Muse

Captain, cabin's ready and doors are closed.

All right, gentlemen, it's time to get high and also fly this old bird. Just a little captain's joke. I never get high when I'm flying unless I mistimed the edible. Another captain's joke.

You really think that's a good use of everyone's time?

If I can't have some fun with my passengers, why am I here?

To fly the plane. Go do that.

TBTL! All good.

here we all are together again can I throw something on you see if it feels good sure okay this is what I would do I would start with a joke joke Vince Vaughn quote obviously

swingers or crashers Fred Claus what are you doing now I'm trying to get some butter you're supposed to sop up gravy with your biscuit I don't want to use my biscuit to sop up some gravy I got

other plans for my biscuit and they involve butter the only thing that's nice about this is even though it's a Tuesday, it feels kind of like it's a Friday. I believe that what's about

to follow is really going to amaze. So I suggest you sit back and enjoy your front row seat.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

my name is luke burbank i am your host this song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world

coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in orland oregon where i think i'm looking around this room okay that you know i'm surrounded by clocks i don't know if that's ever come up on the program but i'm just double checking that all of the clocks are now set on the right time i also change of course the various clocks out in the rest of the apartment including the microwave. I think we've got it all pieced together. Somebody on Twitter wrote that they don't like to change their oven clock because they want to hear both sides on this thing, which I thought was a pretty good spoof. We've got a pretty good show for you here on this Tuesday. It's episode 3640 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

So I don't know if we talked about this back when it happened, But Jeff Garlin, one time TBTL guest, in fact, one time confused TBTL guest, parted company with this sitcom called The Goldbergs that has been on air for like almost 10 seasons now. It's, I guess, a very popular show and was over some allegations that he was inappropriate on the set. He would make jokes that people didn't feel comfortable with. He hugged some people who did not want a hug from him, etc. Just general boorish behavior. And so I just figured that meant his character was probably not going to... I mean, characters get written off of sitcoms all the time. They chose not to do that on the Goldbergs.

Can you verify? Can you give me some 411?

on i just saw some of the footage of how they're trying to present the character that jeff garland plays and it's well we're gonna get to break out one of our favorite words here on the show uncanny it is it is look up uncanny in the dictionary and you will see a picture of what they're doing on the goldberg so we will talk about that also if you are in new hampshire Hampshire and you were woken by a loud boom over the weekend they think they know what happened we will tell you what they think they know coming up and then keeping things in the eastern part of the country the joro spider a spider the size of one's hand that sometimes bites people and has a pretty high survivability rate or survival rate in cold temperatures. In other words, it's a pretty hearty spider. He's migrating north from Georgia and heading your way, if you're in the east.

He's not Spider Pig anymore. He's Harry Plopper.

I'm looking at a picture of a Joro spider right now, and it's not not scary.

I am petrified, petrified with this story.

I also tried the latest workout craze yesterday, the 12-3-30. Really? I'm trying to build my beef castle? And, well, I'll tell you how that went. Coming up, as soon as we say hello to this young man, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, to me he is... An innocent champion of honesty. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining...

Joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning. I feel like that's the perfect drop to introduce me with today because let's be really transparent and radically honest here, Luke. Love it. At the beginning of the show, were you somewhat thrown off at the end of the little audio montage at the beginning of today's show? The part where the montage ends and you're supposed to start speaking. Morgan Freeman? Yeah. Were you like thrown? I noticed a little delay from you. And if I'm right about that I was drinking some water I did, something in my brain told me There was going to be like three more seconds of that audio And so I tried to sneak a sip From my clean canteen And that was right as The audio was actually ending That's not your fault I stopped the music here You and I talk about our stupid little processes Before the show quite a bit Like when you're pulling little drops To promote things Sometimes you just have these little unsaid rules in your head, like, well, I can't do two long ones in a row or just like various things that your brain is sort of like flipping through like a Rolodex of rules, just like somewhere deep in the in the recesses of your brain, completely arbitrary, but make a certain kind of sense as well. And it's the same thing when I'm making these little intros. Now, this is one that I made, I don't know, a couple of years ago. It's from that show, L.A. to Vegas, with either Dermot Mulroney or Dylan McDermott. Dylan McDermott, thank you. I thought I had that straight. I thought I had that straight. Dermot McDermott? Kermit. Is it some kind of hybrid of both of them? It's Kermit McDermott. Anyway, I made that a couple of years ago, and as I'm listening to it, re-listening to it, I realize, yeah, I broke some rules. First of all, there are certain drops that just work better at the end of a montage. Like there are good enders that kind of like kick off the show. Like it's a good handoff to you, Luke. And this today, that Morgan Freeman one was not one of them. I'm going to pull this up here. And then I actually didn't have a problem with what the Morgan Freeman character was saying. I just, like I said, somehow in my brain I thought, oh, there's about two more seconds. There's enough time for me to take a swig of water. Because it didn't sound like an ender. Like, you know the rhythm of these things. I make these things. We do this every day. And there was something about today's that did not sound like an ender. And it was, first of all, the last drop wasn't a very good last drop. It was good for a second to last drop, which now I'm in a Folgers commercial. I don't know how the hell that happened. I know what I was going to say. At what point have we crossed over to full-on coffee lover territory? This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world. And then there's this place in the theme music where it's a good place for the last drop to end. and then the kind of, you wouldn't call it the chorus, but there's a part of the song that is, again, like full of energy and it's a good place to like kind of have the montage end. This one ends like two or three seconds too early and then does a slow ramp up. Let's do a master class here. Listen to the last like few seconds of this.

This is an example of a bad end of a montage right here. No regrets, by the way, about the Dolly Parton and Sylvester Stallone arguing about butter, by the way. I loved – is that from Rhinestone? That is from Rhinestone, yeah. I also like the one that was Tuesday-specific because we're on a Tuesday. Is that how you found this one? Well, it's not how I found it, but whenever I land on this one, I never use it because it's always a day other than Tuesday, and I do have it flagged as Tuesday only. I felt that was very custom. So that's nice. That's a put-up then for my put-downs. But okay, let's listen to the end of this again. And listeners, just notice it's just not right. These are the things. These are the things. These are the rules that we're breaking.

The only thing that's nice about this is even though it's a Tuesday, it feels kind of like it's a Friday.

I believe that what's about to follow is really going to amaze. So I suggest you sit back and enjoy your front row seat.

Now, I'm sorry, I was drinking some water. I needed one more drop. You know, I needed David Lynch yelling, get to the show. Let's do the show. I needed something at the end to take up those last couple of seconds and, like, do a real good handshake with you. Respectfully. You disagree? Drop King. Respectfully, my Drop King. I actually don't agree. I think it was good. Really? Because he's saying front row seat. That feels to me like the show is beginning. Someone's coming in. They're getting their front. I can see why you had that one in the last position. It does feel like something's starting. I just was slugging down some water, and I cut it too close. That's all that happened. I don't think this is a bad intro. I am obsessed with the accent that Sylvester Stallone is trying to do with butter.

He'll be having marbles in his mouth, too, which I guess he always does. You want to go back to this? Well, I mean, we must have talked about this at some point in the history of the program. But rhinestones, so it's – where are they? I mean, presumably it's in the south somewhere. Like, what is that – where is Bud – what is he doing with that, I guess is my question.

He's from the big city, right? I can't remember the plot anymore. I remember watching this for the first time a couple years ago and falling madly in love with this movie. and then promptly forgetting the plot. But I think, like, he's a cocky New York cabbie. Okay, but why does he have to go down there? He doesn't fall in love with Dolly Parton, but she's got to show him around her, like, hometown down south, right?

Trying to get out of her contract with her obnoxious manager, Freddie, country singer Jake Ferris, which is actually Dolly Parton's name in the movie, bets that she can turn the next person she sees into a nashville style crooner unfortunately the next person next person she sees by the way i am having a little um like abrasion on my tongue andrew kind of similar to what you've described before yep and it's just the more the more that uh it rubs against the inside of my teeth the more abrased is that a word uh so apologies for uh my my sliced alone impression that i'm going to be doing today but i'm having a little trouble speaking uh a nashville style corner cocky new york city cabbie nick played by sylvester stallone is the next person that comes into the door who can't sing a note undaunted she brings her new protege to her tiny tennessee hometown to train him in all things country while her ex-boyfriend tries to win her back now would you allow me to empty my

folder on this for a single movie it has a pretty extensive um drop collection in my library here i have five drops from long to short that i have pulled from this movie after watching it one time it looks like actually can i even tell you the date uh this was back in 2020 it was in um may of 2020 i sat down with genevieve watched this movie and pulled these drops here's a short one you've heard several times I love this one I say this to Genevieve sometimes there are two kinds of people in this world and you ain't one of them I love that insult that is great right okay now this one I often will end a uh a montage with and this is a this is a good place to end a montage

hey look here why don't we eat us a few thousand beers and you tell me what's buzzing in the big

bad city. I mean, eat a few dozen beers. I never knew where that was from. Yes. What do you think about eating the beers? It's evocative. It is evocative. Yeah. I could do that. I think I could see myself doing that. Here's some more context for the butter argument. This is a longer cut. Hold it. You addressing me? Uh-huh. A real cowboy always mixes his peas with his

taters. That's real valuable and full.

What are you

doing now? I'm trying to get some butter you're supposed to sop up gravy with your biscuit i don't want to use my biscuit to sop up

some gravy i got other plans for my biscuit and they involve butter he's you know supposed to sound irritated but he sounds very much like a child there i just don't understand i don't even

know if that's a new york thing like but people in new york do do cocky cabbies from new york say butter yeah you know what why couldn't he just be a guy from where's where's he actually from is he really from philadelphia or have i just like assumed that because of the rocky because the

rocky character was from philly i don't know are you looking it up um but you know i often give credit to um schwarzenegger for being the first sort of action star to cross over into comedy but this movie came out long before like kindergarten cop or whatever the first ones of those are stallone actually paved the way for that wow he was born in new york city he's actually

a cocky cab driver from new york city so he's doing i mean obviously you know there is sylvester stallone when he was born the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck he had a certain amount of paralysis i know this because i once attended an episode of northwest afternoon in seattle where his mother jackie stallone was the honored guest right right talking about her psychic practice and she mentioned this so i mean if jackie stallone is to be believed so certainly there's some things about the way that Sylvester Stallone speaks that may be a result of that I don't know I don't think this butter thing is part of it but it's weird to me because I mean I lived in New York for some period of time I feel like I've at some point probably heard someone who is a native New Yorker reference butter and it I don't remember it sounding like that ever I think they say like

but uh I will come to your house I'll come to your home. Refrigerator. I was going to play that drop, but I'm still going through my rhinestones here, and I didn't want to get too tangled up. All right, I got a shorty one here. I like this one. I don't use it very often.

I like getting involved in people's past histories. It's kind of like a hobby of mine.

It ends in a weird place, but he likes to get involved in other people's histories. And then this one, are you still mourning as we record this? This one is a little bit blue, I have to warn you. This is a little graphic and anatomical, okay?

I had enough excitement for one day.

There you go. That's the only drop in my collection that is labeled hog balls.

Now, I think part of why this movie is kind of a blind spot for me is because I've confused it with a different Stallone film. And I apologize if this was the same observation I made last time Rhinestone came up. But the movie poster for Rhinestone, which I saw many, many times as a child, and also I would see it on, I think I might have even seen it on a Laserdisc at this appliance store that I used to hang out in. So my dad's sign shop was on Aurora Avenue in Seattle. And then next to it for a while was this place. I think it was called Erickson Appliance. And, you know, they just, whatever, they sold TVs and washing machines and all the things you would think. but they also sold Laserdiscs. I guess because they sold Laserdisc players. And the people who owned the appliance store had a couple kids that were like roughly my age. So I would just hang out with these kids and we would hang out in this appliance store. And sometimes they'd put Laserdiscs on, like I guess to kind of, you know, sort of as a proof of concept, if you will. I remember once they were playing the Laserdisc of Up and Smoke by Cheech and Chong.

Yeah.

Were you scandalized? Sitting on a sofa, oh, well, I mean, I was like, you know, you couldn't tear me away from that stuff. I was really excited about it. But I remember sitting on a sofa in this appliance store watching Cheech and Chong up in smoke. And there's a point where two people are going to go have sex, and then it just cuts to, like, oil, like an oil pump going up and down and, like, a rocket taking off.

A train going through a tunnel. Yeah, into a tunnel.

It cut to, like, 50 things that were sort of, you know, entendre, I guess. And I remember looking around Being like Oh are we Are we allowed to watch this In the appliance store In Erickson Appliance But they had What they also would do is They had all of A bunch of These Laserdisc I guess What would you call them Like Basically like an album jacket You know like a Like a vine Like the thing you have Yeah With an album They had those Like taped up around the store And one of them was rhinestone And the reason it confused me Was because It looks like he's arm wrestling Dolly Parton But he's also in a movie called Over the Top where he's an arm wrestler and he's arm wrestling someone and my small brain just kind of combined the whole, I think I thought there might have been a movie where he arm wrestles Dolly Parton

He says, it's like a switch and then he just slams Dolly Parton's hand down onto the table. You're right, I did not I was not familiar with the movie poster, but they do look like they're arm wrestling Now this would have come out this came out in 1984 When do you think Over the Top came out? Around the same era, right? There was a period of time where Stallone was arm wrestling everyone on every movie poster. What if he thought he was posing for the wrong movie when this was taken? Or what if they couldn't get him to show up to shoot the cover of Rhinestone?

So they were just... Exactly. They just said, you know what? We can Photoshop him in on that one.

You know, we can put Tupac back here, too, if you'd like. No, no, no. That's good. That's fine. Enough holograms.

You know what, let's talk Jeff Garland because we've referenced it now. Actually, no, let's take a break and then let's come back and talk about that so we don't cross the river yet again. Once a month is probably about all we can get away with our advertisers as far as pushing their advertorial messages one hour into this stuff. But, okay, so we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back and we will talk about what is going on over on the Goldbergs here on TVTL.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle.

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

Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Everybody razzle-dazzle.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. Everybody razzle-dazzle. These are the wonderful, generous people dazzling us with their donations. dough. They're donating a significant, or I should say at least a not insignificant amount of dough each month and that's a big part of how we're able to do this thing. We want to start by thanking well looky here, our friend Lynn Pham. Hey, I know Lynn of Beaverton, Oregon Lynn says, I don't have a specific message, but I would like Luke and Andrew to plug my Wait Wait Stats page, which is at www.dt. Now, I don't think there are very many regular listeners to this show who do not know the legend of one Lin Pham, the sort of archivist of all things TBTL Audio, and also the keeper of the stats at Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. He is such a legend that he has been shouted out by none other than Paula Poundstone on Colbert. Oh, that's right. It was on Colbert. I don't want to take the shine off of being the dazzling donor today, Lynn, but I'm just going to say that's probably the top of the mountain. Right, right, right. Paula Poundstone name-checking you on friggin' Stephen Colbert. Yeah. But if you have any, if you're a fan of the radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and you ever have a question or just a curiosity about some statistical thing, who's won the most episodes, who, et cetera, I mean, there is no statistical detail that Lynn has not carefully tracked, and it's all over at www.dtt.me. Do you want me to look at your stats here? I'm looking for it. No, I don't. I'm bad at it. I'm very bad. I feel like I've actually, the last few times, I think I might have won a couple times recently, but I wasn't funny. That's the problem. I used to be funny and I would lose and now I'm unfunny, but I win. How? Yeah, it's a real, it's a devil's gambit. I'm making that transition. I'm about to cross that rainbow bridge. How many shows do you think you've been on? I'm looking at your stats page. How many shows, regular shows, have you been on? Oh, it's interesting here. It says regular shows and all shows. I'm going to assume that maybe all shows might include reruns. Or also maybe, well, I wonder, do you think all shows means pre-pandemic? Are they divided up? I'm not at the wait-wait page because I am over at Marsupial Gurgle, which is the other thing I want to mention. But I do want to bask in the statistical glow of what I have accomplished on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. So please don't leave that page, Andrew. Okay. But also I do want to mention Marsupial Gurgle, which is where Lynn has collected audio drops of me and Andrew up to, here's yesterday's show, episode 3638, March 13th. I'm nervous. 13th. Wait a second. But that's a different. Am I off with my numbers? I know Lynn's not off with his numbers. There's no way. Let's see. What show are we on today?

I have it 3640 today, but Lynn has yesterday's show is 3638, which would make today's 3639. What date does he have on? This is such a good Dazzling Donor message. Oh, no, no. It was two days ago. Yeah, okay. Two days ago. The 11th was 3638. We talked about Shrek a lot, I believe, on that. Everybody's good. Everything's fine. That was Friday. Anyway, so I want to play a couple things off of Marsupial Gurgle in a moment here, but does it indicate when he says normal shows what that means? I can't figure out exactly what the difference is, but it does say shows with scores in regular shows, and those numbers are very similar. So I think all shows might be like various specials maybe that you've done. Sure, they do, they do, yes, certainly, there are many times where they will do a clip show, and then they will reuse some content, and, you know, somebody, like, I might pop up on one of those shows because I played a game that they're using, so that probably regular shows means just, like, normal appearances that are not part of a clip show, and I am guessing it might be, like, 50? 84. Whoa, that's higher than I would have thought. Yeah, 84. When do you think your very first show was? i remember it clearly but i don't remember the date but i remember i was give me a year or give me a season you can probably put yourself into a season i feel like the season would have been the winter because here's how i the very first time i was on that show what happened was i had been uh tapped to host that show in new york the bryant park project and the higher ups at npr were trying to figure out a way to draw some attention to that that thing and so they had the idea to have me fill in as host of that show and so but before And that was going to happen that summer because Peter Segel had some scheduled. I think he was either writing a book or promoting a book or doing something or writing.

Havana Nights Dirty Dancing 2 Havana Nights He Oh I forgot to If we're just gonna go If we're just gonna delve If we're just gonna sink deep deep Into the minutiae of my life And things that are funny To me Or interesting to me Let me just Permit me this for two minutes So yes Peter Segel famously Wrote The movie that He wrote a movie script That became the movie Dirty Dancing 2 Havana Nights And we were out The last time I was in Chicago um which was we did the show in front of a real crowd like humans were there and we were on stage this was in like december or something and one of the other folks on the panel was the very funny christella alonso who's a stand-up and and television personality and lovely human being all around and we went out to get a bite afterwards it was me and becca and peter segal and christella alonzo and at some point i just said in passing i said well like it's it's like it's like writing you know dirty dancing to havana nights and peter said haha yeah that is and cristella alonzo literally fell out of her seat fell out of her seat and started laughing uproariously because she apparently has this long running well she has a friend who's obsessed not only with that movie but with the story of how that movie ended up so different from what Peter had written. So she was highly aware of the fact that the movie Dirty Dancing or Havana Nights, Dirty Dancing 2, whatever it's exactly called, it's like if you and I, Andrew, just had some sort of thing we always referenced to each other. Sure. We don't have anything like that. But if we did. It's turning into the OJ book. If we did it. If we had inside jokes. If we had inside jokes that we talked about five days a week and then later showed up on Marsupial Gurgle. But basically what happened was Christella's mind was so unicorn exploded over the fact that it was in fact Peter who was the person who had done this thing that she had obsessed over. Like she wanted to do an entire stage show about this movie. That's a good idea. About the story behind this, you know, the story behind how this thing ended up becoming this movie. and like so she it's like something she started she started texting this friend of hers i'm like facetiming with them she can sit she can basically i'm not kidding she laughed continuously for the

next 40 minutes hold on i need to interrupt for one second for a point of clarity so she knew all of the details of this ridiculous story yes um but she didn't quite place it that it was peter sagal the man that she was sitting down with yes for after show drinks i believe there was a this

American Life episode that this was featured in oh okay yeah this story the story of Havan of Dirty Dancing 2 yeah so I think her friend had heard it or she had heard it and it had become this thing that they talked about incessantly but she did not realize that the person she was sitting with oh that's great the person that the story had really happened to and how did he respond she was uncontrollably laughing for the rest of the meal like at some point Becca and I were we got i go home because now we're worried for you cristella because you're like having a you're having a laughing fit like unlike i've ever seen in my life how did peter react with grace and and and then elaborated the story was actually very interesting and i guess if if i'm thinking of the right thing if it's this american life thing he probably explains it there too but i mean what basically happened was he was really interested in cuba and wrote i mean he was a he was an aspiring screenwriter and he wrote this kind of coming of age story about i think it might be an american a young american woman whose parents are maybe diplomats or something and she falls in love with a young cuban man and it was it was a fairly complicated you know but hopefully hollywood friendly story that was did the classic thing where it was like it was bought somebody bought it and never made it and then it was sitting on a shelf somewhere and then and i'm now i'm forgetting some of these details but basically it was just like a it wasn't going anywhere it was sort of a dead project and then for some weird contractual reasons or because they liked basically they took the script and they made it dirty dancing too but they they they basically kept the idea that there's a young woman involved like it would also be a movie that has a young woman in it And for that reason, they had to still credit Peter as the screenwriter or as a story, like a person who, you know, story by Peter Sagal.

And about what era did he write this? Like back in the early 2000s, maybe, or earlier?

I bet it was earlier than that because he was probably hosting Wait, Wait by then. Oh, you're right. So this was in his young. This would have been probably in the 90s. I mean, that guy, we should just have him back on the show because he's got a million great stories from his time in L.A. You know, he was cast in the Michael Jackson.

video for remember the time but the michael jackson was so late to the shoot that they never shot the sea they had peter in full makeup i don't know i don't think it's one yes oh my god i don't think he was like starring in it or anything but he was just going to be something in it he was in full makeup ready to go but the shoot was so bloated and took so long that they just literally never shot the part of the video that he was going to be oh my god he had that movie that

video is so bloated like eddie murphy's in it and a very famous woman is in it as well iman maybe might be iman anyway huh i don't know if i knew that or so i'd blink to that part out i'd love that took longer than two minutes i don't think i've ever talked to him before i'd like to have him on the show if you could swing he's great calling some favors actually you know he was

just weak i mean peter is a total mensch i mean we could get him on tbtl i would imagine uh with with a phone call or a text message yeah in fact right and you know what welcome to the show ladies and gentlemen peter he's been on hold this whole time okay sorry that was your life uh so so that was anyway the first time i was on the show on wait wait don't tell me was because they were trying to well they wanted me to host it fill in for peter but they wanted me to have be a little bit familiar with how the show worked like they wanted me to have some experience with the program so they put me on as a panelist first so I think I was a panelist maybe like twice before I actually hosted it and I can tell you I remember being on that you know being at that table I think I might have been sitting next to Paula like the first show I did it might have been also with Paula Poundstone and I was so scared I might have said three words because I had no idea the mechanics of that show and I remember kind of not really getting what Paula was doing because I was thinking if we talk too much it's going to be a nightmare to edit later but what she was doing very wisely as one of the best people on that show was just kind of creating a bunch of stuff first of all making it hard to cut her out because it was like she's like so funny and also she'd refer back to things so then if they wanted to keep the call back they had to have the original and she was just being so entertaining I was doing these surgical strikes where i'd be i mean this joke probably didn't exist but it was basically versions of that's what she said like not that they were sexual jokes but that they were just

like little one-liners it was when you said my wife that the really the crowd went crazy in the

chase that one i that one actually i said it the crowd went crazy but they cut it out for reasons i still don't understand but i was just kind of sitting there totally stunned totally overwhelmed occasionally going like boy that's a spicy meatball that that's well that is that on

marsupial gurgle because that was a classic line um you won that show the first one i did 15 points it looks like here and then um mo and paula each got 10 the date which you never really guessed at was july 1st 2006 so it wasn't winter it's summertime july 1st 2006 you did win you also uh looks like and this makes sense maybe because you were new looks like you had the the the real bluff the listener story the non-fake one and it looks like they chose you correctly whoever the um whoever the the guest was there was the caller the guest do you remember who the guest was on that show the celebrity guest i'll bet you you do i don't who was it it was gwen eiffel rest in peace yeah very very yeah i'm a big fan i really honestly now um i'm gonna go to

lynn's wait wait stats page and look at some of these yeah some of this data on me because it's interesting mostly it's just it's it's a trip down memory lane like i can when you say gwen eiffel i'm like okay yeah i totally remember that like that really jogs my memory is the

whatever bluff you had was about new safety devices i doubt you remember that that's very very specific and there's a lot of superman joking around there must be another there must have been a superman movie coming out around this time um because there was a not my job about superman um the the panelist predictions was who will be the villain in the next superman movie i think you said a spicy meatball which everybody's a little bit confused about

i won too it's funny so i'm going back to my roots now which is i'm being less funny but I'm winning more. Yeah. That's how it all started for me. It's full circle. It's full circle. Just deer in the headlights, just sitting there nervously, but then, you know, probably getting some things right because I'm, like, totally focused on the information. I probably studied, you know what I mean? I was probably, like, so hardcore going into that episode trying to, you know, do an okay job. Anyway, thanks, Lynn. Thank you, Lynn. We really appreciate you. And because I'm over at the Marsupial Gurgle page, why don't we just grab a few? Let's see here. This is making me sweat. I don't like this. You know, this is what's going to happen. Let's see. I'm trying to think. Please have a drop of what I would say, Andrew. Get it together. That's what I would say to you, my friend. See, I started with me because I know you don't want to hear yourself. So I wanted to kind of ease you into it. Andrew, let's hear what this one sounds like.

Murder?

That's not so bad. That's not so bad. That's pretty good. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going way back, my friend. I'm going to go to, I'm trying to try to jump back, I don't know, 373 pages Ooh Episode 1772 In a collector's series April 7th of 2015 What do you think we were doing then? Things like this? April 7th Yay Nay Or Hodor What is that? That is my friend Andrew That is a much younger Andrew

Do I sound I definitely sound distorted there

You sound so young Okay listen here's me saying let's listen to my voice not right now this is tbtl time i sound i sound exactly like

i sound today like i have a cold um how about this one that i found no joke let's take a listen

to this scratch and sniff stickers scratch and sniff stickers sorry oh that's a spicy meatball oh yeah yeah that one's um from the show before this one let's see uh what is this here we go to like to okay we're doing this and i don't you know anything okay i was definitely in 2015 I would have been maybe in Port Townsend At the time Because listen to how much echo is on my voice Because I used to do the show in GarageBand And yes listeners we did it We got to somehow A more specific place In this conversation Including GarageBand putting echo On things or compression or whatever it is That's like okay we're doing this

I'm really sorry about that Honestly, I was not trying to interrupt you. I'm sorry. Remember this, Andrew? Yes, we played this recently. I am dead serious that that was next, and I had something in queue, and then it went through the speakers. I'm sorry. Was that a dog?

How did that?

I literally just went back to the furthest page I could find and then was just scrolling. That was complete and total serendipity.

Here, I want to play. I just have a whole bunch of meatball stuff here. Let me play this one. This is me. I don't know who's chopping up meatballs in the hot bar and then leaving a half a meatball, But that's what I was confronted with I have no idea what I'm talking about there But I can hear the indignation in my voice And I stand by it I don't even know what this is in reference to I don't know who's chopping up meatballs in the hot bar And then leaving a half a meatball But that's what I was confronted with You can tell I was a real rant

Well, can you hear how much fun we're having over at Marsupial Gurgle If you'd like to have this level of fun, if not more Head on over there And also check out the Weight Weight Stats page And thank you, Lynn For being such a big part of TBTL And wait, wait. You're the gat. I appreciate you. Yeah, you are. Good at the, parenthetically, sports. Maestro.

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

Everybody rattle, dattle.

We've also got to thank Daisy Sindelar in Prague, Czech Republic. Wow. Whoa, Daisy. How's it going over there in Prague? Daisy says, I know all the tens get something meaningful from TBTL, but for those of us who live overseas, it really is the cure for global loneliness. For those of you interested in international news, a shout-out to Radio Free Europe, which is not only the inspiration for Andrew's media empire and an REM song, but also home to the toughest bunch of journalists east of the former Berlin Wall. Luke and Andrew, keep up the good work, and please have Jen on at least twice a year. All right. Can do. P.S. I know the guy who does the top story drop. I'm sure he'd be happy to deliver it live or in quotes live. Power out.

Now, did we. Wow. This rings a vague bell. Now, why have we not. Hello and welcome to top story. I feel like we need to. I think that we need to make this connection.

yes we probably do although there's something just so janky and like i i would like us to stick with

the drop that i just played oh yeah yeah yeah no i'm not talking about replacing it but i would it'd be interesting to talk to that guy we do you even you just grabbed that somewhat randomly right

before a show one night oh i mean i i don't even think that that was part of the radio show i think I think I grabbed it one morning because I was like, well, you're going to have some top stories or I'm going to try to start this segment call. I don't know. I mean, I think it was very not thought through. Yeah. And it's very weird. Daisy, will you please? Could you provide us with the contact information for the. this dude who says top story because that would be fun he must know about it if he knows Daisy I'm guessing Daisy might have told him that must be kind of a surreal surreal thing to know that your voice has been on this podcast for now going on what I mean a lot of years and it must be the

number one piece of sound ever played on this show because like other I mean every now and then we skip top stories but that is relatively rare as opposed to I know that we've had other moments With drops your mom saying what's up dog Or coming tonight on TVTL or what have you I know that like those things have played a lot But they have never played with Such consistency Throughout all the years like top

The only thing that would rival it would be Let the fun begin

Yes although Oh did that go back to the radio days

I don't know but I just mean Because I that is a thing That I always play in the Kind of my opening Deal I almost said spiel but I believe copyrighted copywritten so don't copy pesca um i play that in my kind of like little ramble at the beginning of the show i think like every single show oh you do play that every show i thought that was sort of rotated nope that's always when i say which brings us to episode i say the episode number and then i am before i get into the top what i'm described before i get into promoting what the top stories are going to be i always play tom shane saying let the fun okay

But I think I have a memory. Isn't that where your mom's drop used to go? And then you stopped liking that. So you replaced it.

Well, somebody pointed out that it was my mom saying coming tonight on TV TL. It didn't sound dirty to me because it's my mother and I'm not, you know, a creep. But somebody pointed it out to me. And once it was pointed out to me that you could interpret that audio in a different way, then it was kind of ruined for me.

So my argument is during the time when she was doing that, when you were using that drop of your mom, you were still using top story. And then eventually that was on the radio show. Well, that was still on the podcast, though, for a long time. You made that change long into my tenure on the podcast. So I still think you would know this.

Daisy Sindelar, who's keeping a separate TBTL stats page. What if Daisy also had what if she had a page marsupial burple that was exactly like what Lynn's doing, but just one click off. And she was the one who could tell us what the most used drop in TBTL is.

She actually has a site called Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. No, really, please, guys, stop talking. This stopped being interesting a while ago. That's her site.

Daisy, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. Also, Lynn, thank you for being a dazzling donor. We're only here because of folks like you. Hey, more cha-ching for our guy. I know this guy. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I don't know him, but I'm going to know him. How much do we pay him every time you play that? Do not, please, can we not even inject that into the conversation? Like, because now, I mean, what do you, are we allowed, I grabbed that probably off like the BBC website or something. Probably we owe the BBC money for that, Andrew. I think we're fine. I don't know. You know who's still getting paid? Jeff Garland, Andrew, to be on the Goldbergs.

Or Jeff Garland's Ghost.

What the heck? So I saw this tweet yesterday I'm, you know, because I like to do bad podcasting I'm tempted to play it, but I also don't know if it would in any way pay off as audio What do you think? Have you watched it?

Yes, on my phone, like the only video that I saw was And I think this is the only one that's out there now Although I could be wrong, was somebody noticed how bad this kind of production effect was And they just taped, they filmed it using their phone off of their TV, which has fingerprints on it, and then tweeted it. So I watched it on my tiny phone from somebody else's tiny phone.

And also, the person, his name is Noel Murray, also didn't, like, do anything to, like, close the shades. So there's a massive amount of reflection coming off the TV, which I can't tell if some of it is effect that the Goldbergs editors and producers are doing. because it's like a wedding scene where the daughter is getting married so they're trying to make it dreamy or is that just glare wherever Noel Murray lives or Noelle Murray, I should say. So yeah, it's a little bit confusing but what is pretty clear is that there is a CGI Jeff Garland stalking the episodes of the Goldbergs and it is not convincing at all. No, it's a really weird decision. So he, as I mentioned at the top of the show It was apparently a mutual decision Because he supposedly hated being on the Goldbergs He just did it for the pay but, and then the people at the Goldbergs didn't love him either, or at least people that he worked with because he was inappropriate. One of his jokes, apparently, that he liked to say that somebody asked him to stop saying or that someone talked to management about was, I guess his character would sit in a Barca lounger a lot, and he would sit in this Barca lounger for just hours a day, like Jeff Garland actually would sit in this Barca lounger, you know, waiting for his scene or waiting for other people to do their scenes, you know, that he's just kind of in the picture for. and then he would stand up, and he would say, oh, my, and then he would describe female anatomy or whatever. I don't – I want to be inclusive. Can we call that female anatomy? What would we call – how do I not say the word that he would say?

I would just say vagina, honestly. I think it's okay to say that.

Shout out to my nieces. I mean it's not a dirty word. It is not a dirty word. He would say my vagina hurts and, oh, my vagina, and that was apparently his go-to joke that people didn't like. I mean, I'm offended at just how unfunny it is That's really, to me, the greatest crime there And like, and Jeff Garland, who, you know, he was perfectly nice when he came on TVTL And if you missed that event, or if you haven't heard us talk about it endlessly The reason he was so confused was because it was at my house in Seattle And Andrew, you had, I think, very cleverly presented us as, you know, maybe sort of a radio show You had kind of not, you had certainly not mentioned it was going to be someone's home

I think the email came in to me as a producer at Cairo Radio where I was producing you and Dave Ross. And I did that that delicate dance of some of pivoting it to the Luke Burbank's podcast. I guess I was on the show at that time, too. But, yeah, I kind of did one of those things where they reached out to Cairo Radio and I ended up pivoting it to a TBTL interview. And because of that, he did not realize he was going to be showing up at somebody's house in a very residential area. And then having to climb whatever 20 steps you had outside your house.

Yeah, I just remember him kind of like looking through the glass of the front door like there's no way. Because the Uber, I think, had already left. Some kind of town car had brought him there. But anyway, I seem to remember him being perfectly nice when we were talking to him in that context. But I did find his Defense of what was going on Apparently or allegedly on the set of the Goldbergs Didn't totally convince me He was basically saying My comedic process Is that I have to be able to just make jokes Like ow my vagina hurts That's my process That's how I give that Jeff Garland magic And if the Goldbergs producers Or if the people I work with They don't want to let me do that Then I'll try not to do it, but I can't promise. That's literally what he says to, like, the Hollywood reporter or somebody. He's like, I'm going to try, but I probably will fail.

And he also, like, somebody asked him to stop. I remember this when it came out. Because it's one of those things that's somewhat nebulous, right? Like, you know, like, what happens on these sets? I'm not there. You're not there. And this is one of those stories that really became kind of like, well, I say this happened. Somebody else says this other thing happened. But an allegation was somebody said, hey, can you stop saying vagina all the time? And so he apparently, like, put his hands on the woman making the request and, like, said vagina in her face repeatedly. Oh, I didn't read that part. And then, like, screaming at people and then later on saying, oh, it was just a joke. But, like, some guy and his wife were there, I guess old friends or friends of the show or something. And he's screaming, who are these effing people? Get them off the set. But then when Vanity Fair asks him about it, he's like, I was just joking. I love those guys. And it's like every accusation that he had, which sounds like, you know, it sounds like he was, you know, kind of a cantankerous bully who was making bad jokes, but then doubling down on them and making people uncomfortable. Like, have there been bigger sins in the world? Certainly. But it certainly doesn't sound like a nice, you know, and I don't know. I just hate the I was making a joke. You just get the impression that he's one of those guys who was of a generation that feels like, hey, I am such a talent that this is what I need to do. And if you don't get it, then you don't get the joke. And I don't know. I always cringe at that stuff. Yeah, I don't buy that either. Yeah, yeah.

So, again, I know we probably have some people who love the show The Goldbergs. I will tell you this. I watched some episodes because Wendy McClendon Covey, I think is how you say her name, she plays the mom on The Goldbergs. And she was on Livewire. And she was the weirdest guest we've ever had on the show. I will just tell you that. She came in, this was post-Reno 911, and maybe right as the Goldbergs was starting.

So I watched some episodes of the Goldbergs. Oh, Reno 911, yes. Okay, I was having trouble placing that name. Yes, yes, yes. Okay.

So I think she was there promoting the Goldbergs because it was maybe in its first season or two. And I remember watching. episodes and actually finding the show to be quite charming like i really i kind of i kind of liked it i was like if i watched more you know network sitcom stuff i could see this being kind of in my sort of in my rotation it's not like the office or something or you know something that's just got the most kind of edgy droll humor but it was definitely a very enjoyable and watchable and i'm sure we have listeners who enjoy the show the goldbergs so you know i'm not trying to uh yuck that yum but this clip that this person noel murray um or noel murray again i'm it's n-o-e-l how do you it's a this is a person who appears to be i've been looking around on their various websites looks like a guy would you go with noel or noel i think that's noel right that's how you you say it's n-o-e-l like noel gallagher oh is that how noel gallagher spells his name i think OK, so Noel Murray in this clip says, let me get the exact tweet. He says they should either cancel the Goldbergs or kill off Jeff Garland's character because the workarounds they've been using this season ain't working. And so it's this wedding scene where the the daughter, I assume, of the Goldbergs is about to marry someone. and they're it's in their house and uh the mom goldberg wendy mcclendon is what first of all jeff garland's character you just see his back and he sort of hugs her and says something about like i love you peanut i don't know if this will get picked up or not but i'm just gonna play and we'll see if we can kind of get the audio oh my god this is incredible my little peanut my little it sounds like a hostage now the reason is because the way that they decided to fix this is through a series of extremely involved things one is jeff garland's stand-in who they're like filming as jeff garland so every shot is mostly from the back but they will occasionally cgi his face onto the stand-in and for audio all of the dialogue apparently that jeff garland's character delivers is stuff he said at other times during the show which is wild as a concept like they're just going back and so he must have said my little peanut at some point so somebody at this show andrews job it is probably to go back and make a whole huge excel spreadsheet of all of the different kind of emotional states jeff garland's character has been in and lines that he's expressed or sentiments he's expressed on the show so that they can then take them and use something he already said play it underneath as they're shooting the back of the stand so it seems like he's calling his daughter my little peanut yeah i feel like whatever the whatever the context

was in which he delivered that line but i feel like he was talking to a real peanut like whenever like he was actually probably eating peanuts in some scene and he looked down he's like oh my little peanut and then they've or he was standing at the crap services table they weren't even filming it just still was he was just still mike yeah right exactly it's so weird though because he is clearly when they show his i mean the problem is it's like they i think the producers kind of know that it's not really working so they're trying to minimize it but it just leads to like the weirdest blocking i've ever seen so weird it's so uncanny thank you got to get to use our favorite word like it's sort of like they just need to write him out of the show like who cares it's the goldbergs he went to tahiti like just i i think the world is going to keep spinning if we don't have the full explanation of why daddy goldberg i don't know what his name is on the show like if we don't have a fully convincing explanation of why jeff garland's character is not around anymore he had a heart attack make a special episode where you do a funeral for him whatever like this is so weird because it's just like he's just occasionally he's just hovering but they really don't want to show him very much because they know they're not pulling off the cgi he's got this weird grin on his fake face which is also not like a look that jeff goldberg has ever made in his life he looks like he's ill yeah right like that he literally never smiles that does not seem to be his move but now they've got this kind of ghost somebody else wrote on twitter that they really thought that the Goldbergs had just made him a ghost, which, hey, by the way, not a terrible idea. You know what I mean? Like, keep him in the show, do all of the stuff, but just actually be like, he's a ghost now. Call it out that he's a ghost. He had a heart attack. Now he lives amongst them, but he's really washed out. And just do it for years. And says weird stuff. For seasons and seasons. You know, like, I mean, but you know who is, you know who's really getting away with something here is Jeff Garland, because they're still paying him because they have because they've just

decided that his existence in this plot of the show is so vital that they have to do all this weird silly stuff he still gets paid which is wild to me I mean he probably wishes he would have gotten you know he wasn't fired technically but I bet he wishes that you know season two he would

have gotten out of it yeah it's interesting well I mean of course then I guess the paychecks would have ended in season two so yeah I don't know I mean it's a weird dynamic when I was reading I I think one of the articles you sent today or I don't know, something else, but like, you know, like way back in 2019, he was doing like in a Netflix stand up special. He was doing jokes about how much he hated working on the Goldbergs. Did you already mentioned that? Sorry if I'm repeating. No, I didn't. But it's just kind of like you outwardly hate working on this show. You're pretty rude and aggressively rude and kind of bullying to the people around you who don't want to work with you anymore. Like, geez, Louise, end it. You know what I mean? Like, just get away. I mean, I'm sure the money is fantastic. I mean, well, that's the thing.

And, you know, I don't I can't remember the exact number of seasons that you have to get to to get to syndication. And maybe that's not a hard and fast number. But, you know, the real money is in syndication with these sitcoms. And if you just if you make it far enough that they have enough content that they think they can sell it to, you know, the I don't know, UPN or something. Does UPN even exist anymore? I don't know. We're living in a very fractured media landscape. You know what I've been noticing I feel like the internet changed everything So I don't know In the olden days the whole thing was For these sitcoms you gotta get to X number of episodes because if you do that Then you can sell it into syndication And you can make loads of money There's these famous stories about There was a show Called Grace Under Fire Oh yeah It starred a stand up comedian Her name was Brett

but butler yeah i liked that that was in the 90s right i i legitimately liked that i didn't watch it a lot i didn't watch that kind of tv that much but i remember really liking her yeah she was a

stand-up and i think she was pretty funny i believe she also was dealing with some um some personal issues and maybe issues of addiction sort of towards the end of that show and the the famous sort of story on it is they like had to get to everyone working on it anyone who had any financial stake in the show was desperate to get to like episode number whatever 62 because that was the cutoff for syndication and if they could just shoot enough of these episodes then they could all pretty much retire and the star of the show was kind of non what's it non-compense non-compense like she was just not really able to do it and so they just had to write these wild scenes where she would just be sitting on the couch or they would just kind of like they were just doing all of this really bizarre workaround stuff to keep making the show because i think there might have also been a requirement that she had to be in the episodes or something because she was the star like for it to qualify as an episode and so they were just bending themselves into pretzels to get to this number of episodes so that everybody associated with grace under fire could get paid

i this is beside the point i hope she's doing all right like it's weird i don't i feel like you maybe told me that story before so i can't i think that i didn't know it but i am surprised again that's the hey goldfish brain they say you shouldn't you need a brain like a goldfish right that's what i got um but i kind of forgot about that that she had struggled so i hope that she was able to kind of get her life together i legitimately mean that i know that's not your point here but i don't know because that show it had kind of a rosanny kind of vibe right because it wasn't your traditional family she was raising like a non-traditional family or something and she was like you know just kind of like and it wasn't like a even a middle class family i think they were maybe they were middle class maybe lower middle class and like i don't know just sort of had those those vibes um and i just remember so that was i guess late 90s or something that was on i feel like i was in maybe early 90s i feel like i was in high

school when i would see it it would appear this is according to wikipedia uh in 2011 butler appeared on the rosy show and reported being sober since 1998 um and so uh has a i guess uh you know thinking good things for brett butler yeah let's get her on the show yeah so that but but to the point on syndication presumably jeff garland is also going to get paid when the goldbergs go into syndication this just feels like he's getting away with something or this whole thing yeah i feel like

maybe i was so focused on the allegations and and then the money that i kind of almost skipped over the interesting or tbtl-ish part of this which is just like what are people doing in these production rooms now like there's a phrase that a producer friend of mine said many many years ago is the first time

I heard it you've heard it many times but I was messing around with something I don't know if I was adding some audio effects or something and he just said just because you can doesn't mean you should and I always think of my friend Dave Schmoll who actually is the musical like band leader on Amber Ruffin's show now if that show still exists by the way he still may even have my first electric guitar I believe I gave him or maybe sold him my first electric guitar anyway that's pretty cool I haven't talked to him in years but I found him Instagram and yeah I think he works with Amber Ruff and anyway I just remember him saying that to me way back in the 90s when we were working at the radio station he said just because you can doesn't know you should and it wedged in my brain and like that's what we're getting at with like because it's like tempting with these Star Wars movies you know when you know like I think some of shoot I shouldn't I shouldn't do this off the cuff because I know I'm going to get some things wrong but I think some of the Princess Leia scenes might have been digitally enhanced or something when the actor died why am I blanking on Princess Leia? Carrie Fisher Carrie Fisher died I feel like

oh did she show up in like a later like a recent one where they got the gang

back together or something? I might be wrong about that I feel like maybe they did a little bit of filling in on some scenes but maybe I'm wrong about that and maybe people were just saying hey listen Star Wars don't you do this to Carrie Fisher you know like because we do we are in that era where you can swap people out or you can swap mustaches out like in the case of Superman like that was a decade ago right didn't they digitally alter a mustache off of superman oh off of superman who played superman like i don't know 15 years ago i'm off the rails here sorry i'm referencing things well was it before was it

before like henry that rings a bell that rings a bell i mean that's the current superman but i

can't imagine he's been doing it for 15 no then i then uh let me just uh i'm sorry i'm wondering

if you're confusing caesar romero as the joker and batman who had a mustache under his makeup Which was weird With the nipples on George Clooney's Batman

No here it is Justice League Oh yeah from 2021 After Joss Whedon's theatrical cut of Justice League From the poor removal of Henry Cavill's Superman mustache The Snyder cut fixes that I don't understand exactly why But there was some huge thing about them digitally removed Because he had the mustache for a different role I think So they digitally removed it for the Superman role Which is like honestly commit Just commit to a project

that makes no sense like as far as like it'd be one thing if I'm trying to think of a body modification that would be so sort of permanent and take time to grow back maybe if you shaved your head or something but like yeah shave the mustache shoot the movie grow the mustache for whatever the other thing is

here I'm gonna say well I'll send this you can look at it after the show but the wrap has an article that came out in May of 2020 the 10 most terrifying shots of Superman cgi mouth in the justice league cut and it's all these shots do you think it's rough sorry to

sorry to our listeners who know everything about this world and are just again throwing their phones but like it has to be something where they made a decision to make superman have a mustache to be interesting but then it tested poorly so then they had to undo it because they'd already

shot it right that's the only logical explanation literally he was working on another film where he needed the mustache, and they said, okay, you can work on both. How could he have been shooting it

at the same time as Superman?

I'm floundering around here. I was at least right that Superman had a mustache that was digitally removed, so I'll take that. But I'm trying to figure out. Henry Cavill's mustache explained. Okay, are we at the same place? He was sporting his Mission Impossible mustache, and they had to CGI over it, and it was very disturbing.

That's, I mean, listen, Listen, I can't grow a mustache to save my life. I don't know if we have any listeners who are from back in the days when we had a Movember deal on the radio show, and I actually grew. I did not shave my upper lip for an entire month, and it was rough. It was not an impressive mustache at all, so I'm not really one to talk. But Henry Cavill or Cavill, however you say his name, is a appears to be a square jawed, perfectly testosterone male person who could, I assume, grow that mustache overnight. Yeah, I'm not.

I don't understand how it doesn't seem easier to put on a fake mustache than to digitally remove a mustache. I mean, I think these are conversations people were having years and years ago. but I definitely have today's show pick and it's the first image in this listicle I sent you of his weird ass mouth after they digitally altered and removed the mustache it is you want to talk about uncanny I do want to talk about uncanny in fact I wanted to tell you before when you mentioned that word do you know that uncanny was the most mysterious word to me you just saw the image right? He looks like Hugo Weaving from the I'm not going to do that.

matrix movies i don't know the reference you you would he was also like he was in all the lord of the rings movies he's that he's like hugo i think you say it's weaving uh that's how you pronounce it he had this odd distinction of being in i think the most the movies that had made the most money in the history of movies because he was both in the lord of the rings and in the matrix he's kind You're not like the main bad dude in The Matrix.

I've never – or I saw The Matrix once when it was relatively new, and I don't – I didn't like it, and I don't remember it. You didn't like it? No. Well, I watch it with a friend of mine who – Scott, I love you. Did you take the red pill? It was a friend of mine who was a really smart guy who is a really smart guy. I just haven't talked to him in decades. But he – I really, really looked up to him. I think he was maybe a year older than me, a fantastic musician. and he was really into philosophy and he was a college friend of mine. And then The Matrix came out and he loved it so much. He could not get over how it was basically like the perfect movie and he would only just talk about how The Matrix was just like everything. And so after hearing him talk about it forever, finally, I think I was out of college by this point, me and my friend Andrea drive to his house. He's living in, I think, South Bend, Indiana at the time. None of this matters. I'm just remembering it. I don't remember things that well, so why not give you all the details? We drive to South Bend, we go, we hang out at his house, and then night falls and he says, let's watch The Matrix. I'm like, all right, this better be good. And I remember just being so bored and eye-rolly and thinking it was so schlocky. Now, here's the deal. I was a bit of a snob at the time. He set it up as the best movie ever made. I didn't like mainstream releases very much at the time. So I'm not saying that I stand by the fact that I don't like that movie, but I don't remember anything about it other than pouting my way through it at Scott's house.

I had the total opposite experience, which was I carefully told Scott, don't tell me anything about this movie. No, I had, you know, like I'd heard that, oh, there's this movie, The Matrix. I just heard I didn't hear too much hype about it. i actually went into it with kind of low expectations because i don't really like um watch those kinds of movies i don't really think keanu reeves is a great actor i think keanu reeves is a great person yeah i think he's actually kind of a bad actor in fact i saw something on somewhere on the internet yesterday which was a genius premise for a think piece which i haven't actually dug in yet but it says like kind of when did we all decide that keanu reeves is good at acting because i mean he was not good at acting in point break i don't think he was particularly good at acting in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure means very handsome person and again a very seemingly sort of lovable person or a person who is living their life in an extremely good way so like I'm very pro Keanu Reeves but I always thought Keanu Reeves was just a very handsome person who's bad at acting but it's almost like he's such a good person in real life that we've now decided his acting is good which is interesting

to me. It's interesting because we did we used to make fun of him all the time in the 90s right we as a

culture i mean how wooden and now we don't because of like the john wick films like or something yeah it's like he has it's almost schwarzenegger-esque in that if you just do it long enough and people get used to the kind of rhythm of how you're talking then we just at some point we just decide you're sort of competent at it or like it's convincing i mean uh so anyway i went into the movie with like the lowest expectations you could have and it exceeded those expectations And so I kind of enjoyed it. I haven't seen the subsequent ones. But I just remember actually really being like, damn, this is a pretty interesting premise. And it's pretty well done and well shot.

What's the latest one called? The Latest Matrix? And that's out now, right? And everybody saw it and reacted already? Oh, is it Resurrections? Yeah, that was 2021. Okay. There was also something called Reloaded at some point, I believe.

Yeah. see that the thing is what for me and also there was all those like really inventive scenes of gunplay and people running up walls and shooting things and but then every movie like that started doing that like you know it was almost a victim of its own success so that i don't know what they're doing in matrix reloaded but it's like are they running on a like a taller wall or are they shooting the bullets being you know i don't know they're sitting they just i saw i saw i saw kind of like what i needed to see from that movie in the matrix and i thought it was pretty good you know i don't personally probably need to reload it as it were 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 um two minute version of

new hampshire frost quake uh that's what it was i think it was a frost quake It's just basically like when it's raining, but then it gets cold.

really fast so that kind of top layer of soggy soil that's got water in it freezes and it expands kind of like you know if you leave a can of soda in the freezer and that made a boom in the northeast in new hampshire and parts of massachusetts that's what they think it was over the weekend

a frost quake and i thought that you would get a kick out of the um i'm looking for it now what is the scientific word for it cryo oh cryo quake or cryo seism cryo seism cryo seism i'm looking it up yeah i thought that might be the detail the dazzling detail of of that particular story um okay can i read to you a story filled with dazzling details regarding vision quest this came to us via the text line so i'm not sure who this came from actually um because it just came And if you want to text the listener line, you can text us 206-414-TBTL, 206-414-8285. And here's the story that came in. We were talking about the movie Vision Quest. It came up the other day because it was whatever. It was randomly stuck in my head because I was looking for a Madonna song for my other podcast the day before. Remember this? And Madonna apparently had some very little known song on the Vision Quest soundtrack. Yes. And that's, of course, a movie from the 80s. Well, this person writes in to say, not that it really matters, but OK, that's a very extremely TBTL opener. They say Vision Quest is based on a book of the same name. When I was in college at Minnesota State University, I started working at a vintage motorcycle shop owned by an English professor. How much do you love this already? Like how idyllic is that? You're in college. You're working at a vintage motorcycle shop owned by an English professor. After a few weeks of working there, spending countless hours talking with the owner slash professor, he mentioned a new book that he was publishing and how he didn't care how well it sold that he'd been disappointing his publisher since his first book was a hit and then was made into a movie. It turns out that book was Vision Quest. His popular book was Vision Quest and used most of the royalties from it to buy a ridiculous number of old motorcycles and funky old vehicles and continue to teach English. Genuinely one of the kindest people I've ever known Wow That's like a story That reminds me of a kid's storybook Sort of You find out that You know You're a young person in college And you're working for this I assume like kind of a bit of a character Because he's an English professor

And he has He definitely wears leather coats though Right Not douchey ones Not one that's like Has a big like Eight ball Like a billiard eight ball on the back That he bought at Wilson Suede and Leather Like a real like One that he you know got from his dad and it's it's all kind of like really broken in but he when he's getting on his vintage motorcycles you know kind of thing like effortlessly effortlessly rugged is how i'm seeing

this guy i think it was a leather coat but it was a matrix style leather trench coat it was a full duster i think i'll ask the texter and that by the way that actually sounds like it itself could

be a movie or a book yeah about the person who works at the vintage motorcycle shop with the right you know with the with the english professor slash vintage motorcycle enthusiast

exactly i mean almost uh maybe a i guess coming of age would be a younger person in college but

yeah there's some romance algort and then i was going to say you know um maybe a um who's the guy from uh who's the guy from lebowski who's the narrator who just who just did a heel turn oh

yeah what do we think of that i kept on trying to get to the bottom of that um his name is um sam something this is driving me nuts i do not want to look this up i'm sorry you don't want to look it up i don't want to look it up i because i know this person like this is one of the few people i know bar well sometimes bar eats you just eats you it's sam it's sam something sorry everyone no go ahead luke if you've looked it up go ahead and did you look it up it is sam elliot Elliot of course It just drives me nuts Because I know that one

Very clearly Yeah

But that's

I have to say First of all listeners If you think it's easy Get your own podcast Wait what?

They all have their own podcast

They actually do You're right And they probably can remember Sam Elliot Sam Elliot though Sam is a very generic first name And Elliot is someone's last name I always thought Remember when I had A whole Sam Elliot thing On the show a while ago Because I was shocked To find out He went to the University of Oregon where he studied like English or something because I always just thought he probably, I think I said, I thought he went to Tumbleweed University. Oh, yeah, sure. You know, he studied cow pies or something. Like he's the most, like he's just carved out this like super ultra kind of.

of texas kind of guy vibe but also uh i was sad to see uh recently that he is i think kind of

homophobic yeah you know i really wanted i started to read this story and i really was having trouble trying to tell like where he was coming from he was on maron's podcast right and he was complaining about a new cowboy movie and saying it wasn't authentic enough and the power of the dog oh Oh, yeah, which you've seen and loved.

Am I right about that? I saw it, and I did. I liked it very much. I saw it because I was interviewing Kirsten Dunst about it, because she's in that movie. And I thought it was a very lovely film. You know, Jane Campion, who's a great director, I think. But, yeah, Sam Elliott was going off on what he thought was kind of the non-reality of the film. Like, he just thought, first of all, he didn't seem to appreciate what he thought were the quote-unquote like gay overtones or the you know because one of the characters is um benedict cumberbatch's character uh appears to be a gay man who's probably living a closeted life because it's you know montana in the whatever 1800s or something sam elliot didn't seem to like that and he had a few other criticisms they just sounded way way way outdated

yes how we talk about things yeah definitely he too much yeah what do you say just like too much homosexuality or something like that i did but the only reason i'm sort of being um uh like somewhat cagey about my opinion on this is because like i'm just maybe you agree with him i do i do you know what also the power of the dog just too i love everything about broke back mountain too except just did you notice some gay overtones there no i um it's just i couldn't exactly tell what the hell was going on and i didn't hear the interview itself and i'm not saying like i can't believe that this old white man from a different generation was is has different opinions than me but like the pieces i was reading it was unclear what the takeaway was if everybody was mad at him if he was just if he had if he had just sort of misspoken but no it sounds like he was just he's just an asshole is that the takeaway i'm asking i really don't know i don't know anything

about the dude other than like seeing him in the big lebowski and a few other things and so i guess i just don't know what his personality is these comments though i have them uh let's see here i actually am now in the new york post trying to get to the exact comments that he made although what i keep finding is jane campion just like clapping back as they say okay um which isn't really helping things uh during his bizarre tirade the tombstone star had singled out campion claiming that despite being a brilliant director the new zealand born auteur was unfit to direct a western set in montana in the early 20th century uh i love her previous work but what the f does this woman from down there new zealand know about the american west um and then they actually didn't choose to focus on the kind of homophobic stuff in this but yeah and i guess maybe that's the

reason i'm i'm um kind of confused here is because i wasn't sure if like all of the it sounded like the most of the criticism was stuff that i might just not agree with but it's kind of like hey he doesn't like this this this western movie he's been in a lot of westerns he doesn't feel like an australian should be making movies about the american west obviously i disagree with all of those things but i don't think that they're you know that's his his opinion that i disagree with right um but so i wasn't sure how much of his comments was drenched in homophobia or if he had just thrown one thing out there or what not that it's okay to throw one thing out there i just wasn't really sure because he's talking to maron too and i would like to know what maron

said during this yeah i should listen we should listen to the context before we say anything more on it but i because uh sam elliott is a good at acting and he's i you know i like his character in lebowski i think i just assumed that was him this is kind of affable guy who's just kind of you know i don't know i think i was attributing very positive characteristics to him and some of this stuff sounded less than positive that i was hearing that he was saying but i haven't done

enough research to really tell you anything about it um i i'll just read this i'm coming across this right now you know i've really been struggling with this idea of whether or not i can wash my car when i move into my new place i'm like oh i have a hose now i can vacuum my car i can clean my car in my own in my own driveway which we have a little driveway area that's sort of like um it's kind of grown over though i think but anyway you had mentioned that well you know there are some environmental issues with washing your car in the driveway we got this note from listener Jamie our buddy down in Mississippi who's a hydrologist I didn't know that she puts it in her signature there listening to you talking about the car washes the issue of course is that your driveway drains directly into the storm sewer system and then into the sound or a nearby lake while commercial car wash water goes into the sanitary system and is then treated right but if you use a

responsible cleaning solution, no phosphates, and park your car in the yard so that the runoff goes into the soil, you're going to be fine. Soil is a great filter, and leaching won't be a problem for your ordinary soap. It binds to the particles. Hmm, what do you think of that? You still use more water, which isn't a great thing, I guess. But, um, yeah, so actually... Although you're watering your lawn, so maybe you're getting some bang for your buck there, too. Anyway, I just find that interesting. Thanks,

listener Jamie. Yeah, so that's good. So you can, the takeaway is you can wash your car and you can have that beautiful moment this summer where the sun is shining you're out there shirtless just in some very short jorts in the sweet cream district

you know you talk about your coat hook moments luke when you see yourself like okay i'm gonna move in and i'm gonna have this moment where i'm sitting on my porch maybe cooking hot dogs and listening to the ball game like these little like snapshots that you imagine in the future they're just gonna be like your perfect moments that you're kind of setting up your life for um you know that you know what it is with me with this house it's not washing my car in the yard it's doing dishes there's something broken in me but like i like the layout of our new kitchen it's probably it's better than our current kitchen it might be one of the better kitchens we've ever had and there's a little window over the sink and the sink is a better sink than we have here it has a detachable faucet so that I can actually clean. It's so ridiculous trying to do dishes in this terrible old-fashioned sink that I have here. And so I'm just so excited to be, you know, it's the end of the day. It's the end of a meal. I'll be sitting there listening to a ballgame or a podcast, doing dishes, looking out the window in my little house. That's my coat hook moment. Aww.

That's great, man. I'm really happy for you that that's gonna come together. You're going to be pulling a strong Walt Burbank. My dad, I just remember when I was a kid, and this wouldn't be at night. This would be in the morning. My dad would just be standing over the sink, drinking a cup of coffee, staring out the window that was above the sink in our kitchen. I think that was his happy place. He also had seven children. The poor man was so overwhelmed with life and was a great dad. um but like that probably it would be like he would get up at six in the morning so he could have like two minutes of peace to stare out the window and drink his coffee and the funny part was we lived in the city and like our neighbor her house her name was jesse carlson she's a real interesting character unfortunately she ended up kind of losing her marbles towards the end but she was this very interesting lady from the south who wrote these books and i would sometimes go help her out with stuff at her house but her house was like 10 feet from our house the house were so tightly packed where we lived so he was just staring like 10 feet at a wall of her house wasn't like a vista of anything yeah right there's something about that that made him very happy so you're joining a long line of old men who like to stare out windows how much salami do you think

i'm going to eat over that sink before i die how many slices it's more of a question of how staring into the salami kill you yeah exactly sort of like post show post tbtl pre uh editing and posting tbtl to the internet just standing there listening to 710 oh they're not 710 espn anymore look do you hear they're just called seattle sports radio what i don't know i don't know if it's about seo or what it is but they're still 710 on the dial they're still playing espn programming but they've quote unquote rebranded and when i say rebranded i think they took an afternoon and had an intern make a new logo and they just call it seattle sports radio now i don't

know i don't know why wow they must have gotten some kind of like consultant to come in and tell them that like calling it radio is a problem because everyone's listening to digital but

But they call it Seattle Sports Radio, though. That's what they're calling the – that's the new name of the station. I'm looking at the website.

It says Seattle Sports 710 AM. Oh, I thought it was called Seattle Sports. Maybe on the air they say radio?

I thought so, but maybe I'm just wrong about this.

Because, like, yeah, well, the website – I mean, just the logo says Seattle Sports 710 AM.

Okay, I'm just wrong. Okay, sorry. I thought it was Seattle Sports Radio. Okay, you're right. Seattle Sports.

But, I mean, I don't –

You're right. Maybe it was about losing the legacy technology of radio. Maybe that was.

because they think that like they want to become a there's a great irony to this andrew that we're doing right now a digital thing that people can only get by way of the internet and i'm here extolling the virtues of broadcast radio but i just don't like i don't know i think i i just got back from a conference you know or like a weekend where There's a lot of people in the world. There was so much talk about digital and everyone's just saying that it's almost like there's just no point in even doing anything for the radio because it's all on demand. But I just that's still not how I live my life. I listen to OPB every morning and every afternoon. And when I'm in my car, I listen to I listen to a lot of radio still and a lot of podcasts. But I don't know. I'm just like sport. I like sports radio. Andrew, I like my sports radio on the radio.

Well, it doesn't even say their original name.

Cowboy movies less gay.

And their original name didn't say radio either. That used to be officially 710 ESPN Seattle. Now it's Seattle Sports. So it seems more about losing the affinity or the direct affinity to ESPN, although they're still. And, you know, like I know you go into other cities and they have 710 ESPN stations as well. And maybe they're just trying to spin off of that. I'm reading the press release. It says nothing like it says absolutely nothing.

Lay a little bit of on me. Actually, wait, can I try to? Can I try to I'm not looking at the press release But can I try to guess Yeah Seattle Sports 710 AM Today announced A dynamic shift in the landscape Of Seattle Sports Media Looking to bring together The top reporters And analysts On Seattle's rich sports culture Seattle Sports 710 AM Will etc etc etc

Now I haven't read this whole thing yet You know what I'm surprised this because i was as you were doing the imitation i was like oh and there will be some something about seattle has the best fans the best sports fans in the country there's actually nothing in there there's no pander of the fans here i'll read this to you i think this is the full um full press release as posted to radioinsight.com this is where we're ending up today bonneville seattle announced that 710 espn seattle is now seattle sports the flagship home of the seattle mariners and Seattle Seahawks will still feature the same great insider content and programming, now with a new name showcasing the commitment to the best in local Seattle sports. So that's the closest we get to an explanation. The new name showcases the commitment to the best in Seattle local sports. Seattle Sports is live on the air, 7, 10 a.m., online at seattlesports.com and streaming with this Seattle Sports app. Quote, our focus and investment has always been live and local, says kathy caniano is that how you say kathy caniano sure you know did we work with her

yeah we did is she the it's so funny yeah she was a like a sales uh supervisor there

ah well that's perfect is now she's senior vice president and market manager of bonafil seattle

so that's wow kath coming up in the game that's amazing also it's a you know i think the uh the fact that more and more of the people who sell the advertising are now also the people that are in charge of the talking. I'd say a positive. It's a pretty positive development. They're probably trying to push people towards this app because they figure if we can just get everybody on an app, then we'll be future-proofed. And who knows? Maybe they're right. I mean, maybe that's part of it. Maybe that'll just be... Maybe it'll feel less weird to me in two or three years. But I, you know, I'm old-fashioned.

Should I write to Salk right now and just ask him how they came up with the name Seattle Sports? And if it took him a long time? Yes. And then report back tomorrow. They don't have me on that station anymore anyway.

I can troll them all I want. All right. Let's go ahead and wrap this bad boy up and call that good for today. We will, though, be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. This is Portland Sports Radio.

Hello, Elsie! How's everybody feeling tonight?

Did you ever sing in front of a live audience before ever?

No, never. I need a little work. Well, now, if you're going to sing country, you're going to have to think it, walk it, talk it, sleep it. It's going to be a lot different where we're going. Where are we going? Tennessee. This man's going to be a country singer. Dog? Dog. Dog. That's country. That's rigor mortis. What's the matter? You're wrecking my dignity. I'm a cabbie. I'm not a rhinestone laundry bag. I mean, the first time I was ever on stage, I thought I was going to die. What'd you do? Like a rhinestone cowboy. What are you, Jane Wayne?

Power out.