NN - EP14 - From News Fatigue To Fighting Legends: A Candid August Check-In

A short episode from a weird summer. Originally released in August 2020.

We step back from the noise to reset our filters, refund Patreon for August, and focus on real conversations with family, friends, and listeners. Then we swerve into a satirical turn-signal PSA before a spirited debate about UFC nostalgia and the Tyson vs Roy Jones exhibition.

• news fatigue and building better filters
• pausing social media and protecting attention
• refunding Patreon as a trust move
• community invites via Patreon and call-in line
• satirical but serious turn-signal etiquette
• UFC and boxing nostalgia, PPV economics
• ethics of aging fighters and head trauma risk
• pride, liddell, rampage, and legacy moments
• closing credits and music acknowledgements

Get involved. Don't get involved. Hate your government. See how that works out for 'ya. Good luck, dumb, dumbs!

Chapters

• 2:59 Host Welcome And Theme Music
• 3:23 Coping With News Overload
• 4:01 Social Media Break And Patreon Pause
• 4:27 Community Chat And Call-In Invite
• 5:01 Satirical Turn Signal PSA
• 8:16 UFC, Boxing, And Pay-Per-View
• 10:34 Tyson vs Roy Jones Debate
• 13:18 Liddell, Pride, And MMA Nostalgia
• 16:35 Random Moment And Closing Credits

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 2:34

There is a nine times we've recorded the hard drive in front of a previously recorded studio audience. Hey, welcome to the show, everybody. Larry Compton, your host for Nerds and Nonsense. That was LocalH bound for the floor. Our theme song, thank you very much, Joe Daniels. And before that, we heard De Blues from Music Man Mark to open up the show this week. Music Man Mark laying down a riff or two. And man, can you believe it? August already? What a crazy, crazy time. But our country has been through many crazy times. Lots and lots of crazy times. In fact, even pandemics and very divisive times, very challenging times before. And we'll get through these times as well. But it is getting to folks. It is getting to me, has gotten to me as well as I try to adjust filters for listening to news, uh, my you know, news intake, technology news, national news, political news, and it just you know gets overwhelming. This being my first summer without social media, other than my LinkedIn account, my professional LinkedIn account, and our Patreon community. Speaking of our Patreon community, I refunded all of our donations this month for the month of August, as I've just been in this space, not feeling really creative and productive and doing much with my hobby. So in any case, we're not going anywhere, folks. We certainly got a lot to talk about, but today I just don't feel like adding to the noise about the pandemic, the election year, global protesting, our escalating issues with China, all of that stuff, you know? Instead, I'd rather just chat with family and friends. And in fact, that's one of the primary reasons that I created this show was to do just that. You can chat with us via the Patreon community, or you can call and drop us a message. Three minutes or less, 541-314-4271. The following is a public safety announcement. Sort of. What if I told you that you could let other cars and people around you know ahead of time that you were going to change lanes or make a turn? It seems crazy, but using 1940s technology, every car produced these days comes with this amazingly simple, easy to use, but often overlooked feature. The turn signal lever. Or lever, if you will. Conveniently placed right next to your hand on the steering wheel, and every car produced today is a small lever that can be switched up or down, and here's how it works. And please, don't try this the first time while driving. With the vehicle in park and your foot on the brake, start your vehicle and place your hands on the wheel. Now while looking straight ahead and keeping a firm grip on the wheel with the other hand, push the lever either way, up or down, gently, until it locks in position, and then immediately return that hand to the steering wheel. Do not be alarmed by the clicking sound, nor should you start busting a rap to its hypnotic rhythm. Your focus should remain on those around you as you continue to travel through life at completely unreasonable speeds in your several thousand pound killing machine. Go ahead, push the lever the other way now. Keep your foot on the brake, and remember to breathe. Deep breaths. You can do this. Listen, I I haven't even told you the best part yet. After you complete an actual turn, the clicking noise stops all by itself. I recommend trying this a few times by yourself, with the vehicle in park, of course, and then have a friend do it with you while you stand outside the vehicle and take note of the colored lights blinking on each side of your vehicle, in both the front and back of the vehicle when the lever is activated. Or lever. You know. But this is how others around you know that you're going to change lanes or make a turn, those flashing lights. Finally, practice this while you're actually driving. Push the lever in the direction you're going to turn well before you actually start the turning process. If you don't do it until you start turning, well, you did it wrong. Immediately return to your driveway, put your vehicle in park, and repeatedly slam your forehead on the steering wheel while screaming insults at yourself for at least two minutes. And then take another deep breath and start this lesson again. This is not a real public safety announcement, and I'm not a real driving expert, but I will point out that I figured out how turn signals work long before I even considered taking a driving test. I guess that makes me more knowledgeable than most in this area. And if they are still baffling to you, I would ask that you consider selling the vehicle and maybe walking more. How the hell are you, man? Happy August. Yeah, August. Nice. Hey, do you watch boxing at all? Do you watch any boxing?

SPEAKER_02: 8:25

Oh man, you know, if it ain't on Netflix, probably don't see it.

SPEAKER_01: 8:28

Yeah, and so you don't watch UFC, never got into watching UFC or Oh yeah, back in the day I was. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I haven't I used to be so into it years and years ago before the Ultimate Fighter, and then the first couple seasons of the Ultimate Fighter, and then I was just, I don't know, you know, too busy with life and work and stuff to really even keep up, and it was getting that there were so many events, it was ridiculous. So it quickly went by the wayside. And but here this summer I've been trying to catch a fight here and there, and you know, it's been I don't know, I watched the fight night last night it was with Brunson pulling off the upset, and then a week ago, a pretty good card with Whitaker and Till at the UFC. But I saw that Mike Tyson is going to be fighting Roy Jones Jr.

SPEAKER_02: 9:20

and he's gonna try to knock him out. I saw that.

SPEAKER_01: 9:23

Yeah, in an exhibition bout in September, and that the that they're gonna do it on pay-per-view. You know, the whole card's gonna be on pay-per-view, whatever other crazy acts they do, but this exhibition bout, and these guys, of course, are talking it up like they're gonna go full board, they're gonna go, you know, all at each. And like you said, Mike said he's gonna knock him out, you know. And Jones says, you know, he's gonna surprise him. Uh so$49.99 is what they're saying the pay-per-view is gonna go. I saw this on uh MMA fighting uh.com, and I just couldn't believe it. Like somebody's gonna pay$50 to for ah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 10:04

I've never paid-perview.

SPEAKER_01: 10:06

You've never pay-per-viewed?

SPEAKER_02: 10:07

I have not. Yes. I have seen Tyson fight, but I didn't pay for it, and I was there live.

SPEAKER_01: 10:12

Oh, right. Oh, right.

SPEAKER_02: 10:16

The whole six seconds, man, it was exciting. You were there for the Sphinx fight? No, no, I can't remember the name of this dude. He was a very obscure guy, and even more obscure after that. I cannot remember that cat's name. But one thing of funny part of the fight, Tyson punched him, the dude fell down, and then got up holding his knee.

SPEAKER_01: 10:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 10:42

Holy shit, that was a hard case.

SPEAKER_01: 10:47

Well, he had that, you know, that you know, factor. He he he beat most people before they even got in the ring. He was so, you know, feared, which is which is crazy to me. I don't know. I'm a big boxing fan. I've watched boxing since I was a little kid, and I've always, you know, kept it MMA in the fringes of my entertainment. And at times, like I said before, the Ultimate Fighter TV show, I was watching that's when I started buying pay-per-views. I didn't buy any boxing pay-per-views because I would get the event, like the showtime boxing, would they show it the next weekend, you know? And HBO, they'd usually show it within the month, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 11:28

And so get the pay-per-views, you'd just watch them after they're done.

SPEAKER_01: 11:32

Yeah, so you know, I would I would literally make it a point to like not try and consume any news related to it, you know, and then watch it a week or a month or whatever later. But because it doesn't matter to me, but in any case, I didn't ever buy boxing pay-per-views. It was UFC, I I think somewhere in the 40s, you know, uh UFC 40s something, I don't know. One probably one of my first pay-per-view buys. Might have been 30s, I don't know. But in any case, uh, for a while there, I was buying UFC pay-per-views and pride uh fighting pay-per-views from Japan, you know, back when I was in New York, and I actually interviewed some fighters for a blog I had was doing for a little while on fighting and stuff like that. It was kind of cool. Wrote an article for an MMA magazine about uh fighting and stuff back in like 2007, 2006. Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to me to see Tyson, you know, he's turned his life around so much, you know, which has just been to a really cool thing to see. Because man, was he in a dark place when he was fighting, you know, when he was last fighting? And you know, now that now he's he actually is in shape. You know, he looks in great shape. I don't know if you saw the video the other day of him.

SPEAKER_02: 12:54

Uh no, I've just seen like I see articles on my phone.

SPEAKER_01: 12:58

Yeah, I saw the that's what I saw, but I saw a video of him, you know, doing some commercial shoot thing on the beach, and he's he's back in shape, you know, looking down around his normal 230 or whatever. I don't know, somewhere in there at least. But yeah, I can't see these guys going all at it. And you know the other thing? I can't see Roy Jones taking a Tyson punch. I don't care how old Tyson is. I can't see him taking that. I don't want to see him taking that punch, I should say. I don't want to see Roy Jones at this stage taking that punch from Tyson. If he were really trying to knock him out, I don't want to see that. That's just it's not cool. I didn't like seeing Roy take the last few beatings, you know, knockouts that he took, you know, after the first one with Tarver, and it was just like, yeah, stop taking blows to the head. But I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 13:50

I think the last time I was in the UFC, I mean, like actually, you know, waiting for it to come on and watching fights was back. I think when Chuck Liddell was still in it.

SPEAKER_01: 14:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I can remember. Well, he was, you know, he was the face. He was the face of the UFC from like 2005, 2004, you know, through you know, 2000 early, you know, tens, 11s. He he was the face of the UFC right when it was becoming most popular, you know. The Iceman. Which he was a fascinating fighter because you know, you knew exactly what he was gonna do. And eventually that yeah, eventually that caught up to him, but I mean it worked so well for so long, you know. Yeah, I was watching back then too, because I I saw the first Rampage fight in Pride that he got beat when uh Dana took uh Chuck over to Japan to fight in Pride, and he fought Alistair Overheam and did he fight Overream? Yeah, I think he fought Ovream and then Rampage and Rampage beat him. And so, you know, they were taking him over there to to take over Pride or show that they had the better, you know, fighters, and and then eventually Pride gets bought by the USC and Rampage comes on board and they make a big you know thing of it. And at that point, I wasn't sure Rampage still had it in him, you know, he wasn't as active. Uh it was interesting. I don't know. Did you see that? Were you watching then?

SPEAKER_02: 15:25

I'm aware of who Rampage is. I think I watched it when they were doing didn't they have the teams? Wasn't that some kind of a like he was a coach and Chuck was a coach?

SPEAKER_01: 15:34

Yeah, Tito Tito Ortiz, I think, and uh Chuck. Uh that's the ultimate fighter. That's the show I was talking about.

SPEAKER_02: 15:40

When they were training these guys, or that's okay, right. That, yeah, yes, I'm there.

SPEAKER_01: 15:44

I want to say that was like 2005. I I can't remember. But yeah, that's a long time ago, man. We're getting old. And now, random moments with Larry's mom.

SPEAKER_03: 16:44

This has been a random moment with Larry Smoke.

SPEAKER_01: 16:48

Copyright twenty twenty nerdsandnonsense.com. All rights reserved. Well, except that I don't really mind if you share this, so maybe feel free to do that. You know, share and share alike, that sort of thing. Speaking of copyrights, though, special thanks to Joe Daniels, copyright owner, co-writer, and original drummer from LocalH, for permission to use Bound for the Floor by LocalH as our show's theme song. Check out our Patreon community at patreon.com forward slash nerds and nonsense for more information on getting involved or supporting the show. If you're listening via nerdsandnonsense.com, simply click on the Support the Show link to learn more. Be great and do great things, my friends.