Fairly Harmless: Take a Break from Being Smart

James had a vision at a yard sale: a pizza restaurant that opens at nine in the morning. Andrew thought this was brilliant. Everyone else at the yard sale did not. 

This episode also features a genuinely compelling pitch for a professional insult delivery service where hired randos approach your enemies, say something devastating, and vanish forever. Passive aggressive? Sure. A legitimate business opportunity? These two think so.

James came home from the yard sale with DVDs instead of money: Fletch, The Tao of Steve, and a Yule log DVD that he will tell you about at length. It's a Northeastern Christmas television tradition. He's very excited. 

Also: someone got confused about the name of the game cornhole and the whole thing went sideways immediately. No further questions.

Two guys, 11pm, downtown Raleigh.

Andrew got a haircut from a barber whose hands would not stop shaking and stayed in the chair anyway. James broke two lawn chairs in the same month. By the end of the episode they are working out the physics of surviving a free fall out of a plane using a bazooka and a broken lawn chair as a parachute.

Also there's a hilarious discussion about wearing glasses that look like Elton John picked them out.

This is Fairly Harmless, missing the point as always.

Pointless banter about eateries, sound and parallel universes vs insanity.

Andrew and James open up with James confidently mixing up Tommy Lasorda and Tony La Russa. Two different people, two different teams. Not even close.

The NBA takes a beating next. Neither host has cared much since the Jordan-Pippen Bulls, and they will tell you exactly why. College ball is a different story: real teamwork, real stakes, and an NC State shoutout for good measure.

Then things get entrepreneurial. James pitches Shelf, a dating app for people who can balance a plate of food on their stomach, and the brainstorm spirals into a full graveyard of cursed app names: Doormat, Wrench, Turkey Baster, Meat Mallet.

The episode closes with an enthusiastic, completely unpaid endorsement of Prime Barbecue in Knightdale, and a nod to Longleaf Swine in Raleigh, who referred the business to a competitor when their equipment failed before a catering job rather than just canceling. Integrity in the barbecue industry. It exists.

Two guys from Raleigh walk into a podcast and immediately get sidetracked by Grey Poupon, grocery store rankings, and a secondhand audio interface bought at 3am on eBay. Welcome to Fairly Harmless.

In the debut episode of Fairly Harmless, Andrew and James officially introduce themselves, explain how they deleted the actual first episode, and somehow turn a conversation about mustard into a meditation on sriracha trademark law, space monkeys, and whether the thug life chose them or they chose it. There's also an ASMR detour and a Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor reference that makes complete sense in context.

Intelligent and insightful are words other podcasts use to describe themselves. This is Fairly Harmless. We're missing the point from the very beginning, with musical accompaniment by The Boston Horns.

Pointless banter about strange parties, British English oddities and exotic destinations.