(53 "Neighborhood Board Drama And Why Soccer Needs A Vuvuzela Rule"

Getting drafted into neighborhood leadership when you’re just trying to live your life is a special kind of comedy. We talk about being “wrangled” onto a neighborhood association board, the strange politics of minimal dues, and how planning a simple Fourth of July parade can turn into a tangled thread of emails, opinions, and unintended drama. It’s the kind of community involvement that sounds wholesome until you realize it might quietly eat three years of your time.

The heat pushes us indoors, and the World Cup becomes our jumping-off point for a very honest conversation about soccer. We dig into why the sport can be tough for casual viewers: stoppage time that makes the ending feel mysterious, the offside rule that never quite sticks, and the reality that low-scoring games demand patience. We also compare soccer to hockey and other sports, and we make the case that rules knowledge is the difference between “nothing is happening” and “everything is happening.”

Then we switch to games we grew up with and actually love playing. We talk Rook, poker, why bridge feels intense and a little snooty, and how family history can shape what you enjoy at the table. We finish with favorites like Hearts and cribbage, including the fine line between luck and skill and why competition gets fun when everyone knows what they’re doing. If you’ve ever argued about rules, hated being the newbie, or found your “one game” that brings out your best trash talk, you’ll feel seen. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves game night, and leave a review with the one rule you’d change in any sport or card game.

Please leave us your comments, text me, DM me, give me your thoughts.  what works and what doesn't land?  We want to improve.

thanks for listening

Joe

Transcript

Hello And Neighborhood Duty

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hey everybody, it's Built Down Man I'm the Cardiff Giant. We're in episode 53. And I don't really have any kind of magical number to go with that, but I'm Joe Flush, and here's my partner, Eddie. Good afternoon, guys. How are you? Eddie, you always come up with something really interesting to start with. So I'd like for you to do that right now. What's going on in your life?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Well, I'll tell you, Joe. Um we have this little thing in our neighborhood, not lots of people do. It's not a it's not it's not an official um HOA, but it's uh because there are there are dues, but they're pretty minimal minimal. But we I'm I I got uh wrangled onto the board of directors for the neighborhood association. When you say wrangled, was there a laureate involved? There was a la it might as well there was a there was a branding iron, uh I just say did it come from Emily? No, I didn't uh but anyway, I I I got wrangled onto this uh onto this committee. There are about, I guess there are 10 or 12 of us, I guess, and some of the folks are are older than me and going off the board. And you know, my response to them was why are you trying to recruit someone my age, almost 74 years old? You need some younger blood on this on this committee or on this board of directors, but and I think they're looking at finding some people. We've got some new folks in the neighborhood that have moved in that are in their 30s and 40s, and they're the ones, and with young kids, and they're the ones who really need to be uh on this board. But anyway, we've been preparing for this 4th of July uh parade, and it's not it's not not a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade by any measure, because it'll be mostly kids on skateboards and bicycles and that kind of thing, andor walking with their parents and their pets and things like that. And uh, but anyway, we've been fooling with this with this 4th of July thing for the last, I guess, 30 days or 40 days. And um my my emails get more interesting. I don't know whether I want to use the word interesting or not, but they they become more convoluted the entire time. I'm I'm getting an email from this person and that person, and this person says this about that, and the other person says this about this. And frankly, it's it's kind of a comedy routine in and of itself, really. Have you ever had have you ever been involved with anything like that, Joe?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

No, I try not to be. And when you talked about somebody being 75 and being too old to be on that, I I disagree with you because if anybody's gonna sit out peop outside people's houses and make sure they put their garbage cans away at the right time, it would be a 75-year-old.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I've already got a complaint lodged with the with the association. I'll tell you about that another time that I lodged personally myself. And uh and I told the person that was receiving that, I said, Listen, I don't want to be the old man yelling at the kids, get off my lawn, but I think it's inevitable when we get when we get to be our age a little bit, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Oh yeah, yeah. That happens. Or or saying, you know, uh the grass in front hadn't been mowed since that's right. Well, you go, okay, first of all, like it rained four days in a row. When was I gonna mow the grass? That's right. Second of all, are is that your life? Is that your life now? I mean, I think that says more about the person that's uh calling in those complaints than it is. Obviously. I mean, obviously, Ed, if if you saw somebody uh selling drugs out of their house, that might be worthy, but I don't know if it's worthy in a 12-person No, no, and and I have I've been to one meeting so far.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

I think we're having meetings quarterly. Um, I should know that since I'm on the board of directors, shouldn't have when the meetings might occur, but I don't. And I I'm not shrugging my shoulders at it, but it's one of those things where, you know, I I didn't want to really do it in the first place, and and now I'm there, and and it's a three-year sort of thing. It's it's a three, it's three years of this. So, you know.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Well, I still want to more hear more about the wrangling.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

How does that happen?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

If you don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Well, I had a close neighbor, close friend neighbor who said, Hey, they've asked me to be on the board of directors, and they they they asked me if um anybody else that I know might um want to get involved in. She said, I know you've been in the neighborhood for a while. I said, Define a while. She didn't define a while, but I've been here for five years, I guess. And uh, but anyway, she said, we'll be on it together. And I said, Okay, with the other folks. And she said, Yeah, that's right. But she said, uh we'll be able to get through it. And if I think it's a good thing in the long run, you know, it's a it's it won't hurt me any. It's one of those things where um even at this point in time, I think, yeah, I can get through that. And then I asked myself this question, Joe. This is the question. Well, if it's something that I just have to figure out how to get through, why am I doing it?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

You know, well, I think that I think that was the number one question. Yeah, to begin with. Yeah. If yeah, we have a neighborhood association here, and uh if they asked me to be on it, uh, or if he asked me just to come to one meeting or anything like that. What are you gonna say? I'm 75. I'm 75 years old. I'm crippled. I've got a I've had a heart attack, a stroke, I've had cancer in my eye. You think I want to waste one more minute? Yeah, 30 seconds would say I I'm I'm not. I mean, I'm already wasting time telling you I'm not gonna be on it.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Well, yeah, sure. But you know, I I I like the idea of it, but and and uh in in in case some folks from the neighbor neighborhood listen to this podcast, I like the idea of it, and I'm gonna do it, but it's not something that I'm going, man, I can't wait to that next meeting, or I can't wait for this social event, blah, blah, blah. And but but I'll do it. I like my neighbors, I can contribute in some way, and this might be the one.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

So I'm I'm excited that we opened with this because uh, you know, sometimes I feel like you're you don't have that much to contribute. And now I'm seeing why we don't open with you more often. How mundane can something be, actually. He's talking about his home association. Oh my god, Jill. He's talking about we better make sure our garbage cans are put in. Yeah. We uh we built a little thing for our garbage cans to go in because they were complaining about being able to see our garbage cans. And uh so we built a little shed thing, but we had to first get uh permission from the homeowners association to build this thing that was gonna hide the things that they were upset about. And so we did. We would do and they came back to us and said that little shed is one inch too big. I kid you not. We had to we had to end up changing the plan to remove one inch of that thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Oh well, I don't have any I don't have any plans like that for our neighborhood. In fact, we don't have that much clout. You know, we're not we're not paying a lot of dues. We're only paying $25 a year.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Well, I just want to see you going up to a guy who's a suspected selling drugs out of his house and just check in on the guy, see if he's okay and if that's really going on.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Oh, you know I'm gonna do that. Not at all.

Heat Waves And World Cup TV

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Well, I'm glad we opened with that because uh we have I'm finding right now in this hot weather, this this is hot weather. I mean, when it feels when it's over a hundred feels like temperature, uh day after day after day after day, it drives me crazy. So I try to find things to fill the day, you know, once I've done what little work I can outside, and uh uh so not much on TV going on right now except the World Cup. World Cup, yeah. Soccer. Yeah. I guess it's not soccer really, it's uh football. Yeah. Uh we call it soccer because by God, we're gonna name things the way we want. And it's an old game that appeals to me. That it that it is you know historic. It goes way, way back.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

It goes back to the Mayans. The Mayans had a soccer field and they tried to kick the yeah, the Mayans tried to kick the ball through a hoop attached to the side of something. And uh I expect other civilizations had something very similar to that.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

You're not gonna say Aztecs this time, huh?

SPEAKER_01 9:48

I'm gonna try not to say Aztecs for Nika's equity one. Oh, sorry, just did.

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Uh the uh the thing about the game, and uh, you know, I never heard soccer for for most of my youth. We had we had a baseball field, we played baseball. We always had basketball corps inside and out.

How We Learned Soccer As Kids

SPEAKER_00 10:12

We had did you have outdoor corps as well? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we we had both of those things. Uh we played quite a bit of baseball and uh just you know pick up teams. We didn't we didn't belong to a little league or anything like that. Uh at least in Camelsburg. What we did have, we had the grade schools would play each other like once or twice a year, and uh we weren't very good.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

And that's in the soccer you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Well no, I we're talking I was talking about the playing the baseball, but uh the soccer got introduced, I think. I don't know if anybody wants to check cross-reference my thinking here, but I believe that they wanted to get the girls involved more, uh, you know, by the time we were fifth or sixth grade or something like that. And they rolled out what we thought was a soccer ball. Um when I see soccer balls now, I don't think that's what I think it was a volleyball.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Or it was one of those little dodgeballs, those little red balls that we used all the time on the playground. Don't you remember those? They were really raised.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

We didn't no, we didn't have that. We had we just had a little white ball that is about the size of a volleyball, a youth volleyball. And we would uh, you know, we'd kick that thing around, and here's what the rules were. There was a goal on each end, and you just kick like crazy until you got it in.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Whatever it took.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yeah. Nobody was gonna yell offside. You know, uh, I have a theory.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

When you get when I get a chance, I'll get I'll tell you the theory about it. Go ahead with go ahead with the theory. The theory, my theory would be that you say that you didn't really know much about it until 1961, 62, or somewhere. Well, that's when Kennedy was in office, John Kennedy, and he pushed physical education. And and I guarantee you that they wanted to get the girls involved in uh physical education uh as well, and that was a way to do it. It could be sort of co uh curricular or whatever, um that they could play together. I think that might be the the reason one of the at least one of the reasons for it, in my opinion, could be. Um maybe not.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

And you know that that was kind of fun, just just bullying your way getting that ball in the goal. Did you run over those girls, Joe? Oh, yeah, of course we did. That's what we're although we had some girls on there that did run over me. That and you were talking about the physical fitness thing that Kennedy did. Yeah, we had to do uh we had to do pull-ups and we had to do so many uh sit-ups and push-ups and all that. Did you all have to do that?

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Yeah, we we sort of did that anyway. I'm not sure that there was any kind of um particular um official thing like that or a planned thing like that. But we did have, I I guess we did. We did have these these track and field events also for for our uh grade school. Did you did you guys have those?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Uh rarely was there anything like that. I mean, we're talking about you're talking about a grade school that I mean the population in Campbellsburg is 350. So you can imagine how many people were uh how many kids were in the school, not that many. And uh we would race, I loved racing against the guys uh because I was faster than anybody in grade school. Now I know you we're gonna put that on my uh tombstone that I was I was a fast runner in grade school, but I did like that because I was good at it. Yeah. Now, the soccer thing that stayed with me for a minute or two, you know, then just kicking and running and kicking, that uh it got old for me. We played more Johnny on the pony than we played soccer.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah, I think we talked about that. I don't remember exactly how that game went, but I I think we talked about that. Let me let me ask you this. So did they have you did they have did they it was sort of like on the job training, I guess, in order to teach you the rules of soccer, I guess. There was no such thing as the internet then, so you couldn't research it. So I guess the teachers would say, hey, these are the rules, and this is how this is played.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

No, they would roll out a ball and then we just went kicking. And we knew that one person could use their hands on each side. We did know that. Yeah, yeah. And uh that was the person who couldn't run, you know. That was yeah, that was the person that was not allowed to run, and we uh we would just kick it and all that. But anyway, getting back to the World Cup stuff, I realize it comes from that place. Uh maybe not anymore, but that's that was my part of it. Uh and I know people that are passionate about soccer.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Oh, I do too. Most most of them played in school, though, when it came, it really became popular in elementary and high schools, and most of those people who are really passionate actually played the game over and over and over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

You know, so yeah, uh, but I still don't get

Why Soccer Feels So Confusing

SPEAKER_00 15:56

it. I I want to, I want to, it's one of those things where I watch it and go, I wish I could stay interested in this, but I I find certain things that are just so crazy, I can't take and I'm gonna start with the one that I think is the worst. We don't know when the game's gonna end. Uh they say in the World Cup, you know, they got 90 minutes. Right. If somebody gets knocked down, it just keeps running and running, the time keeps running, they don't call a timeout, and then eventually, you know, they clean up all the blood and carry the body off the field or whatever they do, and they they just start up again. But the whole time, if a guy's getting ready to throw the ball in, the clock is running. Um and and I also I hear people all the time say, well, soccer's actually tougher because it's running all the time. Well, have you watched a game? There's a lot of walking. There's a lot of walking, a lot of just standing waiting, you know, with bursts of of things.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Activity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Activity.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

But they say they've always said, they, you know, who they are. Yeah. This always said, and and I sort of agree, but I could think of other instances where this would not be true, that uh professional basketball players are the best conditioned athletes in the entire world. In the entire world. And I find that and I don't know that they could be better conditioned than soccer players or better conditioned than than tennis players.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Uh it depends on your definition of conditioning, I think. Uh, because uh let's say are they are they better conditioned than uh runners, you know, long distance runners, 10 foot years.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah, you wouldn't think so.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Well, I mean, because those people have uh muscle memory that are quite different, it's not the fast twitch stuff. Uh but back to my soccer thing. My problem is you get to the 90-minute thing, and then they say, okay, well, there's gonna be some more time. You're gonna play it for a while more. Now, I noticed that this year, maybe in recent years, they put the amount of time on the board. But before, they did not. They would just say, We're gonna play for a while and we'll let you know when the game is over.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

See, see, I've already noticed a big difference between you and me on this soccer thing. All this is news to me. Everybody uh everything that you've said so far is news to me.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Yeah, yeah. I I I don't know anything. I know nothing at all about it except, ah, the ball went in the goal. That's pretty good. They probably scored that. That's all I know.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah. So yeah, I if you're you know reading a book or your iPad or something like that, and you hear them say goal, then look up and see what happened. To me, it's you know, because most of the games are very low scoring. One to nothing is not, you know, not unusual. Uh most games I would say are like two to one or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah, I see those low scores.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

And I can't watch for 90 minutes to see that. So you're saying you didn't know you didn't know that after the 90 minutes they play longer? No. Well then why would I? Well, they do that. Let me tell you why they do that. They've had so many uh, you know, injuries and stuff that should have stopped a clock, uh, but they don't stop the clocks, it just keeps running. So the officials at the end, they compute how much extra time they have to play.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Based upon time lost, I guess, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Yeah, time lost.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Now, wouldn't it be easier just to stop them clock? It seems like it would. Uh but but that also lets people kind of lollygag for a while. Think of the lead, why not just knocking the ball around for a while? I don't know. I wish I liked it. Uh the other thing is offside. Do you know about offsides? I know it exists. Yeah. Well, I'm not gonna get into basically basically you you can't uh you can't kick the ball forward to a guy who then kicks it in unless there's someone closer to the goal.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Okay. And so uh that makes it way more interesting. Uh not to me. Uh but it's just one of those things. It, you know, we talk about uh sports that we like so much. Do we don't really care about soccer? I'm just gonna say, not for me. I'm I'm not on the hate side of it. I'm glad you're you guys are enjoying it.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

I me too. All power to you.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Uh I feel the same way about hockey.

Hockey Comparisons And Red Cards

SPEAKER_01 21:24

I feel exactly the same way about hockey. What's the difference between hockey and soccer, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Well, ice would be part of it.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Ice is part of it. A puck is part of it as opposed to a ball, I guess. Uh, but it's the same up and down that really just makes me nutty. And I've got I've got friends and relatives that have played hockey. Um, I've got a son in law who played hockey all of his life. So does he watch hockey? Yeah. Does he know the rules? He knows all of them, which makes it a whole lot easier for him to watch a game of hockey, I would guess. So again, I I I I don't I I think it's great that people like it. People like different things in life. But uh as you said, it's just not for me.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Well, you know, hockey and and soccer have that in common that a player can be removed from the field uh in the case of in case of hockey, you know, you just knock the guy's brains out, so you have to sit out two minutes in the penalty box.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

And you get a red card for that or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

No, they don't get it not in hockey. They get the red card as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

I've been in soccer. That's what I meant with soccer.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

And uh when they played soccer the other night, uh U.S. guy got a red card doing what looked like the same thing they've been doing the whole time, just colliding with each other.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

That's what the commentators thought, too.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Yeah, well, is what they what they do in soccer is you gotta take them off the field and then never comes back. And they don't put a they don't put a replacement and you gotta play one man short the rest of the game.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

And and that's that the way I understand it, um, that's not the way it works in hockey, of course, because there's a penalty box. You go sit in that box for a while. Do you have any idea how long people sit in the box, Joe?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

They have don't they have to put a cone on their heads as well?

SPEAKER_01 23:16

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

That would make it more fun. It would. Uh no. I I think instead of removing the guy, let's say in soccer, I got an idea. To make it more interesting, if if they say there's such a big penalty, goes past the yellow card, past out to the red card, they have to play the rest of the game with a babuzula. They gotta play the vavuzula while they play.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

I think that would be a great rule if I had any idea what the vivuzula was.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Oh God, man, you really don't keep up with soccer. No. For a while, people were bringing this thing that it's it's almost as interesting as my uh kazoo. Uh now I know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

I know the story.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

They would play it constantly. They would play it.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

I know that story. I just didn't know what it was called. I've heard that. And you know, I watched Sports Center, so I've seen that dang thing, but I didn't know it was called anything. I just thought it was called a dang noisemaker.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

So they did that for years and years and years. And finally somebody said, Don't don't you find that maybe a little irritating? What about what about people coming to the game? Do you think they might not want to come because of the noise? You know, when you got people I so I don't know, I don't know how that ever got introduced in there, but it was it was awful. And I for one think that that's a good change is not allowing the babuzula to be problem. Yeah, I tend to agree with that.

Card Games We Grew Up On

SPEAKER_01 24:58

What about like what about like board games and or card games and stuff like that? Do you have one that you particularly dislike or would think you would never play? And why?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Why are why I grew up a lot of card games, Led. I that was the thing I looked forward to when my friends would come over. We would play cards, and uh to start out we played rook, which is uh kind of a you know, it's a simple introductory type card game. You've played rook, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

I played thousands and thousands of hands of rook. That's all my family played. From the time I was four or five, I learned how to play rook. So I played it all through my youth, and we had card games at our house all the time. My my parents would invite people over. There'd be eight or ten, um, then to a couple tables, two or three tables maybe sometimes. So I was around rook all my life, and so to some some extent, poker also.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Oh yeah. Yeah, well, my you know, poker was one that I I learned to play. Uh I never got passionate about poker, uh, I think early on because I didn't have money to to waste. And uh I found that even my family members, man, they wanted to take my money. So you know, you know, funny funny side on that, uh, when mom got married to dad, her family uh I can talk about them now because they're not around anymore. But they they weren't that accepting of mom into the family. They they had other matches in mind, they didn't really want her, and she could feel it. I mean, they weren't they weren't really very secretive about it, but right uh she would she learned to play poker to get an in with uh the family. Nice. So and and it was my grandfather, uh dad's dad, that really welcomed her in. And uh they played, my uncle Henry played. Uh there was a bunch of regular players. They'd have six to eight people playing all the time, and uh she learned to be a pretty good poker player doing it that, but she mainly did it uh to show that she was interested in the family, not uh, you know, she was not an outsider.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Your mother was very resourceful. You've you we've talked about that a little bit, and she was. She was uh she she could adapt to an extent, couldn't she? And she's willing to do that. So she did it. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, my grandfather loved her to death. I mean, he really did. He was he was crazy about her, and he loved my dad. I you know, he probably everybody in the family probably felt that, but uh he uh he was the guy, and I got a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

So was my grandfather. He was the patriarch, so he he decided when when whose whose hand the rook was in when we were playing poker. Or playing rook, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

But I'll tell you one one game that I I could never really catch on to, and this is gonna be controversial, Ed.

Bridge Feels Competitive And Snooty

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Uh, it's bridge. And I've known the rules to bridge, and I've watched people play bridge, and I've played some bridge. Most of the time they don't want me to play because I'm not good enough to uh to keep up. And bridge. It's pretty competitive, huh?

SPEAKER_01 28:46

It's fairly competitive, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Oh, it's very competitive. Yeah. And what people like the least about bridge is they don't like these dumbass newbies that come in and don't know the rules that well. Yeah. I didn't like the fact that one person, well, you know what, with bridge, it's really not the play, it's about the bidding. And once the bidding is done, the play is pretty obvious because the bidding is there only to tell you what's in everybody's hands. And uh I'm too uh competitive with that. I don't want any chance in hell that I'm the dummy for somebody.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Here's what I'm gonna make a comment on that. If you don't, I need to interject uh something here. Uh and I hope we don't get any um any bad responses from what I'm about to say. I'm sure we will, since I've asked for it.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Well, I hope I hope we do. That means they're listening, Ed.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Yeah, exactly. But but in my my opinion, my esteemed opinion, my thinking about bridge has always been, because I'm 74 years old and lived for that long, is bridge has a snootiness air about it to me. Am I wrong about that?

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Or do you think I think you're absolutely right about that? Uh yes. I thought you might agree. Mary Kay and I looked at maybe just for something the couples do to maybe go get a beginner's bridge class and just try to just for the social aspect of it. And uh uh her background isn't very good. Her uh her uh first husband tried to get her to uh uh play, I I think she said it was her first, tried to get her to join a bridge group, and she came home after one session crying. She she was so overwhelmed, and she didn't grow up with card games or anything. Forget, she couldn't tell you the role of the rook. Uh she didn't, they didn't do that. So uh yeah, it seems like Bridge is a little bit uh snooty, and I think it's because once they know how bidding should go, they don't like you coming in there with your trying to count the points in your hand and uh all that kind of stuff. And I I knew some people that that were pretty damn good at it, uh and they tried to teach me, and I again I want to play, I don't want to be the dummy. So it wasn't it wasn't for me.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Yeah, well you you know I I I don't guess we need to beat this dead horse much longer, but when I think of bridge, I think of the 50s and 60s um era, and people sitting around in their living room with their sofas, their divans, their uh and sitting in a a mid-century modern chair with a glass of wine and and playing bridge. That's what I that's what I see in my head even now. And you sort of you sort of said that that's kind of the way you in a suitie sort of fashion, you know.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Right, right. So but uh well I think we should end with some kind of game, but let's just talk about games maybe that you do like.

Hearts Strategy And Cribbage Hustles

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Do you play like card games that you really, really, really?

SPEAKER_01 32:29

I I loved uh I loved Rook. I mean, my sister and I would my sister and I would play for hours at a time, just me and her, and we'd have a dummy on the left and a dummy on the right. And it usually wasn't me or her, it would be an actual dummy, you know, with a chair and no one sitting in it. They would also play and we'd draw out of their hand. Do you know how do you know how that worked? Okay. All right. But uh Rook was always interesting to me, and my family played with a specific card uh called the one, which beat everything except for the rook. It beat all other cards except for the rook. Did your family play with the one? I thought it was the two. It was the one for us.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Oh, okay. Well, we you're number one, we're number two. But that's right. Yeah, we we played with that. And I liked it okay, but I think hearts is way, way better. And uh it hearts is about as simple to teach somebody as anything. Yeah. And then it and then the strategy there, like uh most of the time you're not gonna beat me in hearts. You I mean, you can beat me in hand, but I'm talking about for the game, you're not gonna beat me.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Uh the one that I I really uh are really good at, cribbage. And I learned cribbage uh pretty much self-taught. I I thought the board was cool, you know. Yeah. You keep score on the board, and I thought it was cool. Then I thought, well, it's a lot of luck, because you know, you can't play cards you don't have. Uh it's about 80% luck, but that 20% uh advantage per hand for being a really good player, uh, I played I played for money. I I I teased that I it got me through college. It it didn't, but I sure made a lot of money playing that. Really? Uh yeah, and I would I would lose I would lose money uh purposely in some other games so that nobody knew how much I was and that they'd come back and that you could keep it rolling. So and uh I had I had a roommate uh uh Reed Moore who who bet on uh uh bowling, yeah, and he was really good. Uh but yeah, I would I would go for bowling, put in a little bit of money, lose it, and then come back and play, you know, a friendly hand of cribbage. And it the way it works, you can really once you get to a certain point and you understand the strategy, uh you can you can make it a lot of a lot of money in a short time. Yeah. So so yeah, there's that. And yeah, am I proud of that? Well, yeah, kinda. Yeah, I would be, certainly. If you give me, if you give me like three months to refresh my memory on all this stuff, I'd probably kill everybody. Uh hit a had a guy at work that swore he was the best cribbage player ever, and we played for years, him trying to catch up. Was it Clay? No, no, it wasn't clay. No, it was cash. Oh, it was cash. Yeah. And uh no, but anyway, well, listen, I think we've uh uh beat this subject to death, and yeah, we have.

Listener Comments And Closing

SPEAKER_00 36:15

I I hope people find this uh podcast interesting. Our numbers have been phenomenal. We've had uh most of our episodes you know catch fire, uh, and we appreciate every bit of it. As far as comments is concerned, go ahead and make the comments, just send them to me because I'll uh Eddie might get his feelings hurt. I'm not gonna get my feelings hurt.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Listen, especially if they talk bad about the board of directors' uh introductory uh stuff, that's gonna hurt my feelings if they stand me on that.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Yeah. All right, Ed, why don't you play us out of here?