Muse

Can I have the room for a minute? Everybody out! My empire is struggling! All right, everyone back in? TBTL!

Good afternoon and welcome to Judgment City. You've just had quite a little journey, so for now, relax and enjoy the ride.

Dude, you got the best barrels ever, dude. Just like, you pull in and you just get spit right out of them. And you just drop in and just smack the lip. Hoopah! Drop down. Snap. And then after that, you just drop in, just ride the barrel, and get pitted. So pitted, like that. Eh, tomato, tomato.

It's tomato, tomato. You say tomato, tomato. I say tomato, tomato. How can they say this about me? I don't believe it. I show them. I record everything.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be Too Beautiful to Live.

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

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

You paint your bald spot?

What bald spot? Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is March 1st, and we are still beneath an atmospheric river, although I didn't know you like to get wet, though. At this very moment, it doesn't look like it's raining, but it'll probably start up again here any moment. We have a fun show in store for you. It's episode 3630 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. My friend Andrew's got some big news. I've got lots of news. Involving his life, which I'll let him tell you about, even though I'm very tempted to spill the beans. Some of my favorite kind of beans to spill. uh we'll talk about that also we will talk about this oregon liquor commission technically they're the oregon cannabis and liquor commission but i for some reason i can't bring myself to include cannabis in the list of things that this commission controls and i don't know why that is because I certainly don't think there's anything immoral about cannabis. I don't know if there's anything moral about a liquor control board in the first place. I don't know why including cannabis bothers me, but the point of it is the Oregon liquor control board has confiscated all the Russian vodka in the state.

Either I had a bottle of vodka or he had a bottle of vodka, but anyway, we were drinking vodka, And I was so happy that I found someone who would drink vodka with me, you know.

I guess this is going to be maybe what finally brings Putin to his knees. It was a waste of time to do that. I guess we'll find out. Plus, we've got emails and V-mails. And we have this guy, the aforementioned longest co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's dealing with a bit of a family crisis. You took my granddaughter. And he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington He's Andrew Walsh, good morning my friend

Good morning Luke, forgot how to use my microphone for just a split second there I sounded like I was doing a Batman imitation when really I was doing it You took my granddaughter There's supposed to be a Liam Neeson there, right?

I believe they've also pulled that movie from Russia I'm not kidding, I just keep seeing this flurry of headlines about the things that various entities are doing to try to, I guess, I don't know, have some impact. And one of them, you know, I'm on Russia over this whole Ukraine thing. And I saw a headline somewhere that that, what is that movie called? The Batman?

Oh, I thought you were talking about that Liam Neeson. Yeah, maybe it's called The Batman. I'm not sure. I was looking up Liam Neeson movie pulled. Okay, wrong. You took my granddaughter. Okay, here.

Is it possible the Liam Neeson movie is called You Took My Granddaughter?

I think it is. I mean, yeah, it's called The Batman, and it's pulled from Russia, which is now.

I mean, you know, yesterday you seemed like underwhelmed with this film, the idea of this film, and I haven't watched it. I probably won't watch it, but I don't think it annoyed me as much as it annoys you, the idea of it, and yet it's interesting that they've.

decided this is also how we're going to really show

Russia. This would also be a good case for Russia just to say you can't fire me, I quit. You know what I mean? They could just say we didn't, really like we weren't. They didn't cancel you. Yeah. You canceled them. We weren't going to show this movie anyway. I honestly don't know if my opinion is a popular one or is one that is shared by other people. It's just shared in the Walsh-Haz household. We just have seen the trailer several times, you know, before other movies. That's how trailers work. Although, the name trailer, interesting there, right? I know. It seems like it should come after. It seems like it should be engine, not a caboose.

Oh, why do you drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?

I got a whole thing. No joke, before we got in this movie conversation, I was going to start by asking you how many beans, how many types of beans we could name. So, honestly, this is probably better than my original. You stopped naming beans? I mean, my plan A was naming beans. So, plan B is working out.

I was counting beans last night, by which I mean trying to get my taxes in order. You and I were talking off air about this yesterday. So I have somebody who does the taxes, I guess. But the amount of stuff that I have to do so that the person who does the taxes can then do the taxes is quite an undertaking. I set up like a workstation last night. I moved my printer because it's also my scanner into the other room, Andrew, and I set it up on this like big kind of butcher block rolling table that I have. And I got out what seemed like hundreds of documents and then just sat there. Eating my leftover lasagna, watching Chris Hayes and scanning in document after document after document, it took all night.

were you wearing one of those um green visored little hats i was i was dressed exactly like

the guy whose name nobody knows including me from it's a wonderful life and i don't mean jimmy stewart and i don't mean uncle billy but there's this one other guy that works at the bailey savings and loan and he's always got that visor on he's kind of the money counter dude And I don't know if he has any lines, but any time there's a situation, like at the end of the movie, when George Bailey realizes he's the luckiest man in town, cut to guy in visor excitedly counting each dollar and putting, you know, noting it on an adding machine. That's what I looked like last night.

I've never seen that movie. Is there a scene where somebody punches out the top of their hat?

What?

Yeah, I've told you that. I've never seen that movie.

Well, I also forgot that we talked about old Dirty Bastard auditioning.

I have a bunch of tape of me saying I haven't watched that movie. But it sort of feels like that's also the era where people wear green hats if they're counting money. But then if they're angry, they're punching out the bottom of their styrofoam hat. If they're at the horse track. At the horse track or potentially maybe losing. Either way. Yeah, or an election situation, I was thinking.

Well, it could be their long shot comes in. it can be a celebratory punch your hat out or it could be a uh punch your hat out of frustration but i okay forgive me that we've already talked about this and uh to the listeners please pardon pardon me that i need to rehash it another conversation that you all remember how it went the first time the fourth time or however many times we've had this has that been an intentional decision on your part or is it just kind of one of those things where And you just haven't seen like I haven't ever Watched Titanic and I don't think it's Because I'm trying to avoid it I just missed the window and now I probably wouldn't Sit down for three hours with it Is that what's your How is it that you have not seen Kind of one of the most beloved Holiday films of all time

It's a boycott it's 100% a boycott I'm not going to give that money my Hard-earned dollars no I don't Know I didn't grow up with it in the way I think You don't like Frank Capra's politics I don't think he was too American during the war, I felt like he made like kind of it was wasn't he of that era of making films during the war that would have been not propaganda, but very much like kind of bolstering the spirits of America.

Do I have that right? Capra? I think the thing. Well, I think what they would call like a Capra esque film would be something that was escapism. like as america was involved in world war ii and and and and as there were other sort of sort of terrible world events going on which thank god we solved that thank god that we got past terrible world events as a globe as a planet had a real nice moment the other day of scrolling through all the ukraine news and then just settling on a new york times headline which is that climate change is accelerating at a point that we can no longer positively impact and i was like, well, that's a nice amuse. bush after reading my ukraine stuff but yeah i think the my understanding of sort of like a capra a capra-esque film whether by frank capra or someone kind of in the style is just something that's sort of pure escapism and i'm sure i mean if i'm thinking about it's a wonderful life certainly the war world war ii figures fairly prominently in it and it's not it's it's certainly not a um it's a it's certainly not critical of world war ii um it's also not it doesn't i don't know it doesn't seem to be taking a stand it's you know the jimmy stewart character i mean the story of that film and yes this is the part of tbtl where i explain the plot of it's a wonderful life on march 1st 2022 but basically jimmy stewart's character uh george bailey is this is a very clever very kind of charismatic guy who through a variety of circumstances never quite gets out of this small town that he was born and raised in and which he already always dreamed of leaving and he's always like literally has his suitcases packed and is about to go somewhere so then when the war rolls around he has i think uh he has a bad ear like he went deaf in one ear saving his little brother harry from a frozen pond when they were kids so george bailey can't go to war so instead he becomes kind of like the guy in bedford falls where he lives who like goes around blowing the whistle at night to have everyone turn their lights out so that, you know, the Germans couldn't bomb their city. I guess that was a thing, which is really wild to think about.

Let me just jump in here, too, to say this is what I was thinking. He straight up did make propaganda films. He made a series of seven famous U.S. Department of War propaganda films called Why We Fight, which were sent to the soldiers overseas. And it looks like he made other things. So during the war, I think they took his talents and turned him into making, you know, very, very pro-American World War II films.

Ah, okay. Well, yeah, so anyway, there is some World War II references in It's a Wonderful Life, but it doesn't feel to me like it's an overtly pro-World War II movie.

Yeah, no, no, I was just trying to remember him, because I just, I think of him, I was making a joke about him being too American, and then I got on that jag about, I just had this vague feeling that he was somehow, because of course that's the era, as well and i believe um let's see um uh it's a wonderful life that would have been kind of yeah that would have been in the 30s right or is that is that already the 40s when that came out

i think my i'm thinking it's world war ii i think it's the 1940s because um i don't know why that just feels like the vibe with the cars they're driving and stuff like that but i would say this it's a really good film like i think it actually really holds up not just because of the tradition around it but i don't know i i i really enjoy it as a movie and i you know i do tend to watch it every year uh in fact when becca and i i guess this isn't it would have been more interesting if when we started dating and i said do you have any like christmas movies you watch if she said you know the birdcage or something like and then i was like but that's my christmas movie i guess the fact that we both grew up watching kind of the most famous movie about christmas or around christmas it's a wonderful life is not that surprising but i took it as a good sign because

i i do very much love that film yeah i'm trying to think if i have a comp there which you know growing up like you know we were very much a christmas household like we um well obviously we're a catholic household so it was a religious holiday for us but we had all the all the trappings of Christmas. I have very warm, cozy feelings about Christmas and coming down to open gifts under the Christmas tree. We didn't reject Christmas traditions for some reason. I mean, I might have seen that movie as a kid, but it certainly wasn't something or parts of it, but it wasn't something that, you know, that we kind of pulled out and blew the dust off of every December 23rd or whatever. I'm trying to think if we had anything like that, though, and certainly nothing that carries over to adulthood for me like i have pretty specific memories of being down in our like in our family room did you have a family room or did you call it a living room

well um this is the part of the story where it always feels like i'm trying to um as andy haynes said it must have been great when you found that golden ticket but we didn't have like uh there was not a lot of extra rooms in our house so we had a living room which was also i guess the family room yeah so and it was the hangout room it was kind of like we did have a dining room it wasn't like we weren't in like a one room you know like building it was like there was a kitchen a dining room and then the living room that was the house yeah i was asking

more like what you call it so you call it the living room living room the family room and i don't know if that's a regional thing or or what but we had we called it the family room and the thing is i don't think i hear a lot of people say that and i it sounds very provincial to me hearing

it come out of my mouth i always thought family room was a different room that wasn't

the living room like the family room was where you hung out the living room was where you had your like kind of nicer furniture if you had it and it was kind of like that's where you would like entertain if people came over but then the family room to me i always just assumed that meant another room where the family actually kind of hangs out and does most of their stuff yeah that's

interesting and you know we did have kind of a room like that which was kind of a my parents put an addition onto the this we grew up in the country and it was a smaller country house and they put an addition on i don't remember the house pre-edition this is on my mind because we're looking at uh old photos when i was home last week um but we did have a room that based on your definition right now it should have been called a living room but we called it the front room maybe my family just really was just against calling anything the living room we are a family

we are not a living we are front we are front for a family exactly but all that is to say i

remember being in what we called the family room and um being very cozy next to a little fireplace and like watching those um stop motion animation um you know rudolph the red-nosed reindeer i believe there was a the the snowman one as well um crab rangoon and things of that nature things of that nature um so like i have those cozy feelings but none of them that really stayed with me except that corny ass uh andy rooney i'm sorry mickey rooney which i feel i always do that i always do that the mickey rooney movie that was a made for tv movie that i don't like it when people call my movies corny ass um and then i rediscovered it it came upon a midnight clear and i think one of the reasons it stuck with me so much was i watched it by myself as a kid it It was a Christmas movie, but it was really dark. It was about this kid's grandfather who dies and goes to heaven and then is given more time to come back down to Earth so he can show his grandson one proper East Coast Christmas. The grandson grew up on the West Coast. So is there a horse involved?

Because I believe we've established every Mickey Rooney film. He has to some he has something with a horse.

Yes. Can I spoil it? You don't mind if I spoil the movie. Right. So Mickey Rooney comes back down to Earth, like, you know, St. Peter, somebody lets him, somebody with like wings, lets him come down to Earth for this special mission. And I think he has a responsibility aside from just showing his son a good Christmas. But then he does that. But then at the end, he's got to go back. Right. This is why the movie really stuck with me, by the way, at the end of the movie. OK, everybody, if you haven't seen it, go fast forward 60 seconds. Also, good luck finding it. Right. Yeah, it is on YouTube. I found it on YouTube, but in the second half of it, it gets real jank. Like the entire screen squeezes, and it's just in half of the frame. It's really weird. Worth it, though. It's a good film. At the end of the film, he's called back home, Luke, and he does die peacefully again. And he dies peacefully on a horse-drawn carriage, I believe, right there in New York City.

That's your drinking game.

Yep.

Go get your local vodka, not Russian-made, not that Ruski vodka. Get your local vodka and take a shot every time Mickey Rooney interacts with a horse in one of these films. All right, let's do this. Let's take a quick break. And then when we come back, we've got some news from Andrew. I've got a question about a recent habit that I've gotten into here in Portland, Andrew, and I don't know. I don't know if it's like at what point is it theft, I guess, is the real question. So we'll talk about all that plus some e-mails and v-mails coming up right here on TBTL.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

Top Story, I think, for us, for the people who make this show, that'd be Andrew and myself, is Andrew's big news. You've got some – that was very unsatisfying.

Well, I feel like this is going to be very unsatisfying as well. Hold on.

Let's see if it's better if I play the full drum.

I don't like this buildup.

Hold on. There's about four more seconds.

Oh, I like the little tag at the end. That's sublime. That's fantastic. Wait, was that sublime? Who was doing the drum roll? The guy from Sublime?

Who was the drummer?

I feel like this is going to be way too much of a build-up. It's not that huge of a deal, but it is something that I've been alluding to on the show from time to time, which is, Veeves and I have found a new place to live. We are Seattle residents for... It's like I've signed a contract extension with the city of Seattle for the... definite future we are buying a house here in seattle and we're settling down luke as as i was describing this to people um last week in cleveland i feel like all of the instincts of a 26 year old are suddenly hitting me at the ripe old age of 45 i'm finally ready to say this is my city i'm ready to settle down and so veves and i had been uh kind of looking for a house for a while and we did find one and it's kind of despite you know feeling a little bit bashful after that drum roll i will say it's a mentally this is the first time i've done this before it's not the first time i've moved i've moved a lot in my life in fact i set up my adulthood specifically in a manner that would allow me to move around a lot and you know chase jobs if i needed to check that's what i want to

talk about with you in a minute here what oh just no no keep finished but i mean that's what i find so interesting about this whole thing is that you basically have you know you've decided you bought in on this idea of home ownership again because i know that was something that you guys owned a home in new hampshire and um you just sort of like you've expressed to me many times that you enjoyed being a renter because you enjoyed just having a sense that you could pick up and go if you needed to or that you weren't tied to any one thing i mean i wonder if it's also not related to the fact that you're not formally married even though you are for all intents and purposes you know you're obviously in a partnership with genevieve but like i feel like sometimes like The things that I obsessively do, like get married and buy houses, are the things that I feel like you tend to – you have historically not done as much because of not wanting to feel kind of like stuck with a house or something. So I think it's interesting that you came over to my side of things on this.

I like the way you've turned it into – I bought this house. You're right, Luke. As fun as this is for me Mostly I have to admit You were right all along And I'm coming over to your side That's the narrative here No, but you are right

Andrew, if I would have been your real estate agent You wouldn't be so averse to becoming a homeowner You know what? You did such a good job yesterday With just like freestyling that bad poem And you just heard my attempt at it Which was horrible Like that's a real skill that you have

In your defense You know this I had written down those lines while you were doing the show intro so I did have a little time to kind of think about it I'm not I'm not great on my feet as you know I can barely pronounce the words I do know anyway um uh yeah no but you put your you put your finger on the nose like I uh this is why it feels like a big deal to me um not just the fact that you know we're moving but we're kind of we for the first time are saying like yeah this is where our people are and this is where we want to like stay for a long time i've never lived in a house i i realized this just kind of ruminating the past couple of weeks since my childhood home which i moved out of at age 13 so i was there from you know zero to 13 in 60 seconds um after that i've never lived in the in the house for more than five years i realized um as you know i was at an age when my family moved that um we ended up moving a couple more times then i was off to college in college i had like one studio for four years i won't break down everything but in new hampshire i spent a decade in that town of concord but you know moved around several times within there and then like we said flown around taking jobs in different cities and that's something that i always wanted to do to have that freedom but then when we went down to la and had a couple of cool years down there a couple of stressful years but also a couple of cool years down there came back to seattle about five or six years ago and um and since then we've just been thinking like first of all this is the first city that we've ever come back to you know what i mean like i never returned to a city before seattle and it really felt like home then and then kind of falling in love with our neighborhood here um we're not going to be in the exact same neighborhood but like i don't know we just feel like i have to learn a new thing to say yeah exactly well i'm trying to figure out i have i don't want to like talk about specifically where i'm living right now because i told you off air last time we moved into this apartment i gave enough detail that people were literally sending me the real estate listing for my apartment before I moved in, so I'm going to be, without being annoying about it, slightly more coy this time, but yeah, you are going to have to, I'm going to have to learn what neighborhood we're in, because so far I've heard three

different answers. Am I going to have to introduce you as being in the greater Seattle area?

Yeah, can you go with tri-state area, actually? That would be kind of funny.

Now, joining us from west of the Mississippi, the longest running Cobra.

Yeah, actually, that would be funny. But anyway, yeah, so it just feels really good And I'm excited I have no apprehension about it that I would have had in the past And again, I think a lot of people maybe have these urges These desires to settle down earlier in their adulthood I was taught to fight those Well, I saw you outside playing basketball a lot I know what that's all about. So anyway, yeah, we're really excited. We're going to settle in, and we found this house. The process is intimidating, as you might expect, but it was quicker than we thought. And we have a real estate agent named Sarah, who's also a listener of the show, and she's just amazing. So anyway, that's it. That's where we are.

That's so interesting to me as well. So you had a 10 as your real estate agent.

Yeah, and of course, I've sworn her to secrecy. she's on the facebook page right now posting photos of me next to a for sale sign or a sold sign um no but sarah sarah was the best too it's like you know it's an intimidating process to

to buy in during these days uh i mean i really can't imagine it i have for the number of times that i've bought houses which i think it's like maybe five houses or something over the course of my life i've never bought in a market that's like the way uh it is in seattle right now maybe the closest thing for me was when we bought a house in la but again it was like we looked at this house it was at the very top of our price range we offered them asking price we were the second offer and then the one they accepted fell through and so then they just said sure we'll sell it to you for the amount of money that we were asking that's the closest I've come to trying to buy a house in a super heated environment like what you and Genevieve just went through and I know you don't want to get into like too many specifics probably of finances and you know how

much you spent etc but it just sounds like a war zone out there yeah it's uh I mean I think I was braced for it i was braced for the worst also genevieve is aggressive in so many ways no but she is like once genevieve sets her mind to something it becomes like a challenge to her um and so we actually had put uh we had i it became such a whirlwind that i don't think until we were looking back on it after our final offer was accepted that we made three offers in four days it's like we just kind of got into this mode of like well this one this one this one um and i don't know if that's the right way to do it or not i will say this a couple of those that we put offers on that didn't come through i'm so glad they did not come through like i'm so excited about this place i'm so excited about this show uh i'm so excited about this place we're moving into and i'm sure if those other places had come through and i'd never seen this place i'd be just as excited to move in there but i'm you know in hindsight i'm really glad we got this place and again because Genevieve was just like kind of very single-minded about this and now it's been a couple of weeks now since we know since we've known that this is basically going to go through but we still haven't signed all the paperwork yet and Genevieve is like kind of bouncing off the walls with just like she just wants to get in there and start working on projects and various things like came in here into my studio one day and she was behind her computer and she was just like flipping through photos of ladders like it was some sort of a like some sort of a dating app and i'm just like what are you doing and she's like i'm looking for a ladder i'm like what do you need a ladder for she's like i got a lot of things to do in the new house and she was like so bent i'm like okay okay cool get yourself didn't you get a free ladder somewhere i saw instagram then i'm then i'm in uh i'm in cleveland uh having dinner with my dad a few days ago and i get a text from Genevieve hey I got a line on a free ladder down in Kent if I don't come back avenge me I'm like all right you got a you got a line on a ladder down in Kent so she's uh been taking trips she got a ladder she we have um we have hedges that we're gonna have to maintain in this new place so she's already I can't remember what suburb she went to to get a ten dollar hedge clipper uh thing so she's just like all of her energy that you know isn't directly uh focused on a project at the new house is like kind of in preparation for that so yeah well i again i don't

want to overshare your business so you can cut this out or or tell me to pump the brakes but this is the house that because you you know you and genevieve were putting in offers on different places and and just it's so superheated the market and everything is going for well over the asking price etc and you and i were like on the phone somehow or maybe uh on this line but you were also texting and at the same moment you were texting with like genevieve and and sarah the agent and i believe that this house came up in this like flurry of conversation that i was just kind of a fly on the wall for and if i have the the details right this was a house that you know it's a it's a very it's a really cool looking house and really adorable and it seemed like it was i think genevieve said some joke like would you call this a long shot and sarah said what's

longer than a long shot genevieve so we had a text chain going between the three of us Thank you.

not me you and Genevieve but me Genevieve and Sarah although we didn't even have a separate ladder really do chain we're on you actually do have you guys did have a separate channel where she was sharing with you all these listings um but uh yeah Genevieve said hey is this a pipe dream oh right sent the sent the link to to me and Sarah because this is when we're in the mode of like you know looking at a house almost every afternoon um and I think Sarah I loved the quote so much i think sarah said what's less likely than a pipe dream but sure let's check it out and yeah no everything and that's the house it came together yeah everything everything came came together i mean again i don't want to give too much detail here but i mean people can probably figure it out it is one of bill gates former houses uh you know something that he had built in 2009 uh so there's you know a lot of house hope i can keep it clean it's the sam hill mansion

on capitol hill which just came back on the market i noticed what is the sam hill mansion that's not

the the giant the giant building on the hill that the sun hits in a special way and it looks almost

evil at times i think that might be saint mark's cathedral if you can start talking about something

you can see from i5 oh no no i know that's on capitol hill i'm sorry did i say capitol hill i'm thinking of something south of the city anyway uh oh oh oh that's that's the old va

hospital which is amazon's headquarters for a while that's on north beacon hill that thing is amazing the sam hill mansion literally i just was on the pi this morning and they said it's like a 16 million dollar house that came back on the market and it's just some like massive historic granite home right in like the most primo part of capitol hill but i just want to say this too i really do feel like one of the i mean this house that you're buying looks from the photographs to be adorable but i really think that hedge is almost one of the best selling people that hedge is magical i feel like you could very much go into narnia through that hedge i mean i can literally

do the homer simpson i mean those are the types of hedges that homer simpson backs into and what i mean that fits my personality i think really well just slowly backing into the hedges so we started with that we said that's going to be a key key um attribute for us as we're looking for house a hedge that andrew can back into and sarah was able to find that for us so i was excited about that but yeah i mean it's it's one of those things where we were again kind of in this just flurry of looking at houses and also starting to feel like well sure just make offers on all of them we're not going to get any of them like you just sort of that's not entirely true that's an irresponsible the way of thinking it thinking of it but I was like I remember looking at this house and I didn't realize that there was a basement that was completely finished in this house and and like a mother-in-law suite that has like its own little separate kitchen and its own little refrigerator I mean this is a weird small thing but I've been very jealous of people with two refrigerators like I know people who live in these neighborhoods like people that I volunteer with and they can like take extra food home or whatever because of course they have a I don't know a refrigerator in the basement or a deep freezer in the garage or it just seems like everybody had that and again this is part of me you know never being interested in having a home or the trappings of of suburbia but then suddenly just at some point in my life something just broke And I'm just like, that sounds wonderful to me You came over to my side I would love to say to a teenager Go grab a pop out of the garage fridge It just fits me It just seems like something that you should say

You guys are adopting?

Wait, we need a longer drum roll

We buried the lead Oh, you know what? I have an 8 minute drum roll that I can activate here

But anyway, yes We went We were looking at this house And I'm looking at the upstairs And I'm like, yeah, no, this one looks good yeah yeah yeah yeah and then i go okay there's a downstairs and i had barely looked at the listing because like you said i was on i was doing the show with you when it came in or we were doing our sound check or whatever and it sounded like this was a pipe dream and i wasn't exactly sure if this was the right neighborhood so i was like okay yeah whatever i'll check it out with you guys later and then we all drove out there um and then we we start going down the stairs and i hear genevieve she starts like kind of gasping as she goes into the basement in a good way um and she's like whoa whoa whoa like there's a little kitchenette and we're coming around the corner and there's more house there than i expected uh and then the room that will end up being my studio will be down in the basement and the whole basement is finished and like we realize oh this will be our living area this is where uh we can actually have people over to watch football games something that i've missed the apartment we have now as i've told you many times just it's not suited for that kind of thing i can hook up my you know it's in a basement so we can control the lighting down there i can hook up my little uh new projector luke we could watch football games mickey rooney

film i can watch my mickey rooney if i'm like your foster children football games on uh on the wall

with my projector so we're just like oh my god and so then we're standing outside being like well obviously we're not going to get this house like this is but yeah go ahead put an offer in whatever um and then later that night me and genevieve ready a basketball game watching and she had some free tickets to a UW basketball game and so we're there with a couple of friends and then our phones start blowing up from Sarah saying hey I think this is happening and it's one of the most surreal moments of my life like me and Genevieve sitting at this basketball game and kind of watching the basketball game but then just our we actually had to have a little conference call I think with yeah with Sarah we tried to put her on speakerphone at the basketball game we had to go find a corner so we could have a little meeting with her and then documents are being sent to us and we're e-signing documents on our phone while the huskies beat i want to say portland state arizona state maybe they had cool uniforms that's all i know um but a very very surreal feeling and also it took a long time to really feel like it was it was happening even after we had wired some large sums of money um it still was kind of like this is still going to fall through right um but it looks like it looks like it's going to happen we're going to be signing some official paperwork later this week

and then there you are you going to have a rumpus room are we going to be able to let the wild

rumpus begin i don't think it's you know it is rumpusy down there in the basement i don't think it'll be rumpusy in the way like i picture a rumpus room with like at least i don't know one jack and diane poster or whatever that album is um and probably like you need for it to be a real rumpus room you either need like air hockey a pool table um what's the soccer possibly some kind of miller light yes like neon sign yeah from a bar yes awesome and then what am i uh foosball i'm not a big foosball man i think we've had this conversation before i find foosball to be very frustrating and uh not satisfying at all like like an air hockey um so anyway i don't think we're gonna totally rumpus it out like that but i do think it'll be i think it'll by default end up being sort of our main kind of living area you know i love me a basement there's something very uh and you know what i think kind of kind of related um i happen to see somebody on instagram recently post something like god i just love a midwestern basement and they showed a picture of a basement it had a bar in the corner and my grandfather had a bar like an actual like pretty decent size like bar in his basement that i didn't really see people use by the time i was a kid but I guess it was used quite a bit in the heyday. It was made of like smooth glass block bar. It did have some of those like Miller Lite lights around it, I think, that sort of moved. Like some sort of light that was on a carousel inside. So it looked like this light would change colors. I just have a vague memory of that. And I went to visit my friend Matt and Kristen. And they have a little bar in their basement also in Cleveland. And I realized like that is a – like Midwesterners love their basements. Not that other people can't love their basements. But I didn't realize that was kind of a regional thing, too.

Yeah, I think. Yeah, there's definitely something to it. There was a bar in New York that I cannot remember the name of, but I want to say it was called like the Wilsons. And it was completely decked out like you were in a Midwest basement in the 1970s. And that was the whole theme of the bar was this is like you're somewhere in Sandusky and you're in a you're in a basement, you know. And the Browns game is on or whatever, and people are drinking – do they drink Lainey's? That's more of a Minnesota thing, Linenkugels. What's the kind of – as Rainier is to Seattle, what's the sort of Ohio beer?

You know, I don't know that I have a good answer to this, and I don't know if it's because there isn't a good answer or because I just don't know it. But, like, you know, there are all kinds of cheap-ass beers we would drink, you know, when we were coming up. But like none of them were specifically Ohio related. There is something now in Cleveland that's been around for, I don't know, 30 years now called Great Lakes Brewing. But that's like one of the, you know, that's kind of a, that's a micro brew or it was like a micro brewery kind of place with nicer beers, which is not what you're talking about. You have, what is the one out of Pittsburgh? Yingling? Yingling kind of bleeds over into Ohio a little bit, but that's associated with a different state and city.

So, yeah, I think of Yingling and Rolling Rock as being extreme little Rolling Rock is made in like Latrobe, Pennsylvania. But when you go back to visit my Philly fam, it's you're either having a Yingling, a Rolling Rock or a Black and Tan. Those are those are pretty much your beer options. But are you the last thing? And then we can move on from your home. I was talking yesterday about how kind of almost use the word sensual. And I just want to apologize for even getting that close. know i'm excited i i wanted to to um yesterday i was talking about how kind of sensory my relationship with baseball is like more than any other sport for me it's like baseball because it coincides with a changing in the season like the actual seasons it's just like

I associate it with barbecuing and with being outside and with warm weather and the smell of fresh cut grass. And I mean, I remember being a little kid and this isn't really baseball related, but I remember being a really little kid, probably, I don't know if I had like seasonal affective disorder as a child. Like, I don't know if that's something that hits kids or whatever, but I just, I remember going outside on the first semi-decent day as it was becoming almost springtime and hearing a lawn mower in the distance and and making this connection for the first time in my life that means good things are on the way like someone's mowing a lawn something that doesn't happen during the winter season because your lawn doesn't grow so you don't need to anyway all of this stuff is very um kind of ritualized for me and i'm i'm a little sad that i don't really have a lawn to mow here but you do are you going to be going ham on the yard work now that

you have an actual yard yeah i already i want to um i need to i need to make some changes uh in that yard like here's the deal like veves and i are already talking about like what are things that need to be fixed immediately what are our long-term projects and middle range projects right and one of my kind of i'll call it a middle range project maybe a three to four year goal is to really i I actually – there is a bit of a lawn in the backyard. The front yard is landscaped with, like, stones and things, so there's no actual mowing to be done, although I'm sure there will be a lot of – probably weeds will start to stick up, and I'm sure there's a lot of maintenance. I look forward to doing that, listening to my podcast and just puttering out there. But there is something, like you say, there's something – what do they say? There's something good for the outside of a man like the inside of a lawnmower. No, that's not quite it. They say, stick your hand closer to the moving blade.

They say, real people steal people.

They do say that. Stop stealing people. Our backyard is, it's like, it's got some lawn back there, but it also seems like it might have grown up through gravel at some point. Like, it's just not nice, nice. And it's also, for some reason, sort of two levels. It's almost like part of it is like, I don't know, up by a foot with a little garden box around it, but it's not a garden box. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on back there. And again, I've looked at this house once. Like, that's the thing. It's also just so weird about this place. Like, I've seen it once, and it was on a Wednesday afternoon.

You haven't gone back. Now, you and Veeves haven't been just, like, circling the block.

Veeves has gone back. She took a walk there and took the train. Veeves is so me. Yeah, and she wanted to see what the commute was going to be like because we'll be able to take the train to – she can take it into the U District for work. So anyway, I'm looking at that backyard and I'm like, this need I don't know how to do it. It's probably outside my skill set or I can learn how to do it or maybe hire somebody or I don't know what. Get Roden. That's my answer for everything. I don't know. Our pal Roden will help. He's handy with everything. But no, like I need to figure out a way. I think I need dirt, Luke. I think I need somebody to bring. I want to see a truck full of dirt backed up my driveway and dumping it onto this area so I can spread it out and replant the grass. I don't really know if that's how things work, but I think I'm going to need some dirt. So let me know if you've got any, if you've got a line on any dirt. But then you've got a garage too, right? There is a garage, yeah.

Is it possible I have looked at this house more than you have by way of the internet? Because I've looked at it many, many times now based on the internet profile.

I've looked at it a few times. Genevieve just constantly There's a little virtual tour You can take online She's actually created a Sims character that already lives at the house Oh my god Luke if we if TBTL Had as many impressions on TBTL.net As this house listing We would be this house would already be Paid for my friend but you have

A garage are you going to do something You know Like are you have you have you had thoughts about That is it going to be just a place to put your car or do you have any designs on some kind of i don't know some sort of a cool thing i don't see you like i let me put it this way i'm not the kind of person who cares if i have a garage in fact my the you know burbank springs and bellingham didn't have a garage and maybe that was a deterrent for some people i've just never been the kind of person who like cares about my car enough that i care where like other than not wanting it to get messed with or broken into like i watch some of these hgtv shows and stuff and i'm always shocked where it is like a huge thing for people if it has a two-car garage or a garage or now i'll also say that if you live in the midwest or certain places where the weather is brutal for half of the year maybe that's a different situation you need to be able to kind of like get your car indoors somewhat and And then... go into your house without you know having to be outside but anyway i just have always thought man there's so many things i care about in a house more than if it has a garage or not um that being said you have a garage i feel like you're sort of like me on this like i don't think you're the kind of person who's obsessed with where your car is going to be parked like do you have any thoughts

on that yeah i think we're i think the plan is to park the car outside either street parking or there is a little driveway we can park in that's something that i was having um this doesn't address your garage question directly but this is something I've been thinking about a lot like where we live now if I go to the grocery store I either have to park across the street which is you know as I've described many times a busy two-lane one-way street with with a bike lane and so you know it's a little bit it's a little froggery to cross that with a bunch of groceries and so I have to park across the street unload usually make at least two trips go up the stairs to our apartment go through a locked gate you know like do all these things and then get to my car then park it you know around the block on on the street that has overnight parking and i just had this fantasy the other day as we were leaving the grocery store i thought oh my gosh like it's these little moments that i will think about oh my gosh i'm just gonna pull up to our front gate and just park the car and turn off the engine and make a couple of trips into my into my little kitchen on my little walkway like i'm just so excited like those are the things that will hit me like out of the blue um and again and like to go back to something i was talking about before about the permanence of this and like i i feel like knocking on so much wood when i say that because first of all i also have the part of me that says now that we've made this investment something terribly wrong is going to happen in our lives in the world i don't know what um so there's that kind of paranoia but like i've just never moved into a place and thought this is this is us for the long term and like we can make long-term project plans and if something isn't exactly how we like it like that's something that we can just change and i'm i was i was talking to cable companies yesterday i think i'm going to get rid of cable we're just going to get you know internet at the new place and i want to make sure that we have really good internet so that you and i can continue to do the show unless the bad thing that happens is we get fired so if we do get fired uh my apologies it's my fault for buying a house but like i think the best option for us is to get fiber fiber optic internet which is very exciting but i don't think the house is necessarily wired for it so we're gonna have to like decide where that's gonna come into the house and that's like our decision and i don't need a note from the landlord i used to have to get a note from our landlord in la in order to get uh internet into the room that i needed internet in to do my job you know um obviously there's all the responsibility that goes along with those things but also not having to get permission to fix something or break something is amazing um so anyway to answer your question i think the garage we're going to need that for probably lawnmowers and i don't know if you heard but we have a ladder and a hedge trimmer now so oh yeah you know that's probably gonna garage will probably be storage with maybe maybe genevieve wants to maybe see if we can maybe put a little workbench in there or something that would be more her i don't know what to do with the workbench all i ever did with a workbench was take apart old electronics my parents would give

me without any expectation of me putting them back together did you do that as a kid uh sometimes

yeah my dad had a workbench in the basement of the rental that we grew up and he also had a um like he had a sign shop that had a lot of different work benches but for some reason there was also one in the basement of our house that was a classic seattle basement like cement unfinished cement floor i mean not you know what i mean it was it wasn't dirt yeah yeah but that kind of basement smell like a big drain in one like corner of the basement like everything sloped down yes drain just real strong seattle basement vibes and um uh yeah so we had a workbench and sometimes i would go over there and i'd futz with things but yeah i had no ability to actually i mean it's much easier to take something apart than just put it back together in working order and like i was

never like i i would be given broken electronics and not again no expectation of me fixing it just like i would just take things apart and just take them apart for so we had an unfinished basement we had a little drain i think ours was maybe in the center so just like a but a smaller drain in the center and my dad had a big old wooden workbench there with all of his toolboxes and then my little toolbox um and luke i remember there was a stereo like kind of an amplifier receiver eight track player that was kind of above my head but i and my dad had a big did he have a briefcase full of eight tracks i think it was one of those briefcase full of eight tracks and i remember one of them i can't remember the musician's name you'll probably know but it was damn i wish i was your lover so i remember hawkins oh no that's not it that's too modern shoot there was some other there was some like oldie some song from the 70s but it had the word damn in it and i remember being I'm like, whoa, dad, like that, wow, just an album with the word damn in it. And it was.

It was like soft rock, whatever it was. It wasn't Sophie B. Hawkins. I was way off on that swing. That would be great if that's your dad. Just really into Sophie B. Hawkins. And my name is Lucas for some reason. He's really into that. But anyway, yeah, so I loved that workbench. But I would just like, let's say, I don't know, my dad, an old radio would break or something. So he'd just give it to me, and I would just like, just take it apart. Then once you're inside, oh, this thing can be taken apart, too. Eventually, you're just like snipping wires. Once you're snipping wires, you know there's no going back.

Well, congratulations to you and Vives. i'm really excited for you and uh i think this is going to be fun i think it'll be some fun interesting content for the show just the process of of moving and kind of making you know this your forever home as they like to say uh when they're talking to chip and joanna on hg tv um last question and this is about the move are you gonna pay movers do you know yet have you talked about

this um i'm gonna be taking oh did i not tell you i'm taking about two weeks off and we're doing it ourselves that's going to start tomorrow um yeah we're going to use the same exact movers we used last time again as as as two people who've made a lot of moves from state to state these inner city moves are just amazing and we did our first one when we moved from wallingford here to the roosevelt apartment and we moved almost everything ourselves and then just hired these movers for uh for just the furniture and the big stuff and anything that we would need a van for a truck and they were great I wish I could plug them but I can't remember the business name off the top of my head so we're just going to hire them again so same deal like we have like basically a month of our lease left here as we so we can just like schlep back and forth back and forth and then I can't remember what day it is but near the end of the month we're just going to have them come and take all the stuff that we couldn't take so that's a pretty good like kind of down the middle kind of thing we're not going to have them you know it's not one of those services where they pack everything up for you and bring your garbage cans with your old tissues in it i am really glad

though that you are using movers because that was i don't understand why as somebody i don't you know i don't spare any expense for my own comfort generally speaking like i'm not the i'm not a particularly i should be more parsimonious with my funds but like as i realized doing my taxes i'm like where did this go but for some reason when i moved apartments i decided it was going to be me and david from the basement oh yeah yeah and it was so hard i think i thought well this is just an apartment like an apartment's full of stuff you know i still have a storage unit up in bellingham i was like which so i was like this how much stuff really is this and my bro and i can knock this out and i think i also have a very like off idea of what movers cost because the only times that i've used professional movers have been when i've moved across the country like la to c la to new york or back and those you know that's left you know a few grand right if you're going to have them come and and like you said pack your stuff up move it put it on a truck take care of it get it to the next place unload it like that's not cheap and so i think in my mind any moving that anyone does is like four thousand dollars even if it's like you just need them for an afternoon which is probably more like 500 bucks or something yeah i don't estimate what movers

cost i think for like moving within a city yeah exactly in fact when you were telling those stories about you moving everything with david i think i was telling genevieve about it later and she's like wow i'm really surprised he didn't just do kind of what we did which is again kind of a middle middle road thing like move most of your stuff but have him do the big stuff and i was like yeah i don't know i should have suggested that i didn't i wasn't thinking about it i think the

Well, part of why I moved to this apartment was because it was quieter, but it's also a lot cheaper than my other apartment. And because I bought this other house that I'm going to be doing remodeling on, I was just thinking it would be a good idea to try to rein in some costs. And so I think my mind was, well, if I spend – and again, I'm thinking it's like $4,000 to get someone to help me move this desk and like a couch and a bed, which it wouldn't have been. But my thought was, well, if I do that, then I've just I've basically just lost a bunch of the savings that I'm supposedly gaining on moving. So I just was in a weird headspace where I was like, in order for this to pencil out and actually be worth moving and saving money, I got to not blow a bunch of money on movers.

Yeah, which I mean, I understand that. And where we make those decisions can seem arbitrary at times and confusing even to ourselves. I dig that. You and I have talked about that a lot before, about how we'll blow money on something that we just something so ephemeral, $20 on a bunch of songs on the jukebox over the course of like 60 minutes. But I refuse to buy a $5, you know, little thing of booze from a hotel wet bar, you know, like that type of stuff.

Or I own a truck that's currently at an auto body.

On Burnside

Is that still there Is it running

It's still there I saw it the other night So that's the good news I was telling Becca I was like I checked on the truck She goes You mean you went And talked to him Or I said no But Addie and I Were in a lift And we went by And I saw it was there So it's still They haven't They haven't turned it Into scrap metal yet Yeah Like let me tell you What that truck Which was not expensive As far as cars go Was much more than Hiring movers Yeah that's true too

Yeah sure But anyway yeah So that's our plan For that I don't know if I left Any of your questions Hanging there But yeah that's the plan

not thank you for your honest and thorough responses and i that's not i'm not that's not backhanded i mean honestly like i i'm so into housing markets and real estate and home improvements and free ladders and discounted hedge trimmers the hedge trimmer is power though right like you plug it in yeah plug in yeah and we have the long extension that's a burly hedge yeah it is Anyway, I love this topic Honestly, probably over the next months Genevieve and I will be in constant contact Just because I'm so fascinated by the process I'm just excited for you guys to get in there Get your hands on things And get it all set up the way you want it It's always very fun

And don't forget, if you see any dirt I need some

Well, I've got thoughts on that, Andrew But I'm trying to keep everything vague Trying to keep everything vague

We'll talk offline And you have some ideas about my dirt situation?

Well, because basically, as we've been talking, I'm looking at the real estate listing. I'm zooming out on the map. I'm figuring out your local bars. I'm doing all this stuff. I'm like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, just moving things around on a digital hologram. But everything I want to say would then kind of narrow down the part where you are that's west of the Mississippi.

Just for the record, I want to make this clear, too. Like I'm not going to be like super vague or annoying about this forever. Like at some point we will talk about what neighborhood I live in. I just I just got a little bit and I'm just going to be honest about it. I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad. I just got a little bit. I felt a little bit burned last time because there was still a listing out there on my apartment as I was moving in. And it just gave me kind of bad feelings like seeing that on social media. And since this is still in flux, I just sort of feel like let's just let things settle down a little bit and let me move in. I think that's reasonable. And then eventually, you know, of course, we'll talk about because I'm going to my neighborhood is a big part of of my experience, my life experience. And of course, I mean, what would TBTL have been like if I couldn't talk about living in the Roosevelt neighborhood for the past four years?

So or whatever it's been. So I don't know where I'm going to have to go in my neighborhood to get my hands on some sweet, sweet Russian vodka. Andrew as the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission directed liquor stores on Monday to stop selling Russian manufactured spirits so they have gone in and they're you if you have a liquor store in Oregon you cannot sell Russian spirits this is apparently going on kind of all over the country um in Ohio uh in Ohio New Hampshire and Utah their respective governors have decreed that you can't sell Russian liquor um I noticed our friend uh my friend Ramon uh who is a good Instagram follow if you um are not easily offended uh he works at Rossi's and uh in Chicago and he put up on Instagram like we're not selling any Russian liquor here so it was like a bunch of bottles of Stoli and I can't remember he was flipping the bottles off

or not probably you know i um i've noticed that that account now i think you need permission to follow it so i don't know if that's something has changed blowing up too much from all of the

mentions on tvtl the funny part is i don't actually know if stoli is even an a liquor that's produced in russia right because one of the things that's that that's talking about in this article from uh kp tv here in portland is that there's a lot of stuff that looks like it might be like a russian liquor but it's actually like made in the u.s yeah that you know not i would be unsurprised to find out that stolich shania is actually bottled in bakersfield right you know do you know um we

have one of our listeners and one of our many lawyers named danny lives in new hampshire and i saw that danny had posted to the tbtl slack channel the other day that governor sunu knew there in new hampshire was also making the same move you just mentioned that a second ago um so So I'm on the WMUR website right now, which is like the local TV news station. And I see that this news package they have begins with, it looks like kind of a man on the street interview, the person on the street interview. And we have a fella here who is, I'm going to put him in his maybe late 20s, bearded, buzz cut head, few piercings in around the face area, tastefully done. But I just want to hear, like, I'm just curious.

how this news package begins with this person's take on it. Can we take a listen to this? I have no idea if this is good tape. Every time I've rolled the dice on something like this on TBTL, it always turns out awful, so I'm glad I'm doing it. Take a listen to this. Yeah, I usually do drink vodka, though, so I'll have to find a vodka from a different country if that's the case.

Employees at state liquor outlets clearing their shelves of any Russian-made or Russian-branded spirits Saturday after Governor Chris Sanu, who signed an executive order

banning their purchase and sale statewide we are seeing b-roll there of an employee of one of the that's another wrinkle here i don't think this is the case in oregon but i could be wrong luke you guys don't have like all liquor isn't sold from a state-run liquor store right that's a

new hampshire thing yeah here in oregon you cannot buy it in grocery stores the way you can in washington but you um don't have to go to a liquor store there a state-run one they're just like there are liquor stores that are just run by you know people that own them this is really funny Now I'm doing a little more digging on it. Now, this is the headline from WUSA 9. No, Smirnoff and Stoli are not made in Russia. So then they go, they show all these things on like tweets that people have put out and things where it's like all of these liquor stores that have pulled Stoli and Smirnoff and things that look vaguely Russian. And then they'll hang these things that say Ukraine solidarity, like just a printout that's like taped to where the Russian vodka would have been. But like, for instance, Smirnoff, apparently the story on Smirnoff is it was that that brand was started by somebody named Vladimir Smirnoff, who fled Russia during the Russian Revolution. So dude's not been in Russia for a long time. It's also now owned, of course, by Diageo, which is a British company.

I was going to I was wondering if it was going to be an American company or what. But do you know, this is a true story. This is something I'm just remembering now, probably because I drank too much of this stuff and it killed part of my brain. But when I first went to college, I did not like beer or I certainly thought I didn't like beer. It's not that I hadn't had it. I don't listen to this part, mom and dad. But, you know, I certainly had gone to plenty of beer related activities and parties in high school. But in college, when everybody was getting beer, I was always trying to get them to get me something else. I drank a lot of that stuff called MD 2020. We called it Mad Dog 2020, although I'm not sure if that was officially the name of it. I liked that, which is weird because that tastes worse than beer. But then also I would get like when I say I would get them to get me and I'm talking about the older kids because I wasn't 21 yet. When they would go on beer runs, I would have them get me the cheapest bottle of vodka possible, which was something called Pop Off. Oh, yeah. And I didn't mix it with anything. I was I was just like, I don't know if I thought I was a badass or but I would drink pop off vodka from the bottle because I said I didn't like beer, which looking back, I feel like that must have been slightly an affectation. I don't know. I was reading too much Bukowski, something along those lines, but I would drink it from the bottle pop off. It was just like it was rot gut. It was the definition of rot gut.

I mean, I believe pop off at this point is sold exclusively in shatterproof bottles.

I think so. And in a hardware store exclusively in hardware stores.

you'll find it near the paint thinner exactly right but like i mean that's i i've made this observation many times on the show but when they're selling you the liquor in something that assumes you're going to drop it due to inebriation yeah uh that's you know that's probably not the greatest sign um and that just sounds i mean honestly that that like low-key turns my stomach i think and i you know i consume plenty of vodka in my life currently but the idea of just room temperature pop-off right out of the shatterproof bottle at a party oh golly yeah that must have been so i don't understand how you actually like tolerated that as a young person because you were so your system was so not used to that stuff again imagine how much better tbtl

would be had i not spent a semester drinking pop-off vodka from the the bottle it does say that at one point it was also owned by diageo uh but it looks like they sold it and then um

never acknowledged it ever again also uh stoli uh according to their website is manufactured and bottled in riga latvia um and it is registered with the u.s alcohol tobacco tax and trade bureau as a latvian product um although let's see here uh i'm just reading the the i'm reading the the response from Stoli. The Stoli thing seems a little bit like it's not made in Russia, but just reading this on the fly, it's a little unclear to me if it ultimately relates back to something that is a Russian company. Because then you get into splitting hairs, I guess, which is like, you know, if the company makes the stuff...

in latvia because it's cheaper but they are a russian company than our you know who knows if the other thing is all of this is kind of silly although andrew it's also so weird how my personal politics affects my read on these situations do you remember freedom fries i certainly do and how silly that was and that was if i'm remembering it right you know it was we were in a dispute with france i think it might have been about like the iraq war or something where france was not in lockstep with us and so the kooky conservatives uh started you know wanting to instead of calling them french fries call them freedom fries and i mean that's just the kind of thing that is comical on its face to me and yet because i'm so troubled by russia's incursion into ukraine the idea of like striking a blow to take it back to the george bailey thing uh in its wonderful life when he's like he's like you know the guy who's not only blowing the whistle to tell everyone to turn their lights out but he's like coordinating the rubber drive and all those kind of world war ii things where it was like we were all like all growing our victory gardens and we were in this together i see like people going like we're not gonna sell russian vodka in this uh we're not gonna serve it in this bar and some part of me is like good like take that but it's as silly as freedom fries or it's certainly not going to bring down russia it's just a purely symbolic thing but because i'm i'm so against what russia is doing i love the symbolism whereas the freedom fries

thing is laughable well it's like that scene in it came upon a midnight clear where the annie Potts character is trying to give a news. Sorry, I have to peter out there. I don't have a power out for that joke. But no, I'm I'm with you. And I hesitate. I hesitate to tread here because I'm just not comfortable talking about world politics and world events. But I will be vulnerable and just admit some feelings that I've been having that I think a lot of people can probably relate to now. I know that the world is a very complicated place. Nothing, especially on the global stage, is just cut and dry and simple. But this, as far as world conflicts are concerned, and anything that, you know, I have strong feelings about, this one just feels so much more cut and dry. Like, I feel like I want to be on the cover of, who did we say it was? It was Captain America. I want to be punching Putin on the cover of a comic book. Like it just it is raising feelings in me that I've never had before, which seem like uncomplicated World War II-esque feelings about what's going on right now, as opposed to, I mean, and again, I mean, I know you know this and everybody knows this, but like that Freedom Fries thing was some dumb thing that conservatives were doing here in the United States to try to hurt the feelings of an ally who didn't want to join us in invading another country based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. Like, that isn't, you know, that isn't a comparison there. And so this one, and again, I, like, I mean, I, I am so embarrassed. It's like, I was reading this story, and I'm sure you saw it too, about a couple of or about 10 soldiers, six of them are former Navy SEALs, three of them are former British, like, you know, top trained British military, and they're all ex-military. And they're like training, and they're going to go in and offer their support to Ukrainian forces, right? And I'm reading that and, like, I just have this flash in the back of my head of, like, yeah, can I go fight? Like, no, obviously I cannot go fight. I have a freak out if they don't empty my garbage bins. Like, no, I can't. I mean, are you kidding? I know what you mean, though. But, like, I just had this feeling of, like, good for you. Like, let's just go kick some ass. And, like, it's just like it's so immature.

I saw some footage of, like, a basement. Most of the topics on today's show ultimately come back to the basement. So like some kind of large, you know, I don't know if it was a church basement or whatever, but it was a bunch of Ukrainian civilians with guns laid out and they were cleaning, you know, the barrels of the guns and getting things ready to go. And it was clear that these were a bunch of people who were not military, but who were now going to do whatever it was they could to, you know, sort of protect their country. And it was quite inspiring. Now, I will also mention, and this is why I think Mike Peska, our friend, is an interesting voice on everything. I was listening to The Gist yesterday, and he was pointing out that, and I don't know war fighting or geopolitics well enough to say if this is 100% or not, but he was saying he wonders if there might also be a certain...

and kind of mythologizing around this like everyday citizens throwing you know throwing a pot of hot water out the window to scald the russians now you absolutely salute the bravery of the ukrainians but what i you know worry about is that just the asymmetric nature of these two fighting forces will become more apparent and i'm i'm you know glory to ukraine right i think that's what they're all saying it's like i'm very into that idea and i am i'm like i'm like you i'm like i haven't felt so like just singular in my focus of like what is obviously the right thing i mean one of our kind of informal mottos on this show is shit be complicated because so much of the time shit is complicated but i'm with you andrew this one just doesn't seem complicated now if you want to say does the u.s have a leg to stand on when it comes to invading other countries that's a conversation we could have because i think there's a lot of hypocrisy for the u.s as a nation based on what our behavior has been but if we're just talking about what's going on of vladimir putin taking over a democratically controlled country and also i see it's so weird sorry this is just getting so political it is so weird to see the far rights like embrace of putin and the i mean during this whole thing and this argument that they have like that zelinski is the bad guy that zelinski shut down three tv networks in ukraine because they were critical of him this is before the invasion and look here's the thing maybe he did i don't know enough about vladimir zelinski i don't know how he was running ukraine like i just i don't have that information i know he's probably not a nazi as putin said and i know that he was the elected leader of the country and putin is going in and trying to take over this place to because Of some fantasy about rebuilding The USSR This one just feels really really cut and dried to me Like you were saying and so it's it is Generating all these weird feelings I'm just not Used to ever other than Knowing that the Seahawks were robbed In the Super Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers And that that game should officially Be replayed Other than that I just there's very Little in my life that I feel a strong Sense of assuredness about But this just just doesn't seem Like there's two sides on this one would you bring

back all the old players or would it be between the two current teams i you know what that's a

great question it is a great question i would say you bring back the original play i do too yes although here's the thing roethlisberger boo played in that game and he's only recently out of the nfl whereas we'd have to have matt hasselbeck who's been a commentator as our quarterback who's been a commentator for like 10 years um trying to think who else was on that team um for the i mean i don't think jerome bettis is going to be a huge threat anymore like i don't

even know what year was this 2003 no no it was like 2007 right i forget i'm terrible with i was

at the game which is you think i would remember but i'm gonna try to look up a roster pretty fit pretty fit in those head and shoulders commercials oh he might still be a menace i mean sadly it's like i trying to even remember who some of the seahawks were in that game here i'm looking it up here um sean alexander see oh we did have sean alexander okay oh yeah jordan babineau big play babs babineau looks pretty fit when he's doing the fox the local fox broadcast so i think i would go with well honestly i think right now if we're going to go the modern incarnation of these two teams it's seahawks in a romp because the i think the steelers are trying to find themselves um as a team they just lost or they just you know retired their disgusting terrible human being of quarterback um but even if we're going with the this is where i'm just i'm just such a eternal optimist i don't know why i think that the 2006 seahawks in 2022 would be better than the 2006 steelers i have no real basis for that but it's just my gut backup was Seneca Wallace I hadn't heard that name in quite some time Seneca Wallace was always so interesting to me because he was one of those slash he was sort of like a Cordell Stewart type like he was a quarterback but he could also play receiver oh so did they put him into they use him like that at times sparingly he just was one of those guys that had so much physical upside that and I think he was a really good he was a very effective quarterback in college the way that a lot of quarterbacks who are just like better athletes than anyone on the field can really really do well but then you get to the nfl level and you've got to read defenses and things like that which by the way isn't me low-key saying athletic quarterbacks can't prosper in the nfl because obviously lamar jackson is an example of how good you can be it's just there are a lot of quarterbacks that don't make that

jump if so if what they were doing in college was mostly based on just like being really fast um i just want to quickly wrap this up by letting people know in case there's any confusion what is and is not a russian vodka according to this article from wusa9 which i guess is based in virginia um they like i said pointed out that stoli and smirnoff are not technically russian so you can still buy those um the list of russian actually russian vodkas that glenn youngkin Don't get me started on that guy Is banning in Virginia Are And this won't come as a huge surprise Something called Beluga Something called Organica with a K Something called Imperia Something called Hammer and Sickle And something called Russian Standard Those would be vodkas that are actually from Russia That you're no longer going to be able to get in Virginia If Glenn Youngkin has his way

Now I'm trying to think if I have any T-shirts or anything that would be because i used to have a red t-shirt with a big yellow star on it that was just sort of seemed sort of vaguely soviet to me like i definitely shouldn't wear that now but i

don't think it fits me anymore i think i had i think i had a hammer and sickle t-shirt that i used to wear which was weird because like in maybe in college or i think because i had this phase where the more quote-unquote random a t-shirt seemed the more i loved it like my two prized possessions were i had a t-shirt that said hawaii fire department that i'd gotten at like a goodwill and that was clearly for like had been a t-shirt you got if you like worked at the hawaii fire department and somehow made its way to the mainland and one was called chico's pizza in seaview washington where this little like chef guy was smoking a cigarette and saying seven days without pizza makes one week i love that and both i those were my treasured t-shirts and i would wear them all year round and when it was cold i would wear like thermal like long underwear under them

did you ever pull that move that no i didn't pull it but i can definitely picture it from like you know 90s videos yes it was like so i just loved anything that just seemed offbeat i also would

wear a jesse jackson 88 t-shirt i just anything that just was like me expressing how quirky my personality was through shirt i was into and i i have a distant memory of having like a hammer and sickle shirt which was not attached to an ideology for me it wasn't because i thought you know that you know marx had gotten a raw deal or something like i just probably liked seeming oh no no you know what it was i can remember now it was a t-shirt that said cccp what is that because you know i think that's like the cyrillic for ussr oh you know how sometimes you would see

cccp instead of ussr now that you say that i and i'm looking it up yeah it looks sort of familiar

but i wouldn't have known that it's the russian abbreviation for the soviet union or union of soviet socialist republics i had a cccp t-shirt that i would wear which again i like i don't even know what i was thinking like i wasn't pro russia was not a great place for its residence in the 1991 um but uh which also i think is almost exactly when the when the soviet union fell

right exactly so that's when it would have gone back to being russia not not the soviet union but um the uh i my whole life i've mostly avoided the t-shirts that like i mean i have stuff that's you know have slogans or whatever i have a mariner shirt but like i for the most part with the exception of my official bikini inspector shirts they rarely reflect an actual ideology that i believe in but that that you're in the fbi right you're a female body inspector that's right you how much you charging for those mustache rides i see that you found me on linkedin

i just saw this tweet we gotta get the emails but i just saw this tweet from it was retweeted by lydia cruz who's a if you're a seattle sports person lydia cruz is a great follow on twitter but i think it was from the baseball player joey gallo who for some reason decided to join linkedin oh and he was like and it's like his linkedin page and it's just like under it's like his resume is like baseball teams he's played for and then i think his he like strengths and weaknesses he's like listing pitches that he's not great at hitting it's just like a really funny idea to fit a completely non-linkedin style job into the format of linkedin i thought that was i thought that was pretty clever 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 you got an email or v-mail you like before we get out of here yeah actually give

me four minutes and i'll give you the world because i have a two-minute voicemail here from listener garrett who has a personal connection to somebody we've been talking about lately

hey look and andrew this is garrett and it's lancy mess again Thank you.

I'm actually in the car with our two-year-old, Isaac, who might say something. I wasn't sure if I was going to share this with you all when you first talked about the Matt Stafford imbroglio. But since I'm catching up this week and you brought it up again, so I wanted to see if I can dine out one more time on the story. I went to elementary school with Matthew Stafford in a suburb of, well, a little city inside Dallas, Texas called University Park. We went to his birthday, my twin and I, we were classmates with him. We went to his birthday party in kindergarten where my dad tells the story that, like, we were at a park. and we were throwing balls and, like, we're kindergartners and none of us can throw the ball farther than, like, Matt's fabric and already, like, chuck a ball, like, 20 or 30 yards. And my dad went up to his dad, who was not a very nice person, and was like, oh, he can really throw. And his dad said, we're counting on it. Ooh. Because they kind of groomed him to be a great quarterback. And I guess it paid off. But we moved in fourth grade. I don't have any amazing memories to share except in fourth grade on a field day. He told me I did a good job, which is the highlight of my athletic career. But we weren't super close friends, and I don't know what knowing him in kindergarten through fourth grade tells me about his character now. But it's a little weird having this story. you know I'm really sorry that this happened to the photographer and I think his reaction was really um Stafford's reaction was really unfortunate um but it's kind of weird because I sort of know the guy um and I will end the message by saying I will email Andrew a picture of us on our third grade basketball team he would cry after every loss and I think that was most of the game because we had no idea how to play basketball so thanks for listening and um Power out. Bye.

I don't know if I received that email. I need to check here. I don't see it in my inbox, but if I can find it, I'll share.

What would have been wild is if Garrett recounted a story from field day where a kid fell off the monkey bars and Matt Stafford just turned and walked away and said to his third-grade girlfriend, Christy, take care of that. Take care of that. Take care of that. If that was just like a lifelong quirk for this guy, Matt Stafford.

This is a weird thing. I have one more little voicemail, very short one I want to play for you here. But I can't remember if I mentioned this on the show or not, but I had a shock about a year or two ago when my sister started sending me photos of her and Brad Paisley as very little kids hanging out together, like tiny tots. And, you know, I have family. my mom's mom's family hailed from wheeling west virginia i mean they hailed from poland but they stopped in wheeling west virginia yeah exactly and apparently brad paisley grew up in wheeling west virginia and i didn't realize this but like my sister amy would like sometimes go to their house there were like these photos of them like at birthday parties together not not until any kind of a ripe age just like as as very little kids but yeah i i don't know if i ever met brad paisley but there are photos of my sister does that in any way make you want to kind of get into his music you know why because of the connection not really um but i will say that i think it came up and this is why you know it was like two years ago because i think it was i was listening to the levitard show and it was right before i think the pandemic it was the super bowl before the pandemic which that makes sense right february and then everything shut down in march um and so the levitard show and i think the super bowl was in florida that year right miami um and so anyway they had all kinds of media access and they had brad paisley kind of at super bowl row or radio row at the super bowl uh lead up you know press junkets or whatever and they were interviewing him and i remember um just being he was he was somewhat charming he just basically was able to roll with it while the producer billy kept talking about his showering habits and brad paisley apparently takes three showers a day I think so I found that kind of interesting like honestly the shower talk brought me closer to liking Brad Paisley and his music but then I think maybe somehow I was talking to my sister about it and it came up or something so anyway if anybody wants

photos of I wonder if that's a regional thing is that a Utica thing is everybody from that part of the world showering multiple times and maybe where I grew up it was a once a day kind of place

maybe yeah I mean Brad Paisley is just dirty and he just needs to get clean here let me play if This is a 20-second voicemail. It's dirty. This is from our friend, our young friend, Ling. Hi, CBTL. This is Langley. I have a dilemma. My dad, whenever he tells me something and I don't know the answer, I pretend to be twisting my toupee on my chin, and he said it's called a goatee, but it's called a toupee, right? Bye-bye.

it is now going forward we're referring to that as a you can call it a chin toupee if you want to but yes it's definitely your dad is wrong it's a toupee and it always has

been I have no idea what he's talking about I've got a solid

I'm workshopping a joke can I workshop a joke Andrew yes you can well I'll give you the

voicemail number 206 hi this is Luke Burbank and I'm

Workstrapping a joke? Uh-huh. Why aren't koala bears actually bears? Why? They don't meet the qualifications.

Oh, that's not bad. That's not terrible, right? I didn't make that up, by the way. It's not there yet. Oh, you didn't make that up.

No, I saw it on Instagram.

Oh, I thought you were really workstrapping it. That's as there as it's going to get. Oh, okay. I thought you were just starting to form. Because I got to admit, I liked that better when I thought that you made it up. I mean, it's a good joke, but I was really impressed, Luke. You should have just lied.

I did make that up. That's what I meant to say.

Good job. What a rollercoaster of emotion here at the end of the show for one Andrew Walsh.

All right. I think that's probably as good a place as any to stop this. You sound proud of our work today, Luke. No, I am. I am, but I wish I could take a picture of this. i'm watching a guy walk his dog down the street and it's i don't know what this exact breed is but they're a smaller dog and it's not they're sort of like a dachshund but with longer fur yeah i can picture that yep yep so they're like kind of body shape like a dachshund but a little bit uh i can't quite they have that fringe right don't they have kind of fringe hanging down by their belly as the cutest dog and it's a little coat but it's so tiny its legs are so short and taking the guy so long to get down the street because the dog just could not keep up and the guy was walking as slow as he could and the dog was just trying but i mean what are you going to do on like two inch stubs yeah so that's what i was it was i that's what was distracting me as we reach into the show that wasn't my the sound of my voice was not i'm embarrassed of what we've done today it was oh i'm looking at that little dog struggle along just well that

raises another thing that we can talk more about um as time goes on but a big part of the dream of a house was also the dream of a dog right and we are now um uh in possession it's a you know it's a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a fence around his yard is in want

of a dog there's something about the inside of a fence that's good for the outside of a

dog adoption what exactly anyway i'm not i don't want to rush that i want to get used to our i

would that's why i was trying to like like yeah that's why i was trying to low-key that but believe me that's the loop i'm i'm also cruising a lot of pet adoption sites for you right now be forwarding you some links all right good okay thanks for listening everyone we will be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you until then have a great tuesday take care of yourselves. Stay safe. Hope you're doing all right out there on this big blue marble, wherever you might be. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

That dog is barking. That is not my dog. Power out.