003 - Manchester United...? OOF!

In this episode I talk about Things I've Learned. I start talking about how to fake sports knowledge, and end up discussing television, Irish Americanism and impossible elevator trips.

If you have questions, comments, critique or feedback, find me.

Transcript

Russell: 0:00

My name is Russell Stuart brown. I'm probably not the Russell. you're looking for, but I'm the one you've got right now. These are some things that I've learned. Something that I've learned is that. It's remarkably easy. Too fake. How much, you know, about something. And again, I feel like everything I've learned has almost been summed up by a little bit of knowledge can go a long way. Which, Hey, maybe that's, that's another direction to go in. For looking for stuff, but one of the the way I first learned this. Was that I did not follow soccer. I grew up in the states. I mean. I'm not the Russell you're looking for. But what you should know is that I am the All-American Irish American. And I, I earned the title of Irish American in a way that. I think I deserve it. All right, let me unpack something. The Irish hate the term Irish American. The Irish. In general, do not like Americans who claim. Irish. Heritage or ancestry if it's too far back. If your grandmother was Irish. I'm pretty sure that's enough for you to get an Irish passport. There's a statistically large amount of Irish passports out there. Above 40 million, I believe that are out there. And I think that the population. It's 6 million. If you come to Ireland. And you claim to be Irish. They hate that. So much. So the phrase Irish American is seen as American with notions. But I grew up in America and then moved to Ireland and continued to grow up here. That's kind of a weird one. Cause like how do you freeze? I grew up in. Like I grew up until the age of 10. And after the age of 10. Is when I moved. In and around there. It's a little bit younger than that actually. I don't think I hit double digits till I moved. But like, In that sense? I, I didn't. And even grow up. In either place specifically, I did a good portion of fundamental portion of my growing in one place. And then after that I did the Well, I suppose if the fundament, the polishing portion of my growing up. I don't know. I think, I think it is a well. Agreed. Upon the opinion of the. By many who you would ask that I have yet to grow up. But that's fine. But either way I earned the phrase. Irish American in that manner. And so. In those few years of foundation, what I did learn was American sports. I played catcher in little league. And we went undefeated in the season before I left. I think I had a, a very good habit. Are very good luck when it came to teams throughout my life. I think I have always ended up on strong teams. And I think my greatest successes in those regards. I have come in in the sense of, in the terms of group projects. Which I mean, obviously tells you how successful that is. So low venture is going to be. That was fine. But yeah, I had American sports as my foundation. And so I had played soccer, but not the way Irish kids had played soccer. And maybe I was good. I feel like I was good as a goalie in America. But I feel like the first time I played soccer with Irish kids, I realized that like, no. They were going to dance around me. And I was because they had spent so much more time playing. Sports and they could dribble in just unlike these are we're talking to, like I said, like single digit children. But in relation to me, They were. Like semi-pro. Now bear in mind when we went to Dublin. And we went to Iowa. I skate for, for. Christmas. I don't know, field tours in America, in America. I feel like they were called field tours. And then over here, they were called like, School tours. But like, Over here. A big element. Over here. A big element of the school tour was the opportunity to go and shop. I feel there is a generation of Irish children who went on school tours to the Liffey valley shopping. Facility complex shopping center, I guess is yeah, of course shopping centers. What it's called. It was basically Ireland's biggest. Or best mall at the time. And there was always a different excuse to beat in Dublin. It was a ton of stuff you could actually do in Dublin, but I'm pretty sure. It was remembered. For the trip that you took to the Liffey valley. And that was one of two types of. Of school tour. For very young. I mean when, when it came to it, then you could. As you got older, eventually you would talk about the school tours that went to other countries. I was never in school. When I was in school, that wasn't an option. It became an option in the years after me. So I don't have any experience with that one. But the other type of school tour. Was the adventure tour. And it wasn't always camping. In fact, it usually wasn't an overnight until again, Later on, but like, there are places. In. Ireland that our adventure centers. And I would say that there's probably. Maybe 20 odd activities offered there and at least eight of them are common. Like. They are there. I don't know how many there are. Because I remember going. I remember several different names, but I only remember one location. So I think that it was referred differently. It was referred to differently in different schools. I was at. But like, At this location, there would be an obstacle course and there would be orienteering and the orienteering would be in a small forest and there'd be some form of kayaking. I don't think it was rapids. Exactly. Although I think that may have been a thing I remember actually, I'm pretty sure there was one. Where. Jumping into the water. And I remember it as being like rapids, but like, I think jumping into the water was one of the activities. And at this location as well, actually, the obstacle course was the best one though, because the obstacle course at this location was on this like little island at the center of a huge lake. And the obstacle course itself had like two or three fun elements. But like that little boat trip to, and from that was so cool. That was, that was, I think, I think everyone should actually. Yeah, so that's what I'm going to say about this. What would happen is when you got there? You would probably be in a group of like two, three bus loads of children. And like, You would be given to activities. And over the group of children, that would mean that like, Maybe. Eight different activities were happening. Eight in the morning, eight, eight in the evening. You ate your pack to lunch at lunch. But. You would only get to do two, even though over the course of the whole day, the eight and the eight would add up to 16. And now, now that might not mean 16 separate activities because. They would repeat. Some of the earlier activities. In the later round, but I feel that there was a point where three years in a row. I did the obstacle course. And I didn't get any better at the obstacle course, but I think I appreciated it more. And. I think that there was a lot. A lot to do with that day came down to which tasks do you got? But I think more than anything, I would have liked to have more variety. But I guess it was just picking names out of. So, yeah, like I was saying, I didn't have the basis for soccer. Right. And so what I learned very quickly. Was that you didn't need to know what had actually happened in the soccer. There were certain tones of voice and certain things you could say. Such as. Purchase United. Huh? And that means nothing. I know there's a sitcom. It's a gram Lenahan sitcom. That does a joke about this. And, and it's something to do with arsenal. And that was a useful for eights. I remember when I learned that phrase, it was added to my vocabulary. But I don't want to just like reference other people's stuff like that. But. It was this kind of like catch all phrase where you could say the name of a team and the right tone of an. Would would just imply that. You had feelings about it. And you didn't have to elaborate on those feelings. Another thing with soccer is that you don't have to know anything about soccer. Other than the fact that. Every team supporter. Hates. Yeah. You don't really have to know anything about soccer. What you do have to know is that every team supporter hates. Other teams, supporters, but also some hate, some. Some hate others more than. You don't really have to know a lot about soccer. And. Another part. About pretending to know, or at least having conversations about it. Is you, you need to know enough for the other person to start talking about it. And then, and then you just follow on that. And like, honestly, I'm not teaching you a checklist here of how to lie to people. I'm a hundred percent doing that. What am I talking about? I guess in my way, I'm trying to help. I'm trying to help people who can't make small talk, but like, Hearing myself say it out loud. I mean, it does sound like deception. And it's only going to get worse. So buckle up for the rest of this episode. So once the, once people get talking about soccer one of the things you can always just like. Take. One of the things you can always assume is that as much as they love their own team, there. It's probably another team out there. They hate as much. And they'll want to rag on that. As much as they want to praise their own team. So if you can find out. And so for me, I would know a couple of the teams that have rivalries. One way of knowing that is, is teams that share a city. So like the two Manchester teams, city and United. They have a rivalry, Liverpool and Everetts, and both play out of Liverpool. I always feel bad for. For like the Everton in that situation. Where it's like, oh, the other people. Well, they, they they're named after the city. Although, I mean, of course, efforts in. I'm sure there's a place. Everton. Makes more sense as a, as a place as well, because Everton just sounds like the name of the city, whereas. Liverpool. I don't know if. Okay, this is good. Especially after everything I've just said, but I don't know if people know this. I sure hope I'm not wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Liverpool is named after a fictional bird. The liver, the lever or the live or bird, like. I'm almost a hundred percent certain. I heard that somewhere and oh, you know, some podcasts, they fact check. And when I say some podcasts, No actually. A lot of podcasts. I think there's just this weird, like, We almost. We've. It's like, I'm going to crowd surf. Crowdsource it's like crowd sourcing. It's like, I'll know I met a mistake. If enough people complained. That's probably unfair. The two Manchester's Liverpool and Everton. They're both from the same city. There's a host of London cities. There's a host of London teams. Todd, no Maurice, no Chelsea. And. There's. Twins agree. I th I think like, It also helped that I kept up to date on current affairs. And the way I did that was through comedy. I got there. There's so many, so many British politicians that I can't put a face to, but I could tell you certain qualities about them because they are the qualities that were. Brought up about them. Bye comedians. Like there are, there are British politicians who. I have heard fat jokes about. And I have no evidence that suggests they are overweight. Directly. But it's quite obvious that they are from the context of these jokes. But it's to the point where if you make that joke and I'm sitting in the audience,'cause I get that a laugh. As kind of crazy in a way to me. And maybe fat was a bad example. But it's the first one that came to mind. I don't know if it's problematic. But like the D w. In this situation that was, you know, A unfortunately named politician. For his physical girth. And so that was the joke that was always being made. Andy. Is it fake then of me. To laugh at that. Because I don't know that he's fat. Again, I know that he's fat. Like I only know it. Through this secondhand knowledge. And this sort of second hand knowledge. Is pretty much what you need. And so in the sense that like, And so in the sense that knowing a little bit about something. Can help you. Sound like, you know, more about it. I'm going to try to do this. I was gonna say without spoiling anything, but like, There will be. Certain in consequential spoilers. Made. Here. Because I need to provide examples. And I think it's. Almost more important. To know these little non spoiler spoilers. Because it allows you to participate in the conversation. Without knowing spoilers. So let's say there's like a TV show that you haven't watched. I'm going to go with last. I'm going to go with prison break. So with prison break. There's major spoilers. But by knowing the premise. You can talk about it right away. Prison break is about two brothers. One is in jail. The other one gets the blueprints of the jail. Tattooed to himself. Goes in. And they break from the prison. And so that is the premise that you get from episode one. You don't need to spoil things you can from there, learn a little bit more, but right away you can have a conversation. About that part. Okay. So like one of the ways I would. Ask that question. Is that. Or one of the ways that you can then talk about prison break. Is talk about how yappy I'd be willing to I'd be up for the actual prison break element. And there's the tattooing. I don't know if I could sit through. Ha. Or you could discuss. So like what, what is the limit? Let's say that your brother's in prison. Do you get a full body tattoo? Do you go in for them? How embarrassing does the tattoo have to be before? Eventually you let your brother serve the sentence. That sort of thing. Or if something's been around long enough, I think. It's natural to be exposed to certain things. About it. But also that becomes its own thing. So like, let's say the walking dead. Right. Because this is another thing. If you know, Let's say that, you know, there are more than 10 seasons of the walking dead. And I know that there's a little bit more than that as well, but I know that I can safely say there's more than 10 because I know. Then I can safely say there's more than 10. I can very confidently say, well, like what do you think. What if they had ended it at season seven? Like season seven. Would that have been a good place to just end it? Because I feel like after season seven is when it started stretching. You can say that about any show that goes on. Progressively long enough, because there are people who feel that about like the last three episodes of season. One of anything you talk about. So that is just, again, it's something that. You can talk about is, do you think the show went on too long? And there are certain shows that have very bad reputations for that. Last is one of them. And then. Sometimes. You do need to learn some particulars. So like, If I wanted to teach someone. To be able to talk about breaking bad. There are certain things. About breaking bad. That without spoiling it, make it sound like you've seen breaking bad. So one of those things is having a very strong opinion about the fly episode. And. That makes no sense. If you haven't watched breaking bad. But there's an episode of breaking bad. That one side. Sees as an amazing character study. Have a main character who has been through years of character development has some left to go. And there's the other side. Which thinks of that? Oh my God. That, that one episode where he spent the whole time trying to kill a fly. And they fall into these two camps. And it's a conversation. You don't have to know about the fly. Or do you rather, you don't have to understand what the fly metaphorically represents. If you know that the fly. Provokes a pretty strong example. R a. You don't have to know what the flying metaphorically represents. You just have to know that. People who have watched breaking bad, have strong opinions about it. Ben as well. If you, if you know stuff about the critical reception of things, I mean, I don't want to get into things that are too obvious. Because, I mean, At the end of the day. Doing a little bit of research. Obviously you can fake things. But I would like to point out, but I didn't watch. The walking, dead, breaking bad. So, I don't know. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. So another thing that I wanted to address, and I think it sets a great precedent that I'm still addressing feedback to episode one. In episode three. That was why the term junkie. Help problematic. And I said it was important that I left it in. So, if you remember, Haley sent us in a. An email. And I've gotten some responses by the way. Sorry, first of all, don't respond to other people's responses that makes me uncomfortable because then I'm just turned into a middleman, right? And that's, I mean, you want to build a community go ahead. Right. But like find each other on another platform. Don't send me messages, asking me to ask Haley questions. Okay. Because. But first of all, as well, everybody has the same question, which is a hundred Hamy gets to the top of Hilbert's grand hotel. That sounds impossible. It's not a pot. Come on it's you take the elevator. Okay. The elevator you take halfway up, right? Okay, just take it halfway up the hotel. Right. Whatever amount of the hotel is left, you take it halfway up again. Xenos elevator. Just keep taking it up and just keep going halfway up. And eventually you'll hit the top floor, right. Anyway. Stupid Hilbert's grand hotel. I did not expect that to be the controversy that come out of this, by the way. That that somebody would be occupying. Tough or votes. So anyway, They're good people Hilbert's but like, The room's service does take forever to get anywhere. And also don't get settled in your room because they relocate all the time. Sorry anyway. I was getting off track. Which is entirely what I know this podcast is about, but. Why was junkie? A bad term to use. And I think, I think it's because it's, it's a term which trivializes addiction. And that doesn't mean that I'm prescribing people not to use it. It's just something that I don't want to necessarily use. And then the other problematic issue, which again was raised by Haley and others is. Which poet I. Accused of being autistic in my leaving, sir. And I remember who it was. And I remember my argument. And I think that I could recreate that argument. It is from the half of the paper. I don't still have a physical copy of. But I don't think it's right for me to do that. Like, it's definitely wrong for a doctor to try to diagnose someone. So I feel like it's really stupid for Russell. To try to do that. But what I will say is that I think I was certainly seeing my own autism. Within. This poet's writing. I don't remember if I dropped a pronoun for this poet or not. And I'm really worried that over the course of feedback, people are going to be getting more and more clues. I think if you know enough about the era that I did, the testing. You could probably make a short list. I hope nobody does that. I think at the end of the day, When it came to that. That's what I was writing about. And that's probably why I got an, a. I think that English test. Was one of the. Prime examples. In my life. I have with being autistic. I was kind of like a superpower. And for a lot of life. Autism feels a bit more like a weakness. And so it's really good to be able to recognize those moments. Is moments where.'cause I think weirdly. I got to benefit. Maybe the best way. Maybe the best way to explain that would be to read. One of my English essays out. I don't think it would take too long. Yeah. So that's, that's what I'm going to do. Episode four of things I've learned. It's going to be. Creative writing. That came from a. 17 year old. Russell. 17 year old Russell. Who. Was trying to. Brighten somebody's day and get a B. Lobi Hi-C. And somehow lucked out. Found someone. Who decided to reward. The quirkiness that makes me be. And let me be honest. Maybe that's why I want to find that person. It's because the quirkiness that makes me be. It is not something, you know what actually. They only got it in a very small dose. So they were safe. But the quirkiness that makes me be, can be exhausting. And so it was probably lucky for them. That they only had to grade my English paper. So with that in mind. If you have any feedbacks, critiques, comments, concerns, questions, or the like, Find me. If I get more feedback or questions, I will probably address them in episode four. Other than that I will be taking. A bit of that English paper. And I don't think I will just read it all out and call that the episode. I think I'll talk about why. What I remember. And it has been years. So hopefully what I remember is accurate at the very least. I know it's elaborate. So what got into that? I have had fun doing this. I hope you've had fun listening. Thanks for coming. High fives all around.