Muse

All right, guys, are we going to get into the book or not? Because, I mean, I can always go downtown and have a drink. On Sunday? Sunday night. People go out on Sunday, guys.

Girls go out on Sundays. Yeah, crazy people are out on Sundays. It would be nice to meet some girls, though. I mean, I know you guys haven't had dates in a long time. That's not true. Yeah, that's not true. I have a girlfriend, and I don't have a girlfriend. You just started that sentence by saying, I have a girlfriend. Yeah. Why would you do that? I just wanted to hear what it would sound like coming out of my mouth. It's such an inappropriate time to experiment with that.

T-B-T-L. Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. Hello, friendos. This is Sophia reporting live. From the mobile gas station on 108, just here to tell you I had a Maria Menounos sighting on my gas pump, and she was telling me all about intermittent fasting. Over and out.

I have no idea what you just said, but I feel totally transformed. Have a good show, dummies.

What you do is so important.

All right. Hello. Good morning. And welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo? Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where...

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

Checking the weather forecast. It really is beautiful here. This weekend is going to be spectacular. We're looking at highs of 88 degrees. Even though summer is officially over, but there's still just a little lingering, wonderful, warm weather here in Portland. And we will take it before we enter the long, wet darkness. I want to apologize for uttering the phrase long, wet darkness. this early in the program. I'd meant to wait until later in the show to do that. I'm a little distracted because next to me is a huge box. I mean, a really, really large. I had to use my skateboard to wheel this box back up to my apartment. And it is the Litter Robot 4.

Kittens! Inspired by kittens!

This very involved, very expensive litter box, robotic litter box that I got for the cat. Now here's the problem. The cat is up in southern Washington at the house that I'm working on with my dad. Last night we did Livewire down here in Portland and the show went kind of late and so I just ended up coming back here to this place to crash. but the Litter Robot 4 had arrived and so I took it out of the box and I set it up in the bathroom and I'm so excited but there's no cat here to use it so I had to use it and it works! It works everybody I think this episode is going to work It's episode 3778 in a collector's series

Let the fun begin

A TV anchor in Los Angeles has been fired from KTLA for really going to the mat for a colleague who maybe didn't need anyone to necessarily go that hard to the mat for them.

Oh my God, I'm freaking out!

We'll play the tape for you. Also, in media news, the brief reappearance of Serial, all 16 minutes of it the other day, that is, Serial the podcast, had Nick Qua, the writer over at Vulture, the sort of go-to expert on podcasting. Wondering where all the hit podcasts have gone. I'm a podcaster and I care who knows it. I simply would direct him towards TBTL, one of the longest-running, most popular hit podcasts out there. It's the one you're listening to right now, by the way. It's a Friday, so we're also going to do some music for your weekend. And we're going to do all that with the help of this young guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, may be known for, maybe best known, I should say, for his depictions of the tall ships. The last couple of days he's spent getting bent. I cannot believe he just told that joke. But he is back home now, and he is joining us right now. He is Andrew Walsh. Good morning, my friend. Doesn't he look like the kind of boy who has to fight him off? Yes, he does. Yes, I do.

Hello, Luke. Hi. I have something I want to share with you at the top of the show. You ever get one of those emails? This is just kind of a work email that I got, but it just kept getting more bonkers the more you read it. You're just like, oh, this is a normal email. Is this from our work? This is from our work. This is from our editor, James. He's our Hey Dummies editor. The videos that we do, of course, for listeners. If you don't know, we have a Friday newsletter. There's a weekly video in there with Luke and me. I'm looking very forward to seeing your road kit. Oh, yeah, it's a very short video this week, but I'm a man of few words, but those words count, and so do my actions. It's a line from Batman, 1989. I shouldn't have to say 1989. When I say Batman, everybody should know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I love James.

You're honestly, in a way, you're underestimating the TVTL listeners by contextualizing it. Yeah, because they know there is only one true Batman.

There's only one true Batman, and it's not the Batman. It's Batman, 1989. Anyway, James edits our videos for us. He's very funny. He adds some flair to the videos. He makes them better. I really appreciate it. And he also added to the newsletter content last week because earlier this week on the show, you read parts of the newsletter. And it just contained a bunch of silly titles that James and I and Genevieve had come up with for last week's video, which featured you and some donkeys. Oh, what were the donkeys' names again?

um car sam carly and frank maybe i will um scroll back in my text messages and get you a

definitive answer on that in just a moment some listener pointed out i think it was kayla and stockton pointed out that those might be named after i carly characters i carly is a show that i'm unfamiliar with but do with that what you will interesting fred carly and sam they might all be iCarly characters. Anyway, I don't even really know what iCarly is. I assume that the I is lowercase with a dot above an iPhone.

I believe you are absolutely correct on that, by the way.

That's all I know. Anyway, so James writes back, Hey, I love this segment the other day where Luke was reacting to all the Hey Dummies titles ideas we came up with regarding donkeys. I forgot to tell you last week that my first under-the-table gig all through junior high and high school was taking care of donkeys in South Jersey. Like, that's interesting right there. Yeah. It's donkeys in South Jersey. James goes on to say, I built them a pole barn and a fence, and I did a lot of feeding and cleaning up after them. Whoa. That is interesting, right? Absolutely. Goes on to say, the property owners were friends of my dad. They were strange surveyors who were on the lam with new names after getting caught growing weed in Florida. Interesting. Wow. So the people who own these donkeys are on the lam with different names. they're friends of james's dad but they got caught selling weed in florida so now they're on the lam that's why the donkeys need to be taken care of next sentence they had a lot of guns and also raised rats in their basement to feed all of their snakes which were also in the basement which i also had to clean it was disgusting i went to college so i wouldn't end up with another job like that my god no donkeys no horses no cows whenever you've got

that doesn't eat i think we've decided on one thing james napoli is recording the next hey dummy it's just gonna be a single camera confessional about how the hell he found

himself in a basement full of rats and snakes exactly the other day for a newsletter thing i said hey could you send me a photo of yourself i need it for the newsletter he sends me a photo of himself playing acoustic guitar in a 7-eleven somewhere i don't know man this guy's got character He's got a whole backstory. Yeah, he does. You should have him on on Monday, and I'll take the day off.

I just am so glad that this has brought us back to one of the greatest drops in TBTL history now.

No donkeys, no horses, no cows. Whatever you've got that doesn't eat.

Is that how I believe that's Ray Sparler in Low Overhead Sumner? Tiny Overhead Sumner? Tiny Overhead Sumner.

I don't know that name and I don't know that voice but I think you've told me before that that comes from a commercial where it's like you can drag your car, push your car, pull your car I don't care, you'll get money towards your new car, right? It was just an ad that used to play

during the radio days of TBTL and not unlike Priceless Granite or whatever it's really not shocking that we were fired from the radio station when most of our jokes were making fun of the ads that were literally playing during the show. Like, and the no donkeys, no horses, we, it was an example of where, and you and I, there's another one that you and I talk about a lot now. And I think we can talk openly about this because neither you or I have key cards that work at Cairo anymore. I think we're pretty much. Oh, you know what? I ran into a longtime Ross and Burbank fan last night.

Oh, really?

Outside of Livewire, a really cool guy named Nico, who's a friend of a guy in our house band at Livewire, our friend Pony, who's in the house band. His friend Nico worked at a pizza joint, like delivering pizza up in like Stanwood, Camino Island, and would just drive around listening to Ross and Burbank, you know, all morning long as he was taking pizzas around and it was and i hope i'm not putting nico on french but it's very gratifying to hear him also lament the the monsoonian shift of cairo oh yeah yeah he was like that that station used to be good and now it sucks yeah this is really sad but um i mean we still have friends that work over there's still some some great people there but uh unfortunately much like the republican party has been remade in the image of donald trump somehow Well, Cairo seems to have had a certain monstification. But my point is, there's a new ad that you and I love to roast privately, which is the Cressy Doors ad. I guess that's more on the ESPN side or whatever they call that station now.

I'll see if I can play it here in a second. I isolated one of these commercials a while back, but then, as you would expect of me, Luke, I had to archive my hard drive for space recently because I've been loading in too many 1995 Mariners games from this old vcr i'm running out of space on my computer honestly you're doing god's work with

that and i would encourage you to continue on please but so yeah the the no donkeys uh drop

just was one of those no donkeys no horses no cows whatever you've got that doesn't eat

um was just one of those ads where we felt like somebody should have somebody should have intervened and protected this feller who owned the car lot from recording his own ads i mean i do think that the main thing that drives talk radio local talk radio commercials is the desire by local business owners to hear themselves on said talk radio station i would so they come in

wouldn't you say this guy though this guy who's kind of doing this over the top like you know no donkeys whatever like that's also part of a tradition of being the wacky car dealer though

right as opposed but i just don't think he pulls it off like a cal worthington does yeah you've got you know absolutely you had glenn grant chevrolet i cannot eat these chevrolets and then he would have a hot like a hot wheels camaro in bread from a sandwich that he couldn't eat because he had too many chevrolets or yonker nissan twofer and then he started the guy glenn i think glenn uh whatever from yonker nissan would have his son glenn church would have jimmy church his son on the ads there was a certain kind of personality that could really pull off the ridiculous local car commercial and this one felt to me like this guy's reach slightly exceeded his grasp no donkeys no horses

no cows whatever you've got that doesn't eat i have only heard that clip of that right there so i can't speak to the whole commercial i you know i kind of like the wackiness of it i'm also stalling here because in plugging an external hard drive into my computer luke i have completely crashed my computer it has gone to a black screen now it really does not like this bit at all it does not want me to find a usb flash drive in the parking lot oh my goodness what am i doing what are we doing people anyway sorry i can't so we're not going to get the um crusty door we might it just might be in the middle of top stories at some point that's fine i'll wait for it okay just

Sorry, I didn't mean to leave you hanging there. I was chugging some raspberry lime, polar, 100% natural seltzer. And we just hit one of those rare moments where neither one of us is talking. Yeah, no, sorry about that. A little bit of a dead spot. Okay, quick question. How was the drive back from Bend, Oregon to Seattle, Washington yesterday?

It was nice. It was, you know, pretty uneventful. So I'm sorry that I don't have much to say there. But the other day, I think it was yesterday. I wasn't super proud of the show, my part of TBTL yesterday, because I think you want maybe it was the day before. I think you wanted some quick reacts from me on the Wilco show. And I felt like I didn't have much to say. So somehow I said too much too fast. I think about that later. It's like I have this weird thing where when I don't have something to say, ask the people at KUOW who produce Seattle now as well, because I do this when I'm a guest on their show. When somebody asks me a question, and I feel like I don't have much to say. It's my Seattle, and I want it now. Did they consider that name for the show? They got the Cressy Door guy to do that. God damn it. It's not on this hard drive either. I think I better just concentrate on the show. But, yeah, I do this thing when the...

less of an answer i have somehow the more i will say and the quicker i will say it and so when you asked me the other day like how the wilco show was i just went off king for quite some time i don't agree i want to let you know that that was not how it hit my ears for instance as a uh fellow wilco admirer i thought you actually described the durability of the band for me in a way that i hadn't really thought of it uh previously so i don't know if the listeners liked it but i found that conversation to actually be fairly illuminating oh that's good i guess we did talk about yeah we did end up getting there so okay i'll take that thank you but uh to not do that now to not just blab too much too quickly about a non-eventful trip i'll just say it was blessedly non-eventful we drove back i did most of the driving um and i gotta say we are i guess about to get some really hot weather again like you like you mentioned at the top of the show but But it's just this weekend, you know, I said this to Veeves. I said, boy, it's funny that we're coming down to Bend, Oregon, a place with a lot of natural beauty and hanging out with old friends that we, you know, some of our closest friends in the world. But we haven't seen them in years and years and years. And I kind of associate them with kind of fall time because we used to stomp around New England taking photos in the fall together. And it just seems so perfect. I said, this weekend really feels like this is kind of the representation of the end of summer and the beginning of fall. And Genevieve turned to me a couple of days ago and she said, yeah, because today's the first day of fall. And I was like, oh, I didn't realize that. I hadn't. Did you know that? Was it yesterday or the day before was literally the first day of fall? I did only because I heard them say it, I think, on the radio or somewhere. But I don't usually track those things very closely. Like, it could have been mid-December before I realized it on my own, if I hadn't just heard someone randomly say it on OPB. Yeah. So, anyway, we just – it really – I don't know if it's going to ruin it this weekend with some really blazing hot, weird weather. I was going to say unseasonal weather. But, you know, it just felt like a really nice fall drive. Eves and I got to – oh, this is what I can report on. If you, I might have mentioned this after my Denver trip But I'm not sure And this is an important PSA This is a public service announcement for everybody If you find yourself on a road trip And you want to listen to road music And you have Spotify

This is a serious message to everybody watching my update right now

That's exactly the voice I heard in my head when I was doing that I knew it put on on spotify dial up the artist eddie rabbit and then turn eddie rabbit into a radio station on spotify and you will just get so many road songs from the perspective of truckers who can't be tied down um from i mean buck oh buck owens um to the statler brothers to i mean it is good if you want that like kind of old-fashioned like late 70s early 80s country music about like am i wrong or was there something in the 80s about like big rig culture that really caught the public imagination it's like now my question is did you start with i love a rainy night was that the song no are you driving my life away drive we didn't choose the song uh we let it shows you it shows us we just chose Eddie rabbit and I gotta say that and this is another PSA I don't know if you got Ringo handy there this is very important too I do but I'm also playing Eddie rabbit so this is gonna be okay just make sure see what happens here when I do both of these at the same time okay this is gonna be bad are you playing it didn't really work but okay were you playing anything there because I didn't hear anything come down yeah the problem is I'm I'm toggling between YouTube and – this song, by the way, slaps. You do know this song as well, this Eddie Rabbit hit, right? Oh, I don't hear anything right now. I don't know if I'm supposed to or not. Oh, I haven't – I have the whole thing muted. This whole time has been quiet. I'm just living in a delusional fever dream where only I can hear Eddie Rabbit. Yeah, I know this song really well. Yeah, and I did get to hear it – and I did get to hear this song on the station, but um or or whatever the algorithm but uh but no that started with driving my life away but here's the other thing i want to let people know um if you are on a road trip with a romantic partner and you want to try this trick like hey let's put on the eddie rabbit spotify algorithm just make sure that your relationship is in a good place like viz and i are in a good place and so she trusted me and um it didn't cause any issues at all and to me like that is a milestone in our relationship because I could see I could see

it being a bit of a relationship tester just to turn to somebody and say hey would you like to listen to the eddie rabbit spotify algorithm with me because it's not sexy i thought you were saying it tests the relationship because of the nature of the songs that it then produces for you i.e. the songs about truckers wanting to basically be free from their familial romantic responsibilities No, actually, now that you put it that way, and I think about how much Genevieve enjoyed those songs, now I am worried about my relationship again. There is a song, you know, the algorithm started to sway a little bit near the end as it, you know, tends to do. Like it started with like these, again, 70s and 80s kind of country songs, maybe some of them earlier than that, a lot about trucking and road driving. But then it started to expand a little bit into some slightly schmaltzier 70s music. And there is a song that Genevieve loves And it's just striking me now How much Genevieve loves this song And how much I should be concerned about it And I can't think of the tune at all But I will tell you that Was it Sleepin' Single in a Double Bed By Barbara Mandrell off of the album Moods? No, but that sounds so good Did that come up on your algorithm? Because that did not come up on ours Wow, this sounds like real Love will keep us together vibrations

Sleepin' single in a double bed They get over things I wish I'd say I should have held you, but I'll let you go

Oh, that's so good.

Now I'm the one sleeping all alone

By the way, sleeping single in a double bed is how Becca and I prefer to go to an Airbnb so that she can get some sleep with my snoring. Yeah, really. Like, can we get two bedrooms, please? One for the snorer and one for the person who's trying to sleep. No, I'm doing kind of a version of what you and Genevieve did, which is I had the Eddie Rabbit song on YouTube, And then I was scrolling down the right side of the YouTube page to see what it was. And you know what? It was sending me to some Buck Owens. Like, you're not wrong about the, I don't know, the sort of word cloud of this kind of music that comes together when you play Eddie Rabbit. Yeah. And then I just texted Genevieve. There's some song that she loves. And again, it's not quite country-ish, but it is all about, I think she might even do it at karaoke now. But it's sung by a male performer, and he's basically singing like, listen, he's really doing a good job of pitching it to his potential partner, whoever he's meeting at a bar or whatever, saying, listen, I don't want anything from you. There's a line like, I'm not asking to move in. Does that ring a bell to you, Luke? There's a song where the chorus is, I'm not asking to move in. It's just like, I just want to spend the night with you. And that's like one of Genevieve's favorite songs. And now I'm thinking about it. I'm Googling that. Is it, uh, is it, uh, I'd really love to see you tonight by England, Dan. That is exactly it. Good job, internet. Yes. And why is it England, Dan, by the way? Okay, once we get through this, um, Fred Meyer ad. Here, wait. Here, I got it here on Spotify, which is ironic because Spotify is going to take our podcast Well, that's why I thought maybe if I, you know, it makes no sense, but I was like, well, maybe I'll play it from YouTube and they won't figure it out. YouTube, the other thing that constantly negs us. Yeah, here, take a listen. Okay, we've really got to get to the chorus here because we are going to get pulled down so quickly. I'm going to skip ahead a tiny bit.

Oh, yeah, right.

Somehow the Eddie Rabbit station produces all these songs sung, usually by men, but not exclusively, but sung from the point of view of suitors who are convincing the other person, hey, don't worry, I'm not going to put any pressure on you. But it's like a total, like, what is the art of using somebody else's power against them, sort of? Judo? Yeah, it's like jujitsu, sort of. It's like saying, oh, don't worry, I don't want a commitment from you, when really what they're saying is, you know, don't latch on to me. Let's just spend some sexy times together, you know? Right. It's a little, yeah, exactly. You're weaponizing, you're playing it like they don't want to be serious, but it's really because you don't want to be serious. Exactly. And even better news than that, of course, Luke, a half hour later, we have a pressy door commercial. I'm sorry, cressy door commercial here, mislabeled as pressy on my end. we never even explained why we think this series of commercials that is currently airing during Mariners games is funny. And the reason I find them notable, if not funny is because I, I worry about the person who's who's on the air here. He sounds very, he sounds more than low energy.

Now, this isn't the worst of the worst, but he sounds like he's struggling with things. I don't want to build this up too much. But just imagine the scenario in which you've got a local company and you'd like to promote it and you're willing to spend some money on that. And so you meet with your local radio station and you meet with the production director and they give you some ideas. We could have you read these ads or here's a bit we could do, et cetera. and so uh then you're like yeah i'd love to read the ads and then this is the read you do yes that's what's kind of that's what strikes me as interesting and from the from the listener standpoint you're

listening to the mariners carlos slam tana just got a grand slam and you call him slam tana because i love that i did i didn't make it up my friend did you make that up no my friend paulie said hey mariners got slam tana and i was like all right lock it in that's great good job paulie Yeah, so anyway, and then you hear this commercial.

Hey, everyone. Rick Witters, owner of Cressy Door. If your auto dealership or warehouse is in need of new high-speed overhead doors or your overhead doors need servicing, give us a call at Cressy Door. Cressy Door.

Now, you would agree, Luke, that that is one of the more high-energy versions. That is—he is amped in that one. He is so amped there.

It's the only one I was able to grab, yes. I think what you and I both need to invest some serious time in recording some more Mariners broadcast. I need you to get the most downbeat Cressy Door ad, and I will get Chris Mad Dog Russo going, You want baseball? The doggie's got you covered. Every time I hear that promo and I'm driving, I curse myself for not having pulled over and somehow audio hijacking it on my laptop. I know. It's so hard to get the commercial you want.

Like, because I told you, like, usually once a season, I will just hit record on the Mariners radio broadcast and walk away for three hours and then come back and try to grab the commercials out of it for my other podcast. But there are still ones that slip through the cracks. You don't get the ones that you hear over and over and over again. Somehow, like, they still don't air when you're actually recording. I don't know what that phenomenon is called.

I know. I mean, it just takes a little forethought on my part. I need to be monitoring Syria. Like, I need to basically go to SiriusXM, whatever it is, .com, play it on my laptop, and then be rolling. The other thing that makes it hard is I have not—I did at some point pay for the pro version of this program that I use called Audio Hijack. That's how I grab all of the sound that I play on the show, generally. But, like, at some point, I was going to have to buy it again, and I didn't want to pay another $80. So I'm still in trial mode. Oh, yeah. Which means after eight minutes of recording, which is generally speaking more than enough time for what I need, it goes to just this, like, insane static noise.

Oh, I know exactly.

Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. I can't set it and forget it. Otherwise, I would. It's like I have to be sitting there monitoring the feed in eight-minute chunks so that I can catch Chris Mad Dog Russo saying this annoying line.

I, listen, I'm going to say one more boring thing. If you have anything interesting after this, Luke, say it before we go to break. But then I got to sit on my hands because I feel like I'm I feel like I'm not shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. I have to report that. I was just going to say a little bit of tech talk here. That is one of I mean, listen, I'm just a PC guy because that's what I started using a long, long time ago. Now I'm pretty locked into the Microsoft way of life for better or for worse. But one of the things that you can do with most Microsoft style computers, most PCs, especially if you buy one looking for this, is the ability to set the sound card so that if you have a program, you know, like any audio editing and recording program, like I use Adobe Audition, that you can set up your sound cards just to record what you hear on your computer. You don't need a special program for it. Like I just use, you know, the same program that I edit the show with every day. If I want to grab something off the internet sound wise, I just open up YouTube and hit record on that thing. And it's not it's not a special sort of program that you got to kind of keep on updating or you record it over here and then import it into your editing software. Like to me, that is it is worth it is worth its weight in gold. Now, it's a concept, so it doesn't have a lot of weight to it. I understand. But like to me, that is one thing that gives there is like a period of two years where I had to use a Macintosh computer. Do they still call them Macintosh computers when I was at KCRW and it was like, OK, now I got to bounce over to this other program, record it in here, set up the settings, then pull it over to this other program. And somehow, like I found that so onerous.

It's one of those things where we feel like this has been coming up on the show kind of a lot where there are these things that I sort of for some reason refuse to just either download the right piece of software for or just spend a little bit of money on, even though I.

You know, you know, I have a six hundred dollar litter box in my bathroom right now that I recently pooped in. And like I spend money on things all the time. And yet, for some reason, there are these things that would make my working life so much easier and that I would get all kinds of ROI on and I don't do it.

Yes, I'm a little bit in that situation now. I had some without going into detail. I had some cable situations in my studio set up in a way that I knew I was going to have to, at some point, kind of make it easier to navigate my desk and my studio and whatever. And I just kept on, I moved in here, I set up my equipment, and I just kind of left it a certain way. And I was like, one of these days I have to actually tidy this up and make it much more user-friendly in here. And by virtue of having to take apart my parts of my studio and take it on the road with me last week, putting it back together last night gave me the opportunity to fix some of those things. And it feels really good. It's like, why didn't I just do this a long time ago?

Yes. What is the thing? There was something I just did. I think this might have even been the genesis for this conversation a week or two ago. some small thing like that where i just said this is a really good use of 10 minutes of my life and 40 of my money and it's already making my life a whole lot better so i may just break down and do something like that but in the meantime uh your assignment is to find the most depressing cressy

door ad please yeah it probably won't happen during today's show it took me a half hour to find that one and it was a letdown so that wasn't just well ironically it wasn't enough of a letdown

andrew yeah we needed to be more that's a really good point it was too it was actually too high feet um okay i actually am really excited most of the time with the top stories let's be honest we're phoning it in but i am really interested to talk to you about one of our top stories today and that is the story of this tv anchor in ktla who just seemed to take the uh it's not even firing because his colleague was not fired his colleague chose to go work somewhere else different tv station but he took it so personally the way that the tv station handled the departure of his colleague that he rented an airplane to pull a banner over the tv station saying something uh to his colleague and he has now actually been fired she wasn't fired he has been fired We'll talk about it coming up in a moment here on TBTL. All right, let's thank some daily donors. These folks are making today's episode possible with their financial support. I don't know if we're going to get to this story, this show, Andrew, but there's this big piece in Vulture magazine that's been making the rounds. I apparently I only follow fellow podcasters on Twitter now because everybody in the podcast universe yesterday was going on about this. And it's this article about sort of the lack of hit podcasts. And I read the it's it's a pretty lengthy article. I read the whole thing. And whenever I read about the podcast business, I am reminded of how lucky you and I are to get to do this show and have this particular business model, which I would argue is extremely rare, almost possibly one-of-a-kind. Do you think that this business model is one-of-a-kind in America when it comes to podcasting? Well, I don't think so. I don't know much about the— Were you just quoting that song? Well, I don't know much about podcasting business.

I was just realizing that I don't want my bosses to hear me say I don't know much about the business side of podcasting. I don't know as much as I should, but I would say— They'd like, believe me, they would like us to know less about it. Yeah, that's true. The listener-driven model I don't think is completely unique because I believe Jesse Thorne over at Bullseye or what do you call his network, they kind of rely on— Max Fun. On Max Fun. They kind of ask listeners to support them in a public radio-style way. But it is less and less common because people are doing more like Patreon-y things and saying, yes, you can get some for free, but the rest is behind a paywall or whatever,

which is something that we've been able to avoid yes uh although some listeners have asked that we do create more barriers yes i know we're one of the rare shows where people are like could you make it harder for me to get this so then i can get part of my life back uh jane king is not one of those people jane king is one of our donors today and she's in eugene oregon thank you jane uh jeff mckee is in linwood washington and is helping keep this whole thing going as is jordan now rocky here in portland oregon he is a long-suffering um detroit tigers fan by the way

Oh, Jordan. Well, the good news, Jordan, is you're going to get three wins against the Mariners. I might meet up with Jordan. He tweeted at me the other day, and he said, hey, we're both going to be at that Mariners-Tigers game. Let's meet up and do a high five. I said, sounds good to me, buddy.

Do you know that the Mariners have the best record in baseball against teams that are over 500? I'm sorry, of the teams that are in playoff contention. they have the best record of any of those teams against over 500 squads and the worst record of any of those teams against under 500 squads i am i can't i didn't know that exact stat i didn't know

that exact stat but i felt it in my gut and i've been feeling it in my gut and that's all we can say in that matter otherwise we'll never get to anything today point is jordan you're gonna have

a fun time watching uh a recently called up journeyman pitcher just blank the mariners who have everything to play for i know that will be a fun day at t-mobile for you jordan so we thank you for your support and go tigers uh mark suey is in tarzana california i have always wondered if tarzana california if that is some kind of play on tarzan i doubt it i wonder what that what the origin of that word tarzana is i wonder if it's maybe native american or uh now i guess the reason that i think of that is because when i worked in la at npr west it was called in culver city on um just down the street from us was this really large um complex of condominiums i once looked at a condo for sale there which had been previously owned by the family of jack black which the the real estate i mean it was like a very modest condo right like a two-bedroom you know ground floor condo and the uh the real estate agent said you know who lived here before uh it was for sale jack black's parents but anyway that used to be a movie lot it was called the rain tree apartments or the rain tree condos and it used to be a movie lot back in the day and it used to be where they filmed the tarzan movies because there was some kind of lake in the middle of it that was used in the tarzan shoot another thing the real estate agent told me so when i see tarzana i don't know that's not that's nowhere near culver city yeah but i just think it was there a tarzan connection there is i was wrong i said i doubt it in a

cocky way i mean we all heard it tarzana according to wikipedia is a suburban neighborhood in the san fernando valley tarzana is on the site of a former ranch owned by author edgar rice burroughs It is named after Burroughs, fictional jungle hero, Tarzan. I couldn't have been more wrong with my tone and my words. Leave it to L.A. to have a city that's named for Tarzan. Right. Of course. It's L.A. adjacent. Why wouldn't it be named after Tarzan? I mean, it's amazing it's not named after Donny Osmond. And also wasn't it isn't isn't it the biopic about Edgar Rice Burroughs that has the world's cringiest trailer that Genevieve and I have been talking about for years since we saw it like on a DVD together years and years ago where the Vincent D'Onofrio Vincent D'Onofrio screaming. It's all he knows. It's all he ever wants to know in the rain. Yes, we did.

We did almost an entire episode on this, and I think it really paid off because isn't it called like call like the whole wide world? or something yes good remembering yes the whole white it was just the further we dug into it the more insane it seemed to be also not to be confused with a movie that i grew up i don't know if i ever actually saw it but it just loomed large in my mind in that like i think the vhs tape was for rent in a lot of places which was gray stoke colon the legend of tarzan comma lord of the apes starring christopher lambert aka highlander it was a film directed by hugh hudson based on uh tarzan of the apes 1912 uh christopher lambert stars as tarzan although the film tarzan is never used in the film's dialogue andy mcdowell plays jane the cast also who cares um gray stoke went on to receive three oscar nominations um but uh i was that i think that that was the as far as i was aware the first like prestige version of tarzan in what i would consider the modern age even the 1984 was like 40 years ago or something yeah but sort of like you had the the 1950s versions that were being filmed by jack black's parents condo and then for a long time no tarzan movies and then somebody was like this is ready for like a serious the serious treatment and they did gray stoke the legend of tarzan comma lord of the apes but i was i'm wrong again

as i continue to um google over here the whole wide world was

biopic of robert e howard who's the guy behind conan the barbarian right tarzan of the jungle tarzan the barbarian yes well you were not far off and i'm actually glad that you caught that so we could save everybody the email but man that that movie uh description about the conan conan the barbarian creator is wild just over like we should i'm gonna go back and re-listen to that i won't bore everybody by making us redo it now but i am going to personally go back and re-listen to that what episode is it does anybody know lynn could you email me that episode number please oh i found out maybe i'll sneak it in at the end of the show i was talking to our friend lynn fam last night after live oh nice and i said uh well i asked is it a relief to no longer have to maintain marsupial gurgle each day of course that's the great repository of tbtl audio that lynn um maintained for many many uh episodes he said yeah it's you know it's been kind of nice to not to just get to listen to the show and enjoy it and not have to be thinking about pulling tape and i go does it make you crazy when andrew says something really wild and then says thank god lynn doesn't record the show and he said well i do record those things yeah he said so i think those maybe are still going up on marsupial girl like now it's it's the rare gem of one of us saying something so over the top that lynn stops what he's doing and decides to excise that uh is that really the word i'm looking for is excise no that's like to tax isolate um yeah there's resect i think it was maybe the one i was looking for that's fancy i was trying to keep it as surgical as possible i see okay to resect a piece of tape um so my point is head on over to marsupial gurgle You may find a surprise gem of some some BS that Andrew and I said recently, even though Lynn is not like pulling many, many clips per day. All of this is to say we need to thank Kirsten Medhurst in Fairfax, Virginia. Thank you. Thank you, Kirsten. Appreciate your support. And then Heather Rowe is in Sellins Grove, PA. I don't know I have been all over The great state of Pennsylvania Go John Fetterman And I don't know if I've been to Sullins Grove I'm looking it up it's named after Tarzan Oh okay That makes sense Yeah that's all I got Anyway thank you to all of our donors of the day Thanks for making TBTL possible we absolutely could not do this Without you hello and welcome to top story this is a i think kind of a weird situation that unfolded recently in los angeles reading from the new york post my guiltiest of pleasures when it comes to news consumption i mean it's like i have to read the new york post whilst plugging my nose

because of the all the articles about hunter biden's laptop yeah and just like i'll just read a headline and i'll be like what madness is this and then i realized it's an op-ed piece by piers morgan like it's like judge g it's like it's it's it's like kamala harris is murdering children i'm like how can you print that and it's like editorial judge genie pierro it's like so unhinged but they also do tend to dig up some interesting stories this is somebody named david proper writing in the new york post a los angeles news anchor was fired after he slammed his own tv station on the air for how it handled his former co-anchor's abrupt departure from the airwaves this guy's named mark mester mark mester of ktla was initially suspended then given the boot after delivering a surprise off script defense of former co-anchor and pal lynette romero who wasn't given the chance to say goodbye on air several employees of the television station told the los angeles times the other thing about the new york post andrew is they have almost no original reporting yeah everything i think there's three people there at the new york post piers morgan judge genie piero and david proper yes every piece in the new york post is just their sort of re uh constituting of some actual reporting from something like the la times absolutely but i have got this clip now when i saw this i will admit andrew when i saw the headline la anchor fired after going rogue on air in defense of ex-colleague i thought well you know good on him i mean there's we live in a world that doesn't have enough professional loyalty and i was gonna basically i thought i'll play this tape and then i'll ask andrew would you go rogue on my back right exactly that's where i thought we were going that you were saying this is what's going to happen when they fire you andrew but then i listened to the tape i started to wonder if this guy is totally okay um for okay first things first and i don't mean to so

sound dismissive of saturday programming on television but this was this was a this is the saturday morning news on ktla now i'm sure they're still getting you know it's la so they're probably still getting 800 000 viewers but i cannot remember the last time i watched the local television saturday morning news i assumed that was just all infomercials at this point like i

didn't even know they were still doing that yeah i mean i guess it makes sense that they're doing an update for folks but like yeah like for me when i think about like saturday evening like saturday early evening news i can almost like smell the pizza but not even early evening morning oh this is morning oh i'm sorry oh okay gotcha i was picturing like my my parents going out and we have a babysitter and you can i have this very visceral memory on saturdays of just like the smell of pizza intermingled with my parents like cologne and perfume as they were getting ready to go out for the night and we have like our little like uh tv dinner tables set up in the living room so we can watch uh i don't know some special movie and uh eat pizza but anyway you're talking about in

the morning yeah i don't know i'm not up for that shit i know nor am i and i so just okay the the i'll give a little context before we start playing the tape but basically uh this uh fellow mark mester uh was very very good friends it would appear with his uh one of his co-anchors somebody named Lynette Romero who had worked at this TV station for a long time she worked there for like 24 years the story goes that she was tired of working the weekends and had requested to move to the weekdays and that request had been denied and so she had accepted a position at a different TV station in LA this is sort of the kind of thing that happens but instead of being allowed to give a sort of a goodbye message to the KTLA viewers that she wanted to do. Instead, some other person at KTLA, somebody named Sam Rubin, read a statement that just said, I've got the article right here. I got it if you need it. Okay, good. Yeah, will you read what exactly they said?

Oh, I'm sorry. You know, this is the news director writing a statement, so maybe this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but the first news to hit is this statement. After nearly 24 years, Lynette Romero, our friend Lynette, has decided to move on from anchoring our weekend morning news. KTLA management had hoped she would stay here her entire career, and KTLA worked hard to make that happen. But Lynette has decided to move to another opportunity elsewhere. I don't think this is what you're looking for.

I think that was probably their response to the media coverage of this dude's meltdown. Oh, maybe. But what had happened was a different reporter on KTLA came on and read a statement saying, Oh, this was it, though.

Sorry, that is it. It says this was written by the news director, but read by Sam Rubin during a September 14th segment. So, you know, it's pretty by the book. It goes on to say, but Lynette has decided to move on to another opportunity. Lynette, we wish you luck. We miss you, and we thank you for everything you've done for KTLA. On behalf of everyone here, we wish you and your family nothing but the best. So that's what was read on September 14th.

Doesn't seem like the most disrespectful, you know, sayonara, right?

It didn't give her an opportunity to say her own goodbye, but that's kind of station policy, as you and I know from most radio stations. Once you are no longer going to be a broadcaster on the station, they usually don't let you do live broadcasts anymore, just in case, you know, you want to say something that.

Or you end up stripping down to your tighty whities and doing the running man for the studio. And nobody would do that. Because you've got a thousand people watching the webcast. Right, exactly. That's how things can go really, really wrong. Right. Shout out to people who are watching that webcast God, I would kill to have that body again Mortifying at the time But 46-year-old Luke would love to be transported back to 33-year-old Luke Anyway, so that's what happened She decides to go work somewhere else That's the statement that's read on air Again, they don't let her say her heartfelt goodbye Which maybe kind of sucks But it wasn't like they, you know, said something mean about her You know, on air just was kind of one of those corporate-y kind of things. Well, this was the response from her colleague as they came back from a break, and he decided to just kind of commandeer the segment. By the way, does anything say Saturday morning local news like that music? I've only heard excerpts of this, so I didn't get to hear the actual bumping in. This is great. It's just, it's like, I don't know who the guy is who wrote, maybe it's the same guy that wrote the like hold music

that goes way too hard it's got real tim and eric energy what is it what is the kid who makes cats anyway go ahead good morning and welcome to the kplay five morning news here at eight o'clock on this saturday morning alongside my colleagues we have megan tell us we have doug holkin we have

kirk hawkins i'm mark mestre also no offense that's more people than you need on a saturday morning

some offense we've got rick rickerson we've got tom thomason and in the back it's carrie carrington uh there's 80 people on this soundstage right now saturday morning nobody's watching

uh this is normally the time where we do our four and five segment get to check in with everyone and see how everyone's doing but obviously things are a little bit different this morning so i'm going to take some time and ask to speak directly to you at this hour to tell you what it is that happened here on wednesday so i want to start off right now by offering up an apology to you what the viewers experienced was rude it was cruel it was inappropriate and we are so sorry

all terms that have been used to describe episodes of tbd let's hear that tape again shall we luke can you very save that's canon that's now that's now in that's now in play

i also want to say sorry to lynette romero because lynette i love you so much you literally are my best friend you did not deserve what happened to you on Wednesday what if this is

what if he is only Lynette's eighth best friend I know and that's like whoa dude that's kind of a

lot okay so what when he says what happened to her on Wednesday was this statement that I just read you just read that was read to her that was read to the viewers on Wednesday and he says you don't deserve what happened to you on Wednesday it was somebody reading that statement

that is exactly what he appears to be referring to which again it's it's not like it doesn't sound like they you know turned her key card off and frog walked her out of the head of the tv station like it sounds like she went to work somewhere else because they would give her a

better schedule yeah can you please take the ipad really quickly so i can explain to everyone what exactly went down okay what i see i haven't i only heard little clips of this can you take the

ipad like it's like hold my beer pad oh my god jesus take the ipad like i can't even be holding the ipad for this that's how affected i am by what happened on wednesday when they read a fairly nice note about her pursuing a different professional opportunity you can really hear the nerves in his

voice to the nerves and emotion in his voice but i think it's mostly nerves yeah so the truth of the matter is the woman in the set of your screen is our boss her name is janine and janine is a

terrific woman and i want to explain why so he's now showing a photo of i think it's him and in the middle is their supervisor and then on the far side is lynette romero so it's if i remember right because i'm not watching the footage anymore but this is also it gets weird because it's clear that he wants to say that their direct supervisor wasn't the problem but i feel like he doesn't really end up finishing this thought about this particular person. Just take a listen

to this. And Janine is a terrific woman. And I want to explain why. All we can say about Lynette is that she has an opportunity and she wanted to take that opportunity. And if someone wants to do that, my goodness, go take that opportunity. And that is exactly what Janine did. In the process of that, an announcement was made on Wednesday. Sam Rubin had to read it. It was unfortunate. As we mentioned, it was inappropriate, and we are so sorry about it. Well, by the way, as you mentioned.

What's inappropriate about it? As you mentioned there, buddy, don't drag Tom Tomerson into this. The other people on the stage, on the soundstage, are apoplectic, by the way, Andrew. They're like, what are you doing? And don't bring us into your fever dream, dude. Like, the looks on their faces is pretty priceless.

Lynette deserved to say goodbye. It didn't happen. I don't know who wrote the script. I don't know who handed it to Sam Rubin. Regardless, this was a mistake. We owe you an apology, and we owe Lynette an apology.

Now, we can't... Okay, this is a lot, but you figure, okay, he's wrapping it up. Let's go to traffic on the force. No, Andrew, he's just getting started.

...show this to you this morning, but Lynette, we do have a gift for you. It is flying over our station this morning. There are words. They're from an airplane, and there is a banner that's flying over Hollywood right now. All we can say to you, Lynette Romero, this morning is that we love you, we miss you, and this is going to be the most difficult thing to move this show. I can't even speak right now.

He personally rented an airplane to pull a banner that said, like, we love you, Lynette Romero, or something to that effect, over the station. But, Andrew, the producers wouldn't let him put footage of it on TV. So he had to just basically describe it to Lynette Who presumably lives in Tarzana Cannot even see this airplane You know like where Santa Monica hits the 101 That's where KTLA is Over by like Tytown and like Hollywood But like the real end of the rainbow Hollywood I used to always say It's like people just coast in on hope And they just get to that section on Santa Monica Boulevard And then it's like they're out of gas Thank you.

money and everything uh-huh that's where um that's where the girls girls girls um club is that motley crew i think named their album after right isn't that kind of along that in that area i think so

it's also uh pretty near gold diggers uh-huh which was a club that i used to i used to drive santa monica home sometimes and i would see gold diggers and it it just looked like a pretty down market i guess strip club or video parlor or something adult wise and i always thought whoever goes in there and that's where fred willard got busted yep and i was like i guess the person going there is fred willard anyway a plane is flying over gold diggers saying we miss you lynette romero who cannot see it and it's not allowed to be on tv because the producers are like we want no part of this we are not trying to also get fired dude we can't even move the show forward without you i don't know how we're going to do it but here's i have some ideas read the script talk about a car fire in tohunga and get over it how are we gonna move on it's local news television uh some somebody is gonna go on a police somebody's gonna lead police on a chase somewhere in stevenson ranch you're gonna fly the ktla chopper over it and everything's gonna be fine like it's acting i mean again this this is a person who is definitely overestimating the impact of this professional departure for somebody on the the population

of los angeles you've taught me everything that i know and you always talk about two things dignity and grace and that is how we're going to breakfast i thought you were talking about the things we eat say bye to you today we're going to offer you dignity and grace which is what this station should have done from the beginning do we need to count all the things about Lynette that she has done. She came here to anchor with Hal Fishman. Oh my God, dude.

Do you know she anchored with Hal Fishman? Legendary Hal Fishman. They still haven't found him, have they?

She tied an anchor to Hal Fishman and he's somewhere off of Newport, California.

We think. Awful happened to her. She could have taken some serious action. She didn't. She wanted to hit the field as a reporter. Huh?

huh he's a he's like alluding to some kind of like professional misconduct that she could have sued the company over is that what that is yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna back the tape up a little bit i do not i cannot at this time andrew say definitively if this is hal fishman related or not i assume or if this is why he is currently somewhere in in newport bay but and grace which

is what this station should have done from the beginning. Do we need to count all the things about Lynette that she has done? She came here to anchor with Hal Fishman. Something awful happened to her. She could have taken some serious action. She didn't. She wanted to hit the field as a reporter. Grace and dignity is what defined her life. She's been all over the world. She traveled to Rome. She covered the Pope. Her marriage.

Wow. This is making me so uncomfortable. I am. There is not a relaxed muscle in my body right now. i am i had not heard i only heard like 10 seconds of this thing it's amazing because what this fella

is describing is the work that somebody who is a you know fairly well-regarded tv journalist might get to do if things go well you might get to go to the vatican yeah right yeah yeah yeah like you know i mean it's like it's as if he's describing it like like the tv station caught on fire and she personally dragged out over 50 staffers like no she got a cool assignment to go

to rome to cover the pope what does that mean and also why does ktla need to cover vatican it's like what do you mean to say is lynette who by the way i don't want to drag her into this good on she didn't do anything we did the same thing lynette convinced her bosses that she should go to the vatican for something in the same way we convinced our bosses that we should go to new hampshire to cover the primaries because we thought it would be fun yes and i wanted to see

the places where you used to go eat chinese food at lunch yeah um her life she's been all over the

world she traveled to rome she covered the pope her marriage was on ktla5 today i thought he was

gonna say her marriage was on shaky ground because of the thing with hal fishman i can't handle this

i can't we gotta get through this i am going i'm gonna collapse under the weight of this segment

this might be some of the best tape we've played in a really long time despite it making you

uncomfortable. I think it's really quality audio. Dignity is what defined her life. She's been all over the world. She traveled to Rome. She covered the Pope. Her marriage was on KTLA 5. To David, she obviously had so much fun. There's the marriage. And then who can forget her beautiful daughter, Olivia. We heard one of her first heartbeats here on the air. There is when Olivia was born. Olivia is everything to Lynette. And just imagine what she's going through. All of that happened on Wednesday. Imagine what's...

going on for Hal Fishman I mean is anybody looking for Dufresne party of three what happened to the Fishmans as she lost her mom several months ago she had to send her daughter off to college and now she has dealt with this she had to send her daughter off to college and now she's dealt with

this her daughter who was able to her daughter who is presumably neurotypical was able to get into college which they were able to pay for which she then went to as a rite of passage thousands of americans between the age of 17 and 19 do every year and now this in addition to the fishman

situation and now she has to deal with this asking for a different job at her current company saying there's no room in that slot and her now getting a new gig as a morning anchor on a different radio station in law on a different television station the nbc affiliate in los angeles what is she

dealing with well and again not to drag lynette romero through the mud because i don't think that lynette romero did anything to deserve this a kind of um memorial that uh is really

sort of making everybody look bad you did not deserve this we are sorry it was a mistake and we just hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive us what if she said no she said

No, I don't. What if she called? What if she said, who are you? Mark. New phone. Who dis? Mark, I cannot find it in my heart to forgive you or the other staffers at KTLA for not letting me go on camera and say goodbye to everybody when I'm still dealing with the fact that my daughter just went to Pepperdine, which is 48 minutes away.

Would you say that? The traffic getting to Malibu is a bitch. If Lynette taught Mark everything that he knows about this work, and she taught him grace and dignity are the most important things, would you say that he is being graceful and dignified right now? Do you think the airplane was too much?

Is that where it started to feel undignified for you?

By the way, Hal Fishman was, rest in peace, Hal Fishman, but the Simpsons cartoon television anchorman Kent Brockman, partially inspired by Hal Fishman. Whoa. Hal Fishman, legend, so my apologies for creating a scenario where he might have been at the bottom of a swamp.

Cause of death, undetermined by the coroner. In total, if I'm being totally honest. Let's leave Hal Fishman alone.

We love you so much. You have earned this. You are a champion. You are a leader. You're a model for how to live life. But most importantly, you're our friend. And I'm going to miss you on this set every single day. Well, not for much longer. I mean, if we're just speaking.

Now, here's where this is where it gets even more interesting to me because it's clear that this guy, Mark Mester, is just really going to ride this Leviathan down to the briniest depths of his television. career but i don't think anybody else who's standing around the um you know the desk there really wants to go this hard on the topic but he's gonna pull them into it yeah move on with

this career it's so clear do you guys want to say anything about lynette because this is our um no

no i mean we have we got to back up around the s curves and we got to yeah exactly

Wait, can we go to an El Pollo Loco commercial, please? Anything?

Time to shine some light on this remarkable one.

It's really moving to hear this from you and so courageous to say what you did. And I remember meeting Lynette when I worked at another station. We were kind of competitors, but just it was really an amazing experience.

Yeah, no, and the same, you know, just been a model for Latinas in this business.

Can we talk about, though, how often do women in this business, who've been in this business for years, you just interrupted a woman to talk about how women are respected.

To talk about women in the business.

No, no, no, Luke, you've got to stop this. I can't continue with this segment. This is so tough to hear.

did he just interrupt a woman who was about to talk about how tough it is for a latina to get ahead in this business i just can't yeah now you andrew uh actually read unlike me reading

the new york post uh version of this you read the la times version of this and you said you've got a little more information on what seems to be going on for this fella mark mester who who kind of uh is the um author of this entire situation well we should say i mean you and i have worked in you know places before where there

behind the scenes drama with somebody's departure or what have you like we clearly don't know everything i mean we know the facts that she probably wanted to stick around she there's probably some hurt feelings like lynette probably did feel maybe a little bit like this company didn't do enough to keep her around i felt that way a little bit when i left cairo a while back and you know not there wasn't drama there because nobody knew i worked there but um i tried to break back into the building and give that exact speech verbatim andrew and i did rent a plane I just want you to know Some sales guy I'll never forget came up to me Because the sales people totally ignored me But like who's the big kind of Butch sales guy who was a real Kind of Dave Pridmore No no no big guy Like literally physically big And he comes down and like The only time he ever acknowledged me I can't remember the guy's name but I know exactly Who you're talking about bald head Yes and it was the first time he said anything And he asked me something about Some you know opportunity that would not have happened anyway or something i'm like do you know that was it like a do you want to drive a do you want to drive a corvette or something it would have been that guy but he wasn't offering me a corvette but he did i do feel like it was something like car related like it was a type of thing where nothing would have come of it anyway but it was the first time a salesperson acknowledged that i had a night show on there and he came up to me on my last night to say that i might have an opportunity i'm like tonight's my last night man i'm sorry that my boss did not tell literally anybody like nobody knew that it was so but anyway point is clearly like lynette and her other co-workers here aside from mark like they probably are privy to information and there is some like they they realize and they're sort of sort of acknowledging that you know this is a bummer and it's not just taking another job like there's all that stuff going on but at the end of the day as you and i have said she's still in the la market she's now she's got the job she wants only across the street at the nbc station right so anyway the los angeles times has a little bit more information here says newsroom employees described a different scenario saying that mester who joined ktla in 2014 had violated their trust i'm going to read quite a bit of this article for you directly because it's pretty damn interesting um well i'll just let you read it because i'm curious if it's if it's the people that were basically in a hostage video with him on that set that day and this is a written i'll give the credit here by jonah valdez uh in the in the los angeles times And there's and again, I'm going to read kind of wholesale here. Staffers said producers had written a script for Mester to read to send off Romero, accompanied by photos and clips of her broadcast, which Mester ignored during the segment. So just to stop for a second. So people had produced a nice segment that was supposed to happen on Wednesday. The news director wrote something and somebody just read it straight on the air. But now it's the weekend. It's her show. She's not there.

So producers worked hard to produce something to send her off. Right. Right. And it says that, by the way, that solves one mystery in my mind, because I was trying to figure out how they had certain a certain amount of photos ready to go of like, you know, her, I think, you know, with her family, etc. It's because this was a produced segment. He just wasn't reading the script they had prepared for him. Yeah. And they wanted to send her off. Right. Right. But he was so angry that she couldn't do it herself. And also, by the way, earlier in this article to mention that supposedly management or producers had asked her if she would pre-record a goodbye message and she decided not to do that. So there were opportunities. She learned from my pre-recorded goodbye on the Luke Burbank show that that rarely has the desired effect. So regarding that plane with the banner that was flying over the station, it said, we love you, Lynette. Mester had pitched producers to include footage of the plane in his segment, but that was rejected. Staffers said they saw Mester pacing back and forth with an angry look prior to stepping on set Saturday. He had alerted his social media followers that he was planning to address Romero's departure on that morning's show. After the segment, people in the newsroom said they saw Mester ignore management's requests to step into their office for a meeting. You think? I wonder what that meeting could have been about. It was probably about traffic or something. At one point, several staffers recalled Mester telling one of the news directors to shut up. in quotes, and he said he refused to leave the building after being asked to do so. During the exchange with management, Mester allegedly yelled obscenities that could be heard by other staffers in the newsroom. Dignity, my friend. Dignity and grace, Luke. Dignity and grace. Mester did not immediately respond to requests for comment. And they said that it was common knowledge. Again, this is on background. Several sources at the station said it was common knowledge that staffers were concerned about Mester's temper and what was described as his disrespectful behavior towards women and had complained to management about it you would not believe the temper tantrums and the weird things that set him off said one long time newsroom employee you're constantly afraid you're going to say the wrong thing. Wow so that was the tip of the iceberg it sounds like of somebody who has some real problems managing their emotions yes exactly yeah so but it's it what's what strikes me as odd about it is you know what is it network is that the um you know the i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take it anymore like as far as meltdowns go this was a weirdly controlled one like it was i wish he would have either melted down more or less like less of a meltdown and he still has his job although maybe it's just as well that he doesn't sounds like he was pretty tough to work with but also it's he's not like he's not it's just a it's a it was an odd kind of lukewarm meltdown which is the name

of my jam band we're opening for the string cheese incident it's the lukewarm meltdown yep but you know what i mean like he's it's like he if he was gonna get fired over this he should

have gone way harder well it's just so it's just so confusing to people I mean the thing is I think there was an outpouring um probably from fans of Lynette on social media um and so he sort of feels like he's got that wind to his back right like all that he's speaking to he thinks he's speaking to the hardcore Lynette fans right Romero right sorry close article um hardcore Romero fans and And so but like the majority of viewers, I mean, maybe I'm wrong about this. I was going to say the majority of viewers are kind of like, OK, like, you know, I like that person. It's a bummer to see her go. But then they kind of move on with making their omelet. Right. I could be wrong about that. Maybe if you're somebody who gets up to watch the Saturday morning broadcast on KTLA, maybe you are kind of maybe it is more culty than I think. And you really do cling to the characters on the show. But I just sort of feel like he thought he was really speaking to the people who were, like, just decrying this on social media when most people are just kind of like, dude, what are you doing here? Can we just get to the weather?

I feel like this is a case of this person, Mark Mester, greatly overestimating what the awareness of the Saturday morning programming on KTLA is. Now, I'm sure, like you said, there are some hardcore, there are some folks who get up every Saturday morning and make their coffee and just cannot wait for this program and who loved this person, Lynette Romero. And I'm sure those people were on Twitter and were making some noise or were, you know, on Mark Mester's Twitter or something. But I think if he was able to have a realistic kind of perspective on the whole thing, he would realize that this is not a big deal to most people. but because and and you know you see this sometimes in i'm gonna say our line of work because we are still apparently depending on how it goes next friday still getting paid to do this so i guess we do work in the media andrew but sometimes you get the people that are like in the comment section like they do a story you know they do a piece or whatever and then they're also in the comment section and they're they're tracking all this kind of what chatter or lack of chatter or whatever there is around something that they've created that's a media project i don't think you and i are those people at all i think we create a media project and then we try to get as far away from it as possible for the remainder of our life right but that's that's one way to approach it and then the other way is to like obsessively like to basically just and i'm sorry to say something kind of gross but to just huff your own farts on something so much that you think it's everything when in fact it's probably not making a huge impact on the larger culture

Yeah. And it's nice, again, to stand up for your because when you sent me this, I really thought the vibe was also like, hey, isn't this nice? Because, you know, we we, you know, as broadcasters at KTLA or whatever, we work for our corporate overlords and there's not enough humanity or whatever. And so here's somebody who's trying to bring that. But like the thing is, it's like, you know, for the listeners who did want Lynette to, you know, say a goodbye and have a last show. I do understand that. But it just you usually do not get to do that, especially when somebody is leaving to go to the competitor across the street. Like that is just kind of that is rational broadcast behavior from the bosses.

Now, I'm on Lynette Romero's Twitter feed She does have 51,000 followers Which I could never even dream Of that kind of traffic But it's funny because So the last tweet from her It's six days ago And it's responding to This is going to be somebody Who's probably a little bit outside Of your cultural awareness, Andrew Are you familiar with Holly Robinson Peet?

I only know because it mentioned in this article I was reading that this is somebody else who kind of lost her broadcast job in a way that she was not pleased with, right?

Yeah, Holly Robinson Peet, I think, was on either Extra or Entertainment Tonight as a TV journalist. I became aware of her because she is married to Rodney Peet, the former NFL quarterback who was...

i think a philadelphia eagle maybe anyway um and i doesn't matter but i think he played for like usc or ucla but um it's yeah holly robinson pete is tweeting to lynette romero and no offense to miss robinson pete but this feels to me like she's centering herself in the story of lynette romero this is her tweet to lynette as someone who got no proper goodbye or even an acknowledgement of my departure many years ago on the talk i feel the disrespect and wish you the absolute best okay Holly why don't we why don't we put that axe when we stop grinding your personal axe for

five minutes and just say say what up to your friend Lynette Romero I mean and Mark is doing a similar thing too I mean whether or not he means to um he's also pointing his fingers at himself while he's trying to make this supposed tribute to his his best friend I wonder if he

regrets this decision because i think it's going to probably really really impact his ability to get another job hosting tv news maybe he doesn't want to do that anymore but i mean can you see

anyone hiring him after this no i see the next thing but him being and we've seen former colleagues do this as well when they find their value in the marketplace less than how they see their own value spokesperson for a company or or that he'll start his own um he'll start his own podcast or youtube or whatever and he'll and he'll start it from the perspective of like beloved tv personality who is you know um who is who is breaking out on his own after being disrespected and held back is the word i'm looking for after being held back by the corporate overlords of news yeah i wonder how

that'll go for him i wonder how it's going for some of our former colleagues uh we may never know anyway r.i.p hal fishman i think is really the takeaway from this whole thing all right let's do a little music for your weekend before we ski daddle this is it's friday man i mean you're probably really feeling it because you were in bend i do not know how it got to be friday it's

been a very wacky week um with the again it wasn't like i was traveling to the moon and back it was It's just a seven hour drive, but doing that in the middle of the week and spending spending a couple of days in a completely different environment and then coming back here for a Friday. Yeah, my time. Honestly, and this is just stupid talk. I shouldn't even say this is the type of thing that people say around the water cooler and it serves no good. But like it felt like the summer sort of went quickly, but I was kind of tracking it. And, you know, we had a lot of change in our life because we moved to this new place in the spring. But honestly, I don't understand what happened to September. Like yeah the summer kind of moved quickly But like I swear to god Do you remember the 21st night Well first of all I didn't mean to kind of mention that A couple of days ago This is the first time Demi Dijibe didn't release his His September song That poor guy

He put a tweet out I don't know like a month ago That was like

It's really not happening

I'm really not doing it And please you don't have to tag me in everything related to this song Yes exactly He's created a monster

Yeah but yeah I mean I swear I swear on Monday it was September 1st, and now here it is Friday, September 23rd. I don't know exactly how that happened, but I am very excited for the music for your weekend song. It is by this band that I play. I feel like every time they release a new single, I play it on the show. The band is called Dead, D-E-H-D. Oh, yeah. Addy turned me on to these folks. They're really good. I mean, a lot of their songs are very kind of, they're a trio out of Chicago, and pretty spare sound, straightforward. forward uh and this song is a little bit more downbeat than most of their stuff um but it's like perfect for right now like i've been listening to this song on repeat the past like four or five days um it's called eggshells by dead and for me this really kind of hearkens in the fall take a Listen to this.

I'm sticking with my own department. I'm never gonna leave. I'm staring down at plastic sunrise. I'm right here for you and me, for me, yeah. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Rock along, rock along, it ain't yourself.

I'm done, I'm done, yeah, better off, better off, on my own, walk it off, walk it off,

keep up on eggshells.

So if you happen to see me this weekend and I'm just muttering eggshells to myself, that is why I'm the crazy guy.

That's actually, they wrote that song about everybody at KTLA when Mark Mester went on the air last Saturday. Yeah. Anyway, there you go. Eggshells by Dead. All right. So I have this thing where if I hear a song, I often listen to music on Spotify now and stuff. And if I hear a song that I like, I'll just sort of take a screenshot. And then, you know, it'll just be in my photos. And so a lot of times for Music for Your Weekend, I just scroll through all of my photos and I find some song. and i found this song and i cannot even tell you when i heard it where i heard it why this how this song came into my life but i love it so much and it's probably going to need a fair amount of bleeping andrew okay we'll see it's by this outfit out of miami uh city girls and the song is what we doing and when i tried to get more information on city girls and i put the band's name or the a group's name into Google, the first response was, did the woman from City Girls get out of jail yet? Okay. So that's, I don't, and I didn't click on the answer. I don't know. I do not know their status, but I just know that this song slappeth so hard. So this is the song I'd like to play. City Girls, What We Do It.

Baby with the prom, I'm bitch, I'm good We can party all night, where we goin', what we doin'? Party all night, where we goin', what we doin'? House super clean, fridge on foot Baby with the prom, I'm bitch, I'm good We can party all night, where we goin', what we doin'?

Party all night, where we goin', what we doin'? Girl, it's Friday night We ain't gettin' in the wild on a Friday night It's time to step out on this Friday night You actin' like an OJ

Girl, you probably right Let me look up in the closet, see what I can wear Check the bank account Let me see what I can spell Baby daddy might trip But I don't even care You don't ever go out You been out of my gear

You gon' get a bitch beat up Child please What time we gon' beat up This offense ain't gon' do shit

How good is this song?

This is so good

I love that production It's so good, right?

I love a call and response With somebody on a phone line Sound I love that so much

Yes And it's a Friday Yeah, this is perfect I mean, this is just the i mean this is this is going to be i assume your friday anthem andrew as you're drawing the shades and getting your dartboard ready eggshells uh so that's uh city girls what we do it which is just such a such a hit i was uh thinking of you the um the other day andrew well you and my fellow eagles aficionados because i was in rainier oregon which is on the so the place that i'm uh working on is on the washington state side of the columbia river but just across the columbia river is rainier oregon and they have an eagles there that looks so fun it's on the columbia river like it has a deck that like practically hangs over the columbia river that sounds good and they have video poker i haven't been in there

but i just i saw that's the thing i need video we need to get the eagles you know uh fam down

to rainier oregon for a meetup at this eagles because it looks so cool at least from the

outside i um maybe it's good that in washington state we're not allowed to have those i don't think like just at a place like the eagles or a regular bar to have like a video poker because Like, what is the game that I think I learned this game sitting at a bar when you and I were on our hitchhiking adventure and we're in some state where there is video poker and is a jacks are better. Is that what I'm looking for? I can just sit there with a tangerine tonic and playing, you know, like five dollars worth of jacks are better. That will last me like four hours. Like, I love that vibe so much, but maybe it's good that they don't have that at the bars up here because I would never leave.

yeah it is i will say it's a mixed bag um having that kind of product in because that you know everywhere in in oregon they have that and uh it's available in like a lot of bars and it's kind of fun but it's also kind of anti-social in a way and i'm not that's not a moral judgment it's just like if pull tabs are kind of fun because you and i and camaro could be sitting at the bar, pull and tap.

tabs bs and uh whatever but like if you or i go over to the video poker machine and sit there now i'm playing you know uh whatever the game because it's got like eight million games on it but now that's kind of the focus and uh it's all yeah it's when you go into like for instance uh becca's brother owns a bar in port he actually owns a couple of bars and um one of them when he bought it had video poker in it and he and his business partner actually took the video poker out which actually cost them a ton of money i'll bet you they get a cut but he was like i just kind of want it to be a fun bar where everyone's a little more engaged with each other and not just kind of like in some dark corner of the bar just pouring their money into this machine which i actually think is a very uh respectable thing to do because you know again it's costing him money but the energy in his bar, which is the 21st Avenue Pub, by the way, if people want to go check it out. It's really great and it probably would be less great if they had a bunch of

video poker machines. Yeah, probably. I think few and far between, but access to them would be nice.

Yes, exactly. There are certainly days where I'm in a bar somewhere and I'm like, I love this happening so much. The listener music suggestion. By the way, we're running kind of low on Music for Your Weekend suggestions, so email me luca tbtl.net um and uh and we'll get you in line that makes it sound like i didn't want to choose ben's song and that's not the case i'm just saying the um the flow of suggestions has has uh slowed to a trickle so send me some song suggestions uh listener ben says uh this song came on while i was at work early one tuesday morning and two things happened one i couldn't stop myself from getting down two i had to know who the singer was which for all the people who had too many feelings in the early 2000s the vocals are by the lead singer from the starting line it's such a jam you could put it on toast it's the song is good as new by the band vacationer

i see but the the lead singer of this band used to be with another project starting line starting

but this is i don't i'm not familiar with that band but it sounds like uh they maybe were sort of emo or something it says the people who people who had too many feelings in the early 2000s we're listening to the band The Starting Line but this is Vacationer and this is good as new it is in fact such a jam you could put it on toast according to listener Ben and that's how we're going to wrap the week up thank you so much for hanging out with us thanks for being part of TBTL we will be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you until then have a great weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Yeah, I've got someone waiting for me when I'm gone Yeah, I've got a good one lifting me up when I'm down Well, it's been perfect time No more rhymes You are looking too

I'm feeling good as you

Novelin, this is Bob Howard Bob's the greatest pulp writer in the whole world I'm the boss, typewriter's the employee, no argument I'm in the mood to write a love story Why don't you tell me about your character Conan Conan is the damnedest bastard there ever was To him combat's a way of life It's all he's ever known, all he ever wants to know Power out Let's go.