Muse

Howdy Jack, it's me, Janice Joplin, and I want to audition for my Shine Heart Universal biopic so bad that I came here dressed as me. Actually, I am me, so, well, I dress normal, but my friend, Jenna Maroney, she should be my understudy. I mean, she should audition for me, but I'm me now, actually.

Ongoing train wreck aside, I love this idea. It's great synergy. Yeah. I'll call the studio.

Yes! I am so glad that I time-traveled here from 1969. Whoa, what is that iron bird?

They had airplanes in the 60s, huh?

Right.

TBTL!

Today we are going to go over a great self-defense strategy. Pooping yourself. Poop-dee-dee-woop-scoop.

Poop.

Poop.

So you mean to tell me that all of those sounds were coming from your body? Yup. I'm the president of rap music, and I need to work with you right away.

Hey, do you think you can be my funniness mentor? I can definitely be your funniness mentor. No, a joke's not a joke unless everyone can laugh at it.

Alright, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Just study it out and you'll see. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host coming to you from the Ness Broadcast Center. High in the sky. Above Portland or again.

Hear it out for Luke Burbank!

May the 18th be with you. Is that how that works? I don't know. I'm not a Star Trek head. But anyway, very happy to have you here listening in to the show. Arriving at episode 3,425 in a collector series Let the fun begin Had another adventure this morning Oh, and the adventure begins again Well, TBTL adventure Wherein I set out in my Nike Air Max slides Five minutes before showtime To try to get my hands on some coffee And more critically, some Splenda You know, the fake sugar that I like

This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

I like that I, for some reason in that moment, my brain decided to explain to the listeners what Splenda is. At this point in 2021 in America, that's like explaining what Coca-Cola is. Like it's, I didn't need to do that. Maybe my brain has been taken over by some sort of weird psilocybin fungus, like these cicadas that we're going to talk about coming up in a few minutes. Oh, you know what else we're going to do? We're going to give you some of the details. We're going to clarify a few things about the upcoming TBTL-a-thon 12 content list delivery. Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? Is it going to be amazing? Yes. Are we going to be hand-delivering the program to a number of the tens of listeners? Yes. Are we creating raucous meetups at these residences of these various listeners? No. We've got some We've got some details we want to share with you About the plan for next week Which we are so stinking excited about We almost can't handle it Something else that I guess I'm excited about This new TV show I started watching

Television is no friend of mine

Mayor of Easttown With Kate Winslet I started watching it last night And I will admit that For the first two episodes I couldn't decide if I even thought the show was any good but then at 1.30 in the morning when I realized I had watched six hours of Mayor of Easttown I decided yeah okay I guess maybe the show's got me so I'll give you my review of that and also just of the Delaware County accents that are featured on Mayor of Easttown oh and we will continue our journey we are now in round three of the tbtl drops of stupider contest the deuce we will all remember this moment for the rest of our lives we are trying to figure out the greatest moment in tbtl history this will all culminate with the official announcement next friday so it'll be the last day of the tbtl-a-thon 12 you will all have had a chance to vote and we will announce once and for all and forever the legally binding announcement of what the greatest moment in TBTL history is. Oh, and by the way, more on those cicadas.

There are millions of cicadas that are going to be emerging this summer for the first time in 17 years. But a bunch of them, particularly ones maybe in the Midwest, in the greater Indiana area, they may emerge with a psychedelic fungus growing in them that's going to make their butts fall off.

Weird!

This is really one of the weirdest stories that I have seen in a long, long time. It seems like it almost can't be real, and yet it appears to be. They have real scientists who have studied it out and are featured in this article. So we'll talk about that. Oh, and then we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show. He may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships, their grace, and their splendor. He's got a statement on butt stuff. He is a straight man, and he thinks that the idea and the concept of butt-chugging is absolutely repulsive. You wanted me to make sure that the listeners knew where you stood on that at the beginning of the show. That's what you emailed me this morning, and then now you act mad. He's Andrew Walsh, by the way. He's joining us from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

I would prefer never to be introduced with the phrase butt-stuff in any context, Although that did end up being my, I mean, that is my accurate position on butt chugging, I will say.

That's why I felt comfortable, you know, obliging you when you asked me to play that drop for you. Now, Luke, beaut stuff I can get into. I love some beautiful stuff.

Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo?

Hey, Luke. Yeah. How you doing, by the way, my friend? I thought about you. I mean, I think about you a lot throughout the day. That's really a true statement. But as I was falling asleep last night, my brain was lining up the things that we still have to do before launching out on TBTL-a-thon 12, contentless delivery. And I started to feel a little bit of agita, a little bit of trouble falling asleep, which is not – that's not how my brain works usually. And I thought, oh, boy, if this is how I'm feeling, my good friend Andrew must be in the thick of it right now.

Well, I'll tell you what. I mean you're doing almost all of the work for this thing. Untrue. No, it is very true. I mean, we've had meetings and stuff, and every time I take on a responsibility, I turn it back around to you for you to do it. And we just had a conversation about that before the show. So honestly, as I just continue to clear my plate and push things towards you, I'm actually feeling better this week than last week.

I think the last two weeks I just because there was so much more there were so many more question marks and it's just a big massive anxiety a big kind of formless massive anxiety just kind of my friend Courtney Hommeister the writer and the one time host of live wire used to call it her her dread ball yes or her ball of dread and one of the reasons she stopped being the host of live wire was because she said all week her ball of dread would just build like you imagine one of those like world's biggest ball of twine yeah or a foil ball or something it's like you just keep slapping on a little bit more worry on it until you've got a real honking ball of dread that's kind of how you were feeling a honking ball of

dread yeah so things have calmed down a little bit i um i have a couple of doctor's appointments this week that i'm much more anxious about right now so maybe that put a fine point on it um but just regarding my finger not any kind of life or death situation um but uh i will say this i was having some trouble sleeping last night I haven't I have broken my usual pattern of just like listening to podcasts and puttering around I for some reason I was not in the mood to do that yesterday which means maybe I am breaking a little bit instead I sat down and I watched for I just decided I need to catch up on better call Saul I have no idea why and I had like missed a lot of last season and then my brain is bad so I went back to season four which is I think eventually it'll be a six season run and I haven't watched all of five but I couldn't remember anything so I went back to four and I chomped down like four of those last night. I stayed up late this morning. Better remember, Saul. I did not want to get up this morning. So my alarm clock goes off at eight, which is just one hour before we're supposed to dial up. And I turn it off and I fall back asleep. And then guess what happens? You look like a dream catcher came to life. Oh, boy. Because I didn't want to get out of bed so badly, I had a dream that I was running late and I was supposed to dial you up to do TBTL, but then I turned on the radio and you were on KUOW doing a live news roundup, you know, like Bill Radke style. Sure. And I thought, oh, awesome. That means that we don't have to dial up until 10 a.m. today. So I in my dream, I was waiting for like a commercial break or a sponsor. break so i could text you to say i hear you on the radio right now does that mean we don't have to dial up until 10 and that's all i remember so anyway that's where my brain is um we do want to

just clarify a couple of things too because there have been uh a lot of people emailing in uh excited about the plan for next week and a couple of other people wanting to get a little clarification a couple things uh how did we choose this route that's a question people have been asking Well, we knew that we wanted to end up We thought it would be funny If we could force the one person Who hasn't listened to the show To listen to the show Anybody else who can hear our voice right now Or who gets the newsletter Who has any sense of TBTL Including my pets Or my, I don't know, my half pets Is that what you call your Roomba? Oh no, he's mine He's my full blood kin, Randy i mean rudy and olive have heard more tbtl than mary in in arizona we thought it would be a funny bit if we went to the one person who likes the show but's never heard it and then we just basically pummeled her her and her neighbors with it and therefore i could get her feedback on it so that was we were like well we're going to start in either portland or seattle and we know that we want the end point to be phoenix we also wanted to make sure like i said yesterday because we You're trying to plan this. I know people would be surprised to hear, but we were planning this a few months ago, and we were trying to come up with something that could be okay no matter where we were in terms of the rules around gatherings. And so this, we thought, was something that we could do that would be fun, that would be a bit of an adventure for the listeners, an adventure for us, and would make some decent hashtag content. So then what we did was we said, well, how far can we go each day in this 1993 Mitsubishi Delica van? And then what are some spots along the way where we might actually know some folks? And so we literally just got out a map and started kind of going, well, who lives near there? Who lives near there? And if there were somebody who was on our radar, maybe through emailing us or being really active in Slack, we reached out. And so that's how the route was established. that's how we ended up going to where uh to where mary is going to be but we've had a few people asking hey so are these going to be little mini kind of get-togethers like if we're going to someone's house and i live a one town over could i bring a lawn chair and kick it in their yard and as much as we would love love to see everyone's bright shining faces either behind a mask that's what they feel comfortable with or maskless if we're outside and they're vaxxed that just seems like it's going to create a little bit of extra anxiety for everybody us included because we do not want to be even though every day the cdc has new guidelines coming out every day most of the news seems to be really positive we're not trying to create little get-togethers at people's houses uh because it would stress us out and also because it might stress out the people whose houses

we're going to it definitely will let me let me just jump in for one second i you know a couple of these houses that we're visiting have um kids there you know um some of our youngest listeners and keep in mind not all kids or you know kids are not old enough to get vaxxed if they're under 12 yet so uh i know that you know i've heard from a couple of the people whose houses we're going to be outside saying um we're not going to have a bunch of strangers descend on our house are we my you know my kids aren't vaxxed and i said no most certainly no strangers are going to be descending on your house i assure you so i am now except us except for us right but you know you know how poisonous we are anyway so anyway yeah so let's let's it is the least of the communicable diseases that i possess exactly time and you know i am definitely as i'm because i got an email from another listener today saying hey can i maybe swing by this one and i had to say no you know we have to be very very careful like you know i ideally it'll be in a few months maybe we can get out there again like we're trying to do something here where we're you know celebrating the tbtl community as we always try to do during the thons but in a way that is both kind of adventurous and fun but also safe like we're just we're not out of it yet I know we're all like we all want so badly just for everything to be normal right now but it's not which is why we kind of came up with this cockamamie plan trying to thread the needle a little bit between having fun and again really celebrating all you guys everybody who's listening right now but still doing so in a way that isn't

you know unsafe or untoward well and you know you started the show Andrew by by doing the thing you normally do which is underplaying how much work you put in on things and even though you act like i've been doing the heavy lifting for the show all i've been doing is booking holiday inn expresses throughout the greater inland empire but a thing that you've been working on with our buddy eric the viking stromstad is figuring out the streaming situation and this was a big part of this whole thing because we want to make sure that if we are going to be going to like a random tens house and broadcasting from their yard we we wanted to include everyone that we can because of course this is all about next week is all about celebrating the tbtl community so we didn't want to create something that was kind of insular we want to create something that was extular yes and like one of the weird kind of beautiful things about last year's thon which was of course at a moment that i felt even more fraught than this because of the pandemic because what was going on with the black lives matter movement etc which is such that was just an intense week for everybody But a thing that emerged from that about us not being able to go out in the world was we just did all these kind of Zooms and virtual interactions with the listeners. And, I mean, the fact that we were able to sort of do things in real time and stream the show and take calls and interact with the tents, that ended up being this really cool kind of amazing thing that I wasn't maybe fully expecting. So my point is we have – Andrew, you and Eric have put a lot of time into making sure that we are going to be able to. again lord willing and the the wi-fi creeks don't rise that we're going to be able to stream these shows live so if you uh even if you're one town over you can still pop on tbtl.net and you can watch and listen to us live and be there and be a part of it virtually uh even if we're not coming to your house so that's what we would love everybody to do and again with the with the I guess caveat or the clarification that next year when the pandemic's over I'm going to just say that I'm going to name it and claim it as we used to say in the evangelical movement I'm going to speak it into existence next year when the pandemic's over we're coming to everyone's house and we're making out with all of you including your children okay so don't you worry

Good, now the show's been canceled, so nobody gets any TBTL.

Not getting enough Luke and Andrew in your life, you're going to get too much.

That's the TBTL promise. TBTL 13, oh my God, get away from me. TBTL 13. The swordsmen of slander are here. TBTL 13, the restraining order years. Andrew, we have to keep evolving the show. Yeah, we do.

Right, right. Let me close the window because God has sent an ambulance. But but yeah, that's what they say. God never sends an ambulance without closing a window.

And also, you know, I got a text message, a couple of text messages from our friends on the East Coast saying, ah, you're ignoring the East Coast again. Just remember, like we we couldn't get on a plane to do this this year. And, you know, so we had to keep the travels kind of light and we're keeping it local. But again, there is there is a future out there and it doesn't even have to be a whole year from now before we I mean, I can't make a promise here. But, like, you know, TBTL events, I'm sorry, TBTL-a-thon events aren't our only events. So I'm very hopeful that we will find other ways to kind of get out there, too. So I'm very hopeful about that.

Speaking of getting out there, Andrew, I had to get out there this morning because, you know how about a week ago maybe I mentioned that I'd run out of coffee and also critically run out of Splenda? Yeah. And, you know, I'm a busy guy. There's no way that in those intervening six to seven days I could have just gone to a store and bought some coffee and also bought some more Splenda. Who has time for that kind of stuff? And, I mean, do they even have services that deliver grocery stuffs? I mean. Yeah.

Slow down, Jetson. Exactly. Where are Jetpacks? I couldn't remember any of their names. What's the name of the main guy in the Jetsons? George. Meet George Jetson. Yeah, if only there was some way for me to remember. Jane, his wife. Three, two, one. slow down George Jetson that'll be clean super clean but because I

my mind is a god damn sieve I forget each night when I go to bed I think oh yeah we gotta figure out that coffee situation and in fact you know what our friend Barry at Broadcast is sending me some coffee he's been so nice and by he I mean I think some kindly staffer at Broadcast has been sending us free coffee which is so nice but now of course i'm addicted to it addicted to the convenience of coffee showing up and i don't know if my intake has gone up or what but uh sometimes i will run out of coffee before before the plug hits me up with my next resupply and but i but my ability to go out and purchase my own coffee grounds is just atrophied now and so anyway i of course woke up this morning and was doing my thing and then realized oh yeah i still don't have any coffee in the house and remember last week i was telling you how oh we had a listener email in that they they were dying to hear the end of the story on my quest for splenda because because what happened was so i have a theory let me just start this here i have a theory that the the nicer the coffee shop the more artisanal etc the less likely they are to have basic b splenda in the yellow packet and this is just anecdotal this is based on my list.

lived experience. But whenever I go in Portland, there's just a certain kind of coffee shop that I know they're not going to have Splenda. So I went to the one. I also live in the coffee shop district, thankfully. So I've got like seven options. So I went the other day, I went to one that I thought would likely have Splenda or be the most likely to. They didn't. So I bought my coffee there. Then I went across the street to the surf shop, see if they had Splenda, had to hide my coffee in a planter, went in. They also did not have Splenda. So I got my coffee, came back home with some stevia and then i i dug around in a backpack that i travel with that i usually have my laptop and audio you know equipment in if i'm on the road and sure enough like in the very bottom down under like four or five old like avis rental receipts and other just kind of detritus from my travel there was one packet of splenda andrew and i pulled it out like marcellus wallace's soul and it glowed and i put it in my coffee and i thought this is great uh i'll go and buy a box of splenda later this got me through this is exactly what i needed was one last packet and then i forgot about it and have continued to forget about it every single day since then so i've been mostly going coffee list but anyway today i decided i am going to go to a different coffee shop in the coffee district some awesome place uh called ranger that's very the people seem very nice a very cute coffee shop have you noticed by the way this is how you know you're in a hip coffee shop because mostly what they sell is topo chico yeah is this a seattle thing yeah i

think the first topo chico i saw um was at barry i mean you're just talking about broadcast coffee

that's where i saw at barry shop yeah it's like every cool coffee shop in portland now has a giant refrigerator of topo chico that's like that's when you know you're in a certain bandwidth of cool coffee uh experience so i go in this coffee shop and um i now let me just tell you my the gears are already turning in my brain because i know that they're not going to have splenda because it's a cool coffee shop with topo chico and and hip people working there um and so i my plan is i'm going to ask them do they have splenda they're going to say no i'm going to say okay i'm going to get the coffee i'm going to walk down to the world's sketchiest plaid pantry andrew because you know who's gonna have splenda freaking plaid pantry they ain't putting on airs over there i will tell you there is a whole section of that plaid pantry that has been expropriated by people experiencing homelessness it's near the microwave they own it they run it that's their zone you go into that plaid pantry and you know that's where folks are setting up their microwave and their dinty more they're doing their thing by the way it's not pantry is a very

local thing i'd never heard of that until i came to this part of the world it's a it's a pardon me i don't know if you heard the death rattle as i inhale that's where i am please don't die until

next saturday like a week from this saturday because i don't know how to post the show we've

established what would your plan be because you have to get a fill in that'd be an awkward situation um but please on the occasion that that happens please continue to donate um oh god andrew would

have wanted you to donate to the tbtl a thought his last words to me were please see if people

will upgrade i want you to know luke that i have considered tbtl in my estate planning um okay so uh what i was going to say was so the plaid pantry it's like a a girl it's like a grocery store chain i've never been in one around here but it tends to be like a like huge discount and

a lot of generic goods right no no it's not a grocery store it's just a it's just a mini mart Oh, okay. And I only say that because for people that don't know what it is, I just want them to imagine it correctly. It's the footprint of a 7-Eleven.

Oh, okay. I thought they were like those smart and – what are those things down in L.A.? A smart and final? A smart and final or something, but no.

I think smart and final is restaurant supplies, right? Remember because there was a guy named smart and a guy named final? We have had weirdly a lot of conversations about smart. I don't think the guy's name – wait, was the guy named final? I know smart was one of the names. Yeah, I think it was two names.

But I used to go to one when I first moved to L.A. And they are big and weird. But, and again, I've been so wrong about so many things. But it's not like the restaurant supply store I go to here in Seattle. It's like, no. It's like, I remember it being like a grocery store, but just a weird grocery store. But let me look that up. Oh, okay. Because, you know, business person, specialist.

Okay, but don't distract yourself because this is what I'm about to blow your mind with this story. So you're in a plaid pantry. Full attention. Yes. No, but I'm planning to go to plaid pantry. Okay. Because in this area that I live, in the coffee shop district, there's all of these, like, great, cute, you know, just, like, awesome little Portland-y coffee shops. And then there's the Plaid Pantry, which is – and again, I say this knowing that the people that are outside the Plaid Pantry who are experiencing homelessness, the people who are in there who have literally taken over, like, half the store, everybody is just doing their best. Everybody is dealing with what they're dealing with. I'm not trying to marginalize these folks further. But I'll just tell you it is not like all the other.

places in this area to get your whatever you might be getting and so i knew that they would just have a big ass thing of splenda packets and that nobody there would be judging me about getting my splenda so this is my backup plan but andrew an amazing thing happened i get up to the register and i asked the very nice person at ranger coffee hey do you have splenda and first i said do you take apple pay because andrew i'm an apple pay man now like my father and his father before him You know what's crazy? I did this intentionally. In other words, I could have brought my wallet with me. Like I remembered my wallet when I was leaving the house. But now I'm into this idea of not having to take my wallet. But I also don't really know how to use Apple Pay. I've only used it one other time. And I'm like, I don't know if it's the kind of thing that most places take it. It is an unfamiliar world for me. But I wanted to risk it. I felt like I was like doing a spacewalk without a tether or something. So I get down there. i asked do you take apple pay she said yeah like her voice was very nice but it was kind of like that's like saying uh do you accept money for this coffee sir yes we do we accept money for it and then i was like and do you have splenda and she said oh yeah totally i was like well god i've found my place so she says how many do you want i go just can you throw one in there and she said sure and i said oh and can you give me a couple of extra packets andrew because now i'll have Splenda and I'll have two more days of not having to go actually deal with my life and go buy a box of Splenda packets so this is just like the perfect solution so she rings me up, she makes the coffee puts the stuff in the coffee, gives me the coffee and then gives me the packets of Splenda which, Andrew, are packets of Stevia! Oh my god I didn't see that coming I would like to just talk to the citizens of planet earth stevia is not splenda beyond burgers are not impossible burgers there is nuance to this world that i live in of eating extremely engineered foods that are terrible for me where i like some of them more than other kinds of them and if you say that you have splenda but what you have stevia and you already put it in my coffee and i've already paid using my apple paper by the way that was a whole thing too couldn't get it to work i was like because when you double click the side of your phone to make it happen but if you click once it turns my phone screen off as an apple as an iphone it's like so and i'd also at that point i'd gotten some visuals on what the what the product was that had gone into my coffee had i not asked for the extra you know i uh i wouldn't have even known i would have walked out there blissfully unaware but because she gave me what she had also been putting in the coffee i knew that it was stevia so i'm there i'm i'm crestfallen that i've now already purchased this coffee with the thing in it that i don't like i can't get my phone to work things went downhill very fast oh

my gosh i do yeah i did not expect that to happen and you probably have already explained this it's really difficult to explain taste and even color but can you explain the difference between the

taste of stevia in your coffee and splenda well you know i've been going on and on about uh that anthropocene reviewed podcast that i really like he does a great episode on diet dr pepper and gets into how the people who made diet dr pepper early on figured out how to get rid of a certain sort of again it's very hard to describe taste but there are fake sugars or fake sweeteners like have you ever had sweet and low yes in something when i was growing up that was our

i feel like i was getting a lot of iced teas and putting sweet and lows in them sweet and low

saccharin things like that there's a a certain flavor to them where it is sweet but there's also So I guess I would just describe it as a certain dullness to the finish. So the initial hit on your tongue is, oh, sweetness. This is like sugar. I'm having something sweet. But then it changes as the taste sort of finishes. It gets a little flatter, whereas sugar just kind of stays at that level until it's gone. When you eat something sweet, it just tastes sweet, and then it's out of your mouth. There's a finish to certain kinds of fake sugar products that I just don't love. Then along came Splenda where they managed to create – engineer a taste that's much closer to the taste of sugar. That's why they use that – whatever they do with Splenda. Ironically, I did an entire piece for NPR about this years ago, all of which has left my brain. But that's why in Coke Zero, they use whatever the same technology as they use for Splenda. There's basically some pretty big upgrade in some point in how they break down the sugar molecules and rebuild them so that they don't stick to your insides as much.

And Splenda, in my opinion, tastes more like putting three scoops of regular sugar into my coffee.

And it's not a chemical-y thing? It's not a chemical aftertaste? Because that's the only thing that I sort of think of when I'm having something with fake sugar in it. It's less of it. That's the thing.

They have, for some reason, the process, or I should say the experience of having Splenda, for me, has less of a chemically aftertaste than any other fake sugar product. Now, I'll say the Stevia is probably better than the Sweet and Low or Saccharin or whatever. But to me, Splenda is still the best. And again, I mean, I've now told you the story. I don't have a power out to that other than to say the search continues for me to find a cool coffee shop that also has, I'll just say it, the bravery to have those bright yellow basic b packets of splenda in their kind of you know cream sugar etc area because i honestly think and this is the same reason why at some point all these coffee shops have topo chico in them because they go into each other's coffee shops they know what's going on there's a kind of a group think that goes on with these cool places and and by the way i love these places like that i would much rather hang out in that ranger coffee shop where i was then the plaid pantry where i was prepared to go like if i'm talking about places that i like feel comfortable and are my aesthetic it's that coffee shop ranger but i feel like there's because there is a group think has developed amongst the the coffee cognoscenti that there's something that's not cool about having splenda in your place

and so you did end up drinking this coffee though because you bought it right and yeah she already sugared it and what was that i'm drinking it right now yeah it's not the worst it's not the

Of course, you know the thought I had today as well, Andrew, as I was gearing up to go outside and get this coffee was – because I think actually – we need to move on. I think there is a chance that the broadcast coffee delivery is downstairs right now. It's very possible. But I thought, well, I can go downstairs and grab that, and then I can make myself some coffee, but I don't have any sweetener. And in this, I thought, well, this is why I need to just become an Andrew on this, which is you just drink black coffee. It's just you would not have had to leave your apartment building necessarily. You could have just made yourself a cup of coffee, presuming that the resupply is here, and then you'd be fine. For me, this whole I have to have some sweetener in my coffee thing leads to a lot of hassle.

Well, also, now this comes back to next week. I just recently – Genevieve is also on the Splenda train, as I mentioned the last time this came up. And I had Splenda on the grocery list last week. So I just bought a box of, I believe, 100 packets of Splenda, plus we still had a little bit left over in the old box. So I'm clocking in at – I mean, I don't want to get too bogged down in this, but I'm guessing we probably have about 113 – between 113 and 127 packets of Splenda here right now. Do you want me to go count – it's somewhere in that range, okay? Do you want me to bring some on our trip next week? How bad up are you? Do you think you'll have it solved by then?

No, what I'm going to do – don't bring any. Please, that's for Genevieve. I don't want her to end up in the spot I'm in, where you're just wandering the streets of Portland trying to score a fix of Splendid. Not even because it's sugary, but just to feel normal. But no, I will either. I'm going to today. This is the other thing, Andrew. I was talking about how last night when I was falling asleep, I started to feel a little anxiety. I have broken out the rarely utilized seven-day to-do list for old birds. you know what I mean I have a I have a running to-do list that I update every day it's just an email draft and it's just so each day I put in what time we're going to record the show I put in all what time I do live where I mean I also have an Outlook calendar but there's something about typing it all out in this like format that I have and but I was feeling enough anxiety that I was like oh I need to actually schedule out every single day between now and when we actually launched the tbtl-a-thon 12 like i was like there's just enough stuff going on i can't miss anything i can't get confused so i was doing that this morning and of course i put on my to-do list go to the grocery store and get some splenda but you know the other thing i can do is literally like the first stop as we're on our way to corvallis if we swangle through a 7-eleven or a plaid pantry or a what have you i can just walk in and grab a fistful of splenda packets and be set for the

whole trip i'm going to go to the grocery i'm just buying you i'm putting it on my list right now where's my phone i'm just gonna buy a box of 100 splendas and i'm gonna bring them on the trip and what you do with them so many more than i need you know then roll down the windows and let them flutter out of your fingers like i assume happens and boys don't cry i mean i don't care what you do with it but better to have very um yeah i'm trying to think the era movie i often will describe that as being a real drew barrymore type of feel isn't that oh what did i say lovey

you said boys don't cry oh that's not what i meant no i was picturing boys on the side is what i meant i apologize thanks for that's exactly what i was picturing drew barrymore in a convertible throwing her hands in the air and little packets of splenda um blowing behind her in the wind

god i wish somebody would have done that down stark street yesterday then i would have found some Splenda and I would be all right this morning. Okay, let's take a quick break because we're now halfway through the show and then when we come back I do want to talk about this Mayor of Easttown show and also cicadas with their butts falling off plus drops of stupider round three. Stay with us, it's TBTL.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Everybody rattle, dattle.

Let's thank some dazzling donors. These wonderful Beautiful people are keeping the show going With their dazzling donations Gonna be hearing a lot about This particular business model Next week For now we'll just start by saying a huge thanks To Nicole Partridge Who's in Bothell For a day and a lifetime Washington I'm gonna assume Because Nicole Partridge lives in Bothell That she knows What the actual phrase is on that sign But I think I've always thought it was for a day or a lifetime, which I think makes more sense. Don't you think?

Oh, that's interesting. Because she said in her note, Bothell for a day and a lifetime.

And to me, and a lifetime is like, well, the idea of for a day or a lifetime, it's hilarious because I believe this was referenced literally yesterday on the show.

It was.

One little sign entering a suburban town outside of Seattle has driven 80% of the content on this program over the course of 13 years. But for a day or a...

Yeah, there's a change.org petition. Bring back the Welcome to Bothell for a Day or a Lifetime sign. Oh, it's gone? This petition has 12 supporters. 13, if you count me. The iconic Welcome to Bothell sign was an important landmark that displayed the city's motto for decades. The sign was known near and far, blah, blah, blah. During the expansion of Highway 522, the Washington State Department of Transportation removed and disposed of this beloved sign. Why would you dispose of it? It belongs in the museum!

Or on the side of the road. Get the D-man on that. I hope that wasn't his crew. Camaro Kev's dad. Oh. Dale. Dale Dodger. He was a highwayman. Better not have been you, D-man. Dory Monson. Send a couple of D-mails, my dude. Yeah, because for a day or a lifetime, it's like, hey, if you're visiting, welcome. And if you're going to make this your permanent home, welcome.

Well, maybe that's why Nicole wrote that, because it is a lifetime for her, for a day and a lifetime. Sure, absolutely.

She says, hey, Luke and Andrew, thanks for doing what you do every day. You've been my friendos for 13 years now. And I know the baby I comforted while listening to Prezine is now a teenager. Oh, dear God. There was a baby I'm assuming that Nicole was the mom of That was being comforted When we were doing the Prezine episode Is that still in the running for Drops of Stupider? I guess we'll find out

Would you consider that a cooking with Sean?

And now that young life form Is a teenager My goodness Thanks also to the tens Who have made this wild year so much brighter If I can, I'd like all the 10s to consider how your local library can help you and others. Libraries are providing Wi-Fi parking lots for students. That's a really – that's a genius idea that hadn't even occurred to me. I mean, again, knock wood, but it would appear that we are heading in the direction of normal life resuming. But, I mean, access, you know, for students during the pandemic was just such a huge thing, as in Wi-Fi access. Like this assumption that every kid has the same Wi-Fi connection and therefore can do virtual learning. I mean, that's just, that's not a given. So what a cool idea. Also, they're providing online learning resources for people who are re-skilling. That's another thing. I'm going to need to re-skill when this podcast game ends for us, Andrew. And information and guidance for small businesses. Support your local library today by using their services or helping if you can.

Can I jump in here and say, I just downloaded the virtual lending app, which is called Libby. And boy, the virtual lending app has come a long way since I last tried it in 10 years. Oh, you mean for the library? For the library.

I thought that was the way you were making microloans to people in other places or something.

Well, I am doing that. I'm investing in a small little startup called, it's like Twitter or Twitter. So it's like a microblogging site. I'll tell you about it later. What's a Twitter? But anyway, it's great. So I have been downloading audiobooks and e-books, but mostly audiobooks. When I was especially stressed out last week, I was like, I just want somebody to read me to sleep. And so I downloaded The Art of Fielding. Have you ever read that book, Luke? I've read it before, and I like to re-listen to the audio. Jen was very into that book, right? I don't know.

It's about the baseball-playing kid?

Yeah, exactly. It's about a relationship. Well, it's an interesting college story and sports story about a shortstop and a catcher and some love triangles and some tragedy. But anyway, I'd read it before, so that's my favorite thing to do, to calm down sometimes, is just to put on a story that I've already heard before. Oh, interesting. And it can lull me to sleep, and so that's what I was doing last week, thanks to my local library.

Great. Yeah, definitely check them out. I was a kid. I probably talk about this way too much, but I did not have a lot of disposable income when I was a kid. And so the library was a place, the Green Lake Library and also the Greenwood Library were both places I could ride my bike to or even walk to. and i just spent countless hours in those places and it's probably legit where to whatever degree that my brain is okay at consuming information and that my reading comprehension is reasonably functional it's probably from hanging out in those libraries all the time because it was just it was free it was open all summer just like millions of books to read magazines as i've talked about before the av section because we didn't have a tv a lot of the time so i go and Like I would check out videos and just watch videos all day in those like weird little – like what do you even call that? Like a long table but then they have those – it's sort of sectioned off so that you're watching a video on the TV and you have headphones on but it's kind of just for you?

Yeah. What did we call those when we were in high school because like you would sometimes take tests and something like that or like my library had little functions like that. I want to say cubicle but not that.

I just remember watching, for some reason, the Greenwood Public Library. I guess this fell loosely under the arts and culture department. They just had this video, this VHS tape, that was every music video Wham! had released. And I would sit there and just watch that and watch the video for Club Tropicana or, you know, fill in the blank, Freedom. Not the later one, Freedom 90, that George Michael would do, but Freedom, the one that Wham! did, where they go to, I think they go to...

China in the performance is that why it's called freedom 90 because he already had a song called freedom I didn't know that I always wondered about that oh yeah man because what freedom by

wham was I thought their first like maybe it was post wake me up before you go go but it was like I was actually that was my favorite wham song that may still be my favorite wham song but I would just watch I'd anyway all I'm just trying to basically uh support Nicole's point that libraries are amazing places and public libraries and that they have really like really shaped me in a way and i'm very appreciative to all the people who paid taxes for those libraries to exist all the people that worked at those libraries um yeah it was a really big deal for me maestro andrew i was hoping that's what you were gonna do i shit you not you hear me clicking around

over here. I almost didn't hear you clicking around

but I was like, I was I didn't even, I was, I didn't want to dream that you were going to be able to find the original Freedom by Wham! that quickly. Take a listen to this, everybody. Do you know this song? I don't think so.

And I don't understand But to know that I would give you Just this once, twice forever You could drag me to hell and back Just as long as we're together And you do I don't want your freedom I don't want to play around It's interesting that George Michael would write another song called Freedom,

but I think the whole point of that was it might have been when he basically came out. I didn't make that connection.

Okay, is that what Freedom 90 is about?

Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think it was him. if he

He wasn't explicitly coming out. He was saying, I'm not the guy from Wham! anymore. I'm not the kind of somewhat bubblegum pop person. But it's funny that he would have two hit songs that are basically the same name. Here's to clarify that the second one is from 1990.

Yeah, now, it must be, you know, he was a smart artist. I'm trying to do some reading on the fly here. Like, I'm wondering if Freedom 90 is a, you know, if it's somehow a response, like a direct response to the earlier George Michael. And where he was then I'll try to figure it out

We have to thank our second Dazzling Donor And I know this person well Because I've seen her at so many live events For years and years I know one of our favorite songs is Freedom by Wham It's Tracy Phillips in Des Moines, Washington She says, hi dummies I have one request Please don't start my Dazzling Donor message With any of the music of Wham Oh no God, what are the chances of all the days Tracy says, this show and the tens keep me company and entertained and did so through a really shitty 2020. Sorry, Tracy. Sorry you had a really shitty 20. I mean, nobody had a great one, but it sounds like maybe there were some specifically shitty things happening for Tracy. You've built a community of wonderful giving folks. When my family and I needed support for my cousin who was very ill with COVID, the tens came through in a big way, sending cards with words of encouragement to my cousin. Side note, After 104 days in the hospital, mostly spent in a medically induced coma, he just left the hospital. Great. The cards from folks who didn't even know him moved him to tears at times. Aw. This is the group that you've cultivated. TBTL and I have been through a lot together over the years. A marriage, four dogs, two cats, a cross-country move of my husband. I could go on. there's just so much that has happened with you at my side I feel like I have my two buddies on my side at all times plus you make me look cool with my nieces and all of the ticky talky ins and outs and pop culture shit from the youngins all of this is just to say thank you for what you do my donation is the best money I've spent over the years

thanks Tracy oh wow this is

kind of kismitty I'm going to ask that you go out with space age love song by flock of seagulls It's one of the better songs of the 80s. Yeah, I mean, this is, I bet you this song, the Flock of Seagulls song that Tracy is suggesting was probably banging around at around the same time that Original Freedom by Wham! was out in the world. Do you think I should play Space Age Love Song 90? That was when Flock from Flock of Seagulls wanted to establish that he's no longer going to have that hair. It was featured in the B-movie Career Opportunities. I don't know, Tracy, if I fully agree with the notion that Career Opportunities was a B-movie. That's some young Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly, I believe, trapped in a Target.

Indeed, yes. And Whaley, we also know him from something. Oh, oh, Pulp Fiction.

Well, Swimming with Sharks as well, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I don't know if I've seen Swimming with Sharks.

Whoa. Don't watch it. It'll bring back memories of how domineering I am with you because basically Kevin Spacey is a terribly overbearing – like he's basically, I think, based on the producer Scott Rudin who is now having a long overdue reckoning for his super toxic behavior. And Kevin Spacey is a super toxic producer Who just bullies and belittles His assistant Frank Whaley Until Frank Whaley snaps

You know what I think I've seen Either I've seen that movie Or I just remember a line from the trailer Where he says Are you going to throw me in the water And see if I can swim And he says No we're going to throw you off the building And see if you can fly Does that ring a bell to you?

No but that's some good writing I feel like that was from the time By the way Tracy says that they roller skate through target in this song yeah it's a classic so keep on keeping on uh power out tracy ah tracy thank you so much and and again so glad to hear that your cousin is out of the hospital and thanks to you and ben for all your awesomeness over the years we really appreciate you um there was a time it feels to me andrew where and maybe i don't know it's just a mood i was in but movies where the dialogue was really crisp whether it's those David Mamet films you know you think of Glenn Gary Glenn Ross or Hurley Burley at a moment or like swimming with sharks which is like nothing's happening it's basically a play it's a stage play in fact maybe it was originally a stage play but everybody was hyped on these movies like I just don't feel like a movie where a guy ties up his boss and then they just do live

For an hour and a half I don't mean of blow I mean like to each other Like I just don't see that being a movie that's getting Any kind of Momentum these days yeah I don't know

If they used to get momentum though either because I had Another one like that um buffalo nickel Which is a man like a lot of Those mammoth ones but buffalo nickel especially Um that's dustin hoffman And I can't remember the rest of the Cast it might be I loved that one De Niro who who's that was great

That was uh yeah I saw That like in a theater I'm telling you like There was times – let's see, Buffalo Nickel film. That's that movie. The whole thing revolves around this particularly valuable coin. Yes, exactly. Are you thinking of American Buffalo?

Oh, is that what it's called? It's called American Buffalo. Yes, thank you. Oh, that would have driven listeners crazy if we hadn't figured that out. So who was in that again? It was –

Well, it was Dennis Franz from Sipowitz from NYPD Blue was in it and Dustin Hoffman with long hair and nobody else particularly famous at the time.

But that's a similar vibe, right? It's just them talking and even My Dinner with Andre, I mean, famously, right? That's just talking.

Right, and I just – maybe I was trying to be artsy, but I just loved those movies at the time. I loved movies where people were just doing snappy dialogue and, again, I just don't think of that as being a thing that's – even if it was only popular with a certain set back then, I feel like nobody is even making those movies anymore. Those movies are not trending on Netflix or showing up, you know, in artsy movie theaters anymore. It's just not how we do movies.

Yeah. Boy, that reminds me. I still have not got – when I'm back from this trip, I'm going to go see a movie.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right. Speaking of entertainment, Andrew, I started watching this Mayor of Easttown show on HBO last night. Have you heard anything about this? No, I don't think so. uh i had i think what happened was i kept well remember last week a listener had asked me in their dazzling donor message to do my philadelphia accent which is really pretty lousy honestly outside of saying the words lawyer um and wooder and american and human like um it's not great and i played that great actor and performer christine nangle doing just just beautiful spot on philly accent well i think i had seen christine nangle and paul f tompkins paul f tompkins is from philly i think i had seen them tweeting at each other about mayor of east town and the accents and then last night i happened to be i was like kind of starting to wind down it was like eight i was like i'm gonna get a really good night's sleep i'm gonna just like be rested and refreshed on tuesday to just really bring my all to tbtl and livewire and other various things I knew I'd have to be up early to hunt for coffee And Splenda And I was reading an article in New York Magazine and they referenced mayor of Easttown And for some reason I don't know why It's like when I read that tweet From Dan Harmon Tangentially referencing Macmillan men Patriot a.k.a. Macmillan men That I was like oh okay I don't know why it is that at some point Just the seventh reference to something Just tips whatever domino in my brain and then hits another domino that then has me go all right hbo max mayor of east town first log in as carrie are you over 18 yes mayor of east town okay finds it it's kate winslet playing a detective in a i assume fictional town in delaware county so it's sort of a little bit outside of philadelphia uh maybe east town is a real place my guess is that it's not for whatever reason but she plays the the kind of main detective in this relatively small town and her claim to fame in the town is that 25 years ago she was on the high school basketball team that won the state championship and she hit the winning shot so everybody in the town is like that's kind of you know sometimes her nickname is like lady hawk because they were the hawks the east town are east town hawks and yet her life since then has been somewhat complicated she's divorced she's got kids she drinks way too much rolling rock um and it's but she's also you know a dogged detective and i really did watch the first two episodes and think do i even like this and also are they literally writing this show to just make people do a delaware county accent i felt like there

was entire scenes that were created so somebody would say the word wooder like her character goes to a like a pet store to buy a a terrarium for a turtle a turtle that ends up not really being critical to the plot and she's like i just want something i can fill with wooder and i'm like you just did that because you wanted to say wooder people are like hey you want me to go to wawa for coffee everyone's always eating cheesesteak

I'm not kidding. It's like it's like if you set a movie in in Boston and everybody is just eating clam chowder like in every scene or, you know, what's a what's a region that's really associated with.

It'd be like if if I don't know, Baltimore, Baltimore. OK, I mean, is that what you're kind of asking?

Like other. Well, I'm just saying what's a region that's very associated with a specific kind of food?

Oh, food. I'm sorry, Luke. I was thinking accent. Oh, right, right, right. I don't know.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And then everybody in the show is always eating the food that is the local thing. It would be like if the show was set in Texas and everyone's just eating barbecue all the time. Right. Like you're just doing something, but they're also – like I wonder to some degree if the show was created to just really lean into the regional stuff, which, again, I didn't grow up in Philly. But having had a long association with that town and that part of the world, I have, of course, a lot of thoughts about it. um but uh i you know i the show eventually kind of grew on me it did that thing where you like the end i forget what the exact moment was i know what the exact moment was and i don't want to give anything away for folks but basically like i was like okay this kind of is slow moving okay they keep going they keep eating steak uh cheese steaks they keep going to wawa they keep saying wooder okay i get it i get it i get it and then one thing happened and i was like ah shit now you got me it was kind of like WandaVision actually where I was like by the third episode of WandaVision I was like we get it it's a TV show it's parodying styles of TV shows and then at some point there was just some plot little plot moment that I was like wow shit

now you got me yep yep it was episode 4 which is interesting because they released you know the next Marvel TV show was the thing that I call Flying Guy and Metal Fist I can't remember the name of it You know what I'm talking about, the Winter Soldier one, the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I think it's called. Oh, sure. I call Fly Guy and Metal Fist, which I don't even think is accurate at all. You know, I watched the first episode of that, and I just, I actively kind of disliked it. I disliked a lot of directing decisions about it. I disliked some of the writing and dialogue. And a lot of people said, well, you got to make it to episode four. And I was like, no, I ain't got time for that, which is weird because WandaVision didn't really kick in for me until episode four. That's when everything kind of breaks open. So why did I trust it with WandaVision more than Fly Guy and Metal Fist? And I think one of the reasons is because even though I wasn't quite getting WandaVision, there was a real artiness there that I liked. And maybe there's an artiness with the other one, too. but like I liked the vibe and it just strung me along enough to think that yeah I trust that this is going somewhere where I just immediately distrusted the new one the Winter Soldier one because it just and again and I'm probably making a lot of people angry because it's just like when I told Camaro Kev to watch WandaVision he's like nah I watched the first two not for me I'm just like you gotta get to four man you gotta get to four yet I didn't give the same I wasn't patient enough with the other you know what it is

in WandaVision it's the moment that it pulls back And you realize someone's watching them And I don't think that's giving too much away at this point Like, oh, by the way New York Magazine, easy on the Spoilers with Mare of Easttown Oh, by the way, it's called Mare of Easttown Because her name is Mary, but everybody calls her Mare Oh, okay It's not like she's the Mare of, it's spelled M-A-R-E of Easttown That's interesting, yeah And I will tell you this The thing I read in New York Magazine Said, I won't say it here In case some of the listeners want to start watching Mare of Easttown But the thing they said in the opening line was a massive spoiler Really?

And they didn't give the little warning that they usually give Like literally, that's where We say spoiler alert all the time now

Maybe we've become a nerd to spoiler alert

But we use it incorrectly, right? It's like people I guess it's born out of irony 15 years ago But somebody will say something, reveal something And then say spoiler alert afterwards But the original idea of a spoiler alert was You put at the top of an article Warning, this contains spoilers for season one Of the mayor of Easttown

Now maybe they put that somewhere And I didn't notice it But I clicked on it And I swear to god They were like basically Talking about a character that dies And they were like R.I.P. to this character And so then I was like And then I read a little bit more And I was like Again that was the like Final little thing That made me go Okay let me see what this is all about I just love Kate Winslet as well By the way She's fucking great in this As is Jean Smart I mean To be honest with you Oh she is a treasure All of the acting is really good, truthfully, in this, and I'll definitely give them that. Gene Smart is especially great. There's only one misstep on this show is that the daughter is one of – Kate Winslet's daughter is in a band, and they're way too good.

to be a high school band you know what i mean like everything else about the show feels very underplayed which i love like everybody is very dressed down if you will like this is what that part of the world this is what somebody who is a police detective in a small town in delaware county would kind of dress like a bit we might say frumpy you know and everybody's just kind of got sort of frizzy hair and like everybody is i like how under how understated and under made up everything is uh it feels very much like you know again i've been in that part of the world a lot in my life it really it really checks out and then you just have her like beautifully attractive daughter who's in a band that when they there's like this one it's on the first second episode they're like playing a song kind of at like at band practice and it's like shit these guys could

be signed right now yeah that's irritating i don't i mean i haven't seen nobody ever gets that right

like there's never been a depiction of a band in a show that's supposed to be gritty where the band

element of it has rung true and it's because they're either too good or the the whole point is how bad they are you might see that but just like a just an just like an average to below

average garage band right right it's like they they never it is impossible for hollywood To nail the right amount of shittiness Of a high school band You know like you said The joke could be that they're terrible Which then is usually played for a laugh Like they're totally out of tune Or the guitar string breaks Or whatever the drummer puts his stick through the snare Or They're like basically just covering a song By a real actually good band They have tons of stage presence They're like And it just This is like a gritty crime show So that took me out of a little bit Otherwise though, I have to say I'm quite intrigued And the only thing that stopped me last night Was that it was 1.30 I think I watched like six hours of this show Andrew, you couldn't get me I mean, I do miss going to films And I do want to sit in a movie theater But there are so many movies That I haven't watched on Netflix There's this new Angelina Jolie movie That's supposed to be really good Actually, it's getting great reviews That's out on Netflix there are i mean every week there's another movie that's released that sounds interesting i still haven't seen uh minari which is that and i watched the trailer for that that film minari that was the the the one of the actors in that she won an oscar do you know what i'm talking about no i don't oh my god i have not yet seen the film i watched the trailer i cried my face off my god it looks like the most beautiful moving incredible film and i haven't brought myself to watch it because i keep thinking i don't have two hours for this right now i never think i have two hours for anything right right but what i apparently have is six hours for watching people say wooder

on mayor of east town you know what's i was gonna say interesting except i need to be honest with you and the listener i don't think what i'm about to say is interesting but the reason i was a little distracted before when you were asking about regional food and i i had lost the thread because i thought you're talking about regional dialects uh was because i was looking for something i think i mentioned off air yesterday that i spent the weekend binging a bunch of comedy bang bangs that i had uh fallen behind on and um there is an episode in fact this is this is an episode i think we talked about this off the air um that has our uh that has our our boy our trump imitating um Guy Austin Johnson James Austin Johnson I believe but also It had Paul F. Tompkins On it Paul F. Tompkins is on Comedy Bang Bang more than he's not on Comedy Bang Bang Right exactly great friends and he's a huge Part of the show and he's always playing Different characters if you don't know Comedy Bang Bang it's Total absurdist improv For most of the show And in this One that just aired I think a couple of Weeks ago So he Paul F. Tompkins is playing a character who is doing a heavy Philly accent and they never they never acknowledge like, well, you're from Philly or something. It's like not part of the bit. He just has that. And I'm trying to see. Can I hit play on this? I'm worried that this is not going to love to hear this. But the only reason I also think that you and I should just listen to this full episode while we're driving because the Trump stuff with James Austin Johnson is just I am so down for that.

We are going to have so much flippin' time to fill in this 1993 van that only goes max of 55. Like, we are really, really going to need to come up with some hashtag content to fill our hours.

I meant to ask you, because it's a 1993 van, does it have a CD player? Should we bring CDs?

Oh, you know what? Check that out today. I'm visiting the van today, and I will double-check that.

And just a reminder, Luke's going to take a video with the van that we'll put in this week's newsletter. If you want to sign up for that But

Here, let's just – I have a strong feeling this is going to be out of context. It's not going to pay off. But let me see if this is the part of the show where Paul F. Tompkins is playing this character. His name is Original Fig. Don't worry about why.

We have to get to our next guest here. He is – I may have dropped this perfectly. I mentioned he is a small business owner.

Luke, I could not – he's literally introducing the guest. Wow. I needle dropped this, my friend. My God. Sometimes I worry that I'm too good. Do you think people won't donate because I'm too polished?

If there's one other person on this planet who can appreciate what an awesome moment this is, just from actually starting the tape where it should be started without actually pre-producing this, it's me, my friend. I'll be high off this for like a week.

He literally just said, we have to move on to our next guest, and now he's introducing the Paul F. Tompkins character.

This, of course, is the year of small business owners, and business is getting back on its feet better than ever. We are rebounding and the economy is coming back strong And I, of course, want to talk to him about that He is a liquor store owner Please welcome him for the first time on the show To Original Fig Thanks, Scott Hey, Scott Langston, how are you doing? It's nice to be here Thanks for having me Doing really well Hey, good to meet you Great to meet you So, now, Original Fig That's such an interesting name It sort of reminds me of Harry Potter's neighbor Old Mrs. Fig you you ever you ever meet her you know i don't i don't know fake people oh okay so you don't know let's list the fake people that you don't know chewbacca don't know okay uh who else do we got yeah langston you got anything chevy chase's character in the the vegas movie don't know uh what about i want to hear him talk some more thanks for putting up with this real or is he fake he's a real dude yeah he's real do you know him though he's passed on no i never met him i know who he is too. Fast one. Okay. What about the character from Titanic? The guy who drives around the submarine and talks to the old lady at the end? Is he real or is he fake? Brock Lovett, the treasure hunter?

I believe he's a real dude. Anyway, I'm sorry. I'm so proud of where I was dropping it, but actually later on he will talk more and you'll hear the water. But the only reason

that kind of... No, the Yuz is classic.

Yuz going down to Wawa. And I'm going to hit play in the background here and maybe I'll pot it up again in a second see if we can get him on more of a tangent but the only reason that sort of struck me was you mentioned that what maybe put you over the edge to finally listen to this was Paul F. Tompkins spoofing about it online and I wonder if Paul F. Tompkins has just been into that show lately which has like led him to this new character. I would

be unsurprised because what the sense I have is like if you're from Philadelphia or if like me I guess you consider yourself an honorary philadelphian like there's a weird obsession well here's what i would say if you're from that area or you know people from that area but you don't talk like them like for instance my cousins are not obsessed with the philadelphia accent because they have it yeah right you know yeah sure my cousin mike who you know used to who still works for the wooder department and used to when we were in our 20s and hanging out would tell me his whole day i don't think i'm putting him on too much blast here his whole day would be figuring out how he could like hide in his truck do the least amount of work go to wawa seven times and listen to stern that was his whole day like dudes like that i love it don't they're not into the philadelphia accent because it's just how they talk you know like in china they just call it food you know right like kind of thing so it's people like me and paul f tompkins if i can group us together who like paul f tompkins is from philadelphia but he doesn't talk he's not doesn't talk like you know a person who is deep in the accent and so for those kind of people i think the accent david roth is another one i don't think david roth is from that area but he often cites just like brutal pittsburgh yinzer accent which is very similar but maybe i mean there's just a slight regional difference but a lot of the same components i'm sorry a lot of the same components in the yinzer accent as used would get you know If you're talking about Philadelphia So it's like I just There are certain kinds of people And I'm one of them Who are weirdly obsessed With that accent And so when a show comes out That is set in that world I want to just watch it Just to hear How good Kate Winslet Who's British Yeah Is at doing

This very specific accent Can I play something Terrible for you Yes Of course Andrew Why wouldn't you Why did it take you So long to ask This And I think we've played This on the show before But of course I have my beloved WMMS record that listener Kate, rest in peace, sent me years ago. And I excerpted a whole bunch of it for you and played it for you on the show. Again, that was back in, I think, 2015.

And one of the bits they did, so this is WMMS, this is a Cleveland radio station in the 80s. Of course, big rivalry with Pittsburgh, especially on the gridiron. And so here's 30 seconds of WMMS's Pittsburgh Broadcasting School. This is going to be so bad.

Yo, are you looking for a rewarding career in broadcasting? Then join the Pittsburgh School of Broadcasting. Yeah, that's right. That's where I went. I've learned all about broadcasting, like how to run complicated equipment, Proper pronunciation, you know. Good grammar. You know what I mean? But most important, how to get free concert tickets, yo. Free t-shirts, where to pick up babes, and most of all, how to get free records and tapes. Check that out. The Pittsburgh School of Broadcasting does it all. Look what it did for me.

Take that, Steelers. I don't know.

Take that. You know, Andrew, I just want to do I want to offer this to you In the spirit of friendship Do you want me to cut that out of the show? No Who's the guy from Pittsburgh? John, what's his name? The broadcaster who you resent His constant dragging of the Cleveland Browns

Oh, oh, oh, the professor, John Clayton Yes

I couldn't remember John Clayton's name

Yes, yes, yes

So there you go I wanted to tell you that So next time you're not remembering a name, I don't want you to feel bad. I want you to be like, oh, yeah, Luke also forgets names he knows well, like John Clayton. I wanted in that moment to say, take that, John Clayton.

Do you notice how I had to back into it, though? When you said that, my heart started racing. Will I be able to pull this? I hear that. I hear and curse that name many times a day. I had to get there by reminding myself that he's the professor.

That's just absolute stupidity.

Kind of stuttered like the Pittsburgh Broadcasting School guy there.

Oh, man. That was totally – that was not where I expected the Pittsburgh Broadcasting School bit to go. I thought it was just going to be making fun of the accent, but it was just – the guy wasn't talking like he was from Pittsburgh. It was just the point is they're bad at broadcasting because they root for the Steelers. I misremembered that.

I thought it was a bit – I hadn't heard that in a really long time. I still liked hearing it.

I didn't think it was bad audio, and honestly, it's probably better than most of the actual show we've done today. But it just – it was surprising because it wasn't where I expected the joke to go.

Yeah. Well, here we are today. I think this is all lining up beautifully because now we are, of course, in the drops of Stupider where we talk about the best parts of comedy bang-bang that we've replayed on TBTL throughout the years. Most of them have Paul F. Tompkins in there. I don't know them. All right. So, no, in today's, this is the beginning of round three, isn't it? I mean, we only have eight of these, let's call them clips or teams, as you referred to them the other day, clanking around. Eight teams left in the competition, so four matchups. Exactly, which means at the end of this week, we will have unveiled these matchups, and you can vote through the weekend, and then next week, we're really whittling it down. So, let's start with this. We have Luke coming up in round number one. No, in match-up number one of round three. Splooch the Toilet Turtle. He just says, and I quote, in a hell of a font, Sploocha. So Splooch or Sploocha, the Toilet Turtle, going up against the Blue Angel Show. Three, two, one.

Are you kidding me? That was one of those ones where you don't see it coming.

There you go. All right. That was your first matchup. So who are we leaving behind, Rapture-esque here? Sorry, Serial. You didn't make it Serial, goodbye to the Serial show And Dave Bowes and his Halloween Spooktacular Did also not make the cut Did also not make the cut Again, that Pittsburgh School of Broadcasting I went to is really paying off dividends

I don't know if we need to get into this right now But I think it's interesting that Serial didn't make it And I think it indicates what people really value about this show And what we wish the show could be, Andrew versus what people like about the show.

Well, because one was just a moment of pure just like kind of, I guess, joy and spontaneity. And the other one was, well, honestly, when we talk about this, like, I don't know that the serial show was one of our best shows. I think the serial open was one of our best opens. You know what I mean? Like the rest of the show was good, but I don't know. Do you think that was one of our best shows ever?

Well, I don't know. probably not, but what I can tell you you is that when i'm feeling insecure about the show which is 90 of the time i my thoughts will drift to other programs that are more highly produced and that are burning up the podcast charts and that have funny concepts that they execute through production or are like great mystery shows or whatever and like i honestly think we were ahead of the curve on that like nobody else had done that joke that i knew about uh you know equating i'm not even being sarcastic I think later people did make jokes about that. In fact, I even think an ex-colleague of ours made some kind of joke on Twitter, and I think that led to a whole thing. But I was so proud of that just as an idea. And then that intro that you made was so genius. I said this probably at the beginning of Drops of Stupider, but sometimes when I've been trying to impress people with TBTL, which is, again, rare, that's a thing that I will play for them or direct them to. I'm so proud of that intro you made.

Yeah, no, I love I'm actually proud of that intro, too. I think it was good. I don't do a lot of I think that might be my only example of parody production. No, that's not true. I made a terrible parody of This American Life using some tape of my friend Paul shaving his beard because he was going as a beardless person for Halloween. That was his costume. What are you dressed up as a beardless person? No, Harry Potter. He was going as Harry Potter. It took me a second to get there. And this was back when we were in our still in our 20s or something. And I was just carrying around recorders all the time, recording my friends and hope, you know, hoping to turn them into something. And so I made this really hokey parody of I think I did a bad Ira Glass voice and being overly sentimental about him trying to shave his beard. But aside from that piece of garbage, this is the only parody production I've done. And I was pretty proud of it. But, yeah, but I think as well, you should have been unbridled joy, you know, and sleep. Exactly. In the moment.

And that's what's funny is it's like I can never predict a moment on a particular episode that is going to resonate or entertain a particular listener. And just so many of these shows, I mean, we do this five days a week all year long. You know, it's like it just feels so much of the time like I'm entertained because I'm talking to my friend Andrew. Like I'm always having a good time, but I'm always having the thought, why is anyone listening to this? And then when we hear from people, it'll just be about the most random stuff that they for some reason connected with or thought was funny or was memorable. And so I guess my long-winded point is just it's strange how I kind of wish the show was tighter and more produced and more – I don't know, more like the intro to cereal and yet people would like us just to be laughing at a turtle that's having diarrhea.

Well, when you put it like that, what's to argue?

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 all right we have a bunch of emails and v-mails that have been building up but andrew something very interesting happened at uh right before we dialed up today when we were doing our sound check you were in the midst of listening to a voicemail right it just happened to be i had

like a couple of extra minutes while i was waiting for you to dial me up if i recall you were doing some live radio hit on uh kuow which is why you were late dialing me yep that's right dream um no i was just sitting here and i was like oh i have an extra minute let me check the voicemail line i hadn't checked it in a while and things have been piling up there and my instinct is usually to go to the oldest voicemail so that i can you know catch them before they're totally out of date but today i was like i'll just hit hit play on whatever the very first whatever the latest voicemail in our system is and it's this one and i don't know how this ends all i know is you dialed me up right as this person was identifying herself as somebody who might have insider information about whether or not the mariners used to call weekday daytime games a business person's special versus a business man's special and we might have some information

on that so let's go to the tape okay and andrew um my name is donna and i have worked uh for a long long time for over 20 years with uh the mariners and their community relations people so when you guys are going back and forth about the businessman business person lunch i reached up to one of my friends who um was there uh for a long long time and what she said was that they called it the business person's or businessman's lunch for many years including when it was in their kingdom and then when it uh they got a lot of complaints then they ended up moving it to the businessman lunch and then our business person's lunch and then finally um they did away with business all together because

was over so anyway i just wanted to let you know that and i would bet if you reached out to some of your friendos in the mariners they might be able to confirm that even more so i just wanted to let you know that you can confirm something and um have a great day i start now listening to

the show all right so i remember yesterday when we had stopped on the idea that i was right because jack had sent in the seattle pi article and i said great let's just leave that where it lies which is that luke was right and and now we had to do one more thing with it which proves that i was

wrong no no because you're not wrong she's saying that it was it was business man's at some point and then it was changed to business persons at some point and you know it was it was listener jack taylor who sent in the email yesterday with the actual newspaper clip in it where it's clearly called a business person special um or lunch or whatever it was called in that context and that was from 1995 which would have been the height of you listening to mariner's games i'm guessing no oh i guess you're graduating high school i had a one-year-old in 1995 oh yeah all right show off

um no i'm just just to put it in context my prime no i think that this honestly i think i just Mandela'd this because the height of me listening to every Mariner game that would happen and going to any kind of day game that I could get down to in the summertime. My obsession with the Mariners was at its peak when I was a kid and I didn't have anything else competing for my time and energy. Right, sure. So that would have been much more like the mid to late

80s. But we don't know when this switch happened. I don't think this knocks you out of the water on rightness.

on correctness it i mean it makes me feel like maybe what happened was they were calling it a businessman's lunch or businessman's special i just didn't take note of that certainly of course didn't pick up on why that's not a really good way to describe it and then at some point heard them calling it business person's lunch or business person's special and then that just kind of like locked in my brain so yeah they were calling it that at some point but i i my point i guess was just that like maybe the mariners were above reproach and um uh that's that's certainly not the case they were doing what everybody else was doing for a long time until they changed i

mean according to this person who asked their friend who doesn't have a specific timeline and i and i you know i'm not trying to do i think the i i feel like you're just giving up too easily here i'm actually shocked by this because i don't think i mean we don't know what the timeline here is it could have been in the 80s when they switched over i mean the the team was founded in 79, I think. Okay.

I think Diego Segui was the first batter. Is that possible? Because his son, David Segui, then later played for the team years later. For some reason, I have this memory. I don't know why I want to say 79 might have been the Seahawks. One of them was like 76, and one of them was like 79. But it also could have been – forget who was it.

Can we Google who was the first hitter in Mariner history? Yeah. You know what I was wondering the other day? Well, you actually, why don't you Google that? Because I had this weird thought in my head. And apparently, because, you know, people who love baseball have all kinds of crazy stats that are, nope, sorry, bananas stats that you can find anywhere. But I thought it would be interesting to see a list of what was the last at-bat of every season's, like, the end of the regular season. We know what the last—we could easily figure out what the last bat of the World Series is each year. But, like, of the regular season, just chronologically, what team had the last at-bat and what went down in that at-bat? I don't know why I was interested in that, but nobody has a definitive list.

Boy, Andrew When I'm wrong, I'm wrong I was just, like How do I even describe this? Shot at and missed, shit at and hit Every way that I could be getting Factually close but wrong With this, I was So first of all, the Mariners As we think of them, the modern Mariners They started in the kingdom in 1977 77, okay

So I had said 79

Or I said 76 So those were both wrong I said Diego Segui was the first hitter No, he was a pitcher That year, star pitcher Diego Segui In his last Major League season Became the only player to play for both the Pilots And the Mariners The first game It still doesn't say who the first batter was It says the first Home run in the history of the team Was April 10th So they debuted on April 6th So they didn't even have a home run For, you know, almost a week They lost that first game, by the way 7-0 to the California Angels in front of a sold-out crowd.

Harbinger. yeah exactly and um anyway so i was totally wrong about that i'm still curious who the first actual mariner to take to take the you know to take the plate was like and i don't know why that's not listed here you'd think that that would be um that that'd be an interesting fact that people would want to know maybe i'm the only person who wants to know i'm looking maybe jack

taylor can find it in the micro yeah come on jack how how did you not know we weren't going to be that we were going to be talking about this and send it to us boy there's that broadcasting

podcasting skills again the mariners were the crew were created as a result of a lawsuit andrew in 1970 this is interesting to you and i in the aftermath of the pilot's purchase and relocation to milwaukee by future commissioner of baseball bud sea league oh yeah high school bud sea leagues by the way otani how is it going running that team i look at it every day but i'm like an absent father now who's like i don't know if i want to mess with the kids lives or if i just want to just move move head out to west texas never to be heard from again i will look at our lineup and i'll think if i move something it's going to screw this up well i mean we're not i mean we're kind of

in the middle of the pack again we're in fourth place although we are kind of now we were bottoming out there for a while but it looks like our our fortunes have shifted we're now gaining more points again but like it's so confusing because i'm trying to make sure that we you know on most days have a team you know every you know every position um fielded but that's not what's wrong with me luke my brain is breaking really bad i'm just trying to make sure that we're fielding a full team on most days but the thing is that's not necessarily even a winning strategy on like mondays when a whole bunch of our players aren't playing because it's often um a day of rest um we do better because it's about averages so it's not even about like you need you know more players more points that's not even how it works like so i i don't know i'm confused but right now we're still in the top five we're you know rank number four and so we're doing we're doing our

best as long as otani continues to lead the league in home runs yeah and just is an absolute beast that's got to be good for us when you read the seattle mariners wikipedia page which i will now read word for word in order um no when you look at the history of the seattle mariners wikipedia page it reads like star wars or something 1991 to 1992 a glimmer of hope i'm looking at that now too yeah you realize that like that's where we are as fans of this baseball team is it's just like yeah a new hope 90 and then like nope actually not sorry we're back to rebuilding um god bless our friend the stew bot who's having a tough season by the way we're we're now by my count 93 plus minutes into the show we're allowed to do this we're allowed to do this this is this is fun times okay in the words of mr collard now it's fun times our buddy the stew bot had uh had texted our sports fan chain yesterday about his his minnesota twins who started off pretty well and then just have really really hit some hard times and it was so cute because and i don't mean that dismissively i mean it was it was endearing because stew's going through a tough time with his team and so he's like ah i hate baseball and then he realizes who's he talking to and he's like but but actually of course i don't need to tell you mariners fans about futility because it's like

man we we really got the market cornered on that i am on baseballreference.com and i'm looking at the stat sheets for their april 6th 1977 game against the california angels which as you said They lost seven to nothing. So I'm looking at the batting order that day. And somebody named Dave Collins, who was our designated hitter, was first in the batting order. So the DH would hit first in those days? Followed by Jose Baez, second base. Any of these? Okay. Steve Braun. No. Keep going. Leroy Stanton in right field. Leroy Jenkins? God damn it, Leroy. Bill Stein. Nope. Dan Meyer? Nope. rupert jones yes so you like baseball coladas uh wow i love that he went there terrible bob stinson as a as our catcher and craig reynolds at shortstop the only name i recognize from there

is rupert jones because that was the chant for him was rupe people loved him ironically you would go on to be very insecure when people would say luke years later that's true that's true but i've notice also the seahawks used to have an edge rusher named rufus porter and when he would get a sack everyone would say roof and i i never knew when i was chanting roof at the tv that someday

would be the bane of my existence um so dave collins was the leadoff uh hitter that's just

crazy to me the dh would hit first this is not how major league baseball works anymore your dh is a power hitter and they'd never be hitting first in the lineup you'd have you know some small speedy guy who's going to make contact. Do you find it shocking that Dave Collins had four at-bats, zero hits, zero runs, and one strikeout?

Well, that's how you begin building a legacy of being the worst baseball team in history. That's how you build a legacy of never going to the World Series over the course of an adult human's lifetime because I was born in 76. So for all intents and purposes, me and the Mariners are the same age. and in my entire time on this planet which is a lot i've laughed i've lived i've loved andrew i've had a child i've hosted a hit podcast i've also hosted tbtl done so many things i've done so many things on this planet on this big blue marble andrew and at no time during all of those experiences of 45 years has the baseball team from seattle figured out how to get their asses

into the world series that is really remarkable yes i have a baseball loving friend actually my friend steve udich who was on a recent hey dummies and he lives in portland now and he's a big baseball fan has been a baseball fan much longer than me and knows a zillion times more about baseball than i do um i forgot though of course we grew up in cleveland together so i i know of him as a baseball fan who lives in this area and knows a lot about baseball and so we have conversations about the Mariners I forgot that of course in a Cleveland Seattle matchup he is rooting for Cleveland so when it looked like we on a very big night and again I'm sorry that we're just into sports ball talk now um what do we call it no point conversion is the word I was looking for um on the night that we were all excited for because the Mariners brought up two very very exciting prospects we've been waiting to see them play in the big leagues for a long time now It was like this game was promoted as if as if it was finally the Mariners are going to the World Series. I mean, this game was so highly anticipated and it was against Cleveland here at home. And it looked like up until in the sixth or even making the seventh inning, it looked like the Mariners were going to get no hit at home for the second time this season on what was supposed to be a very exciting night for the Mariners. And I don't think I've ever been so miserable during a baseball game. Like, I know I say that a lot, but, like, there are a lot of baseball games. And I knew that this was just a symbolic game anyway because these young kids were up and it doesn't really matter. But to get no hit at home for the second time. And so I text my buddy Steve. I'm like, this is so terrible. And then I forgot, oh, no, it's great for him because he's rooting for Cleveland. But then he starts, and this is where I don't know if you'll hear this or not. but he starts like saying oh man but you know like the Cleveland hasn't had a um a no hitter we have the longest drought of having a of pitching a no hitter in Major League Baseball and so like and so him feeling like the underdog there like we just have to break this drought and I'm just like you've been to World Series you've won World Series even before like our franchise has the longest playoff drought of all major league baseball yet steve felt like the underdog in this game right which ended up not being a no hitter and it just reminds me that everybody always feels like the underdog yep i feel like unless i mean you you could i mean the yankees aren't that great this year right uh am i wrong about that i don't i don't haven't really been following the league that that closely why would i i'm just managing a baseball team um but uh

Listen, you're doing your best as a single father to our fantasy baseball team. You know. I went out for a pack of cigarettes.

Who was it that the Angels just released? The long, long time slugger who's just, he just kind of his age. Poo Holes, yeah. Poo Holes, probably. So they just released Poo Holes. Here's how broken my brain is now. I'm playing fantasy baseball, but in real life, he goes on to waivers, and I think, oh, I should pick him up, when really it's like, no, no, no, no, no, you should not pick him up because he's not playing for a team right now. You're not a real manager. You are a fantasy manager. You can't literally sign Pujols to what's the name of our – the high school Bud Seeligs.

Although the Mariners should consider it. Lord knows. Yeah, well, should they, though? I don't think so. I mean, I don't know. I mean, he might – players do weird things where sometimes – I mean, this was the thing. During – I don't know if you remember the 1991-92 season, a glimmer of hope. But, you know, those were the days where we met – like, we picked up Vince Coleman, who had been, like, an amazing shortstop and base stealer, like, for St. Louis. And then we had – he was kind of done, but we got, like, one more good season out of him. Like there was a time kind of like what the Seahawks do sometimes where like it seems like they were. able to grab people who didn't weren't seen as very valuable in other places and get like a good season out of them but yeah i i do think you're right and then we can mercifully for everyone end of this episode i think you're right that every single there's something about sports where you of course you you remember the good times but i wonder if you remember the feeling from the bad times almost more acutely because there are new england patriot fans who feel like underdogs and there are new york yankees fans who feel like underdogs and los angeles dodgers fans who feel like underdogs nobody feels like the overdog and yet we can't all be the underdog that's just not how that works but what you remember is all the times your team didn't win the world series or all the years that you're or if you're gambling it's like somebody could be winning and they're feeling good but they can also remember the like 30 uh double downs they lost on blackjack so there's something about the psychology of being a sports fan where i think everyone feels like Like they don't get any of the calls, they don't get any of the breaks, and somehow when they do win, they're triumphing over adversity. If you look at a lot of these teams, it's like you're triumphing with also the largest payroll in the league. You bought the most lotto tickets, which means you should probably hit the lotto sometimes.

Not to be super serious here, but I've said this on the show before, and I'm stealing this from somebody I heard talking on the Political Gab Fest a while back. But I think that is actually one of the biggest problems with the state of our country right now that I think everybody feels like an underdog. And so, you know, I've told you this before a while back when I was visiting Cleveland, kind of during the heart of the Trump administration, I was talking to a conservative family member who was bemoaning the state of America because of us liberals. And I said, but you have like you have your guy in the White House. You control both houses of Congress. How do you – but she was talking like she's losing the wars, the culture wars or whatever, and she's being tread upon. I'm just like, how do you feel like you're losing right now? I mean, how could that possibly be?

What are those folks' policy on people treading on them? Are they pro or are they for it or are they again it?

Exactly.

All right. Space Age love song. Love it. That's right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We're going to be back here tomorrow. with more imaginary radio for you. Getting ever closer to next week's TBTL-a-thon 12 will be exciting. Please join us tomorrow, though, for the next episode of Whatever This Is. We'll see you then. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Stay safe, take care of yourselves, and please remember to mount too tall. And good luck to all.

guitar solo And you made me smile And for a little while

I was falling in love And I was out of your eyes And he touched my mind But I don't know why I was falling in love

Power out!