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Inside the World Cup · Brainwaves

• 0:08
  We got a really big episode of Two Shot Tuesday.
• 0:10
  My name is Jason Riley with me as always, Barry T Nixon, the
• 0:13
  man of the hour. And I do not say this lightly.
• 0:17
  This is our boots on the ground World Cup extravaganza and only
• 0:23
  one man can bring it to you from the vantage point of the VIP and
• 0:27
  that is Barry T Nixon. We got a lot to talk about,
• 0:31
  don't we? Well, I think I have a lot of
• 0:33
  talking to do when you have a few questions to fire at me.
• 0:36
  And because, Jay, this is very good of you.
• 0:39
  I know you're not a sports guy and I know you don't necessarily
• 0:42
  have been. You don't care so much about the
• 0:44
  World Cup, but you are allowing this day to happen, this episode
• 0:48
  to happen. So I can explain what went down
• 0:51
  at the time of this recording just a few days ago with Germany
• 0:54
  and Ivory Coast at Toronto Stadium.
• 0:57
  But we know it's female field. I'd be happy to get into it, but
• 1:00
  you know, we have other things to do first.
• 1:02
  Like shot #1. If you have it.
• 1:05
  What do you got for us? Well, it's a it's booze, Jay,
• 1:09
  and it's the good stuff because, you know, here at Two Shot
• 1:12
  Tuesday Studios what we like. It's the 12 year courtesy of our
• 1:17
  friends at Bushmill. What about you?
• 1:19
  Well, actually, I thought you were having a sober show and I
• 1:21
  was going to be in solidarity to you with Orange Squeezy right
• 1:26
  out of a President's Choice water.
• 1:29
  So we we didn't sync up on that one.
• 1:32
  But to your good health, yeah. Thank you Chase, see you as
• 1:35
  well. No, just as an FYI, the sober
• 1:40
  shows are on pause for the duration of the World Cup of
• 1:43
  Soccer. So basically through the balance
• 1:47
  of the year, if I understand it correctly, this this thing goes
• 1:49
  on and on. You know, Barry, I am not a
• 1:51
  soccer fan so much, but I am a Barry T Nixon fan.
• 1:55
  And so that's where I like to track along.
• 1:57
  And you have had another world class experience.
• 2:00
  I got to see you mere hours before this world.
• 2:04
  You were swept up in World Cup fever.
• 2:07
  Yeah. We had a hangout at the.
• 2:09
  Night before. That the One Star Bar on Queen
• 2:12
  St. and then next door its neighbor the Tiki Lounge,
• 2:14
  finally made it into the tiki for the season.
• 2:16
  We had a good night together catching up and then you were
• 2:21
  sent off for your Saturday extravaganza to see Germany and
• 2:25
  who else? What's the name?
• 2:27
  Ivory Coast or Cote d'Ivoire. That's it.
• 2:31
  That's how I know it. That's why, yeah.
• 2:33
  Cote d'Ivoire. Yeah.
• 2:35
  Take me through it. You were already gearing up for
• 2:37
  there were some unknowns the night before, and so I want to
• 2:42
  hear about how those unknowns became known.
• 2:45
  Because you, Sir, are a planner and you like to know.
• 2:48
  And there were some things you couldn't answer for me the night
• 2:49
  before. But I trust everything worked
• 2:52
  out well for you. Take us through.
• 2:53
  It yeah, I'd be happy to. And there were some unknowns for
• 2:57
  sure, and they weren't the known unknown because I had no idea
• 3:01
  what to expect on game day. Chief among those unknowns, Jay,
• 3:04
  was the fact that my tickets were not activated at the time
• 3:08
  of our hangout. The next morning, I wake up, I
• 3:10
  checked the app, my tickets were still not activated.
• 3:14
  Linda executive producer Linda Lebrun hopped on with Claude and
• 3:18
  Claude said, this is a common thing.
• 3:20
  This is a FIFA security feature. Your tickets will only become
• 3:24
  active a couple of hours before kickoff though.
• 3:27
  Once I knew that, I was able to put it away and just breathe and
• 3:31
  know that OK, no problem, it's going to work and it did boiler
• 3:35
  alert. OK, great.
• 3:37
  So the the whole day began with me meeting up with my friend
• 3:40
  Brad Direct and his son Peyton. It was a like I told you, this
• 3:44
  was a surprise. For his 17th birthday, Brad
• 3:47
  wanted to be part of a German March to this, to the pitch.
• 3:52
  And as it turned out, this starting position for that was
• 3:55
  the Amsterdam Brewhouse on Queens Key.
• 3:58
  I went down there, met him there.
• 4:00
  There were so many Germans. I was like, OK, there's nobody
• 4:03
  in Kitchen or Waterloo right now.
• 4:04
  These cities are deserted. Everybody's here downtown.
• 4:07
  It was wild. We had so many interactions with
• 4:10
  people who had made the journey from Germany.
• 4:12
  We get there, we get to, we meet up immediately.
• 4:15
  We go across the street to the Rabba to pick up some beer
• 4:18
  because this is what you do. As everyone was doing, we walk
• 4:21
  into Brava. It is completely cheek by jowl,
• 4:25
  jammed like sardines. We we just make our way to the
• 4:29
  beer area, which was like right to the right of the register as
• 4:32
  soon as you walk in. We didn't really pay attention
• 4:35
  to the lineups. What we did was grab our stuff
• 4:38
  and then have a nice play conversation with people in
• 4:41
  front of us. Suddenly we're part of the line.
• 4:43
  Next thing you know, we're checked out and we're back into
• 4:46
  the parade. OK, You know masterstroke there.
• 4:49
  Actually, was beer there? Like it wasn't completely sold
• 4:51
  out? That's no pretty amazing.
• 4:54
  Well we didn't buy it like I said.
• 4:56
  Well people were buying 6 packs of whatever they could get.
• 4:59
  I grabbed a couple of tall cans of Coors like that they have to
• 5:02
  have, and Brad grabbed A6 pack of Stella.
• 5:05
  So we were already fuelled. We're feeling good.
• 5:07
  His wife had joined us as well. And then the March began and we
• 5:10
  turned around and suddenly Queens Key is completely filled
• 5:14
  with German supporters. It was a leader of this group of
• 5:18
  people of, you know, we were all part of yelling instructions in
• 5:22
  German. We don't know what he was
• 5:23
  saying, doesn't matter. He was getting everyone hyped
• 5:25
  up. Yeah, we can.
• 5:26
  We continued the March and every condo we pass along Queens Key,
• 5:30
  there were people on their balcony waving and hooting and
• 5:32
  hollering. It was just like this whole
• 5:33
  thing. It was.
• 5:34
  They know the show, they know you, they know the show.
• 5:37
  I'm surprised you don't know. The German contingent has
• 5:39
  nothing to do with me, also that.
• 5:40
  I wouldn't say nothing. I wouldn't say nothing.
• 5:42
  I would say maybe not 100% you, but not nothing more than
• 5:46
  nothing. Give yourself credit.
• 5:47
  OK, I I half a percent. Yeah.
• 5:51
  Anyway, so we continue along. We make it to Queens Key and
• 5:55
  Bathurst. At that point there's another
• 5:56
  convenience store. So what does my friend Brad do?
• 5:59
  It's time for another 6 pack of beer.
• 6:01
  We'd already had 6 plus the two that I got.
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  He grabbed another six on the walk and then we finished that
• 6:08
  by the time we got to the pitch. But before we got there, we're
• 6:11
  walking along Lakeshore. Lakeshore at this point, Jay is
• 6:14
  completely closed. It's just German supporters
• 6:17
  everywhere you look. It was reminiscent of like the
• 6:20
  the Rafters Championship parade. There were just human beings in
• 6:24
  every direction you can imagine. Incredible.
• 6:26
  I'm walking along, suddenly this guy comes up to me.
• 6:29
  I don't know what organization he was with, but ends up
• 6:32
  interviewing me as I'm walking along.
• 6:34
  We had like a 2-3 minute chat. He was asking me all kinds of
• 6:37
  questions about your first World Cup match and how does it feel
• 6:40
  to be part of this whole. We got to.
• 6:42
  Get a hold of all this kind of stuff, we got to get fantastic.
• 6:44
  I need this. Footage, well, I don't know who
• 6:47
  it was. And there was no like,
• 6:49
  identifying marks on the microphone.
• 6:51
  Like, I looked for all this stuff, OK, even in my drunken
• 6:54
  haze and still wasn't able to pinpoint exactly what this was.
• 6:57
  But it was still just, you know, whatever.
• 6:59
  It was a fun thing to do on route to the.
• 7:01
  Sure, you're a celebrity. I mean, you already are a bit of
• 7:05
  a celebrity. Celebrity but.
• 7:06
  They'll come talk to you. You're you're trained, you've
• 7:08
  been media trained at the two Shot Studios, so that's great.
• 7:12
  So now you're walking. I'm approachable.
• 7:14
  People think I'm approachable because of the long hair.
• 7:16
  That's that's Linda's theory and I think it it holds up because I
• 7:19
  had so many conversations with random people.
• 7:21
  I was high by the end of it. I was high fiving police
• 7:24
  officers who were just standing there doing nothing.
• 7:26
  I was high fiving and they were all reciprocating.
• 7:29
  Not shot at all, that's. Amazing.
• 7:31
  Yeah, that's. Incredible.
• 7:32
  That's just who you are. You draw people in.
• 7:35
  You're electric. Yeah, I'm not.
• 7:36
  It's. I'm not exaggerating too much.
• 7:38
  Fully electric. Like a bolt of lightning.
• 7:41
  But you. But unlike a bolt of lightning,
• 7:43
  you will strike twice because you'll strike twice in the same
• 7:45
  place. Happy to be there.
• 7:47
  OK, well done now. Damn, you're on fire today, Jay.
• 7:51
  You're. Approaching the stadium, is this
• 7:53
  what's happening? Now.
• 7:54
  OK, what time is it? One more stop.
• 7:56
  Oh my God, it's probably like 2 hours before the match start.
• 7:59
  Like we were there early like that.
• 8:00
  The parade began probably noon. Mats began at 4, but we had lots
• 8:05
  of runway. I wasn't.
• 8:06
  And by this point, Jay, I wasn't even thinking that the tickets
• 8:09
  weren't activated yet because I'd already gotten the Intel
• 8:11
  that they don't become active until about two hours before
• 8:14
  kickoff. So everything was cool.
• 8:16
  OK, We made one more stop. The group made one more stop
• 8:19
  where they let off some smoke and I sent you some pictures of
• 8:22
  that scene. It was the park right across
• 8:24
  from the Princess gates. That was the thought before we
• 8:26
  actually made it to the grounds. And at that point, I pulled up
• 8:29
  my phone. I looked in the FIFA app and
• 8:32
  there was a little active QR code with a little thing running
• 8:35
  around the top. And I was like, OK, thank Christ
• 8:37
  it is active. We're good to go.
• 8:39
  It's perfect timing. We continue our our way through
• 8:42
  the Princess gates because you got to go through the Princess
• 8:44
  gates, right? That's the, it's so grand.
• 8:46
  Of course, that's the only way for this enormous, you know,
• 8:50
  throngs of people to go through. So we did.
• 8:52
  Yeah, exactly. We did.
• 8:54
  We walked in, we got to the pitch, they had a perimeter.
• 8:57
  SIFA had a perimeter around Demo Field, AKA Toronto Stadium.
• 9:01
  And this was the cool thing. No friction.
• 9:03
  We got up, I stand AQR code for the three tickets.
• 9:06
  We got in and that was the last time I had to produce proof of
• 9:10
  any description of where my seats were, where I was like
• 9:13
  there was no other time where I was being asked to check a
• 9:16
  ticket. They really did it well.
• 9:18
  They had the perimeter. You got past there.
• 9:20
  It was simply assumed that you're there, you're supposed to
• 9:22
  be there. It was great.
• 9:24
  That's. Incredibly well.
• 9:24
  Set up. OK, so that's fantastic.
• 9:28
  So I mean, just that experience alone is about as long as an
• 9:32
  entry into the Lord of the Rings Special edition is like this.
• 9:35
  Just to get from your place to there.
• 9:37
  That's like you could watch Fellowship of the Ring, pick
• 9:40
  your, pick your ring, and you you can watch it fully in that
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  time frame it took from you to get for sure from point A to
• 9:45
  point B. So now you're at point B.
• 9:47
  Before we begin discussing what happened in that stadium, let's
• 9:50
  have shot #2 because this is very exciting.
• 9:52
  Let's do. Right.
• 9:53
  What have you got? I'm sticking with the Bushmills
• 9:56
  12 year Jay, and this one is entirely in your honor.
• 10:00
  OK, great. Well, and I got some nice
• 10:02
  squeezy water for you, Sir. Cheers, Cheers.
• 10:07
  We're in the stadium. Well, not even in the stadium.
• 10:09
  We're in the like, we're through the perimeter.
• 10:11
  And once you get in through the perimeter, there's like all
• 10:14
  these outdoor vendors selling merch, selling beer, selling
• 10:17
  food. So there's this whole scene
• 10:19
  outside the stadium before you even get there.
• 10:21
  So we were hanging out there for a little while, chatting with
• 10:23
  random people. We met this family that was, you
• 10:26
  know, came up from the US to see this match.
• 10:28
  They have German heritage. We granted some actual people
• 10:32
  like Germans who had made the trip over.
• 10:35
  I had all these great conversations.
• 10:36
  Everyone had a huge smile on their face.
• 10:38
  Jay, I'm telling you, the vibes just in and around this whole
• 10:41
  experience was perfect. They were police everywhere, but
• 10:45
  nobody was causing trouble and the police were not bothering
• 10:48
  anybody. It was just like, it was great.
• 10:51
  Like seriously, there was just such a good vibe.
• 10:53
  Add to that a beautiful day, partly cloudy, perfect.
• 10:57
  We get to our seats. Our seats are in the shade.
• 10:59
  As you may remember, we're not sitting in direct sun.
• 11:02
  We're right there on the goal line, 8 rows from the pitch.
• 11:05
  Peyton, who like I said, it was his birthday.
• 11:08
  He had his smile never went away all day.
• 11:11
  He was just like on cloud 9 having this experience as we all
• 11:14
  were. And we get to our seats and I'm
• 11:16
  just like, man, this is exactly as advertised.
• 11:20
  Because when I bought them on StubHub, you don't really know.
• 11:22
  You kind of get like a cartoon drawing of a view of what your
• 11:26
  seats going to be. But then when you're actually
• 11:27
  there, you're seated. You're like, holy shit, this is
• 11:30
  now I can see why it was the cost that it was.
• 11:32
  And honestly, it was worth every penny.
• 11:35
  It really was. Terrific.
• 11:37
  Yeah, that's amazing and I'm excited.
• 11:40
  So you you're you're in, you're getting food at the place,
• 11:44
  you're walking around a hot. Dog in your honor, because I
• 11:47
  know that's what you like to eat.
• 11:48
  Yeah. Two days in a row.
• 11:49
  That means you had hot dogs because you were with me and you
• 11:52
  had hot dogs. Nice.
• 11:53
  Exactly. Yeah, did.
• 11:55
  You have to be shown to your seats.
• 11:57
  Did you know how to get to your seats?
• 11:58
  How was this? Well.
• 11:59
  I've been to BMO or Toronto Stadium like many, many times in
• 12:02
  my life. So it was no, excuse me, there
• 12:04
  was no problem to find the seat. We just walked to our seat.
• 12:08
  Like I said, nobody asked us once.
• 12:10
  Like once we were through the perimeter, there was not one
• 12:13
  security person or ticket person who asked us to produce a
• 12:16
  ticket. We just, this is one thing I've
• 12:18
  learned, and you already know this, and I'm sure our audience
• 12:21
  knows this. If you walk like you know where
• 12:23
  you're going, yeah, the chances of you being stopped or
• 12:26
  interrupted or asked to produce any type of proof of where
• 12:29
  you're going is pretty de minimis if you just have to have
• 12:32
  that de minimis. Yeah.
• 12:33
  You have to have that. I don't know that just
• 12:35
  confidence. I think that's what it is.
• 12:37
  It's confidence. It's like you know where you're
• 12:38
  going. Don't bother me.
• 12:39
  You can talk to someone who looks clueless.
• 12:41
  Those are the people if if you have that kind of 1000 yard
• 12:45
  stare, yes, you're going to get questioned and they're probably
• 12:47
  not going to be ones you want to answer.
• 12:49
  If you have some confidence, just go to your seat, even if
• 12:52
  it's not your seat. How do they know that's it works
• 12:54
  like it's wild it. Works at airports, too.
• 12:57
  That is a perfect thing for airports.
• 12:59
  It gets you, You can get ahead of people online, you can get
• 13:01
  moving, you can get through. Yeah.
• 13:03
  Airports is also a good place for looking like you belong
• 13:06
  there into any. Yeah, Sporting events, concerts,
• 13:09
  those kinds of things. Yeah.
• 13:10
  Anywhere. I had a question and I just
• 13:12
  thought of it again. So you guys are there, German
• 13:14
  contingent is there, What about the other guys?
• 13:18
  Did they come as one coasters, the ivory coasters, were there
• 13:21
  as many? How did that work there?
• 13:22
  Weren't nearly as many, but there were fans in the stands.
• 13:26
  They were wearing orange and that's the Ivory Coast color.
• 13:28
  We actually there was a family right in front of us that were
• 13:31
  wearing Ivory Coast jersey. So we were as soon as we sat
• 13:34
  down we started chatting with her like Oh my God, we got Ivory
• 13:36
  Coast fans right in front of us that broke the ice.
• 13:38
  We're starting to chat, blah, blah, blah.
• 13:40
  Every. Everyone was super cool.
• 13:41
  Yeah. It was a white family, though,
• 13:43
  which was interesting. And the like, the like young
• 13:45
  kids, like under 10 wearing the Ivory Coast shirt.
• 13:48
  I didn't ask them, and I probably should have, you know,
• 13:51
  What is it about Ivory Coast that you're supporting?
• 13:52
  I like, do you have some roots there?
• 13:54
  But it was just like, they're in front of us.
• 13:56
  I don't know if we're going to have that long of a
• 13:58
  conversation. No, you don't know some when.
• 14:00
  You move on. They're there.
• 14:02
  You're there. They didn't come there to talk
• 14:04
  to you. You didn't go there to talk to
• 14:05
  them. Exactly.
• 14:06
  You did your interview, you did your part for the day, and now
• 14:09
  you're recounting it for everyone else.
• 14:10
  OK, we're in the last few minutes of this episode.
• 14:13
  I want you to capture for us the sizzle of the event This game is
• 14:17
  going. It's hot.
• 14:18
  What impressed you the most of well during the game?
• 14:22
  OK, let me just say that Ivory Coast opened the scoring, OK?
• 14:25
  I heard that sucked the air out of the entire facility.
• 14:28
  Next thing you know, it's gut check time.
• 14:30
  All the German fans are looking around and wondering, what is
• 14:33
  this? What's happening here?
• 14:35
  Suddenly, Well, not suddenly. That was the end of the first
• 14:38
  half. It was 1.
• 14:38
  Nothing. Ivory Coast, Germany comes back,
• 14:40
  ties it, and then in stoppage time or just before stoppage
• 14:44
  time, like the 90th minute, they score to go up two to one and
• 14:47
  they just sent everybody home. It was just sheer ecstasy.
• 14:51
  Everywhere you look, everyone was just jumping up and down,
• 14:53
  having a great time, dude, it was it was incredible.
• 14:56
  It was like you couldn't write a better script for the day to
• 14:59
  have a World Cup experience like that.
• 15:01
  That began with in an enormous German March to the stadium and
• 15:05
  then resulting in a 2 to one victory in dramatic fashion in
• 15:09
  the dying minutes of the game. It was just Brad and I were just
• 15:12
  like, this is incredible. Yeah.
• 15:14
  Yeah. It was wild.
• 15:15
  It was really great. Did they?
• 15:17
  March. I will never forget it.
• 15:20
  And the last thing is I last last thing is I did get a
• 15:23
  souvenir on the day. I got a match day scarf that I'm
• 15:27
  going to keep rolled up until the next World Cup.
• 15:29
  What's cool about these is they're only available at the
• 15:31
  pitch on the game day and they are like half as far as Germany.
• 15:36
  The other half is Ivory Coast because it's specific to this
• 15:39
  game. That's why they call it the
• 15:41
  match day scarf. Did I March home?
• 15:42
  Is that what you're going to ask?
• 15:43
  Yeah, it. Was our March home not?
• 15:45
  Really it was more of a stagger at that point.
• 15:47
  People were pretty well served. One more thing I will say I did
• 15:51
  get some false Intel back a few months ago when when I was told
• 15:55
  that the last call would be during halftime.
• 15:57
  That was false. Last Call was the way it usually
• 16:00
  is at TFC matches, the 75th minute, so everybody was able to
• 16:05
  breathe a collective sigh of relief when that was revealed.
• 16:09
  So yeah, the Brad and I just, it was just like a normal game for
• 16:12
  us, like it. There was no no other further
• 16:14
  hoops to jump through with. Everything was cool.
• 16:16
  That's incredible. Wow, I'm I'm glad to hear you
• 16:20
  had. So great.
• 16:21
  This experience that Brad and his son especially got to have
• 16:24
  this experience, yes. So if I ask, this is probably
• 16:27
  the easiest question. If you had it to do all over
• 16:30
  again or or you had a chance to see another World Cup, would you
• 16:33
  take that in? Or is this going to be your one
• 16:35
  and only kind of World Cup because it's at home?
• 16:37
  They're not. You're not always going to be in
• 16:39
  the VIP zone. That won't happen again, no.
• 16:41
  Would you, though? You become a traveler for the
• 16:43
  World Cup? I don't know if I.
• 16:45
  Would. I don't think I would ever be
• 16:46
  able to replicate this experience, Jay.
• 16:48
  Like it was just such a special thing.
• 16:50
  And the fact that it was with Brad and Peyton, the three of us
• 16:52
  together, and I did use that joke that I've used a few times
• 16:55
  on you. It was like we were like the
• 16:57
  crew of Artemis 2, you know, the three of us were doing something
• 17:01
  for the first time together that we've never done individually.
• 17:04
  But collectively we're we're going into a new world and that
• 17:07
  is a World Cup match. And that's what we did.
• 17:09
  So, yeah, I said that to them, by the way.
• 17:10
  It's just wondering over their head.
• 17:12
  I thought that I was being funny.
• 17:13
  They're like, yeah, that's not funny.
• 17:15
  It's it's it's if anything gets dated now that that was like 2
• 17:18
  months ago, that's like, you might as well tell me a joke
• 17:20
  from the 70s. Nobody cares.
• 17:22
  They moved on. You used it on me on Friday, and
• 17:24
  I also didn't find it. Yeah, you.
• 17:25
  Didn't like it either, no. It's not a great bit.
• 17:27
  It's it's, it's all. Right, it's done.
• 17:29
  All right, It's officially done. Thanks, Jack.
• 17:32
  What? Was great was your World Cup
• 17:33
  experience, Barry. Thank you for sharing it with us
• 17:35
  here, blogging it here for us in this time capsule.
• 17:38
  It's available for our audience now and to consume again and
• 17:42
  again. They may want to just continue
• 17:43
  to revisit this to capture the fever because I think we got a
• 17:46
  bit of it there. I'm going to try and track down
• 17:47
  that interview somehow of you on some TV station somewhere who
• 17:51
  knows it. Could be Internet radio, I have
• 17:54
  no idea. Who knows anyway.
• 17:55
  Barry, that was exciting. Thank you for sharing that.
• 17:59
  Thank you audience for tuning in.
• 18:01
  Next week we've got the movie guy coming back.
• 18:04
  Barry and our movie guy, Rob Peetz are going to be watching
• 18:07
  Supergirl. This is going to be interesting.
• 18:09
  I hear it's good. Not so much on the upfront
• 18:12
  ticket sales. We're going to cover all that
• 18:14
  next week because this is all about taking in the World Cup
• 18:17
  afterglow. So Barry, you have a great rest
• 18:19
  of your day. Ladies and gentlemen, have a
• 18:21
  great rest of your week and we. Look forward to.
• 18:23
  Seeing you again on two shot. Tuesday, Absolutely.
• 18:26
  Cheers, Jay.