Muse

Hello, you're listening to PPR PPP. I am Dale Denton. The topic of the day, new beginnings. Getting over losses. Friends. Life. We have our first caller. Yes, ring, ring, ring. How's it going?

Hi. Am I on the air? Yeah. You're my hero. You're my hero. Yay! You are good, man. Seriously. Thanks, man. I got to admit, yeah.

It sounds pretty good. It sounds real, dude. It's not bad, huh? If I close my eyes, it does sound like, yeah, that's the voice. You are on the radio. That's the radio. This is the radio. That's the DJ. No, but better.

Like, if you were on it, I would listen to it.

Thanks, man. High five, seriously. I know this sounds weird, but can we be best friends?

TBTL. What comes before anything? What have we always said is the most important thing? Breakfast. Family.

Femme, right? I thought you meant of the things you eat.

That was really, really, really terrible, but everyone does that kind of stuff sometimes. It happens, like, once. Or twice. Or three times in every life. Or twice. I mean, one. Or once. I'm doing the work. I'm baby-stepping. I'm not a slacker. It's not real. It's a jib-jab.

Sweetie, have a good show. What you do is so important.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL. This right here, this is the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center in Portland, Oregon, on what is going to be a very blustery day here in the 503. And a kind of a bittersweet show on TBTL Because we're going to be remembering our very dear friend And a dear friend of the program, Mike Frizzell Who passed away in Austin late last week A truly one-of-a-kind person We're going to be talking to some folks that knew Mike Throughout various stages of his adult life People who knew him in real life and also just kind of knew the legend of Drew McFrizz by way of this podcast and other podcasts and the internet and his many endeavors. So that's mostly what we're going to be doing today. We're going to be visiting with Jen Flash Andrews coming up in a bit, producer emeritus of this program, and also Bill Radke, who first introduced me to the concept of what a Mike Frizzell is. That's all coming up first, so let me welcome this guy to the program, The longest-running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I would say this. If I were in charge of a radio broadcast program at a university, like the kind that I went to, I would have a class, Kent State University, I would have a class like How Not to Cry on the Radio. They don't teach you that. And, you know, it's come up a lot, I feel like, especially, you know, as I get older and I cry over more and more things, it occurred to me the value of maybe having a class where it's like there are going to be times where you have to talk about tough stuff and your throat is going to close up and you're going to be fighting that the whole time. And I feel like that class would have come in handy today as we dedicate this. Some of that is the low T, though, for you. A lot of it is.

If anybody would like a good Dr. Arakaki joke, it would be our friend Mike Frizzell.

Absolutely. Yeah, not to minimize it, I was also crying over a leaf falling off of my plant over the weekend, so I guess maybe some of that is on me.

I was thinking about this as well this morning, thinking about how we're going to do this show, because this is a really sad and really kind of, I guess, important moment for what we do. I mean, most of the time, this is absolutely meaningless. And then about once every five years, something momentous enough happens that we want to actually really do a good job and honor the moment. And I was also thinking about if crying was going to be a problem on this episode. I have converted my cough button into a cry button today.

I can see you crossed it out and put a piece of tape over it.

I crossed it out and I wrote, I just drew the emoji where the tears are streaming down the face. So I will probably make a fairly liberal use of the cry button. But then I also was kind of, I was pep talking myself saying crying when you lose somebody who you love is an okay thing. And people, you know, when you, when I see it on TV or elsewhere where people become emotional when they're sad, when it's a totally appropriate thing to be sad about, our natural I'll see you later.

Human reaction is to apologize For crying And I always think when I'm the person who's just watching it Well you don't have any reason to apologize And then every time I feel emotional I also want to apologize So the rule that I made for myself was Crying is totally okay today Apologizing for crying is totally not okay

Okay Now you need an apology button Is there any chance you could rig up one of those Where you just push that in every time Do you have a mini to mini

because I've got to add a pot on this board I'm using.

I've got an RCA to mini, but unfortunately it's one of those things with three RCAs to one mini. Oh, that thing. Can you just snip one of those off? You know, like this is, not to get super serious about it, but obviously you've been thinking about Mike all weekend, and of course as we were preparing to do a show dedicated to him, and we're going to talk. I realize that, like, we're talking to various groups of people here. We have a lot of people who are, you know, super emotional today hearing this news. I've been hearing from tens all weekend, texting us and emailing us and calling us and and reaching out to each other because Mike was such a big part of the community. I know, though, that we probably do have one or two new listeners who don't know who Mike is. I'd say two sounds high. OK, we probably have one to one and a half listeners who maybe, you know, have joined the show and have heard this name thrown about but don't know who he is. And we'll talk about that. We'll establish for everybody who Mike was in a moment, but not to get super maudlin. But I think the strange thing for me, and I think this is what happens when you lose somebody, is like as we're doing prep for the show and thinking about, you know, how we how we talk about Mike and even just thinking like yesterday, like, what's the right intro tape to begin a show like this with? I keep on Mike is so much on my mind that I keep on forgetting that he's not going to hear it.

You know, uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would sometimes wonder if he was still listening. I wonder if anyone's still listening. I mean, regardless of who we're talking about, but particularly people who have listened to the show from the first episode, which Mike was on that list. I mean, he was at. Well, he wasn't at the first listener event we did because nobody showed up for that. It was very embarrassing. But the second event we did, he was one of the like two or three people that showed up and he'd been listening since, you know, the very first episode. And so after so many years, you know, and so many episodes and so many so much repetition of the same four stories from me, I always just figure, well, at some point, the people who've been listening to this for a long time, that they'll have gotten the gist of what's going on here and they'll just get on with their lives. And when I would least expect it, Mike would just send me some super funny email that would be like referencing something I said, but but making it way funnier, you know, maybe like busting my balls in the best kind of way because he just had absolutely like just a razor wit. and I would always take it as a real compliment that he was still listening because the guy was an extremely critical thinker and a very funny, very smart person and I would sort of think, well, shit, if Mike is still listening 3,500 episodes in, this must not be the worst thing, you know? And it was just nice to hear from him because again, I just took that as a huge compliment to us that this guy who I thought had really good taste wasn't bored of it yet, you know? And when he would specifically reference something we had said, I would just be like, it would really kind of put some wind in my sails.

Yeah, he was. Yeah, no, he was still sending me notes. I'm not joking. And again, I think maybe we should back up and maybe do a quick Drew McFrizz slash Mike Frizzell 101. It's already complicated with the two names, but I was going to say.

Well, the guy was on the run from the lawman for a long time. That's not even all of his names. Those are only the names we know about.

Yeah, exactly. But he would, you know He'd drop me a note or a text Or just like kind of Somehow jump into my mentions Every now and then In fact, I think the last time I spoke with him Was on one of those Oh, what's the app Where everybody talks And you can't see each other Clubhouse, clubhouse Clubhouse My brain is not working today That'll be my one apology Not for crying But just for how scrambled my brain is

Oh, no, I would like it If you apologize for everything else Okay, good Specifically not for crying

I do owe some apologies around, I think But yeah, like Mike still felt like very much, you know, part of my life and part of our world to the I know that, you know, we live in very different states and we weren't the bestest of friends. But he was, you know, he was a constant in my life. And when I was getting emails from him or if we were busting chops via text, I would easily forget how much he continued to struggle with health stuff. And that's kind of why when I heard that he was suddenly very, very sick and in the hospital and then eventually that he passed away this weekend, I think that my brain is still having a lot of trouble – sorry for the snort – having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around it for all the normal reasons.

But also because you and I were talking about this a little bit over the weekend, Luke, to engage with Mike but not necessarily be in his physical proximity, he's just a tough man. He would never lead on that he was suffering in a lot of ways, at least not to me, at least not to us. I don't know if other people had other relationships with him. But that's one of the mind screws here is that it just feels like yesterday that I was probably getting a text. It wasn't, but it just feels like just yesterday that I was getting a text message from him and we were fooling around or horsing around or he was telling me about his project that he was working on. And and then suddenly to just have him gone is astounding. But maybe this is a good time to talk about who he is and how he came into our lives.

I want to just expand for like two minutes on what you said, though, because for the last the last few times I was down in Austin for things, I would get a chance to see Mike and I would see some of the other 10s and I would see Emily as well. uh mike's wife and you know a lot of these things like uh wait wait and other events that mike would come show up at were not uh they were not in an insignificant amount of of energy work and i would assume potentially pain for him you know to be a part of because he had some mobility issues at the end but i would come off stage like i remember specifically doing the show uh in austin And I think it's like the university of Texas and coming off the stage and just seeing Mike just standing there, just beaming and like, he was just like so happy and he was so positive and we all went out and we had a drink later and hung. And it was like, I mean, I, I have no idea what that, you know, what that took out of him to be there for that. But he, he just was, he was a person who was incredible at, at, at being full of life. Even as his own physical body was starting to really fail him and, and of not of not making that the centerpiece of his personality i was emailing with him like last week about this tv project that he's been doing and it's it was just never like it was like how you doing and it just you know it never was oh woe is me it was always oh hey take a look at this or how do you feel about this or what were the tbtl download numbers of the special of the mike frizzell specials because we want to try to use that as a leverage to get more you know kind of meetings Around the TV stuff He really did sort of keep that stuff To himself at least as far as I Experienced talking to him And so I think you're right It makes it even more Shocking and hard to Understand because He just didn't wear that stuff on his Sleeve very much to a lot of people anyway Now if you are our one New listener it's nice to have you here This guy that we've been talking About named Mike Frizzell um kind of became a big thing on tbtl when when he joined us for like a week of special programming so i had kind of known his story through a mutual friend bill radke who we're gonna talk to a little bit later um but he had mike had been somebody who went to college uh had a knee injury um playing basketball they gave him um some kind of you know oxy type you know percocet vicodin whatever and for like his recovery after the surgery and he took it and I believe what he said on on one of these episodes was that when he took that pill it was the first time he ever felt comfortable in his own skin and you can only imagine if there's a if you are a person who's perpetually uncomfortable in your own skin and there's a pill that makes you feel comfortable that's going to become a pretty big part of your life potentially and it did for him he struggled with addiction and the way he funded that because he was married and had a stepchild and was working

at a tv station in florida like he was kind of living a sort of normal life but also dealing with this drug problem and the way that he could sort of reconcile all this financially was he started robbing banks and he came and he eventually turned himself in after being on like the most wanted list and living in tijuana and just a whole series of crazy adventures then he went and he did his time uh in federal prison down here in oregon and so anyway he came on tbtl to tell this story And we realize this is not like a one segment story. Like we're going to just like take as much time as we need to really get into all of this. And anyway, I know you have some tape there, Andrew, of Mike kind of just like explaining why it was that he even wanted to tell his story in this kind of public way. Can we take a listen to that?

Yeah, this is the near the end of that five part sit down interview you guys did with him. So this is on the final show. And I think that you guys just to give this a tiny bit of context, Luke, I don't know if it's really important. But I think after doing these, you know, these previous four shows, which were very like edge of your seat radio, I mean, it was it was incredible to hear all of the ups and downs of his journey. But there were like a lot of ups and downs and a lot of ins and outs. It's a story not just about crime, but also about addiction. And like you said, at the heart of it, somebody feeling uncomfortable in their own skin. that led them um and so here it is the final episode and you guys are talking about like kind of whether or not mike thinks he did the story justice and why he wanted to sit down with you

to tell it in the first place the the reason for me coming on the air and talking about it at this point in my life it's uh it's sort of complicated but i did want to say that it was last spring i was on a flight and probably experiencing the worst turbulence that that i've ever you know experienced on a flight and you know how the thoughts of mortality always go through your head when you're when you're in something like that and i was thinking what is what is the one thing that i wish i had accomplished that i have not yet accomplished and i really had thought for many years that i wanted to write about this experience and leave it as sort of a legacy for my friends and family because it's hard to sit down with everybody that you know and everybody that's loved and trusted you and had faith in you to put your life back together it's hard to sit down with every one of them and tell them your whole story i just want them to know from beginning to end what my state of mind was and what why i was doing what i was doing and and then when i met you um you have this local radio show and i i was thinking this might be this might be the time this might be the right venue to come forward and talk and i and i think enough time had passed in my life and i think the 10 years 10 plus years since i've gotten out of prison i've proven myself to the point where i'm not afraid anymore for someone who knows me either professionally or Personally, I'm not afraid for them to know about that because I'm a different person now and I'm, I'm trusted and I should be trusted.

Maybe worth noting that that was from January of 2009.

Yeah. The story, I mean, that he told was, I mean, here's the thing. We did a lot of bad programming in the early days of TBTL, like when we were on the radio, we because we were almost actively trying to anger our bosses. I mean, and successfully so in that they fired us, but we would just try stuff all the time. And so much of the time, even I could tell that in the moment, this is not good radio. But when Mike was telling his story, I was just sitting there thinking, okay, if this is our only, if this is like the only five hours of radio that we put out as a show, this is good. Like this is worth it. Like this, you know, this is like something that's actually really meaningful and I think is going to impact people's lives. and the other thing too i had forgotten exactly what mike said in that conversation andrew till you played that tape but i think he would i think it worked and by that i mean he started by telling that story on tbtl and then i know that he wrote a manuscript uh basically for a memoir and then they that's now been something that he and and other folks have turned into a project for television and so i think this this this thing that he said of okay i'm i'm ready to talk about that part of my life and i want to leave i want to put that story out there so everyone can hear it so i don't have to go around and individually tell 300 people this story i think if that was his kind of goal it totally worked and now there's this this latest thing that that he co-created that's a really actually very intriguing compelling uh you know tv idea so i i guess i'm i'm happy to hear that that he was hoping to kind of create a like a i guess an official version of his story and he did and it's that story still goes on you know even today with this project so

um i i wanted to if you don't mind me saying here um one side thing here luke that we haven't even talked about is because he did tell the story on tbtl you own his life rights so oh yeah so that's

another that closer to the top of the memorial yeah i just feel like that's something that we

don't want to we don't want to forget about that aspect of it i didn't want i mean i didn't see

any reason why the listeners needed to know that i wanted to that's between i felt like that was something that was something for the courts to decide years from now when the hottest show on hbo is mike frizell's life story right that's what i swoop in with this signed email that i have you

come running into the room waving a piece of paper over your head exactly i've got a piece of paper

in front of me actually it's a uh it's something that our dear friend phyllis fletcher p fletch wrote about Mike and her time knowing Mike. This is what she said. Mike was a star maker. To Mike, his friends were undiscovered talent. He could shine a light on the most microscopic interaction and make it a universe of hilarity and recurring jokes. I had the honor on one of their Seattle trips to host Emily for a girl's day out while Mike... Mike spent time with his brother and two guys he'd worked with at Pizza Haven back in the day. Come to find out, at the end of the day, we would all have dinner together. I'd heard so many great stories about these guys over the years. To learn that I would meet them was more exciting than any celebrity encounter I've had. Can I mention that Phyllis works for the New York Times? She's not a person who has had no chance to meet celebrities. At dinner, I just stared at them like a dope. And I know Mike was clocking that whole thing. He knew I was starstruck to meet his old friends. i also went to mike for advice when a close family member was re-entering society after prison i remember being on a work trip and calling him i was so frustrated and so grateful for his help by the end of the call we were both crying that was mike too so that's our friend phyllis remembering

her friend mike frisell um who by the way i mean you know we never even mentioned it i mean for years and years mike was one of the crew that did the little red bandwagon podcast and again i know that so many of our listeners know that can we not promote other podcasts

mike would have wanted us to not promote other podcasts

on this episode of tbtl please you know just thinking about you know phyllis's and everybody's relationship with mike and that's one thing that i'm sort of um i don't know sort of hearing about this weekend as everybody's grieving in their own way and then also like coming back to the tbtl community and again whether it's via text messages to me or um or the interactions i'm seeing on social media between listeners like everybody's kind of grieving and everybody i mean first of all mike was such a big part of the show there's this dynamic where we all think that we knew him personally right even probably some people who never met him before i was the only one who truly did and then of course the relationship that like phyllis and all the other little red bandwagoners had and have with mike is is different than the relationship we had with him and that was such i mean that was such a close-knit community within this close-knit community as well and he was you know one of the architects of that thing so absolutely i would say when i'm in my more

insecure moments and i'm like in a conversation with someone where for whatever reason i've decided that i need to prove that tbtl is a thing the my main card that i pull out is oh yeah we used to have a podcast about our podcast and that always like people are like what like that's that's the one thing that i can say that like makes it sound legit and that was because of mike and all of

those little red bandwagon folks i just say kairos doll is my colleague and leave it at that

i say don't blame me i voted for riz doll wait kairos doll's my co-pilot kairos doll's my co-pilot i knew we would get there show title how would mike feel about that the memorial show for our friend mike was called kairos doll is my co-pilot i think he'd get a kick out of that actually all right let's take a quick break and then we come back we're gonna check in with our friend Jen Flash Andrews, and her memories of our dude, Mike Frizzell. Stay with us here on this special edition of TBTL. All right, welcome back to this special edition of TBTL where we're remembering our dear friend Mike Frizzell. um this is uh charlie crockett who was a favorite of mike's in fact when we uh were coming down to austin to do livewire and we i was sort of struggling to find a an artist down there a musical artist to help us out with livewire mike was like i got your guy it's charlie crockett and we reached out to him and it turned out that their tour bus was going to be like 500 miles away from Austin the day we needed them to be there, but they just, like, drove through the night. I think the bus broke. They literally, like, cruised into the Westin on fumes and then just, like, broke out their gear and just, like, made the entire show. Like, the show would have been a miserable failure without Charlie and his guys. And we only knew about them because of Mike Frizzell, so there you go. Joining us now is the producer emeritus of the program, Jen...

I love Jesus, but I drank a little.

...Flash Andrews. Jen? Welcome to the program.

Hi, guys. Hey, Jen.

These are not the circumstances under which we wanted to be reconnecting with you, but here we are. How are you doing?

I'm doing all right. I'm down a little bit, but I'm really glad to be talking to you guys. It's interesting how, as we get older, we more and more tend to connect with everybody at these kinds of events.

I've heard people who are what I consider to be very up there in years talk about this, this feeling of like you know more and more people that are in your orbit uh you know pass away and i thought well that's never going to happen to me the i don't know how those people let that happen and now it is increasingly happening to me and us but it's wonderfully

warm too you know it's there's a weird thing that happens you're gathering for this really sad event but you're so so happy to see one another and and talk about the old times and there's something also kind of beautiful about it so yeah i'm glad to be here with you guys i said i said it was going

to be kind of a bittersweet show and i was thinking is that the right term but i kind of think it is because there's you know is the sadness around somebody passing away but there's really the sweetness of getting to like i mean listen mike would have loved an entire episode dedicated to him like where he's not having to like talk about his bank robbing ways this is kind of a dream come true for him wherever he is so that's the sweet part of it um jen like every you know in the early days of tbtl like every good radio segment that we actually did i assume it was like your idea to do this special programming with mike back in the day what do you remember about how that

whole thing came together well I remember that you so Mike was kind of the one of the original tens there was the group of people that were listening from the very first week and he was one of them and he was originally he was immediately kind of helping us with content because he was sending all sorts of really funny emails and we were using a lot of it and so you ended up getting together with him because you knew him through somebody and so I remember you and I were having a show meeting the next day and you're like you will not believe mike's history and the reason is because when you know mike he's so soft spoken right so gentle and such a just a lovely human being the idea that he's a bank robber just seems like you can't even make it work so immediately we were like we gotta we gotta do this and in in tbtl world back then we were desperate for content so it's like well if one show is good five shows is better we could leave at nine

if we got all this stuff in the can we could be i could be at the night light by 902

how much we loved leaving at nine just can't be overstated you were such big soccer fans back

then right because it wouldn't a soccer no you know what it was well that but then also under the helmet there was like a seahawks show that was happening on wednesday nights and at first i was all mad because i was like how dare they muscle into our three hours of radio and then about three weeks in i was just like thank god it's under the helmet yeah yeah i love the audience crossover there too yeah um people yeah so then i remember i remember those those recording sessions just being, um, pretty, I mean, in a good way, pretty intense and riveting. I had said a little earlier in this episode of the show, Jen, that for all of the things we tried that kind of didn't work, I felt even as we were recording those conversations with Mike, like this is good radio.

Like I was like, at least we did this. Yeah, I did too. I, so it was interesting. The thing that I always remember is I got, and you know, we were promoting it and talking about it and I got an email from a listener that i trusted and he was really concerned he's like this is really out there even for you and luke i mean i know you guys are rebels but you like to break the rules but you're celebrating a bank robber and this is really out there and i just remember thinking um that's so far from what's happening here that this person is going to be amazed and because there was no that wasn't what it was and and immediately when drew started telling the story We called him Drew McGrath back then. Immediately when he started telling the story, he was so, there was so much shame and regret and all that he had been through and what he had done to his family.

That was the most, that was, I feel, when you could just see, because Mike is a, he was a fairly stoic guy. but when he got on the subject of the family that he had essentially lost over this you know the the robberies and then eventually turning himself in well really he had to flee his home because he knew that the feds were bearing down on him that was that was the most emotional he was in the whole story it wasn't about going to prison or wasn't about having to kick opioids by himself in an apartment in like san diego or some shit where he was considering ending his own life but he was too sick from the withdrawal to go down to the garage where he had the plans to do that. It was this idea of letting these other people down where he seemed to be the most, just have the sort of most intense emotions.

Exactly. And that was, it was, I knew that this person, when they heard it, they weren't going to have the same concern. And it was great because he wrote me and said, you guys did a great job, which I thought was funny because we just sat there kind of, we didn't do anything. We just sat there letting, I mean, that story just told itself in such a beautiful way and it was really moving and it really just made him somebody that the whole radio listening community really admired because of his willingness to tell the story. It was so raw. He didn't come out great in it, you know, and Mike knew what he was doing, too. I mean, he's incredibly smart. Like he listened to the radio constantly. Right. Like he was like in a isn't that part of the story of how you guys met? He was a radio aficionado who would call in to various shows and stuff. Right.

Well, I mean, Jen, you remember the part about him going to Tijuana, right? Oh, I mean, this is the craziness of this guy's life that that's like not even in the top three things we remember about him so while he was on the run so he so again i guess go to the internet archive where where do these shows exist yeah people they're not on the american public

media website um for complicated technical reasons but um these five separate hours of the show that were broadcast over the course of a you know broadcast week are on the internet archive if you go to this place called internet archive.org you can search for tbtl and find it pretty easily But also, if you're on any of the TV tale social medias, you'll be able to find it. It's been, you know, listeners have been sharing it on Slack and Facebook, and I can tweet it out, too.

so the story of this guy's life was he was always interested in media he had worked i think at a tv station in florida and and was was working as a producer there he was always interested in hosting sports radio talk the guy knew everything about sports and when he goes on the lamb because he realizes that i guess it's the fbi is is closing in on him he he he leaves where he is living at the time and he basically is now just in the wind but he has a lot of time on his hands and he's down in like southern california and he starts well he's he's listening to a ton of sports radio and he's calling in all the time to this local sports radio station in in i believe san diego and he becomes their most popular caller now again let me mention this guy is on i don't know if it's like fbi's top 10 but it's like he's on a pretty he's on a pretty intense fbi list and he's just He would go down to like the racetrack in Tijuana And bet on like horses and shit And then he would also call into the sports talk station And he became so popular as a caller That they started asking him to guest host the shows And so he goes in to host this show I think it was a night show And he has this very incredible moment Where he realizes that he has achieved his dream But he can't tell them what his real name is He can't give them his social security number for them to cut him like a check for doing it. And he has this really intense moment of being like, I actually got to this thing that I wanted to get to, but I can't even actually enjoy it because of what I've been doing in my life for the last however many years. And that was, I think, when he realized I'm going to have to kick these opioids. I'm going to have to go turn myself in. I'm either going to end my life or I'm going to turn my life around. but it was such a powerful thing for him to be basically guest hosting a sports calling show under an alias while he's wanted by the FBI

Jen is that is that how he got his nickname by the way do you know why he was Drew McFrizz

his middle name was Andrew so I think he just made it up to have a little bit of anonymity

when he was calling into shows even before TBTL right I don't know if he

I don't know where that got used originally I just know that on the like original TBTL blog we would occasionally have in the early days we would have these posts that were so funny and they'd be from somebody called drew mcfrizz and that was where i started to kind of have this little kind of question is that the guy that i had heard about from radke all those years ago because the the mcfrizz seems kind of close to frizzell and so i didn't actually realize that this was this guy that I'd already kind of heard the legend of until, you know, sort of we met him and we sort of got, you know, into it. But I just remember there being someone called Drew McFrizz and them being one of the funniest people to post anything on like the TBTL website, which if anyone posted anything there, I was overjoyed because we really did have tens of listeners in the early days.

Oh, man. And then it's funny because I think a lot of people think that Prezine, you know, kind of a classic train wreck episode came from from mike but it actually didn't we actually had a listener at the monroe state penitentiary penitentiary who um uh sent in like this whole story about making prison food and so we just used mike as our um you know expert our prison

expert your consultant yeah that was another thing about about mike's story that i was kind of surprised by and again it's a complicated topic and there's you know all kinds of things about prison reform that those are real conversations that should be had so I don't want to gloss over this but there were elements of being in federal prison that he didn't hate which I was quite surprised by when we

talked to him like he and his roommate were running this incredibly involved fantasy football league but it was all like there were no computers it was all on paper they like you know they like you know were had a softball team that they were really excited about like there was elements of him i expected like we get to the part about being in prison and it's just going to be like a stallone movie um and that you know i'm sure there were things that were not great about being incarcerated but I was surprised at how much positivity there was for Mike in prison.

Yeah, well, I remember that there was the really nail-biting part where he was possibly going to lose his roommate, and that's when it got really dark and really scary, but he didn't. So I think that really having a roommate who he actually shared sensibility with and had a true friendship with, that was where the positivity, I think, came from.

Also, I remember, Luke, he came on the show. I don't remember why we were rehashing some of these prison stories like years later, but I remember it was like 2014 or something, and he had called – you and I were talking to him on TBTL, and he was on the phone and talking about these things. And you know those – first of all, I remember him talking about how much he loved his fantasy football league that I believe he ran in prison. But you know how you have those moments of conversation, like little snippets of conversation you have with somebody that kind of rattle around your head and almost like kind of echo back through time, like Marge Simpson's voice in Homer's head. There's a little snippet of that conversation we had with him that I think is the most wrong thing anybody has ever said on TBTL. And I've said a lot of wrong things on TBTL, but this one belongs to Mike. And that was, oh, Andrew, you do fine in prison. And I think about I swear to God, I think about that all the time. And I'm like, what in the world? He's like, well, you're smart enough. You'd get by. And I swear, like, I think about that a lot because I'm like, how does Mike think I would do okay in prison?

I think you'd do great in prison, honestly.

As usual, I'm glad I could center myself in the story again. No, but, like, I really do. Sometimes I don't know what I'll be doing, maybe, like, enjoying a long shower or something and thinking can't do this in prison. And then, like, why does Mike think I'd be good in prison?

Listen, this is the order of who would do the best in prison on the show currently. Jen would do the best because you're really good at organizing people.

Well, and if you've heard the prison episode, I actually did kind of descend into a pretty, pretty serious prison. You got pretty tough, pretty fast.

That was, I want to mention, well before Orange is the New Black. Yes. Jen was the original Orange.

I mean, I think at one point I was like, call me Granny.

Yes. You had a prison name and you were like kind of like Sean was, I don't want to use the term, But let's just say Sean was your underling in this prison environment that we'd entered.

Mentor. You can say it, Luke. Mentor.

Yes, he was your mentee. Sean was your prison mentee, granny.

If Sean was not as good a friend, he would have definitely taken me to HR for what went on that night.

So Jen would be the best just because I think you're really good at just sort of navigating those kinds of situations. Andrew, I think you'd be the next best because I think you are a people person. You know how to make the people you're dealing with feel heard. And I think, I mean, you wouldn't be the traditional kind of like prison boss ruling through fear. But I think there's a way to rule through kindness. I follow a lot of prison accounts on TikTok. I'm not even kidding. And you'd be surprised at how friendly a lot of what goes on in themselves is, at least what makes it on a TikTok. I would be the worst because I have poor impulse control. and I would be I would definitely pick a fight with the wrong person very quickly confident

though confidence goes a long way in situations like that I mean big dog big dog is definitely

leading to Luke's early prison yes I it really would it would be I I would not be good at just keeping my head down again if I could just be the nicest guy on the yard or if I could be the quietest guy on the yard or the toughest guy on the yard any of those would be fine I would not be able to do any of those three and so i would be the deadest guy um pretty good jen do you remember so many of these like early tbtl events kind of blend together but we we did some kind of a thing that either happened at the nightlight or ended up at the nightlight in the very early days it wasn't night one party at bandits where jason didn't even bring out the cake it wasn't i it wasn't even the bowling alley uh sunset lanes thing where i believe about two people showed up which was at the end of that week but there was another thing where we were at the night light and i remember mike giving me these signed gloves from a boxer named kelly the ghost pavlik which i still have do you remember why or what the series of events were that we were at the night light with

listeners i'm quite sure we were celebrating like the 50th show okay it was something

You

like that it was a it was a milestone of some sort but like a lot of people show it up and we yes you know we shut it down and it was kind of a big group that was i feel like that was the first

time that we really anyone showed up for a thing we were doing and it kind of did feel like oh shit this is starting to kind of work yeah it was a really fun night we um it's funny because the

listener that i remember the most vividly from that night was the one that got so mad at you when you lost your temper when the Sonics got sold? Do you remember that? Because she worked at Starbucks. She worked at Starbucks. I mean, she was devoted to you, and then she wasn't.

Well, you know, she was ahead of that curve. That's actually been the journey a lot of listeners and former listeners have gone on. Jen, I don't know if you heard this update on that story, but I actually ran in to Howard Schultz in Madison Park. i was out walking my dog and uh i maybe i don't think i'd been on a run but anyway i was in this in this little like kind of fancy little part of madison park and this couple came up with these beautiful dogs and they had been like working out or something uh because they were in kind of exercise clothes and we started chatting and it dawned on me and midway through the conversation that this was freaking howard schultz the guy from starbucks who bought the sonics and then let them leave and i knew it for two reasons one he had howard written on his which was shocking to me shocking to me i was like if you work in the madison park starbucks put a big picture of that guy up behind the freaking machine make sure that guy's coffee is is is done right but then this was the worst part when i realized this it became more important to me in that moment for him and his wife to think that i was like a rich madison park person because that's how we were relating it was sort of like it was like oh yeah we all we all belong to this part of seattle we all belong in this conversation we're all kind of like maybe i run a hedge fund who knows and the idea of me calling him out it was more important to me that howard schultz think i was like him than for me to finally speak my truth which i had been speaking on tbtl and anywhere else they would give me a microphone for years and i had the chance and i just completely i didn't even wimp out i wanted to seem bougie more than i wanted to tell him off

actually I actually have no problem with that I think that was the right decision yeah you

you were going to move the needle on his feelings on any of this probably with this encounter no matter what you said it's funny you but you had been honing that bullet I wasn't a random person

I was not a random person who was caught in a moment they couldn't have expected I was a professional radio host who had spent many hours like workshopping the speech i was going to give this person i mean i could not have been more ready and then just chose to seem like i was a rich guy more than a person who tells off somebody who ruined you know my basketball situation you're

a fine man sir thanks for what you did for the community yes yes um so for me the the um for me really it all starts this whole story really starts at verve wine bar okay um do you remember that because emily flew up emily was also an original 10 and she had started to fall in love with mike just by listening to him on the show and hearing his emails being read and they so she

flew up for our book club yes verve wine bar in columbia city or something yes r.i.p um

It was the Oscar Wilde Book Club, our very first one, and we didn't know what we were walking into. At all TV-tale events, we never knew what we were walking into. But he was going to be there. She flew up famously. So Jason and I drove her to her hotel afterward, and she was super frustrated because Mike had kind of ignored her. But, of course, it's because Mike was so nervous.

Well, see, that's see, this is really this is such good backstory, Jen, from you, because I didn't know all of this. I had sort of I had figured that the way things were working from what I was hearing from Mike was he had a big crush on this listener from Austin named Emily. But he had definitely messed it up and she was not reciprocating. I thought that he had like by his telling of things had just basically kind of blown it or something.

Well, it all got worked out like, yeah, it sure did. But because he was so nervous. But it was one of those things where I was leading that book club and I can't really remember much going on because I was so watching the two of them, like trying to see, you know, are they going to what's going to happen? What's going to happen? And then they were like never even in a conversation together the whole night. And it's because Mike was kind of ignoring her because he was so nervous.

And we learned that in prison. You go up to the girl you have a crush on in the yard and you ignore them.

day one of prison you have to ignore him on the first day exactly yeah so it's fun because we got

to be we got to be at their first date and kind of watch the watch it all unfold over the years

oh and then also perform their actual wedding and then we performed their wedding at the uh

live seattle show also in columbia city i was trying to remember this jen i don't even know

if this may come as news to emily who's probably listening to this i did you get ordained was i was anyone ordained you're doing that i did you did i hope yeah i hope i did you did you have half you have to remember that happening it's also it's also the kind of thing where i could just figure who's ever gonna really look this up who's gonna really check in with the universal life church just i feel bad if i wasn't i feel bad if somehow their their marriage has been not legal this whole time due to my kind of lack of follow through well it was funny too because um when i

was so you and i had agreed that you would do the actual i now pronounce you because you were legal and i would do all the stuff around it so i was having my little premarital counseling with them beforehand and i'll never forget emily saying could you guys not mention the bank robber stuff because my parents don't know and they'll never listen to tbtl but i can't not have them listen to my wedding so it'll be the only time they ever listen can you guys please not mention it no problem and so i remember telling you and you're like okay don't mention it don't mention

it we didn't we were didn't mike have a tuxedo t-shirt on like underneath his outfit because this was a surprise to everyone there except a very small number of people who knew about it So that was like the reveal, right?

Yes. She had a coat on over her little white wedding dress and they threw off and then he had his tuxedo t-shirt on. And do you remember that when we were done, we released the Kraken, which we've been holding for like three years?

What I remember about that is that Kraken was very, very alcohol dense. Like, because, you know, I know my way around a shot of alcohol and I'm generally pretty OK with that, at least early in the night. but we took those shots of Kraken on stage and I remember being like I'm glad this show is done because I am I was woozy immediately yeah it was strong um I I've been thinking about you know Mike and and TBTL a lot of course this weekend and Jen I thought you would probably be a good person to to sort of weigh in on this would you do you think it's accurate to say that the TBTL changed the course of Mike Frizzell's life and also Mike Frizzell kind of changed the course of TBTL

I do I do because he it was it was kind of the um it's like he gave us permission to interact more with the listeners because it went so well and there's so often in radio this idea that you never want to meet the listeners you know you know there's always a huge barrier between you and the listeners and I think there was something about how easily he was absorbed into the fabric of the show that made us want to do it more and and also not be afraid of it. And, you know, because sometimes it didn't go great. I know you guys have been doing phone calls, you know, sometimes it didn't go great, but it was always rich and real and authentic. And I think he kind of was our gateway.

That's a really good way to look at it. I think you're right. I think to the degree that this show has any strong points, it's how much and, you know, people even to this day although less so i think uh you know they'll ask me to like be in on some conference talking about podcasting and i mean now there are like a lot of very successful podcasts so again people aren't exactly lining up to get lb's perspective but but when i've been asked to try to explain why how tbtl has existed all these years the one of the first things i i always say and jen you get a ton of credit for this in the early days and now andrew you've you've taken the baton on this note I've done none of it at any point in the history of the show is having a really really close connection to the listeners and turning over so much of the actual content to them to generate and to be a part of and you know that element of tbtl is really kind of the what makes this show I guess kind of good in the end and I think the fact that Mike was part of the initial wave of that and and like you said Jen the fact that it went well and the listeners responded to him and to that happening that kind of set the tone for what the show was going to be about yeah yep um i know that we have speaking of the listeners i know that we got a a voicemail from listener maggie uh that was a kind of a nice thought on mike uh andrew do you want to

play that bad boy yeah perfect timing on this i was just going to ask if if we could um take a listen to this of course this is from maggie and jen you know maggie maggie again yeah i mean First weeker, do you think? I don't think so. But early, early.

Okay, but early on radio days, I think. Anyway, Maggie, having heard the news about Drew McFrizz's passing last night, left us this voicemail on our answering machine. Is that what we call it? And I just found it to be incredibly touching. So here, take a listen to this.

hello you two it's maggie i wanted to call and pay tribute to drew mcfriz what a guy i just wanted to say that he was instrumental in bringing so many tens together and especially Seattle and Pacific Northwest 10, but he just had the biggest heart, and he was the greatest guy, and he was a true 10. I feel like next to Jen, he really was huge in keeping people not lonely, curing global loneliness. I really feel like he took that ball and ran with it. He had a huge heart. When my daughter Erica and I were having a hard time a few years ago, about five years ago, we were having a really hard time getting along and stuff, and we were friends with him, and he just would hound us until we went to therapy together, and he put us together. I mean, he put people and families and friends together, and my life wouldn't be the same if I did not ever meet him. What a great guy. Anyway, I just want to pay tribute to an amazing man, smart, intelligent, kind, compassionate, a fantastic person. God bless him, and rest in peace. Mike Frizzell, we love you so much. Power out.

There you go. I have to be totally honest and say I'm starting to feel a little jealous about how much attention Mike is getting during this episode.

Yeah, I'll cut all this out. Don't worry about it.

It's funny when the ice storms hit Austin, you know, last year or earlier in the year, I was worried. And so I sent him an email and said, are you guys OK? And what do you need? What can we do? And all this stuff. And he wrote me back. Don't worry, we're fine. And attached a picture of a commode. That sounds about right. It was just so classic, Mike. Oh, maybe laugh.

Hey, Jen, I know that you have been kind of, as is your want, you've been kind of marshalling some kind of sort of emergency fundraising services over at Pretty Snarky. What are you doing over there? What's going on related to funeral costs?

Okay, so if you go to prettysnarky.com, it's an auction site. and i have all of the original tbtl t-shirts from back in the radio days so i'm i'm auctioning them all off and then there's also some signed pictures from me and sean and luke there's um dinner with me and jason and there's also a way to just give five bucks and the auction is going to go live tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. It'll go for a week or so, and then we can get all that money down to Emily to help with memorial costs and funeral costs. So I hope everybody will go to check out prettysnarky.com. Also there, you can see Emily has given, she knows we're talking about this today, and she gave me permission to put her address there. So if you want to send a card, you can do that as well. So you can go there right now. it's up but the auction doesn't start until 9 a.m. tomorrow okay thank you for doing that jen i really appreciate it the other thing is that people just want to reach out to me for any reason you can always reach me at tbtljen at email.com email.com okay it's like is that a new

service i don't know about tbtljen at gmail.com um jen thank you so much for for joining us today And, again, let's talk soon under less sort of bittersweet circumstances.

That would be awesome. I would love it. I can't wait to catch up with you guys more.

I know that you've been through so much in your life over the last couple of years as well. So just know that we're thinking about you two and you and Jason. Jason just really over the Seahawks performance yesterday, which was brutal. But now we're thinking of you.

He's in a dark place.

We love you and appreciate you coming on today.

All right. Thanks, guys. Love you, too.

Thanks, Jim. All right. Bye. Rolling on with a little more Charlie Crockett, one of our buddy Mike's favorite singers, as we remember him here on this special edition of TVTL on this Monday. The first time that I heard the name Mike Frizzell was uttered by my pal Bill Radke I believe we were sitting in the newsroom in KUOW And he was just reading aloud this funny letter that had been sent to him From somebody in federal prison And so I felt it was only fitting that as we're remembering Mike We bring Bill onto the show Radke, welcome back my friend

Lucas, good to talk to you again

Heya Bill um how did you uh how did you meet mike when did you first become aware of this dude's existence

uh in college we were in a fraternity together and um we were we were college buddies and when he didn't seem to have any problems you know he was you know like you are luke mike was funniest guy in the room a little cocky um a sweet basketball player like the the jumper you know and all that and then he was he just he was he was cool and he was hilarious wasn't he yeah wasn't

he like a really good high school basketball player too you told me one time super good like

he got he went you know how how kids i was kind of unaware at the time but kids will go from one school to another they get recruited i don't know if they sort of play that up in high school because it's supposed to be about academics but i remember being told that when he went to i think it was Eastside Catholic. It was like news on the Eastside, you know, Eastside Catholic scores major, you know, major recruit or something like that. So he just, he didn't have the height that I think his dad did, but he, he had a lot of games. So he was a, he was a big deal who maybe, maybe could have played major college ball if he just spent a few minutes his caller.

Huh. And so you guys were, you were in the same fraternity. I wasn't sure if you were in the same one or he was in like an adjacent fraternity or something. No, we were, we were like, you know, next door roomies and and what is it that other than his uh his wit and the like what was there anything else that kind of like put him on your radar or drew you to him were you guys like good

buddies at the frat we were well you know i know now i knew eventually would find out that mike was you know had a lot going on that was kind of uncommon for college age you know sort of white well-ish off suburban, you know, frat kid. So I think he fronted a lot with his, with his, with his deadpan, you know, humor and just like his, his critiques, you know, of, and so he was just, people love to be around him for that. But I don't, I didn't feel super close to him. And I, looking back, you know, looking back, I think that was kind of hard to do. You were around Mike sort of for the, for the running commentary. and the athletic, you know, like encyclopedic knowledge and the wit and the good times. But we were, you know, we hung around a lot. He was a big part of my college life.

How did it end up then that you were one of the people he was writing letters to from prison?

Well, part of that is because he asked me to be a, what do you call it, a character witness, you know, when it came to sentencing. And, you know, I could write. And I think he's like, yeah, you know, Bill's got a way with words. He might be a good one to write the judge. And I did. And basically, you know, didn't shine him on too much, but said, look, you know, he's screwed up and a lot of people screw up and don't get a second chance. And maybe they deserve it, too. But I think if somebody can, you know, make himself useful to people, I think Mike can. I was straightforward. And, you know, his sentence got reduced from what it could have been. And I don't know if part gratitude, but but also just reconnected us, you know, he also had helped. I had helped him move into college at University of Florida and in Gainesville when I lived down there. So we kind of, you know, we kind of yeah, we sort of stayed in touch.

I feel like those letters that he was writing you that you were reading to me were kind of like there's a whole world now built around that. It's like, you know, the Bill Simmons universe, and I think to a darker degree, the Barstool sports universe, and this intersection of pop culture and sports, and snarkiness, which I swear to God, those letters that you would read me was the first time I'd ever heard those things combined, those ingredients.

Yeah, yeah, you said it, you said it well, I mean, he just, yeah, he kind of, what's the word, presaged? Presaged, I've never said it.

that word out loud but yeah that that that vein of humor and and it was encyclopedic like i said that was part of the humor would be the references that they would make to like minor players and and done in this sort of sarcastic way like just the fact that they were minor players and we all know who they are makes it funny um that there was some sonic who had a haircut that

looked like he was in cameo and i believe he was mad at this player and he said word up cameo now Stop Fouling Clyde Drexler or something?

Yeah, was it David Wingate? It might have been. He had a fade. Somebody with a fade. Yeah, word up, brother. Now quit fouling Drexler every 10 seconds. And he would just go down the list of Sonics players. Like, you just got the sense of, like, I'm watching these guys, and, you know, we all have to, you know, we're frustrated. The Sonics were frustratingly close to being okay. So he would just go down the list of a lot of them minor players. So, yeah, David Wingate, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Aaron Williams, does he look normal for you? And then somebody else. And you and me would cry about these letters. They were so, you know, written from a guy in prison, you know?

Yeah. Hilarious. It felt, well, then it almost felt like, I don't mean to talk about Mike like he was just some sort of commodity, but then it was like he was your friend, and he would send you letters. And then when TBTL happened and we started to see this person commenting under a name that kind of seemed like it had echoes of his real name because he was going by Drew McFrizz. I was like, I think this might be Bill's jail friend. Is he out of jail? Is he sending these from inside like Sheridan federal prison? And then as he sort of came into TBTL and I became, you know, really good friends with him and stuff. And it was, it was, I have to say, it was always kind of mind blowing to me to be friends with this person who I kind of considered a celebrity in my mind, the celebrity of the person who cracked up my friend Bill Radke who I looked up to. Yeah.

Yeah, he was in another world in a way. I think that's partly why I was drawn to him even back in school was that he thought that people were absurd, like that life was absurd. And you have that too, Luke, you know, just like kind of an outsider sensibility. But when, you know, when he was 21 or whatever and thinking jump shots and being cool and dating and, you know, just like life's all ahead of him, it had a cockiness to it. It had sort of like other people are ridiculous. And then but what I what I appreciated about Mike, one thing is that, you know, after stuff went downhill for him and, you know, and everybody knew about it, he seemed like he just he was able to turn that on himself a little bit. Like, yeah, people are ridiculous and I'm one of them. and he got he had a sense of humility about him about the whole thing and i just i i i was i kind of appreciated that about him if you know what i mean let me ask you guys a question i don't

know if it's a rude question or not but would you have been skeptical of mike's stories if you didn't know him ahead of time you know i met him at a bar yeah no way i'm believing this shit or even just somebody writing letters to you from prison you know like radke if you didn't know him from college before all of this happened i could just see you know your two people working at a radio station or later various radio stations and thinking like there's no way all of this could

be true yeah yeah he in some way he seemed like two different people to me because i'm telling you like the the what you guys never knew was that like just cocky just keeps coming back to mind i mean and he also like i say you know he was kind of hiding some stuff that he was dealing with and so so he had an edge to him you know he could be kind of a kind of a jackass and you know and then funny again and then you want to be with him again but but it was a totally different personality from the like the quiet Mike he just he got you know he was quiet when I when I when I saw him after prison um uh at least he was that that was a big contrast to me they seem like kind of you know you got the through line but they were two different personalities in a way well that

That was something that Jen was saying when she was on just a few minutes ago was that it was really hard for people who met post prison Mike to think that this is a dude who could have done any of the things that he talked about doing because he was so he was so sort of quiet and very thoughtful. his you know emily his wife i was talking to her this weekend i hope it's okay if i say this but she just said like you know like he just he got up this sounds corny and she actually said this sounds corny one of the things that's great about emily is she has zero sentimentality about her but she said this sounds corny but he just got up every single day and he just said how can i make her life better and he really did that like and that was through a lot of health stuff and just A lot of everything and like That guy sounds like a fundamentally Different dude than The guy that that was

sinking jump shots at the ima and talking shit you know and the idea that the journey that he went on led him to be that guy is amazing because people can people can mess up and they can make no impact on their personality or they could just come out being like well that sucked okay back to it but it sounds like this guy was on a life journey that just ended up with him just being an incredibly you know thoughtful friendly person who who just left everything better than he found

it i think that was there was a connection you know which is what i think you're saying it's like the impression i got we didn't you know we stayed in time we were emailing a couple of weeks ago you know he was reaching out asking people for advice and things so we stayed in touch a little bit it's not like i'm mike's closest friend and confidant but i have the impression that he just felt like i i screwed up don't we all i wasted a bunch of time i hurt you know i hurt people my first wife and kid and you know and and we don't have I don't have time for this anymore you know like I'm not I'm not I'm not a teenager and he seemed just like I you guys have no one better than I did in a in a big sense but to me I had the impression of that like he just had sort of lowered his voice and like had a sense of concentration about him like he could you know be funny and all that but he he had a sense of focus like that stuff was not the main deal and And so I'm kind of not surprised, and I'm glad to hear from Emily that she had that experience with him, because I believe that he's capable of that, and that's fantastic. And I just want to say I wish I had known Emily, and, you know, Emily, you might be listening to this, and I'm just, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, and I'm glad to have known Mike. You know, mistakes and glory and all of that, and, you know, it's nice to be able to have known him and to be remembering the good times.

I will say, I don't want to sort of inject myself into anything that's not my experience, I guess, but from knowing Mike in the last 10 years of his life, I will say that him being married to Emily and them building this life together in Austin, I really feel like it was sort of the great joy of his life. He would tell me that, you know, and it was like the fact that he was able to have that, I, you know, um, in, in, in the, you know, the latter part of, of what turned out to be the totality of his life is, you know, not to get all Hallmark channel on it, but it's, that's really amazing. And I'm really happy for him because I know that the two of them were just madly in love with that enormous brood of animals that they were just constantly dealing with. When I was talking to Emily yesterday, I was like so many animals in the background. I was like, and it was like for a while Mike's full-time job was dog walking I think just because of the amount of animals so I just the idea of them being happy down there in Austin for all of the challenges that they'd both gone through health-wise and other it just that gives me a little smile on my face to know that he was so deeply in love you know with her yeah and you know that I heard

the same thing around the way from from the set of friends who I knew which tells you a lot like These are guys, you know, they're just, they're telling me, well, you know, yeah, I heard from him this time, you know, a few months ago, you know, a smooth one from him, you know, because we would every once in a while just ask, hey, what's going on? And it was very common for them to say that, you know, he found somebody he's crazy about and they're really happy. I would hear that from a different set of friends.

so that uh the fact that emily's handle i think maybe on tbtl land but maybe elsewhere is joy stealer and he loved that shit because it was just so not corny it was so unsentimental that he had met somebody who was kind of intellectually his his match and emily was describing to me some of their kind of i guess conversations um you know later sort of later in mike's life as in to say pretty recently and just the amount of unsentimentality between them was just kind of delighting me because of how much they just were both they were really kind of intellectual matches and both very funny and both really enjoyed i think kind of you know matching wits so um you know i'm happy about that i guess anyway yeah well bill dude thank you so much for uh making time in your day to jump on and talk to us about, about Mike. Hey, thanks for thinking of me, man. It's

good to remember Mike and, um, and my, my condolences and best wishes to Emily. And I hope that, I hope that some numbers that, you know, we might, if, if, if there's not some kind of get together near us and we might just have our own, you know, up here, um, you know, I've been on the phone with people, of course, who, who, who, who know Mike, um, in some way, I hope, I hope this can be a chance for people.

who loved Mike and love each other to get together and have a good time. Yeah, I hear you on that. Well, thanks, Bill. Love you too, man. Thanks for coming on today.

You too. Bye, guys. Bye, Bill.

All right. I don't know what else we've got to say on the topic, Andrew. Any last thoughts before we wrap this up?

No, I think that that was a fitting tribute. Thanks to everybody. I mean, obviously, thanks to Bill and Jen, but also to Maggie who left us that really powerful voicemail earlier and everybody who's been kind of reaching out and everybody who's kind of being there. Yeah, Phyllis, of course, and all the folks, again, who are leaning on each other on the Facebook page and what have you. It was a pretty dark weekend.

My guess is, do you know that, and I feel like Mike would appreciate the annoyance of this, Andrew, I've been trying to log into Facebook today, trying to so i can kind of see what's going on over there i know there's i would imagine a lot of activity a lot of tributes things like that and it won't even let me because i don't know it's just like i don't know the password and it i've been being i don't even want to be a part of the metaverse but i was trying today because i wanted to see what people were saying about my friend mike and i can't even do it so i'm just going to say i'm going to assume that there's a lot of conversation over there for if you want to go over and talk with other people and and kind of trade stories or just be you know virtually with folks who you know who love Mike and want to remember him I guess that's happening on Facebook I think so yeah

and we have a slack community as well as well where again people are sharing their memories and also sharing that link where you can go back and listen to to his five part interview with you guys which is so good I love Mike's voice by the way anybody say that yet I've been thinking about that just well read he was talking a bit about how, yeah, that's super interesting about how he says he could actually hear Mike's change in his voice post-prison. I obviously had no idea because I didn't have context for that, but whenever I listened back to this tape or when I was cutting some of this tape this spring when we were doing the Drops of Stupider contest, can we go back and Mike made it so close to, I think he was like the runner-up,

right? If we'd known that Mike was on Borrowed Time, God, I would have given him the title over my boat crash story. Jeez Louise.

Mike, I'm sorry, dude. But whenever I am, you know, listening back to that stuff, like Mike's voice is, I find it to be very captivating and soothing in a way.

All right. So that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening, everyone. And we love all of you. Thanks for letting this be our job, even though there are days like this where it feels kind of sad. But again, kind of happy to remember somebody who is as special as Mike Frizzell. We're going to go out with another Charlie Crockett song. And this was one that I asked Emily, what was Mike's favorite song? And she said, this has got to be it. It's In the Night by Charlie Crockett. And that's what we're going to wrap things up with today. Thanks for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow doing absolutely meaningless content. So please join us again for that. Until then, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Hug your loved ones. And please remember, no mountain too tall. Good luck to all.

I was dying in the dark, I was hurt in the night, I've been losing to the man, trying to make him understand me. The only days it can find With deflation broken gray On my knees in the night Knees in the night Days it can find With deflation broken gray On my knees in the night Knees in the night In the night, in the night In the dark and open night In the night, in the night In the dark and lonesome night Power out.