Muse

Dear President Vladimir Putin, I'm so sorry that I was not your mother. You would get so many raspberries after your bath, real funny ones on your little Putin belly. You'd laugh so much you'd shake like a bowl of Putin jelly. If I had been your mother, I'd let you stay up late to watch 90 Day Fiance. You wouldn't understand it, but we'd have fun anyway. way. If I were your mother, I would rely upon you heavily for likes on Instagram before you were evil, which would build your self-esteem and you'd say, I like myself the way I am. If I were your mother, you wouldn't have to invade Ukraine. Instead, we'd splash in puddles in the driveway in the rain. Perhaps it's not too late. We can spare the world such pain. Come over and bake cookies We'll use up all the sugar cane

TBTL I'm here for all you teachers and teamsters You farmers and charmers

Rock and roller, holy roller Push and stroller, pro bowler with an abscess molar

So I was thinking about having kids I got the names picked out. They're going to be Donut and the Golden Hen. I know what you're saying. How do you know they're going to be girls?

Sooner or later, gentlemen, you will eat your words. You can't be that overly confident. Never, baby, never. You might eat that mic. Hey, what happened? Awesome. Oh, I can't believe this is actually happening.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live peace and love peace and love my name is luke burbank

i am your host perhaps the torture of unwritten youth would not within your heart imbue ascription to such fealty against that world that you thought was so cruel coming to you from the hollywood

broadcast center located right here in portland oregon where it is oh man oh man it is didn't know you like to get wet though we're in one of those uh atmospheric river situations right now where it is just torrentially raining but also ridiculously warm i feel warm and i'm levitating trying to check the temperature right now what i know is that i like 60 degrees here in portland I turned the heat off and I opened the windows. I was sweating walking around in my apartment this morning. That's how warm it is outside as an absolute deluge of water sweeps down the streets here in Portland. The good news, though, of course, is that, as always, it's warm and dry on the inside of podcast number 3629 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Speaking of the streets of Portland, I have a little update on a story that unfolded in real time on Friday. Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? All kind of police activity that was going on outside my window during the show recording. And I was able to get the 411 on what happened, and it's quite the story, which I'll tell you about in a moment. And also, we've got some ranting and some raving by way of the Seattle Times. People raving about condiment-related jokes on the streets of Seattle. And we asked the question, are micro-affections the new micro-aggressions? Plus, I've got a rant against Major League Baseball. out baseball's not back yet and um it's got me spiraling a little bit at a weird sunday when i i should have been barbecuing uh up veggie dogs on my tiny balcony and listening to uh mariners action instead i was listening to bonniver and crying into a veggie lasagna uh so uh we'll we'll deal with the fallout of the possible major league baseball season being delayed as well we'll do all that with the help of this young man longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is he is decamped from the burgundy bay basement district just outside the cuyahoga valley and now once again joins us from the roosevelt neighborhood of seattle washington i'm back i've returned i'm back y'all he is andrew walsh and he's joining me right now

from the place I just mentioned,

You

the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my dude.

Oh, Luke Burbank, were I your mother. To Green Lake you would not go to smoke a friend's weed on Duck Island, though. Your boats crash, not you would, and give away your address you should not. That's all I got. That rhymes at the end. And that's all I got. Rhymes with not.

I love that you were able to work that up during the intro.

Yeah, that's all. You can really tell there's a direct line where I ran out of time where you introduced me. That was good, though.

I think you actually have a very good knack for the particular kind of, I forget what I said on Friday, but like crime against the English language that that poem is. But it's kind of a weird, specific kind of bad poem. And I think you kind of nailed the scansion of the whole thing.

I just wanted to make sure that we got a little conversation about the original poem in there. Because I just feel like, I told you this before the show, we played that parody of the poem at the beginning of the show. And I know that somebody will be tuning into TBTL for the first time. Or they missed, what was it, Thursday's show where we played the painful audio of that poet reading her poem to Putin. I think it was Friday's show. Was that Friday's show?

I think it was our most recent episode, but just as a refresher, here's a little sample.

Dear President Vladimir Putin, I'm so sorry that I was not your mother. If I was your mother, you would have been so loved, held in the arms of joyous light. Never would the story's plight the world unfurled before our eyes, a pure demise of nations sitting peaceful under a night sky. If I was your mother, the world would have been warm.

Do you think that this will be taught in poetry classes at some point, or at least sort of analyzed as kind of how to not write poetry? I don't think so.

I think there's one thing, and this is not to offend any poets out there or poetry lovers, but I don't think there's a dearth of bad poems in the world. I think, like any art form, there's always more bad than good, right? We just hope that the good floats to the top. Like, wouldn't you say that there's always more bad bands out there than the good bands, right?

Yes, absolutely. And there's lots of dog girl that's been created. You're right. It's like you don't have to look super far to find bad poetry. But there's just something special to me about this one. I almost feel like it would be a fun project in a poetry class to really kind of – to just try to, like, find the black box of this poem And then go back and look at the flight data and figure out where did this exactly go so wrong?

Well, there's something. It is so funny. Now we're just and I apologize. I did this to us. We should get on with get on with newer topics. But, you know, we didn't really hit on the context of this too much when we were talking about it, because not only is it a bad poem, but it's so clearly about taking something and turning it into a poem about you, the poet. Right. And inserting yourself into this scary cultural moment and putting this out on social media and and and inserting yourself directly as a character into the poem, into the narrative. I mean, that's where a lot of the the cringe comes from, not just the poem and the and the cringy delivery of it.

Yeah, I think what I said on Friday was it's it's really the ultimate centering yourself in the story.

Maybe we didn't talk about that. Yeah.

Where it's just kind of like there's this truly horrific thing going on in the world, and somehow it's about – you have managed to make it about how you are – you would be a world-class mother to a dictator. Yeah, yeah. Like, which is just not where the focus probably should be right now. The focus should be on the people of Ukraine and, you know, trying to send them as much positivity and love as we can, not bragging about how we would have fixed it because our mothering skills are so incredible. By the way, speaking of the black box, how was your flight home, your flights, plural, home? Well, we know that you made it, so that's a win.

Glad that a black box was not involved. Right. I mean, that's a win.

But I know that it was your second to last row of the airplane window seat, which was for you almost as bad as it gets for the longer of the two flights. How did it all end up shaking?

Yeah, so here I'll give you a quick rundown on this, although I know you don't want me to rush through any kind of airplane travel stories, no matter how lacking of a power out they may or may not have.

You can leave your hat on, Andrew, as you're telling me a story about airline seating.

You can leave your neck pillow.

on um maybe a show title i'll write it down i'm not a neck pillow man for what it's worth it's just one more thing to carry around um but uh yeah so from cleveland to seattle you first have to take one little uh jaunt of a of a flight from cleveland to chicago which by the way tailwinds must be going our way uh when you're heading west because it was only an hour like it's like literally 60 minutes you're up and you're down um for that flight no problem there small small airline they did make me gate check my bag there but in the way i know you don't like that i don't like it although i'm coming around honestly and this is the kind of gate check where you get it um right there again when you're uh-huh what is it disboarding the plane that's sometimes they call

it a la cart yes like alaska calls it the a la cart which is just that the cart you got to put your your any kind of luggage that's larger than a bread box it's got to go on that thing but then you get it back right when you get off the plane so that's not the most inconvenient um but i would

say that yeah every flight i had they ended up making me check my bag at the gate because it happened again for the long flight from chicago to cleveland because i you know i booked these tickets i don't know if i booked them later than i should or it's just too cheap to try to upgrade but all of my flights were kind of pushed pushed me into the back of the plane which means i'm one of the last groups to board which never made sense to me it seems like you'd want to board the back of the plane first but um so that means by the time I was rolling my bag up to the front they said we have no more room for roller bags on this plane everybody must check them that happened to me every single flight this trip um despite the fact that when I did board the plane um from Cleveland or I'm sorry from Seattle to Chicago uh last week there was literally two places where my bag would have nicely fit like just big empty squares uh but whatever get me started do not get

me started it's like yeah there's so many times where i think that the the the folks working for the airlines and you know they've been doing really yeoman's work over the last two years because there's just so many incidents of people being jerks about masks and things and so it's not a fun job but i do think there's a certain like you just look at the flight manifest and then you just start announcing that it's full even though there's not an actual system for tracking it i've had the same thing where they take my bag and want to check it or something and you get on the plane and there's plenty of room and you're like this isn't a super precise system but anyway yeah i am

i gotta say i'm i'm relaxing a little bit because i really do hate i don't know i guess i just don't like the airlines you're right though i i always acknowledge the fact that the people who work for the airlines are not responsible for the reason i hate the airline so i always try to be as gracious to them as possible but there's something galling about like well I bought this ticket I you're allowed to bring one bag on like I do everything right on my end as the consumer but then they can always just change the rules at the last minute they can tell you oh that bag can't come on or we've changed your seat which is what happened to me not necessarily for the worst but for the long flight from Chicago to Cleveland I found out I don't know maybe on that flight was on saturday so i think i got an email on friday saying hey we've we've um wait you said from chicago to cleveland i'm sorry from chicago to seattle the long flight i should say the long flight home we'll refer to it from here on out i got an email from them saying hey we've changed your um you know whatever the type of plane is we change your aircraft i guess is the word i'm looking for and so therefore we had to move your seat which it doesn't it looked like it had the same number of rows i don't understand exactly what's going on here's what i think actually happened was using the united app on friday when i went to check in for my flight i had as you just mentioned a not so not so great seat for me it was actually the second to last row of the plane window seat so i was going to be trapped all the way back there i don't like windows i like the aisle um and so that was making me a little bit uncomfortable but i was thinking i can handle it And also, it's not a middle seat. That's not so bad. But I opened up the app, and I'm like, well, they do have these seats that have a little checkmark on them that are kind of like upgraded seats. They're not super nice. They're just basically not a complete torture chamber of a seat. And supposedly, you can book one of those higher up in the order, like a row that's closer to the front of the plane and an aisle seat. And I'm like, what if I just take one of those? And then I'll click through. And if it charges me, I'll find out how much it costs. And maybe I'll pay or I'll just slowly back away like Homer into the bushes and just keep my seat. So I choose one of those better seats. Again, nothing special about it. It's not an emergency row. It's not. It's just like a seat that's further up on the plane. And it's an aisle seat. So I'm like, OK, that's good. Instead of row 37 window, maybe take row 24 aisle. OK, I select it. I click through. It never tells me that it wants to charge me more money. I'm like, huh, I wonder if I just got away with something. Or I'm worried, are they? going to say hey you didn't pay for this and then just give me a middle seat somewhere like did i give up my slightly less hellish seat um either way about six hours later i get an email saying hey we switched the aircraft this aircraft has switched we are now giving you a different seat i'm like that doesn't seem right this seems like the same aircraft to me but whatever they kept me in the aisle though but they moved me all the way to the very very very very very

very last row um but an aisle seat so i would rather have the aisle than a window or the middle the very very last row isn't great because there will inevitably be a long line of people waiting

to use the restroom who are the nice thing though is you can use the restroom without getting up

from your seat exactly so that's convenient yes i have a i have a system of straws and funnels it's not pleasant for everybody on board but like you say i don't have to get up which is nice because who would want to get up to stretch your legs on an airplane anyway yeah so it wasn't it and i'll tell you what when i got on that plane i was just in a mood and that's that's the worst that's where you do it to yourself i really the only way to survive those flights is to you know and again this is not the longest flight in the world it's about four and a half hours like it's doable i have an aisle seat like this is not the worst situation it could be but well here's what happened too is i accidentally got pretty drunk at the airport because i hadn't been drinking all week i was hanging out with my parents and just having like nice little dinners and not drinking at all and then i go to the airport and i find a place that sells like 30 pizza and 15 beers and i grabbed did you grab dave ross any nuts on clark while you were at o'hare i didn't but one of us got to do that i did think of you when i heard some Stomach distress in the restroom Out of context That sounds terrible for you But you did that to me That's something that you reference all the time The restrooms at O'Hare How you pray for the people using them Anyway So I had like two of those big Tall Glasses of IPA Yeah I think it was like an IPA Goose Island IPA Which probably has a slightly Higher alcohol content than just a cheapo beer And they really were tall glasses. But I'm also Andrew. Like, I think I can handle two beers with like a personal pan pizza. But boy, when I walked away from that bar, I was tipsy and not feeling bad. But also, I wonder if that was starting to wear off by the time I marched all the way back to the plane. And I'm just feeling the guy in front of me wanted to push his chair back on me. But my legs were already touching. Like, there's nothing I can do. I cannot make my legs shorter. So he turns around and he's like, hey, can I put my seat back? Because he must have been trying. It was kind of a nice move. But I was like, listen, it's already touching my knees. And he's like, oh, OK. And so he didn't really try. I think he tried again about halfway through the flight as if we didn't have that conversation. I just kind of I got to say, I mean, that's violence.

I mean, I will refer people, please, to my award winning CBS Sunday morning commentary about reclining your seat, which is that it is the amount of relief one receives from reclining their seat is absolutely not commensurate to the amount of pain the person behind them feels to have by having the seat reclined into them. Like it's it's just it's so out of whack. They should not seats should not recline on airplanes anymore.

Absolutely. And also a couple of factors here. First of all, some people make the argument, well, then you just recline your seat. And that is a fundamental misunderstanding of of how this works, because reclining my seat does not make my legs shorter. You know, like that doesn't that doesn't alleviate the pain of you putting your seat back. But also when you're in the very last row, as I was, you can't recline your seat. I wouldn't anyway. I never reclined my seat on an airplane. But it's just the whole thing felt like a screw. I will say this, though. I get on the plane and also there's a woman sitting in the middle seat and then a baby who somewhere between baby and toddler. I'm gonna say maybe 18 months that's like a baby right anyway yeah I mean cute is a button this little kiddo but I'm just in a mood so like I'm texting Genevieve like oh great last row next to

a baby I mean that is really me if there's a movie like if there's a movie about an unfortunate travel situation I think they're putting the the main character last row next to a baby like that's that's that's actually how we represent on the large screen or the small screen that your flight

that you have a bad seat on the airplane yeah but i will say this so like and i i almost wonder if this woman saw my text to genevieve um because she turned to me just as nice as could be at the beginning of the flight and said i'd like to just apologize uh ahead of time she said um you know usually my daughter is is good on these but you never know so i just want to apologize ahead of time if things get loud or something and i gotta say i didn't really want to hear

it so I mean I was I think I just kind of muttered something like yeah okay and I didn't really make great eye contact I did not go I didn't I wasn't I was not outwardly rude to her but nor was I super gracious and said oh don't worry about it I love kiddos on airplanes it's one of my favorite things so I just said yeah okay haha and just like kept reading my book or whatever I will say this kid could not have been better like and the woman could not have been more self-conscious about like every time her daughter just would get a little bit loud and not never like upset loud just like talking to her mom but just kind of talking over the the the noise of the plane the mom would kind of hush her and i felt bad i wondered if it was because i was not more gracious at the beginning of the flight because i would say this this this couple this mom and her daughter were both just two of the the best flight companions you could ask for honestly so i felt a little bit bad for not being polite but i laid on the politeness as the flight went on i even offered to help the the woman care because her daughter was completely asleep by the time the flight ended so i offered to help her carry her bags if need be but apparently she had another family member on a different part of the plane who was going to help her so i tried to make up for it again i was not rude when she when she pre-apologized but again i just was not i was not the my best self who i who i would want you weren't bending over backwards to do everything

you could to make her feel less stressed and yet the other thing is that's a bit of perspective because obviously like for you it's like i'm coming down off of my buzz i'm walking to the very back of this plane dude's trying to recline into my knees that all is kind of frustrating but then imagine you're a mother with a small child flying on your lap and your middle seat back row with a baby on your lap that's i mean that is actually the worst like for that mom that is absolutely worst case scenario like you can't draw i was on a flight from uh i just sent you a picture I was on a flight home I think from Vegas and there was a baby in the seat next to me now it just so happened that I had been upgraded so it was you know I was in first class so there was room but there but this woman had a baby on on her lap and she also sort of apologized to me and this baby was also so good the whole flight and I was waving at the baby I took I asked them long if i could i took a little picture of the baby texted it to becca i was like this is my uh this is my uh co-passenger here and by the end of the flight i was asking the woman if she needed me to babysit or just like take the kid off her hands yours for a while rolls of bills saying how

much for the baby i want to make one thing clear about my situation um this woman and her daughter each did have their own seat so they did have room to move around a little bit the um and they would kind of switch back and forth as needed throughout the flight and sometimes the little girl would kind of lay down but again just I mean just as cute and well-behaved and personable and learning and like conversational with her mom at a very young age in a way that I really appreciated so I wish I had maybe given the baby the benefit of the doubt I just didn't want to accept a pre-apology until I knew what I was dealing with you know what I mean because you never you just you never know like nothing galls me more than like I've been on planes with kids that age and they're just like blasting their um video game music like i sound like such an old man but like the the very like simple like or maybe they're playing on a smartphone or something and the parents don't seem to care yeah exactly have you ever dealt with that like i've even been on a flight where a flight attendant had to tell the adult like hey you have to wear headphones or turn that down and the adult was pushing back like i think the adult did not want their kid wearing headphones or something um and i was across the aisle in this case that's an interesting

parenting move yeah like um we don't want aiden to become addicted to headphones oh this uh ipad this is fine yeah they're playing uh you know angry birds cool go for it yeah we're a non-headphone

family but they need to play angry birds with the sound up like that's a strange that's a strange line to draw in your own family structure but anyway i would just like to before i get back into negative town yeah no and it ended up being fine it was a long flight i did at times want to kind of um flick the ears of the guy who was sitting in front of me he also had he was wearing crocs without socks and then took off his crocs i noticed at one point i got up and he's doing this thing because he's got short legs like you know must be nice um all the short people are like do you have any idea how sick i am of having to get a stool just to get something off the top shelf um it's rare that that uh that tall people get to complain about being tall but anyway this guy in front of me he's got his legs crossed not crisscross applesauce but like you know if you're sitting in a chair and you take your left leg and you fully yeah put it up across your knee so it's like at a 90 degree angle he's doing that with his shoes off and just like bare feet just flopping all over the place they were very floppy what is with i don't get people taking i mean i

know that there's this thought that it's like well you're at altitude and sometimes maybe your feet are kind of swelling a little bit or something, but I don't.

So there's two things, and then we should go to a break, and then I want to give you the update on what happened in my neighborhood on Friday. But I feel like there are a couple of things that have just been taken as gospel related to flying, and they're interesting to me. One of them is, and I'm not saying this with any reference to you enjoying your Goose Island IPA, but one of them is lots of people feel like it's not only appropriate but encouraged to get hamboned because you're at the airport. People who don't do that in normal life, when they get to the airport, 6 a.m., I'll take four tequila sunrises, please. That's why they're called sunrises. That's interesting to me. And again, I am the absolute last person on planet Earth. I am in the last row, middle seat of being able to say or being able to weigh in on people's drinking decisions. But it's just interesting to me because it's kind of like, again, what strikes me is a lot of people who wouldn't in their normal life be drinking heavily at 7 a.m. are because we've just decided it's at the airport. We're flying. And so, again, I'm just it's an interesting move. The other one is it's OK for us to all take our shoes off when the plane takes off because of something having to do with maybe your feet are swelling or something like it wouldn't be. No one takes their shoes off in a restaurant. Nobody takes your shoes off when you're watching the Seattle Symphony. There are lots of other times where we're all together in a sort of enclosed space, and it is not considered the norm to take your shoes off. And somehow airplanes, they got filed under, yeah, it's a free-for-all with the shoes.

Yeah, and it really depends on what you do with your feet once the shoes come off as well. I would be lying if I told you I've never secretly kind of taken my shoes off underneath the seat in front of me like on a really long flight. like you just don't you know what i mean i'm sure i did that at some point in the 13 hour flight to australia right like i must have but i would never be like walking back to the bathroom in my in my shoeless feet or certainly i would never take my socks off or like like i say kind of like you know and again i guess it was his right to do it and i don't know if he if the people next to him were his traveling companions or not but like that is really then you see the horror stories or the horror pictures on the internet where somebody's like sticking their bare feet and like using the seat in front of them as a footrest somehow and like sticking it up through the armrest. That just made me do

an unintentional Hank Hill impression.

I know, right? Terrible. Well, I'm glad

you made it home in one piece and sounds like you had a nice time in the cleave with the family so that's all good news. I do have some news about what happened in my neighborhood on Friday, which I want to share with you all right after we take this short break here on TBTL. Hello and welcome to Top Story. So on Friday, when I came and stood at my little workstation here, I was quite surprised to look outside and see that this one of these streets near my apartment was all taped off with like police crime scene tape and there were a whole bunch of people out on the street being interviewed by the police there was a Prius that had sort of come to rest at an awkward angle bumping up against this um don't walk kind of pole and uh it you know I was one of the things I was struck by was how involved the police response was because we've all had most of us anyway have had like someone breaks into your car or there's some kind of sort of relatively small property crime that occurs and if you call the police they send somebody out like eventually um and you know what with your scoot about when that was stolen even though you did score some pretty sweet headphones off of that andrew i was interested to hear but like there's a kind of like police response to a normal amount of property crime or a fender bender accident that just frankly feels kind of non-urgent like they come out a few hours later they'll give you a business card they'll ask you know what color was the case logic uh cd case that they took whatever this was not that this was crime scene photography this was dusting for prints this was a a whole thing yeah when you said dusting for prints on friday show

that's when i was like and we're talking about fingerprints right not the musician prints were they dusting for prints the way i said they were dusting for the evidence formerly known as fingerprints um no but when you mentioned that on friday i was like oh okay somehow that that that completed the picture for me or made it more accurate in my head right i don't think i've ever

seen that in real life i don't think i've ever been around a crime that warranted dusting for prints even though growing up watching television you assume that every time the police come they're going to do that and they it turns out generally don't so eventually

throughout the the process of recording the friday show the police tape came down the police officers

Thank you.

left and there was just one guy out there who the police had allowed to move the prius and he moved it into a driveway of a home and i just figured okay i guess he must have just been a a resident of the neighborhood who was um trying to get out of the way of some kind of crime but they needed him to leave his car where it was but i noticed he was still standing out on the sidewalk and so when we wrapped the show i went downstairs because he was the only person left who i thought maybe knew what happened and i walked up to this guy he's somebody probably about my age wearing a fleece vest do i have that detail right i believe he had uh maybe not fleece but like a puffy like a puffy north face type of thing but i i went up to him and i just said so hey what happened and he looked at me and he burst into tears oh my god yeah and then i said also you don't have to tell me if this is something traumatic and then i in that moment really regretted asking about this because i just kind of figured you know he saw this whole thing and and could just kind of like relay it to me in this like you're not going to believe this shit kind of way but i realized he was in he was part of it and what had happened was this guy um he and his uh family live um i know a few blocks away from where i live and the street where this all went down and his wife was taking their three-year-old child somewhere i think daycare or something and um she had the car idling and she had forgotten her sunglasses because friday was a beautiful sunny day here in portland and so she ran back into the house to get her sunglasses and by the time she came back out somebody had stolen their vehicle with their baby in it the car's gone and this guy comes running out of the house and i just i can't stress enough every single sentence that this guy would sort of get out would end with him having an emotional break and i kept saying to him if this is too painful we don't have to talk about you know like i didn't i felt again i felt really bad that i would i didn't want to be re-traumatizing this guy but he sort of seemed like he was trying to process like he kind of wanted to talk to me but it was so emotionally overwhelming for him so he runs out of his house and just like yells at his neighbor like give me the keys to your prius and he jumps in his neighbor's prius and then he is just driving around he doesn't even know where he's going like he has no visual on his car that's been stolen with his child inside it but he realizes that his wife's iphone is in that car and so he turns on the find her iphone thing on his phone oh my god and he sees the car is he sees the car is basically somewhere over here by where i live and so he just like puts on the hazards and just floors it in this prius that's

not even his and just like drives like in the wrong lane of traffic around everyone just to get to where the dot is and he basically pins he crashes into his own car with his neighbor's car to pin the guy in or uh and so and then he gets i think actually what happened was he he pulled the prius the reason the prius was at the angle it was was because i think he did that to block the guy from getting like off of the street like the guy was trying to like take a a left turn in the stolen car with the baby inside it and i think what he did was the guy drove the prius into the light pole or whatever pole so that the dude could not keep driving and then he jumped out he jumped into his own car and began fighting with the guy as the guys are reversing the car down the street and crashing into multiple parked cars then the guy eventually jumps out runs off but is chased by a mob of people who capture him and hold him until the police get there oh my god this dude this was by i talked to him at like by 10 30 in the morning or whatever this guy had like had his child kidnapped had commandeered his neighbor's vehicle had found his car had trapped the guy in his car had physically fought the dude and had saved his child and this was and he was like he goes i don't know if i'm gonna go into work today and i said i'd take some pto and he goes they don't really give me pto at my job i was like do you want me to call your boss he was like no i think he's gonna be fine i think he's gonna let me take the day off but it was an intense story from this guy as to what happened and also i don't want to go Dear Vladimir Putin if I was your mother Like I don't want to center myself in this Story that was very traumatic for this family But I found myself in this Very odd situation of talking To and it was just me and him on the street Everybody else is gone and it's clear that he's Coming down off of the adrenaline Of the event and he's

so emotionally wrung out from just his fear of like he was only then I think really able to start processing how scary it was for him to run out of his house and realize his child was missing and he didn't know where the kid was and so I was I didn't know like do I hug the guy do I like what do you say to him and so I was just trying to remember that thing of like holding space like I was just trying to be like let this guy talk let him cry I'm not going to try to tell him you know give him some sage advice i'm just gonna try to be here with him while this is all processing for him um but it was a very it was a much more intense scene than i was expecting i thought he was just gonna say you know i don't know somebody was trying to burglarize a house and then the police i don't know what i thought he was gonna say but this wasn't it first of all

i hope you told that man that he has a very particular set of skills and he will use those skills because that strong Neeson vibe strong by the way I did see a movie recently like Neeson isn't another one now I saw a trailer he's like you stole my granddaughter and like he's no I

swear to God swear to God grandkids are being taken now they're being tooken uh now I don't

know if that's the main plot of it but I was watching there's some action-adventure movie with Liam Neeson that's going to be coming out or just came out I saw the trailer for it and about halfway through he says you took my granddaughter anyway i've said it before at

some point we have to ask is neeson part of the problem right exactly what is he doing as a parent or grandparent intergenerational kidnapping yeah is i mean at some point we have to we what's the what's the constant here what's the through line it's liam neeson's exactly he should never

start a babysitting service um did you um just because i this is what i would do in your case as if there's anything i could possibly do i feel like there would be nothing i could do to help this man but i would at least give him all of my contact information and just say you know for what it's worth this is my name this is where i live um this is my phone number if there's anything i can do um just know that there are people who were here for you was that your kind of move there

that was basically what i said i said let me give you my information if you need anything at all um you know i i'm i'm here to help i just didn't know what else to say he was i mean this is what's so weird about events like this in people's lives what he was actually doing when i got to him was he was taking the car seats out of the back of his car that had been stolen because his car that had been stolen had now been crashed into and had crashed into a bunch of other cars and was going to have to go I don't know either to the like the police lot for evidence or was going to have to go to the repair shop and there's like that this the banality of life after something like this happens which is like well you got to get the car seats out of your car because you need them for your kids for the next month while your car's being fixed you know what I mean it's just like little things like that I also I mean I don't know what I expected the Portland Police department to do but it was it was weird for me to realize that like there was there's no after care for this guy yeah like I was the after care and I you know again I'm not saying that they I don't think it would probably be practical for them to send a counselor out to everything but it was just a strange moment that unfolded because I just was I was sort of I was realizing that this is a person who has been through an incredibly traumatic event for them and they don't know what to do with those feelings right now and like everything turned out in a way sort of okay the baby was fine but it wasn't triumphant it wasn't like you know man what a badass move although i was saying later to becca man that is that's some badassery yeah you might something must just click

in like that that that parental instinct just must be like nothing else in fact i'm really embarrassed of course i mean i i i reacted assuming that the baby was okay but what do we know about that side of the situation or maybe you didn't get into it but like what condition was the baby

and do we baby was fine according to the dad um but yeah to run out of your house to commandeer a vehicle to have the presence of mind to figure out that you could track your your car because of this iphone thing to find it to stop the guy to i mean uh what the guy what the dad said to me was i jumped in the car and i started beating the shit out of the guy oh yeah because what the dad and he and and again i can't stress this enough he started crying when he said that part he wasn't saying like i'm so cool you know what he was crying about his kid had to watch him fight a dude in the car you know what i mean like this this guy seemed like a really good dad in that he was so it seemed to him that what was really hard for him to process was to think about how much of this was going into the brain of his child like how scary was this for his kid to see you know there was

again there was no machoism there was no like yeah man i really got that guy or whatever maybe years from now he will reflect on how truly macho the whole situation was because i mean that is i mean that is like i i would hope that i would be that you know again that sort of action movie hero ish if i were in the same kind of situation but again that was not the vibe that was not the vibe bro as he and i were standing there and and then again i was like i i didn't really know what to say to him that there was nothing i was going to say that was going to make it not scary for him um or and you know for him to or not traumatic for him to think about what could have happened i live kind of near a major freeway and one of the things the guy kept saying was he was trying to get on the freeway he kept just saying that over and over again i don't know if that was true or not he thinks that the the the person who stole the car was trying to get on the freeway yeah um that was what kind of he kept coming back to that and i could tell that the way his his mind was working at that point was like if this person and i don't think anyone thinks the carjacker was trying to kidnap a child i think the carjacker was just trying to steal a car and and then at some point realized there was a child in the back but the the the dad was i could tell that every time the dad started to consider this idea of if the car had gotten to the freeway you know where that car would have ended up where his kid would have ended up just like that was kind of like it was like the fact that he stopped the guy from getting to the freeway was huge and also was like every time he would even say freeway he would start crying again because I think of what he thought the implications of that would be yeah I can't even

imagine the trauma that that family is going to continue to go through I mean obviously they will feel so lucky that things turned out as they did but yeah I mean I I'm not even joking again not to be dear president putin about it but like i feel like i will have bad dreams about this i mean this will live i mean the way he's locking on that highway thing will just be on a constant loop in his head as he's doing anything for the next obviously for the next year and beyond like i just can't i can't imagine what the family has to go through now yeah and but again so much better than the alternative uh but still absolutely i mean it's just yeah no absolutely it was it was a

um it was probably the best the best outcome that could have happened you know everyone was everybody in that family was safe the person was captured um i was uh so then of course i was sort of mildly obsessed with this over the weekend so i was checking like the portland like the multnomah county police log and like the booking and i think i figured out who the person was Because there was like on that Friday, there were, I don't know, maybe 25 people that were arrested or that were like booked into the Portland jail. There was only one of them where there was like multiple vehicle theft charges. So I was trying to. But if that was the person, there was not a charge of kidnapping listed, which I thought was kind of interesting because I think most people would agree this person was not trying to kidnap someone, but they did kidnap someone. And if you're the prosecutor, do you do you kind of throw the book at them because of the trauma that they inflicted on this family, even if that wasn't the goal? Yeah, I think so, because this is a this is just a this is just a terrorizing story for any parents. So, yeah. Yeah. And I would think so. But at least initially, if I if I narrowed this down to the right person, which I kind of think I did, there were no charges for kidnapping that were listed. There was, like, vehicular theft, then there was, like, eluding arrest, there was reckless endangerment or reckless driving. There was, like, a bunch of charges, but I was surprised to see that kidnapping wasn't one of them.

Well, you will not be able to sit on this jury. By the way, remember I told you that I felt like my summons to jury duty here in King County was part of a trend? It certainly was. Like, Genevieve has gotten that now. I know two other friends here in Seattle who have gotten the postcard saying you need to come to jury duty. And it does scan with what I was reading. They had to put off a lot of trials and what the system basically got backlogged during the pandemic. And so they're trying to get through as well. They should. They're trying to get through these trials. And so that's why everybody I know practically has been summoned for jury duty. I think somebody asked me, I guess I never gave a you know, I was trying to be careful not to talk too much. On the advice of my counselor, Phyllis P. Fletch Fletcher, or my counsel, I should say, I'm having trouble. I said parents are going to be terrorized. I meant terrified. I said my count. Yeah, I'm just, I'm sorry about that. Terrorized and terrified, I think, are pretty interchangeable. Sort of. But anyway, I was just a little embarrassed about that, so I want to air that out there. I feel better. I'll be able to sleep better tonight, knowing that at least I acknowledge it on the podcast. But yeah, no. I was trying to be a little button-lipped about my experience with jury duty because I didn't want to do or say anything that could potentially affect not just my role but the outcome of the trial if I were to do something or say something here publicly that I shouldn't. But all of that is to say when I was summoned for jury duty right before Christmas, I did go through the process. What do you call it? It's the French word again when they actually jury selection process. Void dire. I went through the first phase of that And then was dismissed After that And probably because of some of the just terrible Terrible things that I said during that process

I feel like I'm never going to be Well one I haven't been I haven't been summoned for a jury in years And I feel like Maybe just because I have bad credit or something I feel like I will never I just don't think they'll ever let me on a jury I just think There's just something about me that seems so kind of not sort of irrational and like capricious and all of the things you don't want in a juror sort of non-logical I would be shocked I wouldn't want to be a pot of any jury that would have me Andrew like I just for some reason I have this deep feeling that if I ever actually get a summons again and I you know jump through the hoops and go down they're going to like take one look at me and go like no we don't want this guy weighing in on this

Well, I mean, I guess it depends on what you put out there I don't agree with your analysis But I do think it's funny that that's how you sort of see yourself You feel like you're wearing it so much on the outside

I'm the bad boy of public radio, Andrew Just like Elvis Mitchell That's right I've now become a regular reader, Andrew Of the Rants and Raves column Thanks to you Are they publishing it more lately?

Or am I now just seeing it because it's been brought to our attention? Like, I saw one good Rants and Raves the other day, and now I'm seeing tons of Rants and Raves. Are they back with a vengeance?

I don't know. I just know that a long, long time ago, we used to do these, like, back in the radio days. And I think Jen was the sort of keeper of that flame. And then, like, a couple weeks ago or whatever, you sent me one that had some real doozies in there that we read on the show. And then, yeah, this morning I got up and after combing through roughly 1000 pages about Ukraine, I and listening to Morning Edition, which it turns out is only talking about Ukraine. I mean, I don't know what else they're supposed to do. Yeah.

As I say, you sound like I almost I feel like I kind of can't get enough. Are you feeling like you're getting fatigue of that story?

um i don't want to say fatigue because to get back to dear pooch sure yeah it's like wow we're all suffering through this i'm getting tired of hearing about it you know versus somebody who's sleeping in a in a train tunnel uh you know for the sixth night in a row like obviously me getting me me having some fatigue with the story is um is is not the worst thing that's happening to anyone I know I'm very interested in the story And I'm following it sort of breathlessly But it is really It's kind of the only thing Other than this weird crime that happened outside of my apartment It's kind of the only thing That is being talked about anywhere

And that comment comes as you're talking about Putting together a show sheet too Which is a different kind of perspective on that as well You are looking for little bits of sunshine That we can hopefully Spread around here on this show It does get difficult to find those when a huge world event like this is happening what i will say about this huge world event

um is and this is just you know stuff that i've seen online but if if you are a listener to this show and if you are dealing with anxiety around this story because they keep just keep you know there's each chapter feels more frightening when you know putin puts his nuclear arsenal into some other status which is probably just him trying to puff you know puff his neck up and and seem scarier but like it's pretty easy to get up in the morning and read twitter and just think we're gonna enter world war three or a nuclear war or something uh you're under no obligation to read those stories like you don't have to read those stories or you don't have to look endlessly at images that are traumatizing to you like if you're somebody who's who's feeling a lot of anxiety around this story you don't have to engage with it like you're not being a bad person if you say i need to just take a step back from this um because there is a feeling and i i share it of just like when you get scared by something like if i see putin is going to use nukes then i want to read the story because i want to know what's going to happen with that because i'd like you know i would like it to not happen but then at some point as i'm reading the story i become I'm kind of I'm overwhelmed with anxiety around the idea of a nuclear war happening on this planet. So.

Now, if it's scaring all of you, you are allowed to put the news down for a little while, which is where we pick up rants and raves. We've got a rave to the man who pulled up next to my partner and me on Montlake while we waited at a traffic light with our convertible top down. He rolled down his window and said, pardon me, would you have any gray poupon? I replied with, but of course. It was just like in those old gray poupon mustard commercials.

Oh, now I get it. Yeah.

Thanks for that explainer line. I do like this, though. This person says, it was such a simple micro affection, but with so much tearing at people from all sides these days, it was a sweet, uplifting and humorous moment. I like that rave, even though, yes, I would not call it the highest level of comedy, but I like micro affection. like maybe we can try maybe we can try some micro affections

in this world even just on the show it would probably go a long way but yeah no I agree I'm sorry that I immediately went for a rant on that rave I like that rave as well I just thought that we didn't need the line although I could also see somebody like is there even do these get edited at all at the newspaper did they write back to the person say hey can you explain why this is funny I just sort of felt like that's an obvious reference but on the other hand i'm old and that is a very very old reference i suppose yeah i can

promise you that the person well the fact that they're writing into the rant and rave already puts them probably in a certain age demo yes but i can promise you it's not a 22 year old like can you imagine pulling up to a car full of 22 year olds who are just discussing the latest episode of euphoria and going pardon me do you have any gray poupon i wonder also if there was a time Where people who were driving nice cars Ever were actually Keeping some Grey Poupon In their glove compartment In case that joke came up For the joke That thing That commercial really impacted The culture for a while That was such a known thing There was a time Probably in the mid-late 80s That I would say the majority of people In this country would have understood that joke

Oh yeah I mean, there's a handful of jokes like that that or I'm sorry, lines from commercials like that, that I think that just like took on a life of their own. I mean, where's the beef seems to be one as well. Like and again, I know that this is very generational, like maybe the younger people who are listening have no idea. Like we listener Gus, how old is he, 11? Do you think he has any idea what I mean when I say where's the beef? Do you think that is this generational knowledge that trickles down or no?

I think Gus is a bad example because he's a very smart kid, and I think his parents school him in the old gods and the new.

The old commercials and the new.

I can see Phyllis and Josh being like, Phyllis making a where's the beef joke, and then Gus being the inquisitive person he is going, what does that mean? And then Phyllis explaining it. But I would say the average 11-year-old or whatever Gus's age is in America has no idea what where's the beef means. Yeah, exactly. Here's a rant to time changes. Washington has failed to continue in the fight for the end of twice a year time changes. At one point pre-pandemic, this state had requested a year-long daylight saving time that meant no more time changes. Somehow we are still changing our clocks twice a year. Pick a time and stick to it. I like that power out. um for me the the thing about springing forward and falling back that is bothersome is not the that you have to change the clocks twice a year it's um that there is this what feels like a long period of time uh when you live up here where it just gets dark so early and i would like to pick a time and stick to it in such a way that it we didn't it didn't get dark at 4 30 in the afternoon although i think i tweeted about this at some point and someone tweeted back at me yeah but then if you never if you never fell back it would mean that it wouldn't get light until like 9 or 9 30 a.m some days so i guess it kind of comes down to do you want to wake up in darkness and have it be dark for like a long time in the morning or do you want it to get dark sooner in the afternoon i still think i would rather it be dark until 9 a.m if it meant it was light until 6 p.m but that's just i guess how my personal circadian rhythm works i always wake up in

darkness sorry that was i've been watching a lot of trailers for the new batman movie that sounds like something they'd say in that piece of garbage uh have you wait a piece of garbage oh does it look bad it just looks so humorless and again not that every action movie or comic book movie has to have like that Marvel.

Guardians of the Galaxy twist on it. Not everything has to be a comedy, but it just doesn't seem to have anything going for it. It just looks like it's just dark, and it just looks like it's just a slog of Batman whispering things that are very serious. And then is it Poison Ivy who's in the new one? I don't know, but maybe it's a Catwoman. I think it's a Catwoman. Anyway, looks terrible. I don't remember what I was talking about. Oh, I was born in the darkness. Darkness. You merely adopted it, right?

Yeah, you and Bane. There was a picture that went online of me wearing Camaro Kev's CPAP that had very, very strong, strong Bane vibrations.

Well, Veeves texted that to me, and I wrote, you were merely born into the CPAP or something. She said, we've already gone through all those jokes. I swear to God, because she was with you in the hotel room while you guys were doing that, and she texted me. That was my immediate reply, and she just dismissed it by saying, we've already done that here in the Vegas room

that's what you get for not coming on the trip Andrew you don't get to be a part of round one of the hilarious Bane jokes that is such an unflattering picture of me for so many reasons but I found it so funny that I was willing to put it out on the line on Twitter even though like if I saw that if I were like a woman on planet Earth and I saw that picture of me some part of and I'm not saying that 99.999% of the women on planet Earth haven't already decided that they're not interested in what Luke Burbank is selling but for the .0000001% who are still considering it that would effectively shut that door like if I saw that I'd be like wow that is that is not a person who I want to spend any time around based on how silly and kind of weird they look with that CPAP on.

Do you have a very, very, very specific child lock on your girlfriend's computer devices just to block out one thing and it's that image?

It's a setting on Twitter where you can actually make sure, I can make sure that Becca can't see any pictures of me in a CPAP mask. Right, or a phone. Although I need, probably I'm going to have to get one at some point with my dang snoring and sleep apnea.

You know what I got going on, Luke? That's just a lot of fun. This started a couple of months back, but now has especially happened a lot in Cleveland. So I'm guessing it might have to do with stress. I have been biting the living hell out of my tongue right in the moments before I fall asleep or as I'm falling asleep. So that or maybe I've just fallen asleep and then something is happening where I'm champing down, chomping down. and there's one part of my tongue where it's probably now continuing to get bit because maybe it's a little bit swollen and there's now a place on my lip as well where this is happening at least twice a night where I wake up in so much pain because my jaw just locked and just took a chunk of me took a chunk of my mouth out it is awful it is so awful it's happening on the reg now like i said twice a night and on the airplane i feel like that's been

i've had i've had phases where that happens more and then like phases where it's not happening like um which is weird i don't know why it seems that we go through a period of time where that just seems to be a thing um i don't know yeah i don't the listeners might have some thoughts on it could be how you're sleeping but i've had that and then i've had it go away so i don't know what

to tell you other than that so yeah i mean i could potentially look at maybe getting a mouth guard of some sort because i remember this started happening right before i went to the dentist's office and i was telling the doctor i was like um you know i i can't tell if there's something wrong with my tongue there i'm always very careful about stuff going on in my mouth since i had that leukoplakia scare a while back where they thought it was pre-cancerous and so i'm always like hey if you see anything weird let me know and what's going on with this part of my tongue that i keep biting and said it looks like it's just kind of got some lacerations from you doing that uh so it's nothing more serious than that but if it continues you might want to look at just getting an over-the-counter kind of mouth guard kind of thing but i don't know i've been very resistant to any kind of um anything that would make me look uh slightly less sexy as i sleep no it's so funny like i don't know what it is like there it makes no sense why i wouldn't want to put a mouth guard in but i just i don't know i just sort of feel like once i unleash that the next thing i know i'm going to be wearing like a face mask of avocado cream and oh actually that sounds

delicious i know i don't like the idea of putting stuff on my face but here's a rave to fellow northgate library patron upon returning home i realized my driver's license credit card and bus pass were missing i checked back at the front desk and sure

enough some nice person had found the items and turned them in thank you for your honesty and easing my considerable panic now the reason i i highlighted this one andrew is what do you think how do we rank places where there's the greatest likelihood that someone will return your id and credit card because i'm putting a library near the top of the list i think i think you know the people who go to the library are people who are they're they're seeking knowledge they're engaging with their community they're like i just think the people in and around the library are probably some of the best people you could find i would feel safe leaving a bag full of money in a library i don't i maybe i'm trying to think if there's another institution where i would feel more okay about leaving my stuff behind and have more confidence that it would be returned i'm actually unsurprised to hear that somebody returned this because of course they did. They were in the

library. We know they're good people. Yeah. And you also think of it as probably an older clientele too. That's a generational thing. Although, and I want to be very careful here and not as many people do, draw an assumption that if you're homeless, you're a criminal because that is not true. But I will say that you do have a lot of people who are really hard on their luck who use the facilities and whatnot at libraries now. So if you were to leave like you said, a bag of money there, there is a temptation when you're literally fighting for survival every day to take the money that is right in front of you as opposed to turning it in. But again, I want to be very careful there. I'm not claiming that if just because you're hard on your luck, you're not going to turn in a wallet. But I would say that there's a, there's a very humane temptation there as well.

I have told this story on the show a few times, but years ago now, Carrie and I had been driving, I'm going to say probably maybe back from Livewire to Seattle and had stopped off at a casino in Tacoma and were playing some roulette and watching the football game. And I had actually won some money. I think I won like 800 bucks or something and had it in my wallet and then left my wallet with $800 in it sitting on a slot machine. And this was a casino where a lot of the clientele, you could tell, were kind of a bit on the margins. and i didn't realize i had done this until we got to i think for some reason we were eating at the olive garden clearly i'd been drinking some reason carrie must have been driving there's a weird series of events i'm not a big olive garden head but i went to grab my wallet to pay and that was when i realized it and uh you know somebody turned that wallet in with eight hundred dollars cash in it and i could just i mean there were just so many folks in that casino that you know based on my sort of, uh, my reading of the situation and I could have been wrong, uh, were, were people that could have probably used $800 in cash and, and, and, and they get, could get them out of a few jams and they, and somebody turned it in and, um, I would just, that, that was, that really restored my faith in humanity and you couldn't give

them any kind of cash reward because you didn't know who it was, right? You just got, yeah, I asked the security guard.

I mean, the funny thing was I called the security folks and they said, we have a wallet, but we can't tell you what's in it over the phone or something. It was very cryptic. So we just drive all the way back down to Tacoma. And, like, I'm, you know, I'm assuming there's no money in the wallet, but I guess I'll get it back and hopefully, like, my ID still is in there or something. And I get it back and it has everything in it. And I ask the security, like, who returned it? And they said, no, it's just some person. So if you're out there And you return my wallet at that casino Thank you very much There's an interesting rant That I'll wrap up this part Of the show with Andrew A rant To those who rant and rave

Get a life You can't do this

That was it Somebody wrote in a rant The rant is to those who rant and rave Get a life Look in the mirror What is this postmodern rant and rave here Is that like a meta Is that like a postmodern rant It feels like it Because of course you are ranting As you're saying that you think it's lame For people to rant and rave That's like the rant and rave column

But there's three of them

And they're all pointing each other On a street corner like Spider-Man I have a rant which is that And I saw you wrote some of this on Twitter too Andrew we're supposed to be listening to spring training baseball right now the Seattle Mariners baseball team which has been not great for so many years I mean I think they still have some kind of record for futility of all of the major sports as far as being the it's been the longest since they've made the postseason of any I believe of the major sports teams in America and Thank you. This year, there's a lot of reason for optimism. They kind of played better than people expected last year, and they've got some really great minor league players who are coming up and younger players who've got some experience. I mean, and I know, Andrew, you're even more excited about this than I am. I've been so excited about this baseball season, and now it's looking like they're going to have to move opening day back. It's like really, of all the seasons for a lockout, Does it have to be when the Mariners are finally actually kind of good, potentially?

But here's the thing that galls me, and not that we have to take sides in this, but don't the players realize that the owners have secret families that they need to feed? This is getting ridiculous. Why can we not help these owners wring more money out of the players and the fans? like they have a lifestyle that they need to maintain meanwhile you have minor league players who have to literally sleep with families they don't know while they're on the road because they because they can't afford hotel rooms they can't afford $80 hotel rooms the whole thing is ridiculous and you're right like I feel like it's going to hurt certain teams more than others I feel like the Mariners are one of those teams because where they are uh with the young team and we've already suffered a lot because we were you know a team that finally rebuilt this farm system and then the development of these young players got stalled out because of the the the covid considerations and having to cancel an entire minor league season two years ago and then also the truncated major league season that time like these teams that were already kind of supposedly ready to pop um have kind of seen delay after delay which is going to affect that the only bright side i can possibly see is i do feel like the mariners are cursed and therefore Or maybe this is just a less painful way for us to see the bot. Like maybe we can blame something else other than just the curse of the Mariners when we once again don't make the playoffs.

It's just so hard in baseball when you are not one of a list of about five teams. When you're not the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Dodgers, and who am I leaving out? I mean, maybe that's kind of the the Mets or all of the Mets have been extremely bad. But like unless you're just one of these teams with just a gigunda payroll, you get about once every 15 years, the ball drops into your slot on the roulette wheel and you're kind of good. And it's just it's sort of maybe good GMs and some dumb luck and a couple of prospects shape up and some veterans kind of overperform. Like it's so hard to do unless you're able to just overpay players constantly like the big teams do. And the fact that the ball dropped into the slot for the Mariners over the course of the last couple of seasons and everything's been funky is you're right. It's really the curse of the Mariners. I saw somebody on Twitter saying, like, I forget who who wrote the article. it might have been some i don't i don't even know but somebody basically who wrote an article about the negotiations was listing the kind of luxury vehicles that the players were arriving in it's like so and so and so and so we're here to negotiate on behalf of the players arrived in such and such vehicles and the clear idea was to try to say well if you can drive a ferrari i mean what are you so upset about and if somebody responded yeah what did the owners drive yeah Like, I mean, certainly there are people in Major League Baseball players who are making astronomical sums of money, but part of why you negotiate this stuff is also so that the people who are much lower on the food chain and in the minors and places like that, although I will admit to this, I don't really know all of the sort of nuts and bolts of this argument, but I'm just siding with the players. I'm sorry. That's just my that's just kind of like where I default on these things like over the history of professional sports. The owners become continually richer. These franchises, many of which seem to operate in some sort of like antitrust loophole, just continue to enrich people, many of whom are manifestly bad. Like think of some of the worst people you think of. And they're the Daniel Snyder's of the world. I know I'm jumping sports here, but this is the Jim Irsay's of the world. They're the you know, there are a lot of bad, mostly white, rich men who run these various pro sports teams and and are all wealth, wealthy beyond an amount of money they can spend in their lifetime. And the idea that they feel like they need to kind of go to bat, so to speak, with the players, again, some of whom are very rich, but a lot of whom are not actually that rich. I'm just always going to side with the players. I would just really really like this thing

To get done, because as I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, how I spent my Sunday, Andrew, baking a veggie lasagna and listening to Bon Iver, which put me in a very emotionally fragile place.

It's not the same. And that's what I'm really missing, too. And like you said, I tweeted something out yesterday as well, saying, like, we should all be listening to Rick Riz miscalculate routine fly balls on the radio right now.

By the way, he learned from Dave Niehaus, who wrote the book on misjudging fly balls.

Swung on and belted deep to left field, and the shortstop will make the catch.

Oh, that's going to be an infield fly. Okay. Anyway, but, like, I love it, and, you know, I've said this before on the show, just like it's this time of year when I should be having, like, Genevieve dreads it, but it's just like the crackle of the AM radio throughout the house during this time and, like, the buildup for it, and it's only spring training. You would listen to two or three games, and then you'd probably take a pause before the season actually began. But now we're talking about pushing, pushing opening day back. And it's just I don't know, man. I'm just I feel like I have a phantom limb of baseball right now.

I mean, I already mentioned it on this episode, but I swear to God, for me, baseball is as much a food, drink and grass event. And I don't mean marijuana. I know. I mean, the all of the there's so much sensory stuff for me around baseball happening. So, for me, it's like the – what I love about baseball season is it's time for me to barbecue up or cook up or heat up, really, some veggie dogs, chop up a bunch of onions, maybe pour myself a little short guy of J-Mo. and you know back when I used to have a house with a yard that I lived in uh mow the lawn put the am radio on and then sit there and sip on my whiskey and listen to am radio and eat my hot dogs I mean that is that's about as happy as I get on this planet um and so the delay in that although I don't know here maybe I can go mow my neighbor's lawn I'm looking out on some streets that have lawns so maybe they'll let me you used to be able to look down at a lawn on top of a roof right i don't think you're there anymore though no i'm in a much smaller apartment building now um but uh uh which i can't yeah i can't see down onto any rooftop lawns but you know people have i mean i do have a lawn in uh in this uh place that i that i bought where i'm still not living because of this work that needs to be done on it but i i um i'll take at least standing on my tiny balcony with my teeny tiny barbecue which is really kind of a pos i bought it at the ace hardware here in portland and i bought it because it was cute and because it could fit on my small balcony at my other apartment building but it's not really like a grill like it uses these little propane tanks and then it just kind of it's sort of it's almost like have you ever seen those

electric barbecues i don't know if i've seen an electric one there are barbecues i can picture

your little you can plug them in and then really what it is is just an electric element where you can i mean you can technically apply heat to meat products or vegetables or whatever you're putting on there but like of course a real barbecue you got to have the coals going or you've got to have the the um you know propane like there's the fire element of the barbecue is really the fun part in the part that feels very satisfying and this one that i bought is very very it's it's not delivering

on the fire element it does use gas right like i had i can picture those little um canisters of fuel because that was my very first grill in a similar situation i was renting in a multi-level building and so like i was up on the second or third balcony floor balcony um and i did remember like mine did have little gas jets that were firing out but was it just that your gas jets

just aren't enough yeah it has gases but there's no sizzle you know that feeling when you really get that barbecue cooking yeah like it's really super heated and then you like drop a steak on there or a burger or whatever it is chicken and it just shows that sizzle effect it doesn't have that again it doesn't help that i'm cooking some veggie dog which is just more plastic than hot dog um maybe maybe there'll be some advances in the meatless hot dog category that i'll be able to um i mean explore this year maybe i need this season to be delayed because i need to get my veggie dog game in order i need to go to spring training on what my food choices are going to be

for this baseball season so this is unrelated to grilling but genevieve's been loving the plant based chicken nuggets i can't i think it's impossible brand i'm not sure but she's just been buying them at the store and heating up heating them up in the oven here uh and she's been really enjoying them i don't think i've had one yet not out of any kind of reluctance i just

haven't been around when she's making them well i've been very intrigued by the kfc impossible

chicken which i see the ads for but then when i went on my favorite food delivery system occasional sponsor doordash the kfc's around me they did not offer the impossible chicken as an option so i don't know if it's not in portland yet or if it they it's for some reason they don't want to deliver it or what but i that is very intriguing to me because there are lots of times when i would love to tuck into some kfc and some of those just like just the absolute worst mashed potatoes ever but like kind of in a great like i love i love the bad mashed potatoes from kfc like i i have a hankering for that sometimes and it would be nice if um if i could get that without

uh eating any actual meat so yeah 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 any emails or v-mails andrew that you want

to get into yeah you know i didn't do a good job of show prep today so i i forgot to check the voicemail line and go through all these voicemails but we have a bunch and i'm gonna play one cold for you here without even listening to it all the way through i you know it's google voice so it sort of transcribes it does its best to transcribe the voicemail so it looks like this is an interesting story uh from somebody named jenna about uh laptop troubles i was having some troubles with my laptop after flying from Seattle to Cleveland. The keyboard was definitely being very wonky while I was in Cleveland. Weirdly, it has stabilized the past couple of days, so that's good. I was also having some audio issues that seem to have stabilized. I'm having trouble here. I am having audio issues. Don't worry. That's not your playback device. That's me with my new stutter. It comes along with biting my tongue at night. Anyway, this person is leaving a voicemail about computer problems. Take a listen to this, and let's hope it's good. Hey, listener, if your name really is Jenna, I hope this is good because I'm really gambling on you here. So don't embarrass me. Thank you.

Hey, guys. This is Jen in Bellingham, and I was just listening to your episode and poor Andrew and your keyboard on your Dell. So I was reminded of a core memory, which you guys should remember, memories don't necessarily have a point or a story arc, but I have to tell you anyway. So it's 2001, and my husband and I are shiny little babies, and we buy our first laptop, and we're super excited because we can make compilation CDs. So we used to have, like, the whole, like, setup, right? Like, multiple devices to make compilation CDs. And it was my husband's dream to have a laptop so he could make compilation CDs for his friends. Anyway, so we get this. And we're also, like, students, right? So we have no money. So we get this Dell. And it is so janky. And we, between, it's like totally fine, but then between some songs, it goes, and so that's not okay, right? So we call Del, and my 11 calls Del, I don't even know how many times, and he gets a sympathetic person to actually send him a new CD-ROM drive. And we were waiting for like weeks, and it never shows up. And so finally he calls back, I'm telling you, like, it's a secret. And finally he calls and gets a hold of someone, and they're like, yeah, we canceled that order. You're not going to get a new drive. And, of course, Rob's livid.

And so he's like, I want to touch your manager.

And I have, my 11 is so, I mean, he's really annoying sometimes, but he definitely tries to be very kind to people. And he was losing his mind on the phone. And so, and it turned out that they were telling him that it must have been like a copyright thing. And it wasn't the computer. It was the song itself protecting, keeping us from breaking the law. Those were their words. And so I took the phone from him because I was like, I'm going to be the calm wife coming in. And within seconds, I was accusing this man of not having a soul. So they never fixed it. And for over 20 years now, we have a blood pact in our family to always talk trash about Dell. So power out. Bye.

People don't like Dell. Dell does not have good brand loyalty, I feel like. Or maybe loyalty is the wrong one.

wrong word it does not have good brand reputation customer service sounds like it wasn't really

great either dunking on the dells yeah um uh meanwhile the wisconsin dells have great reviews if you want to go to a water park inside of a shoney's with your family sure yeah um some of the pinkest pink eye around i understand um that's amazing i never understand when people Who just work somewhere Go to bat hard For that somewhere Like I don't understand Why the person didn't just Hit unless they were literally not Allowed to or their manager was going to Fire them I don't Understand why they didn't just hit send On the replacement disk drive like Why would you why would you fight that hard To not send out a new cd-rom drive Instead of like well this is copyrighted Music and so it's Going to insert a a law and order sound effect after the song like i'm guessing the people they were dealing with were just sitting at a computer somewhere on a you know time life operator headset like i'm just always surprised when well you know it's interesting on uh i guess saturday night becca and i popped into a little um like hotel bar here in portland of this really cool new hotel Which I'll just give the name Whatever it's called The Hotel Grand Stark It's very cute And I'd seen it But I've never been in there So we went in And we ordered a drink And then I ordered this like Pickle platter And Which just you know Means basically A bunch of things That have been pickled And I I like I like actual pickles a lot And I just like things That are briny So this bowl comes out And unfortunately Everything in the bowl Was like So it had green beans it had some pickles it had some eggs it had some i'm forgetting what else was in there but it turned out carrots are good there might have been carrots in there too this was the thing though every single thing in there tasted exactly the same like and it was just kind of like it was real it just wasn't to my taste it was real vinegary it just wasn't i don't i can't explain other than to say it was particularly the eggs like i love like a deviled egg or a pickled egg but they just it didn't seem to me like they'd had the brine right for this or whatever so that's fine whatever i ordered it i didn't care um i'm not going to try to send it back i i get very embarrassed about that kind of yeah so we're settling up and i took like three bites of it becca had like sampled a couple of little things and she had the same response that i did which is like well this is not very yummy so the guy comes over and goes oh you didn't like the the pickle bowl or whatever it was called and i said yeah it wasn't really for me and then becca said yeah it was all kind of one note and now this is the point where most of the time if the person says oh you didn't like something like if they notice that you consume so little of it that they

are commenting on not liking it most of the time they'll just be like yeah we're gonna take that off the we'll take it off the bill yeah um and so i don't think i don't think i even may i must have asked him to i don't think i asked him to take it off the bill i think what happened was He said, oh, you didn't like it? I said, ah, it wasn't really for me. Becca said, yeah, it was all kind of one note. And then this was the part I was so surprised about. The guy goes, and this guy wasn't the chef. He was the bartender. He goes, well, each thing is pickled in a different brine. So it couldn't be one note.

Yeah, like being a little defensive about it.

Which was such a funny hill to die on because, first of all, you could have just not commented on the fact that we didn't eat it. By the way, this guy was very nice, like overall. I just think it was funny because maybe he's just one of those people where his like logic brain he's very driven by his logic brain so when we said these are one note but he knows in talking to the chef that everything is brined in something different it just it did not compute for him yeah i'll bet you it was like that yeah it wasn't like he was trying to be a jerk but it was just kind of like he was like well that can't be so because i know for a fact these are all brined in different brines and it's like well first of all i don't know why we would lie about that but then becca said well have you tried it and he goes no i don't really eat here he goes i don't like to eat the same shit all the time he used the word shit which was also strange yeah it was like on the one hand you're defending this pickle bowl and the and the symphony of flavor which was we were not picking up but then you're also copping to not eating any of the food there and you've literally referred to not the food as being shit but i don't like to eat the same shit all the time yeah and so then i was like just kind

of a quirky guy who probably even like i i feel like my that that reaction of huh they're on their own brian that seems like something i would say even if i wasn't really like trying to die on a hill just kind of like just like i could just see i don't know just saying it in the moment and being like well that was an awkward thing to say i didn't mean to come off as defensive right i think i think

you would

say that because you you would be thinking well i know i know it to be the case that they actually are trying to actively not have that happen like you just be citing the kind of research on the

topic kind of thing like i think this guy was thinking out loud sort of right yeah right like

i don't think this guy was uh yeah i don't think this guy was um trying to be argumentative but again it was just so then he comes brings the bill back and he's like well i gave you a discount on the pickle bowl so he gave us like four dollars off which was a really random number but i was

like all right yeah yeah why not i'm with you though i never if i order something that i don't like like i don't expect money off of that i mean it's nice and it definitely goes a long way as far as loyalty is concerned like if they say hey listen we're gonna comp you that even though you know we delivered on our promise of this is what this is and you just didn't like it it's a taste thing but i would never i never expect money back in those situations it's only if they've really messed something up and really and of course every even that like in in the in the current climate as far as running a restaurant and everything that these businesses have been through i'm even more i think gracious and patient and uh and you know i allow for all kinds of stuff or i would maybe if i were confronted with it but um for the most part like if somebody says hey We'll take it off that's a nice thing but I never Expect it unless it's kind of like well I ordered chicken and you brought me Out a tire that's that's not how this

Should work like it has and the tire was Overcooked and Such small portions Right but yeah like I'm the same way I just feel very Self conscious about Sending things back yeah just Because I don't like them because I'm like well You know they they Delivered on their part of the bargain which Was they brought the food out maybe I don't like it i won't order it next time or maybe i won't come back but i'm not mad if the person actually offers to take it off the bill then i'll certainly allow that but then that ends up just usually getting re uh reapplied to more gratuity because they did the work yes yes if a server comes out with food and then it's not on the bill and they had to take it back and they had to take it off the bill it's like that's that's the maximum amount of work that that server can do related to that item that then isn't reflected in the tip potential right you gotta then i i will

often like try if i'm not just totally handing over that discount to them in real dollars then you should at least when you're doing like the math like try to say oh they took like ten dollars off i should you know incorporate that in my math when i'm figuring out the tip let me read one quick email for you here because it's topical and i don't want this to slip through the cracks i got this uh i just saw this now coming into the inbox from listener jen who's apparently a time bandit As the subject line of her email says, working on the Polish-Ukrainian border right now, Jen says, I hesitated to send this as now I've become a person who emails podcasts. It's OK. There are dozens of you, Jen. Is that a pep? But I'll consider this my foray into war correspondence or TBTL correspondent for some heavy, heavy shit. I'm a longtime listener. I'm about four years behind on episodes, but I was listening to Friday's episode as I was traveling for work in Medica. It's one of the main road crossings between Poland and Ukraine. I've lived in Poland since 2015. I'm a pediatrician working for an NGO. Not that my opinion is the one that matters, but I didn't find anything that you guys said on the show dismissive on Monday. That's very nice. The situation here is dire. We need more than temporary provisions of food, clothing, and shelter. Many Ukrainians are facing the prospect of long-term displacement, so formal pathways to legal status, access to resettlement services, permanent housing, education, health care, and COVID-19 vaccines. If people feel like supporting Ukrainian organizations, I recommend these that do good work. Voices of Children provides support for children affected by war. Army SOS is a citizens' initiative that supports soldiers on the front lines. And United Help Ukraine. we desperately need people to help get African students who are being blocked at the borders I am on slack on the TBTL slack Jen Walter is my name so okay in the end it's not about saying the right things but using our voices to say what matters most we are with you and we will do our part Brack Zasilania aka power out Jen sorry for the mispronunciations thanks for sending that in Jen and I hope that you are remaining safe that is a very tense situation

Thank you for pepping, Dr. Jen. Exactly. Thank you for being a person who emails podcasts. And, yeah, if you want to keep us posted, we would appreciate the information. That goes for anyone who's in Europe right now or has insight on this or personal experience or is, you know, Ukrainian-American.

I don't know any this is so distant from my lived experience I would be really interested in hearing from people that have more personal connection than I do and maybe we can try to read those emails just to amplify those voices a little bit as we say I am well Andrew I'm unsure how the next few hours of my life are going to go because the fob for the gym in my building doesn't work like the little card reader thingy so i went down there this morning in my little jogging outfit and tried to scan my way in it didn't work i thought maybe i had the wrong fob i had somebody from the custodial staff try and i went back upstairs got another fob came back downstairs it didn't work a random resident who is walking by she tried her fob on it no one can get into the gym i went up and down the stairs three times which was kind of tiring considering the floor that I don't it's not a full-on workout but I've emailed the folks here I have not heard back from them I'm going to like get another fob and go down there now and see if I because it is so rainy outside I mean it is like you cannot be outside running in this weather it's rivers of water but it's not not that you want to spread the pain around but it's promising that another person was having the same issue because it's not like just some weird thing with your fob that nobody can figure out they have to fix this now if it's affecting a lot of people I know and of all the days for that thing to not be accessible. It's like if it was any other day, I could just do a little run outside, but this is I'm just watching just waves of water crash down upon the streets. I guess maybe I'll... This could also just be the universe telling me I don't have to jog today. Yeah. Wouldn't be the worst, I guess. Although, I ate a lot of that lasagna last night. A lot. Many, many servings of lasagna were consumed last night while listening to Bon Iver. It probably wouldn't be the worst thing for me to exercise a bit today. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Until then, stay dry, stay safe, take care of yourselves and each other, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

and when the sun comes out the daffodil looks skyward wet from the rain but not broken triumphant trumpet did you like it Deirdre I've been working on it since the last meeting of the poetry club. You said, write what you know. I loved a garden, so I thought I would write about dirt and the sun. It's s***, Vern. It's sentimental. It's emotionally dishonest.

It implodes into nothingness. I was bored. Who wants to read next? Power out.