Rod, Justin and Karen discuss Justin kicking it with the old lady gang, Rod discovers he has Covid live on the air, a candle almost burns the house down, Justified, Jonestown: The Women behind the massacre, listener feedback, and pregame news.
Pre-Game: (Protected Content)
What it is Rod, Karen, and Justin.
I hope all of y’all are well.
Karen, I just wanted to say that I appreciate your laughter, insight, and the ability to derail a show with a smile on your face. Keep doing what you do.
Justin, I hope the new job continues to treat you well. Continue to be the catalyst of change in that organization. It is working.
Rod, I just want to say that I am proud of you and your growth. I appreciate that you are honest and transparent with your life, your moves, etc. I’m not saying that to be messy. I am saying that because you living publicly, apprehensions, anxiety and all and still doing your thang my man. Thank you for showing people that what you are accomplishing is possible. Thanks also for taking time with me when I was in NYC for the show.
Continue to be y’all and take care and be safe.
Drow
P.S.: See y’all in CLT sooner than later.
~It’s funny what you can do when you don’t have a choice in the matter. Anonymous
I’ve spent the past couple of days since the news broke about Game Theory reading over randos’ takes on Bomani on the Dan LeBatard Show subreddit. A whole bunch of people are in their feelings over David Samson begging on Twitter for someone to DM him Bo’s phone number, after finding out that Bo had him blocked. I let most of the more critical ones go in one ear and out the other, so to speak, since they’re mostly just different iterations of calling Bo “thin-skinned” and “arrogant,” and we know what THAT’s code for.
What I was hoping to get your perspective on, as someone who knows Bomani better than most, as well as someone who wrote for him on the show, is the notion that a format like Game Theory is not the best fit for him, because it’s too scripted? There seems to be this prevailing opinion in the subreddit that Bomani was closer to being his authentic self on shows like Highly Questionable, which is a sentiment I find to be dubious at best. I don’t go all the way back to The Morning Jones, but I discovered you through Bomani, during what I guess you could call the latter-day era of The Evening Jones, and I feel like I have a pretty good sense of Bomani’s get-down, so the idea that he was able to be himself on HQ in a way that he wasn’t able to be himself on Game Theory strikes me as ridiculous.
The other most common criticism from people who claimed to have watched Game Theory was that he was at his best during the guest interviews and the ‘man on the street’ stuff, and that the writing was actually a *weakness* of the show, and that they felt like the writing didn’t capture his voice. Since I know that you were one of the writers, I’m not presenting this to you to try and evoke some second-hand outrage, or anything, just wondering whether you think that criticism is fair at all?
Having heard both you and Bo talk about it, I personally don’t think that the people being the most critical have any sense of how hands-on Bomani was with the show, or how much ownership he took in it, if they felt like there was any part of the show that wasn’t true to him. The two criticisms that I thought might have had some validity to them were 1) I don’t know if that kind of show can succeed on HBO, no matter who the host is, and 2) I don’t think that a show based on that format can succeed only doing 6-10 episodes a year. You’d probably have to go at least half the year in order to gain the kind of traction needed to be any kind of success.
While you rest up Rod, I wanted to drop a documentary on Netflix that you will enjoy. The King of Clones. I thought it was a straight forward story based on the trailer that I saw, goddamn this was bigger tea… I am moving my hustle to the scientific realm!
I have been checking out the Victim /Suspect documentary thanks for that too. Man, a lot of learning there
No tea from me today. Just wanted to wish Rod a speedy recovery from COVID. Get well soon playa!