Muse

Okay, class, settle down. I know it's the first day, but we've got a lot to get through. The earth is flat. The devil is real. The sun is crazy. And that is everything that we know. Congratulations, graduates! That's it? Well, no. You still owe tuition. TV, T.M.

it's not great it's fantastic you totally undersold it the pageantry the costumes

wow i can't do that much jokes because nobody laughs at me targets targets oh my god

oh my god that is a terrible feeling of coldness actually you know what i can email you or you know you can email me at uh splat2 at splatnet.net splat1's my father i mean i'll be sad to see him

go it'll be nice to get my hands on that handle all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of tbtl the show it just might be too beautiful to live when you knock us down we're gonna get up and on the way up we're gonna bite a kneecap off all right and we're gonna stand up and then it's gonna take two more shots to knock us down my name is Luke Burbank

I am your host I don't do this for the clout I don't do this for the fame coming to you today

from the Riverhouse Studios overlooking the mighty Columbia River in southwest Washington State, where it's just a beautiful Wednesday.

Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful.

I'm going to be trying to get through the show while also dealing with a just absolutely incorrigible cat today.

Here is something about the soul of a cat.

because I'm not at my typical setup in Portland where I can lock her in another area where I can lock her up. It's really about her emails, you guys. That's what I'm saying, but the emails. Because I can't exactly lock the cat up. I'm just using a laser pointer to try to distract her, so we'll see how it goes. I can't put her in the other room because there are folks coming and going in and out of the house here because it's an exciting day.

I'm so excited about this show.

They are installing, installing is not really the word, they are pouring concrete out in what is going to be the future TBTL studios here along the river. So that is very exciting here on episode 3000, 766 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Something else that's got the internet excited, Jerry Seinfeld, male model. Oh la la. What's the deal with fashion? You know, I promised myself I wasn't going to add to the Seinfeld impersonation discourse. And I just broke that promise that I made to myself. He is in this fashion campaign for a product called Kith. I shouldn't say a product, a line called Kith. And the internet has some strong opinions on it, which we will talk about. And then there's a thing on the internet that I love. It's called Mel Magazine. and I think it is down for the count yet again.

This is why we can't have nice things.

So we'll talk about that as well and do some emails and v-mails with the help of this young man, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, among other things.

He's my devil, my dark lover, my alter ego. Sometimes I think he's my conscience.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

Like, how, how, how do I still have packages going to my old address? This is probably not interesting content, but, like, I swear I've changed my address on all the appropriate websites, yet I just got a note that something that I bought on eBay is going to my old Roosevelt apartment. I'm sick of dealing with it.

You must have it miss—you must still have that apartment in your Amazon account, and for some reason— Now, is it a subscription thing? Is it something you get every month?

Not this time. This is eBay. So this isn't Amazon, and it's not, like, it's... I've had this. I've gone through this with other sites, like my Grove account. I thought I had it locked in, and I didn't. They were great, by the way. Is Grove still doing ads? Are they still paying for ads? Because I'm about to do an ad, whether or not they're paying me or not. Grove is so great. I had a package, and this was my fault. I hadn't updated my address a couple of months ago. So, bought it.

I don't know, I think it was about $35 worth of products from Grove, had it shipped, realized immediately when I got the confirmation email that it was going to my old address, so I emailed them immediately, it was late at night, I'd like to do my Grove shopping late at night, and I am, oh yeah, Grove after hours, and I was just groving, anyway, I saw that it was going to the wrong one, I immediately emailed and said, hey, oops, stop the presses, Stop the presses, you know, like, can you send that to a different address? Of course, it was after hours, so nobody saw that until the morning. And they wrote back to me, and they said, we can't stop the presses, Andrew. That's not how this works. It's already in, you know, this order's already processing. But you know what? This one's on us. We're just putting the money back on your tab and just reorder everything. That was your mistake, but we're paying for it. We're Grove.co, or maybe .com now. I don't know. They're not paying for ads anymore. So that was a freebie. They don't get the proper website recited on the show unless they pay for it. That's right. By the way, what do you think I did? Tell me if this is immoral. What do you think I did? I went to the old apartment anyway and picked up my Grove box and ended up getting free Grove supplies. I mean, why wouldn't you, though?

Right. And you're going to put it to good use as well. You're going to use those cleaning supplies as God intended. Exactly. Who knows what would happen if you just left it out on the street for any old person to find. Maybe they wouldn't use the cleaning products in the intended way. Who knows?

So I think you did the right thing. That was actually – I'm kind of surprised I didn't tell you about this. That was at least a month ago now, if not a little bit more. And so I went back to my old apartment because I have the – this is a rare situation, I think. I have the phone number of one of the tenants who rents our old place because he was kind of checking in on me when he was considering renting the place. I wanted to be very kind of available for any questions he might have. We were very motivated to help our landlords rent that place, as you might agree. So I gave this potential tenant my number and he was texting me with some questions and they ended up taking the place. And he is the friendliest young man in the world. He would check in with me even after he moved in on some electrical stuff. And I was like, oh, yeah, I don't know. But good on you. And I go there to pick up my Grove box. And first of all, hit major nostalgia. It's only been a few months since we moved out. But just like walking up to that old apartment and walking up the stairs to grab my package, to grab my box, to grab my Grove supplies, walking up those stairs, really hit hard. I think you mean grab your junk. When I walked up those stairs, I was hit with some major nostalgia. And I texted him later and I said, hey, I got the box. Thank you again. And I said, boy, walking up those stairs gave me some major nostalgia. He's like, you guys should just come by and hang out sometime. You're always welcome. I was like, what a nice man. But here's what I did want to tell you. I don't even know what the word is, but I had some sort of emotions when I saw that it was late in the afternoon And their garbage bins were still just out on the streets And I'm like are you guys crazy People are going to be throwing their dog poop in here It's been out all week What are you guys doing Do you not have a garbage plan Is it not scheduled out So I'm making some charts for them That I'll be dropping off at their place When I go try to retrieve my eBay stuff

You know what do they say Nature abhors a vacuum Because your actual garbage situation now At your new house Is very under control You've just got a big fat brain that's got to chew on some big fat problems and it's your former garbage now i gotta take that

anyway i really apologize luke i honestly didn't have anything to say at the top of the show so i wanted to mention the fact that i i have another package going to my old apartment and it annoys me i did not mean for this to be 15 minutes of me babbling what's going on with you you got some concrete showing up yeah it's one of these days where i'm very very grateful that my job is just

to do a podcast because i got real working guys out here at the house and they're shooting crete i don't think anybody shooting crete says that hey man hey man we're gonna go shoot some they they they did say we need another shot when they needed more concrete to come out of the or you know cement to come out of the cement truck um it's just it's just really incredible to see what real actual working people do for their real actual jobs first of all they were here at 6 30 a.m and i was also here awake as well but i was hiding in the house because i was psyching myself up to come outside looking as macho as possible is that the word i'm looking for like i was rehearsing how i was gonna say how's everybody doing i was trying out different things in the house on bubbles was i going to be like morning morning gents or is it going to be like how's it going or was it like because there's like about six people and they roll up and they're tying in the last of the rebar and they're getting the whole thing ready and i just realized like how do i put this i just felt very um like i like the homeowner i don't know like the the person who has no nothing really to offer the process other than ultimately paying the bill but also staying inside made me feel weird like i was hiding from everybody but going outside made me feel like i didn't want anyone to think i was trying to supervise or something like the whole and by the way couldn't be a nicer crew of dudes it's just i was very in my head about going outside and interacting with the folks that are here doing some work on my house i feel like you should have

just gone the opposite way instead of like um trying to look macho if that's the word you use like you should have you should have gone full dandy i think or like fred or like fred astaire i picture like you know tuxedo dance out with a mop with tails forget the mop forget the mop leave that to grove nature abhors a mop um you want uh you want like you know a tall slender tuxedo tails cane tap shoes maybe and then you just tap you sort of like kind of gesture with your straight cane to your head to them as like good morning chaps as i think you said before

yeah maybe i should have leaned into it because certainly my butch move didn't really work as i was just standing on a rock i was standing up on a rock going am i in anybody's way literally i was standing on a boulder trying to make sure i wasn't in the way of any of the concrete that was going in so i don't think i don't think my macho my macho move really sold anyone i don't

think they need you to be macho but you just went out to say a quick hello and just like so they knew you're there and if they need anything you're in the house are you gonna bring them any gatorade

any um you're gonna make them i offered water and coffee i did make some coffee for everybody i told them where the water was try to be you know i try to be a friendly sort i'm just not used to having a crew uh come over and it makes me feel does make me feel like some kind of dandy even though i have absolutely no idea my dad and i were considering my dad was like you can probably pour that floor and i was like um have you met me and by the way having watched the process today i am very very glad that i hired the professionals it's a whole thing like it's really incredible to watch them work and uh all of the kind of technique to it and the the commands between the guy who's kind of like indicating so there's a guy obviously in the like operating the cement truck and he's shooting out crete at the direction of the of like kind of the foreman and he's doing certain hand signals for how much they need and it's also incredible because they were literally down to the like last inch as far as how much they ordered so in other words this guy richard who's in charge of the company cool guy came out just took a look around he goes yeah that's about i don't know what he said let's say eight yards he goes yeah that's about eight yards and then i swear to god it was like that was the exact amount of concrete they had in or cement they had in the truck and it perfectly filled out to the exact last little bit oh wow and there was a moment of stress where everyone was like do we have enough and then there just was a little bit that was still in a wheelbarrow and they scooped it in and it is like perfect right now they're out there

buffing it down in some way that's the fun part probably let's see so you said they arrived at 6 30 we should uh mention or we can mention here that it's getting it's a little after 11 now so that's going on five going on five hours now so it looks like a five hour job probably wrap up in

the next half i think they're they go for a while actually yeah um because there's it's basically they're floating it and then kind of like as in they're just getting it as smooth as possible so it's going to be super duper smooth this is going to be like the floor that you walk on in the studio and then in three weeks they come back and grind it back down and then start polishing it and they got to leave that for a few weeks and they put another layer of polish on and then you get one of those real kind of glossy con or concrete or cement kind of industrial floors

is what we're going for i have a question for you that is kind of at the edge of my mind and i'm Sorry to say it's not really related to this, but you just mentioned something about. It's not related to concrete.

It's not.

No, we can come back to this. I'm seriously not trying to pivot because for any particular reason, it's just something that popped in my head yesterday. I don't even know what I was listening to, something on the radio or maybe a podcast. It was not sports related. OK, but somebody said how somebody said, how big is a football field? And somebody said, well, it's 100 yards. And I thought to myself, is it when you say how big? is a football field wouldn't you include the end zones and how big are end zones are those 10 yards a piece are they five yards a piece you're the person who i feel like i i should come to with

boy are you well i i the reason i think you don't include the end zone is because you can go one blade of grass into the end zone and be done with the whole operation that's true an end zone could just go forever right well yeah like you don't need to if you think about the football field The way I think of it is, like, how far does the team have to get? What's the maximum distance a team would have to get, which would be 100? Well, it wouldn't be 100 yards, but it'd be, like, you could be on the half-yard line. So it could be, like, 99 and a half yards, I think, would be the longest you could go or would have to go. But then you don't—I think the—and I'm going to say the end zone is 10 yards deep. That's a total guess. Do you know they used to put the goalpost—the goalpost used to be, I think, either in the end like it was much closer than it is now and it seemed dangerous you'll see some old clips where someone like catches a touchdown or runs in for a touchdown and they're like evading the goalposts which used to just be like kind of right in everyone's way that sounds

terrible yeah that's the other thing i was thinking because if you consider the goalposts to be part of the football field well then those are clearly more than 100 yards out you couldn't play a game of american football without the goalposts where they are so therefore it is more

than a hundred yards but you don't have to you don't have to run to the goalpost again that's what i think to me the the critical question is what is the distance a team has to travel and the team as a group doesn't have to travel to the goalpost they just have to get one inch into the end zone which brings up my favorite football topic andrew and one of the most boring things you can say about football which is a service i provide why don't they have some kind of chip in the football that when the football breaks a laser line a laser plane that is shot down the front of the end zone the goal line as it were that tells us when the ball's in the end zone this is a knowable thing we have the technology i mean we could do this we this does not have to be a guessing game like it still is in the nfl did the ball break the plane we can know this

it's because people hate lasers that wouldn't bring any more fun to the game would it what People love lasers. I'm completely with you on this. Just adding lasers to football only makes it better. The complication for me would be where does that chip go? You know, it would have to be it would have to somehow encompass the entire football because, you know, if you have the chip in the middle of the ball, but just the very tip of the ball broke the plane. It needs to read that in some way. But you're not a scientist. That's not put it in. Just dip it, dip it, the entire football in it, dip the football in a chip. That's how that works. Anyway, I apologize. I really didn't mean to change the subject of football. It just was kind of like – it was one of those things that I think lodged itself in my brain yesterday, and I just wanted to get it out there while we were talking about yardage. But I'm excited for your –

I've been thinking a lot about football today because there was – our old friend Brady Henderson wrote an interesting piece for ESPN about the kind of – the denouement of Russell Wilson, of Russell Let's Ride Wilson's time in Seattle. And I have to say, it does not reflect particularly well on the man, in my opinion. What is the thrust of the article? The thrust of the article, it starts with Russell Wilson watching the most recent Super Bowl from a luxury box in Tampa and pouting about the fact that Tom Brady has really good protection and that Patrick Mahomes gets to throw the ball a million times a game. and then it goes into detail about the times like apparently if brady henderson is to be believed in why wouldn't you he's a very i think a very trustworthy person yeah he's smart it's very very important to russell wilson to win an mvp the most valuable player award and his frustration at various points over multiple seasons has been when he's playing well and thinks he's in the lead for the MVP race and then Pete Carroll takes his foot off the gas or there was a particular play they mentioned where Russell Wilson had all of this basically free space in front of him to run and instead chucked a deep bomb down the field which was picked off this was against the Rams and I believe ended up losing us the game and there was Brady's reporting is to be believed There was speculation that this was Russell trying to solidify his MVP status as opposed to just doing the simple thing that we needed him to do in that moment to win the game. And so it sounds like one of us, like just the idea that it would matter to him to be the MVP this much.

kind of like it's the antithesis of what you should be doing as a team player yeah exactly um i it's it's funny like i do find stories like i don't know am i a hypocrite are we hypocrites like the thing is don't don't bring me into your world no i meant me and pretzel the cat i'm cat city oh okay um you know the answer is yes because it is true like when when i rooted for Russell Wilson because he was the quarterback of the team that I rooted for I would often defend him like I'd say yes he's a corny guy um and you know he's got these personality things that are kind of cringy but I would still rather have him be my quarterback than somebody who might be slightly toxic or you know somebody who's had accusations leveled against him or even somebody who's like super intense and just kind of or somebody who's named Geno Smith or somebody Well, that's more about that's more about talent on the field. But I even met as a personality thing. Like, I would always take Russell Wilson over Aaron Rodgers. Right. I deeply, deeply dislike Aaron Rodgers. And I still think I would take Russell Wilson over him personality wise. But like now that he's gone, it is kind of delicious to eat up all of the to like let down all of the guards that I had blocking out some of the people hate it. hate this phrase but the for lack of a better word the d-baggery that really does sort of um

encase russell wilson i wouldn't say maybe we have different definitions of d-bag he doesn't he seems like a c-bag to me like a corn he's a corny guy like to me duchery is is it i mean again this is just this is i'm splitting hairs and this comes down to my definition of it versus yours but it's like he just seems so deeply corny to me you know which which again when he was our guy i'm totally with you like i was fine with that and now that he's not our guy it's all right

there at the surface for me yes well i mean there's definitely the corniness that's not that's not gone but also this idea of i maybe debaggery is the wrong word i'm sorry everybody that's the last time i'll say that but whatever it is but like the ego the um the not putting the team first even though making it really making it seem like you're always putting the team first, but you hear more and more stories about the ego and about the fame-seeking and the celebrity lifestyle and just like the, yes, and definitely the corniness too and the let's ride, let's ride, let's ride. Have you seen the full let's ride footage? I saw like a clip of like 30 seconds of it maybe back early preseason. Yeah, him just doing his like green screen let's ride, Which I got to say, in his defense, to a degree, like, whenever I'm watching an NFL game and they show those, like, shots of the players, like, posing or, like, slow motion crossing their arms, like, every single player must have their every single, like, you know, like, what would you say? Skill position must have that. But, like, wouldn't the shot, wouldn't the photo shoot of that be corny for every single person? Yes, absolutely. Russell Wilson, maybe especially. But if anybody got their hands on any quarterback that you like kind of doing that photo shoot, it would be cringy as hell.

I agree. I think the reason and again, this is mostly just sour grapes, because I think there's a pretty good chance that our Seattle Seahawks are just going to get their asses handed to them on Monday night because we are just I don't think a very good football team. so this is all coming from the position of me just being sad about that but there's something about there's something that seems a little especially I don't know it's not like I listen Russell Wilson signed this massive contract with his new football team that he really wants to win games for like that all makes sense but there's just something about him going from go Hawks to let's ride yeah it just feels so kind of like dude do you have any actual loyalty like I know that doesn't make sense i i recognize that i am in the wrong for expecting like what do i expect him to say go hawks right as a denver bronco like it makes no sense but it just feels let's ride but also respect to the hawks that's all i wanted to say it's very simple let's ride but also i feel

bad about luke's feelings can he tag it with that okay quick uh programming note here um well hold One thing about one thing about Let's Ride is I came into this conversation late, but on one of the sports radio shows earlier this week, I heard somebody discussing whether or not a Seahawk should try to say let's fly during a press conference. And I don't know if they were being sarcastic or not. I pray they were because there is nothing there is nothing.

more beta than trying to play off of somebody else's like even if you think less ride is cringy which it is coming back with let's fly still lets the first person sort of write that narrative right you're still reacting yeah but we have unfortunately in seattle we have

a fairly proud tradition of fully beta-ing out in these matters the song black and yellow by wizz khalifa which is a certified banger is about the pittsburgh steelers and then in seattle during one you know playoff run we recorded whatever this exact same song but it was like they said the seahawks color and i was like that is the most beta thing you could do it's so embarrassing

um okay but here's what i will say about this if you enjoyed or hated this little preview of the NFL season which begins for Seahawks fans on Monday night but begins in earnest this weekend you and I were talking offline the other day Luke we're thinking we're going to try to do some no point conversions again as a separate podcast that will be found in is it in this feed yeah they show up in this feed right yeah and we're going to try to do those from time to time during the season as time allows schedules might not allow us to do it every Monday we'll certainly try to do maybe the big games also if this is just kind of a long boring season also i won't be talking about the browns anymore so it'll be pretty much seahawks only so um but if you are interested i think we

should do one on the tuesday after the monday night game yeah if you can pull that off i think that would be important yeah i mean that's shakespearean really and i have to say the nfl frustrates me to no end with all of the sort of greed and the alighting cte and not taking care of, you know, folks that played football and are suffering sort of medical problems, et cetera, et cetera. Noting all of that, I will give them this. That was genius scheduling.

Well, you know, it is also amazing. You know, I said we won't be talking about the Browns, but I will keep half an eye open on the Browns Carolina game because you have Baker Mayfield, the former Browns quarterback, is now playing for Carolina and Carolina and the Browns are matching up in week one too and that couldn't have been a scheduling thing on the no that has to be coincidence because the schedule was set long before he went to carolina that yeah that

one i think just worked out that way the seahawk one i think was very intentional i believe that russell well i think russell wilson had been is it possible that they hadn't released the schedule

yet no i remember they released the schedule i remember the schedule came out and we knew that that it was they were setting up russell comes back home to let's face it embarrass his former team on monday night football in seattle maybe not like obviously you know what i'm rooting for but i mean this this was set up to embarrass this this season what i i was talking about this

with becca and we were debating what's more humiliating for the seahawks if they had to go to denver and play russell wilson on monday night football um or if they have to get embarrassed in their own stadium by russell wilson on monday night football i think in your own stadium

i think that that is more embarrassing yeah i think that's why they did it i really do i think it's like come back home and in front of all of the fans that rooted for russell in front of those people who rooted for him for a decade or whatever it was a decade uh i guess nine years maybe he was with the team um uh and then to have them and again i well we don't have to get into too much sports talk it's it's unclear if really the broncos are going to be that great given their division this year it's just that they're going to be better than the seahawks for sure well i

think most teams will yeah just do you need a quarterback based on football um when it comes to a football matchup i think that most teams are better at it than this team but you never know we've also seen i mean listen the thing i tell myself to kind of try to emotionally regulate over this whole deal is there were many games that the seattle seahawks did not win when russell Wilson was their quarterback like he is capable of coming in and throwing three INTs you know like it could just be one of those I don't I'm looking position by position and trying to figure out where the path to success is for the Seahawks I just don't really see it but you never know I mean there have been so many games where we as Seahawks fans have been just pulling our hair out by halftime at the lackluster performance from Russell Wilson he seemed to always sort of get it together at some point but you know it'll be interesting to see what ends up happening on monday night the good news for me is that i'm already like very at peace with the fact that we're probably going to lose in fact this will be this and i don't say this to be i hope this doesn't sound like a like a insulting in any way but there have been there were seasons with the browns where you just i feel like you went in with a very kind of zen uh kind of approach because maybe it was a year that they weren't super good on paper.

And through the same years that the Seahawks were like, you know, being touted as a possible Super Bowl contender. And I have to say, there's something that's oddly relieving about not having intense expectations about this football team.

That is interesting. You know, I was listening to the Mariners game yesterday, playing darts and thinking about the fact that, you know, like all building your Cal Raleigh shrine.

Oh, my God. I love that guy. I mean, that is a redemption story. Sorry we're doing a no point. Yeah, sorry.

Oh, by the way, speaking of no point, sorry, I'm all over the place, but boy, playing our no point theme song is really going to be a trip this year. There's nobody left. There's nobody left, right? Russell was the last person mentioned in the song. We're going to start Tuesday's no point conversion with a song that praises Russell Wilson. Or we got to get the duo back together, see if they can...

K-Dude and Lil Hoagy, except they do mention the Broncos looking like bald cattle.

Oh, that's right.

God, it still works. I believe that will make the song relevant. How did they make an evergreen song like that? It is amazing. They future-proofed it. I was going to say, I've been watching baseball and the Mariners kind of exclusively for, again, like 10 years, a little bit more than 10 years now. um last year there was a chance that we could have made it into the playoffs but that would have just been icing on the cake we knew it wasn't quite the year even at the outset because of some because of like COVID holding some young players back and whatnot um but like this year coming into the season people said this has to be the year Mariners have to Mariners have to make the postseason here we are like late in the season playing meaningful baseball like the last projection was like the 99 chance of mariners making the playoffs and like part of me like i was seriously i had this moment of like am i ready for that like am i ready for the games leading up to that am i like because it can be a meaningless game in june and i'll be ripping my hair out over a mariners game like if there's a what would it be like if the mariners make the first round of the playoffs would be like a three-game series right like is my heart ready for that ask your doctor if your heart is ready for mariners playoff baseball because this is literally something i've never experienced before playoff baseball for a team i'm rooting for and i don't i honestly don't know if i can handle it don't take mariners playoff baseball if you're allergic to mariners

playoff baseball don't take ozimbic if you're allergic to ozimbic um i will tell you this from my the distant recesses of my brain back the last time that the Mariners well the last time that I lived in Seattle and the Mariners were in the playoffs which would have been 1995 they went again I think in 2001 but I think I was living elsewhere and so I was interested but not quite as like in 95 when they made that epic run and they got there I remember those games against the new york yankees in the first round i don't think i've ever watched more in a more intense sporting event and that includes obviously football basketball there's something about playoff baseball where it lived like every single pitch is just do or die it is i the i i remember the stress i remember addy was like one and i had her and my girlfriend at the time janette had to take her around the block because i was getting so i was becoming such a maniac in the apartment like she was like i need we can't have a child in this apartment with you sir you're lucky that she brought her back i know i know actually you know what she would have done a better job than me raising herself um but but uh yeah it's very very intense and that's a good point i mean that's gonna be it's a it's a it's a pretty big deal or at least for people like us it's a pretty big deal And it's very, very intense. And it's a little different than football because there's more games, you know, like obviously the playoffs, you're kind of one and done with football. But the thing that's weird about the MLB playoffs now is for the wild card, it is critical that the Mariners try to win the wild card as in be the first team. Because you play all three games in one stadium. There's no back and forth thing. So you're either going to play all three games on the road or all three games at home.

Yeah. Yeah. And definitely. And then we've mentioned this on the show before, too. And if they if the road does go through Canada, Toronto, they'll be in trouble because one of our starting are probably our second best pitcher won't be pitching because he's not vaccinated because he's too smart. He's smarter than all the doctors. Yes, he has. Talking about the playoff baseball, I mentioned on the show a couple of times now me watching all these old VHS tapes and recording them. And one usually I'm just capturing the commercials off of them.

But one thing that I did capture in its entirety was this rebroadcast that I told you about. It was an early 1996. They rebroadcast the 1995 Mariners California Angels AL West tiebreaker game.

I was there. You were there? I was in the kingdom. I was two rows behind home plate. I lied my way into that game.

Luke, I knew that like 95 was a big season and it was storied or whatever. I did not realize how intense that particular game was. Do you remember that game? First of all, Randy Johnson pitched a full game. It was a – Luis Soho hit an inside-the-park grand slam. I've never – because of – well, it wasn't quite a grand slam. It wasn't – apparently it wasn't scored like that because part of it was an error. It was an error. Exactly. But essentially that was it, and that happened in the seventh. And then the Angels pitcher, Mark Langston, like freaks out. I don't know if you got this from being in the kingdom, but they kept showing him in the dugout and he kept swearing at his catcher. And he was like just beside himself. He looked like a rage. He was just so filled with rage. You thought he was going to explode or like literally kill one of his teammates with his fists. And Randy Johnson pitching a full game like in a playoff game. I had no idea that that all went down in that particular game.

It was astounding. Yeah, we caught them on the last game of the regular season, I believe. Or it obviously went to that play-in game. And I remember I just went down to the Kingdome and I just stood in line in the press line because I had somehow weaseled my way already in at KUOW enough. That was the summer after my freshman year of college. so I had you know enough I don't know what you would call it moxie to figure out that I just waited in line at the press box and I went up and I said Luke Burbank KUOW and they looked around they looked around they couldn't find my press pass why because I didn't have one and then they just said we can't find your press pass and they said would you just just accept a ticket and I said yes I will and they gave me a ticket and it was like three rows behind home plate I remember

you telling me this story but like I just didn't have context for it like I didn't realize what now i've watched that full game and by the way i have it digitized i need to get it to you somehow it is oh please luke it is the best foot luke it's the best football game i've ever seen and it's a darn good baseball game too i honestly think it was the best baseball game i've ever watched and it was 25 years after like i could read on wikipedia what the outcome was going to be and i was on the edge of my goddamn seat it was astounding and now i now i realize that that was the game that you talked yourself into so you graduated high school this is something that i think i always forget i because i you always introduce me as like this young man and we're basically the same age but you did graduate one year earlier than me so that that's actually good

for me to remember nine four and it's amazing that by 95 i was already lying my way into things under the auspices of being a media professional like i just went from like working at the u-dub visitor information center telling people how to get to schmitz hall or odegaard library to lying my way into mariner games in very very short order the last question i have because we should probably go to a break and then you should tell me about this photo you sent me which is yes really disturbing speaking of the edge of your seat i have sent you a photo and i would like to

explain what it is when we come back from the break a lot of people would say in 95 like staying alive in 95 for your class was it staying allure in 94 we didn't i did we have i was pretty

i was only minimally connected to the senior class that i was in because i had to transfer schools from my junior year to my senior year so i do remember we would at pep rallies we would just chant nine four nine four but i don't know what our like i don't know if we had a at nathan hale if we had a catchy rhyme for 94. Maybe only the cool kids knew it and they weren't telling people like me. This is how popular I was my senior year of high school. There was a rule at the time that if you were a senior, there was like a minimum number of photographs of you that had to be in the yearbook.

Like clubs or what have you.

Probably because they figured we want everyone to be represented, which actually I think is a nice idea. I just remember sitting in class and someone comes and knocks on the door and says, can we see Luke? and like one other person they called us out they handed us some kind of a piece of paperwork and said act like you're using this like hall pass or whatever and they just took a picture of us and then that was in the yearbook it was like i was so i so did not register at this school that they had to like proactively figure out a way to work me into the situation oh man i really

i know this was an earlier part of your childhood but i really wish it would have been a photo of you like examining your stamps using like a big looking glass holding it back to the light.

Or holding it up to the light Anyway, okay, we do have to take a break But when we come back, I want to talk about this photo And also a couple of other things That I promoted on yesterday's show But never closed the loop on Coming up here on TBTL Hey, let's thank The Daily Donors These wonderful folks just Basically paid for about 45 minutes of low rent Sports talk And we sure do appreciate them for it Gail Kenny is in New York City I was toying with trying to do A Matthew Barry impression there But I held back Because I don't think anybody I also kind of forget how he says it

bizarre. Yeah, I know the drop you're talking about now. I'm hesitating because I don't want to do it either. He really hits the city in a weird way. I don't actually

have the drop here with me either. That's the thing. It's back at home in Portland. But I think the larger context for that audio is it's some kind of weird off between Matthew Berry's character and Nick Kroll's character on what we do in the shadows. Oh, I forgot that

Kroll is in that too.

It's like they're saying

things oddly to each other i see they're trying to be weird i gotta catch up on that season i i think i'm caught up through last season but then never return no that's not even true oh no i'm really far behind in that i'm gonna i need to finish watching the boys i need to catch up on that then severance then what we do in the shadows so i'll check in with you on all of this stuff in 2026 hope they make no new tv before that appreciate you also thanks to kelly moore in Seattle, Washington. I believe the founder or co-founder of Tens Helping Tens. Nice. Thank you, Kelly.

Thanks, Kelly. And the paint company as well. Yes. Very, very wealthy, Kelly Morris, and we appreciate some of the largesse coming our way. Caitlin Parker is in Malone, New York.

Oh, that's my good friend Caitlin, no longer in L.A. Look at that. The address has changed. Thank you, Caitlin.

Appreciate you supporting us all these years. Laurel Robertson is in Ferguson, North Carolina. Sounds beautiful. What up, Laurel? Thank you so much for all of your support in so many ways over the years. And then Chelsea Shriver is in Vancouver, British Columbia. The real Vancouver. Thank you, Chelsea. Hey, if you could put a word in with Justin Trudeau regarding Robbie Ray, That would be great Because we could That's going to be real trouble See previous comments regarding The Mariners playing in Canada Thank you Chelsea And then Dominic Arrico is in Federal Way, Washington Thank you Dominic By the way, a little update This is a dangerous precedent to set Because I make so many mistakes During the Daily Donor Thanks I don't want to start correcting the record But remember yesterday we were thanking somebody named Sheila yes rakes yes in Ithaca yes and I said she was childhood friends with Dave Ross and she emailed to say first of all you said my last name wrong I said reeks it's rakes oh right you know

what that's right she's told us that before too sorry that's on me too that's how we keep you

donating Sheila every year to see if we say your name right and she clarified that she ran into Dave Ross one time and I believe was maybe a 10 at the time and approached Dave Ross because She was aware of Dave Ross from you know like The Ross and Burbank stuff or whatever But was not in fact childhood friends with Dave Ross So Sheila record

Corrected although she says Here I never attended a Cairo Radio holiday party that was something I was That was that was a weird I don't know what the hell I was Talking about yesterday but Or today for that matter but she says She has been to two TBTL live shows Pre Andrew and post Andrew I didn't realize we're in a post Andrew world here on tbtl is there anything you'd like to tell me luke um yes but we need to do it off air okay sounds this whole time to get through the rest of the show without hey andrew can i talk to you after the show what if you've been doing this show with me like you fired me a year ago you haven't actually been broadcasting the shows that i'm on you just do this with me every day so i think i'm still on the podcast it's like the sixth sense of podcasting you've been dead the whole

time anyway thank you so much to all of our donors for keeping the show going we would not be here without you hello and welcome to top story all right top story I promoted this yesterday Or at least I mentioned it in passing And then I never got back to it And I realized Probably left at least one listener hanging I was on a jog the other day And the weirdest thing happened, Andrew Which was some mystery brown insect Not a bee I know what a bee looks like Some mystery brown insect Jumped onto my calf And sunk its fangs into me to the degree that i like was running and then all of a sudden started hopping on one leg swatting at my calf to get this thing off and finish the run and then noticed some redness which has been getting worse every day to where it is now i sent you a photograph of it like how how large would you say that that that area is you know it's funny the way this was cropped

at first i thought this was your arm um so now that i see it's your calf boy that is big um that thing is it the size of a small pancake i guess pancakes really different size that doesn't really

help a large plum but now if you look at the photo you can see there's a dark spot in the

midst of the redness that's where the bite is yeah yeah yeah now is that the one that's kind of at the edge of the big rash or is it more in the middle it's weird that the rash is not like centered around it i don't know if rash is the right word there let's say irritation but this is very big it is very red at some point i mean listen it's you know it's a bug bite um and so your body's having a reaction to it you'll probably be fine but at what at what point do you maybe have somebody look at this if it if it doesn't go away in a couple of

days maybe i'll go in i mean it's not painful it's just kind of itches but it is it's just very strange i've never had anything happen like this like i'm and i don't know why i'm asking you you weren't there i was but what do you think bit me i have no idea what's even out there what did you say it looks like it kind of it was not huge it was brown it almost maybe seemed kind of like a beetle of some sort oh interesting what i know is it was not a bumblebee it was not a wasp it was not a honeybee it wasn't in the in the bee family okay it was something else and it wasn't a spider

Okay, yeah, because I used to get...

Because I would have recognized a spider.

I used to... I don't know if this happened more than once or if it just happened once and it really stuck with me, but, well, like, I was used to having, like, poison ivy rashes growing up because I was always playing in the backyard, but then one time I had something, and I swear it spread around my body. I could be wrong about that part, but it was not poison ivy. It was a spider bite because there was one big bite, and you could tell where it started from, but then I had a bunch of little red things. I don't know. maybe it all stayed in one part of my body i don't recall but i remember as a kid being pretty freaked out by that like knowing that a spider had bitten me and this was my body's reaction somehow that was much more upsetting than knowing that just like i rubbed up against a poisonous plant you know um but i'm trying to i mean i don't even know how to google this i'm like looking up skin irritation which by the way googling skin irritations is the worst it's just That's the worst. Like, you just want to throw away your computer.

Yeah. I mean, maybe it was a spider that was kind of, like, all sort of, like, what's the word I'm looking for? Maybe it's a spider that was, like, had its arms crossed.

A spider with its arms.

It couldn't be.

Could you look up a Rove beetle? Do you have access to a computer there? I do. I'm going to do it on my phone so I don't further. Okay. R-O-V-E. A Rove beetle. R-O-V-E. be a carl rove beetle says win by any means necessary that's what it looked like look at me andrew well you said you said here i'll bell myself go blind exactly what it was um the rove is it deadly it says that oh not deadly you're probably gonna lose your leg though no i'm um i'm trying to read about this this but you're looking at a photo of it and that's it huh okay well let's

what it was all right this is precisely what landed on my calf and bit me wow way to go oh

and this is interesting and sending me when i type in rove beetle bite and i apologize rove beetle bites is one of my when i'm jamming out i like to snack on rove beetle bites um it looks like it's sending me to oh news uh new zealand government website here um were you in

new zealand by any chance uh well i was in the new zealand of portland called irvington But this is exactly, look at these pictures of Rove beetle bites. That's exactly what I'm dealing with. Look at this first picture that comes up. Peridus dermatitis, it's on someone's neck, and it's exactly what's on my calf. Well, this is kind of satisfying, but can you tell me what's going to happen next, though? Because this is a weird thing. It says, rove beetles do not bite or sting, but their blood contains a strong toxin that can cause skin and eye irritations. But how does it get the toxin in you? Let me tell you what. Oh, did you crush it?

This thing was biting me.

Did you stop it?

Or did you, like, slap it? Well, yeah, I whacked it, but it was also, it was biting me. It was 100% biting me.

So I don't know what. It says here, if you crush the beetle, the toxin is released and absorbed by your skin. The beetle can be crushed if you swat it like a fly or a mosquito.

That's probably what the welt came from. Wow. Andrew, again, this is – I'm extremely satisfied with your research on this matter. So that's probably what happened was I thwacked it and that made the – it's toxic innards go on my calf. But it was 100% biting me. That's the only reason I thwacked it or pinching me.

Now, it does say that – it sounds like you maybe even haven't gotten the worst of this because it says that this is going to get gross. no no it sounds like you kind of avoided it it says like after four days you'll get bad blistering or extensive i hate this word pustules um and then it says the affected area remains irritated blistered and sore for 10 days um and then if you did get the toxin on your hands it could spread to other parts of the body um so has it been 10 days yet that's that's what you want to circle on the calendar and i know that you have calendars i already feel better though just

knowing what happened to me so thank you and yeah that for that update uh the other thing that i mentioned yesterday on the show just at random and then never came back to was me learning that my karaoke skills are not what i maybe hope they could be or dream they might be andrew because when i was at this family sort of camp out with becca and her family so both of her brothers are actually djs like they dj parties and weddings and events and things and so her brother jeff has like a really professional setup and one of the things that's really fun about going to this labor day hang is that they set up this whole kind of like dj booth and there's a canopy you know like and the equipment's all kind of like under the canopy and it's like a legit karaoke deal what i didn't fully realize was that jeff also has he's rolling on the whole night oh okay so saturday night everyone's having a great time drinks are being consumed songs are being sung it's great everyone retires to their tents cut to sunday morning cooking up some breakfast and what do i hear coming out of the system a recording of me singing karaoke from the night before and andrew when i tell you it was shockingly bad i just had no idea i mean i never thought i was pavarotti but like i was pavarottin at singing were you that was did you come up with that two

days ago and that's why you had to cover this on tvtl you knew that that would get me no i promised you that was a completely spontaneous hold on though i have so many questions okay um why were they playing it back in the in the morning why would anybody be playing were they just replaying the entire night like is that what anybody wants to hear selection i think jeff was just being funny probably okay he was trying to get so he acknowledged that like in all seriousness like this was bad in a way that he was playing it to kind of razz you a little no i don't i mean

this is jeff is an extremely kind person i don't think he he's not a ball buster in that way i think he just you know had a recording which is kind of playing a little bit of it's like like Like, let's let's reminisce about last night. And in fact, he probably wasn't playing it to try to demonstrate to me how bad my singing voice is. But the way that I heard it was, oh, my God, that's what I sounded like last night. Like, that's rough.

OK, couple more things. And with that context, there's just a lot to explore here. If he was playing it for you or not for you, but if he was just playing it and he's not the type of guy who and you guys don't have like kind of a you know, you're not busting each other's chops. that's not part of your relationship well then he didn't hear it as something that was pavoraten he heard it as something that was like when somebody's like hey look andrew here's a picture of you um and you're like oh my god that looks terrible but in their eyes that's just how i look and they didn't realize it was a bad photo of me it's just my own insecurities described it

exactly yeah it was happening yeah and the photo is a perfect analogy in fact the same thing happened becca and i were in dc when i was doing wait wait out at a wolf trap and she posted a picture to instagram of us underneath the lincoln memorial and i was like oh my god that's what i look like and she was like i thought it was a cute picture and i was like that's terrible and she was like i can take it down i was like no i guess i just have to deal with the reality that's what my face and body look like now you know so i think that i think the analogy with the picture

is is very apt yeah because i've like i've it's been a really long time since you and i have been in a karaoke room together i've never done karaoke before it's not something that i'm comfortable or or have a desire to do but obviously you and especially going back a ways you and a bunch of our friends were very into karaoke so i've sat in many a karaoke room and bar and heard you do karaoke and honestly i can't hear it in my head right now but i never was like oh that's rough and let's face it like you know when somebody's kind of rough at karaoke like you always seem to carry the crowd always seems to be into it and it's never been and i'm you know what i mean like i wouldn't i wouldn't volunteer this if it weren't true i would just stay quiet i think it didn't

help that i was probably pretty far into my cups at the time that this particular recording was made and certainly not making it better and um also i think it feels like a real safe space there because you know there's not that many people and you can just go up and work the machine yourself so i think i was taking some swings and some misses in terms of like you know if you're at like a crowd if you're at the baron off and it's like a two-hour wait to get up and sing a song You're probably going to go with a tried and true Number and I was I think I was really Playing I was really exploring the space And found myself I think I crossed some lines As far as my vocal range and what I Could actually pull off well could you tell me

Like what were some of the songs that you were

Experimenting with I think I did last dance with Mary Jane by Tom Petty Okay yeah Which I don't think I'd ever Tried to sing that before that's not a particularly hard song and then i actually don't remember this tells you how faded i probably was i don't remember um i just remember a couple songs where i was like oh well that got higher than i expected

to get at certain points yeah yeah yeah um you know and so yeah it was uh i two years ago

uh they just decided this was actually really fun this wouldn't be particularly fun for you But if you're somebody who likes to sing in front of people It was like we're just going to do songs That involve Billy Or Bill So it was like Billy Joel, Billy Jean It was like kind of thematic And I found myself liking I found myself enjoying trying to sing Billy Joel more than I would have expected And this was before I had my My sort of moment of awareness That Billy Joel seems like he's actually A lovely human being I never knew that before I heard him on the Howard Stern show But anyway So even back then, though, I was still like, this is actually more fun than, I think Becca and I tried to do, what's the, We Didn't Start the Fire?

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, you really jumped in. Yeah. Wouldn't that be one of the most difficult, I mean, that would be the most difficult Billy Joel song. Yes. That and It's the End of the World as We Know It by R.E.M. would be two difficult songs.

Well, I did yell Leonard Bernstein at some point during We Didn't Start the Fire, which I do not think is the same song. Nope.

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 uh maybe we'll talk seinfeld on tomorrow show have you seen the photos in question i have yeah okay i won't yeah i was introduced to them in a in a way that uh

is uh somewhat embarrassing that i'll explain to you tomorrow hold the door on hold the door yeah As we get into some emails and V-mails here, I wanted to pass this along from listeners Cheryl and Corvallis. There is a Portland area, Portland, Oregon, Oregon, Portland, Oregon meetup among some tens that we mentioned on the show a couple of weeks ago, I believe. And Cheryl wanted to let everybody know that we have about 10 people coming to the potluck this Saturday. If anyone else is wondering whether or not they can still sign up There are still about 20 spaces left So let's see It sounds like they're trying to get about 30 people there Check my math on that I think the place holds 30 people I saw in an email Gotcha But it also says that the ceiling can't hold them So I don't know what that means Kind of mixed messages for sure We'd love to see some more PDX or Pacific Northwest folks join us at this TENS meetup So again here are the details First of all if you want to sign up look for Sarah's message about this on the TBTL Slack page which you can get to via tbtl.net if you're not already part of that community and the details on the meetup are Saturday this coming Saturday the 10th 12 to 4 p.m. at Brooklyn School Park in Southeast Portland. Do you know that area Luke? Brooklyn School Park? I do. Yeah.

I walk through Brooklyn often Becca and I will do this loop along like in Selwood and then we'll go on.

On, oh, Phooey, I'm forgetting the name of the Springwater Trail, it's called. And it takes you right through that Brooklyn area.

Nice, nice. So anyway, if you're in the area and want to meet up with some more 10s, do it to it, my dudes. Absolutely. Let's see here. What else do I have?

I am planning on swinging by that, by the way. Oh, really? Lord willing. And my flight from Chicago gets me back to Portland because I'm going to be in Chicago doing Wait, Wait. But if I can get back in time, as I should, if everything works out, I'm going to try to swing by and say hi. Nice. That would be great. Well, that's another draw right there. That means we're at 11 now.

So there's only 19 spots. You better sign up, you son of a gun. You're pretty good at doing stuff like that. Here, let me just, since it's Wednesday and this will be the last day we have to do emails and voicemails, let me play this. It's been in the hopper for a while here. This is from listener Jill. If I recall, I listened to this a while back. Some of the some of the audio on this might be slightly tough to make out. I'm not sure. But essentially, Jill has a connection to a USB drive that may be, as the kids used to say, sus.

Hey, Luke and Andrew is Jill in Lakewood, Ohio, your unofficial Olympics correspondent. and I was just listening to a show from the end of June where you had the story about the guy in Japan who went on a bender and lost his bag with a USB flash drive in it and I had to call in and tell you the story so I was in Beijing this year covering the Olympics and I was in the media workroom and I got a lot of requests from for quote-unquote interviews from Chinese journalists and for one of them I did my little interview with him and when it was over I gave him a pin because pin collecting is really big at the Olympics and I had these little lapel pin type things for my media outlet so I gave him that and he felt so bad because he had nothing to give to me I said don't worry I feel really bad I'll get you something so a couple days later he finds me in the workroom and he says oh do you remember me and i said uh yeah and uh he gave me this little tin and the tin is a little dinged up and it's got some scratches on the writing but it's from his i think outlet which is some kind of t5 sports channel in china and it's a keychain with a microphone on it and the microphone is about three inches long and i'm like oh this is from a state run television station in china um not suspect at all to be given a microphone so i threw it in the uh in the nightstand of my hotel room i kind of forgot about it eventually i don't know why i decided to bring this thing home because i thought well we'll rip it apart and see if it's bugged so i get it home i throw it in my guest bedroom forget about it for a couple months friends come over i'm telling them stories about beijing i'm like oh yeah i have this rando keychain let's rip it apart and see if it's fucked and so i rip off the one end the handle and there's nothing in there it's a little rubberized thing but i rip off the top of the microphone and it's my lucky day i have been given a usb flash drive by somebody who works for the chinese government So I have it. I'm dying to know what's on here, if anything. I mean, there's probably nothing, but I do not have a computer to sacrifice. But, you know, you both talked about how you'd be so curious to know what was on a flash drive that you found in the parking lot. I'm dying to know what's on this thing. And if anybody has a computer they want to sacrifice, I'd be more than willing to send it to them just to see for fun if there's anything good on here. So park route.

Okay. I don't know if this is a long shot or not, but Jill, email me at andrew at tbtl.net so that I have your contact information. I know you've emailed in before, but I don't know if I still have your contact info. And if any listener out there has a computer that is not hooked up to the internet and is ready to go to the landfill anyway, and you want to help Jill out with this project, I will connect you to. So you guys can all email me, andrew at tbtl.net, especially if you work for the State Department. I would love it if you work for the State Department and you wanted to help Jill out with this.

Absolutely. Any FBI, CIA, any kind of top level. Did she get the microphone from Mar-a-Lago?

Was it spread out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago? If you look at those photos of the documents, you will see some of these keychains. You see a tiny Chinese microphone in her back. Yes, exactly. So anyway, that is kind of exciting. I'm a little confused, I guess, about whether or not this was a secret USB device or it was just like one of those toy USBs that is like shaped like a.

microphone because they're in the broadcast business and and jill just hadn't explored it

enough you know what i mean i'm a little i think i think door number two it sounds like to me that it like it's that it was just it's a us it's just a clever usb drive and they decided to go with the the the motif of microphones because they're in the media yeah because i don't know what the point of a secret usb drive would be exactly recording device also if i was going to bug something i I wouldn't bug a microphone. Although, that's the last place you'd look.

Not if you're Jill. Not if you're Jill. It's the first place you'd look. Exactly. So, anyway, intrigue. Intrigue and espionage on TBTL. At the highest levels here on TBTL. At the highest levels.

All right. I think that's going to do it for today's program. Thank you, everyone, for listening. I need to go out and check on how that Crete shooting has come. I'm just going to keep trying to make that a thing. Go shoot some Crete. Go out there and see what's going on. And, yeah, I guess I'll maybe have an update on tomorrow's show about how it all turned out. Nice. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back. Boy, I just really went Rizdol on it there. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, friends. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

before we go any further i need to know if there are any hidden recording devices in the room i will find out if there are yeah i'm sure you would but there's none because that would be stupid of us and we're not stupid silly move it's a no power out

I'll be right back.