Speaker 1: Previously on Miller High Life Presents The Heavyweight Diaries. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: is acting coy lay him what I've been working on?
Speaker 1: I have nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, Bloomberg says. Pinky swears
Speaker 1: are sacred. The Gimlet Media conference room is a blaze,
Speaker 1: glowing with the brilliant light of the elephantine chandelier hanging
Speaker 1: low enough to almost tickle the top of my balding pate.
Speaker 1: But the room is made even more radiant by the luminous, young,
Speaker 1: scrubbed faces of the Gimblet advertising team, the Gimlet Marketing team,
Speaker 1: the Gimblet Brand Synergies team, the Gimlet Press outreach and
Speaker 1: public relations team. In the room too is Michael, my
Speaker 1: designated observer from People Off who ever since the Way
Speaker 1: Too Casual Friday incident of twenty sixteen, has been assigned
Speaker 1: to all my meetings. I watched the room watch me
Speaker 1: for a full thirty seconds as I pull mightily on
Speaker 1: the sliding glass door trying to enter the conference room. Finally,
Speaker 1: my designated Michael comes to the rescue, opening the door
Speaker 1: with a quick flick. He leads me over to the
Speaker 1: head of the fifty foot long table and stuffs a
Speaker 1: piece of paper in my hand. It reads meeting agenda
Speaker 1: time two hours, speaker Jonathan Goldstein, purpose to report progress
Speaker 1: on the new season of Heavyweight. It here bears mentioning
Speaker 1: that the new season of Heavyweight is progressing poorly, very
Speaker 1: very poorly. It might also bear mentioning that everyone in
Speaker 1: the room except for me, is wearing a toilet seat
Speaker 1: around their neck. Gimlet has a new sponsorship with Hoity
Speaker 1: Toity Toilet Seats, a startup that crafts toilet seats from
Speaker 1: a single piece of salvage timber and delivers them straight
Speaker 1: to your door. The business teams are showing their support.
Speaker 1: Hoity Toity Toilet Seats were designed by two graduates of
Speaker 1: Stanford's prestigious School of Medical Fashion. The ad copy reads
Speaker 1: wearing them around the neck like a Hawaiian lay promotes
Speaker 1: proper posture. Flipping over the trifoled brochure reveals celebrity spokesperson
Speaker 1: Harvey Kaitel insisting that not only are his Hoity toities
Speaker 1: the height of hygiene and a soothing balm for his
Speaker 1: near constant whiplash, but with the right shoes, they're perfect
Speaker 1: for an evening on the town. Will Heavyweight be sponsored
Speaker 1: by the good folks at Hoity Toity as well. I
Speaker 1: ask Hoity Toity's focused on a different demo. Madison, head
Speaker 1: of marketing, says, they're more Cardi B than Wilfrid B.
Speaker 1: That's what I call Wilford Brimley. But we do have
Speaker 1: some exciting sponsors for heavyweight, like what I ask adult undergarments,
Speaker 1: she says, mobility scooters, orthopedic insoles, wheat, germ fiber supplements,
Speaker 1: some super cool stuff. Awesome sauce, I say, so, how's
Speaker 1: that quirky, self deprecating commentary of yours coming along? Asks
Speaker 1: the senior VP of brand Synergies, a twenty three year
Speaker 1: old toddler named Bryce. Super Awesome sauce, I say, wiping
Speaker 1: the sweat along my hairline with a fish taco wrapper
Speaker 1: from the pre eating lunch that I wasn't sure I
Speaker 1: was allowed to eat, but which with reluctant, tensative rat
Speaker 1: like bites and loud, nervous swallows. I've been eating without
Speaker 1: cessation since I entered the room. Bryce twirls the artisanal
Speaker 1: toilet plungeries carrying as a matching dandy stick, and suctions
Speaker 1: it to the tabletop with a loud, thwacking sound. What's
Speaker 1: the first episode about? What isn't it about? I ask?
Speaker 1: I then try out a jolly, infectious laugh in order
Speaker 1: to get the room laughing and establish a tone of
Speaker 1: casual bonami. But what comes out of my mouth instead
Speaker 1: sounds like a barking seal who's just eaten tainted yogurt,
Speaker 1: has yogurt all over his seal whiskers, and has begun
Speaker 1: barfing out shrimp, cocktails, scuba gear, and whatever else it
Speaker 1: is seals normally eat. In the ensuing silence, Bryce asks
Speaker 1: me to offer a little more detail. It's about this
Speaker 1: teacher who once yelled at me and made me cry
Speaker 1: in third grade. I say, I finally just tracked her down,
Speaker 1: and asks Bryce, making eye contact and leaning forward exactly
Speaker 1: fifteen degrees, as stipulated in gimblet Media's Good Listeners Make
Speaker 1: Good Managers video tutorial. In an interesting twist, I say,
Speaker 1: it turns out she died five years ago. I ended
Speaker 1: up speaking with her hospice nurse who cared for her
Speaker 1: in her last days, and asks Bryce, leaning forward an
Speaker 1: additional five degrees. He says, I say she made no
Speaker 1: mention of me. Bryce fiddles with his toilet seat. What
Speaker 1: else you got, he asks, and the room erupts in laughter.
Speaker 1: What else I got? I got nothing? As the sound
Speaker 1: of the room's youthful titters stab at my ear drums,
Speaker 1: I consider pitching a trip to England, where my unique
Speaker 1: powers of interlocution might help solve Brexit, But that would
Speaker 1: involve taking a trip to England, where the dampness might
Speaker 1: amplify my trots into a full blown case of the scoots.
Speaker 1: Desperate for an idea that was more local to my
Speaker 1: personal bathroom, and with yogurt on the brain, I explained
Speaker 1: how Gimblet media editor Jorge just was just telling me
Speaker 1: how he'd been up all night after accidentally eating some
Speaker 1: spoiled yogurt. I add some sly emphasis on the word
Speaker 1: accidentally to up the intrigue. What if he had a
Speaker 1: do over, I say, affecting the voice of a wizard
Speaker 1: casting a magical spell, and could undo having eaten the yogurt,
Speaker 1: not by barfing nine times like he already did, but
Speaker 1: by not having eaten it in the first place. As
Speaker 1: I speak, I wave my arms in theatrical suspense building
Speaker 1: circles and slowly rise from the table, hypnotizing my brand
Speaker 1: strategy biz marketing colleagues with a perfectly executed borsh belt bob,
Speaker 1: an old Vaudeville trick designed to focus the audience's attention
Speaker 1: onto the performer along with it, my voice grows louder
Speaker 1: and louder as my pitch reaches an hysterical crescendo. If
Speaker 1: you allow yourself to venture past the limits of your
Speaker 1: earthly imagination, you might begin to envision what such a
Speaker 1: do over might yield. With my eyes closed and head
Speaker 1: tilted back, I shoot my arms out to each side,
Speaker 1: bono style and fall into silence. I count down in
Speaker 1: my head five, four, three, executing a perfect pocono'se pause,
Speaker 1: an old Vaudeville trick designed to increase tension at the
Speaker 1: end of a performance to a level so high that
Speaker 1: the audience can't help but break it with a rapturous
Speaker 1: standing ovation. Two and a half two one, Wait for it,
Speaker 1: Wait a little longer for it. With no applause forthcoming,
Speaker 1: I start the countdown again, three, two and a half,
Speaker 1: two and one. When I open my eyes, the boardroom
Speaker 1: is empty save for Michael, my people ops observer, who
Speaker 1: is furiously scribbling angry notes or angrily scribbling fury notes.
Speaker 1: Either way he avoids my gaze. On the table beside
Speaker 1: me is a Gimlet brand Vellum note card. Written upon
Speaker 1: it in big floury handwriting is a note from Bryce
Speaker 1: loved your little skit bro ps. You've got three weeks
Speaker 1: to cough up something or else. It's curtains for certains
Speaker 1: XO XO Bryce. Cakes. All I've got is a big,
Speaker 1: fat Canadian goose egg. It'd take three weeks alone just
Speaker 1: to figure out the perfect cutesy retort to Bryce. It
Speaker 1: was beginning to seem like my Canadian goose was cooked.
Speaker 1: I sit down at the head of the boardroom table
Speaker 1: and help myself to the last remaining vegan brownie on
Speaker 1: the party platter. To wash it down, I crack open
Speaker 1: an unopened Miller High Life, which is still ill mercifully cold.
Speaker 1: This has been chapter three of the Heavyweight Diaries. With
Speaker 1: any luck, the new season of Heavyweight will begin on
Speaker 1: September twenty sixth. Until then, you can chart our progress
Speaker 1: each week with a new diary update. And remember the
Speaker 1: best place to listen to Heavyweight is on Spotify. The
Speaker 1: second best place to listen to Heavyweight is on a
Speaker 1: love seat sharing a pair of earbuds with your sweetheart.
Speaker 1: Heavyweight is Me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Jorge just Stevie Lane,
Speaker 1: Khalila Holt, NBA Parker. This episode was mixed by Emamonger.
Speaker 1: Music by Bobby Lord. Our ad music is Vivaldi's Spring,
Speaker 1: performed by the Wichita State University Chamber Players. We'll have
Speaker 1: a new chapter of the Heavyweight Diaries next week