Muse

Well, I see you got them snakes and sparklers, but where's good stuff, man? Good stuff? This is the good stuff. Snakes and sparklers. Are you nuts, dude? You need stuff to explode. Go boom! Why is that good? So you're gonna tell me that you don't have no black cats, no Roman candles, or screaming memes? No. Oh, come on, man. You don't got no ladyfingers, buzzbuttles, snickerbombs, churchburners, gutbusters, zippity-doo-dots, or crap flappers? No, I don't. you're gonna stand there owning a firework stand and tell me you don't have no whistling bungholes no spleen splitters whisker biscuits honky lighters who's could do's who's could don'ts cherry bombs nips and daisers with or without the scooter stick or one single whistling kitty chaser no snakes and sparklers are the only ones i like tbtl

how many hot dogs you have for lunch three well there's your problem you're starving your body's

literally eating itself you have to be it so we don't see it you have to live it or we won't forgive it you have to inhabit it or leave it in the cabinet it's a b-a-r-t-y because i said so

Hey, everybody stand by. Here we go again.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live, here on a special 4th of July edition. Happy 4th of July to all of you, whatever that looks like or feels like to you, here in the year of our Lord, 2022. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host right over there, my friend and the longest-running co-bro of the program, Mr. Andrew Walsh. Hello. Hey, man. What does the weather look like for you?

Because I was all excited. I think it's okay to say this, that we're pre-recording this because of the holiday. And on Friday, I was all excited to see sunny skies. And I'm like, well, I should just make sure that the entire four-day forecast—that's why they call it a forecast, by the way, because it covers four days. I don't know if you knew that. Make sure that sun is going to stay in that sky. But I am seeing images of clouds and raindrops for Sunday and Monday in Seattle. What's it look like where you are?

Well, okay, so I'm looking at Seattle right now. It's looking like Sunday and Monday will be rainy. Here in Portland, Oregon, let's see, what are they saying about us? Actually, woo, Sunday and Monday, it's not going to be full sun, but it's not going to be raining. It'll be in the 70s. I've noticed since I've been down here in Portland, the weather patterns are actually fairly different, which is, I always just thought, I don't know, Portland, Seattle, the Northwest is probably all the same, but it's considerably warmer here, and the summers typically, typically are drier. Now, here's the thing. In my growing up years in Seattle, I do remember a certain weird, odd, I guess you'd call it irony, that it was not unusual for it to rain on the 4th of July. And I remember this being a kid because, of course, I was obsessed with the 4th of July and all things fireworks, etc. And so on the years where it was the weather was lousy and maybe it was even raining, I always took note of it. And then starting July 5th, it was like, OK, now officially summer is here and it's going to be beautiful for like two solid months. But I do know that there is a certain history of the July 4th weekend not being totally incredible.

Yeah, there's a photo that I took. I think it would have been our first 4th of July living in Seattle. And maybe it was our second, but pretty early on. And we were up in Monroe. That's where the fairground is, right? And where they have a like a demolition derby and all kinds of things where trucks pull boats on land and crash them about. We've talked about this on the show before. I love me a demo derby. And I took a photo of some friends of mine in Genevieve. And I'm thinking specifically here of my friend Margaret and Genevieve. And they are shivering under a blanket together on the 4th of July, like in these bleachers. And I always think about that whenever I because this year I know we've talked about it a lot. And it's not probably the most interesting thing to talk about, but it has been very strange how spring kind of never came or it just was showers the entire time. And then suddenly we woke up and it was an 80 degree day last week.

Right. And that's why I was fine emotionally with this idea that you sometimes seem to get lousy weather on actual July 4th because it's that's been preceded by a month of great weather. unlike this year where it's been lousy weather maybe a little bit of a little break but then back to it like if the 4th of July is going to be rainy it'll feel like an especially bad deal

this time around because of all the other weather stuff that we've been dealing with. Now, meanwhile, I'm in a microclimate here, Andrew, in my apartment, because now, as you've already mentioned, we recorded Friday's edition of the show. Folks have heard that. They've written it on the tablets of their heart. Now, this is Monday's show. It's a Bible thing, right?

I was going to say, is it a Jesus thing? I don't know. I've never heard that before. I love that.

That's the instruction of a certain biblical principle is to write it on the tablet of your heart. Wow. Forget it. I like that. I'm in a microclimate here, though, as we record the Monday show, although it's still Friday. You and I have still yet to live through Fourth of July weekend.

True.

But they are washing, I told you this on the Friday show, they are washing the windows at my building. Oh, yeah. Of course. Of course. I mean, it's a large building. There are lots of windows. But, of course, they're now washing the specific windows to my apartment and also the broadcast center here. and i was out in the living room so while you were working assiduously to post friday's episode i was out sitting in the living room and pacing in my living room on the phone with home depot by the way uh yeah i want much more on that in a moment i have a lot i have a i have much to report from uh from where we left things on friday show but also because they are washing the windows with these power washers i've never seen anything like it like i said usually it's somebody with a bucket of soapy water they're taking a much more maybe this is not even the window washing part of it because the building did have a little bit of green like algae on it so maybe they're getting rid of that but the effect was andrew that it was just raining so i'm sitting here becca and i are supposed to go out to her brother and sister-in-law's house where they have a swimming pool later today and lounge by the pool in the sunshine well it's cloudy here and for all the world you would have thought it's torrentially raining because there's just water has been raining down on all of the windows of my apartment for like an hour now to the point where i filmed bubbles trying to take it all in like i am in a microclimate called it's raining in my apartment or at least right outside my apartment or like on a movie set sort of exactly it's like it is exactly like that where it looks like the main character is in a rain shower but if you pulled back they just have a big thing over that one character on an otherwise dry street in van nuys

california is it more romantic if you think about it that way because you sound kind of irked i am

a little irked because one i was looking forward to going and sitting in the sun by the swimming pool on the friday that kicks off a long weekend so i had that whole thing going and and it's not it's not even sunny right now it's cloudy oh i see that's more of the irritation than the water Oh, yeah, if it was blue, no, I'd be into it. If it was blue sky and then there was rain, I'd be kind of, like, down with that weird juxtaposition. No, the rain makes sense based on what it looks like outside. I'm also in a little bit of a state, Andrew, because of the situation with this lawnmower, okay? So on Friday's show, I was talking about how I had finally pulled the trigger, as it were, on getting a riding lawnmower. but I wanted to get an electric kind because I thought it would be, well, I'd like to say better for the environment, which it will be. But also I just thought less hassle. I don't have to worry about gasoline. I don't have to worry about the engine starting. It seemed like it would just be a much simpler thing. And I found one at the Home Depot in my neighborhood and I purchased it. And I thought the biggest issue was that they were trying to mail me one of the attachments for the lawnmower um but little did i know andrew that when i when i got done with friday's show and went to check my email i would just have a cancellation notice from home depot saying we've canceled the lawnmower because even though it said on the internet that they had two of them at this location uh it turns out apparently they had zero of them and so i i called a different uh home depot in vancouver washington just across the oregon washington border that they said it said that they had them and the guy was like i haven't gotten a riding lawnmower in two years what are you talking about and then i called another store and that person said oh yeah just so you know when it says there are two or one of something it means there's zero of something if there's five of

something maybe there's one of something you know like we were talking we were talking about this a little bit on Friday about how we live in very weird times and there are supply chain issues and you and I of all the things going on in the world just to repeat myself you and I are not the biggest victims of it but I will say this I have I extend a lot of grace towards retailers these days because I think a lot of this stuff is out of their hands but I also and with much much love to our beloved listener who works at corporate Home Depot. But Home Depot has some specific issues like Genevieve. And I'm almost wondering if I should bring her in here like she tried to get this refrigerator. Did she ever tell you this story? Have you guys like? Oh, yeah. Had a couple of pops off of it. I mean, the trials and travails, Genevieve. And it wasn't just like, hey, it's hard to get stuff right now. It's like they order it. The refrigerator finally comes to our local Home Depot. It's there. Confirmed. Genevieve goes to pick it up with a friend. They wait there for 45 minutes while they look for it in the back. They can't find it. And finally, like somebody just says, yeah, we we can't find it. It just went missing. Like, yeah, there's supply chain issues. But then there are just issues with Home Depot not being able to do their job or communicate well, which is ironic because, of course, that's where doers get things done.

That's where doers get things don't like it's ridiculous. Well, so this is what had happened. I had been on the phone with someone before we actually got into the show on Friday. And this person had said, oh, yeah, it's it's just I found the lawnmower. It's on it's it's on a crate. It's just in the back. And so I'll get it and you will be fine. And then by the time I got off the air, I had an email indicating to me that, in fact, they didn't have it. So then I'm oh, by the way, I would say the one silver lining of all this is that I finally broke down, Andrew. And I now have in my system a nine minute loop of this song. Oh, could you make it or just buy it? what's the market for that well the market for it is 3 million views that's how many views on YouTube the Home Depot song Looped has but here's the funny part if you are listening to this song on YouTube or loading it into an audio program as I was one minute in it plays an ad you see how you can monetize your YouTube video it starts playing an ad for like Carvana or something so I did have to go in and do some excising of that

And anyway, which is the amount of the whole thing with YouTube was they kept on like flagging our content for you for using a copyrighted music. Right. And and then they said you can't monetize your feed, which is fine because I don't plan on doing that anyway. But why are these people able to monetize their feed of a copyrighted song?

Interesting. Unless the other thing Home Depot didn't do was copyright the song, ironically. so so i mean i was just i was kind of apoplectic and i was also just bummed because really the for me the part that was really sad was because i as i said on the friday show i had this whole weekend planned out you know mo and do the fire pit and watch the sunset and you know how i get i just was like i was excited about this situation and then now it was like oh this thing you already bought that you thought you had is just sorry we don't have that and then i started calling around And everyone's like, nobody has that. What are you talking about? And this one guy literally said, I haven't gotten a new riding motor here, a mower here in two years at this particular location. I know that sounded like an exaggeration. But so because Hope Springs Eternal, Andrew, I noticed that there were a few other Home Depots that alleged to have one of these mowers. And so I called the one in Chehalis, Washington. Oh, wow. Not far from Windlock, Washington, home of the world's largest egg. And I prayed to the ghost of Betty Birchall, Camaro Kev's grandmother. And I got this very nice person on the phone at customer service. And I said, I go, it says on the website that you have this one kind of mower. But what I'm learning is that the website's really wrong. And she goes, yeah, it usually is. She goes, I haven't seen any. We used to have one, but I don't think it's gone. She goes, you know what, though? Let me go check for you. And she's gone for like it felt like about 11 minutes as I'm just staring at the raindrops hitting my windows here in Portland. And she comes back. She goes, oh, I actually have one. I'm looking at it right now. OK. And I was like, you I was like, I need you to lay. I need you to lie on top of that Ryobi riding lawnmower right now and do not let anyone purchase it away from you. i was like can i just buy it online and go and put it for in-store pickup she's like i don't know if that will reserve it or not so then she transferred me over to brendan who was like yes we can do that just buy it online and then call us right back with the receipt number and then we will go and we will tag it and andrew i'm happy to tell you i did not get a jog in in between recording sessions today but i did allegedly unless it gets lost secure a ryobi mower at the Chehalis Home Depot. I pray

that this is indeed the end of the story, but I am very nervous on your behalf, and I think it's ridiculous that we're doing this show right now. You should be driving there right now. You should be... I know. You should get some super glue. his name you got a super glue your hand to that thing the guy from babe yeah james cromwell cromwell you got a james cromwell yourself onto that lawnmower because i'm telling you they will lose

it and then you will lose i think i think brendan i know i think brendan thinks that i'm just a absolutely have lost my mind because when i called back and sorry we are just fully in the storm

right now andrew i don't know is that what that is oh no i like that sound that's interesting It's like your whole apartment's going through a car wash

That is precisely What it feels like in here Now you get to the point where I get to wave at a very confused window washer As to what the hell goes on in this room They're used to it But yes So after I purchased it I called back And I got the customer service desk But I got a different person and I was like Okay, here's what's going on And they were like, okay, I'll take the tag over to Home and Garden And I was like, okay, please do And then I called back to find out if I could rent a truck from them because I can't transport this thing in my car. And then I got Brendan again. And I was like, Brendan, just tell me that you're going to tag this thing. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got it. They're just doing something, but then we're – it's like Lawn and Garden right now is dealing with a pallet. But then after that, they're going to tag it. And I was like, I promise you in that 10 minutes, something is going to happen to where I'm – and it's like it's the last one of these lawnmowers that maybe will ever be produced.

And this is Brendan or Brandon? What's his name? Or do I have that wrong? I think it's Brendan. Let's go, Brendan. Brendan, I mean, it sounds like you're getting kind of like declarative statements from him. So that's better than I think we've ever gotten from Home Depot in our ongoing negotiations over things. It usually is just sort of a you get like a blank stare even over the phone, just sort of a blank stare and an uncertainty as to where they are in the world while you're talking to them.

No, to be honest with you, pretty much everyone I've spoken to, maybe with the exception of the guy who said I haven't had a new riding mower in two years, and he wasn't even unhelpful—well, that was not a helpful comment, but everyone I've spoken to has been actually pretty plugged in. And I wonder, I don't know, why am I turning this into an urban-rural divide? But I wonder if, I just wonder if a Home Depot in a small town like Chehalis, for whatever reason, in terms of just it being in a smaller town and maybe everybody has to kind of go there or something, I wonder if it operates a little bit differently than a Home Depot in Seattle that's one of seven Home Depots in a 10-mile radius or something. because most of these places I was calling, I called the one in Longview, Washington. I called the one in Chehalis. I called one in Troutdale, Oregon. And everybody I got on the phone, they seemed pretty like helpful and like they took it seriously. I wasn't getting that kind of dull, like you said, stare or complete indifference that I've also experienced at these stores at times.

What did you say? It's Troutdale? They should have a Cabela's there. Is there a Cabela's in Troutdale? If not, that is a sin. I'll check into that. Okay, yeah.

You don't know that off the top of your head? I haven't. I don't. No, I don't have my Cabela's Finder app right now on my phone. When I got my new operating system, it wiped a lot of my apps.

I mean, Troutdale is just such an evocative town name. It leaves very little to the... Oh, no, what? I have a missed call from the 503. I don't like this at all. I think you better call back for real. I think we should take a break here. You make that phone call. Let's take...

Or I just play the voicemail. Oh, you got the voicemail. I just play the voicemail just live on the air. Oh, you know what? there's the same people the andro the call the the missed call is from the same store that called me and said i this is totally not going to pay off but let me just play let me see if i can wait

this is not your store this isn't uh brendan this is the portland store this is the place that i

originally was supposed to get these are the people who told me they had the lawnmower and then i i was feeling pretty good going into friday show and then i got this let's see if this

in any way pays off hello this is braden from the northeast portland home depot i'm calling today by your order for a 48 volt brushless 30 inch uh riding lawnmower unfortunately we do not

have this in stock at this time so okay so that's just following up on the by the way his name's

braden which is confusing can we get the brendans and the bradens of the world just decide get back to us when get back to us when you decide on what your name is and it can be brandon i don't care But let's just have one version of that name. I'm Brandon. But now what's interesting is I had a missed call from the same number. Meaning, are they calling me back to say, oh, actually, we do have the lawnmower? Should we do this? Should we take a quick break? And then I will call them and I will try to figure out what's going on. Yeah. And then I can report back.

Because just to be very clear here. So when we were talking on Friday. show the one we recorded a little bit ago you were all set to pick this thing up but then you got an email from them canceling the order and it sounds like this phone call was just a follow-up to that email saying we no longer have this in stock sorry about that but since then you've got another call from them how much time has passed between those two calls one was it a little let's

see here one was at 11 59 and one was at no i'm confused i'm not i can't i can't see the time

stand i'm gonna say like an hour and a half about an hour and a half past so okay so and they didn't

leave a voicemail the second time so we'll figure this out no voicemail so it could just be i mean the thing is i the problem has been more or less remedied i would just be hilarious if they had actually fixed like if my frantic machinations had solved for a problem that was actually solving

itself yeah but that was going to stress me out a little bit actually because then you've kind of got two lawnmowers on the line and which one can you trust and like in a certain way like i i what i think we need to do is just get the show over as soon as possible so you can get out to chehalis for some please remember no mountain too tall some chehalis agains i one time confused where Where do you guys sometimes go for your... Chelan, Lake Chelan. Yeah. Chelanigan. I one time confused it was Chehalis because I'm not from around here, and I guess they are very different places.

Okay. So I will check on this, and then we'll come back, and we will... We're about 21, 22 minutes into the show, Andrew. This is a holiday. Yeah. So we've already done our job. Let the listeners know we've more than done our job at this point. So we'll be back. We'll do a little more TBTL, and then we'll get on out of here. Coming up, stay with us. hello and welcome to top story all right top story is uh i tried to call that number and it just went nowhere because like i do think it's just probably some automated system that's probably trying to triple confirm with me that that the item i was trying to get is not available but again i'm i'm i'm feeling i'm feeling hopeful andrew i'm feeling i've rented a u-haul truck now too like a pickup truck with a trailer on the back of it so that i can actually like load this bad boy on there and drive it to the place and so the the plan is back on you can't rent them through the store anymore as i learned from brendan andrew that home depot does not have trucks i see chehalis washington home depot does not have okay okay i was a little bummed too because now it means i have to pay sales tax um i didn't have to pay sales tax on the oregon one But also, this lawnmower will live in Washington State, so it's kind of, I mean, it sort of makes sense that I would just pay the going rate in Washington State for this thing. It would have been probably slightly a hustle if I was able to not do that and then immediately transport it across state lines. Well, plus you get the lawnmower tax credit, though, on your federal return. Hope you're happy, Jay Inslee. You got your pound of flesh. Speaking of pounds of flesh, Andrew. Huh? Careful with this transition, Luke. That's the only category that Linda Skeens didn't win at the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair in Wise, Virginia. Narrator, he was careful. We tried to talk about this on the Friday show, and we ran out of time, but it just seems so perfect for Fourth of July content. I mean, is there anything—I keep saying state fair. It's actually a district fair, and I should be sort of specific because it matters. This is not the Virginia State Fair or the Kentucky State Fair. Apparently, there's a place called Wise, Virginia, which is right on the Virginia-Kentucky border, and they've got a district fair that happens there. And on June 13th, they listed the results of the various, I guess you would say, competitions. And one person won more than 25 of the 80 different categories. and that one person was named Linda Skeens she swept the cake, pie and cookies division she won bread, both the sweet and savory she won the brownie and the candy categories her corn won best overall canned vegetable

and her peppers prevailed as the best overall best non-cucumber pickled item Andrew, and this is a very important distinction she did not win in the cucumber pickled items she didn't win in the pickling of cucumbers aka what we think of as pickles but she did win in the best non-cucumber pickled item category okay that's fair also won best spaghetti sauce best applesauce best sauerkraut she won uh best jelly and her grape jelly uh won that category her peach raspberry jam

also won. So she won Best Jam and Best Jelly, Andrew, which is incredible. I want to actually find this. This was a Washington Post piece that I saw reprinted in the Seattle Times, and I've somehow now lost the... I want to figure

out who the person... I can get out of that because I have a link here. I'll get it to you here in a second.

This was a nice piece in the Washington Post. Sidney Page. In fact,

that name rings a bell. We may have read other stories from Sidney Page

before. Nice job, Sidney Page. This is a fascinating article. I had seen something going around about this because, Andrew, one of the funny things is the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair, and this shouldn't be shocking, when they posted their results, it's all in Comic Sans? Like, is that not the most district fair, best jelly category?

You don't get that at the state fair. County fair, you get it in that papyrus font. But state fair, you're starting to lose the serifs and everything.

Yeah, it's 100% like you're very crafty, but semi-guile-less ant chose the font to talk about the various very kind of folksy and I guess you could say life-affirming Americana type of category, such as best jelly and best jam or best non-cucumber pickled item. You just feel like the person typing this in was going, oh, bless her heart. I know that's not really how they talk in the Virginia. They were like, man, boy, she really came in and took over this competition like a bar. That's probably more what the accent was in Kentucky.

Perfect. You, God, you're so good.

So the internet saw, somebody noticed on the internet that Linda Skeens was just dominating the space, and everybody started looking for her. And what's really funny is they located a different Linda Skeens in Blacksburg, Virginia, and her Facebook page melted down with people being like, yes, queen, slay all day. We love you. She had to release.

And, of course, because you can say stuff like that now that Lynn isn't clipping stuff out and isolating it and putting it on a marsupial gurgle. You and I are both like the freedom rated. Yes.

this the wrong linda skeins though is also 68 and looks i saw a photo of her we don't have a picture andrew we still don't have eyes on the real linda skeins but the incorrect linda skeins looks like she could have also been the correct linda and she's loving it she says she's connecting with people all over the world what i love though is she wrote on facebook all caps and this is a generational thing i think people of our generation and younger see all caps as being like yelling aggressive but she wrote all caps i am not the linda skeins baking phenom who won all of the ribbons at the kentucky virginia district fair but like you're right she was she was loving getting to meet people from all over the world but they were meeting the wrong linda skeins oh that makes me sad there are no wrong linda skeins god don't make no junk that's right well uh there's also a frankie skeins who is the granddaughter of linda skeins who started to see all of this internet chatter and weighed in to say okay my as she calls her mama frankie's mama is the correct linda skeins um she lives in russell county virginia with her husband she is also in her late 60s and she does not have any social media she does not have an email address or even a cell phone no email address no cell phone um which would explain how it is that the internet couldn't find her i mean yeah i know that those folks exist in old books but i'm surprised i'm surprised no cell phone you know to be in your 60s like and not have a cell phone that's i will i will say it surprises me that there are still people and i'm obviously i'm envious of it in a way i have a very personally complicated relationship with technology but that's that's pretty old school yeah my grandma is 100 years old and she has a cell phone right i feel like the connectivity provided by cell phones actually means that a lot more folks who are like north of 60 have them than you would think because they're actually very convenient help you keep in touch with people but uh linda skeins has no need for such things uh all the reports are that she is delighted actually by this she also turned down the washington post request for an interview which i thought was really interesting yeah did that surprise you

to hear that um no this i don't think it did because this woman doesn't seem to really be well here's the only disconnect is like to be pulling to be entering all of these contests so you clearly want some recognition right of how good you are but you don't want anything beyond the ribbons themselves I guess there's maybe a little disconnect for me there but I mean once it's established that this woman is not super interested in the limelight like i'm i'm way into that i think that's pretty cool i know it's charming i mean the lack of technology and then the just like no that's okay thank you though the not clamoring for her five minutes the not you know trying to launch uh her home shopping network uh you know uh potato casserole which by the way is what she's apparently famous within the family for they everybody loves i could really go for i don't even know what a potato casserole is but I promise you I would like it. Apparently she did link to her Bandcamp page, so I guess she wanted some kind of notoriety. Actually, that should have been SoundCloud, not Bandcamp. I ruined the joke. Linda Skeen's SoundCloud rapper, rapping about her strawberry fudge, which is also, Frankie says, what her mama makes best within the family. Strawberry fudge, by the way, did win best overall. baked good at the fair in case you were scoring still at home um she also uh she the list goes on here she also won a best uh in show for peach turnovers chocolate cake peanut butter cookies and buttermilk breakfast biscuits this year i think the quote of the whole story comes from young frankie skeins though she says um my grandmother is she doesn't say that she says mama she's an exceptional woman she's kind she's sweet she would either give you the shirt off her back or she would make you a shirt depending on what you wanted oh i didn't get that far that's sweet which is a pretty which is a pretty funny thing so yeah oh and the other thing that frankie says is if you want to meet linda skeins go to the virginia kentucky district fair next year where she will be with all of her stuff well that's an interesting question i wonder if she will be sort of mobbed next week so this was this was just recently this fair that was held this was i I couldn't tell. Okay, because somebody, the article mentioned, like, somebody tried to reach out and invite her to Thanksgiving or something. So I wasn't sure if that was, like, last year. Okay, so they're talking about this coming Thanksgiving. It's just so hard for me to think about Thanksgiving right now. It seems a lifetime away. But anyway, yeah, I hope that she's not mobbed in a way that makes her uncomfortable at the fair. I mean, this has to be the most attention that this particular district fair has ever received. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of views on like TikTok and, you know, various media outlets. I mean, I don't know. On this Fourth of July, I don't know why I need to snatch defeat from the jaws of a nice story. But it remains to be seen if she will end up getting dragged on to some sort of Jimmy Fallon like situation, which I know for you would really ruin it.

But yeah, I mean, I mean, I don't care. I mean, but it doesn't sound like she's really I mean, if she said no to a print reporter, I don't see her. going on fallon yeah so uh i mean obviously what we know is tbtl road trip yes to the virginia kentucky district fair next june hey you know what we live show we featuring linda skein we pick up meemaw and we take her to medieval times in chicago that's what we do or whatever the closest medieval times was i'm so hungry for a potato casserole and a giant turkey leg yeah what would you eat at medieval times i wonder what they have in the vegetarian category probably just gotta have some boiled cabbage right sure you know you love that giant boiled cabbage you know honestly i do like not like i love sauerkraut i love that um real like purpley cabbage that you'll sometimes get at a german restaurant oh yeah it's like a side i actually am in a taco any kind of just like raw fresh cabbage that's chopped up and the crunch that you get in a taco i am a what i'm not into is the head like you boil it and it's just still like the head of cabbage or whatever like i'm not into that but there are a lot of preparations of cabbage that i'm down with um they probably have some kind of a what mashed potato yeah that i can do that i can get oh andrew very excited to see that the menu at the portland pickles where we'll be going tonight because again remember we're recording this before the weekend they have uh they have impossible hot dogs oh nice perfect yeah great i have a feeling and Now we can, I will report on this on the Tuesday episode of the show. So tomorrow's episode, I, I just have this feeling that I'm going to love the Portland pickles game experience more than maybe any other baseball experience of my life. I'm just looking at it. It's looks so, the stadium is so great. I mean, it's just this like, obviously smallish little place, but you can, you can rent a picnic table in the outfield where you can bring six friends. So you just buy the picnic table and then it's just, you bring your six friends. you sit at the picnic table there's like all these berms where you can bring camp chairs there's regular like reserved seats there's all these different weird kind of suites where you get to do fun stuff like it's just it just looks like it looks like the most fun sort of backyard barbecue on steroids where there's also baseball going on yeah i've been to a few like triple a games which are fun in their own right but they're nothing

Thank you.

like that the only experience i've had that is closer to what you're describing was when we went to the and of course i talked about this a lot on the show the san jose giants game so that would have been um whatever the modesto nuts are so is that uh double a maybe or maybe i don't know pretty low down there in fact they were playing as the as the churros that night i believe you know like they changed their name and so they sold all this um you know merch that was like hats and stuff where they were playing as the San Jose. It wasn't Churros. Anyway, all of that is to say it was tons of fun. It was a small little park. It felt like kind of a high school sporting event vibe almost. And then at the end, I don't know if you remember me telling you this, this was the best part. There was some game. After the game was over, you could buy a sack of baseballs that had numbers on them and then everybody ran over to the bleachers that were closest to the corner of right field and they threw down I think I want to say like hula hoops or something like that maybe bigger rings than hula hoops on the field and they you know they track what what numbered balls you have and everybody just hurls their baseballs and they try to get them into the rings and any ball that ends up getting into the ring they will then track you down and you would win some sort of prizes or something we did not win any prizes but my god was that so much fun and it also felt speaking of medieval just like it was like we were all like okay go and then we all loosed our arrows right just like all these balls coming from the stands all just scattering all over the field it was great god I hope they do that at the pickles game

I would love that yes buy a lot

you will not regret buying as many as they allow you to buy

then I'm also though if they do that I already I'm already developing my strategy which is I'm gonna let everyone else throw first because I'll be gosh darned if And if if I'm throwing my ball and it's actually going where I'm intending it to and then just gets bonked by someone else's ball or even vice versa, I bonk some. It should be we should go in waves or should you know what I mean? There should be some some part of the fun is the mayhem of it.

Yeah, definitely.

I'm trying to win some shit here, Andrew. I don't need mayhem.

I know you say it right. Genevieve makes fun of me because I always call it mayhem. And she's like, it is not a spring feast of ham. It is not mayhem. It is mayhem.

Oh, I think I said mayhem.

Did you? Am I saying mayhem? It seemed like you split it. Once you hear it, it's hard to do it. I thought you were saying mayhem. I say it mayhem. Ma'am. Like, yes, ma'am. Yes, mayhem. Show title? I think so. I was just reaching for my pen.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

All right. Do we have a quick email or V-mail that we can do here?

Let's see. What do I have here? I have all I have is kind of a longer email let me see what I can find here

hold on because I do I would like to I would like to wait until we're officially back on the clock I love that that's I'm like it's a holiday we're doing the show we should definitely find the shortest emails possible that's how I celebrate America Andrew I got an email you know

this is perfect here I got an email here from listener John who says Andrew I like you better than Luke did I take care of it yeah let's see I got one from John is the name there That's how you know it's a real person You know what Oh okay go ahead Oh I found a nice little email here I could share with you But anyway what were you going to say Please do This is from Megan in Wallingford Who says your transfer station I was talking about how I like going to the transfer station A.K.A. the dump And how it looks like there are some things set up In the dump that were maybe made with a bit of frivolity Like it looks like they grabbed a mannequin and dressed it up like a dump worker and put a sign in his hand that says slow down anyway Megan was saying hear your transfer station story and comment about the art installation there and that's the way you'd like to run a dump it made me think of Lopez Island and the dump there during its heyday does this ring a bell to you Luke do you know about the Lopez Island dump I don't I know about Lopez Island a little bit it's absolutely lovely well Megan says in the 90s the Lopez dump was the place to be i was visiting the island one day and i ran into a friend who eagerly asked me have you been to the dump yet turns out the manager a guy named neil went somewhat rogue and created a huge take it or leave it space where people dropped off furniture clothing tools things left over from projects all manner of things that could be of use to someone else one time after a garage sale i loaded our truck up with tools and paint and things like a sofa and i took a special trip to Lopez. When I pulled into a parking space and opened the tailgate, I was immediately surrounded by Lopezians who were excited. This is like a Jonathan Swift story. I was immediately surrounded by Lopezians.

who were very excited about the boxes of solvents and paintbrushes and the like. I managed to strike a bargain with someone that they could be the first to pick through my boxes if they helped me carry the sofa over to the covered area where the larger items were stowed. We have a house on San Juan now, and there are no such treasure troves there. I'd heard that Neil just made these and other changes on his own, and by the time the county figured it out, it was too popular a service to end. And just to make the job more appealing to you, Andrew, Neil could often be found puttering around, sweeping up the area at the actual dump. Wow. Yeah.

See, that's I feel like we need to get back to that more. Just people. I like the fact that you could just go rogue. Yes. I know that I said the other day I was saying I really like that when you see government at work, which I also do like that. how the transfer station in Shoreline, how that's the result of money that's set aside for the arts and then a process by which local artists submit ideas and then one is selected. I think that's great, too, to see government functioning. But I also like the idea of someone just being like, it's the Lopez dump. I'm going to do me.

Yeah, exactly. And that is something that the community wants and kind of then supports in their own way. Andrew. What? Sorry.

I have to do something here, which I didn't want to do. Uh-oh. tvtl breaking news i'm getting a text from no not brendan not brendan andrew but brayden now they have it they're saying a truck just pulled up and dropped off a brand new ryobi electric riding lawnmower to the store in portland what are you gonna do i gotta go with

that one you gotta go with the closest one right but where did it's way closer where did you rent

the u-haul though shahalas i gotta call the u-haul on shahalas and and i gotta uh i gotta break up

with them too but now what if you call you better you better get your hands on or at least get your um get a reservation for a u-haul locally before you give that other one up because what if you can get this lawnmower well strange times what a world what a world i am this stresses me out more because and again i kind of don't trust them because like it's always like we have one we're missing it oh you show up it seems like every five minutes it could be different but i think did i even tell you that like when the truck was finally making its way here with the refrigerator that we did end up getting it like the truck broke down or something too it was like everything that could go possibly wrong

went wrong yes i just can't believe that he literally specifies in the text a brand new one

and it's here for you uh-huh well all right well now i i guess even i have to tune in tomorrow now and this is one of your least favorite things to listen to i know because i have to pay attention

tomorrow all right uh i think that's gonna do it for today's special holiday edition of the program uh thank you for listening everyone look there's even andram even seeing some blue sky wow start to peek out it's all coming up burbs of course that's my nickname for myself yeah that's right

but also things are going well for me it's all coming up burbs and you're doing okay too

all right thanks for listening everyone hope you're having a fun and safe fourth of july again whatever that looks like for you living in this country on this day my goodness uh we'll see you tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you until then uh please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

A disappointing twist in a saga involving the Portland Pickles mascot, Dylan.

Yeah, so the Pickles general manager now says a thief stole the mascot costume after a delivery driver left it on the office porch overnight. And this was, of course, after several days of wondering where their luggage had been lost After a trip, Emma Jerome is live with the case of this delivery gone very wrong.

Power out.