Monday Homestretch

BARSTOOL FINANCE CALENDAR (for the week ending 10/19)
Tuesday — Co-hosting Barstool Breakfast; IBM (IBM), BlackRock (BLK), United Airlines (UAL), eBay (EBAY), Domino’s Pizza (DPZ), UnitedHealth (UNH), Goldman Sachs (GS), Netflix (NFLX), Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) and Morgan Stanley (MS) earnings
Wednesday — New episode of Podfathers drops, w/ KFC back in the studio; Alcoa (AA) and Winnebago (WGO) earnings
Thursday — Co-hosting Barstool Breakfast; American Express (AXP), Blackstone (BX), Bank of New York (BK), E*TRADE (ETFC) and PayPal (PYPL) earnings
Friday — China data (Q3 GDP, industrial production, retail sales); US home sales; Procter & Gamble (PG), VF Corp (VFC) and State Street (STT) earnings

MMA/BOXING-  I watched Bellator 207 on Friday night because Matt Mitrione was nice enough to let me interview him for the Podfathers podcast last week.  Apparently, our podcast took a lot out of him, because he got smoked by Ryan Vader 2 days later in the octagon.

I am new to watching MMA, but between this match and the McGregor debacle last week, I will never again bet against a grappler when he is facing a traditional striker… Vader dry humped Matt for 15 minutes into a unanimous decision in the same way Khabib was able to straddle Conor seemingly at will before choking his Mick-ass out.

Vader will now fight Bellator 208 champ, Fedor Emelianenko, in the final of the Grand Prix sometime in January.

Over to boxing… If you didn’t catch the Terence Crawford fight on Saturday night, it might be the last time you get to see him for free.  Here are 3 minutes of it…

An uppercut Terence didn’t have to throw in the 12th after 11 rounds of domination gets Crawford to 34-0, has Benavidez blaming the loss on a gunshot wound he had to his right leg back in 2016, and sets up Crawford v Errol Spence Jr for sometime next year if Top Rank and Al Haymon can get it together.

NFL- I went to a Jets game yesterday with my 2 boys.  Here’s a couple of observations…

I took the kids to a Jets game 2 years ago, and I kept track of the number of times they heard the word “cunt”… Back then, the number was 12 times.  I am happy to report this year it was only 4, including one in reaction to the dance-cam.

For poor people who have never been to a sporting event, the dance-cam is the camera that pans through the stands to catch kids doing the Fortnite dances.  There was a small red-headed kid who was doing very well apparently because the camera stayed transfixed on him for a long time.  Finally, some drunk and superstitious Jet fan behind me screamed out, “Hey, cameraman!… Can you pan away from that little ginger cunt?… They’re bad luck!”

Which brings me to another observation… Seems like Jets fans have become so gun-shy in the face of winning a game that the stadium actually gets more silent when they have a lead.  Instead of a cacophonous sound of fans cheering for them to stretch out a lead even further, there is a nervous whimper of people who have invested a lot of time and money into this team, and who dread them pissing away another lead.

I liken Jets fans to a battered spouse who is afraid to appreciate a nice sunset because he knows a right hook is probably waiting for him around the corner (battered spouses are sometimes male, and sometimes they dance dirty).

Last football observation without mentioning any real football… There is a TON of weed at football games now.  It was a windy day in October and yet the smell of weed was still predominate in the parking lot.  And the halls of the stadium itself smelled like the back of my uncle’s van.  I know that “more people smoking are weed” is not a hot take, but I am saying the predominance has got to be hurting beer sales at this point.

And finally, I will end today on a story… I finished up radio this morning and the conversation in my office turned to haunted houses.  Willie and I were sitting near each other when a young lady had commented that there are some haunted houses that now provide a more personal experience by tailoring the experience to whatever your greatest fear is.  Seems like an expensive proposition, in theory, but I am sure that the place just ramps up the fake webs for people who answer the greatest fear questionnaire with the word “spiders”.

Moving on, when this young lady asked Willie his biggest fear, he quickly answered, “Heights.”  And similarly, my rapid response was, “Black people.”

So the most personal haunted house experience for myself and Willie Colon would be to have us both stuck up on a ladder.  And as Willie yells nervously at me to help him down, all I can do is cower and throw my wallet at him.

Take a report.

-Large