Muse

What do you want, Brennan? This is my online poker time. I'm just going to come out and say it. I'm ready to take on the Catalina Wine Mixer. Ho, ho, slow down there, speed racer. I know what it entails, and I'm ready to nail it. I want it, okay? I want the Catalina Wine Mixer. Yo, yo! Hey, D-Man! Your brother wants a shot at the Catalina Wine Mixer. I'm ready. I'm walking tall. You think you're ready to run with the bulls? I've been earning and burning, snapping necks, and cashing checks.

Screw it. Let's let him do it. look brennan here's the thing it's the catalina wine mixer okay are you saying pal what are you saying it's the biggest helicopter leasing event in the western hemisphere since 1997

why does he keep doing that tbtl

oh good here we all are together again my memory started coming back not all at once just gradually But they said when I woke up one morning, the first words out of my mouth was I wanted to go to a Bob Seger concert.

The story of this situation is, it's extremely personal.

All I need is some tasty waves, cool buzz, and I'm fine. The more attention you pay to these things and the more diligent you are, the faster you'll get better and the better you'll feel. See if I'm not right. Thanks for your time. Have a good day.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL.

I say, I say, what's up, dog?

The show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. And I am. I can't believe you're still on the air. Coming to you from Los Angeles, California. California got sunshine. Where it is actually, it's, you know, hazy, but not very warm I got down here last night, and I went to sit by the pool at the hotel And I was in a t-shirt, and I was cold I had to go back up to my room and get a fleece kind of jacket I have this weird thing going on this summer where Every time I leave Portland, Oregon, I go to a place Last week, or two weeks ago, it was Bismarck where it is actually much colder than Portland, Oregon. But I'm actually, I'm loving it, because it's comfortable and nice and beautiful, and I love Los Angeles. And I love that we're at episode 3,741 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I don't love that Vin Scully, the legendary announcer, has passed away at the age of 94.

That's the saddest thing I've ever heard.

Feels, I guess, apropos that I'm in Los Angeles when that news broke because, of course, he was the long, long-time voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and a bunch of other sports things I didn't even know about. We will take a look back at the career of the inimitable Vin Scully. And then speaking of sports stuff...

I mean, I figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport.

Our favorite football coach from the Detroit Lions, Dan Campbell, He of the, we're going to fall down, and we're going to bite their kneecaps off, and then we're going to get back up, and then we're going to bite off a different part of their body. He has invented a new animal, and we're going to try to figure out, along with the great website Defector, if that animal would be good at football.

That's a tuna, bro!

So stay tuned for that. We've got some great Dan Campbell tape coming at you today. And we've got this guy, the longest-running cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Oh, he's hilarious, dog. Who is Andrew Walsh? And he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I assume you're in California for the Catalina wine mixer. Or do I have that? Do I have that backwards?

That was that was an extremely appropriate intro tape. It's it's sad, but appropriate that I'm in L.A. for Vin Scully's passing and fun and appropriate that we're playing the Catalina. What is it?

It's the biggest helicopter rental event in the Western Hemisphere since 1997. I think so, yeah. So I assume you're there, what, cracking necks and cashing checks? Wow, I'm bad at that. What does he think? Snapping necks? What do you do?

I'm turning and burning. I'm cashing. I'm cashing checks and I'm breaking necks. You know, the thing, though, I realize is part of what I think has what I've always thought is funny about that tape is they say since 1997, because it's like my brain is like, oh, my gosh, that was so recently. But 1997 was like almost 30 years ago. It was 29 years ago.

What year did Step Brothers come? 2008. So, yeah, that would have been like a 10 year ago joke when that joke was new. And now, of course, it's 20. Right.

So then the joke worked then because it was so kind of new.

1997 was but now it's very very long ago now it's 30 years now it's kind of an impressive helicopter rental brag now you should you actually you know what honestly i would go to respect i would go to that wine mixer absolutely what are you doing in la i am doing a tv story about a young artist who solves rubik's cube cubes and then she takes the pieces apart and then she makes them into portraits of people she's known as the cubist danielle the cubist

but you need to i'm not i'm not trying to be difficult here you'll know when i'm being difficult um i can't quite picture why you need to solve it before you take it apart and also your your first question should be do you take off all the stickers and just rearrange them like that kid in grade school did if you ever have you know that guy who just like peel off

all the stickers i know that guy because i know myself i mean raising the question can anyone ever really know themselves but i i think i literally did that it was probably around the same time that i was taking my stickers off of my football helmet uh-huh that indicated i got in a tackle and storing them inside of a uh a dresser that i had like sticking them to the dresser so that the next year i could carefully and kind of subtly reintegrate them into my next

helmet thereby adding tackles and then we decide that you don't know where that dresser is anymore like somewhere possibly in the pacific northwest somebody has an old dresser in the top drawer is

just like lined with your old football stickers i think that dresser is in a storage i sure it It sure better be. I think it's in a storage locker because that was the one and only. This would be interesting to Genevieve. It was the one and only time I actually did some kind of like restoration of a, I guess, what would you call that? It's not quite furniture, but of some wood. So I remember I had this really crummy dresser set of drawers. And it was this like kind of brown color that was really unappealing. And I must have said something to my dad. this is when i was maybe i don't know 12 13 that i was like i don't like this or this color isn't oh well actually you know what it was i remember that i had scratched i had scratched a bunch of like words into it including the uh phrase love is a battlefield by pat benatar i just i had just with a knife i had scratched love is a battlefield into this dresser what god damn it i must have

told you about this i do not think so and i'm just having one of those moments where it's like how many goddamn shows three thousand and four hundred today seven hundred and forty one and i didn't know that you at one point took probably the exact uh the exact swiss army knife

that you were talking about you know what it was it was a rambo knife you took a rambo knife i had a rambo knife like a knife that was a battlefield and i probably was playing on k hit at the time and i probably thought it was profound i scratched the words love is a battlefield into this dresser and then i think what that's kind of cool i gotta say like i'm trying to think the type of things

that i would have been scratching i probably would have been like scratching fart in some place where like nobody would see it and feeling like i was a real bad boy and you're just like

love is a battle i don't even like that song i mean that song is mad about us and neil giraldo we are young heartache to heartache we stand andrew love is a battlefield i believe that video is also pat benatar uh unionizing the sex workers really i've never seen it i feel like the video has something to do with her kind of getting these sort of victimized women together and they do a dance and they like turn the pimp away or something but the funny thing is i didn't even really like that song i just wanted to scratch something into this dresser and i had this rambo knife but a lot of knife talk the last two days really but this was that like when i say rambo knife i mean i think that's what it was technically called right like yeah like was it like a well

this goes back to our maryland conversation is it a buoy knife is that the type of thing we're

Maybe that's what it is, and maybe I just – does Sylvester Stallone have one of those in Rambo, or –

Let me see what kind of –

I'm actually going to Google what kind of knife does Rambo use. I think it's called – oh, well, there's a bunch of new cool names for it now, like – Yeah, it says Bowie, though. Evolving tactical, but tactical survival Rambo full tang fixed blade knife.

when I type in what kind of knife does Rambo use it says Bowie knife Rambo first blood part two

just type in Rambo knife though and you get a bunch of things that are that knife now maybe there

Again, maybe because he was using a Bowie knife in the movie, people like me who don't know better are calling it a Rambo knife. But, yeah, that kind of like – I mean, why was I even allowed to have one of those as a kid? I don't know. You weren't allowed to watch M.A.S.H. Why are you carrying around a Bowie knife? No, I could have watched M.A.S.H., but it made me sad.

Oh, right. Wrong. Bad example.

Also, we didn't have a TV. I could have watched M.A.S.H. at someone else's house, but suicide is painless. made me feel a bit wistful. But yeah, my parents were interesting in terms of what the rules were. It was like no television or movies that were fresh, but have a Rambo knife downstairs while listening to Pat Benatar. Go for that one.

Pick your teeth with it while you stare down your enemies. While it's your friend's turn on the controller to play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. Just like use your booty knife.

Sometimes I would just pluck a hair out of James DeMuth's head and I would split it on the Rambo knife just to let him know really who was in charge of the situation.

By the way, I want to get pedantic with you for a second in a way that is not nice, and there's no need for me to bring this up, but you sent me the photo of your Swiss Army knife yesterday. We used it as a show pic. I am going to pause it here, and I could be totally wrong. It might even say it somewhere on there, but I don't think that's technically a Swiss Army knife because a Swiss Army knife has that that's always branded, right, with the red plastic with the famous logo on the outside of it. Yours is a silver medal.

Andrew, my grandfather, Farnam Moss Burbank, called it a Rambo knife, okay? No, I'm totally with you. I don't think it was at all. I think it was a, I guess you could say knockoff or something, but it wasn't even trying to be a Swiss Army knife, like a, you know what I mean? Like it's not red, but yes, it definitely was not. it's not technically it's just what would you call that a combo knife or something or a i guess

a pocket knife right a pocket knife with a lot of doodads that's what they call it in the store

to me pocket knife though if you say pocket knife i'm thinking it doesn't have scissors on it

yeah well that is the i think it's a i'm looking up there i think pocket knife is um pocket knife means okay like here all the things on it a swiss army knife is a multi-tool pocket knife so a swiss

army knife is a kind of pocket knife did your dad have a pocket knife he didn't carry one my dad always had a pocket knife and he unlike me where i had no use for any of that stuff my dad put his and his was not a swiss army knife by the way it was a literal pocket knife and he used it for

everything um i feel like growing up we had pocket knives in like a lot of drawers and stuff but i don't he didn't like carry it he didn't he wasn't the type of guy where you'd say hey dad can i use your pocket knife for a second he always had it on him that was not his deal at all by the time i was old enough to even hold a knife like that like i was already in boy scout so i probably i had a boy scout knife i might have at one point had a swiss army knife and i feel like that we had various drawers around the house that had old pocket knives in them here and there like to varying degrees of usefulness or you know what i mean like one i can picture one that was probably from the 60s that might have been my grandfather's that was tiny and just had one little blade that came out of it and you know then we had other that was the kind that my dad had that he would

just have in his pocket for his you know you know stuff he needed to do because my dad was low-key very macho i mean and my my dad is the least kind of toxically masculine person you'll

ever meet we mentioned him hearing that even cooler how would your dad react if he heard you calling him low-key macho like i think he would he would reject that he would take his cigar out

of his mouth he would burn his own arm stare he would stare into the distance and he would go huh my dad's big thing are cigars now like he he has zero vices except the cigar which he just absolutely loves he looks forward to his cigar and i think he feels like i'm his trouble buddy like we've been doing some stuff at the house he's been measuring things and stuff and he's always like very excited to break out his cigar because i think my mom's kind of low-key not into

him smoking cigars uh-huh well it's so funny because but when i said how would he react when he said macho and you said take the cigar out of his mouth i thought you were joking i thought you were like just picking a trait of a of a classic macho macho man but no my dad is smoking cigars

he is really low-key kind of macho yeah he like yeah he smokes cigars now which is i think in the last like 10 years become his thing and but again not in a gross like he doesn't go to cigar bars or sit around with other Wall Street fat cats or whatever. He just enjoys cigars. That's, again, his one vice. And when I was a kid, he did so much manual labor, which, side note, he still does. I was like, we were meeting at the house that I'm trying to remodel, and I was like, what were you doing last week? He's like, I was digging post holes. When he puts a sign in, a lot of the times, he has to dig a huge... hole for the posts that the sign goes in that's hard work it is so hard i did it okay when i got laid off from kuow by the way we're coming back to this dresser this love is a battle oh shoot yeah sorry we got it don't forget yeah don't don't think that i've forgotten about that but i had this moment after i was laid off from kuow where i didn't have any other job i was doing small amount of voiceover commercial work for like Hagen grocery store and I was thinking maybe I'll try to take the firefighter test or I don't know we'll see what goes on what else comes up in my life and my dad was like well I could use some help on a project and I went with him and I'm like probably 25 at the time and we're putting a sign in and I had to first of all it was in cement like it was on a concrete driveway of some kind and so first we had to use the digging bar to break up the actual concrete and then dig down like four or five feet with a post hole digger in the concrete and by the end of the day i was like i am because some part of my brain was like maybe i'll take over the family business and uh by the end of that day i was like i will not be taking over the family business meanwhile my dad was just like unfazed like this is just what he what he does and what he did like he's just his i don't know he's just so used to really hard physical labor um that he's still at age um i'm trying to think what i don't know how old my parents are i think they're like pushing 70 now my dad just is out digging post holes and stuff but he had like his hands were always so leathery from hard work and we would hold hands we would pray as a family before dinner and i just remember like him having just the the toughest like most manly hands and a pocket knife in his pocket, and all of those things. And again, I got really lucky with this guy as a dad because he was all of those things, but he was also not a jerk.

And meanwhile, you have your Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places soft hands that have never seen a day of work in their life. To this day.

I mean, if I were to walk out on Lincoln Avenue here in Los Angeles and just find a random person and just go, feel this, and they put their hand on my hand, they would go, whoa.

well they would go whoa for a lot of reasons first of all sure get away from me

their initial trepidation they would be like those are the softest hands i've ever felt like i've it has been remarked upon many times in my life just how absolutely soft my hands are anyway so after i scratched the shit out of this dresser with my my uh excuse me my bowie knife I think at some point my dad probably again this is a big Walter Burbank W Wednesday because these stories all accrete to like my dad's positive qualities or at least list my dad's positive qualities he probably said like this thing looks like crap do you want to do a project with it instead of being like why did you scratch love as a battlefield into this dresser which I think would have been my opening question did you scratch a lot of lyrics in or was it just that do you think I think there were multiple because there was you know probably four drawers right and i think after i went pat benatar on it i think i then scratched other lyrics in which i don't remember now that's the only one that i remember it's such a long one

that's what that's another reason i'm impressed with it like you spent some time doing that picture of this you didn't just write like well to harken back to another one of your musical related childhood stories you didn't just write love bites in the uh you know what i mean love is another song i actually actively hated right wait did you really didn't like love is

a battlefield it was just popular no i i didn't like love is a battlefield and i really hated love bites by def leper because it just you know the notes of it it's very um kind of it just made me feel sad and again this i was very lucky to have any female attention when i was uh in middle school but this one gal wrote an entire letter to me about the song love bites and how it related

to us and she wrote it's mass true oh it's mass true i thought it was this is mad about us i was

confused no it's mass true love bites is mass true when you when you make love do you look in

a mirror it's mass true yes exactly me seventh grade having made zero love not fully understanding what a mirror is still trying right exactly it was a lot i mean nicole radford i hope you're

doing okay but that was a weird letter to write to me but um anyway so my dad i took the dresser over to my dad's shop and we again my one and only like rehabilitation project of something like this i got out the belt sander sanded it all down and then stained it and it turned out really well and i've had this dresser throughout my entire life because it uh it was kind of like a cool project and i think i actually liked the final result so you did that restoration back

again when you were like 12 13 14 something like that and then so does that mean the sticker i mean And let's get back to the. point here can we get our hands on those football stickers or not in case we need to impress our

former colleague brock heward at any point i okay i have this i've been paying on this storage locker in bellingham for far too long and if it is in there david from the basement was nice enough to help carrie get a bunch of the stuff from the bellingham house into storage for me um because she was like yeah uh this probably let's put your let's put the things that are luke's somewhere that's not the house that she now owns um so i'm hoping that it got moved but um i don't know but when i get the stuff out of there it would be a fun tbtl reveal it really was my guess would be it's still that stuff is still stuck in there like why wouldn't it be um the football uh yeah

because tackle indicators only thing is if you're feeling self-conscious there is as a as a kid who's you know kind of like you know you're you're 14 or whatever feeling a little bit more self-conscious Maybe you're just kind of, like, over those stickers while you're doing this restoration project, and maybe you, like, kind of sand them off or peel them off.

Yeah. Then, like, now, I had no shame in front of any mortal man. I don't think I ever, like, I probably, sadly, even though I was eventually on different football teams, I was like, well, if that particular sticker ever cycles back through, these will be good to have.

I can just, like, peel them off. Did they give you stickers for your helmet when you were playing? If so, I was not privy to the sticker room. That would have been the most fun I would have had.

Have you ever seen this?

I've seen it on television when you see, I think even some college programs do it. I think the Buckeyes do it, actually, speaking of Ohio. Yeah. I've seen it, so I know what you're talking about, but I never had any.

Yeah. Well, I certainly didn't have enough. I didn't have the amount that Barry Castona had, which is why I was trying to save them up so that I could augment my next year's tackle thing. I wanted to have – because if you were, like, really good, you would just have – your entire helmet would be cloaked in these things. Yeah, I see that. Is that really the word I'm looking for?

I see that on the Ohio State helmets. Yeah. Okay, a couple of things. I don't like stickers. Do you know this about me? Stickers kind of ick me out.

God, love is a battlefield.

Yeah. And so I'm picturing also – and the one thing I don't like about stickers is – and this goes back to childhood. Because, like, as a kid, I think I liked stickers okay. You know like we had sticker books Did you have sticker books

I didn't have them But people would get those at the book fair And I was slightly jealous But I gotta tell you one thing about these football stickers Because some equipment manager For the Greenwood Boys and Girls Club Had to peel them off They weren't like The kind of stickers that would Stick and you try to pull them off And then half of the sticker stays on They were actually designed For this purpose They were almost like cling.

Okay. I can get more into that. I have no problem with clings. I'm looking at a Kixi, an AM 880 Kixi radio cling in my window right now.

Which is why I was able to take them off of my helmet, which also just so much premeditation. I mean, this was first degree deception on my part because there was so much premeditation. like at some point because you just the normal kids your pat doyles um your uh i'm trying to think of other kids i played football with that's it barry castona and pat doyle that's what i've got like the normal kids would just turn their helmet into the equipment manager never think of it again i had to at some point carefully remove these clings from my helmet and then hand it back in denuded so that i could stick them inside of my dresser so that i could then the next year put them on and everyone be like god this guy's amazing yes it's my linebacker still valor as

if like anybody's like actually judging you based on the stickers and not just what they're seeing

on the field and coach would be like i'd be on the sideline because by the way what happened to me in football is every year that i played i moved further back on defense because i was small like i was 5'1 until like almost my junior year of high school and so i went from like a d lineman to like inside linebacker to outside linebacker to like safety strong safety to free safety and as if they would look at me on the sideline and go we should put that kid in look at all those stickers

on his freaking helmet it's like the the more you play each year you play you gain more stickers Yet you get further and further down the depth chart. The water boy is just his entire body is covered in stickers on his arms. Why is that guy who has never even taken a snap in practice? That guy has made every tackle this season that's ever happened, but he's never been in a game. You find yourself in some sort of last starfighter situation where aliens from the football planet come down and they need somebody. I'm like. hold my beer yes oh actually I kind of want to make that movie now that actually would be kind of good you know what this is actually good Andrew because again I've been paying money for the storage locker forever because I don't want to deal with it now I really want to find out if those stickers are still in that dress what's in the box oh are we going to do that again soon yeah I'll go to the Wednesday is a good day for me to go to the old post office I'll go there today and see what we can grab Okay, nice The sports talk has only Just begun on the show Because we also want to talk about Vin Scully And also what Wasn't that something else you carved into your Dresser, we've only just begun Do I have that right? Sorry, go ahead, do your forward I'm on top of the world Looking down on creation It took up the entire side I want to dance with somebody Parentheses with somebody who loves me You know what I would have scratched into it When I was really young would have been Let's hear it for the boy I loved that song Maybe he's no Romeo But he's my loving one man show I always heard those lyrics It never made sense to me He's my love and one man show Or he's my loving He's my loving Romeo That's from a movie too Yeah they use it in Footloose i believe footloose okay uh let's hear it for the boy but yeah um maybe he's no romeo but he's my loving one man show which i think they mean sure but they're trying to rhyme it with romeo sure oh oh oh oh let's hear it for the boy no it's sure the official lyrics are s-h-o-w so he's my like he's a one man show but he's my loving one man show it i did never mean they're rhyming it with romeo right right so that rhymes oh maybe he's no romeo but he's my loving one man show so like a one-man show will you reactivate the website to pull that audio please i want that to be my new intro andrew you saying maybe he's no romeo but he's my loving one-man show okay oh one-man show like a one-man show i'm 46 years old and i just learned something i was always thinking that they were just saying like for sure like for show no but no he's my

loving one man show which by the way doesn't really make sense no it doesn't i still think it's kind of it's kind of shoehorned in yeah but it is it's a more complete thought than i was giving denise williams credit for what do you immediately think of if i we got to go to a break i'm sorry i totally interrupted your ford promo but um what do you one man show don't think what do you picture a person a guy who's stepping on like a hi-hat thing and he's got a banjo And he's also hitting like a suitcase Yep possibly some sort of Percussion on his head Absolutely and that's now what I'm picturing And that's Denise Williams' boyfriend That's the wild part One man show Alright let's take a quick break And then we'll be back with more of this Two man show On TBTL I got what you were doing Hey, let's thank some donors of the day. These wonderful, generous people are making TVTL possible with their financial support. By the way, Andrew, to answer your question, there's no reason why this young artist needs to solve the Rubik's Cube before making the portrait. It was one of, you know, the producer who's helping put this particular piece together, I love this person and they're great. But there were two things. One, they wrote that in one of the questions, which was, were you good at solving Rubik's Cubes? Or did something about, like, solving them in order to, you know, build the portraits. When I looked at it, I thought, I don't know why you'd have to solve them. The other thing was, this young artist lives in a house that I zillowed. I saw the address when I was coming down here. By the way, thanks to Scott Rosen in Seattle, Washington. We're going to be Zillow-ing your house too, Scott, so don't get too comfortable. I saw the address for the shoot, and I saw the street it was on, and I was like, that's a... When I went... Addie and I did a star tour many years ago when she was little, and I remember this street being the street that Madonna lived on, apparently, according to the star map. Is this Madonna? And then I zillowed the house, and let's just say it's a very, no, she's not related to, this is not Lourdes, but let's just say this is a very palatial home that this young artist lives in with her parents. And one of the other questions that the producer put in was something to the effect of, how did you afford the Rubik's Cubes?

originally before you were when you were starting to make the portraits and i wanted to forward our producer the zillow listing for the house and say that's how like i'm going to put aside my my massive supreme nacho chip of class envy when i go do this interview right yeah it's like it's a cool thing that's being done it's very artistic and it's something i would never be able to do Listen, I was scratching Love is a Battlefield into dressers at this age. So it's notable, but it's not something that's happened by a particular amount of bootstrapping.

Somebody didn't crawl their way out of poverty by making Rubik's Cube art.

Someone did not find in a favela in Rio, they did not find a cast-off Rubik's Cube, solve it, and then position it into looking like Simone Bolivar or something.

All right. I need can you email me your producers contact and folks? I want to tell them roll on everything. I want to see. I want to see this entire interaction top to bottom. Leave nothing on the floor.

It's sounding like I don't want to do the story And that's not true I want to do the story And I think it's very interesting But I'm actively trying to stifle My massive class envy issue that I have

Yeah, yeah I always think of the loser from La Cantata In the conversation we had about that How many years Was that the 2014 Olympics or something?

I believe it was La Cañada But yes What did I say? I can never remember La Cantata which I believe is a beautiful piece of music by Giancarlo Manotti. Right after he got done writing A Mall in the Night Visitors, he wrote a La Cantata. But yes, oh my God, you're so right, Andrew. Your memory is so keen on things that reflect poorly on me.

No, that's not true. It's just that when we talk about how we interact with other people and whether, because I think about it a lot, just as far as how if somebody cuts me off in traffic And if it's somebody in a big, fancy, huge truck with dualies, which I think I know what that means, I'm going to have a totally different reaction than if it's some tiny little beater that's being driven by, you know, an old woman who looks like, you know, she doesn't have a lot of wealth in her life. I'm going to interact with that person differently and throughout life. And so I always think of like the loser. I kind of in my head, I categorize that as the sort of loser from what is the what is the town again in outside L.A.?

La Cañada is kind of near Pasadena. It's a very beautiful part of the kind of greater Los Angeles area. There's a school called Flintridge and La Cañada, and they're both like very tony schools up there. And for people that weren't listening eight years ago when I said that, whatever the thing was, like there was somebody who, I guess, achieved a great achievement in luge, And it just happened to be that they went to either Flintridge or La Cañada Probably Flintridge And my buddy, the colonel, I think, was a teacher at Flintridge for a while He also was teaching in the Chadwick School down in Rancho's Palos Verdes Who, by the way, thanks to Jennifer Nutter In Rancho's Palos Verdes, California today, Andrew

Is that real? Is that somebody on our list? Wow, Jennifer Nutter, thank you

That's exactly how South of Cheese was born But anyway, we were talking about this person who did something really hard and that represented great personal achievement. And I couldn't get over the fact that they went to a fancy school and therefore, in my mind, were probably rich and therefore were somehow less deserving of, you know, adulation over their luge-ing.

Yeah, it was like an accomplished young woman who was going to the Olympics as a luge-er. It was the Sochi Olympics in 2014. Yeah, and you're right.

eight years and i was like the whole thing my my big i i'm guessing that my whole rant at that time was yeah luge is just for the it's it's the best hundred people at this thing that most people

never even have access to right yeah it's not like yeah it's not like you can just play pick

up luge it's not exactly like being the best basketball player in america to me is like you're the best at this thing that everybody could have access to if you're the best at luge you probably one of the it's like dressage like with the horses like how you know like um ann romney is some kind of like champion dressage person it's like yeah of the people who get to make a horse run sideways uh with a special dress on it or whatever you're really good at that but all of that is to say i'm sure this person the la canada loser worked very hard to get to where they got but i all i could get all i could uh sort of take away from the thing was they went to a fancy school therefore i was mad at them it was i don't know i I have a feeling this person was born at the bottom of the hill and thought she slid her way down.

Where is my bell?

Dang it.

I'd also like to thank Dave and Aaron Goulet.

That's one of your favorite expressions, I believe.

That was a very good spoof. Dave and Aaron Goulet are in Edmonds, Washington. Thank you, Dave and Aaron. Sarah Shipley is in Seattle, Washington. Thanks, Sarah. And then Kristen Arntzen is checking in from Thunder Bay, Ontario. Not just a Bruce Springsteen song. I want a Thunder Bay knife. I used to scratch. God damn it. I was going to try to just start riffing on lyrics from Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen. But then I realized that was going to be bad for everybody. And then Renee Leon is in Aurora, Colorado. So thank you to all of our donors of the day. Thanks for making the show possible. We really appreciate you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Let's remember Vin Scully, who was – I was texting with Becca last night about this. it's very interesting that i think probably one of my strongest memories of my grandmother it's been a real this is on the burbank side it's been a real trip down memory lane between my granddad's uh pocket knife yesterday and uh my grandma virginia burbank uh who was a big vin scully fan because she um grew up in la when she was young and i remember one time uh i was watching Baseball on a Saturday and she walked through the room And was like oh Vin Scully he's the best And I don't know why that just like was burned In my brain but uh Vin Scully Has died he was 94 He the thing that was wild about it Was he was the Brooklyn Dodgers Announcer as well like When that team was in Brooklyn He was their announcer and then he just came West with them and then was The Dodgers announcer for You know I don't know Ever practically and Also called a lot of other sports I didn't realize He called what's called the quote-unquote catch, which was Joe Montana throwing it to Dwight Clark, the San Francisco 49ers, in a super pivotal playoff game. Are you familiar with the catch?

You know, there's no way in the world I've listened to as much sports radio as I have and people listing various sporting achievements that I haven't heard of that before. But I'll be honest with you, I get them all confused. So, you know, everything you said, like, all rings a bell, but I couldn't have pulled out any of that information.

I just didn't realize that he also called football. Me neither. He called basically every sport. This was a piece of tape, just like a little random clip of Vin Scully that somebody put on a website that I thought was kind of great. It was him talking about ice skating with Jackie Robinson. this is what happens when you are like the most sort of tenured announcer in sports when it's Jackie Robinson day and they're you know doing all the kind of perfunctory honoring of Jackie Robinson you have a story about ice skating with him you want to take a listen to this

did I ever tell you about the time Jackie and I raced each other on ice skates I'm not going to tell you now but that's going to be hitting the right field if you're on the run kicks it off

by the way just listening to this tape it was It was totally like me remembering some guys because that was, I think, Eric Ethier, I believe, was that player. I forget. But then coming up is Barry Zito, who was a pitcher for the Oakland A's. But I think because they were playing the Dodgers, it was, you know, it was a National League game. So the pitchers had to hit. So Barry Zito is about to hit. But anyway, I'll let it keep going.

One away. The count of the last feet and out to right and Barry Zito coming up. What happened was Rachel and Jackie and I were going up to a resort in the Catskill Mountains a long, long time ago. Being a kid from the east, I had ice skates. Jackie and Rachel said, oh, you're going to go skating? I said, yeah. They said, we'll go with you. Oh, I said, that's great. Now, the only problem was Rachel was about seven months pregnant. sure enough she got ice skates now jackie is putting his skates on alongside of me in the dressing room and he said when we get out there i'd like to race you i said jack i didn't know you ice skated you're from southern california i mean football and baseball but i didn't know ice Skating. squirts down to gordon two out by the way d gordon i believe i said i didn't know you i skated and jackie said i've never been on skates in my life so i started to laugh i said hey jack come on let's face it i mean i'm not a great skater but i can skate he said i know but i said i want to race you because that's how i'm going to learn and if you've never been on ice skates and you put skates on the first thing you do is walk on your ankles and sure enough he

was by the way zero baseball is being described minute three how many pitches have gone by he

mentions the scorcher this was i want to say this was the tv broadcast so in fairness to vin The people can see what's going on But this is to me eminently more interesting Than Barry Zito Squirting one to short Because he's not a good hitter Because he's a pitcher

Running on his ankles on the ice Trying to beat me But what was as memorable and scarier Was Rachel She was on the ice with a girl Whose name I believe was Maureen Miller An Olympic skating star

Maureen Miller shout out

by the way i don't i don't recognize the name but i just love the specificity of all of this right

i know and the company that he keeps by the way dude is like 89 when he's telling this story he only recently stopped doing the games on a day-to-day basis i mean that was what was wild is this is a pretty geriatric person who's remembering the name of this particular ice

skater and there was rachel seven eight months pregnant kind of mincing around on her ice skates I was at my heart and my throat but anyway there aren't very many people who can say oh sure I raced Jackie Robinson on ice

so R.I.P I mean that's almost as good as what Rick Riz brings to the game

Rick Riz would just be like League of Their Own great movie

I was realizing listening to yesterday's game that, I mean, there's no reason to be cruel to our friend Rico Riz because he does yeoman's work. But he really likes the geography of baseball. When they're in Chicago, of course, he's always talking about south side of Chicago. And boy, he couldn't mention the Bronx enough yesterday.

Yeah, he loves it.

It's kind of his default setting.

Yeah, I know. I found that because I was talking, There was a little block party in our neighborhood Yesterday and of course At some point the conversation with me Always turns to baseball and I realized I said Like a couple of times and like I didn't Mean to and I embarrassed myself In saying it I wanted to just say oh yeah they're playing The Yankees but I said like they're playing in the Bronx I said that like twice I'm like why am I saying that I don't talk like that I was like oh Because I haven't listened to too much Rick Riz Right

I know it seeps into you They say Rick Riz's don't influence Andrews for a day but for a lifetime

yeah but he will like and again he brings some good we'll miss him when he's gone and we love him and we're happy we can also make and we're happy uh but we can also tease we're happy that i didn't get to finish that yeah we're happy that he's our announcer right but um he will do this thing at least once a season and i haven't heard it yet but at some point he's just going to bring up during one of the broadcasts how much he loves a league of their own and he will just in this sort of like languid pace of announcing a baseball game just keep on remembering people who are in the movie i mean i've heard him do this at least three times be like great great i think it's it's not sims right no it's him he's like great great movie gina davis and tom hanks lori petty's in that yeah just good and he just like has he do we have that tape have we played that tape no i don't think i have it i've never captured it i just hear it once a year i wish i i wish i had it i always try to do an imitation of it and it's just terrible but like he'll just sort of get lost in his head and he'll do that with some other movies too and just sort of petty just sort of imdb it out loud

while he waits for the next holy shit snacks by the way speaking of did you see this text from my brother david no big boys in the bronx mariners up 6-0 in the first oh they're playing right now oh my god it's a day game and they went up six in the first dude if they can hang on and actually take the series in New York and not get totally swept in Houston, I'm calling this, with their particular personnel, I'm calling that a major, what's the word I'm looking for? That's actually a very successful road trip for them. Huge, successful.

Houston and the Yankees, if they take three out of the seven, I'm with it. I'm good with that.

I just realized, and again, I know we're getting into just inside sports talk here, but I'll say this. Today was a big day because our brand new shiny pitcher from the Reds.

He hasn't even taken the mound yet. I guess he's currently pitching, and he's gotten two outs, and there's somebody on second, according to the MLB app.

I thought this would be one of those games that I would go watch somewhere and remember. I didn't realize It was going to be happening

Kalanick hit a two run homer

Oh good That kid needs a break Okay

What a world What a world I keep wanting to text you all That it's like interesting To watch Kalanick Try to hit in a In a major league game Because it's like What would it be like If a normal person With no baseball training Was trying to hit Against a major league pitcher That's the feeling I have Every time Kalanick comes up Which is so funny

Because he was always And this is the thing That it's hard for me To wrap my head around And again I'm sorry for people That we can't bring you along For this If you don't know What we're talking about But this was a kid who was always the best person on every team he played for, who was always the best person on the field, who was always the threat his entire life up through, I'm sure, grade school, high school, college, all the levels of the minor leagues, the minors, anywhere he was holding a baseball bat. And then he gets to the major leagues. And he just has been terrible, starting with his debut last year. Was it two years ago? Two years ago, right? no yeah whatever um but uh and it's just he can't get it done and it's so you see like he goes up there and you can see the frustration like wafting off him like like like in a cartoon like he just looks like failure incarnate at the plate and it's just that's such a hard thing again i don't know if it goes back to the loser from la canada but like it's just like it's just got to be a weird thing because we can get frustrated at these players that we root for when they're not doing well but also just to think about the mind f that it must be like yes always be the best and then

just kind of be the worst yes that's you know what i hadn't thought of it that way but you're totally right and i think that explains a lot of his kind of like physical demeanor because i hadn't thought about that way but you're absolutely right it's like this is a person who is totally unfamiliar with failure yeah you know in that in that arena arena yeah do they still play baseball in arenas they do yes yeah a eugenio had a three-run home run santana had a solo home run and then kalanick followed up with a two-run homer all in the first inning oh wow all right let's go boys let's go my boys in the bronx my big bronx boys a madonna was in that great movie this is a this is a great article i have a new favorite sports writer i think um from uh defector and And it's somebody named Sabrina Imbler, who I believe uses they, them pronouns. They are such a funny sports writer. And part of it is I don't know if they know anything about sports. The headline is, what creature does Dan Campbell think would be great at football? Now, Dan Campbell, of course, the Detroit Lions head coach who's known to kind of give some pretty sweet press conferences. I don't know. Somehow he's like a likable Pete Carroll to me.

Yeah, he's got a lot of energy. It was hard when he first burst onto the scene with his press conference antics. It was hard to say whether or not we were going to like him or not. Right, because he could have just been like a toxic kind of overly Jocko guy. Right, exactly. But now, I mean, he does this, and he kind of knows he's going viral a little bit, right, when he does this stuff now. Yeah, he's aware now.

So this is the opening graph that this person, Sabrina, wrote on Defector. At the gates of Thebes and before all the incest, the Sphinx posed a riddle to Oedipus. What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening? To the Sphinx's surprise, Oedipus answered correctly. Humans who crawl on four legs as infants, walk upright as an adult, and use a walking stick at an older age. This weekend at a press conference, Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell posed a similarly daunting riddle in a series of lyric fragments. Campbell described wide receiver Josh Reynolds as, quote, slippery, the praying mantis, the spider of death, and a freaking serpent, which demands the question, which animal is Campbell thinking of here? So let me just play you this audio of Dan Campbell talking about his wide receiver.

He's slippery, man. I call him the praying mantis. Um, he's a spider of death. He's just, there's something about him, you know? So freaking serpent. So I love where he's at right now.

You can even hear some of the background say you're going viral or something. Right. Yeah.

What Sabrina goes on to do is to break down which of those creatures, I guess, would be the best at football.

A serpent. Between the praying mantis.

Could a praying mantis catch a football? The spider of death. A frickin' serpent. This is what they write about. I have to say, this is about a frickin' serpent. I have to say I deeply admire Campbell's specific word choice of serpent. And at least this is the only animal on the list that could objectively be called slippery. Now, a modern serpent might seem ill-suited for catching anything due to its lack of hands, although several fossil snakes did have legs, and boas and pythons have tiny leg remnants called pelvic spurs, but these also cannot grasp anything. But a snake's ability to disarticulate its jaw and swallow something enormous means, I think, that it might be able to hold a football in its mouth and slither through the legs of anyone who could hope to catch it.

I agree with that. That's actually good reasoning.

yeah uh the the this is like uh higher up in the piece that sabrina wrote but i thought this was also great i do not watch football understand its rules or give the pig spit the pig skin any passing thought in my daily life but my editor barry was kind enough to explain that a wide receiver is quote the guy the quarterback throws the ball to so i now understand wide receivers have to be good at catching which is surely a very important skill in the grand old game of football and all i need to know to move forward from here this is good old school deadspin energy there that's right i love it this reminds me of the salad days of deadspin yeah a person who knows nothing about football writing about dan campbell and his mythical creatures that's a good this is what we exactly good job deadspin rosie o'donnell's in there

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female

oh man it's not from a female by the way castillo zero runs given up in his debut in the first inning in the first inning right yeah he's pulling a real anti-robby ray i know i'm becoming anti-robby ray what uh it's just the anti-vax thing it's like i know here's the deal exactly if you're anti-vax and then you suck yeah i'm coming for you that's the problem i was telling you i tweeted

this out during one of his um famous or infamous meltdown innings way back in like i think june or something i said oh good thing he didn't poison his body with his with a vaccine can you imagine how bad these meltdown innings would be uh otherwise and of course i got like some hop on who's like expects more from a broadcast journalist to not be publicly shaming and This was somebody who, in their bio, described themselves as not woke and somehow used the race of their child to leverage their credibility in Twitter spaces. And that was just in the bio, like father of a mixed-race child or something. And then you go into their tweets, and they're just fighting with it. Yeah, it was like, oh, my God. You want to talk about – anyway, the whole thing was disgusting.

Anyway, well, that person is not going to enjoy the tweet that I wrote recently, which was, we know Robbie Ray is fully vaccinated against quality stars.

That's pretty good. That's more to the point of mine. Hey, I have a voicemail I want to play for you. This call is coming from inside the house, Luke. This is our friend John at 8 p.m. Take a listen to this. He's referring to our conversation yesterday about pickles, but I think he does. As a broadcast professional, I think he sets it up himself.

Hey, guys. It's John from St. Paul or John A.P.M. I agree with Luke. I feel like pickle everything is too much. I love pickles. It's my heritage. I love a pickle. But pickle everything is too much. But pickle pizza, I say try it. Different places will do it pretty much the same with like a garlic base sauce rather than like a red sauce. And it can be really good. I think the Big Mac pizza that Luke was talking about is overkill. that's just you're doing too much but just like a white sauce like a garlic white sauce on the pizza with some sliced pickles and cheese excellent highly recommend okay so that's

some good advice i'm googling pickle pizza los angeles right now somebody sent us a photo of one yesterday it looked okay but from gauging your chortles luke like again that's a good voicemail it's good advice i it makes me hungry i kind of want to try a pickle pizza or at least one slice but um the reason we're playing that obviously is because we have a new favorite drop

on the show right which is this oh i love pickles you know it's my heritage i love a pickle

use it as much as possible like semitic reference i think so i think that's what he's talking about yeah like you know

Kind of the deli culture, I assume.

Right, right, right. Like a good, like a half sour, like a good Jewish deli pickle. Yeah. I love it.

It's my heritage. I love a pickle.

God, we have a lot of pickle-related audio. I don't have Stacey from the Bismarck Avis. But yeah, between John and the gal at the Avis rental, we're really building quite the roster of pickle drops. also i'm not finding anywhere i guess what i could do is just order a pizza oh my god i'm considering just ordering after i'm done with this tv interview later and i'm back here is it weird if i sit by the pool and just order like a domino's pizza and ask them to put pickles on it and then just sit by the swimming pool fully in my jeans like and like take a collared shirt no take off No, no, no, no, no, I'm like wearing layers, loafers, pizza, full, full on layers, eating a pickle pizza, but I'm going to have to like, I'm going to have to call a place, I don't think there's anywhere in LA right now, at least that my cursory search has, uh, has revealed that is doing pickle pizza, but if I call a place that also makes burgers or something, so somewhere that has pickles on hand and then says, could you throw those

on the pizza no because i mean are you are you not listening to john like it's a whole different thing it's not a red sauce you would get like a garlic sauce on there be here's what john describes and based on this photo that somebody sent me of pickle pizza it goes i'm just repeating what you said yesterday but it's like a slice of that looks good to me but there's no way if i'm in the mood for pizza that that's what i'm getting you know what i mean like i would eat that if we were at if somebody made like small pickle pizzas as a starter that you and your three friends at a restaurant could have a little slice of an old taste of before the main course i would do that but like i can't imagine being in the mood for pizza and being like okay well it's time for a

pickle pizza like that seems like too much to me i ever since we've talked about yesterday it's been kind of living in my brain i think i'm gonna have to do this pretty soon and but find a good one

Yeah, let me see, Portland. Yeah, you're right.

Portland will have a good one. Oh, I'm sure they're probably their main thing. I mean, there is literally the Portland Pickles baseball team. Yeah. I did finally go to a game. That was the game that the Mariners were also playing, and Julio hit the Grand Slam. And I was just walking around trying to find somebody who cared about it, and no one did. And I was like, are we not at a baseball game? This is all part of the same milieu.

Right, right, right. I'm looking. So I think you've talked about this place before. I think I've got a line on one here. Do you go to Rudy's Pizza? Have you talked about Rudy's Pizza? They have a big vegan menu as well. Isn't that in – that's weird.

There's a Rudy's Pizza in Bellingham as well.

Oh, I think I'm looking at the one in Portland. Yeah, PDX. It does say PDX. Oh, okay.

No, I want to know about Los Angeles, Andrew. Oh, well, I just thought that – Hey, Siri, find me a pickle pizza in two hours.

Did you actually do that into your thing? No.

No, I was calling you Siri. I was reducing you to an AI program that finds me pickle pizza.

I'm your boy behind the computer. I think that you need to— He's my Siri. He's my rotten soldier. He's my pickle pizza finder. They have pickles on—oh, here it is. Roo's Dill Pickle, Pickle Chips, Mozzarella Cheese, and Hidden Valley Ranch. I'm out. Sorry. No.

See, again, we've left the bounds. To me, it needs to have at least some tenuous connection to what we think of as pizza. Yeah. Otherwise, I'm just eating, like, some kind of a flatbread that has pickles on it, which sounds delicious. Yeah. But there's some kind of minimum number of what I would consider traditional pizza elements that need to be present for me to think of it as pizza. Mm-hmm. And the thing you just read, it doesn't have enough elements.

Yeah. I'm with you on that. Exactly. Same with the barbecue chicken like we were talking about yesterday. But, boy, man, I was good yesterday. I don't, we keep a bunch of like, this summer I've been really just in the mood for salads. And by the way, I'm not living a healthy lifestyle. I want to make that clear. I'm heavier than I ever have been. But it's just been hot outside and it's just nice to, we've been just keeping a lot of veggies in the house. So I've been mostly eating salads for lunch. I've also been eating, though, side note, a lot of bologna. I meant to talk to you about that. Really? I went, can we talk about that tomorrow? Yeah, I went decades without eating bologna. And now suddenly I opened the thing.

That's a surprising thing to reintegrate.

Yeah, and I need to stop because I'm eating too much. Yeah, it's weird. And we'll talk about it. That's a Ford promo for tomorrow. Okay, I'm writing this down. Tomorrow, baloney talk. Tomorrow, more baloney from Andrew. There you go. All right, for now, though, we should probably get out of here. I assume that you have some Hollywood people to interview and Rubik's Cubes to take the stickers off of.

I've got to go stifle my class envy and interview a Rubik's Cube artist and then find the...

best pickle pizza in los angeles have you ever solved a rubik's cube have you ever actually solved a rubik's cube no me neither and i really did at one time when i was a kid take the stickers off really yeah yeah oh a hundred percent a hundred percent because i wouldn't stick back on right and that's exactly what happened i couldn't get them back on straight no of course that rubik's cube is probably in that dresser that i that i also put the football stickers oh my god it's the dresser of shame and a little chip of your friend's tooth that you knocked out Peter's tooth is in there just all of your shame from childhood I'm not even kidding you like the problem when I tried to do that with the Rubik's Cube was I couldn't get the stickers back on straight and also just looked off all right all right let's leave it there okay all right I think we've uh said quite enough for this Wednesday thanks everybody for listening we're gonna be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio so please do join us for that uh until then have a great wednesday stay safe stay cool go mariners yeah and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all i love pickles you know it's my heritage i love a pickle power out