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Transcript

Bonus Episode: Something Smells Off · Spiders Sound Off

• 0:09
  Hey, it's just me today. No Porter.
• 0:12
  He is off on vacation in Canada, probably somewhere pronouncing
• 0:18
  nil as nil to a very confused bartender or more likely, boring
• 0:23
  his wife talking about this podcast.
• 0:26
  Now that's something I'm pretty good at too.
• 0:28
  I hope he is not stalking the friends and family of our
• 0:31
  current Canadian players, Michael Tyne and Dylan Hominick.
• 0:35
  But with Porter, you never know. I thought I'd use this solo time
• 0:39
  to tell a story from 30 years ago this summer that bonded
• 0:43
  Porter and me forever. The origination story you never
• 0:47
  asked for. One that still haunts my
• 0:49
  nostrils. It was during the Dooley era, so
• 0:53
  Spiders basketball was not the center of our attention.
• 0:56
  It's about the time the three of us, me, Porter and our Richmond
• 1:00
  Spiders Buddy D Hall, shared a house in Falls Church, VA,
• 1:03
  during a legendary summer of pick up basketball and rotting
• 1:10
  death. It started with a smell.
• 1:14
  We were a couple years out of school, whooping or playing with
• 1:17
  a ball almost every day, sweating a lot, sitting on our
• 1:20
  junky furniture, all gross, not showering as often as we should
• 1:24
  have. So at first the smell in the
• 1:26
  living room felt burned, like OK, we're gross, fine.
• 1:31
  But then it got worse. Like what died in here bad.
• 1:36
  Only we are pretty sure none of us had.
• 1:39
  So we called the landlord. They sent an exterminator.
• 1:43
  He poked around, sniffed some corners, shrugged and said eh,
• 1:47
  maybe something crawled under the siding and died.
• 1:49
  Happens and then he installed, but I can only describe as a fan
• 1:54
  that blew cherry scented failure under our house.
• 1:59
  So now our home smelled like dead animal marinated and fruit
• 2:03
  cocktail and it lingered. We slowly began evacuating.
• 2:07
  I started staying more at my girlfriend's apartment in
• 2:09
  Richmond. Porter stayed away too.
• 2:11
  D Hall moved room to try to get further away, but eventually
• 2:14
  could only surrender to the stench.
• 2:17
  Eventually the smell kind of settled, like our noses gave up.
• 2:21
  It was less dead animal and more like someone murdered a fruit
• 2:24
  basket. Porter and I even started
• 2:27
  trickling back into the apartment, thinking maybe we
• 2:29
  overreacted. Then came the flies.
• 2:35
  Started one morning, a weird buzz, the slow crawl of flies
• 2:40
  emerging from the slats of a pantry door that also led to our
• 2:43
  crawl space. Thousands of them.
• 2:48
  Every morning, like clockwork, A biblical swarm would ooze
• 2:51
  through the cracks. Port and I became some weird two
• 2:54
  man SWAT team blasting Raid through the door before we even
• 2:57
  brushed our teeth. Just good morning.
• 3:00
  And then into the door slats for days.
• 3:08
  Then one night I'd had it. Porter was working late.
• 3:12
  I'd reached the point of personal horror movie
• 3:14
  protagonist, and I opened the pantry door.
• 3:18
  I looked inside. Nothing tucked away on the
• 3:22
  shelves. Nothing under the shelves.
• 3:26
  Then I look lower, under the floor, right where I was
• 3:30
  standing, and there it was, staring at me.
• 3:35
  The rotting face of a possum, Milky dead eyes, teeth showing
• 3:41
  more maggots than fur, just waiting to be seen.
• 3:46
  I screamed. Randy came running, took one
• 3:49
  look and just muttered Oh no. But here's the best part.
• 3:54
  Knowing Porter would be home late, I left him a voicemail on
• 3:57
  her answering machine. The most casually evil message
• 4:00
  I've ever recorded. Hey man, nothing big, but I
• 4:06
  think I might have seen something under the pantry.
• 4:08
  You might need to lay down to really see it.
• 4:11
  Look way back under your feet, like way back under there.
• 4:15
  Get a flashlight. Let me know what you think.
• 4:19
  He gets home late. I like midnight, tired, alone.
• 4:23
  I hear him playing the message from my room.
• 4:26
  Curious, he lays down on the kitchen floor, peers under the
• 4:29
  floor into the pantry crawl space with a flashlight, and
• 4:33
  come face to face with Possum Dracula.
• 4:37
  He yelled. He cursed my name.
• 4:39
  He may have added some new swear words to the English language
• 4:41
  that night. Well, the next day we call the
• 4:44
  landlord again. And after calling us wimps,
• 4:46
  we're not taking it out ourselves.
• 4:48
  Audrey. That was our landlord's name.
• 4:50
  She finally sent someone over and this man, this professional
• 4:53
  exterminator, started to remove the possum.
• 4:58
  The moment he moved it, it hit me like a punch in the throat,
• 5:00
  this hot, syrupy wave of death. Imagine roadkill stewing in a
• 5:05
  crock pot of cough syrup for a week.
• 5:07
  My body didn't even possess it as a smell.
• 5:10
  It just activated the emergency evacuation system.
• 5:13
  Full gag reflex. I think my soul tried to leave
• 5:17
  through my nose. Both me and the tough landlord
• 5:21
  immediately ran outside gagging. And of course the exterminator
• 5:27
  just laughed while holding a bag full of corpse.
• 5:32
  Well, that's the end of the story from the summer 30 years
• 5:35
  ago where we hooped hard, smelled worse, and bonded over
• 5:39
  trauma, a dead possum, a fake voicemail, and a swarm of flies
• 5:45
  that still appear in my dreams. We soon left that house for good
• 5:49
  and try to forget but never did. Anyway, Porter isn't here to
• 5:55
  defend himself, which makes this even better, but to make it up
• 5:58
  to him, I'll close with something special.
• 6:00
  Here's a new and extended cut of spiders sound off with a new
• 6:03
  verse never heard before until now.
• 6:07
  Thanks for listening. Men's talking hoops Women and
• 6:15
  men Spider sound off Spider sound off Spider sound off
• 6:20
  Spider sound off. We will try to be funny and
• 6:24
  entertain. Maybe you'll learn something or
• 6:29
  just complain. Spider sound off.
• 6:32
  Spider sound off Spider sound off Spider sound off.
• 7:17
  In your car, on your computer, or in your dreams?
• 7:21
  Spider sound off sound off. Something was rotting beneath
• 7:29
  the floor. Porter found the pantry, then
• 7:34
  cursed and swore. Spider sound off.
• 7:38
  Spider sound off Spider sound off Spider sound off Spider
• 7:43
  sound off Spider sound off Spider sound off.