Michael Symon is obsessed with The Browns

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0:22Hey, everybody. This is David Greene as Obsessed. This is the show where we talk about our obsessions. I'm David Green. I obsess about a lot of different stuff. I'm sure you do too, and that's why we're all here. So I want to focus today on sports because that is a particular obsession of mine. I'm not going to lie. I actually worry sometimes about how much I obsess about sports. If you're not a sports fan, this might make absolutely no sense to you. If you are, you probably understand some of this. I actually look back to the date, January 15th, 2006, when I really did worry myself. I'm a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I was watching a Steelers playoff game in this bar in Washington, D.C., where I was living.

1:05And I would go to this bar to watch nearly every game and then also watch this bartender very closely who I was in love with, and she would become my wife. That is where we met at the Steelers bar. So this place shapes a lot of me. But that day, this playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts, I was focused on the game. I was doing what I do so often during Steelers games, not talking to anyone else and just holding my pint of beer really nervously watching every play because the game got very tense towards the end. It looks like the Steelers had it won. And my hero, our running back at the time, Jerome Bettis, my favorite player ever, took a handoff.

1:46And all he had to do was kind of go a couple yards, hopefully into the end zone, to basically seal the game. And instead he did the one thing that he could not do, which is fumble. I literally felt like I was having a heart attack. And actually this other guy, this other Steelers fan, his name is Terry O 'Neill. He was watching at a bar on the south side of Pittsburgh. He did have a heart attack during this play. It was really lucky that there were paramedics there, other fans, of course. They got him to a hospital. They resuscitated him. And when he looked lovingly in his wife's eyes in the emergency room, the first words when he came back to life were, did the Steelers win?

2:26They did win. But it was a close call. Bettis fumbled the ball. Ben Roethlisberger, our quarterback, was able to tackle the Indianapolis Colts player who had picked it up before he could dart to the end zone and win the game for Indianapolis. So we did pull out that game, thank God. And it was really special, that playoff run in 2006, because the Steelers made it to the Super Bowl. And I got to watch that Super Bowl with my mom, who was my favorite fellow Steelers fan. I grew up watching games with her, and we had never gotten to watch the Steelers in a Super Bowl together. We did that day in her living room in 2006.

3:04They won. We got to celebrate together. I had no idea that she was going to pass away just a few months later. I've never watched a Steelers game since then without thinking of her. I was covering the White House at the time for NPR. And so I got to go to the White House when the Steelers came to Washington to celebrate that Super Bowl title. And I took a terrible towel, which for those of you who don't know is like the tool of every Steelers fan. We bring it to every game. We wrap it around our neck when we're nervous. I brought one to the White House, and I asked Jerome Bettis if he would sign it for me, and he did to my mom.

3:45And that towel is framed now and is probably the only old dish towel that was ever hung proudly on the wall of the NPR offices in Los Angeles, California. That is my sports obsession. And this is a show where I talk about my own obsessions, these things that I can't let go of. and I engage other people about their obsessions to see what we can all learn together. And today my guest is celebrity chef Michael Simon, who is a diehard sports fan as well, but from a rival city, not Pittsburgh, but nearby Cleveland, Ohio. We met up to talk about our sports obsessions recently in Los Angeles.

4:30Welcome back to David Green is Obsessed. and, well, I'm David Green, and I am obsessed. This show is really about connecting with people, sharing the stories of our obsessions, working through them together, helping each other try and understand what the hell obsessions are all about and what we can learn from these obsessions that seem to catch hold of us and not let go. I am lucky to be in a studio with another sports obsess-see. That's probably not even the right word. Another person obsessed with sports? It is James Beard Award-winning chef Michael Simon. You might know him from the Food Network.

5:10Maybe you've read one of his best-selling cookbooks. Maybe you've eaten at one of his restaurants, like Angeline in Atlantic City. Michael grew up in Cleveland, which is home of the Cleveland Browns, who, Michael, I want to make sure I have this right, have never won a Super Bowl, have never even been to a Super Bowl. You don't even know what it would be like to watch your team in a Super Bowl. do you want to correct any of that oh no there's nothing I could correct there that's the just the you know your sports obsession the Pittsburgh Steelers is an enjoyable one I would say yeah I agree with that yeah you guys are basically the most successful franchise in sports history thank you my sports obsession the Cleveland Browns is incredibly painful yeah we've never been to a super bowl i have suffered through the drive the fumble the i'm the red right 88 you've literally named moments of pain as if they were names of books they're espn specials like we're so bad that they've made specials after us they call your stadium the factory of sadness factory of sadness is that right yeah that sucks yeah it's but it's true i mean but allegedly they're building a new stadium so maybe the new one will be filled with joy so what despite all of that pain um what like what's the obsession what keeps you well you know i'm obsessed with sports in general but especially football and especially the browns um you know as i was listening to you talk about like things that make you obsessed it makes you think about like why why am i obsessed with this but like for me as a kid my whole family both sides of my my mom and my dad are both from outside of Pittsburgh um all my cousins my aunts my uncles everyone is from Pittsburgh you really should have been a Steelers fan yeah and for some reason they let me be a Browns fan um but I you know I remember watching all those games as a kid with my dad and my grandfather you know like and actually my my grandmother too uh like they were rabid rabid football fans so growing up in a family like that where like Sundays especially football Sundays were spent at my parents house watching the games always my mom cooked you know typically like either a big Greek or Italian type feast my grandparents came over both sides and and we watched the Browns you know like like I said Red Right 88 that was when I was in grade school I believe that was in like 1983 when the Browns everybody thought they're going to win the Super Bowl and we had the Raiders beat.

7:49It was the cardiac kid years. I'm sure you remember that, because actually the Steelers stunk back then. I do remember those times. I appreciate that. Rare. And like, you know, Brian Sipe used to beat the Steelers. And so... And Red-Right 88 for non-football aficionados. It was... Red-Right 88 was the play that we lost the game on. That was right before Don Cockroft missed the field goal that furthered the pain. So Red-Right 88 was a post-drought. the Ozzie Newsome that was intercepted and, you know, after Brian Seip had an MVP season, and then we still had a chance to win the game. Um, and we missed the field goal as time was running out.

8:29This is what obsessive sports fans can do. They can literally speak with, you know, encyclopedic knowledge of certain. Well, I like can't remember things that happened eight minutes ago, but like, I remember when Ernest Beiner fumbled because Webster Slaughter missed the block you know I remember when there's no way the Browns could lose this game we're up against Denver and John Elway had the drive with I think 48 seconds left and completed I believe three fourth down and 20 plays you know in that drive like just just ridiculous stuff so um yeah I mean my sports session comes from when I was a kid and it certainly has followed me into adulthood I mean When the Cavs finally broke through and won the first championship of my lifetime, we were in Long Island.

9:16And because the Cavs were only winning games against Golden State when I was in New York City, I literally said to Liz, honey, I'm driving to the city tonight. And drove to our apartment in the city and watched the game by myself that the Cavs won in game seven. Because I was certain that if I stayed in Long Island, they were going to lose. How important? I mean, you heard me talking about my mom. Like when I watch Steelers games now, those memories are so present. Like, I feel like I'm still, I could still talk to her about the play that's happening. I remember, you know, we would watch in her living room when I was a kid and we would kind of, we would play this game because we'd both be so nervous about a play that was happening.

10:02This could be in the regular season. I mean, it wasn't even that important. and we would turn the sound down and i would um watch her reaction to watching the play to like see what happened and that became such a superstition like i still think about that kind of stuff now and that that's part of the the connection for me well i like i mean like what other thing like all of us have been there your team is winning you're sitting on a couch with your friends and someone gets up to do anything, go to the bathroom and something bad happens. So then like, you pretty much make a rule. No one can move.

10:41Like, don't move. Like, what else would you do that for? Like, it's the, the weird idiosyncrasies of sports and the way that they make us think sometimes with no rationale, um, whatsoever, you know, like if I'm watching a Browns game and they're playing bad, I'll switch seats. Like somehow me switching seats is going to make one of our, um, 32 quarterbacks we've had in the past five years not stink. I believe that. Yeah. You know, like you just, you believe that that's going to happen. And, uh, you know, I, I don't know if I learned those habits from watching my father and my grandfather or if they just, who knows, but it's, uh, on Sundays, no matter where I've lived, no matter where I've been, I will figure out a way to watch the Browns.

11:30My wife, Liz, will often say to me, you, like, why do you do this to yourself? Like, you've been in a good mood all week, and in, in, like, three to four hours, you're gonna be in a horrible mood because something terrible's gonna happen. You know, because that's the life of a, of, of a Cleveland Browns fan. You know, so, and she's right. But every week, there I am, finding the game, no matter where we are. Do you become a different person when you're watching? Like, my wife, Rose, actually doesn't have a lot of fun.

12:03I mean, I get borderline violent. Like I will curse. If we're at a bar in public, I'll slam a beer, not to the point of like breaking the bottle, but pretty close. And I'm the one who is swearing the most, like to a point where she'll come over and be like, you're in a public place. And I kind of defend it. I'm like, it's a football game. Like I'm in a Steelers bar. I can do whatever I want, but I want to be like, almost i make myself a little nervous i i'm i i watch most games at home now for similar reasons and i scream a lot at the television at the players at yeah i i get very vocal throughout the game and and have chucked a couple things here and there too like it just and and the same with liz she said what stop with the yelling what are you yelling like they can't hear you like But I just, it's a very personal thing to me.

13:02I want to take it in a little different direction. Like, I, family is so much of it for me. And I feel like, based on what we've talked about, like, you and I have a difference in terms of our relationship to sports. Like, I sucked personally at all of them. My mom was the manager of my Little League baseball team in Pittsburgh. She was the manager, and she wouldn't put me in the starting lineup because I was such a crappy hitter. I was crappy in the field. I was basically just really shitty. So that kind of made watching sports the thing that brought us together. I mean, I think you've said, like, your dad and granddad, it was like coming to your own events.

13:43Yeah, I came from a pretty good sports family. My sister was very athletic. I was athletic. I had an uncle, cousin-uncle, that was uh played professionally for the denver broncos um was an all-american at notre dame so like there was sports were big in my household and everybody that did them was was they excelled at them so you know like my my grandfather like my father worked at ford motor company um you know and and for a large part of my childhood worked midnights so you know i would spend most weekends as a kid with my grandparents. And my grandfather, Pap, who, God, he lived to 102. It was a major part of my life as a child, would bring me to most of my sporting events.

14:36Like, he would go to all my wrestling matches. He would, when I was on the travel team, he would travel with me. He would help coach, even though he didn't know anything about wrestling, you know, like. It was you and Pap, like that. Yeah, and my grandmother, like Olga and Preston. Um, so they were like a huge part of my, uh, childhood when it came to the sports that I participated in. Um, and also we're part of watching sports together. Um, you know, my, my dad always fortunately took off Sundays most of the time. So like Sundays was our day. Um, and that's when we gathered to, to watch the Browns, but yeah, but like all the sports that i participated in i always remember my grandfather being there always like never like he was always in the room could you have imagined that relationship without sports he was a special guy i mean like he like i was very very close to my grandfather um so yeah i still think we would have had that relationship because he was just just I'm not saying he like he was one in a million like every one of my friends he was their favorite my Liz my wife like if you say pap to her her eyes will light everybody he came in contact with he just was he was kind of a magical guy love sports but he had a softness to him like I wrestled for a high school called St Edward in Cleveland Ohio and like my senior year in high school was our 10th straight state title and seventh straight national title so it was a very storied program and i was you know wrestling you cut all this weight you do all this crazy stuff and i had cut all this weight for a summer tournament and my grandfather brought me to the tournament and um and it was on a like an aau travel team and i lost my first match and I just, I remember like I had sucked all this, I had lost like, on like Monday, I was 18 pounds over.

16:39And so I lost 18 pounds between Monday and Friday. Jesus, that's like sacrificing. Yeah, and I mean, it wasn't like I was big. Like I was, this was, I went from 123 to 105 was my freshman year in high school. And I lost the match and I really didn't care that I lost the match because I was just so, I just was shot. And I was very competitive. It was just one of those moments. And I walked off the mat and my grandfather grabbed me. And he was, it was never about winning or losing to him. It was how you carried yourself. And he's like, I will never get upset with you if you lose. But if you do not give a full effort, we have a problem.

17:19And he knew, he knew that I had like clocked out and that it never happened again. Like it never, it was just like a stern, like talking to. Um, but it was the only time I ever remember him being mad at me. My entire, you know, he was around until I was 52. Um, you know, I was lucky and he was a full mind that entire time. So in my 52 years of, of life with Pap, it was the only time I ever remember him being mad at me, the only time. And it was just cause he didn't think that I tried and I didn't, you know, like. He was right. He was right. You know, but it taught me a great life lesson. and, and, um, you know, and I, I carry it with me with everything I do now, but you know, I was fortunate enough to learn at a young age from someone who like, you know, I think when you're competing in sports, there's those parents that like are really hard on their kids and, and maybe want something out of them that they didn't have or expect something out of them that they didn't Like, fortunately for me, like, because I came from a sporty family or however you want to call it, like, they weren't searching for my sister and I to fill a need, a void that they had.

18:36They just wanted us to always give our best, you know? But I, you know, you mentioned your PAP's softness, and you mentioned that, you know, some people have tough parents and get pressure to be great athletes. there's something about sports that I feel like gives, maybe particularly guys, like a language to connect with one another in ways that I feel like some, you know, some particularly men might struggle with. There's something about sports that softens things or builds a connection where you can bring emotion and vulnerability into a relationship. And I wonder if that's part of the appeal.

19:17Yeah, I've never really thought of it that way, but I agree with you 100%. Like, my dad was not warm and fuzzy. My mom was warm and fuzzy. But, like, with sports, there was always a very warm connection. You know, even though, like, if you were to hug my dad or give him a kiss, you could feel the tension in him. Like, he just wasn't a warm and fuzzy guy, you know? He was loving, but he just wasn't warm and fuzzy. And my grandfather was kind of, you know, my grandfather was a pipe fitter. He was tough, you know, like grew up in Johnstown, you know, like a tough blue collar town. He was a tough guy in a tough blue collar town, but he had a softness to him with me.

20:01And but it was. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that was built through sports or that connection through sports or it was always an easy sports were always an easy connection to the male figures in our lives, you know? Like the first, my dad always used to joke. He's like, you know, you never could read anything. The first thing I taught you to read was the sports page. And you figured that out in like eight seconds, you know, where I could like, and I'm still like that memory of random sports facts is bizarre, but I can't remember anything else. Like, like, why do I remember that Jerome Bettis went to Notre Dame in war number six, right?

20:3936. No. Oh, Notre Dame six. Yeah. 36 is a stealer. Yeah. Why do you know that? I have no idea. it just popped into my head right now yeah um but like yeah like i remember him at notre dame wearing number six that's amazing i want to ask you you said that your father would stiffen up if anyone hugged him would you hug him after a big browns win so i'm i'm sort of an asshole so i would hug him all the time just to make him uncomfortable yeah just for the sheer joy of it um oh yeah i mean with with sports i was all like and and it was like when i now that god it's like therapy like you're on the couch after i am i'm on the couch i'm getting therapy but like after wrestling match when a wrestling match you'd give me a big hug your dad yeah but like if i was at the house like in for the weekend and saying goodbye and i'd give him a hug he'd be like i love you too you know or he would never when he when my dad got sick he i used to talk to my father every day and you know usually on speakerphone walking around the house and um you know and he's very close to my wife liz also and i i mean i had a great relationship with my dad um but he would never like if i at the end of the conversation i would always say dad i love you and he'd be like you know he would he wouldn't say he'd say me too couldn't say the love thing yeah and then right before he about a couple weeks before he passed he i'm on phone and he goes all right i love you and like i like and i looked over at liz and she looked at me i'm like oh god he's he's dying like it was like it was it was such like a shock to my system that i knew something like here's this guy that never complained about anything but something's wrong you know um um it's weird it's you know it's it's weird and you lost your dad fairly recently right September yeah uh I don't remember many months ago that was you know um yeah he found out he had bone cancer and three weeks later he passed I'm really sorry yeah it was you know it was but but again all those like we talk about sports a lot of those memories those are like watching football golfing with him you know him coming to my matches like those are really great memories that i have with my father that all evolved around sports all of them that's part of the memory you always yeah and same with my grandfather like a lot of my memories with my grandfather revolve around sports you know so that's a big part of i think why there is that obsession and addiction and because it brings me to even though the suffering of the browns it still brings me to a happy place thinking about watching sports with my grandfather and my dad yeah i'm i'm the exact same way with my mom i mean that's my it's my um it's the connection i can still hold on to yeah almost like i know she's still there right you know like i mean i remember even like when i'm what like in a big cleveland sporting event like kind of thing like as my grandfather got old like he was a Steelers fan when I was a kid and then he had been in Cleveland for so long he started changing to a Cleveland fan just because that was always what was in front of him and he knew the stats and he knew that but like so after he had passed when there was like a big game I'm like well certainly Paps watching over this team in some way somehow they're gonna win like he's watching them like this weird mental gymnastics you go through with your head as a sports fan and why are they gonna win or lose?

24:19Like, no one else has a grandfather passed away that cheered for the other team. Right, right. No, I beg my mom to, and I always feel like I only have like four or five chances to ask for her to get involved. I don't feel like it can be just unlimited, but if it's like a really important playoff moment, I'm like, okay, mom, this is the one. I know you're up there. I know you can actually make sure that they score here. It's, we're not okay. So, David, right now, are you asking your mom, please don't let Mason Rudolph be our starting quarterback this year? I actually, I'm really torn. I don't know what she would think of Aaron Rodgers, but I'm having that conversation with her whether they should let Mason Rudolph just be the quarterback or whether they should sign Aaron Rodgers.

25:04Fair enough. And when people hear this, it might already be determined and Aaron Rodgers might already be the starting quarterback. But I have, like, but it's a conversation. Like, I can't talk to anyone about the Steelers who's alive right now in the way that I can have these conversations in my head with my mom. Right. And there's something really touching and weird about that, but it's meaningful. I'm gonna ask you to do some therapy for me for a minute, because I'm gonna get a little vulnerable around this. I feel this connection to Pittsburgh when I'm embracing the Steelers, if I go to Heinz Field, Acresher Stadium, but I still call it Heinz Field, and go to a game, I feel like, I mean, such a connection to the people around me.

25:55I'm hugging strangers, I'm drinking beer with them, we're all in it together. It becomes such a part of my identity in a way that I love. And I had a friend who once was talking to me about different ideas for writing a book, and he said, you should write about Pittsburgh and your love of like hanging with real people and watching the Steelers games and like how that feels good to you and how you try to do that. And I like wanted to punch him in the face. He's a friend of mine, but I was like, I'm not, there's nothing inauthentic about it. Like I am, this is who I want to be on a Sunday. I know you think I'm, you know, as a public radio host and you think I'm an intellectual, like, I don't want to, I don't want to go to a fucking poetry reading on a Sunday.

26:41Like, I'm sorry to poets. Like, I want to be drinking an Icy Light or Miller Lite or being in Pittsburgh or being in a Steelers bar with my people. But also, he was probably on to something. Like, there's something about the identity of being a Pittsburgher and with my people watching Steelers games that just does something really good. And then that's one thing I'm trying to sort out. I mean, ultimately, Yin's guys just want to go to the bar downtown. Right. Yeah. very well yeah well that was my best that was it was good that was good that was good yinzer yeah it's an escape i i think that's again it's like look your day-to-day life is so different than that those well now 17 sundays a year it'd be 18 soon if they keep expanding yeah you know um and so i don't think it's like yeah some people don't understand it and they never will but like those 17 weeks to you bring you to a place that make you happy yeah and they bring you they remind you of your mother and they let you release and not think about you know like not being the intellect not covering the white house not like all the heavy stuff that you've had to do in your life like sports aren't heavy they're they're enjoyment and like and there's something oddly satisfying about like saying oh they're gonna run it here like like we know what the hell's actually going on like we could like it's one of the beautiful thing about being sports fans is you're you we think that we know more than the people that are much smarter than us and we could voice our opinion constantly throughout a game right like why didn't they throw it there like we couldn't call it like i watched i'm i'm good friends with michael strahan i've got to watch several games with him and i always thought like i knew a lot about football and like i'd be like how did they miss that tackle or whatever and he's like all right pause pause the tv all right idiot let me explain this to you you know yeah huh and he's like you know it's like he goes michael would say it's like me going to a restaurant and going why is the steak charred like this you know but it's for us as in fandom it's our escape it's when we think that we're smarter than we are it's when we get to release all of our emotions um inexcusably like with other people who are in it are whacked like us are whacked like us yeah like i mean when you're at a steelers bar or brown's bar it's a little bit different like i do it in the comfort of my own home now, but like, but even Liz, even though she'll say to me, why are you yelling?

29:20She knows I'm going to yell. I know I can yell and I don't feel bad about it. You know? Um, and so it's, it's. There are no pressures to be something or to do something or to succeed in some way. And no. And we all, I think have our version of escape and for a lot of us, like sports really. And I think David too, it, it brings us back to childhood. Yeah. which is like the older you get, the harder it is to get back to childhood. It's like there's proof that it brings it back to childhood. There's a bunch of 40 to 70-year-old people wearing jerseys, for Christ's sakes, at a game when you shouldn't wear a sports jersey after you're like nine.

30:01But there everybody is. No one's judging me. No one's judging me. It's the kid. It's the kid in me. I've just had like six yinglings. That's the only difference. And I haven't washed my Bettis jersey in nine years because I'm superstitious. Bad luck. Yeah, exactly. Bad luck. You know, so it's, I think there's all those things. I think it brings you back to childhood. It brings you to the memories that like, you know, like my dad, grandfather, your mom, they're not here anymore. Yeah. So like to have those moments with them still is always going to be special to me, to you, to people watching, you know?

30:35No, we'll always be able to cherish them. All right. We're going to take a little break and then Michael, I'm going to ask you about some other obsessions when we come back.

30:51Welcome back to David Green is Obsessed. I am with Chef Michael Simon. We've been talking about sports and Michael, I brought sports to the table. I want to kind of have you bring some things to the table. So I'm going to call this Michael Simon is Obsessed. Okay. Okay. Oh, no. um so kind of a lightning round uh what what's the earliest obsession you remember in your life bmx bikes bmx bikes i love what age we're doing bmx young like we used to build a couldn't afford to like buy the fancy bike so we would build them ourselves and skateboards and we had quarter pipes and half pipes in the yard so skateboarding bmxing like that was my earliest obsession that i remember like physically doing uh okay an obsession you are scared of you know i i'm obsessed with the restaurant business and i know it's going to sound really weird if i say like i'm afraid of that obsession because that obsession has been my livelihood for most of my life but i hope there is a time in my life where i could walk away from that obsession comfortably and happily and think that i achieved the things that i had set out to achieve doing it does that make sense yeah but you don't you don't feel like you're there yet you still have no no i don't feel like i'm done i feel like there's a couple more chapters to write um but you know my my biggest problem being a chef in the restaurant business and you know it just i a lot of it's how i'm raised is i I'm compulsive obsessive period like it's it's a it's a flaw in my personality but also is what's driven me to be successful so like when I'm opening a restaurant and committed to the restaurant and trying to achieve what I want to achieve like I'll work myself sick so like I I need to learn how to work smarter and still achieve the things that I want to achieve but you know I physically can't work the 100-hour weeks anymore.

33:00So I'm learning how to do it smarter, hopefully. And you're scared of it being kind of something that you can't control. Yeah, I'm a control freak. Yeah, I mean, like, my control freak obsessiveness makes me want to be in it 24-7, you know, where, look, I still want to enjoy my grandkids, enjoy Kyle, enjoy my marriage like there's a lot of other things that are important to me um so to to even though it's what has made me who i am i have to be careful with my obsession obsessiveness of being a chef you know i wondered um you know your restaurant in atlantic city angeline um where i ate definitely the best chicken parm i've ever had in my life so i suggest it to everybody um named after your mom uh like the Sicilian style cooking like connected to your mom it do you see a similarity between kind of the connection to family when it comes to sports and also cooking and food and all food yeah I have a big created food I think there is a food family connection and my family was huge you know like we ate a lot we cooked a lot I you know I learned how to make baklava when I was eight you know um so yeah there's definitely a there's definitely a food connection obsession so yeah it could lead to that it just it's also like you're like for me as a chef i'm always in pursuit of a perfection even though i know that perfection is not something that's necessarily attainable but it's hard for me not to pursue it okay an obsession you haven't told anyone about except your wife how about if i just recently told you about it is that okay i'm afraid to think about where you're going with this but yes that's fine i have an obsession that my wife actually created um that because i'm a chef and i've spent the majority of my life on my feet for you know 12 to 16 hours a day um i started getting pedicures with liz years ago and the obsession of making my feet not only look decent but feel good is is an obsession do you want to say more i i do so like i i don't like i like to but i i feel this got me my wife liz got me obsessed with this about uh 10 to 15 years ago and when we lived in new york city um and and then she made fun of me because i basically would go every week to get a pedicure and they'd be like your nails are fine i'm like i just just give me the whole thing you know um but you know i recently as david said earlier we're neighbors now and we were just i had brunch at the liz and i had him and his wife rose over for brunch and we were just talking and and somehow pedicures came up and david said i've never had a pedicure said it proudly for the rest probably really proudly and and rose is like i've been trying to get him a pedicure for 20 years he's not getting a pedicure so immediately i'm like we're getting pedicure we're getting pedicures you know so when he said do you want to sit down and talk before we do this podcast i said yeah let's you know let's just talk a little bit about what we could talk about.

36:13I go, let's, let's do it over pedicure. I thought, I actually thought you were joking for the record. Like we're getting ready to, to, to record a show about like gritty sports towns, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I literally thought you were kidding. I am very comfortable in my manhood and you know, like pedicures are. And so yesterday I brought David in, he got his first pedicure of his life and he enjoyed it very much. The, I will say that But the paraffin, the hot wax, frightened him a little bit. It was hot. It was hot. I didn't know what it was. It's like purple in a bag. And they're wrapping your foot in a bag with purple goo.

36:49Like hot purple goo. A little preparation would have been nice. Like just a little bit of preparation would have been really nice. I've been talking to chef and restaurateur Michael Simon, who is a native of the city that always wishes it were more like Pittsburgh. Cleveland, Ohio. Sorry. His latest best-selling cookbook is Simon's Dinner's Cooking Out. You should definitely get your hands on it. Michael, this was fun. Thanks so much. Always.

37:18David Green is obsessed as a production of Campside Media. It is hosted by me, David Green. Our senior producer is Lane Rose. We are mixed by Ewan Leitramuen. The executive producers of Campside Media are Vanessa Grigoriadis, Matt Scherr, and Josh Dean. Special thanks to our operations team, Ashley Warren and Sabina Mara. If you have an obsession you would like to share, hope you do, you can send us an email. The address is obsessed at campsidemedia.com. That's obsessed at campsidemedia.com. And hey, if you enjoyed the show, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Really appreciate you listening.