Best Of 2024 - After Dinner Mintz: A Recap Of My 1-On-1 Dinner Date With Mintzy

Gather round ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, as I have a story that you're not going to believe totally going to believe. My dinner with Ben Mintz was…..without question….one of the wildest experiences I've ever encountered. And I think the funniest part about the entire ordeal is that I'm assuming it was just another day in his life. Some people pay hundreds of dollars to watch the Circus up close and personal, and it only cost me a bar tab of $54.72.

It's going to take me about 10,000 words to retell this whole thing, but if you want a short summary, here's what I'd say:

Or is he the exact opposite of who we think he is…..? I'm truly not sure if he's hands down the dumbest person to ever walk on this Earth, or if he is actually Keyser Söze, faking the intelligence of a mentally challenged 3rd grader with eyes that, if he had a better arm, could make him an elite quarterback because he can see all 4 receivers running their routes at the same time……..all to boondoggle his way into working for the greatest company on the planet. Let me explain:

This story begins early in the afternoon yesterday, when Ben Mintz tells me he has selected a location for our dinner because it has "an incredible happy hour….pizzas are half off and apps are $5". Totally fine with me, Mintzy, although I low key was hoping he'd select a nice steakhouse where we'd have to dress up, and I could snag a pic of his undoubtedly wrinkled button down. Anyways, and this won't be the last time this happens in this blog, the plans changed. Around 3:00, Mintzy informed me that he forgot he had a Dozen match at 5:00, and he wouldn't be able to do the originally planned 4:45 tip-off. I said, buddy, just say you got a poker tournament and skip it, but he declined. He said his priorities go Dozen, Poker, Getting The Half Off Pizza Deals, then Barstool. 

Anyways, with a delayed dinner til 6:30 or so, I took that opportunity to head home and try and get into my package room to get my internet modem, as I haven't been home before they closed up shop all week. Unfortunately, before I even finished the 35 min walk home, I felt a phone call vibrating from my watch. Looked down at my phone and saw one eye staring back into mine….it was Ben Mintz. 

"Hey man, uhhh, I don't want this to sound cheap but ummm the difference in the Happy Hour deal tonight is like a lot of money and so I was wondering if maybe you uhhhh could get there around 5:45 and put an order in for us? Dozen matches only take around 45 minutes, so I should still make it by 6:00 but I want to make sure we get the deal. Do you mind?"

Mintzy, as someone who just paid his first month rent check of $2661, haven't been reimbursed for my moving expenses yet, and haven't received a paycheck since I quit teaching on February 16th…..I do not mind one bit. 

So I veer left on my walk home, book bag still on my shoulders, and head over to a little place called Pizza Parlor in the West Loop. Sit down and call my Mom for a bit, where she reminds me again to polish up on my apparently nonexistent soccer skills in case I ever get to do The Yak Gauntlet again, and then I hang up and walk in at approximately 5:35, ten minutes earlier than instructed to guarantee I got this order in for Mintzy. I take a picture of the menu and text it over to him, wondering which two pies he wanted. Oh, yeah, it's not 50% off pizzas like he said. It's buy one, get one free. Not a huge deal, obviously, but the two of us will now be splitting two larges.

Mintzy didn't answer for 15 minutes, and after the waiter came by 5 times asking if I was ready to order, I finally made the decisions myself and ordered one Abe Froman's Fave and one Hot Chicken pizza. Figured we didn't need anything else as two large pizzas for two medium sized guys was probably enough, plus, he hadn't answered in 15 minutes. Nope, couldn't tell me what pizza he wanted for 15 minutes, but he immediately responds with a Like and a request for me to go flag down the waiter in the next three minutes to snag the calamari before Happy Hour ends.

I literally had to get out of my seat, go back by the kitchen, find the waiter, ask if I could squeeze in a quick app, have him check his watch, and at 5:59, we secured the calamari.

….the food came out in 5 minutes. At 6:03, the food was delivered to the table. I have proof.

What do you do when the two pizzas and the much needed calamari come out 23 minutes after you arrive and your dinner guest still isn't there….? I chose to wait, making literally everyone around me wonder if I was getting stood up on a first date.

And I waited. And I waited. And I waited…..

At this point, I had decided that I had fallen for a 9th Green at 9:00 pm situation. These motherfuckers got me. Katz had to have been behind it. Take the rookie that came in taking cheap shots at everyone, have dumb ol' Ben Mintz DM him asking to go to dinner together, advise me to go, have me get there 15 minutes early, have me order the food, add in an appetizer, pretend you're running 45 minutes late, and then never show. An incredible rookie prank, and I was legitimately in the middle of sending this text to Mintzy….

….when this motherfucker came through the door. I took a glance at all the possible places where a mic could be hidden to see if The Yak boys were running a pick and roll on me, but within literally 15 seconds of hearing him speak, I knew he was not outsmarting me….he was literally just Ben Mintz.

Let me say this: I really enjoyed the dinner. Mintzy was extremely nice to me, answered any questions I had about how to do things within the company, and explained to me how he got to his self-proclaimed "6th Man of Barstool" because while he's not the star of any shows, he's the one guy that can go onto anyone else's show and make it better. 

Anyways, I wanted to reiterate, dinner was fun. But let's get into the good stuff, like when I pulled out my clipboard and notebook paper filled with joint content ideas to run by him, taking meticulous notes of his responses for each. Here are some of them:

Coach An Inner City Basketball Team

Mintzy didn't love this proposal for a few reasons, the first being that it seems like a lot of work. Funny to hear that from him, but I do agree with his reasoning. Lots of people (even someone in the office yesterday) are sending me high school basketball job openings in the area, saying it'd be hilarious if I coached a team next year for content. Umm, do you guys realize that coaching basketball is an 11, if not 12, month out of the year job? I had to give up coaching TO work at Barstool. I would have to give up Barstool to coach again (if I wanted to do it the right way).

The second reason Mintzy declined on this one was because he wasn't sure of how much on-court value he could provide these….youngsters. He said he would probably be more of a clipboard / stats type of assistant coach rather than an Xs and Os guy. Oh, and a direct quote, "I do think I could be a good role model for the players."

Take The ACT Once A Week Until He Gets A 36

I said Mintzy, everyone is trying to catch that same fire that Jersey Jerry started with his Hole-In-One challenge….what do you say we take the same general premise, but with a little dim-witted spin? His immediate response to this was that it was a funny idea, but it had to be a hard No because there's simply no way he would ever be able to do it. I agree, a 36 is tough (although this motherfucker says he got a 28 back in the day!!!), but what if we amended the rules a bit? What if we focused on one subject of the test, got a 36, locked it in, and then moved on to the next? That is hard, but that is absolutely doable. He's a Math guy from playing Poker, and the Reading / Science / Language Arts portions are certainly beatable. We could get an ACT Prep book, I'd teach him a couple sessions, and I think we could do it.

He said No. 

A Staring Contest Vs. Riggs

"Huh? Oh wait, I get it, because he's cross-eyed."

Yep, Mintzy, because Riggs is cross-eyed is why we want you to do a staring contest against him. He did say it'd probably be pretty funny, though.

Are You Smarter Than Tate's 7th Grader?

This one has some legs, no? Get a couple of my former twelve-year-old students out here to the Windy City to produce a show to see if Mintzy is in fact smarter than a 7th grader. When I first asked him about this, I think he thought I was legitimately asking if he was smarter than a 7th grader. He answered with an emphatic YES. I was like, oh, you like that idea? He goes, what idea? 

And then the odds for the bets on NO shifted drastically to -650.

Anyways, Mintzy told me he felt that if the questions were "like a test", he'd win. But if they were about "common sense", he wasn't sure. 

Commit-Mintz

Also not a bad idea, if we're talking about the practicality of these options. Mintzy was down to commit to learning a series of basic life lessons, like teaching him how to cook grilled cheese, how to iron a shirt, and other things that, in his words, he "really struggles with". I told him that I was torn between some of these ideas because I wasn't sure if they would be a one off thing, or if they had the opportunity to become a legitimate series. If we're talking sticking to only basic life lessons, I think it's pretty clear we could run this one well into the next….decade.

JudgeMintz

Alright, here's my #2 option of the entire pitch list. Anytime a company employee fucks up, they need to go sit before the honorable Judge Mintz. Do you guys get it? Judge Mintz…..makes judgements….on what should happen to Barstool employees that fuck up.

The one tough thing about it is that we would probably need some technical help from an editor on how we can have Judge Mintz and Ben Mintz on the camera at the same time, because that's probably what 99.9% of the shows will be. Mintzy sitting across from himself, pleading his case of why he fucked up, and then determining what his punishment should be.

I hope you guys are still reading because that's actually a fucking good idea.

Wedding Crashers

He thought the idea was kind of funny, for us to crash random weddings in the greater United States area, but he wanted me to know that he's already "Been there, done that". No shit, Mintzy. I didn't come up with this idea out of the blue. I came up with it when you drove to the wrong country club and attended the wrong person's wedding last weekend.

Rap Lyric Analysis

The fastest answer of the night, without question, was when I proposed that he analyze popular rap lyrics and give his interpretations of what he thinks the artists are trying to say. He immediately replied, in the most serious tone of the night, "I'm going to stay away from that one."

(Everyone take a deep breath for second)

Okay, lock the fuck in. I need your feedback on this one, because in my mind, it's actually a legitimately good idea. Would it be funny if we did a real-life reenactment of…..

Billy Madison / Benny Madison / Billy Mintzyson

Picture this: I teach Mintzy a lesson, on camera, starting in Kindergarten. I'll dress up in my teacher garb of a shirt and tie, and we'll stick him in a little desk like the ones that kids have to sit in. Each week, I teach one lesson, and then he takes one test. If he passes the Kindergarten test (which I'm not sure the man can use scissors, let alone color between the lines), then he moves on to 1st Grade the next week. And then if he passes his basic Addition and Subtraction facts in 1st grade, we can move him on to some Reading Comprehension in 2nd grade.

I can already see it now. Ben Mintz, after a month, will have made the 3rd Grade, where he'll unironically say, "1st and 2nd Grade were easy, but Social Studies, Division? This is going to be tough!". And then can you imagine when he finally gets into the later grades….? I don't know, you guys, I'm just a blogger, but this sounds like a fucking Must See video each week. And with people looking for longevity in these types of series, you gotta think this could literally take years. How long will it take Ben Mintz to pass an 11th Grade AP Literature exam? And then he has to move on to Calculus! You know what, I may go see if Hank thinks this idea is funny today. 

Final Blogger Notes:

The Cheese

I have to address this, not to trash Mintzy, but to clear my good name. People were questioning what rabid animal ravaged through the parmesan, and due to the fact that I was nearest the additions plate in the photo, some assumed it was me. Let's be very clear: we sat opposite each other the entire dinner, and then when the waiter took our photo at the end, I swung around to his side for convenience purposes. And let's also be very clear: Mintzy's way of adding parmesan to his pizza was to pinch his two or sometimes three fattest fingers into that tiny tin and squeeze them together, creating a tidal wave of cheese particles overflowing onto the table. Oh, and he did that on his very first bite. That's like sharing a thing of french fries with someone you just met and double dipping before they even grab one. I didn't even need to open my mouth for my first bite of pizza….my jaw was already dropped. 

What Mintzy Had On His Phone

My mind is in such a fucking pretzel here, because the way this happened is literally insane to the point where I can't believe it….to the point where Mintz is truly the awful combination of dumb and unlucky……or to the point where he's seriously a fucking MASTERMIND.

Guys, we took this picture once, and then Mintzy readjusted himself to display the Brick Watch front and center, and the waiter retook it with a flash…..right at the exact time that the basketball game he bet on / was watching went to a commercial, and the commercial was for…..CHARMIN TOILET PAPER. Guys, look at Mintzy's twitter bio. Everyone's favorite twice a month show, Wake Up Mintzy, is presented by fucking Dude Wipes, a direct competitor of toilet paper. What are the odds that the very second we retake this picture was the very second the Charmin mascot on the screen, unwrapping a roll of toilet paper. You can't make this shit up. You can't make any of this shit up.

Okay, that's my recap blog of my dinner date with Ben Mintz.