Midwestology 4: High School Football Brain Damage Machine
Added 2025-03-24 13:16:35 +0000 UTCWe've reconvened Nate, Milo, Joe, and Francis to discuss the beloved American Midwest, and the phenomenon of high school sports being a dominant motivator for all sorts of decisions that it probably shouldn't affect so much, like: all the other things that schools are supposed to do? We hope you enjoy
Comments
Is cricket a posh sport in the rest of the South? In Kent it was probably the second sport after football, and it was p normal to play for all backgrounds. I never clocked it as a class thing especially.
Ben Yardley
2025-04-02 11:16:28 +0000 UTCthis was part of what cracked my egg half a decade ago, just not on AOL
Lizzie LaHaie
2025-03-26 18:46:56 +0000 UTCTransitioning on AOL because you wanna chat with lesbians and it just went too far... that has bit potential I think
Ariane Signalis is the Elster Signalis Fan Club and challenges you to play SIGNALIS without pointing at any of the characters an
2025-03-26 16:57:08 +0000 UTCRobert Evans hearing Joe and Co ripping on the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and their horn, feeling heartbroken
John Her
2025-03-26 13:28:07 +0000 UTCThe thing about Americans just being like “that’s the local creep stay away from him” is so real. My mom grew up like blocks away from Gary Ridgeway (green river killer) and she told me everyone called him “scary Gary” and knew to stay away from him. But also he was just the scary guy on the corner to avoid, nothing to be done about him.
michael dees
2025-03-26 05:16:45 +0000 UTCMy wife went to Carmel high school and we are consistently jumpscared by Nate talking about it. Her notes are that Carmel high school has a planetarium and that it drives everyone insane about sports.
Jess
2025-03-26 02:39:48 +0000 UTCAnyone else start singing "grapefruit diet" after the fade out?
Christopher Barnes
2025-03-25 21:00:19 +0000 UTCOhio is pretty crazy about HS football, I'm near Massillon which is where Paul Brown was from, and they have both a huge fancy stadium and an indoor practice facility
Marjorie Zeager
2025-03-25 20:06:32 +0000 UTCI would bet any amount of money that ketamine was in the cocktail of drugs JFK was on at any point in time
Marjorie Zeager
2025-03-25 20:04:18 +0000 UTCInteresting that Alabama didn't make your list: if they didn't use high schools to feed the football programs at Bama and Auburn we might not have schools at all, or the roads to get to them.
David Purves
2025-03-25 18:06:57 +0000 UTCNot just food you could disgrace your family and/or church and go straight to hell if you lost.
jamin
2025-03-25 13:35:20 +0000 UTCAlberta is part of the Midwest while also being spiritually part of the deep south.
jamin
2025-03-25 13:32:06 +0000 UTCStill find it weird as a born and bred New Jerseyan that Blues Traveler are from NJ. Popper is such a tryhard reactionary, but in the way that is different from how Jersey reactionaries act - almost as if he’s still mad at his dad for moving the family from his birthplace of Ohio to the Northeast.
Matthew
2025-03-25 11:24:51 +0000 UTCSee I’d never associate the post-Dead jam bands and associated bands with the midwest, considering a lot of them originated in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic college towns; Phish - Vermont, DMB - Virginia, Blues Traveler - Princeton, NJ, OAR - Maryland, etc.
Matthew
2025-03-25 11:17:04 +0000 UTCkind of? i remember some of the very basic stuff we got taught at the end of elementary school that was mostly about this, but it was so long ago that it's an extremely vague memory. i remember the more detailed stuff from health class in middle school, but the general 'bad touch' sex ed stuff was more like 4th-5th grade
Trashfuture
2025-03-25 08:43:29 +0000 UTCLincoln was basically the same. At least you guys could walk to stones town.
James Cézanne-Taipale
2025-03-25 08:32:23 +0000 UTCWild hearing Hamilton County mentioned, and yeah College football is huge in the south, ROCKY TOP YOU'LL ALWAYS BE
ZephanyZephZeph
2025-03-25 06:49:45 +0000 UTCOk but the 90s swing revival rules and Ska rules yall are wrong
Lizzie LaHaie
2025-03-25 05:09:48 +0000 UTCIs ween a jam band? I've heard at least one guy associate them with jam bands but they also don't seem like one when I think about it for longer then five seconds.
Grease Wizard
2025-03-25 03:43:42 +0000 UTCApperantly so. I need to rethink a few things in my life now.
Malcontent Battery Pack
2025-03-25 02:53:00 +0000 UTCwe would never make anything up
The Worst of all Possible Worlds
2025-03-25 00:38:18 +0000 UTCthe Midwest has more of a culture of protecting the family child molester lmao. our family had one (long dead thank god) and basically everyone I've known had one who was born in like the 20s and everyone just knew not to leave little kids alone with em. but also it's a "family matter" so the law can't be involved
Rae Rae
2025-03-24 23:33:42 +0000 UTCLearning that Alberta, Canada is technically part of the Midwest because we learned line dancing from kindergarten to Grade 12
Joanna
2025-03-24 22:50:08 +0000 UTCYep. From Eugene, OR, which is surprising to me. From their Wikipedia: "One of the band's stage props was known as the "Dildorado" or "The Dildozer", a riding lawnmower modified to look like a human penis that mimicked ejaculation by shooting colorful fluids from its tip."
Raymond Price
2025-03-24 22:27:45 +0000 UTCI moved into town from the countryside 2 years ago, and i got a house directly across from the school. Every fucking away basketball game the kids win my toddler gets to get woken up by the firetruck parade and i have to kick at least one or two half drunk middle aged men out of my front yard. HS sports culture is unhinged around here.
Jonathan Sutter
2025-03-24 22:18:13 +0000 UTCWait Cherry Popping Daddys is a real band?! I totally thought it was just a Worst of all Possible World bit!
Malcontent Battery Pack
2025-03-24 21:16:02 +0000 UTCPlayed high school football in Texas, even in the suburbs where there’s plenty to do they make such a big thing of football. Lotta dads trying to relive their peak years of high school through their sons.
Agripinaa
2025-03-24 21:10:20 +0000 UTCThe return of the rugby playing murder stoner, last seen in the cricket episode iirc.
Andrew Davis
2025-03-24 21:01:04 +0000 UTCThe surviving remnants of the Ó Flossachaigh clan jolt awake at the mention of their ancestors' dance, arms and hips ready for action.
Jack Fennell
2025-03-24 20:48:17 +0000 UTCnate listing all the jam bands brought me back to getting picked up by my stoned af friend in his brand new car cause he was rich af blasting dave, rusted root, phish, deep banana blackout, etc 😭😭😭
Joshua P. Kelly
2025-03-24 20:24:19 +0000 UTCnearly 40 year old CT / new england hardcore kid (hatebreed & youth of today, what’s good): managed to see dave 15+ times in my younger days - first time I ever smoked weed & ate acid @ 12/13 was at a DMB concert. Definitely something where new england 🤝 midwest🤝 mid-atlantic seaboard DMB used to play Hartford, CT three nights every summer until there was a frat bro riot & fire lmao
Joshua P. Kelly
2025-03-24 20:20:53 +0000 UTCThe restricted donation thing is so true! I work at a nonprofit and most donors are allergic to giving unrestricted funds because it's not sexy to fund things like the fundraising department or the administrative staff (which is what those funds get used for); donors want to point to something very concrete, like a building or a direct service position. It's really annoying to explain that we can only handle so many buildings, vans, and direct service staff without people doing things behind the scenes like custodial work or accounting.
Kathryn from Detroit
2025-03-24 19:41:50 +0000 UTCAs a elementary school kid in the 80s we got a lot of Stranger Danger education. As a boy prone to tears I was frequently called "queerbait". Also calling the Grateful Dead "what if The Doors lived" is way off base. The Doors would have morphed into Bauhaus or something. As far as I know the Bosstones broke up because the lead singers politics got horrible, so cut them some slack, it was just that guy.
Ben Schwabe
2025-03-24 19:41:44 +0000 UTCThe guy who tried to molest me was a cousin. Thankfully he was slow and the candy he offered was bad. Chocolate coins? My 8 year old ass was worth more than shitty chocolate coins, steve
Garth Hansen
2025-03-24 19:27:40 +0000 UTCFun fact. I met Haste the Day back in uhhh 2005? They were opening for From Autumn to Ashes.
Akileese
2025-03-24 19:20:51 +0000 UTCSounds like grammar school rugby in Aotearoa
Gonk_God
2025-03-24 19:07:28 +0000 UTCProbably true. Especially South Dakota.
Rylan May
2025-03-24 18:57:23 +0000 UTCI thought I heard his say "John F Ketamine" and I bet jfk would have been down to clown
Garth Hansen
2025-03-24 18:52:02 +0000 UTCMy high school, Lowell High School in San Francisco, was half “temporary buildings” which had been there since the early 70s. I graduated in 2001. Supposed best academic magnet public school in the city was full of shitty, mean teachers who made homophobic comments and me and my friends and was falling apart.
Simone Meltesen
2025-03-24 18:26:06 +0000 UTCI'm kirkwood class '01,and can confirm the rivalry is bananas, labeled as "the longest rivalry west of the Mississippi". As I was goalie for the actual "football" team, and the only varsity sport to beat Webster my senior year, I got to talk shit to the egg ball players for the last 6 months of school.
bouteilles de vin et polystyrène
2025-03-24 18:20:06 +0000 UTCAOL 🤣 I worked in a European AOL customer support center back in the 90s and, oh boy, lots to say, but top of the pile, and perhaps instructive as to how they fumbled the bag so hard, the chief ops officer..I was seeing his PA and, she had access to his emails and, our boy was a total freak. S&M swinger's parties weekly. A/s/l baby, a/s/l
Cormac
2025-03-24 18:12:54 +0000 UTCI can confirm that, actually, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies have decent politics and the lead singer is a genuinely nice guy (I know him through my work). They've also said a few times the name was a fun bit when they were freshmen in college but it got dark after they put out records with that name and had to live with that. Sometimes, kids, the bit is not worth it.
Jordan Clementi
2025-03-24 17:30:47 +0000 UTCWhen I was a kid in Massachusetts in the late 90s and early 00s, I lived in a neighborhood that was four streets making the shape of an E, meeting the main road (Which was a pretty dangerous road at the time, to the point that the sidewalks were no guarantee of safety) at the three tips. I lived about halfway up the middle prong, and I was only allowed to go about 3/4 of the way up my street, all the way up the top prong of the E, and not at *all* on the bottom prong. We moved when I was 11, and I didn't find out until I was a teenager that the limits were where they were because of where the 3 pedophiles in the neighborhood lived.
Nova Zicko
2025-03-24 17:26:33 +0000 UTCAnd how the general public still had no idea about it
Donovan Burns
2025-03-24 16:59:21 +0000 UTCI work in retail and we get Code Adam training, which covers what to do when a child is missing. The host of America's most wanted is the guy doing the instructional video.
Camoose
2025-03-24 16:45:42 +0000 UTCFun term for maypole dancing I heard at a renn faire..."putting a condom on a caber"
D&BDomeisen
2025-03-24 16:30:28 +0000 UTCI guess someone in small town Indiana might now know where all those AOL discs came from?
Rain
2025-03-24 16:30:17 +0000 UTCAw man, hearing that music just gave me a full-body flashback. The Army band came to my grade school and played for us during an assembly and Zoot Suit Riot was their closing number.
David Schuller
2025-03-24 16:15:08 +0000 UTCThe weirdest part of school sports/activities was when you had the home school students play on the team. My brother and I played quiz bowl, basically jeopardy but you played with others as a team, and we always went up against home school students and they were always a bit off. Like the type of people who did Quiz Bowl were the nerds, but even we found the home school kids a bit off. These weren't like Francis' home schooling situation because this was in South Dakota - so most of the time they were homeschooled for religious reasons. Anyways we'd shake hands at the end of the match and one dude, regardless of if he won or loss, would try to crush your hand because he probably only ever interacted with like three other people. My brother made the comment that the home school kids always had to be smart and win because they probably wouldn't get food if they lost.
Levi Magnuson
2025-03-24 16:00:56 +0000 UTCEvery time joe and francis say the word 'nonce' I can't stop myself from thinking of Milo's Andrew Tate impression
marilyn
2025-03-24 16:00:47 +0000 UTCIt was weird how the big swing hit was named after one of the ugliest race riots in US history.
Peevish Giraffe
2025-03-24 15:37:25 +0000 UTCfor me i liked the swing band revival cos i was sent to cotillion and learned to jitterbug lifts are super fun, y'know?
kaninchen ZERO
2025-03-24 15:31:04 +0000 UTCThey didn't need to come to Ska.
Harold Duggan
2025-03-24 14:51:29 +0000 UTCFun to find out that all schools do some kind of weird dancing thing for no clearly defined reason - in Scotland most schools have like one PE class a year where you awkwardly do ceilidh dancing
Toss a coin to your GP
2025-03-24 14:42:03 +0000 UTCBizzy Bone wasn’t kidnapped by his father. He was kidnapped by his stepfather
Seán
2025-03-24 14:41:55 +0000 UTCHaven’t heard the name Haste the Day in a minute. Tooth & Nail Records baby!!!
Jessie Cherbak
2025-03-24 14:37:28 +0000 UTCJoe, Nate, you never had Stranger Danger / No one except the doctor or your parents is supposed to touch your Bathing Suit Area education? BTW, this is the 'sex education' being removed from schools.
Liz and Ash at UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA!!
2025-03-24 14:16:38 +0000 UTCGrowing up in Massachusetts in the early 2000s there were houses that my parents told me to avoid because there were peodphiles that lived there
Colin English
2025-03-24 14:11:07 +0000 UTCOmfg YES.
Rusty Shackleford
2025-03-24 13:50:07 +0000 UTCYou know it's gonna be a good one when they lead with the ICP intro
kiwi
2025-03-24 13:32:36 +0000 UTCJoe and Nate riffing on the midwest lets me laugh through the pain better than most things.
Sparky
2025-03-24 13:19:39 +0000 UTC
