How Bingeable Happened

Bingeable is the name of this site and it is also a word that was added to the dictionary just this decade. Covering everything from Game of Thrones, the Future of Football, the impact of social media on our lives and so much more, the happenings of the 2010’s will make up the majority of what is posted on this site during its initial two-month-long content roll-out. Starting November 1st, 2019 and finishing on December 30th, 2019, we will be bringing you 5–6 pieces per posting date. There are twelve scheduled posting dates within this two month long span, a format that is designed to let you spread your reading out over multiple days if you’re busy with life’s responsibilities, or if you chose to, you can binge-read all at once. Posts will be authored by Sonny Giuliano, Dalton Baggett, or the two of us teaming up together (!!!).

Below is a handy pie chart to show you exactly what factors first led to Sonny and Dalton’s friendship, then their writing partnership, and eventually Bingeable. Even further below that are some even handier explanations behind each of the delicious slices of pie chart. Ok, this doesn’t sound super exciting but it is, we promise!

JP Sports — 21.5%

DB: I worked at JP Sports, a small sports store in Fort Myers, Florida, for about 6 years. But the only years that truly counted were the ones Sonny worked with me as well. What was once just a way to pay the bills became, well, a way to pay the bills but much more enjoyable. From arguing about LeBron James, to deciding baseball should be abolished if they don’t adopt new rules we created, and dealing with terrible sports fans, the years at JP’s were the molten steel used to forge the Valyrian sword that is our friendship. It was also the early birthplace of the ideas that would become Bingeable, so you all have the grind of working retail to thank for this site.

Speaking of terrible sports fans, I still can’t decide who the worst ones were. Literally any Boston sports fan, or Cowboys fans who inexplicably didn’t like Tony Romo.

SG: They’re both on the short list of the most terrible sports fans, but if we’re creating a first ballot Hall of Fame class of terrible JP Sports fans/shoppers, I’d include:

· Unapologetic Patriots haters who would come in and think they were the first person to ever joke, “Are the Patriots footballs up there deflated?”

· The fan of a team like the Arizona Diamondbacks who would pull the whole “Don’t you have more stuff than this” Routine. Nah guy, all the other D-Backs fans in Fort Myers, Florida already came in and bought it all up.

· The people who would come in and ask, “Do you have their championship apparel yet?” before their team actually won the championship.

· The guy who clearly watched a ton of First Take because he’d come into the store looking to debate every relevant sports topic.

· The guy who would walk around, not be able to find anything he wanted, and then tell you “You guys need to get some new stuff. I already have everything in this store in my man cave.”

LeBron James — 13.5%

SG: When Dalton and I met, he was one of the poor souls who had been influenced by a large-scale LeBron James smear campaign, primarily driven by middle-aged sports reporters who would literally get down on their knees in front of Michael Jordan if His Airness asked them to. Now to be fair, LeBron has had his missteps along the way; he’s only human, even if sometimes on a basketball court he’s appeared to be something slightly more than human. But all things considered, the vitriol that was directed toward LeBron by the likes of analysts Skip “I’m a huge fucking disgrace to my profession” Bayless and “sports fans” who are actually just assholes, has been over the top.

Fortunately, somewhere along the way Dalton saw the light, and I don’t know if his changing opinion says more about his open-mindedness or his willingness to give in to my peer pressure, but watching him evolve from a staunch LeBron-hater to a true admirer of one of the greatest and most important athletes ever has been a joy.

DB: The answer here is definitely my willingness to give in to your peer pressure. I can say for sure that if I hadn’t spent countless hours discussing and debating LeBron with you I would never have seen that proverbial light. As I get older, I’m realizing it’s so much more fun to just enjoy things, so I’m going to let myself enjoy watching the GOAT play basketball while I still can.

The Rocky Film Series –10%

SG: In my opinion, it’s the most important film series in cinema history. Dalton will likely disagree with that assertion, but there’s no getting around the fact that no piece of modern art has been more instrumental to our friendship, and therefore to our writing partnership as well. The first time we ever drank together, we took shots while “Eye of the Tiger” played in the background. The first time we ever teamed up on a writing project it was for a series of Rocky themed posts ahead of the release of Creed in 2015. We’ve seen both Creed and Creed II together at the theater within days of their respective releases. We’ve re-enacted the Rocky/Apollo beach scene countless times over the years.

The original Rocky was the quintessential underdog story, and I think that says a lot about Bingeable. Rocky’s whole life was a million-to-one shot — at least that’s what the tagline of the first film told us. Maybe it’s a million-to-one shot that Bingeable takes us anywhere, but we’ll at least go down swinging trying to find out if there’s a chance at all.

DB: The most important film series in history is Star Wars. If it wasn’t for The Wars, we wouldn’t have the MCU or really any of the IP driven content that is flooding the markets thanks to the Disney monopoly. Love it or hate it, it’s unequivocally the most important.

That being said, the Rocky series is obviously the most important to our friendship and the start of Bingeable, which will soon be the Rocky Balboa of websites, so that’s pretty good too. I just hope that Bingeable doesn’t turn out to be the Rocky V of websites.

Shea Serrano — 9.5%

DB: One of the first important things in my life that Sonny introduced me to was Grantland, and even more importantly, Shea Serrano. Shea’s writing style is wholly unique and interesting and someone that I try to copy on a regular basis. Every couple of days one of us would ask the other “hey did you read that new Shea piece?” and if we hadn’t that’s how we would spend our time at work. We got paid for quite a few hours’ worth of work just reading Shea’s pieces on Grantland and then The Ringer. I’m sure Shea was also the inspiration for the pie chart that Sonny made for this section of the site.

SG: He absolutely was, and he’s the inspiration for a piece I have coming up that I am calling Chart Exhibit. Ya get it?

Anyway, not only has Shea been an inspiration to both of us as aspiring writers, he’s been an inspiration to any individuals who have taken note of the sort of Internet Philanthropy he and his followers — affectionately known as the FOH Army — are now famous for. Shea has rallied the troops a number of times over the last four years or so, most notably when Shea’s initial $200 donation led to $130,000 going towards Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

We need more Shea Serrano’s in this world. It would be a far more generous and readable place.

Hardwood and Hollywood — 7.5%

SG: Just months before I started working at JP Sports I began writing for Baller Mind Frame, a sports and pop culture website affiliated with Complex that would eventually be re-named and re-branded as Hardwood and Hollywood. The fine folks at H&H have allowed me to write about literally anything I could’ve imagined — I wrote multiple columns about Bachelor in Paradise — they’ve given me the opportunity to do work on the editing side of things, they’ve empowered me to become a writer who felt like I could pull off a website of my own. Most importantly, because they took my advice and brought Dalton on board, they’ve helped me to realize that teaming up with Dalton on long form writing projects is a whole lot more fun than doing these things solo.

So to Frankie, DV, TJ and all the other folks in the H&H fam, thank you.

DB: I would also like to thank the H&H fam for giving me an opportunity to write about some fun stuff over the last few years. I would specifically like to shout out TJ, whose writing consistently makes me mad and jealous but also smarter because she’s so much better at it than me, and most other people out there for that matter.

Baseball being not good — 6%

SG: As Dalton already mentioned, one of the things that we bonded over very early on was that baseball, America’s pastime, was a silly little dying sport that could be improved a whole bunch with some simple (or not so simple) rule tweaks. We wrote an incredibly well-received piece about it back in the Spring of 2016, and guess what … we’ve got Six More Ways to Improve Major League Baseball coming at ya very soon!

DB: Ok, I know I just said that stuff about wanting to just enjoy things as I get older, but I just can’t bring myself to feel that way about baseball. I’m glad there are fans out there that like to dedicate 12 hours for one game, I’m just not one of those people. Not until they implement all of our new rules that is. I love all of you though, because to paraphrase Michael Jordan: baseball fans read articles too.

The 2015–16 Golden State Warriors — 6%

DB: This is supposed to be about the Warriors, which it kind of is, but also it’s about LeBron as well. You see, Sonny and I gushed over the greatness of the 2015–2016 Warriors over the course of their historic 73–9 season, which was fun and all, but the finish to that year will always be a source of great regret to me. I was still, unfortunately, a LeBron hater at the time, so when the Cavs came back from a 3–1 deficit to beat one of the greatest NBA teams of all time I was extremely sad and disappointed. I realize now that LeBron is dope and I wish I could go back in time and watch that series rooting for him, which would have been way more fun and exhilarating. You were always right, Sonny.

SG: You didn’t even mention the fact that we saw these dominant Dubs play in person in Miami. We saw 2015–16 unanimous MVP Stephen Curry drop 42 points and drive a dagger into the heart of every Heat fan in American Airlines Arena, and that was the worst game he played over the last week of February. He went for 51 in Orlando one night later, and then hit one of the most remarkable game-winners ever two nights after that in Oklahoma City.

And by the way, our girlfriends were there for this game too.

Twitter — 5%

DB: Look, Twitter probably shouldn’t come in as high as 6% on this chart, but unfortunately we live in a slowly forming dystopian society where everyone is online, in some form of another, at all times. I have no self-control so I can count myself among those addicted to social media. I tweet a lot, but rarely get much engagement, because like everyone else on the planet I’m not as funny or interesting as I like to think I am. But I can always count on at least 1 like on most of my tweets thanks to Sonny. If it wasn’t for him I would just be screaming into an empty void while the world burns around me.

SG: Hot take: I think you’re underrated funny. I wouldn’t like your tweets if they didn’t make me chuckle.

Uptown Funk — 4.5%

SG: Each decade there are only a handful of songs that manage to transcend music and become culturally relevant in a way that is normally not reserved for a single auditory experience. We can squabble over which songs from the 2010’s reached this level of notoriety and appreciation, but with that said, it’s impossible to leave Uptown Funk off of that list.

I’ll be writing about Uptown Funk more in the very near future, but for now it’s worth telling you that Uptown Funk is the only song that Dalton and I have drunkenly snap-chatted ourselves dancing to at weddings just to send to each other. It’s the only song that would for sure make us ignore the fact that there were customers in JP Sports. And it’s the only song that doesn’t exist on a Rocky soundtrack that I know Dalton for sure likes.

DB: Uptown Funk is an elite wedding song. It should be played at every wedding for the rest of time. If you don’t have space on your playlist, just go ahead and get rid of Sweet Caroline, please, I’m begging you dear reader, get rid of Sweet Caroline forever, it’s time.

I will also never not film myself wedding dancing to Uptown Funk and send it to Sonny. That ritual is a part of my life now.

GIF’s — 3%

DB: Sonny and I use Gifs for probably 60% of our communication, so here are 3 that sum up our partnership:

SG: Looks like you got it covered pretty well here, but I prefer even numbers to odds, so in order to make our own little Mount GIFmore (see what I did there?), I would add the GIF of Forrest Gump excitedly waving to Lieutenant Dan, my go-to GIF to use to say hello to you simply because I’m bored.

Leonardo DiCaprio — 3%

DB: Many an hour of our time at JP Sports were dedicated to discussing the Academy Awards. Mostly at my insistence because I love awards shows more than anyone else I know. Sonny humored me, and one of the questions we came back to most was “when will Leo win an Oscar?” He was snubbed a few times in his career and was owed his damn statue. Well, by chance, Sonny and I went to the movies together to watch The Revenant and got to witness the performance that finally won Leo his Oscar by eating raw bison liver. It was a spiritual experience.

SG: I love the fact that you again just skipped over the fact that our girlfriends joined us on this trip to the movies. You make it sound like we went alone and shared a large popcorn together.

That was just for Creed and Creed II.

Game of Thrones — 3%

SG: Just so it doesn’t sound like this is a one-sided friendship/partnership in which I’m the one who is constantly introducing Dalton to people and ideas and things that he’d eventually love, it’s only right that I credit Dalton for consistently pushing me to watch Game of Thrones ahead of the final season. I gave in to Dalton’s constant needling, crammed seven seasons of Thrones in a 60-day span and don’t regret it one bit even though the final season left much to be desired. More importantly, he always responded to my Thrones related questions and comments with such legitimate enthusiasm, even though my prompts were not always super thought-provoking:

“FUCK EM UP TYRION!!!!!”

“What the fuck is going on with Arya’s eyes now???”

“Hodor ☹”

“THE GIANT IS LITERALLY FUCKING RIPPING PEOPLE APART OH MY GOD!”

DB: While you can take great pride in changing my mind about LeBron James, getting you to finally power through a rewatch of Game of Thrones will always be one of the true joys of my life. Vitriol at the last season aside, it is potentially the greatest television show ever made and watching you digest it at record pace was immensely satisfying. Every “What the fuck just happened?!” message I received was like a little boost to my pride. Now you just need to watch Star Wars.

EAD — 3%

SG: E.A.D. stands for Eat A Dick. I coined the phrase, I say it very frequently, Dalton does now too, and I’m proud of that shit.

DB: Hey Sonny… Eat a Dick.

Pickleball — 1.5%

DB: Ah pickleball, the sport of choice of retirement communities across the country. Also something for Sonny and I to bond over. If you aren’t familiar with it, all you really need to know is that pickleball is a paddle sport. Sonny likes to talk about his natural talent at any and all paddle sports. But when we played pickleball we were pretty much even, so I’m just saying take any of his boasts about paddle sports with a grain of salt.

SG: “Pretty much even” is code for “I lost but didn’t embarrass myself against one of the greatest paddle sport athletes who never received any formal training in any kind of paddle sport.”

All I’ll say is I’ve never lost an intramural Ping Pong or Pickleball tournament. But you made me work for it, and that’s a lot more than most people can say. Well done.

White Russian Monsters — 1%

SG: Ya know how the delicious mixed drink “White Russian” consists of Vodka, Kahlua and cream? Well, there is a coffee-flavored Monster energy drink that is called “Mean Bean.” One night at a JP Sports party, Dalton, myself and some of the other JP employees had the brilliantly devastating idea to mix this creamy coffee flavored Monster with Vodka and call our concoction a “Putin” … a White Russian Monster. Ya get it?

Warning: Don’t mix Putin’s, beer and tequila straight from Mexico in the same night or you will end up face down in your front yard in the middle of the night puking all over the place while your neighbor walks by with his dog.

DB: No matter what we accomplish in our lives, “Putin’s” may always hold the top spot of our greatest creative achievements. They also may simultaneously hold the top spot of our worst ideas ever. That’s how you know they’re perfect.

Early 2000’s Wrestling — 1%

DB: I stopped watching wrestling when I was a kid once I learned it was fake. Sonny, however, kept on watching it his whole life which I respect a great deal. It’s kind of like Santa Claus, why shouldn’t we enjoy something just because it’s “not real.” I still get/open presents under the tree from Santa even though I’m *pretty sure* he’s not real. It’s also nice to have Sonny around when I try to decide if a memory I have about wrestling was actually something that happened or just a weird fever dream I had. Speaking of which, did Kurt Angle lose a bet on a match and have to shave his head on live TV?

SG: He did! It was a Hair versus Hair match against Edge. Angle lost and proceeded to compete in wrestling headgear and a truly terrible wig for the next month or so. How silly and delightful.

Beavis — 1%

SG: Over the past few years there has been a run of photorealistic live-action remakes of some of Disney’s most popular films, including The Jungle Book, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. Well, back in 2015, Dalton and I had front row seats to the live action spin-off of Beavis and Butthead, titled Just Beavis.

One afternoon when just Dalton and I were on the floor at JP Sports — whoever decided that Dalton and I should be left in the store alone was just asking for trouble … Oh right, that was me, I made the schedule — we were joined in the store by a young man who looked, talked and acted just like Beavis. The resemblance in all facets was just uncanny; it was almost too spot on to be something that could’ve really happened, but I was there, and I know for sure that I experienced this reality, even if it felt more like a hilarious fever dream.

DB: The Beavis incident was the most unprofessional we ever were around customers, and that’s saying a lot. Every time that guy opened his mouth it was taking everything in our power to not roll around on the floor laughing uncontrollably. I wish him nothing but the best though and I hope he found his Butthead.

SG: Dalton, you are my Butthead.