come watch it unfold with us. Draft Watch presented by Bucked Up, Thursday at 7:45 PM Eastern, live on YouTube at Lebatard Show.

So the end of the week is going to be a grueling, grueling grind for the employees of this particular network. We are going to be doing 5 shows before we get to Friday, and one of them is Thursday night off the draft because you all know how much I love the draft. Thursday night live draft coverage. The Dolphins— it's a giant day for the Dolphins because the Dolphins have a lot of draft picks. Uh, the thing that I wanted to ask you guys about because I am fascinated by it— we talk all the time around here about the dollars that athletes make. To me, it's been strange. I had this conversation with Sampson the other day. He thinks it's always been so. It has not always been so that we always have known the salaries of the players. That is something that has changed the way we view sports. The fact that every damn contract that's out there has a dollar figure and you know what your franchise assigns as a value to the player. The Padres selling for $3.9 billion. That's football money, okay? That's Walmart, Denver Broncos type money. Floored me because of the inflation that has happened in baseball.

The Padres in 2012, Zaslo, sold for $800 million. The Padres. And I thought they were crazy to go get Blake Snell and Machado. And I'm like, what are they doing? They're the Padres. Well, what they're doing is turning their franchise into something. Petco Park sells out a lot. Petco Park is top 5 in attendance. San Diego is a weird market in that it's one of the biggest cities in the United States. I think it's top 10 biggest city in the United States, but it's not one of the biggest media markets. Like, I don't think it's top 30 in media market. So it's a giant city, but it's not a giant media market. The fact that San Diego doesn't have very much in the way of real sports, but right in the middle of a beautiful city on the water, They've now got a franchise that just sold for $4 billion. Why is it that people care so little about what the owners make but care so much about what the players make? And generally speaking, when we have conversations about labor versus management, most people end up siding with management, even though what I just said to you— there aren't very many things that in sports that have an inflation rate of that one.

Where you go from $800 million in 2012 to $3.9 billion. You go from the Mets going for $2.4 billion at the beginning of the pandemic to now the Padres are worth $1.5 billion more than that. So just the difference between the Mets and the Padres is twice as much as what the Padres went for in total in 2012. That inflation rate is nuts and, and proves that sports franchises are almost always a great investment.

Well, when you say, why don't fans care about what owners make? I think fans care about what owners make when they're not then putting it back into the team the same way fans care what players make if they're not performing for the team. Like, I think that's the correlation there.

Oh, but I think there's been a shift though with fantasy football and an assortment of things that makes us all our own GMs that people now in fandom, smarter than they've ever been, more informed than they've ever been, actually like to assess, is my player overvalued or is he undervalued? Am I getting value from that pick? It's no longer, is he just good? It's also in the construction of my team. Is this something that is valuable? And I'll tell you what's happening with kids that has floored me when it comes to the infection of whatever it is that fantasy football does. Too many kids now following sports. I'm not saying too many as in too many, although that too, but many kids are watching sports and these aren't human beings, they're just numbers. That it's all, all they are is an assortment of numbers that fit into however it is you fantasy GM because you've made the shift from how good is my player to how much value am I getting from my player.

Well, it's not just the fantasy, it's also how prevalent the gambling is now. Like the gambling is a massive thing now. Like, my older son is way into the gambling. So yeah, like, I think that, that now is playing a major role.

It's changed the way that fandom is experienced though. Would you guys be interested? Do you guys think you would have the same interest if I tell you, uh, you know, baseball player X is getting $150 million contract? If I gave you the information every year at the end of a baseball season, here's how much the Padres reported to the government as earnings? Like, would that be interesting to people in the same way, or is it just the players that's doing this? Because I'd be interested in that. I'd be interested. I don't understand why the Portland Trail Blazers are presently being run the way they're being run—

cheaply. Yeah, but the guy that owns the Carolina Hurricanes also bought it from the Paul Allen estate, is now like doing a lot of things that are kind of not in the NBA, you know, usual, which is You get— you go to the playoffs, you get a t-shirt. They're like, no t-shirts for the playoffs. Everybody's like, wait, what?

They did that down here for a little bit.

Yeah, but come on, this is Class A.

They're not sending their two-way players on the road for the postseason.

Also something that does—

it's crazy.

They're, they're trying to check out of hotel rooms early so that they don't have to pay for the extra half day.

Are players doubling up in hotel rooms?

I don't know if they're doing that, but they're not having as many for like staff and people that work for the team. They're like, all right, you can be in the conference room for 7 hours. No, they're trying to save money that way. And it's like, you guys spent a lot of money. You own two sports franchises. You got the money. What are you going to— and they also— another thing that I thought, that I thought was crazy was they're looking for the new head coach and they're like, all right, the new head coach for the Portland Trail Blazers, we want him to take less money. We want him to be less expensive. So if you want to make $3 million a year coaching the Trail Blazers, you can do that.

I mean, they're allowed to spend whatever they want to spend. And then fans are allowed to get mad about it.

Well, but it would make sense, right? If all of America, all of American business is being affected by the fact that people are coming in and slashing costs so that you minimize inefficiency, do you know how much inefficiency there is in how much it costs for these teams to travel? Like, it's, it's going to be something that makes an appearance here and there where people are going to continue to get to the thing and then cut the soul out of the thing because because they're doing everything to save costs, because everything in every economy feels like it's shaking.

I don't know enough about the dynamics, but I've seen people like Trista weigh in on this. And this is a— this is a bit of a shock to the NBA system. Should be noted, Carolina Hurricanes, while their facilities are often the butt of some jokes and they're trying to do stuff about that, the Carolina ownership and front office is well respected in the NHL.

Why wouldn't everybody come to any business right now and try to make sure that you eliminate inefficiencies. I'll give you one example that I've just learned over the last 5 years because it's the business that we're in. One of the reasons that the documentary business has fallen apart is because in order to tell a story right now, the way that the doc business is working, there are no inefficiencies on where it is that profit can be made. It's been made so skeletal that there's very little profit that can be made on documentary movies in a way that they used to make profit. However it is that sports teams ended up traveling. And another thing that's happening in documentaries— that Jail Blazers documentary isn't very good, and the reason it's not very good is because they just let the players tell their story and there's just not enough in there.

They don't tell good stories?

Well, it's just not examined. You make your own determination, but it was clear that it was made by the players. It was just, it was just obvious that it was made by the players. And, uh, in a way, I mean, uh, there's just a lot missing from this, from the story. They're, they're called the Jail Blazers, and Bob Wizet, their former general manager, points out correctly there have only been 3 teams in NBA history that really have a moniker. It's the Showtime Lakers, it's the Bad Boy Pistons, and it's the Jail Blazers. But I left that documentary feeling unsatisfied on— they As an example, they didn't really even tackle the racial component of what was happening in Portland. Like, they glossed— they skipped right past it.

Well, Bonzi said as much in his interview with us. It's like, hey, we wanted to make this doc, so we made it. It's like, yeah, it's only going to be looking very, very good on their end with nothing really to push back on.

The reason everybody wanted to make the Jail Blazers documentary for the last 10 years is to tell the truth, not just to tell the story that you have access to the players so they'll sit down with you. Like, you want the whole truth, not just their truth.

Right, but it became an economy, and it became these empires for these athletes to build out these worlds and these production companies post-career, some doing it during their career. And the athletes aren't going to sign up for the true story. They're going to sign up for their version of events. And that's what's happened to the documentary feature, at least in sports.

It just kills interesting. It's not— if you're going to trade the access for dilution of the truth, You're, you're just making something that's less interesting than it could be.

It's— I understand your perspective because you're a consumer of these things and you also own a media company. It's a bit of a bummer because we aspire to make the interesting documentaries, but you're pretty cut and dry when it comes to the capitalism of all these rights fees. You got to be cut and dry about what this economy is, because if you want to tell an interesting Megan Rapinoe story, Megan Rapinoe will tell it herself.

That's fine. But I'm also interested in the Padres going for $3.9 billion, and it's not because they have to cheapen their product in order to do it. They're not making their product less good. The reason that they're filling their ballpark is because they're interested in competing and make the playoffs 4 out of 6 years and spend big money on big players because they're interested in being the very best.

Shouldn't it be celebrated then, the fact that there is a market for them to go about this? Because a lot of people were scrutinizing. I know David Sampson was like, these contracts are, are bad. They're going to regret all these contracts. Couldn't believe the price that the Padres went for. And here they are. In short order, making one hell of an ROI.

The thing with the Padres, too, is like they're making an investment banking on getting more money from baseball over the next several years. When baseball expands, you're going to see like $150 million go toward each team. That's supposed to happen in 2030 or 2031. They're centralizing all of the media right now. The disparity in TV contracts between the Dodgers and the Padres is $300 million. It's $330 million for the Dodgers. It's $30 million for the Padres because they're run internally by MLB when they lost their TV contract a few years ago, and they're banking on MLB centralizing local media. That'll make another $250 million a year. So they're buying it high. And the fascinating part becomes, are the players going to try to use this ownership, use this number as a means to say, hey, You guys can't cry poor and put a salary cap on us. With the CBA coming up, this number is that much more fascinating.

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Bow.

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Dan Lebatard.

It sounds to me like everybody could use a hug because a hug is always the right size.

Stugatz.

All I have put in my body today is 3 cups of coffee and an entire cup of honey.

Don't let him fool you. He said in the break that he's jittery.

This is the Dan Lebatard Show with the Stugatz.

Do you guys not both fear a breaking point on this? It can't keep happening this way. Like, it's not— it's just— I've heard this all my life about baseball, right? Giancarlo Stanton's contract was supposed to be something that was unmovable. And now there are plenty of contracts like that. But wouldn't you assume that it can't keep happening this way? What's going to happen is there's going to be a work stoppage and the sport's going to go away for a while because they can't keep doing it this way. Like, there's no way they avoid a work stoppage. Like, baseball's going to shut down for a while. Like, that's not going to be the WNBA talking about it and posturing. Baseball has done that. And I think it's— I don't know what you're hearing in baseball circles, Jeremy, but I would assume that a lockout is all but guaranteed.

All—

most people think that that's going to happen in some capacity. I think everyone knows that baseball's in a really good place right now. Viewership continues to trend up. There's so many stars in the game. It would be a disaster for Major League Baseball if they lost a huge portion of next season. And I think both the owners and the players know that. The problem is, if it's salary cap versus no salary cap, that is not a place to start that just gets settled quickly.

Speaking of money, Zaslav, I don't know if you were interested in this story. A former Alabama football player— this is a unique form of fraud I had not seen before in the sports world— a former Alabama football player is accused of getting more than 13 loans for about $20 million by impersonating David Njoku and a couple of other NFL—

Michael Penix Jr. and Xavier McKinley.

He was wearing a wig, he was wearing makeup, he had falsified documents, and he— the wig— when I saw the word wigs in this story, plural wigs, it was my favorite part of the story because if any of you have seen shirtless David Njoku, It would be hard to impersonate him shirtless because—

doesn't he have burns?

He gets on— well, that too. He also— yes, he gets on airplanes though shirtless because if you were—

he goes just about everywhere shirtless.

Yeah, if you looked like he did shirtless, you wouldn't wear a shirt very often. Why would you deny the people the rights to see the sculpture that is your body?

I get it.

But putting on a wig to impersonate Michael Penix or to impersonate David Njoku, putting on makeup in order to to not just have falsified documents, but be attempting to look like a player because you were a former player. I don't know how somebody gets away with that 13 times to the tune of $20 million. I am not very good as a fraudster. I would not— I want to ask this person questions like, when was the— when were you most scared? Did the wig get askew at any point? Like, what sort of— what sort of situations did you have?

I want to know why he picked those individual players.

Yeah, they don't look alike. Mike says it, but the thing is you have some similarities in some of them, right? Xavier McKinney has dreads, so does David Njoku.

He—

Xavier McKinney at one point had half of them painted blonde too, so it's like they're— David Njoku famously has that. The thing is, when you go, you're not going to show up as a defensive tackle from Alabama and be like, hey, I'm Xavier McKinney, safety.

Did he show up wearing the jersey?

It was a Zoom.

They don't, they don't have any similarities. They have one.

Everything was, everything was via Zoom. So like, it's like, hey, grainy footage, like, you know, got the wig, got the mustache, got this, got that. So like, he was just going through Zooms and just cramming them out and being like, yeah, I'm Xavier McKinney. Hey, yeah, Michael Penix.

Incredible range.

Yeah, uh, safety, tight end, quarterback slash. Uh, Tony's putting in a mustache, which I, which I like.

Somebody had a mustache somewhere.

Was there a mustache? Of course.

Well, if you go over the wig, you gotta go to the mustache.

I'm not sure any of those people have a mustache.

I think Michael Penix has a thin mustache.

Uh, Zazz really caught me off guard though with something I hadn't considered, which yes, and Joku is a burn victim as well. There was a time that he walked into the stadium with a number of different burn injuries. I don't know at present, I don't know where that stands, but it does make me want to ask follow-up questions on if you were doing makeup, is that what you were doing with makeup?

I wasn't trying to be, you know, uh, inconsiderate, but this was October 2024 was the end of it. It was May 23rd to October 24th, so it was probably before said.

Uh, that'd have been ambitious.

Okay, yes, thank you for the timeline. That does—

victory for the theater kids, by the way.

Zaslav threw me off.

Uh, you weren't ready for the burn conversation?

No, because all of a sudden it opens up a whole nother thinking process in terms of the questions that I was asking. The wigs, plural. He had an assortment of wigs. This scam, this is how this scam works. I've got documents. I've got the players that have the wealth. What do I need? What do I need to really pull off this caper? Because it's a caper. What do I need? I need wigs, plural. I can't be using the same wig. It has to be a different wig for a variety of different people.

I got to tell you something, by the way, Dan, we had bagels and cream cheese this morning. And you see those capers and they're like all over the cream cheese. Those are disgusting, man. Like, whoever says I want little green duty balls on my bagel anyway?

Go ahead. I'm a late bloomer on the capers. Just started using them. Love a little bagel with cream cheese, little tomato, little capers.

Capers are gross.

Out loud, Zaslo asked me that question. Who likes little green doody balls on their bagel? Put it on the poll.

@LevitarShow, do you like capers?

Little salty doody balls.

Dom capers.

Yeah, I like Jeremy's way better. Little green doody balls.

Speaking of wigs.

It's not a wig.

No, it's plugs.

It's colored.

It's plugs.

Do you think when he describes his plan to his friends, he's like, yo, I got a caper.

Uh, this makes me think of something else here because I was thinking about movie genres because, uh, they're, they're, uh, our friend Adam McKay has a movie that's very popular right now on Netflix where he's trying to do something on climate change and the way he's getting Americans to pay attention to it or the world to pay attention to is by throwing sharks in it. On May 1st, another shark movie is coming to, uh, theaters. Deepwater is—

oh yes, I saw a trailer for that!

What a sick trailer.

Oh, that's Aaron Eckhart, right?

Your first start in The Plane and then sudden you're like, oh, plane movie, okay, cool, I like plane movies too. Then all of a sudden, plane crash into the water.

I'm into that also, by the way. Not in real life, but in movies.

In movies, I love a good plane crash. Then the sharks get in after the plane crash.

They're just like chilling in the plane that's been, you know, cut in half because, you know, they crashed, and there's sharks. I'm into it.

So sharks as a genre confuses me that it's all still alive, uh, and it's just— it's separate as a genre, right? We don't have— I guess we have heists as a genre.

Heist is a great genre.

I love heists.

Heists and capers, right? It's heists Those are the same. Those are similar, correct? There's not— those are not different.

There's no different movies.

There's not a caper category and a heist category. It's just one umbrella category. All right, so help me put together the list of movie genres. There's drama, there's comedy, there's thriller.

Well, everybody knows there are two movie genres I will watch the movie no matter what: time travel movies, prison movies. I will watch any of those movies. What I'm really waiting for, Dan, is for somebody to take the time travel and mix in the prison. Like, maybe you're in prison, but you know how to time travel. Let's put those two together. Now we're cooking with gas.

Throw some sharks in there as well. But let me— let's just get together here for a list of genres. What horror is a— it's a genre. There are no other animal genres, right? Maybe apes. There are no—

is there—

is that— Apes have made a comeback. There's a recent horror movie that had an ape in it.

There's nothing like shark movies. Shark movies are by— they're by themselves, right? Every once in a while there'll be a bear with Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins, or somebody is devouring or trying to devour DiCaprio. But by and large, I don't think people think of apes as a genre.

What about alligator movies? I saw a movie called The Crawl with Barry Pepper. That's a good movie.

No, it's not. And no, it isn't. The snakes are not a genre.

Oh, I don't know about that.

What about dog movies?

Snakes on a Plane.

What about dog movies? Homeward Bound, Air Bud.

There is dog movies.

Marley and Joe.

Cujo. Cujo.

Dog's a genre? I'm not saying—

The Sandlot.

Look, are any of you surprised? Are any of you surprised that the shark movie is still a thing?

Marley and Me.

No, they do really well, especially the low-budget ones, including— this premise has been done before and it wasn't done a long time ago. There was a movie from 2024 called No Way Up. In which a plane goes down into deep water. There are air pockets, there are people that survive, and then they start getting attacked by sharks.

This isn't that one? This is a different one? This is the same thing?

I believe that one had Colin Meany. This one has Sir Ben Kingsley. Now, another interesting note to this: the director of this movie is Renny Harlin. He directed Deep Blue Sea as well. So this is his second shark movie, and it has a lot of people wondering, is this a spiritual sequel?

You've got to be surprised that the shark movie is still a thing. How is the first one the best of them?

I like movies when you're trapped in the ocean, you gotta like manage the sharks. I saw this one movie with Blake Lively and she was like trapped in, uh, like on a buoy, you know, and there were sharks around.

They do very well. Like I said, they're, they're not super high budget and you put a shark on your VHS cover, people rent it.

Yeah, I just wonder if McKay got this idea from you, Dan, because it's a Category 5 hurricane and then sharks end up in this coastal town, and I just wonder if it was you getting fooled by all of those videos of sharks being here in Miami in the street after hurricanes. I think that must be what happened here, right? He's like, ah, and Dan talks about climate change too. I've got a movie just for him.

So the hurricane picks up the, the, the sharks and sends them somewhere?

No, no, no.

It's like a rising tide.

Oh, that's not cool.

Yeah.

I want the hurricane to pick up the sharks and then put 'em somewhere else.

She's pregnant.

I gotta tell you, very pregnant.

You're off.

Has to give birth.

You're off base about Crawl, man. 84% certified fresh. On Rotten Tomatoes. You don't want to watch a good movie, don't watch a good movie, Dan.

So Crawl, not Thrash. You're saying Crawl is the alligator movie?

Yes.

No, I did see a portion of that.

It's a good movie.

I don't think alligators is a genre. It's not a genre. It's not. I think sharks—

We have Hook.

We have Hook with an alligator movie.

But I think dogs is a genre, though. I think there hasn't been a dog movie in a minute that has been popular. But I do believe that a dog is a genre of movie. I also believe that Zazz has two. He's mentioned two. Time travel and prison, those are both genres of movies. Both of them are.

I'll stop whatever I'm doing and watch a time travel movie, prison movie as well. And I already told you, I'm waiting for somebody to have the balls to do a time travel prison movie.

Well, I mean, Demolition Man was a cryo prison.

That's—

I, I got one for you. There was a big shootout in the end. Jesse Ventura was there.

That's not a prison movie.

It's a cryo prison.

He's in prison.

I'll tell you what, I don't even think it's a time travel movie. You lost. There's a time jump, but they're not traveling in time.

Traveling in time?

No, no, no.

They travel forward in time.

Futuristic.

Okay.

Futuristic.

It's not drawing a line in the sand.

You want to go back.

Future prison. Because that wasn't even Sly's only future prison.

I'm jumping.

I'm traveling.

In Judge Dredd, he was a— he was the rare judge that found himself now behind bars in penal colony.

On the wall.

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Ein perfekter Frühlingstag.

Hach!

Sonne.

Hach!

Park.

Hach!

Picknick.

Und so viele Pollen.

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Dann lebe tot!

A woman who was out swimming with her friends is believed to have been swallowed whole by a 13-foot shark without any of her friends noticing. Hm. That's the weirdest part about that Story. You're swimming with friends, you're having a good Time, and then all of a Sudden people are looking around and go, where's Shelley? Like, nobody screamed?

Every friend group has a Shelly though, that if they go missing because a shark ate them whole, you wouldn't notice.

Classic Shelly.

Exactly right. Yeah. Stugatz.

She went quietly apparently. If I'm swallowed whole by a shark, you're gonna know it.

This is the Don Levitar Show with the Stugatz.

Beethoven: Good Dog.

I don't know if I can— I guess the animal genres are what? Because snakes, snakes doesn't— they're not enough snakes.

It can't be Indiana Jones movies.

It can't be one or two. We're making an assortment.

Aladdin.

Every damn year a shark movie gets made. Every year. Every year a dog movie doesn't get made.

A snake movie. There's a good, there's a good amount of dog movies.

A snake movie does not get made every year. That's not— I mean, there's—

there hasn't been—

we'll see what 2026 has to bring. There's also offered up anaconda.

A huge difference, guys, between there is this animal in the movie and this is centered around the movie. Indiana Jones is not a snake movie.

He says it's a movie with a snake.

I hate snakes.

101 Dalmatians, Best in Show.

Dog movies are a thing.

I'm telling you, man, as a hurricane tears through Florida, Haley rushes to find her father who is injured and trapped in the crawl space of their home. With the storm intensifying and water levels rising, the pair face an even bigger threat lurking below the surface. I won't spoil that part.

And that's— and that also seems to count as a climate change movie.

Yeah, there are— takes place in Gainesville.

There aren't— the alligator and the crocodile are too dumb to get multiple franchises. They get one here and there. They do not qualify as a genre. I reject it because their brains are the size of a walnut. They're just— it's not the same. It's not— it's not what a shark movie is.

It's tough to swim in zigzag. You know, that is true. You gotta run in zigzag. That's easy. That's easy. If you get caught by an alligator chasing you, you're just stupid. But the swimming in zigzag, it's tough.

Does everybody know that you got to run away from alligators in zigzags?

Just common sense, man.

Some people don't know that. Some people try to go straight lines.

Put it on the poll at Le Batard Show. Did you know that you have to run away from an alligator in zigzags? Uh, because it is— you, you do have to. But Zazz is also correct that yes, when the alligator has the home field advantage of you're the swamp, uh, there's no getting away in zigzags.

Uh, are we sure this was an alligator movie or a croc movie? Crocodile's way more dangerous.

I don't know the difference.

You don't know whether Kroll was alligators or crocodiles?

I'm saying like if you showed me a picture, I don't know if that's an alligator or if it's croc.

If you see a gator, it's less intimidating than a croc. Yeah, croc, way more ominous looking.

I disagree.

What? You don't know your gators?

I believe either one of them and they look like a giant dinosaur snake, I'm gonna be scared.

I'm gonna give away the spoiler of what lurks beneath the water here in Crawl, because this synopsis says giant alligators.

Well, then that's a mistake on their part. They got the stubby little snout. Croc, way more scary.

Another genre: getting disavowed by your government. I'm in.

There have been 8 of those.

That is not a genre.

What are you talking—

James Bond gets disavowed by his government all the time.

That's just a franchise called Mission Impossible.

And Mission Impossible, clearly.

That would fall under the The thriller, that would fall under the thriller category.

No, but not every thriller, you know, you don't get disavowed by the government.

That's espionage. That's a different genre.

Baseball is its own genre.

When we talk about things being bought and you guys complaining about WrestleMania, I don't know if you guys saw this. If Zazz saw it, he would have gotten upset. They were showing Adam Silver in the crowd at the Cleveland game, and the announcers on Prime had the audacity to say what a fantastic job he's doing.

Oh my God.

Worse than that, he goes, "Look at this precious metal, Adam Silver." And I was like, "Oh, please." Come on.

Come on.

Said he was doing a fantastic job. And I thought of Zazz watching that game. If he hadn't checked out of basketball in order to follow hockey for the first time in his life, he would have been enraged by Adam Silver. And that's simply you just being a good broadcast partner, right? So again, when we come back to this dilution of truth stuff, you guys don't care? You don't care that we're gonna keep making some of these trades?

Yes, we do, but there's nothing that you can do about it. See, we're American. We're used to not being able to do anything about the things that bother us via gigantic capitalist ventures.

Jeremy, go find that sound, please. Go locate that sound for us.

Pardon me.

Got it. That is Chris Cody after a buffet. I heard something that made me sad this weekend, the news out of Vegas where Vegas is, uh, obviously whenever there are economy problems, uh, Vegas gets hit pretty hard where disposable cash is. A lot of Vegas is shrinking, suffering under the weight of just things changing, and, uh, the Vegas buffet is all but extinct. The MGM Grand has now closed its buffet and has no plans for that giant space either. Uh, there are a number of hotels in Vegas that are struggling. But Vegas is gone. I don't know how you guys feel about the Vegas buffet. Chris Cody, I'm assuming that you love the Vegas buffet.

I've hit a couple in my day. I always did think it's a little excessive for each hotel to have two.

There used to be more than 70 buffets in Vegas. And one of the things that would be celebrated, as everything in America now costs $45, is you could get prime rib for $4.99 because it's a way that they wanted to get you near their casinos and on their property because you have to walk 17 miles to get to the next property, even though it looks like it's right next to you. But there are now evidently fewer than 6 buffets in Vegas at all of the hotels. Put it on the poll at Le Batard Show. Did you know that there are now fewer than 6 buffets in all of Vegas? And it all started during the pandemic. All during the pandemic, everyone realized, okay, we can't just be sharing food like this.

Now the, the recent trend, more and more hotels are jumping on it, is they're going the way of all-inclusives. At these Vegas resorts.

Chris Cody loves some all-inclusive resorts.

Talk to me, talk dirty to me.

He's got some, he's got some weaknesses there. When you can get a drink package and a food package and you just tell me this, it's one price.

You mean I don't have to do anything? I just walk in, I just get the food and come out?

All inclusive.

Yeah, I, I don't mind a Vegas buffet. I had the, the one at the, uh, the Wynn is very famous. That one's really good. But then one almost killed me. I got diverticulitis from one straight up.

The thing about the buffet is, is you think the way to attack it is, oh, I'm not gonna eat all day to build up the biggest appetite. You gotta eat a little bit in the morning to set up for that, that buffet meal. If you're gonna hit the buffet around 4, you don't wanna like not eat all day cuz then you get filled up really quickly. It's a, it's a rookie move to think that you can, oh, I'm not, I'm just gonna leave a bunch of room, not eat all day. No, no, no. You gotta eat a little something, get the metabolism going, really open up that space, then smoke a joint right before.

I was in Vegas 2 months ago. We didn't do a buffet. Yeah, it's like, whatever.

Well, they're hard to find. There aren't any of them.

No, no, but it's not because we said, hey, let's go have a buffet. Oh my God, I can't find one. Let's not. Like, we just— we didn't do a buffet. We didn't care.

You're a buffet guy in other aspects of your life, or not?

I can't tell you the last time I did a buffet, to be perfectly honest with you.

I can.

I went to a buffet locally, and I looked around, and it was just a place that I loved pre-pandemic. And then I got there post-pandemic, and I was like, this is kind of I mean, if Pizza Hut bought back the buffet, I'd be into that.

Yeah, like, are we calling the sad continental breakfast at a hotel a buffet? No, I mean, it is technically a buffet. I can get as much as I want.

No, it's not.

I can have as many little sad cereal bowls as I want.

It's not even advertised as a buffet.

Continental breakfast. Okay, they're trying—

that's just different genres.

That's just them trying to sound fancy. It's a buffet.

Uh, put it on the poll at Levitard Show. Is the continental breakfast, uh, does it qualify as a buffet? You just mentioned Pizza Hut. I don't know I want to know what you guys think of the changes generally happening in America to some institutions because Pizza Huts are closing, Wendy's are closing, 700 7-Elevens have closed. And I imagine this is all a byproduct of you can pick up, you know, you can pick up your phone and just, you know, get DoorDash or get anybody to bring you anything you want at any moment. And convenience is, I imagine that that's what's happening. Do you guys have another theory when I tell you a bunch of Wendy's are closing closing all over the country. Like, this is—

they stopped caring about Dave's secret recipe is what happened. If you want me to talk directly about Wendy's, I didn't like what they did for a long time. Their quality went down, and now they're, you know, having to deal with the consequences.

I don't think it's a— I don't think it's that their quality has gone down. It has.

Okay, you tell me then.

I was at Wendy's this weekend and sad. No bueno.

Okay, I was of the impression though that the reason that this was happening to 7-Elevens, to Pizza Huts— oh, let's check in with Jeremy here. Jeremy, where are you? You— okay, you found— you have found the place the sound is coming from. Let's check in with Jeremy.

Jeremy is muted.

Jeremy, you're muted.

Okay, they can't even hear that we're telling him he's muted.

Yeah, uh, well, it's too loud. Yeah, it's too loud. We are, uh, the video team has made an executive decision, and I wish they'd told me about it before I threw it to Jeremy. They said it's all too loud, you don't want to throw it to where Jeremy is, so you'll just have to enjoy him in picture-in-picture thinking that we can hear him. Yeah, as they continue to renovate here at the Elser And, uh, it's behind that door.

Whatever's behind that door, Dan, we still don't know.

Yeah, but they just told me, the video team just told me we've had to turn it down. It would annoy the audience. He's too close to it. Can we at least see it though? Let me see what's back there. Is there somebody jackhammering? Is that the problem?

Looks like the door's locked, Dan.

Okay.

Yeah, he's going like this, which means door is locked.

All right, that's too bad. Uh, uh, you think it's the quality of the Wendy's? Absolutely. That it's not— well, it's not— is it the 7-Eleven's quality? Is it the Pizza Hut's quality? I've assumed there's too much competition on convenience and that people, man, aren't people more reclusive than they've ever been because everything can be brought to your home and you're spending the whole day and every time you look at your iPad, it's got 9 hours you've spent today on your devices.

9, oh my God, we're so much closer to 14. Anyway, I got Wendy's this weekend. Obviously I got the number 5. Everybody knows you gotta go number 5 spicy chicken sandwich. And I got the spicy chicken sandwich. I opened it up. I thought it was a burger at first. First. That's how flat it was. Very, very disappointing. Usually it's a good thick, thick juicy piece of spicy chicken. This, this was— it was— this was a piece.

So what's your explanation for what's happened with 7-Elevens?

I don't know.

That, that almost 700 7-Elevens are closing when I thought— I thought that this was, uh, this is— these are the affordable places. Every— everything is $45 now. Everything. More.

We just got an alert. My wife bought diapers, $60. I'm like, whoa, where'd that come from?

Wrap a towel around them.

The prices I see when you order like food delivery nowadays, like the jacked up prices, is just insane. Like something that should cost like for me, my wife, my kid, like $50-something. It's like $95.

Yeah.

How many times have you ordered dinner on your Uber Eats or DoorDash, whatever it is, and when you get to the end of the order, it's like $130 for the 3 of you. It's a punch in the stomach. And you have to abandon it, 'cause just on general principle, I'm not paying this.

You know what it made me do? Go throw it back, Jack. I went to start calling the places now, and instead of getting their higher prices on Uber Eats, I'll call the restaurant itself and be like, "Hey, give me this, this, this. I'll go pick it up." What'd you say? And I've gone and picked it up.

Jared, Jack?

Sorry, could you speak a little bit louder, please?

We didn't hear a word that you said from down there. How bad was it? Because they shielded— A darned word? They, they, they— What? Shielded us from any of the sound that was coming from your mouth because they said it was too loud. No, they don't use shields in shark movies, Dan. That wouldn't work. How bad was it down there and what's the equipment that they're using? Could you see anything? That was as close as you can get? You couldn't see where that sound is coming from in the hotel? What? All right, you're gonna stay in character. Okay, what'd you say? All right, good.

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