Muse

You don't even go to a restaurant on the weekends, it gets busy, so they gotta start a waiting list, they start calling out names, they say like, Dufresne, party of two. Table ready for Dufresne, party of two. And if no one answers, they'll say the name again. Dufresne, party of two. But then if no one answers, they'll just go right on to the next name. Bush, party of three. Yeah, but what happened to the Dufresnes? No one seems to care. Who can eat at a time like this? People are missing We need help Bush, search party of three You can eat once you find the Dufresnes TBTL

Now, we've gone each other for quite some time in the professional realm I'd like to push things forward in the friendship realm

It's Friday, Friday Gotta get down on Friday I knew it

well i didn't know it but i knew it if you feel uncomfortable at any time give me the sign we can

save any segment we've done in the past okay remember that segment where he did the world's fattest pets glenn lost all the tapes we made that work you mean when we got those two rabbits and we tied them together to look like a big fat one yeah people loved it they bought it you see what

happens larry you see what happens you see what happens when you find a stranger in the album

Okay, enough chit-chat. Let's get the family in here.

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

So I'm predictable, I gotta tell you.

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

Jalapeno!

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is I gotta be honest it's not even sunny out it's just kind of cloudy and gray but it's not like 41 degrees and it's not actively raining

oh ma, pa it's just beautiful

so I guess this now counts as beautiful May weather here in Portland, Oregon where I am in day three of kitten ownership

Kittens! Inspired by kittens!

You may have even heard Bubbles in the background there, doing a little meowing. You know, kitten ownership has changed me, my friends. I started this whole journey by saying, I don't want to be one of those weird people who walks around with a cat on their shoulder. Like, that's not the look that I'm going for.

I just want you to be normal, and clearly you're not.

I had to go get something from my car this morning, down in the parking garage, and I thought, well, let's take Bubbles on a journey, and I literally put the cat on my shoulder, got in the elevator, went down to P3 of the parking garage, got my laptop bag, and came back up. I'm now a person who's, in a limited environment, but we'll see where this goes, I'm now a person who's walking around with a cat on their shoulder. three days into this and that's that's who i am people and you know what i don't apologize for it i do not apologize and i don't apologize for the fact that we're at episode 3000 683 in a collector series let the fun begin speaking of the cat i am just covered in injuries from her where she's been scratching me and biting me all in a playful way but now the problem is I am itching like a fiend.

You know, it's not so much the burning, but the itching. Oh, my God. It's driving me crazy.

I'm sure people will email in and say, like, I'm doing some sort of, I'm rearing this cat incorrectly and that I'm letting her just basically chomp on me night and day. But it's our love language, everyone. My other love language, of course, is Twitter, which I've been very bummed to see that Elon Musk is trying to buy it and the news earlier this week that he's going to let Donald Trump back onto the platform if he's successful in purchasing it. I know what you guys are thinking. Hey, it's the guy from Twitter. But now some news this morning that maybe the deal is on hold. It's based on Elon Musk's actual tweets. So we will get into that. Plus emails, V-mails, and whatever else strikes our fancy on this Friday the 13th, by the by. We'll do all that with the help of this feller, the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's an activist and house party enthusiast who is here to co-bro and chew bubblegum, and he's all out of bubblegum. Y'all know why I'm here. He's Andrew Walsh, and you'll join me right now from the Sweet Cream District of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. Listen, I know that it's not a competition. I know that. I know that intellectually, but I do want you to know that I have a lizard on one shoulder.

right now and a cockatoo on the other i don't know what kind of lizard i know i know of a cockatoo the other thing is just a lizard name a lizard what is it a gecko would you have a gecko as a pet when you see somebody walking around with a lizard on their shoulder as a pet in capitol hill

oh oh you're thinking of yeah something big like a is it a bearded dragon i'm looking a bearded dragon or probably not a kimono dragon those are as big as a small child but yeah like probably a bearded dragon would be the lizard you might most likely see on someone's shoulder on Capitol Hill. Maybe a bearded dragon on one side and a ferret on the other.

Really dominating the space

of show-off pets. I have a question

that Genevieve asked me yesterday about your little kitten that if you explained this on the show, I forgot. Or maybe I never asked, in which case bad for me, but why did you choose the name Bubbles for this kitten?

It was just an extremely spur-of-the-moment thing. So as I have mentioned many times, the folks that were her, I guess, parents, owners, caretakers, they named her Meowgly, which is actually kind of clever in a way because Mowgli is the kid in the jungle book but it's a cat so they meow so meow glee yeah um but i wasn't gonna stick with that because it just i couldn't tell people you know that the cat was named meow glee so i don't know i mean after uh beck and i went out to um oregon city to meet with meow glee and the people that were taking care of her and on the drive back i just was thinking hi i wonder what i'm gonna call this cat and then just the name bubbles came into my mind and i thought there's some alliteration there bubbles burbank and i just i just told becca i was like i'm naming her bubbles and that was it that it was it was not a lot of um consideration but i also just wanted to kind of get it over with like i didn't want to because cat names i mean you know you have a cat named professor bananas which is one of the great cat names of all time and one that i have stolen for use on wait wait don't tell me but i just i thought i could i could spend a month on this or i could just decide it's bubbles and i just went with the uh door number one i guess do you know door

number two in that thing i just set up um do you know that um when i was getting not my first cat growing up i grew up with various barn cats including fred and ethel um but then when uh me and my dad were living in lakewood ohio um which is like you know more of a more of an actual neighborhood kind of in the city and we were getting our first indoor cat for a year i feel like it was for years if not just a year leading up to it I knew I wanted a cat and I knew I wanted to name the cat Jimmy I just had this feeling and I wasn't a big Jimi Hendrix fan it wasn't because of anything I just was like I want to get a cat I mean I was a Led Zeppelin fan but I

honestly it wasn't that was it Jimmy Neutron which hadn't been invented yet that was it actually Jimmy Neutron wasn't invented yet I don't like that like a cartoon called Jimmy Neutron I assume that was after you were living in liquid ohio yeah let's see so the year if i'm gonna just in

case people are cross-referencing that which i would say like don't bother it was just a spoof that luke said throughout there but like i'm talking this is like 92 so i don't know when jimmy neutron came out but um anyway i just knew i was like i can't wait to get a cat named jimmy and um i was just really really excited about it and then we went to 2001 by the way oh okay so right s uh spca i believe is the right acronym right to pick out our cat and i met the cat and i remember i went with my dad and of course he was i was a minor he was driving he was buying he was he was flying and buying um from my new little kitten and i met the kitten and i knew immediately which kitten uh we wanted to bring home because it kind of reached out to me was snuggly and purring immediately and the cat was a gray cat with like kind of um subtle stripes and And I said, Dad, this isn't a Jimmy. This isn't Alexander. It just had strong Alex vibes. So I named the cat Alex.

I like that you had the you were ahead of the trend as far as I was tracking it of like human names for the cat. Yeah, I wasn't trying to be funny. The time you were getting this cat, that was a real Mr. Muffins era. That was a real patches. Like that was a real that was the time when the, you know, Mr. Whiskers or Whiskers. Those were the names we were giving cats. No one was naming a cat Larry.

Well, there are some human names that are there are some human names that are just inherently funny for a cat. Like, I feel like, I don't know, a cat named Kevin is kind of funny or just kind of like, no offense to our listeners named Kevin, but it's just such a common name. Whereas I don't think Alexander is a super common name. I mean, Alex, I guess there are plenty of people named Alex.

But anyway, the funny thing is, Luke, I don't know where it came from. Like to this day, it wasn't like I knew somebody named Alex. There was no connection. There was no connection for Jimmy. I just knew I wanted a cat named Jimmy. And then I met this cat. And I'm like, well, obviously, it's not a Jimmy. Obviously, it's an Alexander. And we called him Alex. But his middle name ended up being Francis. But anyway, that was actually named after my uncle. But anyway, I just don't know where that came from. But it just seemed so right. And that cat, Alex, lived a really long life, actually I went off to college and moved away And so that cat lived out its older years with my dad and stepmom Who doted on it and loved him to death until he passed

I do feel like Bubbles is also kind of a throwback name I just, like, you know, no one's naming their I don't think people are naming their cat things like Bubbles I think that was popular 20 years ago Again, then we entered the, you know, the phase where most people are I feel like most people are giving their cats human names And their dogs for that matter That's a thing now But I think we're going to go back to The convention of giving your pets A name that's just Like I said patches or something like that Like a non-human name That's going to cycle back into the Culture and Bubbles is going to be ahead of that

I see so you were just trying to stay ahead of the trend Is the easy answer to that It has no connection to the TV show The Wire Bubbles

Well actually it was Because I love Is that Andre Reiko I always get that name Slightly wrong But I loved the character Of Bubbles on the wire And it actually occurred to me Bubbles is a fun thing to say It's alliterative With my last name Which is Burbank And I love the character Bubbles from the wire Do we know Really and truly That was really and truly Part of my calculation

I would have never known The actor's name Andre Royo What else Royo What else is Always Oh I thought you said it What did you say?

No, I said Royco. Oh. Because there was a columnist for many years, I think for like the Chicago, maybe it was in New York or Chicago, Mike Royco. So for some reason, Andre Royo's name always, and I also confuse him a lot with Giancarlo Esposito, who is the guy from Breaking Bad who owns the chicken shop. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yep. I could see it. Those two guys, those two actors kind of occupy the same space. Yep. No, Bubbles, the Bubbles character from The Wire, I just absolutely have so much love and compassion for him.

Absolutely, yeah. But, yeah, I wish you'd be in more things. I wish you would be. I'm going to meet Andre Royo someday. If I ever fill in for you on Live Wire, can I talk to your producers? Let's get Andre Royo on. And my first question and last question will be, I want you to be in more things. I wish you would be in more things. And then a big cane will come out from the side stage and just pull me away. I love that this conversation is apparently happening at the Apollo. Was that the Apollo thing? I always think of it as like a hee-haw thing or something.

No, you know what? Actually, I think the Apollo thing was a clown-type person would come sweep you offstage. There was two things. It's funny. It's like a white kid growing up in Seattle with limited television access. I had a lot of awareness of the Apollo Theater for some reason because Showtime at the Apollo was like on television. One thing was there's some kind of We should look this up My childhood thought was That's a petrified wood stump To the side of the stage And you rub your hands on it Before you go on stage There was a thing that everyone had to rub Before they would go out on the Apollo And then if you were bombing with the crowd Somebody would literally sweep you off the stage With like one of those push brooms

Like a little broom Oh yeah

Those were the two things that I remembered about Showtime at the Apollo, which I guess the version of it that made its way to me via television was kind of a proto, you know, America's Got Talent or even American Idol or one of these, because the thing was you could get booed off the stage. It wasn't like you got booked and they were going to honor their seven-minute commitment to your singing or comedy act or whatever. It was kind of an audition process. Like, you could absolutely get swept off the stage at the apollo when i was a kid at least the tv version i hope if you ever um like

retire from lifewire i hope on your last night you will sweep up a spotlight that would be an

amazing move i'm googling what is that thing they rubbed on showtime at the apollo um let's see the apollo's tree of hope oh traditionally amateur night contestants rub the apollo's tree of hope for good luck today the preserved tree stump stands in the wings at stage right wow i was actually

very fairly close absolutely they rubbed a spittoon on hee-haw i just looked it up i found out something last night is the spittoon of despair

unfortunately. What's your sound of spitting into a spittoon? Because there is a specific

sound. Oh, the cartoon one that sounds like a bullet ricocheting? Yeah, it's like

ping, and then it's like it's like somehow the spit is metallic when it goes, and it's the only spit that's hitting the spittoon. It's like an empty, dry spittoon, and then when your saliva hits it, it sounds like a bullet is going

in there. You're absolutely right. Aren't you glad that we live

in an era that's post spittoon oh i wouldn't do well in a spittoon world well look i i lived a nightmare version of that in college which was i wrote for the uw daily i think the second time this week i've referenced that which is weird but polishing it was the fashion at the time in the sports department for everyone to dip or chew tobacco we had a guy uh the first editor There was a guy named Hans Rugemer, who was from, I think, Billings, Montana, which tells you everything you need to know. Peace and love to our listeners in Billings. But he brought a certain rural culture over to the sports department of the UW Daily, and he would dip constantly, and then he would spit his saliva into giant, like, double-gulp cups or big-gulp cups that he would slowly fill up over time. I don't like that. Sometimes you'd be late, be late night, be an edit. I'm sitting there with the berserker, Hans Rugemer. And that was the nickname Danny O'Neill came up with. Danny would always call him the berserker for some reason. And it would just be there might be like four or five, you know, gas station soda cups full of human spit. Oh, that's so awful.

Disgusting. I remember the time. I think this only happened to me once. How did this only happen to me once? I guess I'm blessed considering how much me and my friend smoked during my kind of late high school and college years. But I remember driving around in my stupid minivan. I was stressed out because I was doing that internship, that short-lived internship that I did for one summer that was kind of ill-fated in a bunch of different ways. But I remember a big part of my job was to make deliveries. Hey, Lloyd, make a delivery. In my little minivan, I would be making deliveries around downtown Cleveland. And I grew up in the suburbs and in the in the exurbs, really. There it is. And I and I didn't really know Cleveland that well. And keep in mind, this is before smartphones. You know, this would be like, OK, this place is on the corner of Superior and Sixth. And you take a left here, but that's a one way. And you just have, you know, you just have like your directions written down on a piece of paper. You might have to stop at a gas station and say, hey, where's Sixth? You know, like it was a different time. And I remember being stressed out, trying to get somewhere, feeling late, feeling harried and and feeling hairy. and then just grabbing my Dr. Pepper out of the cup holder and taking a swig of it and realizing that was an ashtray. I turned that soda into an ashtray yesterday. I'd forgotten. Oh, at least it was your ash. It was my own, but it was a butt. It was actually a cigarette butt was rattling around in there and I believe it touched my lips. You were on the boba tea trend before it was popular in the States. So that was a shocker. I mean, the fact that I can tell you very specifically where I was. I mean, I think probably, I don't know, I cannot tell you if any of it passed actually down my esophagus, but it definitely got in my mouth. I don't know. That's where the memory stops. That's where everything just goes black. That's it.

I am very grateful that I never got on the train with tobacco, you know, with dipping and chewing and things like that. It was a real thing, though, when I was a kid, in fact, to the degree that they had someone come to my school, Jesus Creek, and give us a speech about not taking on the habit of putting tobacco under your lip. And they showed us some extremely upsetting photos of people who'd suffered through cancer because of their chewing tobacco habit and the surgery afterwards and the way that it left their face looking. It really did a number on me, Andrew. i had no i i have put chewing tobacco uh in my mouth one time and one time only i think i've told this story on the show a few times but my friend derek lol scar had some and it might even been his older brothers and i remember putting it in my mouth because everybody at that time was dipping like in my high school all of my peer group was dipping and i put this tobacco like and it wasn't like a little packet or anything it was loose i think put it under my lip immediately felt nauseous and took three steps and just fell over into some bushes and I don't know if I threw up or I wanted to throw up but I took that thing out of my mouth tossed it and I've never looked back because I've obviously I'm the kind of person that if I get into a habit I usually tend to stick with it and overdo it so I'm very glad that that and cigarette smoking

Thank you.

were the two extremely bad habits that I didn't ever fall into.

Yeah, I saw somebody getting, I think they were buying dip. They were buying some sort of tobacco. There's a little kind of cruddy gas station not far from me, and I was buying some beer there the other day, and I realized that people are buying tobacco products that I don't even know what they are anymore. Like one person was buying something that I think was some sort of a mouth tobacco, but it didn't seem to be dip or chew.

There's something called like Zeus, or it starts with a Z, And a friend of ours, who shall remain nameless because I don't want to put their personal business on blast, but a friend of ours uses that product.

Oh, interesting.

And I was driving with this person recently, and they said, I got to tell you, I'm a Zeist man or whatever the thing is called. And then they just like popped out a thing that looked like a little tin of like, you know, mints or something. But instead it was these little packets, and they took that out. You know, I just think –

Can I ask you a quick question? Is this somebody who's trying to kick another habit or they're just into this thing?

This is a person who was a very high level baseball player And that's a whole thing too Like baseball players and tobacco I was never good enough at baseball to pick up a dip habit But the older kids and the kids that were playing at a really high level And maybe getting into the minor leagues and stuff It's a very cultural thing with baseball You're still in touch with that person

I think I know who you're talking about I didn't realize that you two hung No you're thinking of a different person so many baseball players okay we'll move on yeah that's terrible broadcasting sorry well i started

it i started it that's my fault i'm sorry if i seem a little distracted andrew my phone is blowing up because i am the people at cbs in new york are trying to pull together this situation for me so as of uh yesterday i was uh planning on just being right here in portland oregon with my kitty cat for the foreseeable future and then i got a call from my bosses saying could you actually fly to new york on saturday to interview baz lerman the film director um because he's got a new movie coming out that's like a biopic of elvis presley and i said uh okay and then they called back and said actually we're not going to do it because the travel is going to be prohibitively expensive and then they and so so then I said all right well then I guess I'll just not do that and then they called me back this morning and said actually we would like to go to New York to interview filmmaker Baz Luhrmann so so that's happening but this is the wild part the security is so tight around this film they will not send me Andrew a digital screener this is what they are currently proposing and this is what is being worked out right now by the various powers that be somebody is going to fly to portland with a physical copy of this new elvis movie go to a movie theater that they will rent out a room in i will go to the movie theater and watch the movie there while supervised by the person from warner brothers who will then take the i don't know thumb drive dvd put it back in their pocket and fly back to presumably los angeles

with it is it zin smokeless tobacco yes okay that's exactly what it is in here driving it's

been driving me nuts name for howard zin i'm uh i'd be great if howard zin along with being a very like left-wing pundit was also i guess historian is more accurately if howardson's side hustle

was starting a snooze company um i was listening to you though that is interesting i mean you know there's been a few times in my life where i've gone to media screeners where it's just like you and a few other media members yeah in the room or in the little tiny like screener um you know usually a full size screen but it's a screener room or something even here in seattle i remember i had the opportunity to do that one time at one of the older um theaters that's now Gone but anyway yeah That's really strange it would be Just for you but I guess that's the difference Between CBS and working for a local Radio station well I mean what it is is the studio

Really wants to publicize This film so they're You know they're incentivized But they apparently Have stopped at just sending Me like they've blanched At the idea of just sending me a screener because As I joked with my friend Anthony Who's producing this piece I go well my side hustle of course is trafficking in illicit Baz Luhrmann films that's how I really that's really where I make my money that's I mean I made a killing on Moulin Rouge just that's the thing

like DVDs out the wazoo on that one I understand in the digital age why people are reluctant like it is easy to leak things now and leaks are a problem like again I'm not an apologist or I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the the corporate machine that is Hollywood or leaks or whatever but i do understand that if that is your job

to protect those properties before release date, then you want to take measures to do it. And I understand you're trying to put, you know, you're trying to put those protections on the, the digital screeners that you send out and you might get burned. But for all of this, like if this were the new, if this were like end game, like the Marvel, like the final reveal of the Marvel, Marvel franchise or the Marvel franchise, I would understand that. But like, is there that much thirst and desire for somebody to spoiler? Yeah. And again, like, not that Baz Luhrmann isn't a big deal or not that his films haven't been. If we let people know that Elvis ended up dying, it ruins the end of this film. Maybe the film actually explains that he didn't die and the rumors are true and it finally explains where he had been. I mean, at this point, can we all agree that at this point Elvis is dead? Like, when was he born?

Well, as Mike Daisy once said, right before he lied to our faces, facts are your friends, Andrew. So, I mean, I think you can say that. but the other thing is i'm uh so so now i'm gonna go uh i'm gonna go to new york which means i'll be doing this show from new york on monday just fyi but um i'm gonna go do that and then later in the week right before we go to denver andrew which brings me to much more relevant to the tbtl interest topic which is tbtl on 13 let the fun begin denver um i'm gonna fly to la that weekend And while you're driving your way across the West, I'm going to go to L.A. and interview the young kid. He's probably 30, but the person who plays Elvis in the movie as well. Nice.

By the way, the rental agency gave me a Delica. Are you familiar with Delica? That's why I'm supposed to be driving to Denver.

Don't take it through the Sonoran Desert. Okay. Because my only advice to you is take the northern route between Oceanside and Phoenix, okay?

The way some listeners insisted right before our van broke down when we took it the other way.

No, back to the TBTL-a-thon, though. This is actually exciting, Andrew. We are going to now tell you, the listeners who might be coming out to Denver for this get-together, the place where we are going to have our event on Friday night, May 27th. And it is Local 46 in the Tennyson neighborhood of Denver. thanks to listener robin who uh knows the folks there put us in touch with irie the uh the person who kind of manages these things at local 46 uh there is going to be there's a band playing inside which means we will be outside which honestly probably better for everyone yeah you know in this economy and by economy i mean covid rates going back up which is fun so uh yeah it's going to be outside it'll be behind uh local 46 we're going to be doing some trivia this makes it all the more important though that you let us know if you're coming because there's some amount of bench seating but we might need to actually rent some some chairs or something uh depending on how many folks are going to show up so please do email us tbtl radio at gmail.com if you are planning to come out to this thing um again friday night may 27th in denver at local 46 andrew you said that the email account has received exactly seven responses which i put at the low number uh-huh i said between seven and 400 so so far we're tracking at seven i thought you said between

four and 700 huh i'm confused um yeah but if i said that that's great because that means we've already exceeded my low expectation yeah so yeah we got seven emails telling people about how many people will be in their party and again i want i want to be clear here i'm not looking you're you're not beholden to this like somebody said well let us know later on if we can bring you know there are some other like non-tens i might want to bring if there's room like there's room bring them we're not this has nothing to do with like restricting it or or there's going to be plenty of room we just kind of want to know what to prepare for like luke said we have to rent some stuff but yeah please the more the merrier and you know we just we've gotten if we get to like a hundred people

all be shocked honestly i don't yeah looking the way just because of you know the fact that denver is a wonderful place but and we've got some really dedicated listeners there but it's not it ain't seattle for us it's not what i would think of as a place where we necessarily have you know three four hundred people who want to come to an event so the more the merrier we may get some hop-ons we are we're working on the trivia plan and one of the things we talked about andrew was making it fun for people who are not tbtl listeners so it will be tbtl related but it will also be entertaining if you are the you know boyfriend girlfriend partner child of a person

who knows about tbtl yeah absolutely and also like if you're like well i don't know i'm not super into trivia or i'm a little bit shy about that stuff like honestly this is just something to do so we can all hang out we haven't seen you all in a long time so like you know just come no matter what and we'll just you know we'll play some trivia but then we'll also just kind of hang out and have some beers and get to meet up with you guys because it's been a really long time I'll be the guy with a cat on his shoulder Yeah, I'll be the guy with a lizard and a bird It's a competition

Which, you know, really are kind of the same thing If you think about it, right?

Ooh, if you go back far enough Yeah, right, because, like, birds came from lizards, right? All lizards are dinosaurs And all birds love lizards

I need to look something up really quick This never ends well But are you familiar with the concept of something called Archaeopteryx? I am not, and I certainly wouldn't be able to pronounce it So Archaeopteryx was a, or sometimes referred to its German name, Urvogel, is a genus of bird-like dinosaurs. The name derives from the ancient Greek. The reason that I knew about this thing called Archaeopteryx as a kid was because I went to a school that was teaching creationism. and i believe and again people will throw their phones and then pick their phones up and email us about how i'm probably wrong on this but the way that i was told the way it was related to me as a as a kid as a student in a science class where they were teaching that the earth was literally 7 000 years old was that archaeopteryx was a hoax so i think archaeopteryx was found in germany it It was seen as some sort of a missing link. It was something that was both bird-like but also reptilian in a way that indicated the moment in time when lizards were becoming birds.

Oh, interesting. Lizards becoming birds. Birds becoming men.

Archaeopteryx Bar Mitzvah. Show title? God, that's a lot of interesting words in one show title. but so what i remember the way that i found out about archaeopteryx was there's a thing out there that they're trying to tell you is the is proof of evolution but if you look at the stone it's two different kinds of stones like it's two different like you know they basically made this it's a hoax fake news archaeopteryx is fake news and so i just walked around in my life thinking oh have i ever heard of archaeopteryx i was like yeah well that's that hoax right my guess is having done zero research in the last 36 years or whatever the difference in time between when bill bame told me this that was our science teacher um dealt with a um halitosis situation by the way uh that was um troubling anyway uh from when bill bame told me that archaeopteryx was a hoax and now i've done zero research but my guess would be archaeopteryx is not a hoax it's probably a real thing and it's just weird to think that in my childhood people were telling me actively telling me lies like they didn't think they were lies but that went into my brain somewhere because now we live in this era where facts are so are so disputed um if things that are just observable facts about the world everyone gets to have their own set of facts now um i was an early member of that world even though i didn't

know it this is there's no need for me to tell this story but it just sparked a memory for me that was a little bit outside the ordinary of my religious upbringing that I'm going to share with you, and I know that we're late for the break here, but also, like, we've given Elon Musk a lot of air time. Like, if we don't get to Elon, like, whatever, that's fine. I want to tell you one thing about it, though,

when we get to the topic that is, it's a weird internet thing that I want to get into, less the Elon Musk, because you're right. He's like, at this point, he's like a negative energy monster, and the more we shoot him with lasers of content, the more powerful he becomes.

Yeah, I just saw that headline to him, It's like, OK, you can tweet. Now he's getting now people are responding to this big tweet. Tweet, tweet, tweet. Anyway, what we haven't talked about a lot on this show, to our discredit, is the Shroud of Turin, which is something that, like, I, you know, honestly, if you had Shroud of Turin on your bingo card today, just honestly take the rest of the day off. Go buy a lotto ticket, crack a beer. Why is it the middle square of the TVTL Biggo? Somebody has just been sitting there with Shroud of Turin for all these years. It's like when eventually Wordle's first word is going to – when the answer to Wordle is going to be steam, and I'm going to get it in a line. I'm going to be so excited. But, you know, my religious upbringing was a little bit more, I think, traditional than yours. You know, like my family was very involved with the Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church is, you know –

You didn't have anyone telling you Archaeopteryx was a hoax?

Right, exactly. Although I do believe that there's some skepticism about the idea of evolution, generally speaking. There was some tension there, which reared its head a while back when I was visiting home, an extended family member. I said something about animals evolving, and they kind of looked at me funny. Somebody who I consider to be a pretty smart person, and they kind of looked at me funny, and I said, oh.

say anything, but in my head, I was like, let's not pull on that thread. I'm hoping I misinterpreted that look. But anyway, all of that is to say, you know, we went to church, we went to a little Sunday school thing called CCD, where we learned, you know, tenets of the Bible and various things about Catholicism. But, you know, that was it. And then I got, you know, as I got older, I went to Catholic grade school and high school. But I do remember one time somebody saying there's a special presentation and it was in the it was in the building where we held ccd which again was kind of like a sunday school yeah sunday school i don't know what it stands for but um it was catholic creative discussions um and so we had a catholic creative discussion one day in that building but i remember it wasn't in the uh it wasn't in one of the little classrooms or the normal classroom it was kind of in the in the lobby area or the big like kind of gathering area And I believe adults were there, too. And somebody was there with like a projector, either a slide projector or a film projector. I don't recall. And it was like this big presentation. And I remember like everybody being very excited. And I didn't understand what was being presented, except I learned then that people were very, very excited about this thing. The Shroud of Turin, which was is Turin in Italy. Is that correct? It was like this piece of fabric that was found that people believed had Jesus's likeness on it. Like Jimmy's. Jimmy Christ.

Jimmy. Think about how different the religion would be if Jesus' name was Jimmy. Just like, have you considered accepting your Lord and Savior Jimmy?

The idea was that this was a piece of fabric that was placed over Jesus' face, I believe, in the tomb, I want to say, and that his visage sort of imprinted itself on this thing into a stain that looked like Jesus' face. And this thing was, I think it was actually kind of toured around the world. Yes, I remember this. Maybe even maybe because it was maybe proof of the existence of Christ. But then there was carbon dating that happened, I think, years, maybe decades later that for once put to rest. I mean, if you believe in science, which I'm just saying there's good people on both sides. But like, I think carbon dating made it very clear that this could not have been that old, even if there are three hypothesis, hypotheses.

Andrew, I'm on the Shroud of Turin Wikipedia page. Everything you've said is totally accurate, by the way But there's something called the medieval repair hypothesis Another thing called the biocontamination hypothesis And something called the carbon monoxide hypothesis

So all of these things would dispute the carbon dating That would say this couldn't be real These are people arguing that, no, this is real

I think those might be arguments Some of them might be arguments for why it's real Because the radiocarbon dating dates it to the Middle Ages, like you said But maybe somebody is saying Well, yeah, the medieval repair hypothesis means somebody got their grubby mitts on in the medieval times.

They were grubby then, man. Holy cow. Boy, I mean, honestly, did they even have sanitizer? Right. No offense to our listeners who grew up during that time.

Peace and love to our listeners from the Middle Ages. Yeah, I remember the Shroud of Turin being a big story as well, and also the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know about those?

Yeah, I don't have the same kind of visceral memory with that, but I remember hearing about them, yeah. But have those been – because those were supposed to be kind of like people believe that they were texts that could have been part of the Bible but were lost. Do I have that right?

I think, again, reading from Wikipedia, the Dead Sea Scrolls are an ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscript first found in the 1940s on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. That's where the little description ends for me. Let's see. I'm just trying to get to the point. And they're significant because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons. Okay. Wow. Along with deuterocanonical and extra biblical manuscripts. God, we've got some great words in this show today, Andrew. Between Archaeopteryx and deuterocanonical.

Dazzling deuterocanonical. Dazzling deuterocanonicals. Yes. Hang loose. dude duro canonical so i that must be like deuteronomy which is a book in the bible that

the root word must be the same as deutero canonical wow wow anyway we did some uh we went deep today so we really did i mean what better way to celebrate a friday than getting into deutero canonical content all right quick break and then uh we will be back with uh probably deuterocanonical free i think so second half of the program i'm just proud that i could say that yeah i know that's a that's a reeks true again only because of the book of deuteronomy would i have even had any sense of the first half of that work okay uh we'll be

be back with more tbtl in just a moment 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

all right let's thank some dazzling donors these wonderful generous donations that they're dazzling us with are keeping the show going folks like scott star i guess we have i mean i should know this at this point, Andrew. We've read up to hundreds of these names, but we have some sort of field in the intake form that says you can help us pronounce your name correctly. And Scott Starr said it's pronounced like Ringo. Peace and love.

You know what? Peace and love. So it's Scott Ringo?

That's, Andrew, that's where my brain just was. I didn't, I thought That Scott was just making a hilarious, complete, non-sequitur joke. Like, as if Scott's name was Alexander Francis Walsh. Was that your cat's full name? Yeah, yeah. As if we had a donor named Alexander Francis Walsh who said it's pronounced Ringo.

In other words, you just thought it was just an absurd joke.

A funny thing to get me to play this audio.

Peace and love, peace and love.

But, of course, Scott's last name is like Ringo Starr's stage name, by the way. That's not Ringo Starr's real name.

Yeah, what is his real name? Do you know? Hold on. Oh, God. It starts with an S, right? Yes. I believe both of the first letter of each name is the same. Robert Stevens? Richard Starkey. Ah, Richard Starkey. I got to admit, I had to look it up because I can never remember if it's Starkey or Starsky, but it's Starkey. Richard Starkey. It's Richard Hutch.

Anyway, Scott Starr, real name, Stephen Starlovich, is donating money to the show, Andrew, and we're thanking Scott right now. I'm sorry, Scott, that I completely and totally whiffed on your very obvious last name similar to Richard Starkey's. I started listening to TBTL. Now I'm reading Scott's message. I started listening to TBTL when it was still live on the AM radio, right after reading the Stranger article. Wow. Shout out to Eli Sanders for Pulitzer Prize winner, Andrew. That's the closest we'll ever come to a Pulitzer Prize on this show.

Speak for yourself.

On this show. You might win one for Spotless after these messages.

I've written some pretty good newsletters that I'm submitting to this year's.

Why am I so broken inside, Andrew? I mean that's a big question to answer in the middle of Scott Starr's message But because of the people That I tend to follow on Twitter I follow a lot of fellow journalists Fellow journalists That would indicate we're journalists Which I kind of don't think we are anymore But I follow a lot of people who are journalists And so the I think the Pulitzers were just announced recently And it was just People I don't even actually know But just because of who I follow Then it starts suggesting things and i just had a whole day of people just being like unbelievably honored to and like these are all people doing presumably really good journalistic work and they're being rewarded for it as they should be but by the end of it i was like no one cares about your pulitzer so then my way of getting back at these people who did nothing at all to harm me was to write a similar tweet that said um still kind of in shock over this thank you so much to our amazing team that made this possible and then it was just a screencap of the dominoes pizza delivery tracker that said your pizza is in the oven actually that's pretty funny but that was me acting out against people who their only crime was being excited they won a pulitzer which they should have been it's on a friday today i know yeah i just said oh yeah that's like a that's like a golden blurs When Luke's tweet of the week actually falls on the day It's supposed to happen

Wow we almost went without But you saved the segment in the middle of another segment Well no you did by playing that sound effect Well you did by talking about your tweet Okay Scott did you get enough Did you get enough attention Scott Because Luke and I have things to talk about too Like the Shroud of Turin and things Luke tweeted

And deuterocanonical content You know what I said it was going to be Deuterocanonical free But I lied So Scott read the Stranger article Which told a lot of people about the show And said I'm happy to say I've never thrown my phone even once Thank you Scott Appreciate you See you in Denver TVTL brightens my day And has helped me get through One financial meltdown One frightening president And one pandemic With my good humor

mostly intact why did he i don't have anything so bad what if the presidency he was talking about was carter how did we help him with that he knew back then as gas prices were soaring as people were having pain at the pump andrew and the hostages were in iran he was like but someday there's a show that's going to completely misunderstand the pronouncer of my last name after i've been donating 50 a month to them from who knows when uh scott uh continues i don't have anything to promote or announce but this year i'm going to do the seattle to portland bike ride the stp hell yeah scott i hope to see at least a few fellow tens out there on the route i'll be the 51 year old guy who's puffing along trying to keep up with everyone now stop smoking first of all for starters scott congrats in advance that's amazing i really want to do that

sometime andrew i know you're a hard no on that but our friend you were suggesting it as a tb telephone thing that the um the um timing wouldn't match up for that i believe right right but i feel

like your hard no was not time and i'm not saying this i'm not trying to put you on any kind of blast it's just you know my experience with you is that and one of the many things i love about you is that i think you're pretty open-minded and you're usually like well let's how could we make that work as opposed to you're not usually kind of like yeah that doesn't sound like a good plan for me it's rare that that's like you just kind of come right out with that and i feel like the stp idea was a pretty hard no from you it would it would be more than that we i would have

to i would have to start doing some pretty serious training i mean i haven't ridden a bike in a long

time i haven't also i'm imagining you with like a mixing board on your back ride past chehalis i

I haven't I haven't I've barely walked up a set of stairs in the past 20 years like I it would take so much to get me prepared for that in a situation that wasn't dangerous for me which is I think maybe why it seemed pretty intimidating sure of course and our friend Lee of course yeah he'll be there head of the Cascade Bicycle Club I think he was the one that pitched it I would like to do this I'm not a bike person either by the way like I you know I get on my jogs and stuff but I've only the longest bike ride I've ever done was with our friend Sean DeTorre we rode out

to this thing called hall ash which was on the anniversary of the uh the explosion of mount st helens uh there was a brewery out in like woodenville that had like a concert and kind of fun thing and the deal was you started in fremont and you rode on like the burke gilman trail all the way out to woodenville and i believe it was like me and van and sean and it was not a far bike ride and yet I was plum tuckered by the end like it was maybe I don't know 15 miles I mean on a bike wait from Fremont to Woodinville I don't know the exact I remember looking at it and thinking yeah it's a bike ride I'll be fine and I remember at the end of the bike ride being like ooh I'm feeling that

I thought that Woodinville was like a 35-45 minute car drive from where we are that feels like that must be like a 60 mile bike ride

or something well either way it's much shorter than the seattle to portland yeah route so my point is uh you may have helped me dodge a bullet by immediate knowing our stp tbt elephant anyway scott's gonna do it congratulations scott that's

amazing and let us know how it goes were there a lot of hauling ass to the haul ash jokes it seems

like something that that community would embrace um nobody in my particular inner circle you know what the other thing that was funny was sean brought a freaking boom box i mean are you shocked to hear this so sean had like a bike that had like a basket on the front of it and he had brought a some it might have even been like a cassette like one of those maybe it wasn't a boombox but one of those like tape players that was mostly a speaker like a long rectangular speaker and then the the mechanism for the tape he was just bumping the tunes as we were riding as i got more and more tired i was like this this guy he's carrying extra weight for our entertainment he's riding of course because it's sean some like bike from the 1920s yeah no no speeds just one no i mean i was probably on some trek you know with like you know 50 different gears and i probably bought the bike for the ride you know like all that crap that i tend to do and sean was just on some like the bike that the like witch is riding in the wizard of oz and just bumping the tunes that he was just like just absolutely unfazed like he seemed totally fine And I was like, oh, man.

I am terrible with directions. Woodinville is 20 miles out. I thought Woodinville was like, I feel like the times that we've done events there, I sort of felt like I packed a lunch for the travel. And that wasn't a car.

You packed your patience? Yeah. Well, it's very traffic-y. If you're trying to drive out there from Seattle, there can be a ton of traffic. So it may have taken, it may have.

felt like a further drive but on the burke gilman trail which is one of the real treasures of the seattle area i think it kind of takes you sort of right out there you know what ended up happening was we didn't ride the bikes home i got a um like a bike rack type thing for the back so what happened was i drove my car out there this was when i had space car the original space car i drove space car out there parked it van followed me then we drove back to seattle in her car So we had a car out in Woodinville The problem was I picked up some janky bike rack On like Craigslist And somehow in putting These bikes on this bike rack That kind of just like hung on the very back Of this little Audi I had It completely just Like What's the word? It basically dented the shit Out of my car There was just something about the way the bike rack was sitting Or the weight or something it was completely divoted like when i took it off every time i had like accelerated i think the bikes would sort of separate the rack would separate from the car because of like gravity and then when i would come to a stop it would like bang into the back so when i eventually like traded that car in for space car number two i believe i got much less money for my trade-in because of the damage to the back of the car thanks to haul ash and you um you uh love that car like i'm i usually buy cars that like i love the one after space car two was my fave except space car two blew up oh right literally about a hundred miles outside of the warranty right i remember that in fact you know as i was sitting here talking to you andrew um and that space car two was an audi a5 that car an audi a5 was sitting at a stoplight that i watch as i'm doing the show with you and i remember i was thinking boy that's a handsome car i would love to have one of those cars i used to have one of those cars god damn it blew up yep sure did anyway scott thanks for the donation and thanks for being part of tbtl maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set

now ready ready go everybody rattle dattle well look at this it's a fellow luke checking in luke

Hertel out there in Wakefield. You know what, Andrew? This is interesting. Last night, we were doing Livewire, the Alberta Rose. It was a fun night. Sellout. The place was jam-packed. There was people. It was like standing room only, which hasn't been the case in a long time. So it's kind of fun to see life coming back in that way. But they did not. Nobody Luke'd me. So are you happy? I wonder if that's something that will. Are you happy now? Are you not entertained? You know I was fine with it because it just Involved me not having to explain to the other people That I'm not being booed it was more efficient But I wonder if that's something that will not I'm doing Wait wait in Chicago in June Like in They're moving actually by the way I don't know I hope that's Not hope I'm not spoiling something They're moving to a new theater in June They're moving out of the Chase Bank auditorium And it'll be interesting to see if People do the Luke name thing when I'm when I go on stage anyway this is Luke Hertel who's in Wakefield Rhode Island who says hey dummies I just want to deliver a hearty thank you to the two of you and the rest of the TBTL family both paid and unpaid good point we're getting paid for this this is our job but there's so many people doing this on a unpaid basis that are helping contribute to the show in one way or another all of the lovely people who make this imaginary friendship so much more than just a podcast. A big shout out to my brother-in-law Matt, who is shockingly still listening and to our elevens, the sisters, who are still putting up with our shenanigans. What is this

shockingly still listening situation here? What does that mean? Shockingly? You know what it was? I think Luke's like are they ever going to bring up the shroud? Are they ever going to get into that? I mean, will there be any

will there be any deutero-canonical

conversation? Will there be any deutero deets to discover?

um my guess is and i don't this is not specified in the message but i'm creating a backstory for this situation which is that matt maybe was listening you know like back in the day and then told luke about it and matt and luke are married to sisters i believe that's the i don't know if that was the order of the tbtl but i think it's clear that that matt and luke are married to uh two people who are themselves related right that's that's that i think i'm following that yeah and still putting up with luke and matt's shenanigans yep but the still listening part

still hurts my their shenanigans i understand their shenanigans are a pain in the ass and they're hard to put up with no offense luke but like shockingly still listening no offense to that luke or me luke uh luke hurtle a lot of offense i meant a lot of offense to you luke Burbank, sorry.

like in denver ron finally luke says a quick plug for pesca's podcast the gist back and better than ever and without which i wouldn't have discovered tbtl okay well how about i read to the end of these messages i had an invented history where matt turned luke onto the show but it sounds like

mike as in pesca turned luke onto tbtl by way of the gist and then luke got matt into this dirty business of tbt that was the shenanigan that was the shenanigan i'll tell you man the gist i'm i'm

i'm a daily listener that guy mike peska's brain is a marvel it's a absolute marvel to um and it the thing is like i am always arguing that podcasts should be longer but i kind of i can't believe i'm saying this but the gist is about maybe 30 minutes a day which is like the perfect time for my jog I actually find myself, Andrew, being like, that's a good amount of time for this show.

30-35, I think, is fine. Shorter than that, and I'm wanting more in most cases. And if it's much shorter than that, like the five to ten-minuters, with the exception of the slowdown, which is more like my little... I'm not just saying that because they're an AP. I really do love the slowdown, which is like you take five minutes, you slow down your day, you listen to some poetry and some context for it, and it's very soothing. But aside from that... I'm more of a Jimmy Pardo guy. But aside from that, I... Is that the guy who did the world's worst live read for us? Yeah, this cold read. It's just like, eh.

That lives in my head. Like, any ad that we do on this show, and it just could be for some giant product. I'm like, do right by this company, unlike what Jimmy Pardo did for us.

Do you think we got one listener from that one read he did one time?

If you are a TV channel listener who came here because of hearing Jimmy Pardo do a live read on, like, was it Never Not Funny or something? I love that we're now giving him Don't go listen to that show He's probably not He's our friend Bean's friend He's probably a nice guy But boy oh boy He could not have been less committed To that life Yeah that was rough Anyway Luke We're so happy to have you Here in the TBTL family I am talking to myself by the way This is how I pep myself up But also Luke Hertel in Wakefield Thank you for supporting the show We really do appreciate you Hello and welcome to Top Story. Which is just I was talking about this with Becca in the car the other day that feels like a real world harm like like that is going to make the real world that we live in a worse place not just because it's like that guy's gross but because he then has access to millions of people's brains again in a way that he doesn't currently have. This is why Trump had to release a press statement, a press release when he hit a hole in one, allegedly, at like Mar-a-Lago. He doesn't have Twitter anymore. Like, I honestly feel like my mental health has improved greatly by him not being on Twitter, not being able to drive the conversation, not be able to get people riled up and the media riled up over these, you know, these missives. So the fact that Elon Musk has already said he's going to let him back on, that it's sort of a little bit like a version of you and the Cleveland Browns. Like do I want to be part of a club That will have that guy So to me It's not just a story about Elon Musk It's a story about like am I going to end up having to depart From the social media platform Which is the one place where I have even a modicum of I don't know Followers or like Where I can put some thought out I mean it's The home Andrew of Luke's tweet of the week

Right exactly That's what it's broadly known for What do we do with that segment if you get off of Twitter, actually? We should have even talked about that before instituting it because I don't know. Can the show stand without it? What is TVTL without the Tweet of the Week?

So he tweeted this morning that it's on hold because he wants to figure out what percentage. This is what he's claiming. He wants to get better data on how many accounts on Twitter are spam or fake accounts. So who knows? like he's probably trying to leverage you know the twitter quants into giving him more information or whatever that he wants to before he potentially buys his company but i also had heard you know it hasn't happened yet and a while ago there was the rumor that he might not do it because it was kind of a lot of money to pay for something that loses money and it was hurting his tesla stock

I would just very much like him to Please not buy Twitter Because then I will have to make a decision As to if I want to keep interacting With that platform Now here's the weird part, Andrew I use this program called Print Friendly I believe I taught you about Print Friendly

Don't you tell me about Print Friendly

I believe you did and you changed my life, Andrew Two technological innovations That have changed my life in the last 10 years Print Friendly and Key Me Thanks to the listener, Grace

Grace and I should team up and just walk the world educating people.

Grace, can I crash at your place when I'm interviewing Baz Luhrmann because hotels are like $700 a night in New York. It's funny, CBS has this per diem, right, which is basically what each city in America, each major city, they have some algorithm that says this is what we think a hotel room should cost. And the per diem for New York is like $200 a night or something. They haven't updated it since the 70s, which is just funny because like you you know that where we stayed even in brooklyn you and i that that thing is going for 600 bucks a night or something here's the thing i'm on print friendly i'm printing out this story about if elon musk is or is not going to buy um twitter and the ad on print friendly which i've never gotten this before andrew you know one of those things where like you buy some real estate that's the sort of the framework around what the internet story is right so you're a company that sells whatever and you just buy x number of impressions and it just goes out to the world wherever it goes out right yeah like a banner ad on the side a banner ad when i'm printing out this elon musk story the banner ad are for trusted precious metals sources Donald J. Trump .999 pure silver one ounce coin and also don't tread on me silver coin. I don't go to any website. I'm doing nothing in the internet space that would tell this banner ad that I want a freaking Donald Trump coin. But I think it somehow understands that Twitter is going to become a much more Trump friendly space. right like why would of all and the article by the way that i'm printing out is from the new york times i'm not at the you know some it's not fox news it's a new york times article by adam satariano and lauren hirsch why why would this banner this print friendly thing which again is just a cycling a rotating thing of impressions why would it show me a don't tread on me coin

in a Donald Trump coin well this story is so intertwined with Trumpism now and maybe I guess and maybe this um you know maybe for some reason this link you know this particular story has caught updraft and it's drawing clicks from people who are in who are excited that he's yeah exactly and maybe they're in you know it's the New York Times so usually those people hate the New York Times but I would assume that the New York Times in trying to you know trying to maintain an even hand here would you know they have probably certain rules for things that they cannot advertise on their website or around their articles but like just because these appeal to these commercials or these ads appeal to a different um populace it doesn't mean that it breaks their rules so no but i think the ad is on print friendly oh it's not a new oh i misunderstood that so wait but the whole thing about print friendly is it removes the ad so print friendly

is now adding ads that's strange not to the not to the printout this is so oh i see it's just so

it doesn't print out it's just like on each side oh it's just making me look at it while i'm getting

the document that's more easily printable i see but i've never seen that i just have never even and i hope to never again see a don't tread on me coin or donald trump coin it's just weird to me that when i'm printing this story out i mean you're you're right i think that there must be some sort of attention around this article from a certain type of person because of the possibility that it will let their cult leader back onto this platform that then went out and indicated to this company that this is i am a person who might be interested in this donald j trump coin it just for me felt like confirmation that twitter is about to get somehow unbelievably

is going to turn into an even worse place it's strange i can't even get um i'm i'm on pin i'm on print friendly now just looking at various new york times articles and trying to like print you

know pretend i'm printing them out you can i don't do the exact same one friendly doesn't give

me any ads it just it just takes it and that's why i was confused i've never seen ads on print

friendly i wonder when you go to so you type it in and then when you go to the next thing which is where it basically puts it into this other document form you don't see ads around oh you

know what how this is oh my god this is the most boring thing in the world i use print friendly as a plug-in are you going to a website I just I just have the I

open the article i have it as a plug-in too but sometimes it's weird oh but that's why you're

seeing ads okay because i just i just hit the little plug-in thing and it just takes whatever page i'm looking at and it says hey do you want to must be nice photo do you want to delete that yeah i know how to use the internet which is the burn no um i don't know why that's that's janky for you but that's why i'm not seeing ads so at least this wasn't interesting but at least it relaxes my brain a little because i couldn't picture what you were talking about let me tell you what i thought was the most interesting thing about this uh update in the elon musk story and twitter is for the first time in my life this news was broken to me by someone on twitter that i believe you're familiar with old friend 99 i swear to god i open up twitter today one of the first things so old friend 99 who used to go by what was it josh letterman is that what the handle

used to be his real name i'm guessing the person's real name is josh letterman i don't know now it's

just old friend 99 at old friend 99 but anyway um it's just like a they just tweet out really weird like kind of one-liners that are just absurd like for example ultimate weird twitter it really is friday the 13th i thought that was just a superstition that's an example of something that was tweeted out today well old friend 99 the first thing i saw today when i opened up twitter was elon musk left his wallet in the car and he will be right back and i was like oh is he starting to look at backing out but like legitimately that's how i learned this news that's a very

interesting okay that so you had the you had the proper sort of read on that which is that this person old friend 99 was making a joke about elon musk maybe is not going to actually be good for this thing i had a feeling that that's my life because surprisingly literal tweet from that

it is and i'll see things on twitter and i'll just be like oh like i always have to sometimes not always but you find yourself backing into the news right you see a certain energy around something or you see responses that are responses to responses and like not even direct responses not like retweeting or or replying but just you can just tell that there's something going on in the zeitgeist around something based on vague tweets from people so you have to like kind of google what's going on so i think i saw that and i googled you know elon musk and there was the headline like he's tweeted again but like honestly and that's what's kind of like irritating me well there's so much that's irritating about that guy but um he's just such a troll i mean of course i mean he's so trumpy in that way he's like nobody's talked about me in a week like i gotta tweet this out so that people will be like will he won't he this whole thing is maybe he'll buy it maybe he won't the whole thing is just about him getting attention it's exactly what trump would do he just drops a little twitter bomb on friday now everybody's fucking talking about him again i'm sorry for swearing but whatever the guy is a fluffing about him yeah everyone's fluffing

talking about exactly what a troll all right let's do a little music for your weekend before we skeedaddle um you have big plans this weekend andrew what are you up to you know i don't

weirdly have big plans it looks like it's gonna rain through the weekend again i'm getting a little bit sick of that as far as my planning has gone today is it looks like today is going to be sunny and then monday is going to be sunny and the lawn needs a mowing so if the sun holds today uh the mariners game is on at i believe 4 30 pacific time today or thereabouts um so i plan on strapping my big headphones to my head listening to the ball game and mowing the lawn and that's as

far as i've gotten so far i think i'm gonna have to buy a riding lawnmower oh this house that i bought because it's on about an acre oh yeah it's kind of hilly yeah all right um it's not like now that's that's misleading because a lot of it is just kind of wild lands so i'm not going to mow that like there's a almost like a yeah just kind of like a prairie or something and then some trees but even the part that is grass is fairly substantial and again kind of on a hill and part of me was like well it's a good it's good exercise to get out there and push the lawnmower but i was like yeah but i could also get a i've never even driven a riding lawnmower and i this is i don't know why i'm choosing this moment of the week to get into this but so i this house that i bought that i'm going to be trying to fix up this summer um there are neighbors on either side and i've chatted briefly with both of them they both seem like nice folks but they're where this house is is kind of in a sort of more rural part of washington state it ain't portland and there you know these are i don't know the politics of my neighbors but my guess is one of them at least i think is you know probably getting a lot of ads for donald trump silver coins in their internet searches and for some reason i've played it out in my head that i'm going to show up on this brand new Husqvarna or whatever and not know how to drive it and just make a complete fool of myself in front of my neighbors. Because I almost want to go to my dad's house and practice drive his riding lawnmower so that it's not my literal maiden voyage of doing this. Because I already just feel like a city slicker. I already just feel kind of like, you know, I bought this place and I haven't been there a ton.

because I've been trying to work on the plans to get it remodeled and kind of more the way that I want it to be. So I just can imagine that they're like, who's this city slicker who bought this house and isn't there as much? And then I show up one day and I'm like just on this riding mower that I'm just like going backwards on for some reason. This is my anxiety around this house.

I just sent you, by the way, this is kind of stupid to do on the show, but I just sent you a text message of me driving my dad's lawnmower when I finally was old enough to drive the big one.

I saw this picture from Spotless. Yeah, we were talking about Spotless. I love this picture. You're on a Kubota.

Yeah, the reason I was talking about it on Spotless was because my dad, like, I had a smaller, small, just, like, regular riding mower, like, you might picture, like, again, in the 80s or 90s, just, like, you know, little seat, you know, not a very big machine, but you could ride it. But my dad had an actual tractor, which was, like, you know, smaller to midsize, but a tractor that you would hook things up to the back of, And mostly we hooked up this this big, you know, big bladed mowing mechanism to the back of it. And he would drive that around. And then I got to an age where I was old enough to drive it, too, which was, you know, kind of fun. But it's also meant more work. But really, it was about the story I was telling was about washing that tractor. It's something that I call the Kubota principle now, because when I was a kid, I remember my dad added a new list to my chore list, which was, hey, I want you to wash the. He loved that tractor and is a beauty. It is sparkling.

in this photo. I want to mention, it looks like you just got done turtle waxing that thing down. Yeah, and he kept it really

really clean, and then he said one day, like, why don't you clean the tractor today or something? It might have even... Did he armor all the tires? I don't think so, but they're beautiful, right? Those tires are pristine. Yeah, and at that age, like, those tires probably came up to my chest. Like, they were kind of big. I remember that thing as being much bigger. Looking at the photo of it now, it doesn't seem as big because obviously I'm bigger, but anyway, I remember, like, saying, okay, oh wow dad's gonna trust me to to i don't know why i was kind of excited about it but i i really

went because you're a kid and operating a motor vehicle of any kind no no washing it he told me

to wash it one day and i'm like okay i'll wash it and then he came home later that day or he came out from whatever he was working on or whatever and saw the the good job i had done on cleaning the tractor and and he was very proud of me and that felt really good but then he put his arm around me and said well this is your new job now you are the one who washes the tractor your reward And I was like, oh, shit. And that's the Kuboto principle. Don't do too good of a job lest it become your daily job.

Literally the cornerstone of my entire career. Don't do such a good job that anybody is going to try to make you do it permanently. Now, Andrew, what I really want to know about this photo. By the way, this is the part of the show where we talk about a photo that no one can see. Could this maybe be the show pic? Is that crossing streams? I mean, I don't know.

Just nobody tell. just nobody tell hannah it'll be fine i want to know what is going on with this shirt you're wearing it looks like it has musical notes on it i know about this shirt well weirdly if i'm right about this and i could be wrong this is a weird no it looks like i'm zooming in as much as i can maybe it's just you know what i think it is i think that might be a shirt that i was literally embarrassed about and this doesn't i sort of hate to tell this story because it doesn't paint my father in the best light um but i that might be a tweety bird shirt and i mean and if if i got it right i think there was a time where i was visiting like my net most of my nieces i'm sorry most of my cousins are older than me but i have two cousins who were younger than me and i think there was one time we were out in chicago where they lived at the time and my grandparents were there or something we went on some adventure it was just like my grandma and me and my sister and our cousins and we all went out and got t-shirts and I remember like I think they might have all been Looney Tunesy and people got like uh the Tasmanian Devil and other kind of tough t-shirts and I think I picked out a Tweety Bird t-shirt and I remember I remember somehow and I could be totally wrong about this and I hate to say this because my dad was not really like this at all he was always like you know you like what you like but I remember maybe overhearing him say something that felt a little bit like yeah of course my boy goes gets the Tweety Bird t-shirt Or something like that It was a different time Yeah I didn't get the Taz

Which is hilarious Because like Honestly if you Were to tell 46 year old Luke Which Looney Tunes Shirt are you going for I would 100% go Tweety Bird The last thing I would go Is Taz I feel like And peace and love To somebody who I know Who literally has a Taz tattoo Not the person Who was a baseball player Who dips These are different people But there's not a character That I find less interesting Than Taz

There's not a lot of depth From the universe Yeah Do you see behind me In that picture you see sort of some like very shallow hills that are kind of brown in color like dirt behind the barn there that is what i sometimes refer to as the hills of ohio that's like we had a lot of wild lands too you can see a little bit of it back there that a lot of the lawn wasn't mowed like you're saying like A lot of it is brush. And in fact, my dad would sometimes borrow a brush mower and then mow actual the highway crews actually use. Yes. But you know what he did was he created like a labyrinth of mazes in the brush in the weeds for me and my friends to ride our dirt bikes and quad runners around it. I mean, yeah, like I mean, that kind of he made the maze to hide your Tweety Bird. I feel bad like saying that, like if my dad were to hear that, he would first of all have no idea what I'm talking. about and also that does not represent him as a person or his thing he's not somebody who's kind of like as far as i know like which is why i think it stood out in my head is i just have this weird very strange memory of feeling like oh i picked out the wrong shirt and it might have had something to do with you know i was hanging out with my cousins and i'm the one with the you know slightly more let's say twee shirt but that could be it because if you zoom in really closely on that you don't see a bird but doesn't it look like that that musical note is coming out of like a word bubble sort of it looks like jimmy neutron to me anyway what a what a terrible

conversation this is no i'm the one that took us there i was just curious about the shirt and you gave me your real memory of the shirt whether it's you know 100 or not but um i was the one that now i want to find that i just want that kibota does your dad still have that no when we

you know he sold off all the farm equipment when we moved off the moved off the range he doesn't

use that in uh his new suburban home no my dad has one of those by the way oh really did they have a bit of land yeah they're on an acre plus and uh my dad's got exactly this he literally has a green version of this kubota and really yeah yeah he uses it for all kinds of things um i mean mowing but also like various projects it's like a full-on like it can like it's got like a post

hole digger on all these attachments uh-huh oh yeah like one of those um i know what you're talking about those things with the big spiral on it right yeah right so anyway i'm gonna have one

of those probably this summer and i just need you to coach me up on how to drive it i would

actually because you're not gonna embarrass myself in front of my neighbors you're not thinking about getting a big tractor like that though right you're just no no no i'm gonna but

i'm literally gonna like walk into lowe's get one of those ones that's probably like chained up outside yeah no you're gonna be fine unlock it and then i'm gonna drive it home it's like like the guy in the straight story.

Remember that movie? Yes. Wasn't that Lynch as well? Didn't maybe. No, no, no. Maybe. Wasn't it David Lynch who wrote the movie or made the movie about the guy in the tractor? Possibly. I could be wrong about that. You look that up. You look that up. I will. Luke, it's very simple. You're going to find your, I mean, I don't know what they're like these days. Maybe they're more modern and maybe more complicated, but I find that things get more simplified sort of with the technology. And so you're going to sit on that thing. you're going to see there my old i had a i don't have a picture of this but my little yellow riding mower like there was a clutch on the left i think a brake on the right you engage the clutch and then you put it in you know you move it from park into into you know four maybe drive drive to or reverse like it's pretty simple like you're you're going to be fine and then oh then you probably have to engage the the mower at some point too but you'll be fine and nobody's going be watching you just start in the corner of your yard that is the the bush yes nobody's gonna see

by the way you're absolutely right andrew w friday david lynch directed the straight story saw it it was a people loved that movie i mean i was working in public radio i believe yeah it's 99 um and it was the kind of thing that everybody was taught you know it was getting a lot of attention it's uh it's based on a true story of a real guy named alvin uh who was an elderly world war ii veteran who lived with his daughter um and when he hears that his estranged brother is has suffered a stroke he makes up his mind to visit him and hopefully make amends before he dies uh and uh he drives a john deere 110 lawn tractor having a maximum speed about five miles per hour On a 240 mile journey From Lawrence, Iowa To Mount Zion, Wisconsin

Sounds weirdly peaceful There's something about Just sitting on a mower That really can It can lull you to sleep Be careful there

Apparently You know I'm really into these Mike Judge Sort of Documentaries If you will About musicians And he's just He's got a whole bunch of them I started seeing them on TikTok And I think the listeners Clarified that they're like On Showtime or something They're kind of animated But they're like You know the story of being on the road with James Brown or the story of Johnny Paycheck or whatever. And George Jones, the country singer who was married to Tammy Wynette had apparently, according to this anyway, just a raging drinking problem. And the Tammy Wynette and also his friends would take away all his car keys and then he would just have to drive his, his lawnmower to the liquor store. So there would be a time where George.

jones was probably one of the more famous country music artists in america and you could be driving down a street in whatever presumably southern town he lived in and he would just be on his lawnmower with a bunch of beer coming back from the liquor store this doesn't sound like the worst life no honestly peaceful like you said peaceful yeah um okay all right music i assume you have

some george jones for us i do no you know i'm really struggling as to there are a couple of songs that i've been enjoying but they're very they're very good rainy day songs and today is a rare day where the sun is out, and so I sort of feel like I don't... It's looking like it's

going to rain here in Portland, so if you want to speak to my experience, you can do that. I'm going to go with something

a little bit more upbeat and a little bit weird. Not weird. This is kind of a poppy-sounding song. It's by a musician named Chelsea Jade. Are you familiar, Luke? I'm not super familiar. And this video came across the transom yesterday, and actually really, it was a very stylized black-and-white video that's actually really cool and that kind of caught my attention the name of the song is super fan i did a little bit of looking into chelsea jade and it's interesting she was born in south africa but actually grew up in new zealand and you know i love that band the beths who are from new zealand and apparently when they were younger um chelsea and one of the members of the beths were in a trio together as well although this music is very different this is not like that kind of jangly 90s um kind of retro sound of the beths this has a little bit more um modern pop sensibilities with some cool little uh production um flourishes here and there the name of this song is called super fan by chelsea jade

i talk a lot of bullshit lately because i'm way too proud to really be seen So I'm locked down, low-key, slinking through the parties, defense ready. You say you're surprised to see me. I say, what are you, the party police? Fronting like I don't have the time. But inside of me, the crowd's going wild. Cause I'm a super fan. That's my move.

The more I like you as a person or a celebrity, the less attention I'll pay to you in person. I dig that song.

I also, that background singing is what I imagine Bubbles' voice would sound like if she could form human speech.

I don't know if you addressed this on the show, but I didn't realize that bangles are kind of known for being kind of loud cats. Did you know that going into this? It's interesting as somebody who broadcasts from your home.

I didn't know that. I mean, after seeing her photo on Craigslist and then reaching out to the folks and finding out she was still available, I did some cursory Googling of kind of what the personality of bangles are. I don't remember seeing something about them being vocal. But she's been in here. This is what's weird. She's been in here this entire show, Andrew. She's just asleep amidst the cable from my router to my computer that I am talking to you by way of. What would you call that? I'm sorry, the mix pre or the? The laptop. Basically my hard line connection to the internet. Sure, yeah. Whatever you call that. She's just been sleeping curled up in that. So she has long periods of not being very vocal. But she also just really loves to also stand in the middle of a room that I'm not in and just meow, like really loud. And then I go into the room and I go, what are you doing? You know, I'm over in this other room. If you want to talk to me, come over. Yeah. And then she comes into the other room. It's a bizarre thing, though.

I want you to know that I only raised that because I didn't know that. And I saw some people talking online like, oh, wow, the personality of Bengals are they need a lot of attention and they're loud. That's an interesting choice. But everybody like everybody that I've seen online is delighted by hearing Bubbles little voice pop up. And I include myself in that as well. And I know that I was very self-conscious about Theo's yowling. But first of all, people are very kind about that, too. And they said they liked it. I didn't understand how you could like that sound. It was so awful to me. I mean, I loved that cat. But he was an old man. And those sounds sounded terrible to my ears. But a cute, cute little meow from a tiny little bubbles. Like, every time I hear it, I like it. So I hope you don't think that I was saying that to get in your head at all. Oh, no, no. I didn't take it that way.

But it's interesting because, yeah, first of all, a lot of people are reaching out to me who have this kind of cat. So I'm learning a lot about them. One thing that people are pointing out is that they're extremely active. So now I'm going to have to buy – apparently I'm going to have to buy a cat treadmill, Andrew.

Which is a real thing because, again, I'm in a relatively small apartment and I, you know, as she gets bigger, I certainly want her to be able to get her ya-ya's out or whatever. So people are saying that that's really worked well for their bangles and, you know, I'm just getting all kinds of advice and tips and tricks. But a lot of it I just didn't know. Like, I didn't know that they were particularly vocal. I love that she is, like, obsessed with me. Yeah. Because that's the thing. In my life, Andrew, I don't get enough attention from people. I don't have any jobs that involve people Paying attention to me Obviously I'm joking with that But I do find it very emotionally comforting That if I'm sitting on the couch She wants to be sitting on the couch with me Or if I'm going to the bathroom She does one of two things She either goes to the bathroom herself Because her litter box is like In the bathroom She's either like oh this guy is going to the bathroom So I guess I'll do that Or she wants to climb up on me While I'm going to the bathroom Oh I don't like that Maybe seems moderately gross But like yesterday after my jog I was, not to be too personal But I had taken off my running clothes I was about to jump in the shower But I was quickly going to the bathroom And she came and wanted to climb up me So I grabbed her, put her on my lap And then she fell And so as to not fall down to the bathroom floor She dug her claws into my Bare skin, Andrew And delivered If they found my body right now They'd be like This guy was in a knife fight Cause of death Knife wounds Cause of death Bubbles Cause of death Adorable cat Digging her claws Into his Fleshy haunches As she slips off of him Honestly when I say it out loud Maybe I should have just Ended things I mean that's not a dignified Dignified moment in my life Close the door You know No I think it's fun I like to talk to her When I'm in there Cause I'm in there for hours Andrew Is everyone who's ever dated me Actually not Becca That's the thing I'm still kind of on my best behavior With her Like She hasn't yet been subjected to the like The thing that everyone else I've ever been with Has been like Are you really still in the back Like how long Two hours You need to be in there for two hours It's me time It's a long time It is me time The song that I would like to suggest this week Is by a band called The Frights Who are a surf punk band out of Poway, California I heard this somewhere I think I was in a bar or restaurant And it was one of my Shazam finds I really like this song And I actually really like this entire album That this song is off of Which came out in like 2013 It's eponymous, Andrew In that the album is also called The Frights But this song is called Submarines And I just kind of like it So maybe we can play it

Now that you're here, I got something that you ought to know If everything's clear, I want to tell you what I told you before

If we were alright, I would have shown you I could be your man And every night I would have taken you by the hand If I were to go, would you go? If I were to stay, would you stay? If I were a man, I'd be great

I know that I'm not, it's too late

I love that line. If I were your man, that'd be great.

I love the sound of that. Right? I mean, I think I listened to maybe a little bit more punk than you, but I was never like a big punk head, right? But I got into things like the Misfits. And this almost sounds a little bit, I shouldn't say that, because I don't know that much punk, so I'm going to say it all sounds alike by comparing it to the Misfits. But this era, like that, whatever the echo is on those vocals, Yeah, the production is very cool. Yeah, some of that early Glenn Danzig stuff, which I love. Like, honestly, as I was listening to that, I was thinking, like, ooh, maybe I should mow before the Mariners game and listen to that whole record. What era did you put that at?

This is 2013 is when this particular album came out.

So there, it's almost like an homage with that sound. Okay, gotcha. Interesting. Oh, I love that. Yeah.

Yeah, that album, that self-title album, The Frights, I listened to the whole thing this morning, and it's really good. I really like it. Wouldn't recommend. Okay. I see you, Andrew, listening to Danzig whilst eating a French dip and mowing your lawn. I think that sounds like a perfect Friday afternoon.

One of those classic soft-breaded French dips.

Our listener suggestion comes from a long-time listener and one-time colleague of ours, the musical Stubot, our friend, Stu. Does he like music? You know, he is the person that I got the term objectively perfect from as it relates to music. I think about that all the time. I love that. Like, Stu, when he's just vibing with a song. In fact, I believe this was one of those songs that he might have tweeted out with just the link and the words objectively perfect. he says, this is an email from Stu. He said, as noted on the popular microblogging platform Twitter, I'm really enjoying the song You Have Bought Yourself a Boat by M.J. Lenderman. That some Twitter users chose to cyberbully you by tagging you in it, in my menchies, is deeply regrettable. But I think many, including you and Andrew, might enjoy the built-to-spill-slash-Neil Young chug of the tune. The album this appears on is called Boat Songs. Again, sorry, and has lots of fun Lil Rockers about the Michael Jordan flu game, which is called Hangover Game, Going Home for the Holidays, which is a song You Are Every Girl to Me, and Dan Marino in the song Dan Marino. Can we rehire Stu, please? What's our budget? Have some, just so we can have more Stu in our life. Warmest personal regards Stu Newman Associate producer Upper Midwest region Comma TBTL

Let's Well I don't want to make any promises We got to We got to see if we can Prioritize After we get through the TBTL Getting up to Minnesota For the fair I want to make that a TBTL priority If we can squeeze it in To your schedule As Stu would say

Promises made Promises kept Yeah

Is that something that he would say

He likes to say that When he Sometimes he'll go like I'm going to have a beer on the patio He tweeted the other on a Friday. He was like, everything that's happening today says, have a beer on the patio. And then four hours later, it's a picture of him on the patio with a beer. Promises made. Promises kept. It's a classic stew tweet. Love it. Anyway, yeah. Let's try to get out to Minnesota. If we raise enough money during the TBTL-a-thon. Wait, is that bad? Wow.

We're leveraging that.

We don't want that dynamic.

Well, then if we don't make it out there for any reason, then it's really... Well, I want the listeners to know what the steaks are.

That's all. Yeah. All right. That's what we're going to go out with. You Have Bought Yourself a Boat by MJ Lenderman, as recommended by our friend Stu. All right. That's going to do it for this week of shows. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you. Until then, have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

It's plain to me to see You have bought yourself a boat Since the last time you and me spoke Your laundry looks so free Soft threads hanging in Relaxing in the wind You feel so much better when you wear these clothes again The waves ruin the beach house Every year on your birthday

So the guy goes back aft, and the captain says, No, you idiot. The forward quarterbilt. Oh, God, I love that one. Me too. Yeah. Because it's so true. Well, you're damn right it is. I mean, picture this guy at the Morse lamp, halfway to the f***ing court nozzle. I can just picture that. hilarious yeah it sure is power out