Muse

What are you doing? We're, um, cleaning out the garage to make it a rehearsal space for starting a band. For a band? Yeah. I used to play drums in high school. Cool. Really? I was in a band myself. Oh, yeah? What was it called? The band was called Myself. It was a sort of solo percussive group. You know, djembe, narimba, conga, bongo, bimbale, you know, just like, yeah. And you played all of those yourself? I played all of them myself. Wow. The Big Fork Daily called it really very weird. Oh, that's great. Congrats for that. That sounds great. Okay. TBTL.

I'm going to suggest that we have a little constructive talking time. Not long at all. I mean, maybe 10 minutes or, okay, or maybe 15 is also good.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful or anything, but I kind of feel like you're winging this and it's going bad.

They sound un-fricking-incredible together. Bada-boom! You are in business with a couple glue-sniffing squish heads.

I don't even care how this turns out because I'm just going to eat hot dogs. And so that's all I really care about.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo? 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 Portland, Oregon, where we are looking, finally, well, when we started the sound check for the show, it was Blue Skies. Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. Although now it's getting a bit cloudy, but it's not actively torrentially raining, so we will absolutely take it. As we arrive at episode 3670 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Much to talk about on this Tuesday, including the question as to if Major League Baseball should just get rid of human umpires and replace them with robots.

Does this sound like a musical robot?

There was a situation over the weekend involving a player named Kyle Schwarber and an official, an umpire named Angel Hernandez that just seemed to typify a frustration that many of us baseball obsessives, I think that's the word I was looking for, have been thinking about this season. It feels like particularly if you're a Mariners fan and you like this guy named Julio Rodriguez, kind of our young superstar who just had a statistically improbable number of bad strikeouts. And by bad, I mean the human being standing behind the catcher made a bad decision. So we will talk about that. We'll try to keep it from getting too sporty, although I'm already going hard on my sports. Do you hear this? I'm bouncing my I was bouncing my little Spalding high bounce ball so much during that intro that it bounced onto my computer and started playing this. I'm not even kidding you. And I worried it went out over the air. Hopefully Andrew had me muted. Anyway, we'll talk about baseball and umpires. Also, he did it. He did it, y'all. Elon Musk acquired Twitter But my Twitter's weird He somehow is now The owner of the one social media thing That I care about So that's pretty cool Oh and I somehow Angered the Elon Musk heads Out there yesterday With a I thought very innocuous tweet Which we can talk about as well And then Speaking of kerfuffles That involve only me I am really deeply frustrated about a couple of things

Is this a thing people care about? No

In the last 24 hours I've become deeply mad about two things and I feel like these are two things that are not relatable to the audience and not things that other people are as mad about as I am but I would just like to get it off my chest if that's okay We'll do all of this with the help of this guy the longest-running co-bro of the show. The Big Fork Daily said he's best known for his drawings of the tall ships, their grace, and their splendor. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Sweet Cream District of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. I know you've been having some email issues lately, but are you accepting text messages at this time? I am absolutely accepting. them you know i i basically i deserve every email problem that i get andrew because for many years i was using the lame excuse that my email was being quote really weird when it probably wasn't just as a way of deflecting from not responding to folks in a timely fashion now my email is legitimately being very weird i started today's show or at least before we were recording by telling you I'm in hot water with my colleagues at CBS Because I was supposed to send This voiceover track file to them Which I recorded yesterday And hit send on And then walked into the other room And only learned today That it had never arrived in New York Which is I assume how the internet works That file goes into a tube here in Portland And then goes all the way to New York City And everybody was losing their minds About the lack of this file

now can you check your text messages i sent you i'm looking at very important did anything come through for me a second ago i'll just sit here bouncing my ball should we um can you hear this this is a real question andrew can you do you hear this yeah okay so i'll stop doing that oh it's not terribly annoying sounds like a bouncing ball here do you want me to kill the music bounce it it's kind of a nice sound I think

it's very kind of calming I guess it's like my version of a fidget spinner but I don't want to like I could see myself whiling away the summer with you doing these shows and also just kind of like letting this thing quick bounce with my left hand but if you can hear it I don't want to do it because I feel like it will be annoying

oh I'm not worried about that I what I sent you is it's not that big of a deal and I want to just get dismiss this at the top of the show I babbled about this way too much at the end of yesterday's show I want you to know that I edited the end of yesterday's show so the listeners don't even know how much I babbled about this drama but I will say that I opened my mailbox here at my new house yesterday and what did my eyes see I knew it I had a sense but the package containing the paperback book my replacement of foundation and empire by isaac asimov and not only did it find its way to my proper address after i think going to two wrong addresses or potentially going there it's the right version it's the exact version i was hoping for so there was all luke i always tell you you're always borrowing trouble you're worrying and you're worrying and everything just has a way of working out i don't know why you were so worried about this book showing up for me i did have a weird sense that it was going to be fine

like i know there was the disclaimer on the website that said the you know books in your mirror may not be as large as they appear i don't know i was trying to make it like the mirror thing i feel like they got rid of that did they fix mirrors they fix side mirrors so that the objects

are not larger than they appear do they not have it anymore i don't know i don't use i don't see

that on side mirrors anymore really is that real it's not on mine on my mazda cx5 i bet you it's

not on your oh that's funny i mean i just figured i've seen it so much that i stopped seeing it you

know what i mean like i don't think they put that on i think that they've fixed mirrors so that they no longer make objects look larger or appear larger than they might actually be yeah which is also can we just take a quick second yeah so much to talk about with you today i don't mean to get sidetracked with this but what was the harm of an object appearing larger than it was was it larger or closer this is terrible either one okay fine you know if you're using a mirror

to drive a car and something is closer than it appears i guess your objects in mirror may be

closer than they appear okay that would make sense yeah that would be a problem further away I thought it was – this is how little impact that made on me from a messaging standpoint. I think I've always thought it was objects in mirror are larger than they appear, maybe larger than – which is totally ludicrous.

Objects in mirror may be cooler than they appear. And then you look at me and I'm like – Maybe funkier than they appear. I'm wearing sunglasses and my hair is spiked up.

Maybe. I still – I stand by objects. OK, so my first premise is is completely flawed, which is you're right, Andrew, objects and mirror may be closer than they appear. Of course, that makes sense, because, like, if they're closer to you, then you shouldn't merge or whatever. But I do think they've taken that off of the mirrors.

I'm trying to figure that out, and I can't figure it out on the fly unless is there a way for there's no I was being serious. I was going to say, is there a way for me to just call you on the phone and go out to my car right now? I feel like my car does say it, but I can't be.

assured i feel like you send vives not that she's our errand person it's like one of those things

professor bananas i got a mission for you bubbles this feels like one of those things if you're right about this this feels almost berenstain berry you know what i mean like a mind exploding phenomenon like wait when did that go away and why and did they did they fix mirrors and why did they ever do it in the first place i mean i'm sure i feel like there's why have i been living my life

thinking it was larger objects in the mirror may be larger than they appear there's got to be like

a 99 invisible on this right isn't this exact well is this i'm considering starting a podcast

called 100 invisible yeah i don't think we've got i don't do it oh you know what the um part of this that's interesting is in fact 100 invisible yeah can i talk to you about the the two things that i'm like really fired up about that are gonna probably this is good going into the tbtl-a-thon that are probably going to alienate a lot of the listeners yeah oh are you asking yes yes yes of course yeah well you have the right to tell me not to based on the financials of this well i don't

know where you're going with this and i don't have i guess i don't really let me think here do i have anything that i can fill with and then i did the book thing uh home this is not phil andrew this is my lived experience no i'm just saying like if we ditch this though do i have anything to bring to the table i mean the answer sadly is not yes so i guess go ahead like go let's i saw a photo

okay i think show title tank the thon also definitely sounds like somebody who fought in the early stages of the mma like back when it was just a vhs tape you would rent at blockbuster when it was like ultimate fighting championship i'm sure there was someone named tank the thon who is like an air conditioning repair man from Creedence, Ohio. I saw a photograph today on Twitter of national treasure, national treasure Henry Winkler. I love Henry Winkler like so much. And I love him in the TV show Barry. I love him just as a human. He was on when our friend Radke had that show in the middays on KUOW, which is now a different show that's hosted by our other friend Libby Denkman he had for some reason Henry Winkler had written a book I think it might have even been like a children's book and he was on the record with Bill for like presumably the whole hour it was some of the most like intriguing radio I had heard Henry Winkler is just such a mensch in every sense of the word just a completely fascinating and lovely warm human I saw a picture of him today that just made me furious and it was so innocuous to most people he was holding a giant salmon that he had just caught and he was smiling and he had he was tweeting it to some friend of his like hey jen look at this or whatever and i composed two different tweets that i tweeted and then deleted about it first one was i just retweeted it and i said radically different experience for the two animals in this photo fawns and then i deleted it because like who wants to be mean to henry winkler who's a national treasure and then i wrote a different tweet which didn't have his picture which i said normalize not putting a hook through an animal's face when they're just trying to live their life so you can have a picture for your dating app profile and i also deleted that because that was just totally out of left field for people but here is my here's my question how is it and i'm sorry to our the people that like to fish in our audience how is it that we most of us i think if someone was holding up an elephant you know that they had killed if someone was donald trump junior in it or jimmy johnning it the two people i can think of who do that kind of bullshit trophy hunting we would most of us would be horrified and then like if somebody were to kill a deer and hold it up a lot of us would be like huh that doesn't give me a great feeling we probably have some hunters in the audience and there are you know real statistics about white-tailed deer and how many of them there are and wasting disease whatever but somehow no one blinks an eye when you put a hook through a fish's face and then hold it up by its gills like it's fun how why is that not a thing why is that so much more normalized than any other animal you know hunting i guess for a lot of us and i say this as a person who as of three years ago

maybe four years ago was in ketchikan alaska and went out on one of those like you know fishing things you pay a bunch of money for where they just basically catch a big fish for you and you stand next to it so i did this and i really regret having done that it just struck me as weird that nobody blinks an eye about how we're treating these fish yeah uh i mean i guess you're not wrong but i you're not obligated to give me the answer i'm looking for yeah no i mean i think

you're i'm not saying you're wrong but i think you're pretty majorly out of step with most americans on that and again like that's listen i preface this by saying i'm out of step with most americans and i'm not even saying that like necessarily logically you're wrong although i would say that we do know that there is and i don't even want to make this argument but just for the sake of throwing it out there and then i'll let the listeners argue with you if they feel like it but um luke at tb i think we do know that there is a um that there is a difference in various animals and their the way they go through the world and their perception and the size of

their brain less than you would think though and those salmon have memories fish remember things

that's one of the interesting things about this but would you say that there is a spectrum of the way because there's a reason why genevieve doesn't eat pork but does eat chicken and again i'm not saying i'm not wanting you to maybe i shouldn't raise that because i don't want you to weigh in on genevieve's choices these are individual choices um absolutely and so i don't mean to put her in the middle of it i'm just saying i think it's interesting and and i think it's interesting and um i don't noble is a very strong word but i think it's interesting that genevieve several years ago the more she learned about pigs and how smart they are and everything decided you know what this is not an animal that i want to contribute to its death and i don't want to eat it and it's not comfortable doing that anymore so she stopped doing it um but i don't think she'd trouble you know eating a salmon and i don't and i think there's good reason for that i don't think i'm the best person to articulate it but i do think that there is a that we can all agree that there is a difference as far as like you know a lobster that we're eating and what goes on inside of a lobster's brain and experience versus a pig or a dog inside of a lobster that's good for the outside of that is not a show title we can't we've already used that construction too many times so So again, I'm not even saying that you're necessarily wrong, but I'm just even just saying that like, you know, a lot of us would be uncomfortable with like somebody posing next to a deer like I would be and you would be because that's not our culture. But I mean, I go to Ohio and I don't mean I'm going to the backwoods of Ohio. I mean, I go to Cleveland and all of my I mean, we are so out of step with, you know, they are all like cousins, like good, like good liberal minded cousins of mine love deer hunting. They go out and they they hunt the deer and they eat the deer and they do all the different things to the deer. Now, that's not for me. And I'm not even trying to morally say it's OK. I want to argue that. But I just mean that, like, I don't think that most people do think that that's out of step, let alone fishing, which is just one of the most like kind of traditional Americana things to do.

I would argue I think you're everything you're saying is totally accurate, including the fact that I am wildly out of step with, you know, the mainstream on this. But I would argue that like if you're a deer and you're walking in the woods and somebody carefully and in a targeted way shoots you and hopefully they don't, you know, wound you and then you just wander off into the woods. but they actually like you know it's a kill shot as it were that is a much less gruesome death than a hook going through your cheek and pulling you up from whatever little mermaid-esque life you're living and then and then hoisting you into an environment where you literally can't breathe and then holding you by the thing that you would be breathing through if you could your gills and then taking a picture and then trying to use it to impress women by way of an online pic like that

is a weird thing that we impressing women thing where does this come in so dating apps if you're

ever on a dating app that i think i don't know i haven't been on them i've been basically in relationships of some kind for the entire time that those have existed but the sense i get at least the joke online is so many of them are like guys profile pictures are them holding up a fish like maybe to demonstrate ruggedness or that i'm outdoorsy or that i do fun things i don't even

know if that's a real thing or not this doesn't have to do with the fonds i thought the fonds was

trying to flirt with a fish flirting with he is on um fonzer which is a dating app for people who played the fonds it's f-o-n-z-r it's a very specific it's like raya but even more niche

and it's like it's instead of swiping left or right you either say hey or you say two thumbs

up or you or you go you you bump the soda machine and get a free soda yeah no there's two it's just the inflection of a's you got to be very very precise right so anyway i'll stop now because again we have fish fisher people in the audience they say that on anglers anglers um we have you know people who love fishing and i'm not trying to yuck their yum i just had this weird moment this morning of being like it's completely normal for us to hold up a fish that we just killed for i would argue no reason i'm not even against people eating fish i just think there are probably there are there's a spectrum of ways a fish can reach the end of its journey right and some of them are probably more unpleasant than others and being fished out of the lake and then held up seems like one of the more one of the least fun endings for that fish and yet

we think of it as a joyous event yeah okay so that's not to point out hypocrisy but i mean you've had prisoners trapped in your sex dungeon for like at least four months now but i don't hold

them up andrew for pictures yes that is true and that's the difference a very private thing okay fair enough i don't like stand next to them i don't hold larry up by his earlobe and like take a picture like look at me i got larry in my dungeon that's going on marsupial girdle you don't post it i mean i assume i don't take the photos um okay so that's thing number one that uh that the listeners will probably not go with me on thing number two and this one's actually more alienating even than my anti-fishing pose stance i was driving along um a street here in portland yesterday called broadway and there is um it's a you know semi-busy street and so there is uh and this is throughout portland i've noticed these they have and maybe they have these in seattle now too they have basically a thing where if you're a pedestrian you can hit a button that will cause an overhead you know sort of traffic light but not a full like real red light green light thing but just kind of like a it does turn red okay but you can hit this thing and it will flash and then go red to allow you to safely cross the street as a pedestrian and then it's done being like one of the things that's can be frustrating about these lights and i think they're good by the way i think they should totally exist is that a lot of people don't understand that after the person has crossed the street you can then keep driving you know it's not a red light red light it's just a once the pedestrian has safely cleared the intersection you're allowed to keep going and it'll it'll even say on the sign stop on red but then you know you can whatever okay so they have those things i think those things are great for pedestrians i think they make sense yesterday i'm cruising down broadway i'm going to the fred meyer on my way to um pick up some groceries and i see these two cyclists and they're full on you know they're doing the thing they're like geared up obviously helmeted up full on outfits and one of them reaches over and punches the pedestrian stoplight thing so we all stop and then they ride their bikes across the street and i was filled with rage because they are not pedestrians they are cars like you don't get to stop me from driving to ride your car across the street like cyclists are i mean obviously you want to be safe around them but it's you're not a pedestrian right

well i mean i guess technically you're right i got to take the other on this too and i like i don't like arguing so like just take all of this like let's just end it wherever but this one i i do pretty strongly feel like the more people who ride bikes and the fewer people who drive cars is better we should be moving more and more in that direction i say that as somebody who does not ride a bike but always thinks one of these days but you do ride a car but i do ride a car you sit on top of your Volkswagen Golf and I have the little around I have those reins And they go around the steering wheel. And sometimes I put Professor Bananas in the driver's seat just so that people understand that it's not an autonomous machine. No, I mean, and so I do think that cyclists have to put up with so much more than we as automobile drivers do, including the possibility of death, like at almost any given moment. Like one person looking down at their phone and for a second veering into a bike lane or even worse, you know, a curb that doesn't even have a bike lane in it. And I just think that it's I just give cyclists the benefit of the doubt in almost every case. Now, I do think that I mean, there's the stereotype of the kind of entitled cyclist or the rageful cyclist, especially in Portland, I think, where Portland is a very bike friendly city. So maybe that that plays into it, too. like they do i mean that's a city that has a lot that builds in a lot of kind of i don't know concessions but pathways and there's a lot of infrastructure for cycles which i think is really

good actually yeah i'm i'm with you i'm everything you're saying i totally agree with so far so i

think that i understand why sometimes like here here was an irritation for me sometimes you know in my old neighborhood on roosevelt that has like a protected bike lane when i say protected just to be clear, it was like a dedicated bike lane. painted green, and separated from traffic with stanchions, like malleable stanchions. Some people ask if that means it's like a brick wall or a concrete wall or something. It's not quite protected in that way, which could, I guess, be even better, obviously. But anyway, there was infrastructure there for cyclists. And every now and then, I would see a cyclist screaming down the street, not in the bike lane. And I would be like, oh, come on, man. Or if a cyclist is in an area that is very bike-friendly but not obeying the traffic laws. I mean, that's the classic thing that makes automobile drivers angry, right? Like, hey, how come we have to make all these concessions for cyclists, but they're blowing through red lights, as occasionally cyclists will do? Well, I don't encourage that behavior, but I also try not to get, like, super up on my high horse about it because, generally speaking, like, they're putting up with a lot more from us cars than we are from them. And I just try to give them every concession possible because, ideally, more of us would be doing that. yeah yeah yeah basically yeah permanent right away yeah i totally not on the sidewalk though i think if there's if you're riding your bike on a sidewalk next to a um next to like a bike lane which that was another thing that would kind of bug me like hey there is a bike lane you don't

need to be rolling over pedestrians here um you do have some there are some rules in your mind yeah anyway that's where i am no i i think you're i think you're again much like my uh anti-fishing stance i think you're totally in the in the majority with this and i i agree that more bikes is more better and everyone who's on a bike is not polluting uh the atmosphere in the way that i'm polluting from my car uh and not adding to traffic so like i'm i'm totally into as many people as possible riding their bikes around town and also interestingly enough i haven't had one run-in with an aggressive cyclist in portland since i've lived here um so you know to the degree that that's a stereotype i have not experienced it and portland is a really cool city for riding your bike because they do have so much dedicated like from where i'm standing right now andrew i'm looking at exactly one of those um dedicated bike lanes like you used to have in the roosevelt neighborhood there's signs on the street it's like i will say that as a driver in portland roughly 94 of my brain space is taken up with making sure that when i take a right i'm not inadvertently crossing an area where cyclists are riding and and possibly endangering them and like that's fine it just comes with the territory that's life but here is the thing in the places where cyclists want to ride in the street and ride in front of my car and ride at a pace that is much slower than my car drives and in fact much slower than the posted speed limit i i i see that as the cost of doing business of living in a society which is we have all agreed that we will treat these cyclists these bikes like they are vehicles and we will respect them in the way we would respect another car we won't try to you know drive around them in an unsafe way or beep at them because they're not riding as fast as my car can go like that's the deal right so then to me the idea that you can then just like hit a button and you're allowed to stop all of the traffic on the street at what is not actually a stoplight that feels to me to be inconsistent from a logical stamp or from a whatever standpoint now i'm going to raise something here that i i

think is just interesting culturally and we've talked about it on the show before um i i still think that this doesn't really change how i feel about these things yet but i understand how it complicates things is bike technology is changing right like we've been having i think we've been having this kind of car bike rules of the road debate in one form or another as a society especially in cities like seattle and portland for a really long time now but one thing that i didn't predict was yeah but what about when bikes become you know more and more like motorized yeah because you know it started with the you know just electronic assist the e-assist bikes that give you a little bit of a boost started on that as you're going up a hill but then you have these things now like you can actually rent things that look like bicycles around seattle but they literally don't have pedals on them so now you're literally just putting your feet on pegs and it's not even like a moped like there's no pedals but it's just electric um but i still say it's better if more people are on those and fewer people are in cars and generally speaking like i i like the way all of these things um are kind of transforming the infrastructure in i think a good way but i know that it would piss you off even more if somebody used that crosswalk and then zipped by on a bicycle that they didn't have to pedal with their feet and like intellectually that shouldn't really make a difference but i know that it would irk you even more and i do think that that is interesting like what is a bicycle right that's actually you know what that's an

interesting question because you're right i um one of the

jogging routes that i tend to do is along the willamette river and there's a you know a path that goes on both sides of the river and there are people on these e-bikes that i think are going up to like 30 miles an hour and i'll just be out there it'll be like early in the morning and i'm doing my little loop and somebody will they might as well be on a harley you know but they're on the where the jogging path and i guess the bike path but it feels to me like they're not they're no longer on what i would consider a bike because of how fast it can go like it doesn't make any noise and it's not bad for the environment because it's electric so i guess that's something but it i do get really annoyed when someone if they were going the and this is how in like or how specific it is to my own set of grievances if they were going as fast as a normal bike i would be fine with it but if they're going as fast as a as a motorcycle i'm not okay with it and i can't

explain why this matters to me and for me i also think and i think i mentioned this before too with bicycles but also these things especially like i think it it raises an interesting point of like are you close if you're driving something and i don't know how fast those e-bikes go but i do know that there are some that i don't even know if you would technically call it an e-bike anymore the ones with the really big tires that can you know are like so powered they go quickly without much help from your legs like how do cyclists feel about that if they're in a bike lane and then how do uh drivers feel about that like if cyclists are kind of like hey listen we're out here peddling our ass off we've been doing it for a long time we've we've um advocated and fought to get these bike lanes built you know like some people in portland and seattle are are seeing finally the fruits of advocacy that has been going on for decades right to make cities more bike friendly And it's pretty cool in a lot of ways. But if you're one of those old school folks, cyclists who've been fighting for that and actually cycling around and now suddenly this infrastructure that has been built for you that you fought for is being taken over by these, you know, mechanized or electric, you know, powered devices. like how do you feel about that as a cyclist on the other hand if those things aren't using the bike lanes are they in traffic with the cars that doesn't sound safe for anybody involved in as a pedestrian i certainly don't want those damn things on the sidewalk yeah it's complicated god i wish we had a talk radio show on cairo where we could weigh in on these issues you mean the war on cars hey listen i can i have one controversial thing you got to bring up two i would like to bring up just one quick i got to do my two hot takes what's your one hot take why did we not call yesterday's show too beautiful to blive i'm so mad about that i gotta tell you i was mentioning that um a few days ago on a wordle the final answer ended up being olive and i didn't get it i totally struck out i got zero for six or whatever whatever however they score that on wordle and for some reason i had eliminated every letter and somehow i just couldn't see that it was olive i thought for sure it started with a consonant and i i just wrote blive like just to like put something in there and i didn't expect wordle to accept it and it did accept it and then boom there i am standing at the plate watching the pitch that just went right over the plate and i'm standing there with a blive in my hand i got a text message from listener jen in dc who said i did the same thing i tried blive too this world drove us mad you must

Both of you must feel so seen by this.

No, I don't know if she... I think she might have ended up getting it. I'm not sure if she ended up with Olive or not, but she did try Blythe and got stuck with Blythe, and I responded, too beautiful to Blythe. And as I was responding to that text message, I realized, wow, talk about a swing and a miss on yesterday's show. Really should have been that. Well, what did we go with again? I don't know. I think I just wrote Lukel's McPoopy Pants. Sometimes when I can't come up with anything, I just insult you. Kind of placeholder. Placeholder. Feel the electricity, which was fun.

Well, I like that one, too. And you know what? If it's any consolation, the word blive lived with me most of yesterday because I wrote it down on. So, you know, I have various papers around here. And I had yesterday I was doing some live wire stuff, some blive wire stuff.

You can't steal that for God's sake.

So I had a couple.

Can we have nothing?

I love this narrative around you resenting Livewire. It's so great. But anyway, I had a couple of news articles that I was going to reference for a Livewire recording. But one of those was what I wrote Blythe on. And the same one, like this, I also, you know, I'll basically mark up these news articles. In fact, the news article was about the two oldest what are called common loons that they've ever discovered, and these loons—

one of them is 35 years old and they've been mating for 28 years and both of them just like landed at this like nature preserve in Michigan and they're not currently hooking up but like this is what happens they land they fly in they land in their different parts of the lake and then they find each other one's named Faye and one's named AJB or something anyway on that like news article I'll usually like underline kind of details and things so that when I'm talking about it with elena i can like quickly assess the plot line but i wrote blive on there and i remember talking to her about these loons and like trying to like go through this thing and like suss it all out and i kept thinking what's the blive angle of this why is it what i wrote that down for a reason i must there's something i need to say that involves blive it was related to this

story it was actually front of mind for you i thought you were going to say that it was just sort of like the type of thing you looked at you didn't realize until later how much

it was too front of my mind it had no relation to live wire but it was actually confusing you sort of it was confusing me because i kept looking at i was like why did i write blive because again i will write a bunch of details things that i want to make sure to reference uh follow-up you know comments etc and blive was just on there and it was just totally confusing me until we were done recording i never referenced it obviously and then at about 4 p.m yesterday i was like oh

Blythe, the thing Andrew did on Wordle Do you know the thing I'm talking about That this is going to be impossible to describe You know what, I'm just going to start talking And if you just want to go to break at some point Just like cut me off and just go to break, that's fine But where you've been staring at something for a long time While your brain has been doing something else And you kind of aren't even seeing it Until like kind of later on you realize Oh yeah, I was staring at that thing Like this is not a very universal example you've got a yard that yard needs mowing um i was gonna but like i think this is not a universal example but it often happened to me like kind of on the radio like when i was doing the night show i would um like tvs would be on right like one would be cnn msnbc and then maybe the third one would just be something like i know exactly it would be like a cnn like documentary like the prison documentary would be on on friday nights and i'd be like staring at it And like not seeing it at all until like later on you go in the studio and like, oh, yeah, that prison documentary is on. I've been staring at that, but not seeing it for three hours.

I was thinking you were going somewhere else with it, which is have you ever found yourself using a word and not fully realizing why in a conversation? Then you realize it's written on a thing in your field of vision.

I don't know. I mean, I know I follow what you're saying. I don't know if I've done that, though.

I feel like I do it a lot, actually. Like, I'll just use a word that I'm not conscious of why that's the word I'm picking, and then I'll realize it's on the show sheet or if I'm somewhere, you know, like a coffee shop where there's a lot of those, like, live, laugh, lovey kind of posters. I will take something that I'm just seeing, and then subconsciously I will integrate it into the conversation that I'm having without even realizing it.

IPDTL. I'm sorry. That was just a word that I'm looking at. That's the name of the software that we use To talk to each other Alright, let's take a break Let's take a break

And then we'll be back with more TBTL In a moment, stay with us

We was hoping for some razzle dazzle Razzle dazzle That's right man, razzle dazzle On your mark, get set Now ready, ready, go Everybody razzle dazzle

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors These are the generous folks who are keeping the show going with their dazzling donation starting with Audrey Hausman out there in Akron Ohio hey hey Goodyear right is that the home of Goodyear

yeah it used to be the rubber capital of the world now I think it's like the I don't know what's the new fancy name for rubber

baby buggy capital of the world yeah I think so yeah do you guess that's a reference to rubber baby buggy

bumpers yeah but I can't say that I couldn't either obviously What is Akron What is Akron now It's like the There's some fancy word For like rubber Like Like rubber And rubber Vulcanizing Capital Of world

Rubber baby buggy bumper Rubber baby buggy bumper

It used to be the rubber Capital of the world Rubber baby buggy

Bumper Anyway Yeah You think it's Stop Hey Thanks Audrey You're saying it's no longer The It's no longer considered the rubber capital of the world, because maybe that's not an industry in the States anymore, but it's something different now? Is it possibly it's the Audrey capital? I think it's the Audrey capital of the world. It used to be, you know, like you said, Goodyear,

and I think, um, I think that was it just

good year there might have been another tire company there i'm not sure but yeah good year was there and so it was the deemed it um dubbed itself the rubber capital of the world but then when i was going to school in kent ohio which is the condom capital of the world the see um see what you do you see we have a nice thing and you muck it up actually i'm mucking this up so let me

just shut up let me shut up and let's read audrey's message audrey thank you so much for the support Audrey says, this is my third or fourth year as a dazzling donor and as a certified non-creative person. That must be hard, Audrey, because as you just heard, Andrew and I are highly creative. We're some of the leading creatives in the podcasting space. As a certified non-creative person, I'm out of fun, novel ideas for this message. Instead, I'll share this perennial sentiment. thank you both for once again providing companionship through a year of unexpected challenges and joys this podcast is special because the two of you are special ah audrey i'm waiting for the throw my phone parenthetical here uh it has heart because you've put your hearts into it here's to many many more years of tbtl to come that's really when i'm throwing my phone god you added that i did audrey that was such a nice message really i mean really like that's i mean that's kind of stopping me in my tracks it has heart because you've put your hearts into it here's to many more years of tbtl that's that is a really really sweet message audrey

thank you for that um also i mean i am learning a lot about akron just from the wikipedia page Alcoholics Anonymous was founded there I did not know that or recall that

Is that where Chrissy Hine is from?

Chrissy Hine, yeah, and that's why She's always fighting or was fighting with Mayor Plasquellic all the time And then it says here We all know that LeBron James is from Akron But Steph Curry What? Is this right? Yeah, it says Notable individuals from the city include The basketball players LeBron James Does he go by Stephen officially? But it's Steph Curry

Yeah, his dad, Del Curry, must have been playing for the Cavs at some point because he was I always thought of Del Curry as a as a Charlotte Hornet. I believe he was maybe a Charlotte Hornet when he was winning the three point contest. Like his dad was an NBA player.

It looks like he played for the great Cavs in 87 and 88.

That would probably check out.

That lines up. Yeah. Look at that.

Interessante. Yeah. Anything else on the rubber? Do they say anything about what it's now known as the Steph Curry capital of the United States? I really thought that we had crawled out of it. I thought that I kind of put a nice bow on, though I'm still going through. I'm looking through. That's on me. I'm like a dog with a bun on this. Audrey, thank you so much for supporting the show, and thanks for that nice message. I'm going to try to actually absorb that. I have a really hard time understanding the concept that people like me or tolerate me, which drives a lot of my behaviors you know like on some intellectual level Andrew I understand that people like the show because they donate folks like Audrey donate and that money goes to APM and then they pay us a salary and then we get to do this five days a week it's like I my brain understands that but as far as like people actually enjoying it that's hard or us You and I Actually I see your value pretty clearly But my own value is hard for me to You know like Just understand or at least Sort of appreciate when somebody says something As nice as like the podcast Is special because you two are special The part of that that relates to me is very Hard for my brain to fully like wrap around So I will be working on that For the rest of the day Audrey but thank you That is an extremely nice message from you Luke one word

Polymer

this is what i was trying to get i thought we got out of it now you want to get well now i got it

though i got i mean i didn't get there i mean i just uh let's be nice to ourselves but i am a

little bit bummed about how i stumbled into Audrey's message i know card is special because

we are special andrew but polymer is me polymer is what i was getting at i'm going to read directly

from wikipedia here what age what age would you put these polymers in would you say space it says

Iron Age polymers, despite the number of rubber workers decreasing by roughly half between 2000 and 2007, Akron's research in polymers gained an international reputation. It now centers, Luke, I don't know why it says Luke on Wikipedia, but it does. It now centers, Luke, the polymer Valley, which consists of 400 polymer-related companies, of which 94 were located in the city itself.

polymers describe it as a non a non-nutrient cereal varnish what i think that's some version of that is what chevy chase is working on in christmas vacation at his day job it's some like non-nutrient cereal varnish which very much seems like a thing that chevy chase just probably made up on the fly yes it does but that's what the company that's the business that the company is in including brian doyle murray his boss who he eventually kidnaps because he his christmas bonus was a membership in the Jam of the Month Club.

It's amazing that that character doesn't end up... What's his name? What's the name of his character? Chevy Chase?

Oh, phooey. Just picture his wife saying it to him. I can picture Beverly D'Angelo saying it so many times. It's not Cliff.

No, but it's kind of a dorky name. But it's amazing that that character is not in prison. Jail. Jail.

It's one of those movies where they just decide, we're gonna like suspend belief at the end of this because basically brian doyle murray's wife shows up and she is mad at him for having not done the christmas bonuses and apparently that has some legal standing because there's a lot of police at his house uh-huh the police are there i didn't remember that okay oh yeah they're there like they have they've fully shown up they were reporting to a kidnapping and they get i mean although it's randy quaid really though think about it randy quaid is the one who does the kidnapping oh is that true well that well both the actor and the

character should be in jail then i mean that's one of those art imitating life imitating art

imitating life but i believe i think it's randy quaid his cousin right yeah that's right because he wants chevy chases yeah yeah he's complaining chevy chase is complaining about actually the the exact like series of words that he uses uh to describe his boss carrie can do that verbatim it's like a two-minute rant when he's spouting just like when he finally lily livered like just like a series of the silliest things it's a very impressive party trick but i do yeah it's actually it's it's the cousin cousin eddie uh he's just yakking up a bone it's cousin eddie who actually does the kidnapping, and you're right. Not Clark Griswold. Clark Griswold, thank you.

I know, people, that is... And another year of dazzling donor messages of people throwing their phones. Maestro Polymers.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Non-nutrient cereal varnish. Ready, go! That's what he puts on the... When they're, like, you know, tobogganing in the snow, he puts the cereal varnish on his like disc that he's sliding on clark does and that's why he like fires down the hill at like a supersonic speeds luke i don't know why i was doing this because

i'm not a big chevy chase fan generally speaking and you know he's kind of his reputation is sort of soured in recent years um but somehow i stumbled on maybe it was after a conversation on tbtl but i stumbled on like even like later editions of the um of the griswold family movies of i guess you know uh they're not christmas are they all vacation european they went to europe

at some point so it was like yeah christmas vacation uh was a big one a vacation whatever like the first one where they try to go to wally world but there are some then they got really out

there yes and there was one in and i think it's this one hotel hell vacation which was made in 2010 and it still had Chevy Chase in it and I remember the other day I think that's the one it was someone it was some vacation movie that was made in the 2000s and it still had Chevy Chase oh I don't know like it was just like I'm sure that one of them was Henry Winkler holding a fish but he comes home I remember he comes home and I mean it was so bad it was like a made for TV movie and that wasn't even that good but he so that's what his business is it's all cereal and breakfast food related, right? Because I remember the scene of that movie, the opening scene is he comes home with some like gross food product that he wants his kids to taste test.

Hmm. I'm just looking at the cast. Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold. Beverly D'Angelo. Is this Hotel Hell Vacation 2010? This is Hotel Hell Vacation cast. Somebody named Mead Nickel as quote, Hot Girl. Seth Kirshner as Valet. Sounds good. Bruce Fine played Claude or Claude. Travis Greer. This is what I'm interested in because the kids, right? In Christmas Vacation, the kids are, what's his name? Jonathan, I think it's Jonathan Galecki, the guy who went on to be in Roseanne and then the Big Bing. theory. He plays one of the kids

at one point? I didn't realize that. Yeah, he was

the kid in Christmas Vacation and then he was one of the kids and then the daughter was what's her name from most recently Julia she was in oh, phooey, she's in Yellow Jackets this TV show, that's the thing she's most recently in, but she was also in Juliette Lewis? Juliette Lewis is the daughter But they would cycle through They would like cycle through You know other kids in subsequent Movies I think Anthony Michael Hall might have been the kid in one of them

In an earlier one right Maybe because Christmas Vacation was like the third one

This was 2010 Hotel Hell Vacation Was 2010 and let's be honest Everybody needed money Yes the only reason That Chevy Chase was making Hotel Hell Vacation was because He probably had some unsettled tax liabilities that

I want to know where I was watching this sorry to cut you off I I'm on Hulu now like first of all why did I start watching it is one question that we should all ask ourselves like where was I mentally that I thought this is what I'm going to land on because even for me like I don't enjoy stuff that is so bad it's campy right I feel like I must have been doing it for a reason but I'm going on all of my streaming sites and I cannot access this movie

you know why Andrew? The 14-minute short premiered as a series of commercials during the Super Bowl to help promote HomeAway Incorporated. HomeAway Incorporated? What is that? HomeAway planned to use Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo in a national advertising campaign to resemble National Lampoon's vacation. HomeAway purchased a replica wagon Queen Family Truckster for use in the campaign. The first ad aired during the CBS Television Network broadcast of the Super Bowl in 2010. This was the reason you can't find is because this was an ad. This was a long ass ad starring the two of them playing on the popularity of the National Lampoon vacation films.

Well, then I hate to burst this bubble, but I I'm talking about something else then because I'm seeing I think they made another one in the 2000s of one of these vacation movies because it was. and you're right i'm not able to see this anywhere because i think it was mostly a commercial but there's another vacation movie that might have been made in the slightly earlier 2000s sizzler vacation it was an ad for sizzler it was it was the home depot vacation i believe is this is

actually not the worst ad tie-in though because i mean home away i think is one of those places i don't even know if they exist anymore but my guess is they like they're like verbo or airbnb be they allow you they help you rent your house out like as a hotel so the idea that you went to a hotel hell vacation my guess is that this movie or what to the degree that it's a movie was chevy chase and beverly d'angelo having a terrible time staying in hotels and if only they would used home away and stayed at someone's house everything would be great that's not bad you know what it

was that i watched luke it wasn't 2000s i was a little bit wrong but not completely wrong it was 1997, and it was called Vegas Vacation, and I think this might be on HBO. I'm trying to track it down now.

Would you consider watching Hotel Hell Vacation if I told you some of the plot? Yes, please. Tell me how it ends. Tell me how you feel about the ending. Clark and Ellen are driving to visit their son, Rusty, and his family, who are spending their vacation by renting a beach house. Clark and Ellen make a detour for the night at Le Grand Canard, a very sophisticated hotel clark begins seeing a brunette beauty around the hotel and is instantly attracted after having miscommunications with the receptions at the front desk clark and ellen finally get to their room the napoleon suite which turns out to be very small the when ellen talks to rusty and his wife and daughter through the webcam clark's genitals accidentally become visible on the webcam because of the small shower this is in the commercial this is in the short film slash commercial for home away hotel hell vacation so basically if you stay in a hotel even if you get the napoleon suite it will be so small that your balls will be visible on the webcam so you should

probably just use home away to stay at someone's house wow i am i want so badly so badly to thank frank mccready our second dazzling donor everybody razzle dazzle sorry i'll let you finish no no no no you keep doing that i'm gonna see if i can i'm now just trying to log into hbo max and won't let me i'm having a real burbank moment since we switched our plant hey hey hey all of

my electronics that's the bad hey that's the bad funds frank mccready is our second dazzling donor frank

in puyallup washington frank says hi guys thanks for another year of great content oh thank god frank sent that before he heard this episode could you please give a shout out to my friend dave he's finishing up a round of treatment for a medical condition he is doing well but a little extra help never hurts absolutely yeah dave again i don't i can't imagine that what you just heard is helping anything in terms of your medical situation but we're sending you all of the positive vibes that we can muster right now thinking about you and and hoping you're you're doing well and frank thank you for supporting the show and thanks for supporting your friend dave thanks for tolerating that deep dive into a commercial doubling as a uh national lampoons film did you figure out what you were trying to figure out about vegas vacation i would know what

i need to figure out is why hbo won't let me log in this is driving uh did i not tell you the other

day that hbo is the most annoying of those things the reason um i'm having issues here is because

i used to log in on this computer just with my comcast account right and i don't have a comcast account anymore so i'm just trying to um to log in with our hbo max credentials that we bought you know via i don't know it fell off the back of a truck or something so um it's just like it's the the system is so confused right now but i'm i don't want to let this go luke i know we have to start top stories and i'm just babbling as i'm trying to log in here but can you start top stories but can i reserve the right at some point to play for you the opening scene of vegas vacation where

he comes home with a new breakfast food you can do the thing that they do in congress where you can say i reserve the balance of my time okay great so you're making a statement but you're not using up all of your time you're going to cede to the gentleman from portland but you reserve the

balance of your time now keep talking because i might be like 10 seconds away from making this

happen i want to activate this though because if i don't we will literally go over the river we're going over the river in like one minute hello and welcome to top store i'm sorry that that was so the volume was so messed up on that andrew i'm wearing my glasses for the first time and i'm not seeing everything how is this coming up now properly i don't know i feel like a pic This is not the kind of show where we talk about our bodies that way.

It's not on HBO Max anymore.

I'm finally in. I can play for you an episode of Entourage that's called Vegas Baby Vegas. That sounds up our alley.

Entourage. How did that show get as far as it did? I don't know. I mean, many, many people are saying it and very strongly. They love Entourage. I do not understand the popularity of that film or show. Again, I didn't invest the time. Maybe there's some subtlety to the characters that I just didn't get. But it just did not appeal to me.

Should I just sign up for Fubo TV so I can play the first season?

Hold on.

Let me rebuy my Fubo TV stock.

Please. Everything is Fubo right now. What I love is how hard of a time Dave Sims has saying Fubo. did you mention that to me or did somebody else mention that to me because i don't know that i've experienced it he calls it fubu tv sometimes or fubu tv he has a lot of trouble with and you know what in his defense it's not a a word we're familiar with fubo no it is a new it is get the fubo on your ruku speaking of baseball andrew is it time for robotic umpires

Are you asking me? Just want me to start by answering that question

I would love it if you just said no And then I hit the emails

I can't

Or just say yes Just a one word answer And then we just go to emails

I can't do that Luke I mean if you want to have this conversation I want to have the conversation I want to have the conversation Should we push it off to another time when we have more time?

No let's have it right now In 40 minutes someone is coming to look at my stove That doesn't work So that's our only time constraint.

You're trying to sell your stove that doesn't work? And they're coming to look at it?

Don't blow this for me. I'm selling it to Veeves.

You're just like.

I put it on OfferUp. She's coming down.

They open up. You got like a hair dryer in there that's blowing on a hot dog. Look, it works. It's hot. Feel that hot dog.

I put my mouth on this hot dog.

You know, I'm going to save it for the email segment. But for the first time ever, we have a voicemail that is responding to something that we are going to talk about in today's show, because one of our listeners knew that we were going to talk about robot umps. And then we never talked about it yesterday. But this person left a voicemail with their opinions on it anyway. And it swayed me a little bit. But before I get into my opinion about it, will you go once again with the email every week?

And it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female. Well, now we can play it because we're in the email. But we can't, though, because this voicemail references a couple of the big events of this weekend that I thought maybe we could set up a little bit, such as who was it? And see, this is I don't have it in front of me and I'm bad with names. So my apologies. I got to ask you to set this up. But there was a big headline on Sunday night baseball this weekend where was it Scherzer? Oh, no, no. Al Schwarber went ballistic near the end of the game. I think ninth inning, maybe. Yeah, ninth inning.

Yeah, because he was the second out in the ninth inning. Yeah, he was the Phillies were losing by a run. It was the bottom of the ninth, and Schwarber was called out. He was, as we say, Andrew, rung up by Angel Hernandez on a very far out, like a pitch that very much missed the strike zone, and it was the third strike. And this was the culmination of a game where Angel Hernandez's strike zone seemed like it was all over the place. Yes, and in fact, that pitch that he would— And so Schwarber had already been rung up a couple times over questionable pitches.

And apparently that pitch that eventually led him over the edge, which was just—I mean, it's just—it's awesome to watch.

It really is, and I'm surprised it doesn't happen more.

He's pantomiming, like, where—what the strike zone is. It was down there. It was over here. It's like it's second word movie sounds like it was really an amazing show. But I do think it's interesting that the ball that sent him over the edge was actually not even the most egregious mistake. It was actually kind of a borderline, according to all the reports I read. But it was just like it was the final straw and it was happening on both sides of the ball. One of the announcers while this is happening is saying that he's like venting on behalf of both teams right now, because both teams were getting just, like, these terrible, terrible calls by an ump who has a reputation for being a terrible ump. What's his name? Angel Hernandez. Hernandez, yeah, who already has this reputation.

Larry Bernando.

And I get so frustrated during games when the ump is inconsistent. Like, if you want to have a narrow strike zone or a wide strike zone, whatever it is, like, you have to be consistent. And it sounds like this was just kind of wild. Well. No?

this was the one thing that i read was um i forget uh which player it was i believe it was one of the catchers and i don't know if it was the phillies catcher or the the other team but the catcher did say and maybe they just have to say this because like angel hernandez is like hulking right behind them you know potentially eight more games this season right exactly they said that it was consistent basically these were not strikes but they were consistently angel was consistently calling these non-strikes strikes and what the catcher said is you just have to adjust as the hitter easier said than done I would think but but there was I read one comment that said at least he was basically messing up this same call the same way the whole game although Kyle Schwarber's reaction makes me think he wasn't because I MLB players batters that is I think they tend to figure out what's the guy doing with the strike zone today yeah maybe he's kind of calling the inside pitch as a strike or he's whatever and then they do adjust so his just full-on meltdown which again i'm just surprised doesn't happen more if i were a major league hitter and i was called out on strikes in the ninth inning i would i would break the bat in two and then like monkey knife fight the umpire every time it happened every single time like like the fact that that thing with that schwarber did was considered like one of the great meltdowns in the last five years tells you how weirdly stoic hitters generally are and how many weird mores there are around baseball like your people get mad if you flip your bat after a home run people get mad if you like all the stuff where pitchers are beaning hitters it's all over some tiny violation of the weird puritanical rules of baseball and one of those is you don't say you never look at the umpire and say like that was uh you know that should have been called a ball you you might mutter it under your breath but if you turn your head towards them that's considered like complete disrespect and you will get tossed for it yeah it's a weird sport or if you didn't

get tossed like you said even for the rest of that game that ump is going to be there and they can just like kind of punish you and kind of get a chip on their shoulder and and then like not give you favorable calls and this is the kind of stuff that drives me bananas as somebody who's like kind of a rule follower and i i also hate like like misused authority you know and kind of bullying And I often look at those plate umpires as like just being kind of bullies because you're not allowed to say shit. You just got to take you just got to take what they give you. And we have this rookie player who's got an amazing eye, Julio Rodriguez, but like he is getting so many bad calls. Like it's a national story now. It feels like hazing to me. Yeah. And it's like people don't understand why he keeps on getting these like bad third strike calls when he's being patient at the plate, waiting for something that is actually a strike and they're calling these balls strikes against him and he's getting...

thrown out and so far like if he starts not thrown out but what's that not thrown out of the game I'm sorry he's called out and you know that would be that would be next level they just start tossing him yeah but he's got to be he's got to be patient he's got to be respectful because if he you know makes a fuss over it then he's got even more of a target on his back and like that so this all started with you asking me if I think we should have robot umpires like all of these conditions make me think like yeah sorry for the swear but fuck the umps like I I am that that's and maybe that's because I'm newer to baseball and we have the technology and I don't and it's not even about the accuracy but it's about like the human element of what I consider to be kind of bullying and Angel Hernandez just being a this time I won't swear but being a jerk for such a long time and I might have accidentally just downloaded Vegas vacation let's say let's pretend it was legally I'm going through such great.

If Angel Hernandez is in Vegas vacation, you officially have to believe in a god. So anyway, I would usually say – I think that they should have it for the strike zone. Yeah. I think that they should – I mean, and yesterday we sort of previewed this, and we had like 2% of the conversation, and we were talking about like the way that – I think baseball actually lends itself to sort of robot umps differently than the other major sports. but you also said that like yeah they're probably like there are still some calls that you would need a human for maybe in the outfield maybe the question of if you know like that did the outfielder catch the ball or did it did it you know did they short hop it like did it bounce right in front of their mitt there's some things like that that might be hard to track from a robot standpoint but in terms of the strike zone based on just all the things that are now in daily life in terms of kind of like cameras and facial you know recognition etc you could very much structure it so that a robot tells you empirically if it was a strike or a ball I feel like that part of the game will eventually become automated or you know it will no longer be

in the hands of the Angel Hernandez's of the world and I would usually praise that but and don't do it yet don't do it yet but when we go don't the voicemail segment machine I actually really like one caller's kind of counterpoint to what we just said but before we do that Luke after all this time it has finally paid off I have now an MP4 paid off for whom an MP4 of Vegas Vacation which came out in 1997 this is the opening scene Clark Griswold has just driven home from work he accidentally steps on a bike that somebody left in the front yard it's comedy gold and now he's walking in the front door Oh, he's knocking over lamps. Beverly D'Angelo is in the kitchen. Oh, hi, honey. Ooh, smells good.

Kids, come on in here. Gather around.

So remember, I said... What is that background sound?

Is that the voiceover? They must have a TV on in the background or something. It's kind of like a busy kitchen scene. You don't see a TV, but yeah, there's some... It sounds like there's some TV on in the background. Now, the reason we're doing this, just as a reminder, is because, number one, it's great radio and number two is because you mentioned that he used that cereal varnish non non non-nutrient cereal varnish which made me realize oh the through line for all of this is he works for some i i guess breakfast company or food company because i think this movie begins with him asking his kids to try some sort of gross food i don't remember what it is

i want to show you something this is my new car keep dreaming son here eat these

he's handing them cookies they're eating it they're chocolate chip they're delicious they're four years old anyone for milk he's got years old packages of milk like little it's my long life food

preservative it's finally been approved i got my big bonus yeah that's always angling for that

bonus he's finally gonna get the bonus so yeah the they just ate cookies but like they're eating cookies that taste good but when they hear that it's four years old there's by the way the timing on this is like i think they used a robot ump to direct this because like angel hernandez like it's just like the blocking enhancer non-nutritive cereal varnish it's semi-permeable

it's not osmotic what it does is it coats and seals the flake prevents the milk from penetrating

it yeah it's a it's a beautiful product i like it yeah i actually like you know just like a gin and tonic i feel like a gin and tonic isn't great right away right now you let it melt a little bit right the gin and tonic is best when it's been poured and it's been sitting for maybe three minutes or so uh three to five minutes and because the

the ice has melted a little bit and then that's the that's like kind of the magic where the magic

Thank you.

happens as everything kind of comes together i feel the same way about cereal you don't want

a little bit of sog yes you need a little bit of sog now let me tell you this about umpires andrew i went down a rabbit hole the other day over this whole angel hernandez thing and i started googling around about some of the greatest gaffes in umpiring history and there was famously a game in 2010 where a pitcher named armando galarraga was pitching a perfect game and the final out what should have been the out an umpire named jim joyce he was the who's like first base ump in this game and he blew the call so basically what happened was the tigers got the guy out like he was out by a half a step but Jim Joyce called him safe and that meant that uh Armando Galarraga didn't have a perfect game to his credit he had a one hitter which like to be a pitcher and have a perfect game a major league pitcher I mean that's like a you know there's a short list of people who've thrown perfect games like 11 it's only like 11 it's very very short it rarely happens and he did it he literally did it and this guy Jim Joyce screwed it up and I remember hearing about this and just being like they better like you know tar and feather jim joyce and then i saw the post-game presser with jim joyce and the dude was crying he was like this is a once in a lifetime thing for this kid and i booted it that's like a baseball term i guess and he was so wrecked by missing the call it humanized him in this way that i wouldn't have imagined i don't know if angel hernandez has that same thing in him but it's interesting how much i wanted to just like Destroy Jim Joyce for ruining Armando Galarraga's thing And then when I saw how I mean he literally cried The umpire cried during the post game Wow Presser And then I was like Then I was totally I felt so sad I mean I felt more sad for Armando Galarraga But I also felt sad for Jim Joyce

It was actually 23 by the way I'm sorry there are 23 people who threw Perfect game Should be 24 And you know who the last one was right Luke

I don't know

You do, just by me setting it up that way. It was Felix back in 2012. Last perfect game. I actually didn't know that.

Was that the one that ended with him doing the, like, where the wild things are pose? Yes, exactly. Accidentally?

Yep, yep. Oh, Felix.

And also... God, if that guy would have... If he would have just decided to, like, you know, learn a new pitch, man, he'd still be pitching for us.

What I didn't realize was that Randy Johnson also got up. It was when he was with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He threw a perfect game.

Randy Johnson was a no-hitting fool as a mariner, which, again, maybe only threw one, but still that seemed like a lot. But, I mean, the thing that Randy Johnson did that will go down in history as the absolute weirdest thing, not even in the history of baseball, but in the history of life, was when he killed a bird. I know he started the show saying the fawns should stop holding up dead fish. So I don't mean to elide the death of a bird. He didn't do it on purpose.

He was trying to pitch.

Yeah, right? And, by the way, a quick death for the bird. I hope that's how I go. The bird hit by a Randy Johnson pitch That I don't even know is coming It exploded

I mean not to be gross for people who are not familiar with this But like he's pitching And then suddenly there's a bird And then suddenly there's no bird

He is throwing a Randy Johnson fastball In a game And all of a sudden the ball explodes in feathers

It's just astounding

Do you think if you give Randy Johnson A million tries at that He could ever do that again

No I don't think so But I don't, again, I don't think he was trying. Of course he wasn't.

I mean, it's just the, I don't know what you would call that, just the intersection of like time, space, momentum, baseball, bird that happened in that moment. I think, I don't think that'll ever happen again in human history. It may have never happened in human history, certainly not on a baseball field, and it will never happen again. That is one of the truly weirdest things that's occurred in my lifetime, was Randy Johnson killing that bird. And you don't believe in a bird. show title too beautiful to bird do you want to try to get back on yesterday's horse

go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a

female what about those weird one wheel bike things people stand on now oh yeah yeah what

about those in the bike lane yeah it's a good question i would say that cyclists would i would guests hate that i saw some guy came around the corner came around the corner in the grocery store yesterday and almost was startled out of my shoes because there's like some guy just looked like he was like he just looked like he was from some battle of the future and he was like dude

that's their look yeah full body armor And it was so Was he on one of the Skateboard one wheels Or the one wheels That you stand on Like you're in the Comic BC

Like you're in the Comic BC only Weirdly in the future Instead of the past I guess everything is Time is a flat circle But like yeah It was one of those Like he wasn't Standing on it Like I just come Around the corner He's a tall guy And like you say He's just like I mean he looks Like some sort of Mad Max kind of guy

Yeah basically a version Of like Master Chief From Halo Or some shit But all in black That's the look so becca lives down in what's called the south waterfront of portland which is um where there's a lot of tech bros uh because of like these kind of larger you know apartment buildings not it's not unlike south lake union i guess and every time i'm going over there there's like gangs of these one-wheel dudes in those outfits the other day we were coming and i go this is the least threatening

gang i've ever seen well this guy was actually intimidating like he was very tall and like he He didn't have tech bro vibes. He had more Mad Max Fury Road with one wheel vibes.

He had more like, I'm playing a guitar. I'm hanging from a chain on Joe Immortan's truck or whatever.

Sort of. I mean, he wasn't all necessarily chained out or pierced up or whatever. He just looked like he was riding a motorcycle somewhere and kind of dirty, dusty, decked in leather from head to toe. But then instead of having a motorcycle, he had this one-wheel thing.

I promise you that guy has multiple NFTs. You could have taken him.

I could have taken them, did you say? You could have taken him. Oh, I could have taken him. Hey, let me tell you about an NFT.

It's a new one. It's Deez.

Deez nuts. Okay. Let me play for you this voicemail going back to the conversation that we just had.

It's Immortan Joe, by the way, not Joe Immortan. Somebody was throwing their phone out there.

Is that the guitar guy?

no that's just like the main baddie in fury road um so yeah there's also a guy named toe cutter i think and in yeah same dude right uh famously same actor yeah hugh keys burn he was he was toe cutter oh i didn't know that the mel gibson one and then he was immortal joe in fury road

oh i had no idea i believe i could be wrong about that's really interesting okay uh so we were talking about robot umps and i ended that by saying yeah i could see robot umps as being an improvement in the game even though i know that is blasphemy to long-time baseball fans and we have a voicemail here from jordan who's a long-time baseball fan in fact a um a detroit tigers fan

and uh probably wanted to kill jim joyce that one day in 2010 he has a different um take on this

which i find to be very compelling um listen to this excuse the audio i think it might be a little

Hi, Luke and Andrew. This is Jordan in Portland. The rabid Detroit Tigers fans, just giving me a call because I hear that you're talking about umpires and robo-ups. I am against robo-ups myself for two reasons. A, I think it just delimates the human availability that's built into the game of baseball. You know, it's just like that game on a Sunday They call the swarmers freaking out on Angel Hernandez. There's something, I don't know, I find great about that, that we can all get rich shit over Angel Hernandez and also J-Rod getting jobs constantly. It's amazing.

So anyway, this is really hard to hear, but I thought it was a compelling argument that without the robot umps, for me it's not the purity of the game, But, like, that moment where the batter is freaking out is a great moment. I'm glad we had that moment, right? And that's kind of what Jordan is saying here. Like, aren't those moments kind of fun? Isn't it fun to come on TBTL and talk about that?

There will be new moments, would be my argument. Like, I think what Jordan was saying in there was something to the effect of the imperfections Or whatever the irregularities Or the humanness I don't There would have been a time when I would have said Yes, in fact there was a Like a real sports on HBO Many years ago about robot umps And they basically Made the case that In terms of strikes anyway Not maybe again out in the field But in terms of balls and strikes There's already the technology And they basically, I think there was like a Might even be a minor league team or some team somewhere, obviously not in the MLB, that was using a robot ump, and it was just so much more accurate than a human. But even then, when I saw that thing years ago on Real Sports, I remember thinking, yeah, but it's kind of fun that the drama of is the ump going to call it a ball or a strike, but I think I'm over that.

You know, Jordan, thank you for the call. Peace and love. But I think I would rather a game where we just know definitively, and then there will be other drama. There will be, you know, I can be mad at, you know, Jared Kalanick if he's not hitting the ball the way that we think he should, or I can be mad at Mike Salk for being mad at the memory of Kyle Seeger. Have you followed any of that? A little bit, yeah. Sitch?

Talking to some folks.

Clearly Kyle Seeger did something to some friend of Mike's. because Mike said he wanted to see Kyle Seeger burn which seemed a fairly intense statement and then he doubled down on it and he referenced something in passing that was like well then don't do something to my friends that makes me mad at you

I didn't know about that but you know I was having drinks with somebody who works at that station as a little bit of insight on that and this is something that blows my mind and I also i'm starting to i don't know how much i can trust this person on this thing maybe he's just like too close to everything but he was saying that um oh yeah well kyle kyle seager is a jerk like he's notoriously been a jerk i'm like sounds like there's some bad blood maybe between that radio station and some of the behind the scenes stuff because like kyle seager i mean listen i know baseball players tend to be kind of jerks you've talked about that in my experience if i can

interject this quickly in my experience of interviewing pro athletes baseball players were 100 percent the biggest jerks of any of the sports so i'm not saying that kyle seager is like

pleasant all the time i have no idea what the guy is like but as far as a public image like the my buddy was kind of being like well yeah everybody knows he's a jerk i'm like no not everybody knows that like everybody loves him the entire club was crying on his last day he was drafted by the mariners and then he retired when he didn't get re-signed by the mariners because he's like a mariner like there is so much heart to that story people outside of seattle do not understand why we even like kyle seager but like i don't think it's accurate to say everybody knows kyle seager is a jerk but clearly there is some bad blood between maybe people who tried to work with him or get him on the radio or whatever and i don't know what that is but like i don't think

we can say clearly kyle seager is a jerk no i agree with you 100 that that statement is flawed because the 99 of the people who are mariners fans think of kyle seager in a positive sense because they've never tried to interview him in the locker room or whatever there's a similar version of that which was this guy named chris bazio who speaking of no hitters he pitched a no hitter for the mariners just world-class asshole just one of the just meanest cusses you would ever meet in the locker room just a horrible human being but everybody loved him because like i mean the fans loved him because he pitched a no hitter but i was like boy you should have seen that guy in the kingdom in the locker room i mean everybody on that team just absolutely sucked honestly jay buehner was the nicest one and he would throw up in people's batting helmets like that still made him actually the most relatable the least terrible person to deal with on that particular team that that's not true you know who the nicest one was probably alex rodriguez because he was still young and trying to probably in the way he still is like he was very concerned about how he came off and so he was nice to you or polite because he didn't want to ever get branded as being a jerk which actually goes a long way you could say that that's just like uh you know kind of that's just a means to an end for him but if the means involves him not trying to fight me like some of the players did including chris bazio i'll take it why can't

i find my are you ready for a good time drop are you ready for a good time see it was good is that you or the drop that was just me where was my i spent all that time isolating and downloading that acdc drop and i can't find it anywhere oh well are you ready anyway jordan thank you for

the call um i think i politely disagree um but i i do i will give jordan this much part of the fun of baseball is how sort of anachronistic it is like how intentionally everyone's always like they've got to make the game shorter i'm like really make the games longer yeah i love i love how long baseball takes i love you know all of the kind of things about baseball that make no sense in this in these go-go 2000s you know that's the stuff i love about baseball so i guess that could be an argument for like the imperfection of the umpires as well are you ready for a good time

i was ready like two hours ago i know i really thought we're gonna have a good time today oh well um all right well i thought you were gonna play it no i can't find it i just was filling i just can't goddamn find it and i can't find anything today am i gonna have to download that again like i i gotta get out of here i gotta get out of here this has been a failure on several levels uh

All right. Well, listen, thank you, everyone, for tuning in to today's TBTL. I'm sorry we failed on so many levels. We'll be back here tomorrow with more TBTL for you. So please do join us for that. Until then, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Hug your Jim Joyces. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

This is the Ace theme song.

Ha, ha, ha.