Muse

Hi, welcome to Taco Bell. My name's Etesia. How can I help you?

I am mesmerized by the divergent culinary concepts at play here. Cheesy gordita crunch. Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos Supreme. I mean, it's like Mexican jazz music.

TBTL! I just might have tacos tonight. It's in material.

This is what happens when an inside joke gets into the water supply. They are sending shockwaves over the airwaves. They are rude and abusive, but want you to listen to them.

I mean, the chutzpah of these guys, with their fakakta shtick, it's a real shone down what it's supposed to be. A Simca. Yeah.

It's supposed to be a Simca. All I know is this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.

All right, hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. This whole phenomenon is protected by a force field of tedium. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. As Jay would say, he's got flow. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where the broadcast sounds a little more professional today. If I sound a little more focused, capable, supported by my tools here, it's because I've got a new microphone stand.

You know, you've got to eat that microphone.

And it is a beaut. Speaking of things that are beautiful, I was out on my little morning jaunt this morning, my little morning jog along the Willamette River. and I saw some kind of animal in the water. Do they have seals in the Willamette? I don't mean the Grammy award-winning Kiss by a Rose Singer from the Batman soundtrack. I have never seen a seal sunning themselves on a dock on the Willamette River. I've never heard anyone talking about those seals. We've got to do something about those seals. But if this wasn't a seal that I saw kind of breaching in the water, it was either a smallish whale or we have some kind of a Willamette Ness monster type situation going on here in the 503. And you heard it first right here on TBTL, unless you're listening to this years later, in which case it's probably been a pretty big news story. Speaking of big news stories, we've got some fun top stories for you here on episode 3366 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Law enforcement in Arizona found a guy who was tied up, lying down in the desert with a bandana stuffed in his mouth. they uh they investigated the case and figured out that he had made the whole thing up well we know you're good at lying he had done an incredibly elaborate fake kidnapping on himself so that he could avoid going to work at a tire store feels like there might be easier ways to get out of work but i don't know we'll look into it coming up in a moment also barack the sheep was found in australia with over 75 pounds of wool that had grown on his poor little sheep body because he was out in the wilderness and there was no one out there to shear him they brought him in they got the wool off of him and he's warming the hearts of a worldwide audience via tiktok and uh other such internet sites so we'll tell you about the story of barack coming up uh and then canadians are saying that their butter is tasting weird right now there's some conspiracy theories flying around on the internet that there's something up with canadian butter so we'll get into all of that as well with the help of this guy, the longest running cobro of the show. He may be best known for his drawings of the tall ships. He's a six-foot-two pile of awesomeness. He is Andrew Terry Poo Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. It was the

summer of 2015, my friend. August 30th, to be exact. When it happened. Miss Crumpet posted on Reddit, should a seal be in the Willamette? Just got back from kayaking between lake oswego in milwaukee she writes they write i should say there was a seal swimming in front in front of the Milwaukee Riverfront Park looked healthy. There's lots of fish in there. Old Swang comes in with some answers. They're all the way up to the Willamette Falls, eating the spring Chinook steel hood and sturgeon. The fishermen are having to reel in their fish quickly to get them in their boats before the sea lions steal them, to which Black Cain responds, they are the wolves of the Willamette. That was in 2015. Cut to 2018. It'd also be a good name if we got like a field hockey team or something. He's really good. K-A-T-U, Channel 2, ABC TV in 2018, December of 2018, has this story, sea lion removal underway on Willamette River to protect endangered fish. That must leave you in a bit of a pickle, Luke, as to who to root for. I assume that you enjoy seeing sea lions, but you also want to protect endangered fish.

I am a fan of charismatic megafauna. I'm on the record with that. But it would explain why I haven't seen one before. And I wonder if, like, because it sounds like the fish and wildlife out here tries to keep them out of the river. I mean, this has been a huge problem over the years in Seattle. There was a famous sea lion named Herschel who would just post up at the Ballard Locks and just feast on the fish as they were trying to come through the fish ladder. And it was, I mean, half of my childhood growing up in Seattle Was hand wringing and pearl clutching Pearl clutching makes it sound like it's not a real problem It was just a lot of news coverage of Herschel What are we going to do about Herschel So I'm used to that in Seattle But I've never seen a sea lion or seal in the Willamette I've never heard of one being there And I think it's because they're actively trying to keep them out But I have now, again, unless it's a Willamette nest monster, Andrew What I saw today was a seal or a sea lion, like a biggin And I feel like I need to report it to somebody So they can maybe catch it and send it back out to sea or shoot one of those.

I forgot that those sea lions hang out at the locks. And when I used to go there before pandemic time, although that seems like a pretty safe place to go, I could go to the locks now. I can't blame that on the pandemic. But to get rid of the sea lions, someone was going around with like some sort of a gun or a clapper of some sort that shot like blanks. There were very, very loud gunshots to kind of like, you know, scare them away.

Well, that's always been the tension there is, you know, we need to get rid of the sea lions, but we need to do it in a humane way. Simply eliminating them, i.e. killing them, is not the solution. um this is a uh a fairly weird pivot but i just finished reading this book i did an interview on livewire about it yesterday about uh the south african diamond mining industry and which is a terrible and brutal uh industry i will just say and one of the things that some of these very very impoverished uh diamond miners so these are the people that have to go down in the hole not the De Beers people that are keeping all the wealth what they will do is they will sneak a homing they will sneak a pigeon in to the mine with them like a homing pigeon and like it's the story of this one CZ this kid this 13 year old kid I mean this is a real it's not like made up this is a real kid and he has a pigeon named Bartholomew Andrew and he sneaks Bartholomew into this diamond mind in his lunch pail this book is by uh matthew gavin frank by the way if you're if you're wondering and uh he then if he finds some rough diamonds and the bosses don't see that he's finding these rough diamonds he will tie them to bartholomew's legs with with little burlap bags and then sneak bartholomew back out to an opening and then send bartholomew into the sky and hope

that he gets home with the diamonds you can't weigh him down though that's well that's the thing

Yeah, because sometimes people will tie too many of these uncut diamonds to their pigeon and the pigeons. There was just one particular beach where pigeons were just like falling out of the sky because they had too many. And when I say diamonds, we're talking rough diamonds that are have a very, very low resale value out on the market. Like it's not like, you know, the hope diamond and somebody is getting a million dollars from these. I mean, these are people that are living in just unbelievable poverty, even with the sneaking out of an occasional rough diamond. But the thing that's crazy is because these pigeons are now a way that people can sort of grab a few extra diamonds for themselves. Pigeons are illegal in this part of South Africa. There is actually a law that was passed that if you see a pigeon and you have the means to kill it and you don't kill it, you have broken the law. No, you are legally obligated to kill pigeons.

No, I don't like that. at all that's not a good solution to this

problem of course it's not and also the like this book goes into great detail on pigeons and they're incredible just the things that are amazing about pigeons do you know pigeons are super

Superstitious, like they see pigeons be exhibiting behavior that indicates they are superstitious. They can identify all 26 letters of the alphabet.

I have seen. Have you seen pigeons at a sporting event? They'll always turn their bud lights so that the labels are out right when a big play is about to happen. And then it goes their team's way. If you ever say, oh, this guy's pitching a no hitter, you will almost always be dive bombed by an angry pigeon and an angry Andrew upshaw. Anyway.

I'm trying to beat the traffic, Andrew. Just trying to beat the traffic. Anyway.

You know why I say that, right? He texted me one time. It was, who came so close to having a, somebody. A no-hitter. Yeah, somebody who came really close to having a no-hitter. Did Marco come? It wasn't Marco. Dang it. Maybe. I forget. I think this was about two seasons ago. And, you know, I'm watching it at home with Genevieve. In fact, we were supposed to meet somebody somewhere. but we're just kind of like well we got to watch this play out like here it is and then everything's going well until the ninth inning and i get a text from your friend and mine ron upshaw that says you checking out this no hitter and he immediately gave one up and like i know that ron didn't make that happen like intellectually i know that like there are other people like all over the city and potentially the world who were making the same mistake he did but he made it to me and it happened right as who was it god damn it i gotta look this up there's about two counterpoint andrew yeah he did make that point is he was the only person who said and the other

problem is and i love you know we love ron he's a pal of ours but he's also the person who was at a game with you once and it was the game was not over it was like the eighth inning and he was he wanted to leave he did i believe leave to beat the traffic which if anything bad had happened in that game that would have also been on him because you gotta stick it out in my opinion if you're gonna go to the hassle of schlepping down to the ball field you gotta watch the game through you can't like leaving to beat the traffic to me again this is just my way of enjoying baseball not everyone has to enjoy it the way i enjoy it but leaving before the game is over means you didn't care

about the game that much wait a second your way of enjoying baseball is to get really angry and then tweet at a bunch of mariners players and then feel awful and delete your tweets well let me clarify you don't actually target the players in your thank you i don't add them i just find

i just find in a i find a picture where they look silly usually they're like publicity shot and then i paste that into the into the message section of twitter and i say nice job arthur roads great job kyle seeker i'm basically that mariners executive who got fired for talking to the rotarians uh except there are no consequences for me other than my own shame the next day and

and less racism i will speak i hope i sure hope um yeah i mean anyway that's not even that that

that's a whole can of worms can i just say real quickly though on that subject um uh i think it's I think it's a fascinating story Somebody tweeted this at us I think like this morning Somebody on Twitter I think they go by like Mr. Autumn Man Oh yeah

Yeah, handsome autumn No, he doesn't say handsome I just think he's handsome But yeah Mr. Autumn Sweater or something

Hey, by the way Whoever that listener is You just gotta peek into Andy's brain He thinks you're handsome

He's like It's like Mr. You're right I think it's Mr. Autumn Man He's like in like a sweater Outside like Drinking coffee or something He seems like the man That I wanna be But never would be

well he's also uh the the man or the person who sent us a link to the story that i had actually answer by the way don't be mean to my friend andy we know that you are this handsome young stranger you are verified as a handsome young stranger on our show that's true um handsome handsome autumn man tweeted us this this a very fascinating story that i happened to read yesterday did you see that article as well about the guy who basically blew the lid off of now this sounds like a sports story but it's really more of just a what an idiot story there's this guy who was a high up executive with the seattle mariners and he's giving a talk to the like rotary club of bellevue or something on zoom i've given a talk at a rotary breakfast and i say this with peace and love to any rotarians in our audience it is a low profile event i've never felt like more of a micro celebrity. I've never, the micro in my micro celebrity has never been more noticeable to me than when I was giving a 7.30 a.m. breakfast talk to some Rotarians in Port Townsend.

And that was, oh wow, Port Townsend too, that's small. And that at least was in the before time, so it was in person. So at least you were, at least you had like a podium and you could smell some donuts. I mean, for it to be a Zoom call must really, you know, kind of make this, I'm just You haven't even explained the story yet, but I do wonder if the Zoom nature of this also played into the frankness of the GM who – I think you're – Not GM, I'm sorry. Yeah.

I think you're right, though. I bet you very much – it very much affected his just being casual and saying a bunch of things about the Mariners' baseball team and its players and things that they had done. It was as if you were at a bar with a guy and he got a couple too many drinks in him. and started just telling you stuff that he shouldn't tell you, but he's doing it over Zoom to some number of Bellevue Rotarians. And, I mean, he said a bunch of stuff that was racist. He said a bunch of stuff that just made you angry as a fan because it just explained the decisions that the team makes. Again, now it's veering slightly into sports, but I'm just saying it made me very, very, very mad at this guy, and also I was very much in favor of him being fired. he did resign eventually which of course he'd already done a bunch of bad stuff like what got him fired was that he did some of it on zoom and it was recorded but he had already been uh he'd already there'd been a settlement over unbidden back rubs that he had been giving out to a particular female staffer i mean it was like this guy was bad news from from the jump uh but anyway The interesting part of it is the person who discovered This video is Like a I don't know like maybe Mid-30s dad of three And obsessed Mariners fan Who had been It was a Saturday night his kids were In bed he'd been playing his Favorite video game Which is some kind of MLB type baseball game He was listening to a baseball podcast

Yeah the MLB game by the way not that this Matters but it's coming I haven't played it Because it's only been on I think it's only a PlayStation game but is coming to Xbox for the first time this season so I will be probably spending some money on the latest edition of what is it MLB front page it's not called

that but whatever I thought you know it's funny because when I read the when I read the name of the game I'm not a big video game person the show sorry the show I thought maybe it was a game where you just manage teams that is an option in most of these don't even play you don't even play you just it's just a giant spreadsheet well it's basically what you and I are doing with this fantasy league that we're doing uh the original article is by adam jude who does a great job in the seattle times in my opinion and it's a guy named eric hess and so yeah so eric hess is 36 years old he's an engineering manager in the seattle area this is just really great writing uh his three children had gone to bed saturday night and hess retreated to his home office for some quiet time i'm sure that the parents of of you know youngest children in our audience can absolutely I mean you need your Andy times you don't even have kids yeah I know he was having his uh he was having his Eric times uh he uh steps into his little office uh for some quiet time alone with his playstation and his favorite video game MLB the show while playing he finished listening to a Mariners podcast because he wasn't getting enough baseball just mainlined into his system he was playing his his his uh baseball game he's listening to a Mariners podcast and then he finishes up and then he's asked that question we all ask ourselves these days is that all there is is that all there is and he this is me talking not the article by the way i want to put words into adam jude's page but so he was like he just types mariners into youtube and i know that feeling of being so into something that you're just like uh let me just type chris craft into the internet just see what it says i mean i know that's a boat but there's maybe there's some new information about that boat that i didn't know yet and that's what this guy eric He just types the name Mariners into YouTube. And what comes up is this video that I think has been viewed two times, presumably by the Rotarian who put the video up, right, just to make sure it was working.

No, actually, he said that there was – well, you're looking at the article. I thought he said that he was the very first person, that there were zero views on it.

Let's see. The second-newest result, a video posted the day before by the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary Club, featured then-Mariner president and CEO of Kevin Mathers' Zoom conversation. Yeah, you're right. Hess clicked on the 46-minute video becoming the first person to play it. So nobody even checked it when it was up. He starts watching this video. He says he watches the first 10 or 12 minutes, and he was struck by Mathers' unusual candor. And that's a way of saying, basically, this guy was saying a bunch of stuff in public that he probably shouldn't have been saying. and um and so he uh tweeted he uh tweeted out a link to the video but his his link you can tell that at this moment he doesn't realize what he's actually watching he just thinks this is like oh wow this is a very again candid conversation he writes super interesting video here with kevin mather so he's not like gotcha he's like hey uh you know baseball fans of course he has not a lot of he's 211 followers as of uh you know when he put this out so he's not sending it out to a Thank you.

huge group of people but this also shows i guess how even a an account that doesn't have a huge number of followers i guess i bet you of his 211 followers 210 of them are similarly baseball obsessed and so they it starts spreading this video and people start watching the entirety of it and then of course by the next day ryan divish who's a great baseball reporter here in seattle or up there in seattle picks it up and then it's a firestorm and the guy's fired basically 24 hours or so after the the video is posted it's it's interesting because this guy who found the video said you know this is basically my entire life the Seattle Mariners he's a season ticket holder he is clearly I mean he's clearly obsessed with baseball in the Seattle Mariners and he's like you know this is this really other than probably his family this is the centerpiece of his life is this team and he got the this particular executive fired for their terrible behavior and it's like must be so interesting it's so weird for him to be it's like as if that you're watching your football team and they call you in off out of the stands to kick a field goal to you know win the game or something like we're just not used to as fans actually being part of the story of the team in that way especially because this is kind of a negative story too

I think he has mixed emotions not mixed emotions like I shouldn't have tweeted this out you know it is what it is but he also like loves this team and it's kind of a bummer the well that's not kind of the whole story is just a bummer so it must be kind of a bummer for him that he is that this is what he discovered as opposed to something nice and fun and exciting I want to give a quick shout out though because you missed it I think because I follow him an important link there it was this guy Joe Vieira if I'm saying his name correctly he's been a Twitter friend of mine for a long time I'm a huge fan he's and do you follow him he's an editor an obsessive mariners fan and he follows local news really closely and he covers the storm on twitter and he's a great twitter follow and so he um he was following eric and then he watched it and then he started kind of like live tweeting and breaking down the video and then i think that's how it spread because he's got quite a few followers so um i not to get too baseball-y on it but real quick before we go

to the break i do think that this is effectively a positive because what's happened was it's sort of lanced you know a festering kind of boil that was the way the Mariners were treating this guy Jared Kalanick who's like a really really really highly regarded prospect the Mariners were basically making these moves where they were not bringing players up to play in the major leagues so that it would make the the players contract more advantageous to the Seattle Mariners which as a fan you just want your team to play their best players please and the Mariners also uh you know lose money but they make a lot of money because they also own the tv rights to the mariners and they own the network root sports that the mariners are on uh so it's all this vertical integration and unfortunately in a lot of pro sports now winning is not the way you even make money the way you make money is not spending any money on your team and sharing in the profit share and the tv rights to the sport and that was also something that kind of came out in this conversation so i kind of think and now what you've seen he also said some racist stuff about a couple of different Mariners and they're Mariners who don't speak English as a first language and I've seen a number of these players who are mentioned now on Twitter saying hey thanks Mariners fans we really appreciate you thanks for getting our back I kind of feel like it was cathartic in a way for the players to see that the fans have their back and not the team's back as it were or not the back of this horrible appearing human Mather so in a way I kind of think that this diehard fan Kind of He did something unwittingly that was necessary For the team, it makes me feel like there's a brighter Future for this team, A, because that guy's gone And B, because these other players Kalanick has been tweeting out about how much He appreciates the fans, other Mariners Have been tweeting out about racism in whatever form It takes, I think it was Bishop was tweeting this morning, like racism takes A lot of different forms, and I'm not Into any of it, you know, it feels like the team Is unifying around the fact that that guy sucked Well, good.

I mean, I hope that they band together and it doesn't drive them apart from management. I mean, that's been my concern with it, and I don't want to get too baseball-y here. But, I mean, essentially what Mathers did was, I mean, the Mariners have obviously had one of the longest slumps in professional sports. But I've been kind of trusting this process that they've been talking about for the past several years of, like, really stripping down, not quite to the – what is it, stripping down to the bolts? Not quite that, but definitely taking these step back seasons and building up their farm team. And now they have these really exciting prospects, like really exciting around the league. And this guy just goes up there. And instead of saying, like, yeah, what's Julio Rodriguez like? Instead of saying it's amazing to see somebody like that in the batter's box, like the future is so bright. We are so excited. I'm beside myself. He's just like, yeah, he's really loud. He doesn't speak English very well, which apparently is also completely not.

true no he speaks right no really well considering that he's from the uh dominican republic i think and it's a second language and he insists on speaking in english yes because he wants to be better at it and because he's proud of his skill and this manager this president is just saying oh yeah he's loud and he doesn't speak and then he starts complaining about paying the salaries of interpreters for um japanese players now i'm just recycling everything that you know very well luke but just to give people a sense of what it was it's just like this casualness and i I've been stewing on this. It just occurred to me I haven't talked to anybody about this except for a couple of texts back and forth with you guys. But I think that because the question is why? Why would Mathers say these things when it's so easy just to get on the Zoom call and say nice things about exciting players? And I think it is a little – well, it's a combination of a lot of things. I think it's just hubris and also believing the things he's saying, as Levitard said. He says it because he truly believes it, and he doesn't even realize that it doesn't look and sound good. But I also think that he was probably thinking, well, I've got to impress these people in some way. Like anybody else that's around Julio Rodriguez, what are they going to say? Wow, look at that guy's swing. You know, I'm glad his wrist wasn't damaged two years ago or whatever. But anybody can say that, and anybody can be a fan. But he wants to give these folks these morning, these people who woke up at six in the morning to hear him talk. He wants to seem like cool around it. He's not in he's not impressed. He's been around baseball his whole life. And he's just looking at it in this very like kind of pragmatic, not that impressed kind of way. And I think that's what he wants to to give these people in the Rotary. What do you think of that theory?

Yeah, there are certain I mean, there are certain kind of people. I'm probably one of them, that whether you're playing to an audience of a thousand people or an audience of 10 people, you want to somehow in whatever your own defective way is, impress them, engage with them, you know, like not just trot out a bunch of well-worn. Well, that's not true. I almost exclusively trot out well-worn stories and jokes. Are you self-plagiarizing again, Luke? but um you know yeah i think you're right i think he probably felt and also you know it's the rotary club so there's probably some probably a couple of big wheels from the cracker factory in there you know like because it's a business thing and so there's probably a few people there that are you know run some big something or other and you know he might know them from the charity circuit over there on the east side so he wants to kind of row down a little bit who knows but um yeah it's just absolutely terrible look the thing about criticizing uh julio's english that i mean you've already kind of mentioned this but there was one specific anecdote about that which is that the first time he did an interview this was in in one of these articles the first time that he did an interview in english like a you know whatever postgame interview or something interview in english he said this is what he said he called his mom and told her not about the game but about having done the interview in english that's how excited he was so to go from this is the person we're talking about and tend to describe his english as not great is like so disrespectful to just humanity you know that it's just like they couldn't fire the guy fast enough as far as i'm concerned so yeah i'm hoping that this that this is and i don't blame this is fully happening now i'm sorry it's like i don't even blame i don't blame scott service i don't know Scott Service's heart, that's the guy who's the manager of the Mariners. You'll notice him as the fellow who's wearing a uniform but clearly doesn't look like he could play. I'm just going to keep bringing that up until they change the policy, Andrew.

I like the policy. I think they should go the other way. They need to get everybody to dress up like the players on the sidelines. You want to see Stan Van Gundy in short shorts and a full-on

uniform, just ready to take the court? Yes. Don't you? Now that you say it? Actually, now that I say it out loud, I kind of do. I actually really do. Okay, we've got to take a break. We could just sit here naming nuts and talking about the baseball season all day. But we have other things, important things to get to, including fake kidnappings and a sheep named Barack. So stay with us. This is TBTL.

we got a number one victory royale yeah fortnite we about to get down get down 10 kills on the board right now just wiped out tomato town my friend has gone down i revived him now we're heading southbound now we're in the pleasant park streets look at the map go to the mark sheet take me to your xbox to play fortnite today uh you're welcome

um

To the five listeners who didn't know about this song, this will live in your head for the rest of it. You will wake up in the middle of the night just saying, just wiped out Tomato Town, and you won't even know why.

What is this? This is the first I'm hearing it, but I saw, I think you tweeted about this. This is one of those things where I'm just now realizing I've been seeing the word Tomato Town trending or something, and I don't know why. It's, um.

I checked the upstairs of that house, but not the underneath yet. So it's kind of a little bit confusing to me, the exact origin of this song.

The way that I became aware of it was it started to be a TikTok meme. I thought, first, I love the song American Boy. I know nothing about Fortnite, and I love this kid's voice. So, I did a little research on it, by which I mean I typed Fortnite American Boy parody into the internet, and I got connected up with something called Chug Jug. You just heard the kid say, I want to Chug Jug with you. This is called Chug Jug with you is the YouTube page parody of American Boy. The art around this, though, makes me think this is actually, like, not just like a nine-year-old kid. This is not K-Dude and Lil Hoagie because there's something extremely online about the imagery. If you go to this actual – this is, by the way, 3 million views just here and untold millions more plays on TikTok. It seems almost like a very, very, very, very high concept parody thing that was made by somebody who sort of gets it but either processed someone's voice or got a kid to do it or – you know what I mean? So that's where it gets a little confusing for me as to what the actual, like who this kid is who's singing, for instance.

I don't know who that is. And did you, I'm just Googling this on the fly. You're already ahead of me on this by a long shot. But it's a parody, not just of American Boy, but also another 16-second parody, Let's Play Fortnite, by a YouTuber named CM Skits. Were you familiar with that DNA of this as well? So, yeah. So apparently that, maybe that's where it started out. Let me see if I can play it here.

You can see your Xbox to play Fortnite today. You can take me the moist admire, but not lose weight.

So this is somebody else. That apparently is the original one, which is even more grating. I don't find your version grating, so I shouldn't say more grating. No, I love my chug-jug version. I like that kid's voice a lot.

It's very, very cute. And anyway, it's been in my head for weeks. Addie and I were talking about this weekend, literally the Tomato Town line. And she was like, do you ever just find yourself just saying just wiped out Tomato Town? I'm like, yes, I do, Adelaide, to the point where I tweeted about this the other day, maybe a week ago. And I just want to say, if you can't say something, if you can't reply something nice, you don't have to reply. I mean, this wasn't actually a mean reply, but I probably two weeks ago wrote on Twitter. Is anybody else? Does anybody else just have just wiped out Tomato Town? Just go through their head like 60 times a day. And there were like no responses except one person just replied. No. Well, you asked I did ask And that's the response Don't ask a question Don't open your mouth Unless you know the shot And so that's on me But I just was like Zero engagement The one person replied is no I'm just like Nobody needs this tweet in their life And then I deleted it And then in the subsequent week or two I feel like there's been a growing body Of tweet work going on around So our friend John Goodwin From the Fun Loving Criminals And my colleague at CBS Sunday Morning just tweeted today something to the effect of, is anybody else just waking up in the middle of the night hearing Just Wiped Out Tomato Town? And I was like, yes, I have been. And I didn't write this, but I'm like, I'm mad that I think I wrote an early tweet on this and then I didn't have the confidence to stick with it and I deleted it. But I just wanted all the listeners to share in – I'm not sure if it's the joy or the pain of knowing what Just Wiped Out Tomato Town means.

Yes actually that's where I saw it this morning It was John's tweet Which you know what I'm just going to give it a like right now Because I think that's a great tweet I think that somebody should have been on this sooner But maybe John Goodwin is just going to get all of the love

So do we do the Donors of the Day over Yes The Fortnite song Or do we do it over Okay well now in that case I've got to get back to the correct screen Which I've already I think X'd out Oh you know what this is a great moment While I'm scrambling back to that page to say, rip-dip-dip-dip-dip, it's their birthday to my very own mother and sister, born on the same day, February.

24th my mom suzy b and my sister hannah n uh are both uh celebrating their birthday today so happy

birthday happy blurs day to both of you and um you know that's uh a demerit to you luke for trying to sneak in more blurs days on a non-blurs day i mean i just feel like we have a whole day no membership has its privileges andrew if you know you've had to tolerate me in one form or another

Within the family structure Being if you're Addy Or if you're my sister or my mom The one upside is You get blursed

On your actual blurs day If I remember Alright I'll allow this time Although I do want to when we renegotiate contracts I want to talk about this because it does sort of seem like A labor thing though right you see it from my perspective How so is it that Well we have our roles And you know contractually I administer Blur's Days on the Blur's Day itself. And so when you're stepping in and doing these things, it kind of. Gotcha. I see what you mean.

It's a union issue. Yeah, it's a labor issue. I would advise you to take it up with your shop steward.

Oh, shit. You're my shop steward. Yes. And I designed it that way specifically. I didn't plan this well at all.

All right. Let's thank our donors of the day. These are the wonderful, generous people Who help us wipe out Tomato Town Five days a week 52 weeks a year

We got a number one victory royale Yeah, Fortnite, we bout to get down

By the way, whoever says get down Which I think it's probably the same kid That guy is low-key famous When you see the video The video is usually like a bunch of, you know Young, high school-aged kids having fun Then there's always the one kid who kind of sticks their head Into the frame and says the get down part

Because that's really the star of the show Is the get down right

One more time For the people in the back

It's so great

I'm always so late to this shit But I don't care like I find this delightful I'm glad I get to share this moment

Well this came out and by the way it came out in 2018 Oh no shit oh wow Yeah I mean we're all Well those of us who are not in that world Of whatever this online gaming universe is etc are all pretty late to it so don't don't feel bad um feel good that we have donors of the day people like dusty snyder of campbellsville kentucky so cool god that sounds like a pro wrestler oh really i thought cow well there was dust oh yeah sure that's a good one too i guess because the first time i heard the name dusty was the american dream dusty roads oh okay when i was uh when i was a kid um dusty thank you so much for your donation also Janie Tsai is in Guildford, and then no state given, Andrew, which usually means this person is maybe across the pond.

You know, I looked this up yesterday, but unfortunately I did it after I sent you the list. My apologies. I believe that is England. Yes, you are correct. Nice. Just past Tomato Town.

That's right.

Thank you, Janie. Do we have anybody from Tomato Town? I'll feel bad because the town is wiped out.

Probably. Well, if you know of Sacramento, if somebody was coming in from the kind of Sacramento Valley, that's that's tomato town. Yeah, that's just like they grow a lot of tomatoes there where you you'll be on the freeway. You'll just see those huge those trucks that have two giant trailers are just full of tomatoes with no cover on them. It's just I guess they know that the, you know, the gravity will keep the tomatoes in the trucks.

And it's like you it's like it's like in a movie. It's begging for somebody to be thrown through the air and land on that tomato. Oh, I know.

So, like, I mean, maybe if there was a lemon meringue truck, that would be the only thing that would be more primed for somebody just taking it right into the face. Right. Jessica Changstrom is in Manhattan, Kansas. How about Tavis Cowan in Corvallis, Oregon? Nice. We're practically neighbors, Tavis. Thank you for supporting the program. Oh, and then speaking of actual neighbors, McKenna Jones. is supporting the program from right here in Portland, Oregon. Thank you, McKenna. And then finally, last but definitely not least, we have Alan Bartels checking in from Rancho Cordova, California. Do you know Rancho Cordova? I love those names. No, I always confuse it with two different places. One of those places is Rancho Palos Verdes, which is actually coincidentally on this morning where Tiger Woods had his unfortunate car accident yesterday. You know what Rancho Palos Verdes is? That's south of cheese Oh right Famously in my world That was where my friend Cotter He was a teacher at a school up there in PV Called the Chadwick School And so I

spent a lot of time there just as you might imagine an absolutely beautiful part of the world yeah then my buddy joe dollin used to in the summertime go up to cordova alaska because that's where his uh his granddad was a fisherman out of alaska and they had a cabin up there and he would tell me that the mosquito come back from cordova alaska with so many welts from the mosquitoes up there that he would look like he was maybe permanently disfigured and then after a period time they would go down. So Rancho Cordova in my mind is somehow a combination of Rancho Palos Verdes and Cordova, Alaska. That sounds

a little bit reminiscent of No, I wasn't looking it up, but the mosquito thing sounded terrifying, and I immediately thought of the flies that covered us right as we entered into the where are we, what do they call it? Not the North Country, what do you call it? The Northern Territory. The Northern Territory in Australia, yeah.

That was the weird, hey by the way Andrew! Rancho Cordova is a city in Sacramento County, California. It's basically in Tomato Town. Nice.

We can be pro-Fortnite gamers.

Andrew, that's crazy. You said, what if we have someone in Tomato Town? I said, well, if it was in Sacramento, that'd be as close as we're going to get because of the thriving tomato industry in that part of the world. And then we have somebody who's in Sacramento County, who's in Rancho Cordova. And also, if I look closely.

believe in god i told you what kind of a god would make brazil nuts um that that was what finally broke my faith as i was throwing another brazil nut out the window can you stop naming nuts i'm literally naming nuts now yeah and also if you look closely at alan's last name it might be pronounced tomato ah sure if the b the b is pronounced like t the a is like an o sound i have It's all written down somewhere.

Uh-huh, sure. Hey, thank you to our Donors of the Day. We couldn't do the show without you. We really do appreciate you. And, Alan, thank you for being from where you're from. That really, really created a great sort of payoff to this Donors of the Day segment. hello and welcome to top story our top story uh takes us to arizona coolidge arizona in fact uh where uh police say that a guy named brandon souls went to extreme extreme lengths to get out of work this month they say he faked his own kidnapping he bound his own wrist gagged himself and invented a story of treasure hidden in the desert. He was 19 years old. He admitted during an interview with detectives that he had made up this kidnapping story, which led to his arrest. This all unfolded on February 10th. Officers responded to a report of an injured man in an area near train tracks outside of Coolidge. The caller reported the man was going in and out of consciousness. When officers arrived, they found a man, later identified as Mr. Soles, with his hands bound behind his back by a belt and a purple bandana stuffed in his mouth. He told officers that after completing an errand that morning, he had returned to his home where two masked men had abducted him near his vehicle, struck him in the back of his head, and knocked him unconscious, according to the arrest report. He says the guys drove him around and then dumped him where he was found. He was taken to the hospital. The police were investigating this story because that's a pretty serious thing. If two people show up at your house, bonk you on the head, tie you up and take you out to basically the desert, they should try to figure out who that is. And I will say, you know, I definitely have some suspicions about law enforcement at times in this country. I think the system is very much broken. I will give credit to these detectives, though, for like being thorough about this case. Yeah. Like they were like, we got to figure out who did this. So as they are out investigating the case, they start to kind of like uncover some inconsistencies. For instance, the guy had no concussion or injury to his head. They looked at the text messages that were on his phone, and the text messages and the phone calls he was making did not line up with the story that he was telling. After they confronted him with the inconsistencies in his story, he finally broke down and explained that he did all of this to get out of work. His job, he worked at a car shop called the Tire Factory where he installed tires and drove around the area to pick up parts for the store.

To me, I expected them to say, when I saw the headline, man fakes on kidnapping to get out of work, I guess I would have thought his work was he has to go in and clean out porta potties.

Or he has to stand on his head most of the day and he picked the wrong room in hell.

LL. See yesterday's program if you don't know what we're talking about. I was trying to imagine like a job that is so bad that you would do this to yourself to get out of work. And then working at a car shop and driving around and delivering parts just did not quite rise to that level for me. This also sounds much harder than a day of driving car.

I know this has really I know I always say this when these types of things come up, but this has really strong Jughead vibes to me. As in Jughead Jones of Archie Comics, because I remember being a little kid and, you know, Jughead Jones loves hamburgers, loves wearing soft hats that are shaped like crowns and loves not doing work. And he loves not doing work so much that he goes to great lengths not to do work. Sometimes those great lengths are more work than the task at hand. And I always think of this as Jughead Jonesing. We could also call it a mummy move.

Like, yeah, like, yeah, exactly. I this had to take I mean this had to take hours to do and like his shift what was he doing an eight-hour shift this had to be four hours and then you throw in being interviewed by police yeah I mean granted maybe part of it is he didn't it got bigger than he expected also I guess one here's the only way that this would because believe me I'm not ruling out faking a kidnapping to get out of doing tbtl I just want it to make sense in terms of time commitment right right right um how did he tie himself up i'm sorry that's a great question no that's a really good question actually my guess would be from watching all the crime shows that i do he somehow managed to tie himself up and then he passed his arms under like his his his arms over his feet and behind his back so that it you know that's what they sometimes do when they're trying to fake this but to me it's like the only here's the only excuse or sorry the only justification from a just a time standpoint let's leave out the fact that he lied and wasted police time and resources which is all very bad I mean legitimately bad because those people need to be focusing on real crimes but the only way that this would even I could see this unfolding in a way that could have made sense was he basically overslept let's say he went out the night before he got cray he then overslept his shift and realized I don't have any good excuse for not going in so what I have to do now is create a situation that justifies why i in other words he was already in trouble at work he didn't like go do this at 7 a.m on a monday morning so then he could call in and say i'm sorry i was kidnapped today it was more like covering his tracks i could see that you panic you panic i mean what a panic

yeah like okay i'm panicking what i'm gonna do create an entirely elaborate ruse where i literally physically tie myself up and dump myself in the desert and wait for someone to find me

By the way, the police took a picture of him when they found him, which is kind of I mean, from an evidence standpoint, I guess it makes sense. And it's in The New York Times, but it's it's kind of funny to think of the like first officer to show up being like, OK, I got to get a picture of this.

Yeah, I had the same exact thought when I was looking at that photo. I was like, oh, that's interesting that they would take a picture of, you know, presumably a victim lying in the dust on the ground with his, you know, blindfolded with his, is he blindfolded with his hands behind his back? It's so brutal looking, but you're like, yeah, well, it doesn't take much to pull out your phone quickly. I mean, maybe even when you're pulling up to a scene, you should just always have a camera or a camera phone, like kind of ready to go, because you do need it evident. I almost tried to say a word that diuretic from a diuretic standpoint. Yeah, I there's a nature ranch valley party in my mouth there. I nailed it. You did. Kind of nature. But anyway, yeah, like I guess they do need to take the photo, just take it quickly and then untie the guy, I guess, is the right.

And in fact, well, whatever it does. I don't need to recount the various kind of true crimey shows that I watch, but something like that photo just memorializing in that moment what the scene was, that that can be very important. And I happen to be watching a kind of a miniseries show called The Widower on NBC. By the way, sorry for the train sounds in the background. The Burlington Northern train that's chugging its way to the side of the 84 apparently just really wants to let people know that it is doing its thing. Anyway, one thing that happened in this, the widower, was that there was, unfortunately, somebody died, and it was ruled a suicide, but the police were very suspicious of that. And by the time they were able to come in and really take a good close forensic look at the scene of the crime, the guy who we now know did the crime had cleaned everything and painted everything and like that kind of killed their case. So the idea of having, you know, if this person who was alleged. allegedly kidnapped if they're not in any real if you've checked their vitals and they're okay yeah snapping a quick pick can have a lot to do with solving the crime later uh so that kind of makes sense but in this case now that we know the context it just sort of heaps more insult to injury on this guy who went out into the desert to do this thing to get out of his shift i mean do you fire the guy for this or do you promote him because he clearly takes the job like you know what a lot of people would do if they were what would i say how old is he 19 something if you're like if you're 19 years old and you work at a auto shop driving parts around you know what the majority of 19 year olds would probably do if they overslept their shift they would just not

come back yeah like that's in a way just make up a different excuse make up an easier better line

my grandma died how many grandmas i've worked with people that have had seven to eight grandmothers And all of them have passed away, and you hate to see it. I mean, that's a lot of grandmothers. Yeah, I know. It's a lot of trauma.

But I'm trying to think, what would my excuse, because there's, I mean, especially in the day and age of the cell phone, there's no excuse. Like, when I was coming up, when I was literally this guy's age, if I were to miss work somewhere, now most of my work was for my dad. So that cut out a lot of lying, unfortunately, for me. But like when I worked for that as an intern for that production company in Cleveland, if I suddenly did not show up, I could say I broke down and didn't have access to a phone. You can't say that anymore because everybody's got a phone in their pocket. So it is an interesting question to say, what could your excuse be in this day and age when you don't even tell somebody, you don't even give them a heads up, hey, I'm broken down on the side of the road or, hey, you know, I'm feeling sick. You know, you got to you got to figure out retroactively why you weren't able to reach out. That is a conundrum.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, I overslept. I mean, that's just honest, though. Yeah, right. We need a few more details, I guess, about like if we're going with the if we're going forward with the theory that he was he had already missed work. And this was an attempt to try to fix that. How many hours late he was. If you're an hour late, you could say. I overslept. If you're four hours late, I'm trying to work also with the sort of parameters of, yeah, we all have cell phones. So being out of communication is extremely unlikely. In fact, when somebody is out of communication and they're not calling you these days and there's no explanation and it's like, oh, my cell phone was being weird, that's like the biggest red flag there is because we're hyper connected. It is just almost it's it's it's so unlikely that somebody in the modern day and age in a city, let's say, would not be able to get in touch with you out, you know, over the course of hours that my my my spidey sense would already start tingling that they're probably making up the story. But, yeah, you could just – there's a bunch of other better lies that you could offer probably. The other thing is I don't know the manager of this tire shop. I don't know the owner. I don't know what their policy is. My guess is you've got a 19-year-old kid, and he calls in and says, hey, I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well today. You're not firing him over that. You might be annoyed at him. You might think he's a flake. But based on what you're paying him, based on the job market, he's probably not getting fired for missing a day of work. Yeah, or I'm still like

I guess credit where credit is due Because he wanted to make this very believable

That's what I'm saying, maybe he deserves a promotion

He could have just told the lie without having the cops involved Like, if he wants this lie to be believable enough Just like, maybe tie yourself up and create some rope burns on your wrists You know, maybe, I don't know, bonk yourself on the head And just tell your boss, this is what happened to me I was abducted by two people They threw me in the desert for a while But then instead of actually doing that And calling the cops Or having somebody call the cops Just say that a good Samaritan found you And you came home And you got cleaned up And, you know, you still don't have your phone back But you are working with T-Mobile on that As we speak You know, like, why did you have to let Why are you getting the cops involved? It is their job to solve mysteries

Well, he didn't know I mean, again, I think our guy Did not think this all the way through because he just lies down in the dirt waiting for somebody or something to find him. I don't know if he realized that somebody would immediately call the police. I don't know if he had really... Again, it's both a very elaborate plan and also a very kind of undercooked plan. What if you call your boss and you say, I can't come into work today because I'm faking being kidnapped. I'm working on an elaborate ruse. I'm currently tying myself up so it'll look like I was kidnapped because I overslept today Because I was partying last night So I'm not going to be able to come into work today To just, you know, full disclosure Just radical honesty Just see what are your bosses at the tire shop Going to do with that information Okay, I guess we'll see See you tomorrow. All right. See you then. Like, that's a power move. You literally tell them that you can't come in because you're faking your own kidnapping. Just radical honesty.

I mean, that's kind of where you get to the beginning of Office Space, right? I was like, oh, you could also just say, listen, I am not in a place where I can drive around and deliver parts today. That's my truth. Yeah.

See where it goes. The thing I always say when Office Space comes up on this exact specific point in the movie is I feel like Office Space is one of those movies where at least me as the viewer. And midway through, I completely forget the MacGuffin of the film. Yes. Like they just they just decide at some point that we don't need to go back and revisit is Ron Livingston still hypnotized or not. Right.

Genevieve had to remind me of that the other day. I had no I don't even I don't think I knew that. I mean, I must have seen the movie from beginning to end, but it was like new information to me.

Yeah, because there's so many other iconic scenes now. You know the Bill Lumberg stuff The red stapler the destruction of the Printer which Sounds kind of like a high minded book like The defenestration of The whatever isn't there a book called the Defenestration of something which is like to be Thrown out a window right to defenestrate But and also like there's

The whole thing in the movie about like you know They're going to try to embezzle did you I don't know if you Mentioned that to me if you said what is Office space about I'd say well it's about A guy who basically kind of gets He's kind of over his workplace, and then he and his friends come up with a scheme, like, from Superman 3 or 2. We already have all the comic nerds angry at us. The Richard Pryor Superman movie. They weren't mad until you called them comic nerds. No, that's – people love it. But anyway, they try to embezzle, like, a half a cent. It's like the whole half a cent scheme, right? Right. It's supposed to not show up on the books, and they're supposed to get rich. Like, to me, that would – and then, of course, there's all the other little –

But that all happens post-hypnosis, right?

Yeah, I mean, it must. But, I mean, I kind of forgot that the reason he gets over it is because of some hypnosis thing. The thing that puts it all in motion, like I just did not recall that at all. Not even like a little bit of my brain, you know.

Right, because there's a couple of reasons for that. One, they just – they never come back and address it. He doesn't get unhypnotized at some point. And also there are – listen, I love the movie Office Space. Don't get me wrong. But then they just – as I think maybe Genevieve coined this phrase or something. But it's like it does not adhere to its own internal logic Like is he hypnotized Because then he'll do things sometimes that are like Maybe he's not hypnotized But then he's getting hypnotized The hypnotist has a heart attack and dies And he stays in this kind of blissed out state And therefore changes his whole Instead of doing what his annoying boss tells him to do He just starts to do everything on his own terms And of course as happens in films Everything starts to work out for him Because of his just lack of giving a bleep But yeah then they just never really get back to it For the rest of the film And he doesn't like get bonked by a coconut And like suddenly wake up and he's stressed out again Like it's just the rest of the movie That's just the thing that happens

And they never address it again

That I remember I don't think it ever comes up I just think it's kind of like Yeah then the movie's over And it's like he you know He makes friends with Is it Jennifer Aniston Is Jennifer Aniston weirdly in that movie

Yeah it's definitely her

By the way, the defenestrations of Prague is what I was thinking of. Three incidents in the history of Bohemia in which multiple people were defenestrated. So apparently people were being thrown out of windows in Prague in the 1600s. Defenestration. That's what I was thinking of.

Wow. But I feel like I don't know that word except I think you might have explained this to me on the show before. Also, while I'm talking, I'll just say it was definitely Superman 3. Sorry about that.

Who was from Superman 3 again?

Superman 3 was the Richard Pryor movie. Oh, yeah. Where he came up with the scheme to, like, embezzle from his company but keep it off the books and keep it hidden by just taking half pennies that were, like, accumulating in some sort of accounting situation. He thought he could just take all this money without them ever knowing.

All I remember about that version of Superman, and I could be confusing it with a totally different Richard Pryor movie, was is there some critical scene that unfolds on the roof of a skyscraper? or like a high-rise apartment i feel like i have like if you said superman 3 richard prior'd be like they're on a roof that's what would come into my mind and i i don't think i've seen this

since i was a kid so i don't think i can answer that question but i'll watch the trailer silently

here is superman 2 the one where lex luther like escapes from prison in like a hot air balloon don't remember somebody like somebody uh is like like it's one of those kind of prisons where you know he's in the yard like gene hackman aka lex luther is in the yard and then somebody throws down a rope ladder i want to say from like a hot air balloon and he climbs in it or something

yeah that sounds about right i think all right now i'm going to just say something that i might be wrong about and it'll just make everybody so angry why would i

volunteer this but my understanding is superman one had a bit more of a serious nature to it and then this guy and i i know this because i was a beatles fan this guy richard lester or dick lester was a director who like directed i think maybe a hard day's night and some of those like kind of goofy beatles movies and then he took over for i believe superman 2 and superman 3 which is why they took on a much more comic bent then you find people like you know richard prior in there

and like you know it's funny because like the Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor trying to climb up in this rope ladder up into this hot air balloon it's much more Batman like Adam West Batman like he's kind of feckless and he's kind of mad at his henchmen and it's not like Lex Luthor is an evil genius right like Lex Luthor is scary but not the version in that movie and that would have to be exactly what you're talking about like adding a comedic kind of you know definitely like taking one of his henchman's hat off of him and then whacking him with his own hat that kind of energy

I want to play we won't play the whole thing but I'm just I'm loving the visuals on this trailer I feel like I'm I feel like I'm like 10 years old again and I'm at home and we rented a VHS tape from Valley City VHS rental and this is the trailer that's going to play before I start watching like Star Trek

It's time for Superman Alexander Salkind presents Christopher Reeve and Richard Pryor In Superman 3 This time Richard Pryor Has come to Metropolis Oh I'm sorry

Wow his name is Richard Pryor What are the chances?

He's got something to sell He's the best con man And the world's greatest computer genius

I told you something

i can't ski but then he falls he's on skis for a scheme to turn the ultimate computer into the ultimate weapon he is now luke

right there in whatever that setup scene is where you hear him yelling he was skiing on a roof and then somehow skied off of the roof is that what you're thinking of and now i'm trying to remember i even i think lex luther and his like super like i'm going to use the word babelicious wife or mistress are on the roof and they've created like a some sort of a like a snow paradise up there that was not something I just saw but I'm thinking that's why I just

saw him ski off of this roof that would explain why I think of it as being a movie largely about a roof roofs that's interesting that's early LaFontaine is that the voiceover oh yeah right of course yeah the in a world guy but he's younger there yeah yeah I closed the

tab. Sorry, did you want me to continue? I thought

we were... No, now I'm just watching the trailer.

Now you're just watching the trailer too.

Well, no, I'm watching the scene on the roof. Oh, okay, cool. Let's hear that. Yeah, and you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right, Andrew. They have... For some reason, they've kind of... Is that like Richard Crenna? They've created this sort of winter wonderland on the roof of a Manhattan high-rise, or I guess it would be a Metropolis high-rise, right? This is just dialogue, and I'm sure it will absolutely not pay off, but I'll just start playing it here and uh we'll see if we get something now he's pulled off this stunt he'll

try and stick his nose into my oil scheme and ruin that too well who's the teacher's i've got to get rid of it but how shoot him you know about him and bullets

what i believe they're talking about superman you know about him and bullets

or krypton hammer krypton heimer i don't know what you call it but there's this stuff that I can, like, hurt Superman.

How would you know about that? Oh, I know a few things. So I understand from the graffiti I've seen. Wait a second. What? She's right.

I believe that would be a reference to that woman being supposedly loose. Mm-hmm. And maybe written about on men's room walls. Yeah, exactly.

Kryptonite. I remember reading about it in an interview with him. Where did it come from?

While this whole thing is going on, these, like, the bad people are doing their thing, Richard Pryor's character has a pink blanket on like a cape And he is walking up this ski jump So he's walking up the hill On the roof of this metropolis high-rise And my guess is that at some point He will decide to ski down And that's when there will be real trouble

Satellite! Oh, Gus has been doing some thinking Gus! That's why I keep you around Yeah, I've been thinking that I'm not making enough money for this gig

Gus, if there's anything I hate

it's greed greed mr. Roth just a minute let me tell you something oh now he turns around

I can't ski there we go and right off the roof oh no superman gonna save him nope this is the movie Richard Pryor died in wow oh he left

Lands. Wow. You want to talk about Madcap? He falls easily 40 stories and then lands on a glass atrium on his skis and continues skiing down the building.

Oh, right. That's where Genevieve and I say physics takes a holiday. You know what else? And I always say, and this is related to, I believe, the second Superman movie, because I do think maybe it's this one. And I have seen this since I was a kid because Genevieve and I were watching one of these more like goofy Superman movies. And I think it's the scene that disappointed me as a kid and still disappoints me today where Superman solves something by spinning the world backwards. You know, that's kind of famous.

That one is really dark because that's when Lois Lane gets caught in that earthquake seam and she's being crushed or her car is being crushed. I remember as a kid being like, this is like it felt like real world, scary, violent event, you know?

And I think I'm thinking of the right scene. There's some big action scene in a Superman movie where there's chaos going on. And I always like Genevieve is fascinated with people in any movie, like especially the non comedic action movies where there's just chaos going on and a car chase and gunshots. And you just have people still like, oh, not even like looky looing. right just like walking to work and there's a scene in one of the superman movies where somebody i believe it's an adult it might be a child i believe it's an adult is holding an ice cream cone and then superman runs by and the ice cream kind of drops to the side or something but he's still trying to eat the ice cream cone i'm not describing this well but i just remember saying why are you still eating ice cream when all of this is going on and genevieve turned to me and said well he's an emotional eater and now we just say that all the time when we're watching a movie and somebody's not responding properly to the surroundings that are surrounding them is well

he's an emotional eater by the way i might have i think my childhood brain i won't apologize to all of the superman enthusiasts out there who have had to listen to me muddle through this What my remembered plot points are from these films But I think my childhood Memory Was kind of blending a few things together I'm at the scene now, Superman turning Back time So Lois Lane was in a car That rolls down a hill for some Reason, and I just remember The, again, the way it was shot It was very, and this is before they got into The kind of more jokey, jokey version of this Universe, so again, as a kid I just remember It being really scary because there seemed to be real Terror in Lois Lane's eyes and she was getting Covered in dirt as this car was Rolling down this hill or whatever So Superman finds her and now she's Not alive and he gets really Mad and this is when he flies and turns back Time This is Yale trained Christopher Reeve Flying off So angrily oh interesting so he's hearing like you know his his family and and all of his thoughts are conflicting about should i turn back time share style by flying around would that work by the

way have we has anybody looked into that is this the one where superman is dressed really sexily

and he's on an aircraft carrier yes god fishnets for days for days here i go once again with the

email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female we didn't get to

barack the sheep or butter gate but that's good because that gives me a chance tomorrow to play our favorite butter-related drop. In fact, maybe we can just use that for intro tape.

I almost said to you at the top of the show, because when you said the word butter, you did what I always do. You said it in the voice, butter, in that tape that we love, but you didn't have the drop, and I was wondering if you did that on purpose or if you'd forgotten about it and had the same thought as I did. Yes, and I almost said to you, I hope we don't get to that story so that we can use our favorite butter tape tomorrow. I'm not even joking.

I love the way that the cart drives the horse on this program Let's delay the stories because we both want to play a funny drop But yeah, actually, let's just go Why, you know, why go for just, you know, a pat of butter When you can have the whole stick We can just play that full-on thing tomorrow There's a rumor

Am I misremembering this? That my grandfather used to just eat butter I'm not joking And here's the kicker That he would put definitely pepper And I think salt and pepper on it He was a large man Certainly by the end

You know I could see that being kind of good. You know what I had last night for Din Din? First of all. Don't. It's the first and last time you'll ever hear me call it that. I was very hungry at about 6 p.m., and so I made some soup, by which I mean I opened a can of soup and heated it up and got some crackers out. But I had had all this cheese, like, kind of, you know, half a wedge of different kinds of cheese in, like, Ziploc bags. I looked at them. They had all started to develop some mold. So I tossed all of that. And then I was like, well, I've got these crackers. They're just kind of, like, sitting there. And I remembered when I was a kid, we used to put butter on crackers. Yeah, I think I did, too, maybe. Which sounds probably decadent. And if you didn't grow up that way, it probably sounds really weird. But let me just tell you. So last night I was like, you know what I'm going to do? So I'm going to put a little butter on these crackers, and then I'm going to dip them in the soup and just get this real kind of like buttery, savory, crackery bite. I like that. It was a home run, my friend. It was so delicious. And I was like, I don't know if I've put butter on a cracker since I was, you know, nine years old, but that's going to be my new go-to. So your granddad eating butter makes a lot more sense to me this morning than it would have two days ago if we had this conversation.

Yeah, and I don't want to blow all the butter talk today. since we have a big plan for tomorrow. Keep your butter dry. We can talk about crackers. It sounds like you do not usually crumple up crackers and put them. I'm having trouble. Break up crackers and put them in your soup. That's not your usual move. I will say it usually is my move with most soups.

It depends. So for me, it's very soup dependent. Back when I used to eat meat, if I was having a clam chowder and they came with those oyster crackers, I love those. I love throwing those in. because I just like to texturally what happens if it's like this kind of soup last night I didn't I think because my thought is if I if I crumble these crackers up into this soup and then I don't eat it fast enough there's just going to be kind of a soggy mess as opposed to a crunchy because I think the fun part about putting crackers in soup is that they stay a little bit crunchy right so you get that kind of you're eating something that's warm and and liquid but also kind of crunchy i guess i just think if i crumble them up and then i don't eat fast enough then they're just going to become part of this overall sogginess that is the soup yes which you are speaking like a

more normal person but i will say that if i have like a cup or a bowl of that real deli style fat noodle chicken soup that you might get like right before a pastrami sandwich or something um like a junior's um i do not mind when are we going back to junior's so hungry right now I do not mind letting those crackers get real soggy.

That's basically doing matzah at that point.

Yeah, and you're just kind of like, you're almost like, if you take your time with the soup, they'll break down to the point where they're just kind of part of the broth and it becomes a thicker broth. I can understand why somebody would think that's kind of grody, but I don't mind that at all.

I think for me what it comes down to is I like a very watery soup. I mean, not like I don't want it to be flavorless, but I like the liquid content of soup to be, I like the ratio of liquid to solid stuff in the soup to be much more liquid than solid. In fact, this Amy's soup that I made last night, I would recommend, by the way, Rustic Italian. It's my new fave. What I do, it does, the can does not tell you to add any water. but when you open the can you dump it into the into the saucepan a little bit of the soup kind of stays stuck inside the can and i'll fill about half of that can up with water and dump it in andrew i d i d a d g a f i will just absolutely make my own recipe by adding water to it because i like soup to be so for instance if it's a if it's a soup that has noodles and i don't want it to be mostly noodles to me that's pasta and i will have that as a different kind of thing i want my chicken noodle soup or whatever version that I eat in these days to mostly be hot salty liquid

it's why I love miso by the way oh I do love miso I am with you that I prefer a lot of broth but I also don't like my broth too watered down so unfortunately like if I'm making the soup from scratch I can control how much stock and broth I put in there but I probably would not just add more water because to me like I'm well I'm a saltaholic Luca well me too um hey can I read you something kind of interesting here this is not is it super related because i'm only talking about soup it is superman 2 related i thought this was true because i think a 10 told me about this a long time ago so not only did richard lester take over the superman franchise from director richard donner but he took over mid-movie of Superman 2. And in fact, there is a version of Superman 2 called the Richard Donner cut you can get. He was like the original director, but he was pulled off the project. I'm not sure exactly why, but he was replaced by Richard Lester. I'm reading from Wikipedia here. Lester not only completed the remainder of the film for its theatrical release, but also rewrote and reshot a substantial portion of Donner's footage in order to receive the director's credit. And then in 2001. That's interesting.

I bet you that people who are really in the know can, like, I bet you if you watch that film with that knowledge, you could really see tonally where things shift.

Yeah, because I believe now this is where maybe I'm just overextending my reaching out past my knowledge here. But my understanding is that it is a big tone thing because, like, you were just describing that scene where Superman is so full of anguish in learning that Lois Lane is dead. And, you know, I imagine that shot was from above and he reaches his arms out towards the head as he as he yelps. That's Donner. Right. And then Dick Lester comes along and you got ice cream scoops falling off ice cream cones and probably beanie hats with little propellers probably make an appearance at some point. And it just becomes a very different tone. Interesting. And then he sticks around. OK, should we read an actual email from a listener or actually? No, you got to go here. Let me read one while we're talking about DC Comics. Kayla and a whole bunch of other people wanted us to know that Shazam, which we talked about on the show yesterday, is DC. And I knew that. I knew Shazam was DC. I think if you go back to the tape, you might even hear me mumble something about I thought it was DC. Kayla says, Shazam is DC. A movie came out a few years ago. His name was originally Captain Marvel, but they changed it for obvious reasons because Marvel had its own Captain Marvel. He's a 12-year-old kid who shouts the name of a wizard, and that gives him powers. He yells Shazam to become an adult superhero.

Got it. And then there must be some, because the reason I thought it was Marvel was because I saw it associated with Captain Marvel. But is that part of the, like, is there something about those verses splitting off or something?

I don't want to try to read and talk any more than I already have today. But, of course, you and I were just – do you see that we're kind of fighting on Twitter right now, by the way? Have you noticed that whole thing?

I don't look at Twitter during the show.

That's what we're fighting about. Wait, what?

Hold on.

Do you really not know what's going on? At the very beginning of the show, you and I were talking about a story. I don't remember what it was. And then while I was responding to you about the – oh, we were talking about the Mariner story. And you responded to a listener in a tweet that I was copied in while I was responding to you about a different topic. And so I wrote underneath, by the way, Luke just tweeted that while I was talking on TBTL related. Oh, I see this while Luke is talking on TBTL.

God. Wow. And you're getting a lot more engagement. This is a listener, Stephen. And he was also kind of pointing out that there's some complexity to this Shazam story and what verse it's from. And I responded. I had a feeling we were botching this topic. What did we get wrong besides everything? And then you responded with the thing you already said, and you've gotten 10 likes for that. My response to Listener Steven has only received three likes. Well, it's early. You know, it's a marathon, not a sprint, Andrew.

Exactly.

When it comes to hashtag engagement.

We should probably read that Vanity Fair article before we talk about this anymore and make people destroy phones and whatnot. All right. Will do.

I guess that's where we should probably leave things today because, yeah, I do have to ski-daddle and do have to do a TV interview from in here for my CBS story, which always stresses me out because depending on – I'm just sitting here. Basically, there's two kind of huge windows on the other side of this desk that I'm sitting at. And depending on where the light moves I either look moderately normal Or extremely upsetting And I just have to hope That the light, you know what I mean? Because it's like I can't control what the outside light looks like So I just have to hope that while I'm talking To this guy from the Colorado Water Authority That the gods of sunlight Are smiling upon me So I don't look absolutely horrendous On national television in a couple of weeks

You don't have time to talk about it What's the story? Yeah, what's the story?

This is part of the sports gambling story because this, the piece of, so I was in Las Vegas working on the actual sports gambling side of it. But we're talking to somebody who manages a project in Colorado that is receiving, it's like a water reclamation project, but it's receiving a bunch of its funding from sports betting in the state of Colorado, which they just authorized. So this is just kind of an example of some of the ways that states may see some benefits from this money, benefits that are far outside of like.

the casino as it were i see interesting interesting yeah so um but for me the important part is will i look ugly or not um i just like the fact that's the that's the big takeaway i like that it's tied into power and water just already has like more of a noir feel to it right like a chinatown kind of i thought of course it's water and power they run everything yes they do um all right don't lead with that i'm gonna lead with how do i look let me center myself how do i look you know dang it i had a thought for a song to go out with based on something that we were talking about and then of course my brain is just i get so diuretic that i can't remember these things i think you'll like what i picked you love the flaming lips waiting for oh i do i was subjecting oh god bless this is off the soft bulletin i can't ever decide what the best flaming lips record is but soft bulletin is up there man now you got me i'm gonna be jamming out to this record later today when I have some free time alright thanks for listening everyone we'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you and blurs days for those of you who are not my blood relations if we have any left we'll see you then until then be safe mask up and please remember no mountain too tall good luck to all

Is it overwhelming To use a crane to crush a fly It's a good time for Superman

To lift the sun into the sky Cause it's getting heavy Well, I thought it was already as heavy as can be

Tell everybody

Power out.