From Monday night:
Luke: “I’ve got a theory on why we watch so much sports. It’s because we don’t have enough going on with our lives. If we were absorbed in our career or absorbed in our family… If we were absorbed in our shul. If we were flourishing, we wouldn’t care so much about sports. Because we both have this underlying depression, we look for the instant lift. I know that there’s this one exciting thing going on today, it’s this game tonight.”
The rabbi laughs.
Luke: “Sports are these little highs that help us get through life. We get highs from sports that we can’t get from our regular lives. In our mundane lives, we’re depressed. When we can get absorbed in sports or a movie, we can leave our mundane depressed lives. Oh, this is exciting. This is what life could be if I only had more going on.”
Rabbi Rabbs: “There are a lot of people who are married with a lot going on in their lives who are also involved in sports.”
Luke: “The people who are most involved in sports tend to be the most depressed. People who are leading happy healthy normal lives don’t paint their faces to go to sporting events. The more time you devote to sports, the more unhappy you are. I don’t know if it is necessarily causal. It may be just a symptom. Unhappy people want to escape from their lives.”
“Unhappy men love to latch on to a sports team and they project on to that team all the qualities that they wish they had in their own lives, such as to be a winner. They lose their identity into that of their sports team, like some people do with religion. I don’t matter. All that matters is Torah, Christ, the Dodgers, etc.”
“By contrast, the people with the most going on in their lives are the least likely to be heavily involved in sports.”
Rabbi: “If you’re working your ass off, you don’t watch TV.”
Luke: “When you’re life is going good as a guy, you’re going to be thinking primarily about your career. You’re going to be fantasizing about — how can I make more money? How can I be more successful?”
Rabbi: “Really? I was never like that. I’ve never been the guy trying to make a million dollars. I was the guy who was always asking — what’s the least I have to do so I can get by? That’s why I went into being a Unix admin.”
“When you were the Unix guy, everybody kissed your ass because there wasn’t enough of us to go around. We’d just sit around and do nothing all day until there was a Unix problem once a week. We’d come in. We’d fix it. Then we’d just sit there and jerk off on the internet for the 40 hours a week we were at work. It was nothing. It was a joke and I was comfortable with that.”
“I had no interest in managing other people.”
“Just leave me alone! I just want to check my email and watch Youtubes all day.”
Luke: “What do you fantasize about, rabbi?”
Rabbi: “Having a wife by the time I’m 50 and having a $1,000 a month coming in.”
Luke: “You’re not afraid that you’re aiming too high?”
Rabbi: “I just want the minimum stuff to get by. I’m perfectly content to do this show once a week.”
“My fiance was anorexic. She weighed 95 pounds. She was 5’7″.”
Luke: “Did you think, oh, she’s got the body of an 11-year old boy? That’s hot for me. That’s how I like it.”
Rabbi: “She had the body of an Auschwitz survivor.”
Luke: “Do you think you fetishize the Holocaust and are looking to marry someone who looks like a Holocaust survivor?”
Rabbi: “No. She didn’t start out like that.”
Luke: “Did you shave her head and make her wear striped pajamas? And play commandant and Jewish slavewoman?”
Rabbi: “She was 18. I was 45.”
Luke: “I like my girlfriends to dress like therapists and to sit across from me and to ask therapeutic questions until I can’t take it anymore.”
