Muse

Staff and I went out to go see Minions, Rise of Gru. And I just have to say, it is fascinating to learn the history of how Gru rose to power. If you don't know Minions, they're these little yellow guys. Denim overalls. They speak in a kind of gibberish language. Yabba Babbo, Dabby Bebo, Boniana. Yeah. Minions is a prequel to the Despicable Me franchise. Rise of Gru is a sequel to that prequel. Essentially, the minions will seek out the most despicable person they can find, in this case, Gru. And it just got us to thinking, who in our society would have minions if they were real? and are they real and where can I find them and how despicable do I have to be to get some well stay on our show we will be answering all those questions and more I will be attempting all manner of heinous acts in order to court the millions will I be successful find out when this American life returns stay with us T-B-T-L

their hygiene? Absolutely. Do they have a confused look in their eyes like a dog that's heard a strange sound? Yeah. But strap that dog to a sled and baby, you'll be flying across

the tundra. All right. Hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live. A beautifully wrapped, glossy, sweet

smelling show. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. How did I wind up here? How did I wind up

here? Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon on a absolutely gorgeous Wednesday. Oh my gosh. It's just beautiful. It was very warm yesterday and it was warm yesterday evening as I spent most of the evening trying to glue this pottery bird, this very cool mid-century pottery bird that Becca got me. I had to try to glue it back together because Bubbles, the cat...

Kittens! Inspired by kittens!

...knocked it off of a table and it shattered. And it actually came back together sort of okay-ish as long as you position it. Like one side of it, it's pretty obvious it's glued back together. The other side looks pretty great. And so as long as the really jacked up side is always facing away, like towards the wall, we should be all right. But I'm very excited to announce that things are about to change around here involving incorrigible kittens.

I don't want any more at any time during the day from anyone. That includes me.

I went to my local Ace Hardware store yesterday, and I purchased not one, not two, but three colorful spray bottles. And I filled them with water, and I set them on stun, and they are placed in various strategic places around the apartment. And I'm going to start having some rules around here involving surfaces and where cats are allowed to climb and not climb and things like that. So things are about to start happening to me now. Here's what's about to start happening to all of you, the listeners. It's episode 3731 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. There's something oddly aggressive about saying this is about to happen to you. Here's what's about to be imposed on you. Episode 3731. The general manager of the Eugene Emeralds baseball team. I got a, what would you call it, an exam, I'm going to use a word here, a rectal exam during a baseball game, and he was singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game as it was happening.

How would you like to say, put your finger in my bottom?

I will also mention that I didn't, until the story came up, think we were going to get to use this audio tape again.

How would you like to say, put your finger in my bottom?

But, um...

There it is. We will play you the very brief clip of tape of this guy singing while getting an examination. And also, we're trying to figure out why he did this. That's the thing. The Eugene Emeralds did a good job of blasting this out onto the Internet, onto social. But there is zero explanation of why this is happening. So we'll get into that. Also, Duolingo is now offering High Valerian as a language that you can learn via Duolingo. High Valerian, of course, coming from Game of Thrones. So if you would like to understand High Valerian, you can now do it on Duolingo, which had me watching the trailer today for House of the Dragon, which is like a prequel to Game of Thrones that's coming out pretty soon. So we'll get into that. And we'll get into some emails and V-mails, and we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions.

of the tall ships there's one thing i know about first things first i love my job he's

andrew walsh and he is joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i have

something to talk about for a change uh it just occurred to me this is something that i should probably run by you i've been trying to do something in my life i've been trying to retrain myself it's funny that this is just coming up now this has been going on there's been a little private i don't know what do you call it when you kind of um when somebody has been like in a cult or something you got to reprogram that program that i feel like deprogramming sometimes they call it and then maybe reprogramming i'm now in the reprogramming part of my life in regards to how i talk to animals this is a true story okay i don't know when this was obviously the animal i talked to the most in my life is my cat professor bananas um and i realized that like a lot of people 90 of what we say to our pet is are you a good cat are you a good girl are you being good how good are you you're so good and i don't i it occurred to me that i don't like it like to the degree that i'm talking to my cat at all um and i think there's benefits to talking to your pets even if they don't understand the words, they understand the tone.

I agree. In fact, when Bubbles was getting her last round of vaccination, the person at the Petco where I was, who just worked there, had a bangle and was so excited to see Bubbles and had all kinds of advice from me, including talk to them a lot. She was of the opinion that that is very good for your relationship with your cat.

Yeah, I believe that's true. When Theo was still alive, I would kind of hold him a lot. He liked to be picked up more than Bananas does. And I would, like, talk right into his belly. He had a big old belly, and I felt like, you know, that's probably good, like the vibrations or whatever. I just – I truly felt that. Anyway, but I kind of don't like – I mean, listen, I know it's an animal and the words don't really matter, but there's something weird and condescending about constantly asking – like the vast majority of your spoken relationship is asking somebody if they're good or being good, essentially well-behaved. And first of all, well-behaved kittens rarely make history. That's something bubbles should have. That's a show title right there. Because that's something that I feel like Bubbles has really lived by. But I'm so I have been trying so hard because it's so you find yourself doing it even when you're conscientiously trying not to do it. So things I've been saying to bananas have been more like, hey, did you have a good day? Or like this morning she was laying on my belly and I was like, oh, you know, and I'm just saying mostly the same stuff. Did you catch the home run derby? But, you know, not because it's weird. You can't say anything that you're looking for a response back, but being kind of like, what are you going to be doing today? Bananas, how are you looking forward to your day? Yeah, you are. You're looking forward to your day. Like, there's no difference. Like, tone wise, that'll mean the same to her. And I feel better not being like, are you good? Constantly good. Are you behaving? Are you good? Are you a good girl? Are you a good boy? Trying to do the same thing with dogs or whatever. And I don't know. I don't I don't know if it makes me seem like the weirdo, but I'm trying to emphasize this. Are you good dynamic?

of course that presumes that your cat has some understanding of what you're saying

right because no it doesn't that's my point is the cat only is hearing the tone anyway sound right the tone and the sound so the words don't matter and i don't like me constantly asking somebody if they're good it's weird it's a weird line of questioning okay i guess because of the

lack of cognitive not lack of cognition but last lack of understanding on the part of the cat i would imagine that it wouldn't matter what you would say you wouldn't care but you don't like the feeling that you have of basically always asking the same question you feel like you're

actually being a little dull maybe a little dull and also it's just weird I would never say to you and again as Genevieve told me when I told her my new plan to not say that anymore she's not a human but I do think it would be weird if my relationship

with you like if we dialed up in the morning and said hey luke are you good are you being good luke are you being good luke luke are you being a good boy like that's such a weird line of

questioning yeah i guess so i mean i my here's the thing with me and bubbles a i know she's not being good yeah right you can just be like why aren't you good i which is a version of what we talk about we i have as everyone does with their pets i have a million weird ass things that i say to the cat when i like i walk out in the morning in the morning i always say hey bubbles burbank like i don't know why that's something that i like to say to her but i like to say both of her names because i use her full name because it matters you don't call her burbs i don't call her burbs that's my i reserve that for you um i i say hey bubbles burbank and then she's always a little dazed in the morning which is nice because it means i can kind of pick her up and i'll usually pick her up and kind of cradle her a little bit um and pet her head or whatever and then like i'm you know i sing weird songs to her that i've made up or that are based on something that's going on in the apartment i also have to do a little kind of walk around to see what she's destroyed over the night what what piece of plant she's chewed into shreds or whatever and then you know we have our little morning ritual but most of my talking to her is it it's really the worst kind of parenting you can do it whipsaws between aggressively loving her like just being like you are the sweetest cutest cat and i hold her up i hold because her body is still really small i hold it up against the side of my head and just feel her little rib cage oh yeah purring yeah just go yeah so in those moments i'm just like there's and i will tell her this i'm just like you're the best cat of all time that i'm i'm showering her with love but then when she's being mean to me i'm just like okay that's it you're going to air jail which is where i just hold her as high as i can and she's just like can't touch anything door right exactly make the bad cat fly so i like and i'll like hold her in air jail and i'll just be like and then i'm just like i've never i never talked to her in a harsh way but i will say to her like i can't even think of a good example right now but i'll get extremely detailed about what i consider the rules of a society and a family

sure yeah yeah do you ever tell her that you would divorce her if she existed yes i quote

most of who's afraid of virginia that's one of our little go-to's oh that's so cute if she's being bad i will just be like i'll explain it to her like i'm in couples therapy like bubbles when you when you knock that um when you knock that bird off of that thing and broke it that really made me feel like you don't value what it is to live in this apartment with me etc so like I just go between just like aggressively loving her and aggressively negging her.

And so do you not find yourself in the habit? Do you ever find yourself saying like, are you a good kitty? Because I just know maybe that's just for whatever reason isn't my go to. Yeah. And so you're already doing it. And so I respect that. That's what I'm saying. Like, I don't want this and this more dynamic of checking in on the cat's relative behavior. I think it's a weird line of questioning. I like what you're doing more. And I'm trying to be that.

well it's going great with me and bubbles as you heard i spent last night gluing together this bird that was broken and trying to find this one tiny piece of plastic that goes to this toy of hers that's like basically a motorized kind of random it's like a imagine just a little kind of oval that sits on the floor and then it has a wand that comes up off of it and when you hit go it waves this little feather around in a random direction and she likes this toilet she likes it so much that she regularly breaks it and so she there's one level where she just kind of pulls apart this one part of that you can screw back together but she actually broke the actual mechanics of it in a certain way like she she ripped off this one piece of plastic that the only way to possibly fix it was to super glue it all back together so i had it up on this high table What she did at some point, Andrew, was got up on the table, found the one little nub of plastic that I was going to need to glue together and decided to take it somewhere and hide it. So now I have to throw the whole toy out because I can't find the piece that I need to fix it, whatever. Point is, she's not a good cat.

She's no interest in being a good cat. There's no question there. There's no conversation to be had.

She's full on Marlon Brando mode. What are you rebelling against? What do you got?

although i do understand the confusion with the toy like she's kind of like well this one's mine i thought i'm allowed to play with this one you know and then she just yeah

no that one i would not i would that one i don't give her grief on because she's just she's doing you know she's just playing with the toy and having fun um but the other stuff and again i want to stress i never use a harsh tone of voice with her maybe i should start maybe that would help but like even if I'm negging her

I'm doing it in a sweet way. Sure, yeah. I'm just, like, to me, it's all about tone. It is. You would think, you know. But, yeah, I did get this. I've got one right here, actually, Andrew. I mean, this is not good audio, but I'm going to, this is the squirt bottle that's assigned to the studio.

You hear that? Yeah, I could hear that. I could have guessed that sound. I wish I could have guessed it. It could have been a second.

Oh, hey, speaking of mystery sound, a couple things. I want to say the tape that you heard at the beginning, the Ira Glass talking about Rise of Gru, that's a guy on tiktok who is mr big bucks with an x i don't know his real name but it's it's

it's mr underscore big bucks i don't think it's underscore are you sure maybe i wrote it down wrong uh but either way it's definitely big bucks with an x b u x is it yeah so was i wrong about the underscore sorry about that i i don't know i'm not looking at it right now but that but

that was how that was what i thought i saw point being that's who did that and he does a bunch of like kind of ira glass things that that one i thought was was really funny just you and i were both enjoying just how he kind of nailed the like maybe even more than the impression he really just nailed the kind of programmatic of the open of this american life like what the shit that's that's

the thing that you're right it is underscore mr underscore big bucks b-u-x um yeah like i you know because i've seen his other things and his impression it's kind of funny that it's not that great of an impression but it's really that he really kind of nailed what the show would do with his premise like that's what really won me over we're gonna try to see how much trouble we could get in i can't remember his exact verbiage at the end but yeah it's pretty good so yeah mr

big bucks so that was uh that that was what that audio was all about and then i wanted to play this for you andrew can you guess who this is this is of course a classic round of wednesday mystery

audio who is this how would you like to say put your finger in my bottom now you played that at

the beginning of the show i i don't recognize that i wondered if it was new or something really old but then you said in your intro because i listen you said in your intro never thought we'd use that again so this is something that you remember the origin of and it must have played a relatively large part of at least a segment of tbtl at some point i'm going to say going back maybe even to the radio days it would i my memory is it was post radio days okay but and i don't know how large it

actually loomed on the show honestly i think once i played it once i was like no this might be a little on the line for us for our genteel tastes sure that is former first lady of italy carla bruni oh my god on a talk show for whatever reason talking about putting a finger in someone's bottom Which, I mean, before the rise of Donald Trump as president, that to me – and again, I'm not – this is not a commentary on Carla Bruni as a person. I actually really like her music, and I don't know enough about what, like – did I say Italy? I think it was actually France. I think she was – is married to Francois Hollande, I think, maybe. But point is, I just thought it was funny that you had the first lady of a major country talking about someone putting a finger in someone's bottom. Sure, yeah.

I wish I knew the context for that. I wish I knew why.

I think she would. Because the thing is, Carla Bruni had a whole life and career previous to the person she was married to becoming the president of France or prime minister. You think I would know these things? Is it president? I think it's president. I think that's what they call, like, that's what Macron is right now, president of France. But so that's what that audio was, in case you were curious. It's probably the last time we'll get to use it for a long time. Can I play?

Let me play. Do you think we'll be able to use? I was going to save this for the end of the show, but I'll just play it here.

One thing. Did you put the banana in Andrew's rerun?

Yes. Here's a logic to bananas.

Do you know what that's from?

What is that one from again? I always forget. I used to know this.

It's like, I don't know. It's like from Law and Order or something along those lines. It's from one of those procedurals. Genevieve, this is going back years and years ago. Genevieve had it on just like in the background or something in the middle of the day. And she heard that drop and she said, you've got to get this tape. You've got to get this one thing.

Did you put the banana in Andrew's rerun?

Yes. He is allergic to bananas.

I mean, it's gross, but it checks a lot of boxes. It's got my name in it. I don't like that's not from a comedy. No, it's really from a procedural. That was. Oh, my God. That's a cop questioning somebody.

That's a totally different context for it than. And if you told me that, I forgot. but like that sounds the idea that that would be presented as like actual dialogue from some procedural is unintentionally

hilarious yeah that's funny because if you heard that and you thought I just pulled that from a skit then it's not that funny it's just sort of crude but if it's something serious that we pulled it becomes funny 100% like I just thought

it was like a Bill Murray up your butt with a coconut like it's something off of

he seemed prepared to do it although he did not have a coconut so far as I can tell you.

To my recollection. Yeah, I just thought it was like from some sort of like Howard the Duck or something. Like, because also the delivery is so bad. Yes, he is allergic to bananas. Exactly, right. It just sounds, I totally thought it was maybe from like Hot Shots Part Deux or something in that universe. I want to just kind of, if I can, Andrew, put a bow on. I want to bring to a close the saga of Luke and the Lawnmower. okay now if you remember the listeners were just absolutely on the edge of their seats a couple of weeks ago as i was trying to get my hands and my butt on eventually a riding lawnmower and it was a whole back and forth where they the orders were canceled and and then it was was the lawnmower on a truck or not was the lawnmower physically at a home depot did a guy who i thought was nicknamed coach but i realized now he's just the trainer was he going to be able to figure out the solution to all of this anyway as part of all this i had ordered in the very beginning the very earliest by the way this is kind of weird when i ordered this lawnmower online i also ordered the thing that's like a grass catcher you can hook onto there and so as you're mowing away it's also catching all the grass for you now you would think wouldn't the system be set up that if the thing canceled the lawnmower order it would know to also cancel the grass catcher because if they're saying we don't have the lawnmower for you which is originally where the problem started they said congratulations you're going to be the proud owner of a lawnmower here's your receipt you bought this thing and then the next day randomly there was a an email that said your order has been canceled but they still mailed me the giant grass catcher which if i hadn't gone on full finagle mode i may i would still maybe not have one of these lawnmowers so it's a good thing that they did it well it's a i i guess it's sort of oak it is ultimately i guess it was better that it went through but there if i was less of a like persistent nudnik i could really right now just have zero lawnmowers and one massive grass catcher apparatus yeah that which would do me no good You just think the system would be set up like if we're going to cancel, if we're going to cancel the primary thing here, the lawnmower will also then cancel the ancillary thing, the grass catch.

Well, don't forget, this is where doers get more dumb. I just came up with that. Why are you so full of rage? Show titles. I thought you were going to say so full of rage. I feel bad because I know one of our listeners works for Home Depot and really likes Home Depot. But we've just had some really bad experiences in the past.

Okay, I'm going to tell you, though, this is a put-up for Old Home Depot today. So I get this grass-catcher noise, first of all, shipped to my apartment, which is hilarious. The thing is, like, the box is roughly the size of a refrigerator, and it's a refrigerator.

Frigerator.

And it's, like, sitting in my—that'll be one of the things we address during our CliffsNotes episode, where we explain why we say the word refrigerator strangely on the show. I can't not. but the uh so you like walk into this male area in my relatively small apartment building which is a massive thing but anyway um i got it out to the house and i was i was very excited uh because i thought this could be the solution to all my problems because the grass was very long at one point and so even when i cut it there was a lot of like debris if you will or leftover grass that i need i wanted to get all of it out of there i am happy to say by the way that i've the lawn is now i mowed it yesterday and we really got it dialed into where i can just set it on mulch and we're all good like i don't have to rake any grass we are set but anyway the thing i didn't realize with this grass catcher it had so many parts i mean it was like very involved and i i had to go on youtube and like how do i put this thing on there was no instructions which was very odd so i youtubed it and what i realized was in order to use the grass catching function you have to change the blades on the lawnmower like you got to tip this 200 pound 200 pound this 500 pound you know machine over on its side which first of all just feels like probably bad for the lawnmower and get a wrench which they do i think maybe provide and then take the blades off and put on the other kinds of blades because some of the blades are like mulching you know they're like chopping it up into fine bits this these blades were different because they're going to be cutting the grass at a different length so that it goes in the bag right as soon as i realized this involved me changing blades on the bottom of the lawnmower i was like i'm out i don't want any part of this

like just a reminder you're you did i know we talked about this so yeah it had to charge so you got an electric one so that's cool though because if you tip it on the side you don't have to worry about like the gas leaking out 100 yeah that's yes that that that's that's definitely

a lot better than yeah because if you i know this from having many a gas lawnmower if you do anything weird where it's like the carburetor on it gets like flooded or something if you tip that thing over on the side it might not start for like two days yeah so so this doesn't have that problem but it's just like i was like this is way more involved than i want to get with this i do not want to be changing blades on this also it scares me to change blades on a lawnmower even though i know it's not on i just feel like that's just a whole area of life i don't want to deal with blades on a lawnmower so like sticking your hand in the garbage disposal exactly i just the whole thing made me feel uncomfortable and i was like yeah no i this is i don't want to deal with this so but i had taken everything out of the box i was all excited this was until i watched the youtube video so anyway i put everything back in the box and i hadn't obviously used any of it but i put it it's like and then there's like eight million different little like aluminum poles and all kinds of just stuff associated with this and i put it back in the car yesterday and then i drove it uh back to home depot and then i realized i'm getting in line for the returns and it's like the line is out the door and this one guy looks at me when i walk up he goes welcome to the party and i kind of laughed and then i realized he was wearing one of those like um black rifle coffee company shirts that's like you know the like basically like weird second amendment obsessed coffee place because you know i can't bring my assault rifle into starbucks so we created our own so i would like to go to this other place i like this place that really protects my rights to be armed while drinking coffee and so then i just spent the next five minutes just being like why did i laugh at that guy's god damn it i was so mad that i was being collegial to him but anyway so i'm starting to go into my like anti-home depot rant in my mind like this line is really long and like oh god what's gonna happen well i'm happy to say andrew another associate walked over said I'll help the next person. And then all of a sudden the line just like melted away, moving right through people. Nice, good. I wheeled the thing up on the shopping cart, this big old box, wheeled it up. The associate there just said, oh, okay. I said, I'm bringing this back because I go, if I want to use this, I have to change the blades? She goes, no way, that's a huge hassle. Are you kidding me? And then I was like, yeah. And I was like thinking I was going to have to do more of an explanation because the box was now open. and truthfully there was probably some not parts but like packing material that had been in there that probably wasn't there you know like i always feel weird bringing something back where it doesn't have everything that it had before and it's so funny how they don't care i think i what did i

buy my um my i don't know if you know that yeah i think i bored everybody with this but i had to get a new recorder for this show recently you know a little field recorder that i have on my desk and i bought two i actually had two physical devices in my hand that i had to return i think and one of them that i returned like i forgot the batteries you know it came with a special pack of batteries and i went to return it like to me i'm with you like in my head like everything has to be absolutely perfect it has to be the exact twist tie holding the cables together it has to be the little black one you know like whatever um but they don't care when i went

i don't i don't understand the i don't really get the business model like how like where does

this go how does it get re how does it get re-perfected in the box where does this go now

because it's all there and it's never been used it's and i really did put everything back in the box it has all the stuff and it's the original box but you can't just sell it that way it's got to go back somewhere and then someone's got to like kind of reposition it so that it's like the way it was when i got it and i don't know who does that and also the cost this thing costs 300 bucks or something you're going to spend how much money are you going to spend shipping it back to wherever that happens restocking it like again i'm not my heart's not broken for corporate america these places print money in a lot of ways but i am like okay i mean i will i don't want to i'm not uh you know gonna look a gift horse in the mouth here but i was like i don't know how this is gonna end but anyway the person she was so nice and she was just like totally on it and she was like uh do you have the order number and i was like looking for it in my phone but i have like 8 000 emails from home depot related to the various iterations of this purchase and she was like no problem let me look it up in a different way and she finds it and there it is and she scans it and she goes back on the card and i go yeah and she goes all right have a great day and i was just like wow that was so much easier than i thought it was gonna be i'm glad to hear it because it's also not just the

the it's not just the end that you got that you got the end that you required or desired but also that like you were talking to somebody who just understood you know who just like could communicate with you in a way yes that like again the folks that i had talked to at our local one i mean it just is like they just are there because there has to be somebody there they have zero interest at Oh, I mean, they will.

maybe go on the website that you could go on to and look at it and type in the wrong place but that was the it but like here you just have somebody who's like yes i'm a human being who

understands the words you are saying yes and it was it was very very pleasant and so i guess my takeaway is it home depot is a great place to return things buying things yeah right that because you know andrew i am not kidding as i was walking out i overheard a few people a couple of associates and someone else a customer in a conversation kind of at the opening of the store and literally someone was saying we're not sure if it's on the truck oh right there you go again i was walking out and i was overhearing a conversation that probably had to do with exactly the same kind of thing that i was dealing with which was like online order versus what's in stock etc where's the truck what's on the truck and i was just like i was just like oh man i know what that's like but

as far as the return process pretty great yeah no that's good i'm glad we i'm glad we get a win for them because i have been pretty rough on that company lately all right let's take a quick break

and then when we come back uh we will get into these top stories and do some emails and vmails in a moment here on tbtl thank you baby all right let's thank some donors of the day these are the people making today's episode possible with their monthly support of tbtl and we sure do appreciate it thanks Matthew Becker St. Paul, Minnesota

Matthew Becker Former colleague Current friend

We take And never the twain shall meet You're either a colleague or a friend No, but like Our business model is Work with people Hopefully Get them interested enough in the show That when they no longer work at the same place They then become financial supporters of the program That's right

Our thing is just like Talk about the systems within APM. Talk about Concur. Complain about Cody and Belka enough. And then eventually all the APM employees will listen to this show.

Yep, it's working. Thanks, Matthew. Appreciate you. Rachel and Greg Smith are in Oakland, California. Thank you, Smiths. William Richard is in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. Mountlake Terrace was the... There's a place called the Mountlake Terrace Pavilion. and they have a massive swimming pool in there with all kinds of cool diving boards. And my whole childhood was, there was like the different levels of public swimming pools. There was like Evan's Pool by my house, which was pretty basic. And then there was Helene Madison, which was better because they had a high dive. And then there was the Mount Lake Terrace Pavilion, which was like, it was, you know, in the words of Huey Lewis, Nirvana. I lived for younger.

I was like, you have to be square? Where is he going to go with this

That's the story I always tell about Huey Lewis When I was I want a new drug One time I was having dinner in Portland And Huey Lewis was sitting next to us And it was me and Jessica and the mummy I think And Huey Lewis' table As they finished their meal The people he was with said Oh you're going to Seattle tomorrow And he just stood up and said Nirvana And then walked out That's Seattle Anyway thanks to William Also Jill Brown is in Denver

pennsylvania whoa this is why you play the game and this is why you read my eyes shifted away from the page i wondered what you were doing denver pa this is why you read all the we went to a

denver iowa you and i did on our um hitchhiking our quasi hitchhiking trip i don't remember remember that that's where that's where nora mcinerney ended up dropping us off technically Oh, right. That's right. It did have a different. Now that you were making for Waterloo, I think. Yes, yes. And Nora was doing the math on she had to go kind of officiate a memorial for someone back in the Twin Cities. And so every mile she drove us towards Waterloo, Iowa was further endangering her getting to the event on time. And so eventually Denver, Iowa was the drop off point.

I am looking at Denver, Pennsylvania on the map right now. It does indeed exist. So we will accept your donation, Jill. Thank you. Thank you, Jill. Appreciate you.

Kathleen Aiken is in Port Orchard, Washington. I know for a fact that exists because it's just down the street from where my folks live out there on the Olympic Peninsula. Christina Mayer is in Wenatchee, Washington. Oh, I love Wenatchee. Beautiful apple orchards, cherries, the like out there. It's a very, very gorgeous part of the world. Thank you, Christina. Thank you to all of our donors for making today's episode possible. We genuinely would not be here without you. hello and welcome to top story all right uh the top story that we didn't get to yesterday involved this um kind of i don't know viral thing that's been going around which is the general manager of the eugene emeralds i'm going to try to of course i didn't this is the one story i don't print out so i'm now furiously googling to get back to a link by the way my uh safari updated in some way we were talking yesterday about the um what was the thing you said genevieve calls it where it's like these little things that if we took five minutes to fix them once and for all then we would it'd be so much easier or like like my passwords on things where i don't know the password and so i'm forever having to go back and find where you emailed me the password for

something years ago learned helplessness or something like that she has a phrase she throws

around a lot but like uh this uh safari adjusted something where it got rid of where it changed basically what it looks like when i go to safari and i know that if i took five minutes that just tends to be um tends to be a search engine that i use a lot it's kind of a default whenever i go now to safari it just looks weird to me and i don't know how to find things i know internet searches should be pretty easy at this point but i'm also too lazy to take the five minutes to figure out how to reorient this so that it looks like it used to look yeah it's strange how just such a small adjustment such a small shift in something can so radically change your ux experience yep

absolutely and even if it's better just the change itself is very disorienting yeah i mean when i used to get updated on anything the first thing i would do is like i remember i would do this with itunes all the time i mean i i've been out of that world for a long time and god do i not miss it but um i was still using itunes for the longest time as a way of just like sorting music and a lot Of the audio I'd play on The show and every time They would update it would be drastically different I would go in and spend like 45 minutes Resetting everything so it looked Like iTunes circa 2011 Or something like that

I have Found the article now which is good Although I've also lost The audio tape that I played yesterday I was the only reason I really want to talk about This story Andrew is because I would like to try to integrate this Tape into Canon

for the show i feel like we talk about baseball so much on the show that like having that in the

because all i have right now is baseball is a simple game you hit the ball you throw the ball and hey lloyd do some delivery and um the crack of the bat the roar of the crowd that's right Phil Hartman baseball's back I'll plan on playing that during the World Series when the Mariners are in it baseball's back um I just think we can always use some new audio to add to the conversation anyway that is audio of the general manager of the uh Emerald uh Eugene Emeralds his name is oh gosh this by the way thanks um Deadspin re reanimated Deadspin I'm talking about like the the sports website that i used to obsess over that then got kind of corporate and so it kind of i was not into it anymore now i read defector more and i'm starting to realize why not the not the best article ever written here about this we have to get down to like the fourth paragraph before we learned the guy is named alan benavides he's the uh eugene emerald's general manager and uh they did this i guess what stunt promotion where they had him get a prostate exam While he was singing While everybody was singing Take me out to the ball game But you can see on the kind of Diamond vision That he is in like a Kind of a box Like the play-by-play announcers Would be in If you can imagine When they kind of cut to Rick Riz and Dave Sims I know that's your favorite Particular combo Andrew Yeah They cover each other's weaknesses That's what I love about that If you see on the diamond vision You can just see This guy's little face Popping out of one of those like broadcast booths and that's all you're seeing of him thankfully and he's just singing along and you can tell a moment of insertion

now here's the thing the Eugene Emeralds tweeted this out

this tweet has gone everywhere but here's all they say our manager well first of all it's general manager but okay our manager may be the first person to ever sing take me out to the ball game while receiving a prostate exam Wait a second. I have him as the manager here.

I had him as the... Does it say general manager in the thing? Yeah. Because I have Whiskey Riff, which is the link you sent me yesterday, has him as the manager. Because I think that was a question I had for you. Because this was going to raise the question of how much are managers needed during the game?

So we should figure this out Okay, you go ahead I'm sorry, I want to figure out if he's the manager or general manager

I think you can just Google his name Google Alan Benavides And I bet you it'll tell you one way or the other I'm with you I was sort of carefully looking for that Because it's a different thing If you're the manager versus the general manager Like you said, if you're the manager Supposedly you're in the trenches Making moment-by-moment decisions Whereas if you're the general manager

You're taking more of the 30,000 quick view So I'm on his Twitter now, and his bio identifies him as the general manager. So you're right about that. But, like, well, then, again, not that I turn to WhiskeyRiff.com for all of my journalistic standards. I can't tell you how self-conscious I felt sending you that article, Andrew. But, like, that's a huge mistake to call somebody the manager in the article when they're the general manager. I know the words sound similar, but those are very different roles.

Yes. Well, and, again, the Eugene Emeralds are not helping because their literal tweet says, our manager may be the first person to ever sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame while receiving a prostate. What it seems is that WhiskeyRiff.com didn't make a follow-up call or throw the Google search in to see what is Alan Benavides' actual job title.

You're right. This does sort of, this lies with both of them, but the Emeralds should identify their general manager, I would think.

We got it right here on TBTL, and that's what matters. So this is the question, why was he doing this? And also that's not explained by the Eugene Emeralds. You would think there's some speculation that because this was June 30th that this actually happens was a while ago. June is Men's Health Awareness Month, which I know, you know, a blessed men's health awareness a month to all who celebrate. Like, I don't know what you're supposed to do with that information. But that's one theory is that this was supposed to promote men's health awareness. But you would think that if the team was doing this as some kind of promotion or like way to raise awareness of something that's important, You think they would have hashtagged that?

Yeah, you would say even some more context and say like this is an important thing, you know, you know, follow in our lead or whatever, you know, because this is something that you should be taking care of. It's not a bad message, but you got to, you know, give the message.

Right.

So otherwise, you just have the general manager getting, in the words of Carla Bruni, a finger in his bottom. Right. Yeah. Like that's a Stern show. You know, by the way, that's like literally a Stern show bit. They would do It was like prostate karaoke or something Where they'd have staff members I've pitched this idea Many times on our show for you and I And you seem to kind of Still be a little bit leery

Well it just sort of seems like it would be ripping off another Show and that's my problem with that Yeah that would be your big problem

But like It's just basically From what I can glean from that very short Video and from the kind of pretty Bare bones tweet about it is that you had an empty stadium because they do they do sort of pan in the video there are like five people there yeah you have a basically empty stadium where a guy is singing while getting a finger in his bottom for reasons that are not fully explained that's was a very weird moment that unfolded yeah like you know what i mean like you if you were if it's like hey it's um prostate health night at the park i don't know if you promoted it better if it was more consistent coherent if people got t-shirts if it was like we have a free sign up we have a sign up for free you know not at the stadium but like what if the t-shirt was the metallica metal up your ass t-shirt we're talking about who thought that would come up in place in a month

well now that you know now that you know the reference because weirdly that t-shirt lives

in my head so um it is unforgettable now that i've seen it yeah imagine seeing it when you're

12 years old oh my god i would have been absolutely scandalized yeah but like it just

this is the kind of thing that again i don't think it's i mean it's certainly pretty like i guess i'm gonna give this general manager points for his for being game you know because it's like that's a you know me andrew i'm i'm pretty much up for anything and also like attention with certain within certain parameters and so you'd think like i'm into bits i'm into things that are memorable i would never do this like i you could not i would you cannot pay me enough money to be talking on the mic while i was undergoing this particular kind of exam that's just not so the fact that the gm was like yeah i'll go ahead and do it my guess would be that he thought it's important for men's health and it probably is an important message but again the lack of other things that are kind of contextualizing this and the lack of fans at the game seems like a real problem right i mean i guess i will give them this in videotaping it videotaping it in recording it on their phone and putting it out on twitter and it got a lot of attention I get the message was spread as it were but like no one being at the stadium just like if i let me put it this way if i had agreed to do this if i was alan benavides and i always want to call him adam benintendi because i think that's a real player for like the royals or something oh i want to explain something just to you andrew and probably my brother david andrew and maybe dirz if he's listening i completely misunderstood and if the stew bot made it this far uh basically the people on our sports thread who listen uh i misunderstood what was going on with the royals pre all-star weekend or all-star game um somebody sent out a text to our group listing all of the kansas city royals that were not going to be playing in toronto against the blue jays yeah there were

Ten players that couldn't play. Yeah, and Andy had texted it out and said, guess which team probably has Newsmax on in the clubhouse.

Right. I thought they had all tested positive. But no, they're just not admitted into the country because they're anti-vax.

They couldn't play the four-game series against the Blue Jays because Canada has a rule that if you're not vax, you can't be up there playing baseball. And so, yeah, and they did lose three out of four of those games because they didn't have a lineup. Well, good. No offense.

peace and love to our Royals fans I know we've got some awesome folks in KC but like so when I responded with oh maybe this means Thai France will get in I thought that all those people had tested positive for COVID and Adam Benintendi being a Andrew Benintendi Andrew Benintendi being a all star I thought that might open the door for our Thai France but what I didn't realize was no they just weren't let in because they're not they're not vaxxed so I wanted to just for you and the other people on that text I wanted to correct the record I misunderstood the nature of the tweet I misunderstood the assignment

I could tell there was some misunderstanding going on there I knew that because I saw you're like Oh, this could affect the All-Star game I was like, no, the All-Star game isn't in Canada But I was driving when that was all happening So I was listening to the robot in my car Read all this out Which is an interesting thing, by the way When you play Wordle Did I already tell you this? When you're on a Wordle text chain I've done it with you

You and I were in the rental car You and I were in the rental car and we were going returning uh the pa equipment and our sex toys um right uh that's another question we'll have to answer and um and you and and your wordle group it was like a saturday morning and your wordle group was popping off yeah and so you hit places like you have a new

text message from and then first of all my phone will list everybody on the text chain i need to give it a name like if i get a text from the from anybody on our text chain that's called the fun loving criminals the robot will just say text from fun loving criminals but if you don't give it a name it just lists everybody so first oh yeah i need to name my wordle group like wordle or something because it lists everybody on the chain and then it says genevieve has says wordle three two nine three slash five red square no that wouldn't be red like black square yellow square black square green square and it just goes on and on and then vives and i play a game called quartal where we just share it with each other and that's where you play four wordles at the same time and then you share it i sent her her text was so funny i sent her my quartal school my quartal score try saying that come on say quarter quartal score okay you can do it do it no i said score i said score really really hard to do super hard but i sent her my quartal the other day and i didn't realize she was driving result and she said sending me your quartal while i'm in the car is dirty pool my friend it just goes on forever it's just like a hundred squares

anyway what were you saying speaking of indecipherable languages andrew duolingo and hbo max are partnering to add high valerian as a language you can learn on duolingo this is in anticipation of house of the dragon which is i guess the prequel to uh game of thrones which i watched the trailer for today i didn't even know this was a thing that was happening i will just mention this duolingo hbo thing that just stinks to high heaven of corporate synergistic cross promotion sure my guess is that there's like five high valerian phrases you can probably learn because i don't think george it's not like vulcan or something where i don't think george r martin wrote the entire language oh but i think people have i could be wrong about this i think

that's a good point i think that there's probably a lot not unlike the star trek languages

this is a press release it's just it's just i mean i'm reading from it it's a topic on the show i've mentioned both entities a bunch of times and this show so it worked right like yeah they're doing their job i'm totally like i something inside of me dies when I read to press release because it's just so like like um i am thrilled for new and old fans of game of thrones to experience the high valerian language it's been a pleasure to revisit the world of westeros for house of dragon and work with the team at duolingo to breathe new life into this course said david peterson the linguist who developed the full oh okay here we go i should there you go this guy developed the full high valerian language yeah so there you go there It's a, I guess you can do it. Listen, by the way, if this sounds fun to you, I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. Like, if this was something, this was the way my brain was wired, and I just wanted to kind of, like, thought it would be very cool to learn this. And if someone has fleshed the whole language out, like, cool. I hope people have fun with that. Like, I'm not trying to poop on that idea. But I, because I now became aware that something called House of the Dragon exists, I did a little Googling, and I found the trailer. And again for the purists And the hardcore Westeros heads I know I'll get a lot of this wrong But it appears to be So it's a prequel It's basically 200 years before Where Game of Thrones picked up Like you know the series as we think of it And it's about the Targaryens

Yeah because you remember the Mad King Set everybody on fire and everything So it's about that Which would be an interesting era

But that would have been If it's 200 years before

wasn't the mat oh you're right no no you're right because that was their dad you're right i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm totally wrong on that but it's it's that family but you're right i'm totally i was

totally off everybody's super god i'm so everybody is super platinum blonde right and but this is what was so weird and again i please please understand i'm not trying to yuck anyone's yum on this either but it was a very strange experience for me to watch the trailer for this thing because it is very much in the style of game of thrones my guess is that it's created by a you know a people who were it's not the same two you know kind of main co-creators that you'd see i forget their names off the top of my head but my guess is it's people who've been associated with this show for a while and it looks a lot like game of thrones uh and it's you know it's all set in that universe etc and whereas when i got into game of thrones and i was so so into it and you know all the players and when you see a preview for the next week's show and something's going down you're just i was just like absolutely riveted watching the trailer for this i couldn't think of anything i've ever seen that looks more corny and i don't think anything is fundamentally changed about the show i think something is fundamentally changed about me like i bet you that these are great this is maybe a really great show like it isn't like they didn't change things They didn't add in Poochie, the dog or something like everyone on here looks like they could have been on like the OG Game of Thrones. Right. Like it's different characters because they exist long before the Game of Thrones kicked in. But like there's nothing wrong with what they're doing. But for some reason, it just hit my eyes so differently than Game of Thrones did 15 years ago.

Well, I mean, I do think that a lot of that must have to do with how disappointing the end of Game of Thrones was. Right. Like, I'm not saying completely because it also has to do with the passage of time. And just like this was a hard world to crawl into. Right. And to under even while we were watching it and sometimes watching it twice and then doing a recap podcast about it. How many things would I just get wrong every time? You know, and now it's been so long since I've thought about it. And I read the books, you know, but now it's been so long that I since I've thought about it, I have to really stretch to remember people's names. I mean, that's true of real life people as well. So maybe I should give myself a break on that. But it's just like if the end of Game of Thrones was really, really good and you just wanted to live in this universe more, I could totally see myself being tempted by it. But like it just it was one of the big I didn't watch Lost. So without that, this was the biggest disappointment of an ending of a series I think that I've ever experienced of a show that I was I'd spent so much time and energy obsessing over. And I'm not saying the show owes me anything, but it was just such a letdown that why would I want to like because it takes a lot to crawl back into this world unless you're already like somebody who's so, so into it. And I didn't realize that this is based on a book to like R.R. Martin apparently wrote these two prequels and he released one book. And now this series picks up where that second book left off. I had no idea while he was not finishing Game of Thrones, he was writing prequels. I didn't even know that. So, like, it just gets so complicated, and even the books got, they just became more and more laborious and tedious, and you're just like, ugh, like, and he hasn't even finished that story yet. Why would I crawl back into this world when there's just so many loose ends? I think for me it's the fact that it's a prequel. So I don't like knowing the ending already, or at least knowing where things are going to go. Like to me, I feel like game of Thrones got me episode one. When you open in a field and Ned Stark is executing someone that and, and,

and is, is so pained in doing so and doesn't want to, but is forced to. Yeah. That scene,

like watching that scene, I was just like oh my god what is this world and I am going to be living in it for the next however many years of my life like I was totally drawn in you know what didn't draw me in a white getting shot through the heart with a fire arrow yeah a boat full of people that look like they're off the cover of a sticks record like just you know the guy from the roll the bones video like eight million of that guy just getting there like you know torn up by um i don't know why i'm asking you this but uh what's the big redhead thor thor kingsbane or something like that whoa i don't

think it's an andrew w wednesday i think you're right and let me like that sounds right it's

close it's something bane it just felt like unfortunately the end of that show just leaned heavily and have more and more heavily into the elements of the show that i always found the least interesting the personal dynamics the you know the like just like the scenes mostly where people are talking was what i was always interested in absolutely you know what happened in lannister

yeah exactly what happened i was always there for the for the um what do they call castle intrigue that's the wrong phrase yes but palace for the palace intrigue what a weird damn could have landed that one walsh but yeah no like that was always the most interesting stuff the human stories within not the dragons and we put up with the dragons and the smoke babies and the magic and all that because the rest of it was so good but as it goes on it becomes the balance of that just

continued to shift exactly and i don't know if that was because they were just out of ideas or they were just tired of writing the palace intrigue or what torment giants bane by the way i knew that was not i would have accepted your first answer i thought we get the idea andrew let me tell you something about language as long as the people who are hearing what you're saying understand what you're trying to convey that's language my i just know that it's a bane and he says you were merely born in the fire uh or whatever you you only lived in the redness i was born in it with this beard if i've learned anything from high valerian andrew from my careful study of high

valerian it's that language is evolving yeah i am i'm with you on that i mean if i had a friend who was really really into this and said hey give it a go i would but i just don't think i'm there is that person in my life and and again and now keep in mind we are also watching the trailer so the trailer i mean it could be up to them and you know what are you going to put in there you're going to put montages of people looking at them looking at it now like looking at the quiet throne juxtaposed against great battle scenes because that's what makes great trailers but um my guess though is the show and it's not the same show runners either i can't remember those guys names of course one of david benoit and somebody else but i believe benoit bain i believe was

king's benoit did you take back some benoit banes to that sex shop in denver gently used

anyway yeah no it's not i don't think that this is gonna capture my imagination either and it just is a reminder of how uh and again i might a lot of people might disagree some people might love the ending good good on you but i was just like oh i put so much into this really By the way, it's David Benioff

I knew it wasn't Benoit Benoit, I think David Benoit is like a smooth jazz Oh, is that true? Guy, yeah, I'm pretty sure Yeah, again, I really hope Because I know we have fans that are so into Game of Thrones And probably people that have been really looking forward to this series And if I can just say for the 33rd time This episode If you are looking forward to House of the Dragon That's awesome And I bet you'll love it And it's like, you know, so I don't want to be dismissive of what someone's excited about. I'm not saying it's bad at all. I've only watched the trailer. I'm mostly just curious as to why my reaction is so different. And I don't, for me, I've actually forgotten that the ending left me a little cold until you said that. And who knows what we said during Song of Ice and Spoilers, how, like, you know, sort of, I don't know, disappointed in the ending I was. It's been so long that I don't even remember how I felt about the ending now. but like i just you know obviously loved that show and was so kind of engaged with that whole westeros universe that i would kind of expect that i i wouldn't mind going back there like personally i know you're saying you're not that interested but like i don't know i i guess i wish that here's the other problem i don't know if i have the energy to meet a bunch of new characters right yeah like it's like i just keep i just want to see i want ned stark to come back can we do like

It's like a multiverse, a parallel universe version where, you know, I don't know. Can I see something about the Starks, who I find to be the most interesting sort of characters on that show or something? I don't know.

Ted Sparks of Summerdale.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, I mean, I do. I do want to say one thing only because Chris might be listening. I did enjoy it. If you'll recall, our listener, Chris, invited me and Vives to watch the final Game of Thrones on the big screen at Tacoma Little Theater. And that was that was amazing. So my memory of the last episode watching it was great, but it was just like the last season was just such a bummer. I will say this. I'm with you about the prequel thing, too. Like, well, if I want to live in that world, do I want to go 200 years prior? I will say, though, and I think people who are in this universe, if you watched Breaking Bad and then you watch Better Call Saul. Again, I'm not saying everybody gets it right, but God damn, did they get it right. with the small problem of these characters are aging rapidly in the prequel and they look so much older than they did but you get that out of your head really quickly um and i'm way behind i'm like uh well i haven't watched any of this season of better call saul but my god do they i actually i think better call saul is better than breaking bad at least for my taste not better i just enjoy it more because i like the characters i like the pacing it's got a little bit it's got a slightly lighter touch uh but it also has some really heavy scenes but like but also the beauty of it is knowing where things are going it's it's weird what they pulled off with that it's astounding

i agree with you i've only watched i think maybe the first five or six episodes of better call saul but bizarrely that one and maybe this would be my experience if i actually like sat down and watched this new game of thrones thing it's it's almost like this interesting thing to see how it's all gonna fit together because you know the breaking bad part of it you know who's who in that show and like how did they all get there that actually for some reason i i'm with you i find it interesting and gratifying to watch better call saul despite kind of knowing where everything ends

up yeah exactly and and there and and the but that's because you know and it has to do with the story arc and where we left things and also it's not 200 years earlier and it's not even like hey this is what walter white was like as a child you know i have no interest in that either you know what i mean it's that it is exactly the era prior of breaking bad and you know that this will probably end right as breaking bad begin so it almost will create sort of like a loop where you could kind of go back into the other show like it is like where you choose to pick the story i think

so you're saying we are not going to do a special house of the dragon podcast it seems like that's not called quit dragging my heart around oh that now we have to great great yeah you're proud of Stop dragging my heart around. Yeah, we have to do it. I didn't even get the name of the song right. An idiot.

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, Lee. Email or V-mail before we get on out of here?

Yeah, I want to play this for you. It turns out we have several former mail carriers or postal workers, I should say, in our audience. One is listener Anne We're also hearing from listener Maggie On some of this stuff The US Postal Service has come up quite a bit In the show recently Because we did get a TBTL PO box Which I'm going to go check Hopefully later on today I'm going to go check that PO box See what's in there Did we decide we are going to do a segment Called What's in the Box And we're going to use the tape from I love it

You know I've never even seen the movie 7 That's what that's from right Yeah it's dark I've never seen the movie 7 So hopefully So you literally don't know what's in the box I literally don't know what's in the box Oh sweetie Maybe watch 7 and then decide if we want to call this segment No but there are dozens of us Dozens there are other people who don't have that context I think it's Listen it's a made up movie It's not real life And it's funny this play Is that Brad Pitt yelling what's in the box An anguished Brad Pitt I think it's funny because of the How high the stakes are in the film presumably And how low the stakes are In terms of us going through the P.O. box So I personally vote for that

Maybe we can do that on Friday or something Depending if there's stuff in there But anyway As I was waiting in line that day To get the keys to the P.O. box I was thinking about whether or not I should apply for a job To be a postal clerk Because they're looking for helpers there And I always wonder would I be able to do that job And we talked about that a bit um heard some um employees weighing in on that topic but then also luke the other day you and i were talking about the story of the olympian who had her um had her metal stolen her gold medal was stolen from her car then ended up being recovered and it was a very interesting and sweet story um but at the end of it she mentioned that she's going to send her medal to her parents for safekeeping i was like after all of this never just trust any kind of delivery service with that medal don't send it anywhere drive it to your parents house if you want wear it around your neck sleep with it is what i was saying like never let that out of your sight again um but we got this message from listener ann um who says that actually with the u.s postal service there is a way to securely send something it's called registered mail we've all heard of it. But Anne walks us through the process of how, of all the care the workers must take when something is sent this way. Take a listen to this. I found this fascinating.

Hey guys, it is Anne, current yarn shop owner, former postal worker. I'm probably not the only person to call in, but there is a USPS product that is pretty darn safe as far as sending high value physical objects and that service is registered mail it is super stressful in my opinion for the postal employees involved but it is a situation where there is not only a tracking number but that tracking number is tied to someone who is personally responsible for it throughout its journey so say you luke come to the counter and give me a bar of gold and honestly that has actually happened um this involves wet activated brown tape you know if the seal is broken you can tell that kind of thing um we would get it packaged up you would get the tracking number i would physically sign for it i would put it in a secure location that i was the only person who was authorized to enter that location then at the end of the day when the truck driver comes to pick up all the mail he specifically he or she specifically signs for possession of any registered items it goes to the next processing plant there's a literal registered mail cage it goes into there and so um is actually and each of these locations is locked along the way it is actually fairly secure it's how uh people have to send human cremains that's a whole different

story so anyway thanks bye so that's interesting i mean it is really locked down that's amazing

yeah i can't believe i spent so much money flying addie places where i was when she was a kid i just could have mailed her that's what i'm saying it sounds like the only way to go i mean just like yeah complete like people monitoring her and her whereabouts at all times keeping her safe that's you know speaking of adi i actually had she left her credit card at a restaurant where we went on father's day and so i uh went and got it and then i mailed it back to her like kind of

in honor of you for father's day to be kind of like see like you really did influence me you've

been a huge you know that i still i camaro kev is in possession of my credit card which is was at the rickshaw in seattle for like two plus months and i still don't have wait that's not

the one that you left at goldie's because you left one of goldie's that i thought camaro had to pick up um that could have also happened i don't remember that but that sounds possible

i left one at the i left my actual credit the nice thing is i have been i've been racking up zero credit card debt in the last three months because my physical credit card was at the rickshaw and then it's just been at Camaro Kev's house. So that's my personal finance tip. If you're trying to not run up your credit card, lose it so then you can't use it. Yeah, yeah. I was on a bit of a hot streak with that here in Portland, just kind of leaving cards at places because I have a few different ways to get access to my monies. And so sometimes I have this weird PayPal card that they mailed me that's semi-associated with my account. i can't get cash but i can buy things and anyway so one day i was like i just got to go get these cards i was like it was like zelda i was like collect i was going to various places and just collecting up these things that eventually would bring me back to being a whole person but um but what happened with addy i cut you off i had to well i mailed her her card back to her and i used registered mail and i and it got back to her just fine safe and sound everything worked out but i had no idea the whole chain of custody thing yeah fascinating and yeah i thought i'm glad

that you found that fascinating because i really found that fascinating too another reason why i think i should work at the postal service i find it all plus free gold bars plus you can just steal all the i think that's the takeaway from that you can steal all the gold someone mailing a gold bar

that seems expensive right like yeah those things are heavy very heavy yeah and like i mean that's You are, I guess you could insure it, maybe, but boy, you are really trusting the system at that point.

Yeah.

To mail, you know, mailing, I don't, I'll like. I don't know what the alternative is. You put it in a suitcase and you fly, drive to the place or something. You do it yourself. I mean, anything can happen. You know, you could also have a traffic accident driving the gold to the place. Sure. So, I mean, you're taking a calculator or whatever.

But at least you die with your gold. I mean, that's my whole thing.

Which is, and then you, and as they often say, you can take it with you.

It's, exactly. It's like that famous story from the Bible that I'm always telling you about, about the man who's dragging gold through the desert and it weighs him down and he could survive if he left the gold behind, but he refuses to.

You're confusing the Bible with the film Three Kings starring George Clooney.

Possibly. I still can't believe that's not a Bible story. I feel like I remember it so well. There's probably a version, some interpretation. I've done a lot of searching. I don't know, man. I probably heard it on an AA tape or something. No shit. It was probably in a lead or something that I heard growing up. I was in AA when I was growing up. I wonder if Three Kings holds up, by the way. Yeah, I wonder, too. People love that movie. Who directed it again?

I can't remember. I think it was... I'll look it up. It was... Was it David O. Russell? Kind of before his... Yes, it was.

You're absolutely right. David O. Russell. I would have never gotten there. But yeah, okay.

That was... And that was written by John Ridley. John Ridley, we used to have him on... On like Day to Day a lot and stuff. We'd have him on doing commentaries and things like that. John Ridley is a very interesting fellow.

Oh, that does ring a bell now. I think from NPR.

i don't think i realized he wrote three kings though okay that movie was so good plus this oddball dude he's not an oddball that's not fair this very kind of like memorable dude that i used to play pickup basketball with in seattle at what was then called marshall high school i don't know what it's called now but you know when you're going you're heading to green lake and you're driving along like towards green lake from kind of where you used to live andrew and you're going along, I guess maybe is that Ravenna or something? And right before you get to like the Starbucks and the Gregg's Green Lake Cycle, to your right, there's a school. Yes, yes. A big like high school. Yes, yes. That used to have the best afternoon pickup basketball game in Seattle for my money. And in my early college years and then early working years, I would play pickup basketball there almost five days a week.

That's a beautiful brick building.

yeah it really is and you just kind of get to know everyone on the court and like i never actually became friend friends with any of the people like outside of the game but you just see the same like 15 guys it's kind of an interesting social dynamic you just see the same 15 dudes like four or five days a week for years of your life like and one of them was this guy that i would always call stallone i believe his name is actually mike but he looked exactly like he looked very similar to Sylvester Stallone and he was just this quirky dude but it wasn't Frank Stallone was it it wasn't Frank Stallone that would have been pretty cool okay but um so I used to always call him Stallone and like anyway he was and for years and he just played ball with this guy and then one day I don't know how it came up but I was like what do you do he's like oh I'm actually an actor and he was like yeah I was just in this movie called three kings and I was like oh no kidding I mean he had like one scene he's in one scene with the with the guys but I was like holy shit and then i remember watching this movie and seeing mike from my basketball game like he may have been portraying an iraqi i'm not sure which i don't think he was from iraq so maybe that wasn't maybe that's not how we do it anymore but like i was so geeked to see my guy from pickup basketball in a scene that also involved george clooney yeah i believe it's clue it's like clune

dog and it's got it's all like famous people it's got ice cube in it oh right geez yeah i wonder if

that's worth another watch anyway i i hope it holds up because i love that movie it's basically yeah they're trying to find some gold out in the desert but it's like uh marky mark is in it also spike jones is in it and he's so great and i didn't realize that's who spike jones was

oh i didn't know that either i don't think that doesn't ring a bell to me yeah

all right i don't know why i always love to end the show on the most unrelated random thing that i can't get out of i didn't help you there that's my style y'all hate it or love it the underdog's on top and I'm gonna shine homie until what does he say

hey Luke you're doing it again

what quoting the game quoting hate it or love it by the game to end the show

you're just digging yourself into another thing where now you're gonna end the show on not remembering lyrics to a song I don't know you know that song that song slaps hate it or love it I don't know if I know it

you know me I have a lot of blind spots on that kind of stuff

And that song is, I might have to use that for Music for Your Weekend. If you're not familiar with that song, that song is really good. Okay. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imagination. I'm going to study the lyrics of that song by the game, and tomorrow I'll be ready to go. It's going to be so good, Spotify is going to pull it. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

This is what the animal said to us. He says to Ms. Cogman here, baby, up your butt with a coconut.

I think he was prepared to do it. Except I saw no coconut. He had no coconut to bite out. Power out.