The Opener: April 17, 2024

Mike and Danny are holding it down while Kevin goes on vacation. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I played today with a ton ofgratitude and appreciation for the opportunity to do
this. I'm really glad I getto do it again tomorrow. And I'm
going to remind myself on a dogand I'm ready for this moment. A
great maccoma binding himself. He's adog eating every morning like Danny, Me,

(00:24):
Kevin and JJ do in the morning. Two blinks, one bark,
Grab the car keys. It's adirty down beat. On Wednesday, April
seventeenth, twenty and twenty four,we're doing it. We're doing at six
to ten am. We're doing itwithout Kevin Turner this morning, and we'll

(00:47):
get to the adventures in keV ohhere. Momentarily, I kind of feel
like an empty nester. I know, right the parents that are just kind
of staying together for their kids andthen they go to college and they look
at each other and go, youknow what, I really don't like you
plant at the watch, look atthem. I know some people who I

(01:10):
think are in that category. Manlike done. How often does that happen?
I think it happens a ton likewithin a year of nothing either not
eighteenth birthday or departure from home.Some dude. I know people that have

(01:30):
gone through this, and some ofthem will wait until their kids get through
college because the stress of a divorce. They don't want that kind of influencing
their emotions while they're trying to geta degree. Right. But if you're
already like at each other and you'relike, you know, this is a
ticking time bomb anyway, and theyleave the house, I guess you maybe

(01:55):
kind of loosely start the proceedings.Yeah, like if the kid's gone,
then you just don't even talk.Maybe, uh, and look, you've
leap in the kids rooms. Yeah, you created your own space, and
you've got your own distractions, andyou know, find ways to just kind
of avoid each other, and thenyou have to have the hard discussion I

(02:20):
guess. I mean, hell,none of my relationships ever made it eighteen
years, yeah, to ever getto that point. But it's a bizarre
dynamic, man, the empty nestertheory. But I just imagine waiting looking
at the calendar, waiting to goI'm like, all right, we're free.
You know what's funny though, whenyou like say that, I'm sure

(02:46):
you've seen these things too, andyou've heard this described by the kids that
go through this, they get madat their parents for waiting. Really yeah,
yeah, like, why would yousacrifice your happiness? I could have
handled this because the parents, intheir minds, it's like, well,
we need to stay together for thekids and provide the stability and supportability and

(03:09):
all of that. But the kidsare like, no, I knew you
guys hated each other since I wasfive. It didn't help me for you
to stay together. Yeah, butwhen you're kids fourteen or fifteen, remember,
you know, don't you always seethat they get a divorce and then
the kids crying? Is it myfault? Wait, you don't love each
other anymore. But then when you'resaying when they're eighteen or nineteen, then

(03:30):
they're suddenly I suppose little geniuses AndI knew I could have handled this.
That's true, you know, likeit flipped pretty quickly somewhere around seventeen or
sixteen. Yeah, maybe we alljust belong alone. Maybe maybe you're we're

(03:52):
lone wolves. Mikey, Like,once you start something, the clock just
starts ticking on its inevitable demise.What time is it? Six o four
in the morning, Good morning,everybody, This is the downbeat you have.
JJ Jackson here. Hi, JJ, Good morning boys. How are
we doing good? How are y'allsilly? Good man? Pretty good?

(04:13):
Pretty good? No, it's allgood man. Kevin is. It's funny
how this thing works, Like younever know how personalities work. And Kevin
is, uh, he does kindof hold this thing together. You know,
he's more than the glues. Yeah, Kevin for a dude named Kevin.
But I mean he comes up withall the stuff. He thinks about
it. Twenty four to seven,we think about it, you know,
twenty seven, twenty two seven maybe, But yeah, Kevin holds this thing

(04:39):
together. He's always got stuff,got stuff on the side burner and back
burner and all this, and he'sjust good at it. Man born for
this. Dan and I probably weren'tborn for this. We're Charlatan's. But
Kevin is, Kevin is solid.It's kind of incredible that Kevin grew up
and knew from an early age thatthis is what he wanted to do.
Yeah. I never ever, evenwhen I was offered the job at the

(05:02):
Ticket, I still was like,why would you do this? Really?
I have no experience, nor doI have any real interest in doing this
for a living, Like, don'tworry about it. We'll train you.
All right. I know we've talkedabout this, but you just did songs
and then they thought they were sofunny or good or call it you called

(05:24):
in as the pizza delivery man,would it pizza Danny? Okay, So
this is a long time ago.So I got hired over there in March
of ninety nine just to do likea weekend show with our program director,
just to kind of test the watersand see how it would go. Why
but because yeah, so leading upto that for the years prior, because

(05:46):
the station only been on the airabout four and a half years at that
but maybe five years at that point. And after about a year of it
being on the air, I finallysuccumbed and started listening full time, kind
of fell in love with, youknow, Mike and Greg in the afternoons,
and found I felt a connection tothat show. They loved baseball.

(06:06):
I loved baseball like I was ahardcore baseball nerd at the time. And
once they kind of flipped their switchand started talking more about their personal lives
and being more loose with their content, not just being so hard hitting sports,
it connected with an audience and Iloved it, so, you know,

(06:28):
me being a musician, I thoughtI was kind of funny until I
met you. For years and Iwould send them different like okay, send
to the segment called facts Fodder,which was basically email us funny content,
and I would send them factxes everyday, so we had a fax machine
at the restaurant that I worked at, and it would be like a top

(06:51):
ten list or just jokes, anything, yeah, just some kind of bit.
And then I would I would recordon my little track recorder at home
wacky songs and theme songs for theirguests and send them cassettes of this stuff
and they would use it and theyliked it. And I would call in
on occasion and do you know,voices and whatnot, kind of like a

(07:15):
total very on a small scale ofwant to be Gordo got it was theme
songs for guests. That really kindof because that's something that especially back then,
shows didn't have or maybe didn't eventhink about. Well, that's the
thing about those is like anything else, maybe like a joke or a top
ten list or a specialty song,it's kind of a one off you never
hear it again. But the themesongs when you have a recurring guest every

(07:36):
week, Rusty Greer Can Hitchcock.That's all. It's something that becomes kind
of like ingrained. Yeah, it'spart of the show. Part of the
show. And then they Kat andBruce because it was the PD, no,
it was the producer of the Hardlineand the PD of the station at

(07:58):
the time. It's like, hey, why don't we go have lunch?
We like you, And I've developa rapport with Mike and Greg and Madam
Kat and Korby. Yeah, yeah, remotes, But I was social with
Krby outside of the station briefly,you know, for you know, we
go to shows together and smoke weedand stuff, and we met for lunch

(08:18):
and hit it off, and they'relike, dudehy don't you when did you
come work? Like doing what?Why? Why? Why would you do
this to yourselves? And you know, they put me on the air with
Jeff and we did a weekend showfor about I don't know four six months.
Position came open on the a nighttimeshow with the I guess it was

(08:43):
with Mark Followell and Doug Anderson,the voice of the Mavericks now was their
producer. And I was like,I don't know how to do this.
We'll show you and I still haven'tlearned. That's just so great about Kevin
and bring it back to keV Ohye, dude, he's a he's great
on the air, he's a wonderfulhost. But he would be the best
producer like anybody he if he wantedto be a producer in radio, he

(09:05):
could produce the highest level radio program. Yeah, forever, forever. He's
just wired that way. But Yeah, and then you know, the hardline
position came open. Interviewed for thatwith Mike and Greg, which was bizarre.
He was sitting across a table fromCat. Yeah. Cat went to
Kansas City to PD up there andthen that position became open. Was he

(09:28):
an aspiring host? I guess atthat time because he was a cat never
had designs on that, but hewas a producer. And then he would
do a weekend show with you.I think the only reasonally, at least
for me, that's you know,that was my trajectory. I think,
honestly, the only reason that hedid that show with me was to kind
of h for lack of a betterYeah, test or train, but give

(09:52):
me some experience. You know,he was young too, and the trip
is in this thing. You don'tknow what your trajectory is, and a
lot of people don't. I don'tthink I ever was like, oh,
I should be a radio host withmy life right, Just something you do
and you enjoy and you're like,I'm okay at this And if that's if
you're a producer, that's why it'sperfect there because the producer like you get
on air, you get that experience, but there's not the pressure or whatever
of being a host and the contentyou don't need to know at all.

(10:15):
But that's how you do it.You just keep going. And then then
a weekend show, like you said, so he was a producer weekend show
and then for some the next stepwould be trying to become a host.
Yeah, but then yeah, hewent to Kansas City and I took the
job with the Hardline. And thatinterview was funny, sitting across the table
from Mike and Greg and Greg kindof running the interview welcome in. No,

(10:39):
it was a show, what areyou going to do for us?
I don't know, man, Idon't know. I really don't know.
Show opens. I guess we needeverything. Really a lot of that,
and Korbia just started working for himas well, So we kind of started

(11:01):
with that show together and I'll bedamned, twenty some odd years and then
run they said, yeah, let'sdo it. Yeah, and you were
you were delivering pizza still er.No, No, I was working.
I mean I'd taken the night.I was producing nights from seven to ten,
so you would follow well and Dougokay, okay, and the Followell
went on to greater, greater things. He took the MAVs job. He

(11:22):
was doing radio at first, thenmoved to TV so that that show dissolved.
He probably always had aspirations that dude, that guy's been dialed in since
he was a little kid. Yeah, yeah, and now he's been the
MAVs play by play guy for howforever and he's so good. He's the
best in the business. Olympics andhe does FC Dallas and everything he does

(11:43):
is he does perfectly. I kindof love the way he looks at this
because I really do believe that Markloves the MAVs so much, loves Dallas
so much. And I don't knowwhat kind of offers he's entertained or gotten
from maybe a larger scope like national, But why wouldn't people be recruiting him

(12:11):
from big networks because he's he's excellent. He's an elite broadcast. I wonder.
I bet they have and we probablyjust don't know about it. And
I bet he's just happy when hedoes the other stuff. He does soccer,
he does Olympics, you know.But as far as like, we

(12:31):
want you to be the voice ofthe NBA, we want you to be
on the second or third string onT and T or NBC or whoever's running
these national games. I bet he'shad some phone calls and just says,
you know what, I love thegrind, I love working with the guys
I work with. I love mycrew, and I love this team,

(12:52):
and I'm happy in Dallas. Idon't want to do this. How much
harder it is too, I mean, because he is just he doesn't I'm
sure he still does tons of preps, certainly on the opposition, but he
knows the Mavericks back and forth.But if you do national right, yeah,
that's why I do. Like.Oh, even those NBNTNT guys who
kind of admittedly I haven't watched toomuch of this team, you know,

(13:13):
like because of how Chuck and Shackare, they can get away with the
honesty, and it works for them, and it works better than any it's
worked for anyone else in basketball becausethey're the best at it. But most
people can't admit I don't really watchthese guys, you know. That's like,
oh my god, how dare you? Yeah, So for follow up
to do that, and at thelevel that he does it for the MAVs,

(13:33):
I imagine it's probably daunting for himto think, Wait, I can't
know every team any we're close tohow I know this team? No,
not to the level that he knowsthe MAVs. But I promise you he
knows as much as anybody else aboutevery other player, every other team,
every other organization in the league.Yeah, and probably beyond that. His

(13:56):
knowledge, his ability to retain knowledgeis insane. Yeah, that's a gift
right there too. You know thatworks for a lot of people. In
radio. I don't have it thatgood. I've got some random crap in
there. But Mark knows so muchabout so many things like that. Dude
will talk wrestling with you. Yeah, he loved it back in the day.

(14:18):
He keeps up on it. Nowhe never brings it up, you
know, because it doesn't apply.But yeah, he is good at everything
he does. I told you,mom, buddy with Dave Ben's who was
the Timberwolves guy for ten years,the play by play guy, and how
it works. Like he got todo the Olympics and they're like, we
need someone to do the Olympics.I don't know a couple of Olympics ago
and he wasn't going. It waswhere they were doing it remotely, you

(14:41):
know, from some home base herein the States, and he's like,
of course you want to add theOlympics to your resume. And he's like,
what am I gonna be doing?And they gave him fencing and synchronized
swimming, and he's like, I'msorry. They're like, no, yeah,
you're a professional. You're gonna youknow, you gonna be good at
this. Think about you or evenfollow up with that matter, Oh my

(15:01):
god, but follow up could doit, and he could probably do it
tomorrow because they gave he had acolor guy, you know, like he
has some legend of synchronized swimming.So essentrally, all you have to do
is kind of handle the ins andouts and maybe ask some questions, but
not enough to sound like a dumbass. Because even though the play you

(15:22):
know, the play by flay guyAnd he said, know what he's doing,
but imagine calling fencing or synchronized butlike, what the I know what
they all think about having to learnthe vernacular right, all the terms.
Yeah, I wouldn't even know whereto begin. So because he's my buddy,
I streamed some of the events andhe sounded amazing. It's an apronunciation
of the names. Just little thingslike that. But so play by play

(15:45):
is a skill that I guess canbe applied to varying degrees of success,
to anything. I bet there's anelement, yeah, I guess. I
bet there's an element of uh,the same skill set or muscle that actors
have that can, like really reallygood actors can take on different roles that

(16:07):
are dissimilar, yeah, and bebelievable and learn scripts. And I guess
there's something kind of akin to thatwhere you I don't want to say they're
faking it, but in a way, yeah, if you don't grow up
watching fencing or having a love ofsynchronized swimming, and you've got a week

(16:29):
or two to crash course and retainas much information as you can and make
it sound like you've been doing thisyour whole life. Yeah, that is
a skill that I, number one, I do not possess. It's a
skill that I do not want.It sounds torturous play by play, Yes,
but but there are some people manypeople think they could do this job,

(16:51):
and they could. I'm not claiminganything other but there are some thinking
I could never do that talk forfour hours every day. The truth is
a lot of it's just the formaticsof it, you know, handling the
formatics, and I think if youput that play by play, put it
in the same shell where it's likeyou just have to kind of get in
set the stage, say what's happening, and then once the event starts,

(17:11):
you lean on your color man andyou just sort of I mean, you
have to learn the basics and theterms, yes, and then you handle
sponsoring and the outs. I mean, it's it's less daunting when you put
it into kind of a visible shell. And I think follow l for instance,
or Dave Ben's is just so goodat that and they just got it
down. So Yes, essentially youcan plug whatever you want into the actual

(17:33):
event. I think. Yeah,but don't you sound like kind of a
fraud if you you know, fumbleon some term or misuse something, and
the people that are actually watching thisstuff. You know what, maybe that's
the thing for the Olympics. You'vegot a lot of day trippers that know
nothing about fencing. Anyway, you'regonna have this tiny minute percentage of hardcores

(17:57):
that are tuning in that might detectthis guy didn't know what he's talking about.
Among people watching Olympic fencing. Right, let's say there's one hundred probably
what eighty five are just watching theOlympics and like, oh yeah, I
like fencing. I have a collectionof swords. Honey, you like Game
of Thrones. There's swords on TV, honey, get in here. They're

(18:18):
sword fighting in the Olympic. Youknow. So maybe at fifteen that are
like in deo fencing, and thenyou have one that's family or friends of
the people competing. As long asthat not too many of that fifteen are
on Twitter, Yeah, yelling exposingyou for not knowing what you're doing.
You're fine. And then the restof them don't care. No one cares.

(18:41):
They're like, these guys know whatthey're talking about. Yeah, that's
true. That's one way to lookat it. Nice Perry, I don't
even know what that is. Didyou just look that up? Now?
I play Sea Thieves. It's asword fighting based okay, pirate game.
Are you still playing that? Yeah? It's fun, yes really still Yeah,
it never ends, I know,but for me, for video games,

(19:04):
I'd get to a point where,okay, I can have nothing really
new happening. It's changed, it'schanged since your days. It's an open,
beautiful world and you could have apirate ship full of treasure and booty,
and some other ship out of nowherejust comes and start firing cannons at

(19:26):
you and you got to fight themoff or run. Really fun. Yeah,
my days ended with PS one's Medalof Honor pretty much began. I
love it. Someone said Danny wasthe brody of the ticket, And I'll
tell you this brody absolutely could bea radio show host. And you're right.
Start in with just lobbing grenades orcontributing a little bit here and there,

(19:48):
and then yes, it does takeone of us saying Jesus, this
guy's good. He's funny. Youknow he could do this, and he
probably doesn't think he could at all, and he still gets nervous when he
comes in here. But the listenerwouldn't really know it because you carry yourself
with you know, a little bitof BS confidence. I that's the thing
about Brody. Brody could come inhere and do this. The thing about

(20:10):
Brody is he is so quick onhis feet and his mind it calculates at
a faster speed than mine does.Like I have to kind of pause and
be mindful and think about the thingsthat I'm going to say, because otherwise
I'll it's like trying to run thehurdles. But yeah, he would be
phenomenal in this, and he probablydoesn't know it. He's a natural or

(20:33):
believe us. And that's why Idid. I was trying, been trying.
You can get him a weekend show, and you know how that goes.
Because I feel like, if that'swhat he wants to try, why
not give him the opportunity to doit. But that's clearly out of my
hands. We got a blot todo today. In spite of our sweet
Cavio being abroad. He is makinghis first trip to Europe. It's good
for him. I was talking toMalcolm's mom about this and it's like,

(20:56):
look, I got I got someactual work to do. Eight So I'm
gonna I'll be up a little laterthan normal. And and she's like,
what's going on. I'm like,well, Kevio had to go to Well,
he's gone vacation for nine days Ibelieve, is it seven days,
eight days, something like that.But it's his first soiree to across the

(21:17):
Atlantic, and I don't know ifhe made it. It's gotten off to
a questionable start. Oh I wouldeven say, poor start. Are you
going through our text messages? No, I have his flight information in front
of me. So it's KEVEO andRoxy were going. They're going to Italy
and they're supposed to leave it seventwenty five last night, pre standard how

(21:37):
they do it, you know,get in a plane, settle in cocktail,
maybe something to eat out cold,wake up. In his case,
Barcelona seven twenty five departure. Andthey didn't end up leaving till eleven o'clock,
so three and a half hour delay. They had him on the plane,
they took him off the plane.He was texting us. He's like,

(21:59):
I think, so he's getting canceled. I think I'm screwed. So
they were supposed to land about anhour ago, maybe something like that,
maybe land right now, and theyare in air and they still have three
hours to go. So we'd loveto be able to report that Kevin is
safely on Terra Firma, but wecannot. We cannot do that. So
they were supposed to board in themiddle of the first NBA game last night

(22:26):
yeap, which we watched. Istarted the second one, went to sleep
YEP, got up prep for theshow, and we're almost done with our
first segment and he's still got threemore hours to go. Yeah, go,
oh my god. They will arrivefour hours and thirteen minutes late.

(22:51):
The poor best, but the otherthe worst part is that it's Barcelona.
He's got a connecting flight to Milan. Well, that's obviously of the middle.
So what are they going to do. I don't know how many flights
a day from Barcelona to Milan arethere. It's probably not a rare flight,
so they're gonna get on whatever onethey got. It works American,

(23:12):
He's not on American airlines. Imean, the worst case is you spend
the night in Barcelona and waiting forthe next day. I guess, but
I don't know how that's going toaffect is Dave Matthews's playing. I did
look that up. The Dave Showis on the nineteenth, so today's the
seventeenth. Yeah, that's just alittle puddle jumper from there to Yeah,

(23:33):
it's hour and forty minutes or so. Okay, so a real plane.
But I think he might be gettinghis Lake Como portion of the trip chopped
out, which I was very excitedfor. I think Roxy surprising with around
a golf on some cool Italian coursethat I think they may not be able
to pull off now. And thetruth is they still have two hours and

(23:53):
forty nine minutes, So fingers crossedon them even, you know, making
it over all that ice cold water. As he was keeping us in the
loop last night on our text thread, all I could think about was poor
Roxy trying to manage this. Thissweet boy just freaking out over his vacation.

(24:15):
Is this this is a picture ofhim. Look his little plane over
the coldest part. He might beover the deepest portion of the Atlantic right
now, this instant and the coldestand the most shark oldest. Yes,
so last night is touching his laminatedsheet of her shark identification that I gave
him. That's so brilliant. Soat eight forty we get the text boarded

(24:37):
for an hour. Pilot said,in forty years of doing this, he's
never seen this problem. Very vague. Another pilot sitting af he roes back,
he's telling everyone that it could bea lie. I don't know what.
That's a bad dead heading pilot who'ssitting behind the pastors saying a lie.
Wait what huh? And he goes, this may be the death plane.

(25:02):
Let's see now. He says,okay, And this is at nine
oh four, twenty five minutes later. Kicked us off the plane a minute
later, gonna miss the connecting flightto Barcelona. Whole trip ruined. And
I'm even trying to be nice atthis point, right, like, no
ruined. Oh you know what.The first thing off the menu now is
golf, he said, golf isout. Yeah, it's over a fiery

(25:25):
crash into the Atlantic. Feels likea good thing for that dude who's already
anxious about all this. And thenwe got a light out. Oh we
have a delay. Get off theplane. That does not calm the nerves.
But then one minute later he goes, okay, I'm back, So
I guess they no he was messingwith us, that he was that scared.
I think, oh, okay,well off he went at about eleven

(25:48):
pm last night, Our sweet Kevin, he is uh somewhere approaching northern Portugal
and northwest Spain right now. He'sgot a couple hours left, Sweet Kevin,
let just try calling him on theplane. Yeah, all right,
we gotta fund show. Got allsorts of goodies for you this morning.

(26:10):
We're gonna talk MAVs with our boy, Kevin Gray. He's your pre and
postgame show host right here on ninetyseven, won the Freak. He's gonna
join us in studio because my pantsare getting a little wild. And I
did watch these play ins last night, got me fired up for playoff basketball.
And I also don't know that anyteam I saw yesterday SAMs maybe the
Kings belongs on the same hardwood asour fighting MAVs. And then also maybe

(26:33):
are we losing it in the otherdirection. I need Kevin Gray to yeah,
to offer a measured, measured responseto this, because between that and
the MVP discussion, I mean,yes, is this real or are we
just the most myopic homers in theworld. That's a great question. Yeah,
because I think they should run toLuca and hand him the MVP and
then we'll see you the Nuggets inthe Western Conference Finals. We're doing that

(26:56):
at nine o'clock. We got allthe other staples of the show. Sports
at seven coming up in just atan half an hour, and uh,
we got some movies. We sawLights, Camera a Holes returns at eight
o'clock. I know, JJ sawa League of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Is definitely
not the title, but what isit. It's the Ministry Ministry. He
wasn't even close. No, Igot the Ungentlemanly w oh. I thought

(27:19):
it was just called the Ministry.It's a long title, long time.
Yeah, it's a difficult title.She saw that, And Danny, you
saw Civil War, Civil War,And uh, I know it's a little
late, but Oscar nom Zone ofInterest. Okay, there's a couple of
uplifting films. It's going to bea feel good edition in Lights. I've
been rocking three Body Problem on Netflix. Okay, and I have thoughts as

(27:42):
well. We'll do that at eighto'clock. But coming up next, it
is the most important thing in theworld. Is there an elephant on the
loose in your neighborhood? That's nextin ninety seven on the Free