TIL the head of the Dept of Labor used to be the Mayor of Boston

From his official bio:

In 1997, he was elected to serve as a State Representative for one of the most diverse districts in Massachusetts. There, he focused on creating good jobs, protecting workers’ rights, expanding mental health treatment, and investing in public transit.

Following his time as a State Representative, Secretary Walsh spent the last seven years as the Mayor of the City of Boston. While mayor, he led the creation of close to 140,000 jobs and helped secure a statewide $15/hour minimum wage, paid sick leave, and paid parental leave. He established Universal, high-quality Pre-Kindergarten for all children, and free community college for low-income students.

He seems like exactly the type of guy who would run a department that would frown upon a man refusing to pay another man what he is owed as his employee.

if you eat this salad you’re gonna have a baby

i actually got a lot done today

went with bree to a restaurant where if youre a pregnant lady and you eat the salad the odds magically increase that you will deliver the bambino within 3 and 36 hours.

bree wanted to go there because on monday theyre going to induce her and she would rather her angel come out the natural way.

she taught me a lot about being a pregnant lady. we did a little podcast. it turned out better than i expected.

when you’re unemployed you feel like a complete loser and when you do something well it has a way of surprising you.

apparently i can talk aloud in a conversation.

anyways this restaurant has an unpronounceable name, it’s on an adorable street in studio city that actually looks like it could be in the movies now that i say it.

the waiters told us that 15-20 women a day go in there for The Maternity Salad.

bree is picky and she said the salad was good. mine was meh.

they had this huge board with all the names of the Salad Babies.

she was very calm. her work gives her 6 months off to do this. which seems like a lot, but then how do you just not be around your 6 month old if you wanna receive money and benefits?

we’ll check in with her later.

best question i asked: what was your best baby shower gift?

tune in never to hear her answer because lets be real, if i wanted to do podcasts i would have been doing them by now.

came home and watched the end of the cubs game.

then did something on the howard stern group that ive been wanting to do somewhere, anywhere, for the last 10 years.

long long time ago usa today had a blog called pop candy by whitney matthewson and she did this thing where once a week she would feature one of her commentors.  most posts got like 20-100 comments, but those ones got 1,000+ because it was actually really nice to see who these people were and what they were into.

last month i did an Ask Me Anything to get the ball rolling. i knew some of these people disagreed with some of the rules that i had implemented or didn’t like how i did certain things, so i did it to let them grill me on it so that there would be a record of where i stood on things and so maybe they could understand my rationale better. funny thing was, most of them had zero interest in any of that and just wanted to ask good questions. which was fine because that AMA wasnt about me, really, it was to set the table for the weekly AMAs to come.

so i made sure to keep it as really real as i could, but also to mirror what we love about the Stern show, which is people are brutally honest, including the host. especially the host.

well it worked out because today i picked this guy who was one of my best Informants. the group gets more than 50 posts a day and it is really helpful that 3-4 dudes regularly tell me any time someone says something insane that needs my attention. in a perfect world i would make them all admins, but this system has worked out fine and despite the size (16k) most people respect the rules and are civil.

so i asked him yesterday if he was up to do an AMA and he said whats that? turned out he was perfect. he grew up on Long Island in the 80s; knows everything about the show, the staff, all the minor details, and even knows the comedian guests on the much-maligned Wrap Up Show. works in government in DC. the whole thing was shocking. and then he came out in the middle of the thing.

pop candy strikes again.

then i watched this video of David Ross, the backup catcher for the Cubs in 2016 who was the oldest player on the team so they called him Grampa Rossy.

if you remember, in the World Series, in the final game, on what everyone knew would be his final game of his career because he was retiring, he hit a crucial home run off one of their best pitchers.

the cubs digital team has taken it to higher level this year with their videos because not only is the production good but the interviews, like on this one, lead to some amazing insights.

for example: Grampa Rossy has no business hitting a home run off Andrew Miller on a rainy night in Cleveland,

but through this video we learn all this crazy ass inside baseball stuff that is what i live for

namely:

Rossy and Miller played together in Boston. when you are the catcher and he is the pitcher, you tend to learn things about him if you ever have to hit against him. Ross, like most people, knew that Miller’s money pitch was his slider – a pitch that will trail away from a right handed batter, just out of his reach.

sliders are super hard to hit so you usually just let those go by and wait for him to throw a fastball.

miller had a tell. one that probably only a catcher would know because it may hurt some catcher’s feelings.

when a catcher calls the signs, he’s not asking the pitcher “hey what do you think about a fastball?” he’s telling him “dude, let me call this game. i see what you have going. i study the hell out of these batters. here’s what we should do: fastball.”

if the pitcher disagrees with the call he will shake off the catcher and have him call another pitch. most pitchers only have 2-3 pitches so it’s not that complicated. but if a pitcher shakes off a catcher, generally the catchers don’t like that.

so Grampa Rossy noticed that every time Miller would shake off a pitch it was usually because he wanted to throw a fastball.

there it was, game 7 of the world series. all of his years of being around the league, learning weird quirks, studying batters… it was Grampa’s weird knowledge of his former pitcher that helped him know that when Andrew Miller shook off a sign with one ball and two strikes it was probably gonna be a flaming hot fastball.

and it was, and the Cubs were on their way to winning the world series.

 

xbi gave me a pair of tickets to see Boston tonight

boston 1978but then there were all these strings attached as to whom i could bring

theyre trying to set me up with someone in the agency who is nice

and smart, and easy on the eyes

if you like that sorta thing

but shes super bossy and judgemental and plays things waaaaay too safe if you ask me.

she keeps asking me why i dont have a house

and why my apartment is better furnished

i told her that some things deserve attention and other things dont.

i told her that im laser focused right now.

when i get home i make sure the cats have steak in their bowls

and theres plenty of gingerale in the gingerale fountain.

then i look at the kitty litter to make sure their poops are blue and green

then i look in the fridge and make sure theres plenty of liver and bacon and apple cider.

whats the difference between apple cider and apple juice she asked me once.

and i said there are some things that deserve attention and other things dont.

then i told her i turn on my bedroom tvs and fire up my xbox and ps4

and she asked why do you need both game systems.

i told her, are there only blondes and brunettes running around? she said what?

i said there are more than just those two systems, you know.

and i said then i switch on the ceiling fan and open the window and guess what, im about 80 percent satisfied with life right there.

she said what about love?

i said, are you the pokemon of love that i better catch or someone else will get it and live forever and ever in utter happiness

and she couldnt say yes so i said, then you probably should either grab a joy stick

or order us some soul food because this is the part of my day where i take off my pants.

and thats how i lost my tickets to Boston tonight

theyre playing Boston on wgn

something ive never heard before so it must be from Third Stage.

the fans are smiling as its the top of the 7th and the cubs are up 11-2 over the visiting boston red sox,

thanks in part to a home run by the elderly pitcher, greg maddux, who is still on the mound. thanks sox.

did you drive your cah to tha pahk?

if i could be anywhere in the world it would be wrigley this weekend. the last time the red sox were at wrigley was for the 1918 world series. little known fact but that series wasnt played at fenway and wrigley, it was played at fenway and comiskey because back then people didnt have television so they figured more people could attend the games if it was held on the south side, so thats what they did.

1918 was the last year that the sox had won the world series until they did it again last year.

its 1:33 and twenty minutes with tony starts a-now.

chris chelios and some dude with a red sox hat just sang take me out to the ballgame.

one of the great things about baseball is if you take your hacks the pitcher actually can hit a homer.

cubs just banged two doubles in a row. oh this is sweet.

i really dont like interleague play. its like if people said guys can walk around with their dicks out. you’d say, yeah i guess thats interesting, but after a few years ive had enough.

even though the cubs just hit another double i like that the sox havent played in 85 years. its what used to seperate baseball from any other american sport. teams just did not play each other unless it was a world series situation, and with so many teams nowadays, other than filling the coffers of the owners, i dont see the point of this any longer.

it also sets up situations like the fact that the cubs play three games here in LA and not again all year. it sorta weakens league rivalries if you ask me.

last night big time red sox fan karisa invited me over for dinner to celebrate the eve of this historic meeting. i just called her because she doesnt get wgn in her hollywoodhills penthouse. hey its 14-3, i told her, tell your girlfriends they can come to wrigley whenever they want.

she made shrimp linguine, we ate garlic bread, and drank wine. may i say i was a little shocked to see her get drunk so quickly, i thought she had been practicing pretty well over the last few months, but then again she is a girl, which shouldnt be hard to remember but sometimes it is.

the cubs finally got out of the inning and wgn is playing “more than a feeling” into the commercials and this is the way to wake up.

fucked up at 8am and called the court to see if they would pick me on my last day of jury duty and indeed they had! i was supposed to call in last night but between doing laundry and hanging out with karisa i had forgotten to call. so at 8am i woke up when someone else called me and i called the court and the happiest man in the planet laughed and said oh dont worry, you can call every day next week then. d’oh!

ok that ends twenty minutes with tony, come back next time when we discuss how great it is to park right in front of my house.

Cubs v Red Sox, tomorrow 3pm ET, noon PT on FOX. Wade Miller vrs Carlos Zambrano

riley dog + steph + mass live + kitty bukkake