Muse

The hippies are capable of extremely hard work, even though they tend to approach work, as the rest of us do, sport. Some of them are very successful. This is the house of a popular local band which plays hard rock music. They call themselves the Grateful Dead. They live together comfortably in what could be called affluence. There are many other similar houses or apartments in Haight-Ashbury, maintained by hippies who work in places where employers do not mind bizarre dress or long hair. Their concept of a new style of life unites them, and that concept is, in most cases, drawn from the drug experience.

TBTL!

I dove deep into your podcast because it's what you do when you're over. Thank you for the enthusiasm. Can I get a wolf whistle or something?

Well, with all due respect, I mean, I hate to admit this, but I mean, I don't think I've been online and, you know, a couple of days or weeks or whatever. So that's really not an important thing to me. My face, your face, instant face. Go go talk to whoever you want that does that stuff. I don't know.

And what's the deal with popcorn? Doesn't taste like pop and it sure doesn't look like corn.

and like and what's it do with fishing i swear every time this guy talks all i hear is a turkey goblin all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live where's my royalty my name is luke burbank i am your host

Sometimes people say that my head is too big for my body, and then I say, compared to what?

Coming to you from Northbrook, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. Here on episode 3000, I went to ding my desk bell. It's amazing how reflexive that is for me, but I forgot to pack my bell and bring it all the way out here to Illinois. so you'll just all have to imagine the wonderful sound of my desk bell as I tell you that we're at episode 3,790. Ding. Actually, no, I do have this one. In a collector's series. If I sound a little amped today, it's because, of course, the Seattle Mariners will be playing some playoff baseball later today.

Hey, Lloyd, do some delivery for the truck to the airport.

And it was, boy, quite a situation on Saturday when they pulled off that win, that quite spectacular, improbable win. Of course, we were on tape yesterday. I mean, we're always on tape. We were even more on tape than normal yesterday. So today is really my first chance to process this whole thing with my friend Andrew and all of you, the listeners. So we will do that. Let the fun begin. Plus some top stories, including a cheating scandal in the Alaskan Fat Bear competition.

I'm not fat. I'm big boned.

What is with all of the skullduggery around these animal-based contests? We heard about the walleye fishing tournament where people were stuffing lead weights into fish. Now we've got people trying to tip the scales at the Fat Bear competition in Alaska. We will find out what's going on there. And then speaking of animals, or I guess humans who are dressing as animals, this came up on the show, I think on, I can't remember if it was yesterday's show or Friday's show, but the question of if the Denver Nuggets mascot Rocky is actually clearing $650,000 per year.

People just came out here and was getting hella money.

We have this list of the highest paid pro sports mascots, and we will go through it. Plus, we'll do some emails and V-mails, and we will talk to this young man, the aforementioned longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's really known for basically three things. He's got hair, he's got chutzpah, and broad-based knowledge. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. I did it again. Two minutes and 13 seconds into the show. I'm going to go back and make sure it's not audible. I'm clearing my throat with my microphone on. I don't know if you heard that. I think it was quieter this time. It wasn't like so theatrical, but what is with me? I need to get this locked down. Of course, I'm lucky to even have a voice today, so cut me some slack, people. I think I just got it back around an hour ago after Saturday's shenanigans.

Really? I mean, let's talk about that a little bit. Because when you and I actually last spoke, it was Friday, and I was saying, I think I'm just going to watch the game in my apartment with the kids.

and keep it mellow and focus on the game and then you had texted our friend hannah and uh and and she said oh yeah we're over at this place called the satellite in portland and so i said well i you know what i should head over there and that was so much fun on friday that we then headed back on saturday and that was one of the most memorable sports experiences of my life except i don't

remember a lot of it because I was pretty drunk you know of all the things to talk about I'm going to start with something potentially condescending here but I will tell you I was so happy of myself not to take credit for you being a fun guy to hang out with but I was so happy of myself that I connected you and Hannah via text message and I you know I think I sent a note to both you guys saying hey Hannah no pressure but Luke is you know in Portland now is there a place theoretically where one could watch a Mariners playoff game right thinking like because when you were talking to me on the show on Friday I could be wrong about it but you were like no I think I'm fine I'm just gonna watch it at home and I sort of heard like yeah but it would be better to not like you grew up in Seattle you've been watching the Seattle Mariners your entire your life and i just sort of thought you should be around people for this if you want now i live a life where people are always trying to get me to be around people and i don't want to be around them so i didn't want to be i didn't want to be presumptuous anybody would understand my my aspirations to be a homebody would be you right absolutely and so and that's why i sent out that text saying hey you know not saying hey luke is looking to hang out just kind of like hey is there a place and later on when i found out that you guys all gathered at the same place in portland For both games on Friday and Saturday I was so, I was happy And again, I'm not trying to put What is fun for me onto you I hate it when people do that for me But it sounds like you had a good time this weekend And I was really glad that you could be around People who have the same exact emotions As you during these momentous times I'm really glad that you also

You know, kind of brokered that situation Because I really did on Friday I really thought, you know what The idea of being home actually sounded appealing to me until about the like third inning or something uh-huh um just because they were winning and i was getting amped so i i went over on friday about not midway through the game but i probably got there by like the third or fourth inning to a little like kind of a bar that was

like pretty hyped up for the the mariners is it like a mariners bar i've never been to this place

it's a sports bar where people who follow the mariners know to congregate so they have a bunch of tvs i would say friday there was like maybe eight or nine people in the bar who were actively watching the Mariners games like had jerseys on and we're paying attention Saturday was packed and everybody was completely fixated on the game and that was the big one like Friday was amazing just because we managed to win a game but Saturday I mean that was really like in a that's a top five Seattle sports moment for me and I'm just so glad that I got to spend it with people who were equally excited again apologies to any of the people who were there and are now listening to this uh for how faded i was at the end i was picking up random people and spinning them around brock heward style it was it was bedlam now where did you end up watching oh you were at the you were

at the stadium yeah yeah one quick question about your experience too because i i enjoyed this i saw that a listener i think reached out to us on twitter and like tagged you and me and tbtl and said hey is there a place in portland to watch and i think you said oh yeah there's this place Did you end up running into any listeners? Oh, nice. So you did end up hanging out as well.

No, I didn't. But I did put that on Twitter. I was telling. I ran into listener Zach at a Portland Pickles game, actually. Oh, nice. This summer. So we have a long history of watching baseball together. And so I was giving him the heads up that this was happening over at the satellite. But it didn't come together for whatever reason. Now, there may have been other low-key tens there. I don't know. But if they were, they were in clear violation of the rule, particularly when I am getting into the brown stuff and the Mariners are coming back from having been down 8-1. Again, I have such positive memories of the afternoon in the sense that I remember probably 50% of it. I just have a sense. I remember being very joyful. Specifics are a little harder for me.

Yeah, I've been hearing a lot of that from people watching experiences. I actually I was in pretty good shape as far as alcohol is concerned, because, yeah, I went to the big watch party, as they call it. So at T-Mobile Park for people who aren't around here, that is the field, of course, where the Mariners play. But this game was being played in Toronto. But they just said, hey, we got the like, I don't know. Don't the Mariners claim to have the biggest jumbotron in the Major League Baseballs? I think anyway, it's a really big. jumbotron and so you know they had um they they had the game on the jumbotron sometimes they go to a split screen to show us in the crowd and the shenanigans going on um and you know it was like kind of like i don't know they blocked off maybe five or six or seven sections all down below and had kind of like um just a few concession stands open so it sort of felt like a weird a weird party at the ballpark and it was great and i gotta say and like for people who didn't watch the game like it was uh it was a miraculous comeback the mariners were i mean out of it early on in the game being down by seven runs and then just i mean after ridiculous event after ridiculous event the mariners pull off what's truly felt like a miracle and the place just went crazy i you and i talked on the phone as i was leaving the stadium because we kind of called each other out of enthusiasm them i don't know if you could tell in your state and where you were but like my voice was shot genevieve was looking at me because it was the first time that i was having a conversation where i wasn't screaming and i was like ah look we won give me another cigarette

it was it was incredible that i believe i did cry during our phone conversation i also cried at the end of the game in the bar in full view of everyone which some could say is an extreme response and some would be right that was i don't think you were the only one crying over baseball i was putting the emotional in tired and emotional like i was and i i yeah i think there were there were a few of us that were literally crying tears of joy i don't know the last time well that's not true i cry a lot uh usually it's not i i don't know if joy is the word i do cry from happiness a lot i cry if i hear like a particular song and i'm driving and just the moment feels perfect to me but this was something else this was like sports tears of joy which i don't know the last

time or if i've literally ever done that yeah you know and i was thinking about my experience too i mean that that was i mean saturday was just it was just unreal i i don't know how to describe it and i was thinking about the other big moments in in my sport fandom life and and how huge they are or were um obviously the miracle on dirt the miracle on dirt uh that you and i watched a meaningless mid-season game on our road trip in new mexico it's mike zanino it's a walk off yeah

i mean as far as our shared baseball moments that's top five no question but you know i kind

of forget so when obviously when the browns finally made it to the playoffs two seasons ago that was huge for me personally I had lived through a lot of misery for the Browns to finally make it but that was a different experience I believe I was watching that I don't even remember that moment all that well I mean I know they beat the Steelers to get in and I was probably at home watching it with Genevieve and old Mr. Theo on the couch our old cat and I'm you know I remember kind of being in our TV room and like losing my shit and my phone blowing up from everybody I know in the world kind of congratulating me and the hard work I put in to get the Browns where they were and that was a moment but like it just wasn't I don't know I was at home you know I remember when the Browns finally broke their like 15 or no like 18 game losing streak or something that I remember crawling on the floor in front of a I think you might have been there for that no I don't I don't know if you were over for that but we had a bunch of people who kept on swinging by our house as They saw that the Browns might finally win a football game. That was huge. But, like, I've never been in the city when something like this is happening. The closest thing would have been the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl, but I was in L.A., you know, and you and I were talking on the phone and trying to record a drunken podcast from our different locations. But like here I was, I kind of in a city with a fan base and just like in this crowd of like seven, I guess it's like seventy four hundred lunatics at T-Mobile Park watching a ball game on a giant TV together, essentially. Right. And like the, you know, the bottom of the ninth inning, just like every single pitch killed me. like are we going to pull this off like every pitch felt like a I aged a hundred years and I just remember just having my hands over my face the whole time kind of looking through the cracks in my eyes and like that moment and to be around a bunch of other nutcases literally wearing their shoes on their head and calling it a rally shoe I have thoughts about that I don't know if I love

it I mean it worked it's like I don't have room in my heart for new superstitions is really what it comes down to so for people that are outside of Seattle or inside of Seattle but not following this very closely somebody at the thing you were at Andrew just put their shoe on their head

just to try to change up the mojo and then it seemed to work and then a lot of people there

started putting their shoe on their head and now rally shoe is a thing that happened earlier in the season though this guy ben started the rally shoe thing earlier in the season i don't know how early in the season but it it didn't start on saturday no i'm i'll look it up but i'm quite sure that i was watching games where people had the rally shoes on their head it might have started during the wild card but i don't think so i think it was a regular season thing but see the thing is

i don't know why like i love rally cap so again for folks who don't know there is a kind of a thing in baseball where you like turn your hat inside out if you're trying to come back and i remember we used to do that in little league it's like i like the dumb superstitions that i grew up with i don't know if i'm ready for new dumb superstitions and yet why would i have any problem with it it worked it's fun people are having fun there's no downside to it other than

it feels too nouveau to me you know i just don't go in for putting footwear on one's head like i'm not judging other people for doing it and it certainly was a moment the whole thing seems pretty gross to me um and i don't i don't even go in for rally caps i mean you're you wouldn't be surprised to hear is the boy who would clog his ears as a young person when people saying happy birthday to him i'm not somebody who goes in for rally cap actually i am i am a little

surprised because if everyone's doing it it's not like the focus is not specifically on you it's kind of a and again for me it's just that when i was a kid in little league we would be like losing and we would turn our hats inside out so it feels like it's a long-held tradition but somehow rally shoe rally shoe feels like the superstition equivalent of them playing macklemore instead of louis louis like i don't like new things happening well except for them actually winning

That's a new thing. And I'm enjoying that greatly. Yeah, it looks like, by the way, I'm just trying to do a little bit of background. So again, on the show, there's a just a strong tradition of every time I say something confidently, I'm way wrong on it. But it does look like the person who's kind of getting credit for the rally shoe during this particular game on Saturday says that he saw another Mariners fan doing it at another game. So he's not even taking credit for coming up with the concept at all. So somebody out there, that's actually kind of interesting. Is there somebody out there that is seeing this guy, Ben, who's all over the news now as being the rally shoe guy? Is there another person who's like, well, actually, I started that like on a Tuesday against Detroit a month ago.

And I feel like that's something you would remember. Yeah. Or something you would very much forget, depending on your state of mind. Well, sure. Yes, exactly. If I had done that on, I may have done that on Saturday. I don't know. I might have had other people's shoe on my head at some point on Saturday. It was very blurry. But, yeah, I feel like if you were at the stadium and you put your shoe on your head and then people noticed it and then it started working, you'd remember that you were the only person in that stadium with your dang shoe on your head. Yeah, exactly. But it was a scene.

It was magical. It really was. I was just so glad to be able to be here for it that I didn't move to another city again. You know what I mean? So I could watch Seattle just partying in my rearview mirror. It was incomparable in my life. I mean, it has to be my number one sports moment now, right? Again, I told Genevieve, like, because we were at T-Mobile Park watching this game and losing our goddamn minds, and also knowing that I am quite literally losing my goddamn mind and memories with every passing day as middle age becomes a more senior look on me, I told Vives, one of these days, I'm going to put it probably like six years from now, eight years from now. I'm going to be trying to sort things out and be like Genevieve weren't we at that game and she's going to have to remind me no we were at T-Mobile Park watching it on a giant TV remember I'm like

okay that's right and then eventually it'll be Genevieve didn't I hit a double in the top of the nine to bring Cal Raleigh home no I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I hit it I hit a double the other

way I went with the pitch I remember being very excited Genevieve I did I did not play in that

game i'm here to say but i did i think influence it deeply with my reverse jinxing one crap talking adam frazier the entire game just being like this guy has been such a disappointment this season as he goes on to have three hits including the one that eventually gave us the game uh i also tried desperately to bet on the mariners when they were losing eight to one and draft kings would not let me which was wild i mean i had a bet down on them to win from before the game started. And so that bet I did, I won. But I was trying to actually bet, mostly just to make the people at our table laugh because I was going, all we need are two grand slams. Just two grand slams and we're back in this. And so I was, but it was interesting that they wouldn't let me do that and that that would have been a quite...

profitable enterprise for me and they didn't let you do it because the odds were just so

extraordinary that it would have i think it may have had to do with the fact that i already had a bet in at a different price point i'm not sure it was just grayed out and it was i mean that website is very kludgy anyway um so who knows what was going on you were both grayed out like god knows what was going on there oh i was gray leaning towards black at that point but um Yeah, you know, I mean, I would say the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl is is huge for me because I was such a, you know, diehard fan. And they had so many bad seasons and, you know, two and 14 under Tom Flores. But that Super Bowl was a bizarre experience, the one they won, because it was sort of never in doubt. It was just they were leading by so much. And then they, you know, at the beginning of the second half, they get a Percy Harvin kickoff return. it was just kind of like i mean like the second play from scrimmage is a fumble that knocks the broncos way back it just was like it was exciting but it was almost just kind of like a coronation that took four hours and was never in doubt the game on saturday for the mariners was just i mean it was they had a it was it was more like when the seahawks came back against the green bay packers in the nfc championship game um except in that case they ended up going to the super and losing so this was just like this was so critical because this got the mariners to the next playoff series it was just it was both meaningful and shocking and and just delirious

yeah it was honestly saturday was uh the perfect game vives and i went there with a couple of friends they're the reason we went to the um watch party i mean i i feel like i went into way too much detail on this in my like super caffeinated quasi coked up manner on um friday but like i i really was trying to think where do I want to watch these at least the first two games of this wild card series and and it sort of felt like for a moment and there was like it was like the Empire Strikes Back it was looking dark there was no place to watch it and then all of a sudden a couple of miracles came through which was my favorite bar opened early on Friday so we could get together with some friends to watch the game there and then this Saturday this magical game like I was sort of on the fence like hey V should we go to T-Mobile Park for this watch party it honestly seems a little bit weird and also like do i really want a 14 hot dog as opposed to just going to teddy's again or something but we had some friends who aren't even huge mariners fans actually um one of them is a big hockey fan uh san san jose sharks for those keeping score at home that's who she likes and um and then uh her partner mike is a huge um atlanta braves fan and so they were just kind of like hey we have these extra tickets why don't you just come we have to leave halfway through anyway because my friend Nina had a hockey game that she was in that she had to go to so they just stuck around for the worst part of everything and then the second they left the Mariners started to turn around I think they had more they're really the opposite of a rally shoe and they really well I wore them on my head very briefly um and not a shoe but you will put humans oh oh oh certainly yes less less gross um but anyway it's just kind of like one of those things were like this moment um it was so important to me the way it ended up turning out and the fact that i was there but without this like random note from a couple of friends who i have not seen since before the pandemic just saying hey you're taking a flyer on this thing do you guys want to go to it and it ended up just really i don't know man that was a really special moment listen that moment would have been special no matter where i was but i feel like it was extra special we ran into our buddy scotty who listens to the show and is a friend of ours got scotty the hottie scotty the hottie had some drinks with him after the game met some of his friends like everything was just buzzing and everything was just working out perfectly well and i wouldn't

have had the fun that i had in portland if you hadn't sent that text so thank you for that i feel like everything worked out just the way that it should now uh they're playing in houston today And where are you going to watch that one

You know I mean this Daytime schedule thing is a bit of a blow Like they're playing here They're starting at noon today right Or is it today the 1230 one I think today's the noon one So I'm just going to watch it I think it's 1230 It's like 230 out here Okay yeah because you're in Chicago Now I just got to be responsible I got to watch it on one of my screens while I do some work Veeves and I need to record our podcast tonight So this is a five game series You know some of them Game three, I think, will take place on Saturday. So we'll have some fun on Saturday. But at least for today, I've got to treat this like a businessman's baseball game.

I feel like, I mean, some of this probably has to do with time zone stuff. Just, you know, we're in the West, et cetera. But it also feels, I've gone from the heights of adulation on Saturday to the depths of pettiness here on Tuesday.

why can't we get a primetime game right why are we playing i mean we just played i would say the most exciting series of any of the series that happened and did the most improbable thing that's been done since like the turn of the century and i mean the other century i don't mean 2000 that would be less impressive but like and then we got to play like the mariners and and uh astros will be playing at 7 30 a.m yeah on on on a leap day it's like what i know on can we please get some

prime time age i'm really irritated about this this this tuesday game today is it you know it's in the noon hour i guess 12 30 and then do you know and then the next game is on thursday and it's kind of a similar situation it's either noon or 12 30 i can't remember where that ended up and And it's like, boy, just in the middle of the week. And again, this is my first experience with playoff baseball. Like, honestly, like since I've been watching baseball, once the Mariners are out of it, I kind of this this speaks to my bad fandom, I think. Like, I care about my team. And then I'm so dejected after the Mariners miss the playoffs, as they have every year that I've been watching them. I just kind of stopped caring about baseball because I just see all these other teams I'm just jealous of them sort of and and I just turned my attention fully to football at that time and so this is my first experience with all of this like I guess all teams have to put up with day games because life goes on and these series can get kind of long. But, yeah, it really seems like a screw that we just had two one o'clock games, which was fine. So it was over a weekend, sort of. And I just took off work early on Friday. But like now just a Tuesday and Thursday at noon. Come on. Give me a bark.

And I guess I'm going to watch it here in my hotel room because my flight isn't until this evening. But I could run into the very unfortunate situation where they are like the game's going long and it's maybe very critical. And I'm like in O'Hare Airport, you know, trying to like peep a view of the game on the TV and the Wolfgang Puck Pizzeria or whatever.

Well, why do you have your hotel? Did you get your hotel late knowing that you'd have to stick around this afternoon? Because wouldn't housekeeping have kicked you out by now anyway?

Andrew, you are talking to a platinum level Bonvoy member, my friend. Actually, what happened was I called the front desk and I said, can I just? Because you know what I hate What I irrationally hate I hate having my luggage In my life For like an entire day Oh yeah After which I've been like Kicked out of my hotel But it's too early for my flight That is my least favorite thing in life Which shows you that I have a pretty privileged life That's my least favorite thing I hate war by the way And human rights violations man's inhumanity to man and also having to wheel my away luggage bag i put those at about the same level but um but like and you know sometimes if you're if you're lucky and and the hotel is like near the airport you can just check it with the bell folks and then go do your thing and then grab it right before you go that was not going to work for me today because of the geography of everything And so I was just like the idea of being in like a Buffalo Wild Wings, probably the only person who gives a crapple about this Mariner situation, you know, nursing a Beyond Burger debating, by the way, if I want to drink excessively or not, which is, you know, again, we may we may need to take a hard look at some of these behaviors. but like with my luggage next to me okay that just doesn't sound as the mariners maybe like play poorly against houston because all of their adrenaline has been drained out of them from saturday that was a that didn't seem like a fun thing for me so i called down to the front desk and asked can i basically like rent my hotel room because you know hotels will let you do this sometimes where you pay it's not the full night's charge but it's like maybe 50 bucks or something and you get to stay until, like, 5 or 6 p.m.

Oh, I didn't know that you could do that.

Okay, good, yeah. Yeah. So I called down and I asked, and the person at the front desk just said, when do you need to check out? I was like, probably, like, 5. She goes, I'll just let you stay, whatever. And I was like, you are awesome. So that's how I'm getting to stay in this hotel room.

Because, I mean, that's the thing. Me just complaining about hotel rules is not interesting. But, like, I don't know. I think I was pretty naive in the way I thought about hotels for a long time. I mean, up until, I don't know, well into adulthood, five or ten years ago, all of a sudden I did the math and was like, wow, we say we're it's like we don't even get 24 hours in a hotel room. I know that that is super, super obvious. But, like, somehow it's just like, oh, my God, I'm not allowed to check in until 4, but I got to have my ass out of there by 11 unless I beg for a noon checkout.

What is this, an Airbnb?

It just sort of seemed like, wait a second. How about we check in at 4 and leave at 4? How about I'm paying you for 24 hours? I mean, I understand the business model. But, yeah, at some point I was like, man, you really don't get much if you're just getting a hotel room for one night.

well me as the ultimate nudge i would just recommend to everyone that you if you get to the hotel early you simply ask hey is there a room ready because particularly like post pandemic i mean i know some aspects of travel have come back uh to their pre-pandemic levels but it feels like hotels are not being and maybe just this week i happen to be here but it's like always ask if you can check in early because the answer usually is yes in my experience even if i'm staying at a hotel that i'm not like whatever bon voice status with but then yeah you know there's a lot of again my sort of way of going through life is to ask for a lot of favors but try to do it nicely so that at least uh if uh you know if it's annoying to the person i take some of the edge off of it but i have been very lucky in my life that i have received a lot of very nice treatment just by asking, hey, would it be possible for this to happen? Followed by a very quick, do you know who I am? Sometimes I'll proceed it with that, but I'll do it very nicely. Right. Hey, do you know who I am? I mean, is it possible to say, do you know who I am in a way that it's not annoying? I don't think so.

It would be funny to really be like, obviously, somebody that nobody should know who you are and just say, hey, do you know who I am? I'm Gary in room 302. And I was wondering if I could get a late checkout.

Well, you know, adding to my issue was that I don't have a rental car here in Chicago because I got in so late on Sunday night. I just didn't want to like get in another shuttle, go to the rental car lot and then drive myself here. It was just like so because usually what I could do is I could just throw my luggage in the trunk and then problem solved as far as the daytime goes before my flight. But I didn't have my I didn't have a rental car this time, which meant I've been taking a lot of lifts to get to the chutes and things like that. And I had a very interesting conversation with my Lyft driver last night that I mentioned on Twitter, which was she's a very nice lady. Maybe I would say like late 60s or something. And we just had a great chat as I was getting a ride from the shoot location back to the hotel. And I somehow the NFL came up and I think I said, oh, I'm going to probably watch the football game tonight or something. And she goes to the NFL. the players don't even sing the pledge of allegiance anymore and i just wow how does she stay up on the news like that that's where the discourse is at on this you know that's i mean that to me was such a misunderstanding of every of every element of that part of the game the players don't even sing the pledge of allegiance anymore how would that even go i hate i pledge allegiance to the flag hey i can't actually i can't keep the words of the pledge of allegiance in my head as i'm trying to sing the star-spangled banner but um like i just really and it was such a bummer because this person was so nice and i was really enjoying she was telling me about her grandkids and all of her favorite recipes that she makes from scratch because her parents came directly from italy and it was just like this was a really nice time and then i just realized like there are people that we are never going to reach with msnbc and and the new yorker and it's the people who think

the athletes don't even sing the pledge anymore no it is sad though it is so sad that they don't

sing the pledge it's it just was like oh man there is absolutely no comeback to that no like i didn't even clarify i didn't go well okay for one thing carmela uh by the way it's interesting to meet an italian american named carmela yeah because it's so it's like so i'm heavy sopranos vibe yeah but like she told me about her kids her kids aj and meadow it's very interesting wait was that ed falco no but like i didn't even go like well okay one thing they never it's it's it's the star spangled banner and they never sang it although as i wrote on twitter i can't stop picturing if they made the players sing the pledge of allegiance before the game just how bizarre and kind of

entertaining that would be like can they hit the high note everybody is like really really excited

and you know there's gonna be some like 400 pound guy that's just got the voice of an angel

yes like barney you know like you just don't see it coming exactly exactly like barney from the

Simpsons. All right, speaking of 400-pound guys, we've got to talk about these bears when we come back from this very short break here on TBTL. Stay with us.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank some daily donors who are keeping the show going with their wonderful, generous support. I hope these people knew they were signing up for weeks of baseball talk. I realize that, like, over the last couple of weeks, this has really turned into a sports show. I think to the chagrin of some of the listeners. But I promise it'll be back to a dream show pretty soon. As in, just talking about our dreams.

Just talking about my dreams, right. Yeah, no, I mean, that was on my mind today because I saw some people grousing about it on social media. And I was like, you know, this is just a huge part of our life right now. That's why I didn't want to get into the details of the game. Like, we're not doing a no-point conversion here. But, like, what happened to us, what happened around us, what happened in this city this week was historic. And so, you know, it's okay if you're not totally into it. But, like, listen, I could have filled the intro of today's show talking about my hedging project. Notice the hedge project. Oh, that looks good, by the way. Yeah, but the new tool I bought broke near the end of my project yesterday, and now we're shipping it back. I could have talked about that for hours. Maybe we'll talk about it tomorrow. But my point is, like, we can't just go into hedge talk. Like, something huge and beautiful happened over the past few days, and this is our life.

I cried on Saturday in public, and we needed to talk about what the events were that led to that. That's right. You know who loves that kind of conversation? Betty Schlafer's in Auburn, Washington. I bet Betty was doing a happy dance. Oh, I'm sorry. One last thing. Have you seen that video going around of the people working at Toyota of Seattle? Yeah.

Like just losing their mind. Silently watching the game. I have a theory about that, Luke. Can we put a pin in that, as they say? I want to talk to you about that silence. I don't think they were being silent.

Okay. We will talk about that right after. I also thank Tiffany Davis of Seattle, Washington, and then Stephanie Raffinelli of Piedmont, California. I'm sorry for whatever yard work they're doing out in the yard of the hotel here.

Oh, I can't hear it.

Oh, good. That's good, actually. That's a relief. Patrick Marr is in Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Patrick. Look, we got a lot of Seattle folks, too, which is important because these are the people who do love that we've just been talking about baseball and are about to, again, after we thank these folks, Catherine Adage is in Oakland, California. Thank you, Catherine. And Louis Melencon is in Springfield, Virginia. Thank you, Louis.

Could be pronounced Louis. You never know. My name is spelled like that. And it's Louis, my middle name. Oh, yeah, I always forget that. I always think your name is spelled like Kyle Lewis. K-Y-L-E. Like Lewis and Clark? No. Okay. I got it. Sorry, I wasn't listening. Where's my bell? L-O-U-I-S. Here, I'll give you the bell. I almost cracked my mic to give you the bell earlier. Maybe that's why I was clearing my throat into my unmuted microphone. But my middle name is L-O-U-I-S, just like this donor. And you're right. It could be Louis, the French pronunciation, or it could be Louis, the Valley City pronunciation. Who knows? I'm going because Meloncon Strikes me as a possibly French

Sounding last name Yep smart And I'm well known for my Grasp of all things Francophile Like the fact that it just took me about Four seconds to remember the word

That's how you know That's how good I am at it

So Louis or Louis Thank you so much for supporting the show And thanks to all of our donors today For keeping TBTL going hello and welcome to top story okay quickly the thing that andrew and i are talking about with this toyota of seattle thing is a video that somebody put on the internet of some employees of the local dealership um watching the mariners clinch the game on saturday and doing just first of all just being absolutely joyful and adorable and then doing this kind of dance that the mariners have popularized uh where they get in a big circle and kind of dance around in a circle uh kind of with their arms interlocked and then a guy comes in like another guy who's like out on the you know showroom floor or something something comes in and like enters the circle and then dances with them and it is just absolutely delightful but one of the aspects of it is that there's no audio and so it kind of seems like they know they're not supposed to be freaking out and so they're silently celebrating which adds to kind of how charming the video is but your theory is that this is just cctv and there's

just no audio yeah see i because i watch it a few times i'm not trying to take the fun out of it but I thought I was confused, or I guess I still think I was confused the first time I saw it, and I could be wrong about this, but because there's no real strong audio, you get the impression that these guys are trying to celebrate in silence because they're the only three people in this little service center waiting area, right? But if you turn it up loud, you can hear some sounds sneaking through, but those sounds don't really correspond to their feet on the floor, and it looks like their mouth is open at times. I think they're celebrating. I think people in the showroom can probably hear them freaking out, which is why that fourth guy comes in and finishes the dance. I think that somebody taped that I think somebody used their phone to record this off of a screen that had no audio. So in other words, when you hear some clicks and pops and extraneous noises on this tape, I think that is the sound of the person holding their phone to whatever they're recording. If that makes sense. Does that make sense?

damn look at you look at you vanilla ice cracking the code vanilla ice that's the thing that he does in the movie cool as ice oh i haven't seen it's on my list it's on my list don't spoil it i i know i've told this story before but that movie is so funny to me because they needed to figure out a plot device that would make vanilla ice's being a rapper relevant to solving the crime there's a crime kidnapping okay there's a kidnapping and what he does is there's a ransom tape like an audio tape that the kidnappers make and i don't know if it's the kidnapping victim is on it or if they're on it but somehow vanilla ice has to eq out on his boom box this ransom tape so that he can hear i think like an oil there's like an oil derrick in the background

love it he's gonna use his own five band equalizer on his uh on his little literally does it on a

like a like a boom box like we took around on the road trip to amplify the tbtl delica uh thon and he's like he's like taking the low end he's like taking the high end out and he's like hearing the base of this thing that's again i feel like it's like an oil drill of some kind and then he knows where the warehouse is she's being kept that is amazing as somebody who's basically just

did that i mean do you think i'm right though i mean i feel pretty strongly about this i watch it a couple of times um but i i you know i don't know if anybody's written about that aspect of it i think a lot of people are seeing it and thinking that they're doing a silent celebration because

they're at work i don't think that's the case no i i think the way you've laid it out it makes perfect sense and that's probably what it is it's funny though that and i mean it's just adorable all around and that thing has been viewed you know hundreds of thousands of times millions of times probably so i also don't want to take any of the shine off it but it is funny that if it's silent it's cuter than than if if they were allowed to actually scream and yell it's still very cute with them screaming and yelling but it's not as cute as if they're having to be quiet but they're so excited yeah what does that say about the sort of human nature or the human

experience that that is adorable oh i mean it's i mean it makes sense right i'm not i don't think i have a fun answer to that i mean i think it does make sense this idea that you're kind of watching i think there's something about watching surreptitiously about this idea that something huge is going on but you have a job to do and it's this idea of playing hooky like you know i definitely played hooky on friday just because i talked about it on friday morning show like i got all my work done as much as i could on thursday and took maybe one or two shortcuts by naming the show before we started recording and already having but then renaming it oh then renaming it and then confusing the algorithm you didn't let your excitement get in the way of doing quality work yeah well doing work let's just leave it at that but yeah the idea of them maybe sneakily watching it is kind of fun but i i mean again i think that it's still fun either way i was just confused when i was watching i'm like somehow again i just like with my vanilla ice ears i just could tell that whatever extraneous noise i was hearing was not lining up with what i was

seeing now i think you i think you've cracked the case again ice um could you all right oh my god

let's talk about we do that could that be my nickname ice yeah okay going forward just write it down you can call you can call me the ice man the ice um and oh andy ice kind of like natty ice

or maddie ice um and you know that i only realized i literally only realized last weekend that that's why they call matt ryan maddie ice is because it's like a reference to natty ice

That's always been kind of my assumption But are we definitely right on that I have that connection

That's a weird nickname for Matt Ryan looks like a person Who should be yelling at another coach At a youth lacrosse game

I can't even picture his face I never know what football players look like Because they wear helmets So I can't even picture him Matt Ryan appears to be about 60 years old

Although he's younger than us I mean he's very fit Don't get me wrong Matt Ryan is an extremely fit human being. He plays professional football, but he just has this, like, extremely bland, like, kind of dad face who's, like, dad who's, like, leading the Cub Scout troop, but just a little bit kind of too sharp with the kids. Yeah, I see what you're talking about. You know what I mean? Like, he just looks a little – also, he's always being sacked. So every time I see him, he's getting up off the ground in frustration. So that's probably not doing him any favors in the sternness department.

That's the thing. you listen to levitard show and of course you knew about this well before i did but they do this game called the looks like game right where listeners write in like this coach looks like the man who does this sort of the perfect or maybe not the perfect example but one that i can remember is like pete carroll the coach of the seahawks pete carroll looks like a recent retiree who drives down the highway with the top down on his car and one hand on the headrest of the passenger seat and like you're just like okay but like the vast majority of the people that they that they list in these jokes i don't even know what they look like sometimes i'll look them up later but they're still brilliant even if you don't know what they look like because they paint such a

complete picture it's amazing that p carroll thing is that it's the hand behind the passenger

seat headrest yeah that's that's the detail yes i stumbled there i feel like the original might have said what kind of car he was driving and i'm terrible with cars but like those it's like well you know this very well luke it's those details that make these little spoofs so funny just like

they just dig deeper and deeper into the details so uh the fat bear contest up in alaska which i think we've talked about in years past uh has been rocked by a scandal so this is this thing where people are voting online as to which of these fat bears in canada are their favorite and the what these bears are doing is they are gorging on salmon to build up a heavy layer of fat so then they can go hibernate and not eat for however many months so this is you know not just an exercise in gluttony this is them uh doing something uh you know important biologically which i was we were talking about this on the live wire podcast yesterday this is before i knew about the cheating scandal and i was just saying i'm at the point where anytime mother nature seems like it's even moderately functioning i'm pretty chuffed like oh the river is not lava currently meaning salmon can still live in it which means the bears can eat them then the bears can hibernate like if if i see nature operating like it should i'm just like okay well that's a win oh the rain's still falling down not upwards right exactly awesome good good exactly as a win so but um so people go on and they vote you know it's just like a fun cute thing and it draws attention to this part of of the country which of course we should be preserving and and thinking about and and not turning into a parking lot or whatever um but they noticed that there was an irregularity in the voting uh it was these two bears were going up against each other one's called 747 which is a pretty great name yeah um and then one's called 435 holly and 435 holly less great name peace and love to our hollies out there but now here's the thing i'm wondering if they just name these bears like if they just have numbers and if this bear because there's another one in there named 901 there's one in there called 128 grazer like is 747 did they just get to that number or is it because the bear is roughly as large as a commercial airliner because i assumed it was called 747 because it was as big as an airplane i'm not read up on this but it sounds

like if they all have these just random numbers that one just sort of lucked out it sounds like

i'm looking into this honestly if you're a bear and your number is 747 you're destined for greatness yeah that's what i said that bear space a hundred percent but anyway um they noticed that one of these bears was uh had gotten uh 37 000 votes that was 747 and then all of a sudden there were like i think it was like 6 000 votes in a very short period of time for 4 35 holly and they there's 9 000 votes came up all of a sudden out of nowhere and they went in and realized somebody was literally spamming the fat bear contest so they had to create a captcha which is ironic in that the bears are also capturing salmon and eating them and that's the fun of this but now You have to do a captcha to log in because.

Because somebody took the time to try to mess with this stupid fat bear thing. And you know what my first thought was? I don't want to see any headlines about voting irregularities. Because it just makes people like my Lyft driver last night who thinks you can't even sing the pledge anymore. Just see more smoke and believe. I know that this sounds like an intense place to take it. But I literally thought, just let Holly 435 win. Nobody cares. I think a headline on CNN, voting scandal rocks, fat bear contest, is more damaging to our democracy than just letting the wrong fat bear win.

Sounds like you want to cover up. You want to cover up. I mean, it sounds like you're on the wrong side of history here.

I really do feel like – I mean, I know that in journalism the job is to report the facts and not try to put your thumb on the scale or omit things. But every time there is an article about any kind of irregularity in an election of any kind in the United States, even if it's just about bears, it stresses me out because I know that it just becomes fodder for people who are going to try to steal the next presidential election. And literally I woke up this morning, got stressed because of that headline.

I was trying to figure out why these bears are named after numbers. I could be wrong on the fly here. Look, somebody wrote that the scientists come up with the numbers randomly, so I don't know how you randomly end up on 747. I mean, there are a lot of boring numbers in this competition, too, but you are right. 747 seems kind of badass, but I was going to say, so this thing, you think somebody built a bot? Is that what the thing is?

That's what their suspicion is, that somebody built some kind of bot to stuff the ballot box. I saw on Twitter, somebody wrote, I think James Hamblin, who's a very funny. Actually, you know what? It's not funny, James Hamblin. Leave some for the rest of us. James Hamblin is a physician who also writes for the Atlantic and runs marathons and is funny on Twitter. Like, no. Okay. You get to do one of those things, my guy. Or if you're me, none of those things. Yeah, because he's taken the world up. He wrote something like, what if they find out that someone was stuffing the bears with fish that were stuffed with lead? But anyway, I mean, really to me, I mean, it seemed just like that was a weird thing for someone to try to mess with, but it's the Internet. But again, more what stuck out to me was that it genuinely created a certain amount of agita for me because of how much low-level agita I have. Like I saw a headline that I didn't even click on in – it was either the Times or the Post this morning, the Washington Post. And it was like a grim – is this the end of the republic? Experts weigh in on the grim possibilities if Trump is reelected. And I was like, we're not clicking on that today. Not today, Satan. What do we say in the headlines? And I bet you that they're not wrong, you know? Yeah. Like it's like I can't click on that kind of stuff anymore.

It it really, really is a day ruiner for me. Yeah, that's I mean, I realize you made a comment a while ago that sort of stuck with me because I listen to so much sports radio these days. Right. And I mean, going back years now and as a guy who didn't grow, grow up even caring about sports, it is kind of an interesting thing. Like the thing that I cared about most in life for a very, very long time was public radio. And I got to admit my public. I mean, I think podcasting has something to do with this as well and all the choice out there. And the fact that I get some public radio esque content on demand probably has to do with it. But like I don't have like just my local public radio station on at all times in the background like I used to. And now it's like sports stuff at all times. And you said, yeah, it's interesting because I'm like I'm very far behind now. as to who hosts what both locally and nationally um anyway that was on my mind because for some reason well i think it has to do with a hosting change on one of my um morning sports radio shows i switched over to public radio a couple of weeks ago and i've been listening to a lot more kind of morning edition or just hearing you know a couple of segments here and there and and then so the radio is already tuned to that so then you'll hear all things considered if i happen to be taking a wake them up shower later on in the day or something and so i've been listening to more public radio and i realized like oh part of this shift in me might have had to do with the fact that when i hear stories anything related to national news i automatically start shadow boxing with uh people either in my life or strangers i haven't met yet um about like just like is there so much conspiracy in this world and there's so much um you know i had to hear or I heard an NPR reporter have to say, quote unquote, fake news or something about like, don't trust the media when this. is the media and works for public radio and an institution that i truly believe in for um for good quality journalism right and just knowing that a lot of people would just look at this journalist's hard work and say oh that's bias that's nancy pelosi radio right or whatever and just like i automatically it it doesn't even have to be a bad news story it could be a fine story But my brain just starts shadow boxing with people who are on the other side of what I think to be very important, very obvious issues that shouldn't even have sides, you know. And, like, I just realized, oh, maybe that's one of the reasons I especially retreated to more sports talk radio during the Trump years because, like, you just can't – I always think of my brain as an old computer that's probably seen its better days. At one point, it was pretty flashy and had a lot of promise, but now it'll just get stuck on something and then the fan won't shut off because it's just getting hotter and hotter. And you leave it and you say, okay, well, I'm going to try hitting shutdown on this thing. I'm sure it'll shut down by morning.

But you come back to it and the computer's just super hot and the fan's been running all night because it still hasn't finished some processes. I was like, my brain can't do that at all times. sometimes i'm just i'm gonna need to listen to somebody um list the top five hockey names that are the quintessential hockey names which i was listening to yesterday yeah well i've got some of

just that kind of content for you andrew that is which mascots make the most money per year

yeah what's with this you dropped this on me i think on friday or something a rumor than the denver nugget the swole denver nugget uh mascot is that the one we were talking about

the one that looks like he's super jacked up yes and um i want to say one thing which was i was slightly misremembering rocky i don't i don't think i i dislike him as much as i thought i did but we were talking about the new uh kraken mascot buoy uh which is a troll and was getting trolled because i don't think there are that many people that were excited about buoy but we look just kind of like an sort of off-brand disney movie character instead of what i think is the fun kind of uh resurgence of just completely bizarro mascots a la gritty out in philadelphia with the flyers and and uh doppler the storm yeah seattle storm mask that i just learned about but that i now would die for yep as i said the other day so in so that just came up randomly and then you googled um rocky the mascot and then you laughed because you agreed with me that like swole mascot's kind of dumb and then it was the same day that i saw this news story out of denver does rocky the denver nuggets mascot actually make six hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year um uh but here's the thing uh i can't seem to confirm the initial reporting on this whole thing it came from the sports business journal which released its list of the top five highest paid mascots but it just appeared to be i can't find the original article from the sports business journal so all i can find is basically this kind of photographic that's just got a picture of each mascot in the top five and then how much they allegedly make and then everyone else is just reporting those numbers but i can't find the actual source like if the nuggets ever confirmed that's what the mascot makes now what a tv station in denver did kdvr uh what what they did was they went on the rockies uh sorry the um nuggets website to figure out how much it costs to rent rocky for your event and then they extrapolated from that and figured if the person inside the costume gets half of the money they'd have to work 32 hours a week as the mascot to clear 600 and i think 50 the number is one place at 650 and one place at 625 which is why i'm going back and forth but let's just say to clear 600 000 their math was whoever is inside this costume would have to be doing it 32 hours a week which seems like more than you know there would be demand for and and that if they split the money with the team then they would that's where they would get 600 thousand so it's like a i i cannot confirm or deny that this is actually the case well if you

tried pulling down on like the 16 k hertz tab a little bit like on your boom box just sort of i'm wondering if we can get to the bottom of this mystery by by sloppily notching some frequencies out um i tried to return to a joke that was funny before and it's no it's not funny anymore my apologies for that we'll cut it all out in post here's a real question i have for you um do we think putting aside special event well no you know what let's include special events Do we believe that mascots of any kind of major league team or, you know, like major league outside of baseball, basketball, football, do we believe that it's always the same person inside of that? And is it different for different sports? Because I feel like I knew somebody who said they knew the person who is inside the Seahawks mascot. Wait, I want to get there myself. Hawk. It's not Hawk, right? doesn't it blitz blitz i believe is the name of the seahawk mascot so that's like you know what failed jamal adams project aka blitz it's like what is that eight home games a year whatever that would be um chances are the same person but then you have the mariner moose suiting up 81 times a year for just the games alone the home games alone is that the same person inside the mariner moose outfit each time or am i wrong that there's a person inside of that

and actually it is a moose here's what fox 31 had to say on this exact topic andrew while it isn't public information who is wearing the rocky costume fox 31 believes that the mascot is being kept within a family of performers after seeing multiple people don the costume recently at

various nuggets events and games a family of performers i know it's 2022 but when i hear a family of performers i picture them out on some like um some trail somewhere in a a horse-drawn carriage and they're looking for people to entertain town to town along the way yes any family of performers or their trapeze artists they also mentioned uh that there was a piece

on hbo real sports back in 2010 that uh pointed out basically you had mascots at this like mascot camp who would who refuse to take their mascot helmet or whatever you want to call it their mascot head off because there is something within the mascot community the mascot code of conduct says that mascots are not allowed to show their face so that adds to some of the um interesting i guess you could say confusion around this i do love the idea though of a hard-working family in Denver where the family business is being Rocky yeah the Nuggets mascot and sometimes it's dad sometimes it's mom sometimes it's their teenage daughter it's like ah I got Rocky duty on Saturday

like who's who's putting on the head now I think I've told you this story before I also mentioned this on the KUW podcast the other day but I'd be shocked if they left it in but when I was in high school. I went to St. Ignatius and the teams were the Wildcats, right? Which is just woefully generic for my taste, but whatever. So the mascot was some sort of a Wildcat, right? A big cat that probably wore a jersey. I don't remember it all that well. What I do remember is that when I believe I was maybe a sophomore, maybe a junior, it was a senior who we knew who wore that Wildcat outfit and was the was the mascot for the team at all times I believe and the other thing we knew about that guy is he's also the guy where you can get marijuana from or from whom you can get marijuana I should say he was a big stoner and there was a rumor that he would only put on that outfit if he was high there was also a rumor that he would go camping sometimes with his stoner friends and take the head with him um and make everybody laugh but then this idea that he only would put on that uniform if he was a little bit buzzed really made the pep rallies interesting because i just remember i didn't go to like the sporting events i don't think i don't know if i ever went to any football games i mean i must have football was it's a huge football school they're very proud of their legacy in football going to the state championships or whatever well

You and – who's the – Vrabel? Oh, yeah.

That was at Walsh. Yeah, that was – yeah, that was different. Oh, okay. Sorry, that was slightly different. Yeah, but anyway, my point is I remember sitting in the bleachers at these, I guess, mandatory pep rallies or whatever they were during the school day and watching him so closely because I'd be like, wait, is he blazed right now? Like I remember specifically one time – and I can't remember the guy's name. I apologize maybe it's best since I'm Accusing him so I'm sure he would want to

Be named first middle And last as the guy who The guy who sold weed to everyone From the mascot

I mean and also like He's probably like a banker Worth millions now or something too Who knows it was a good school Anyway so I remember Like one time being in the bleachers And he was like kind of doing his goofy thing And one time he started messing around with a football player's ear like they were just all like can you picture like the football team comes out and everybody applauds and then um they all sit down in like some foldable chairs down on the court or whatever while various speeches are given or whatever rallies are pepped um and i just remember him kind of like the the mascot sort of goofing around with the football players but then he started sort of like twiddling around with one of the football players ears and not you know it just seemed goofy but i was also just like is he just like really stoned does he know he's

doing that right now did he do that bit where he would put two frozen pizzas in the oven and

totally forget that he did that it was a huge thing i wonder what the wild does that wildcat mascot have a name not the guy i'm not trying to out the guy now but um i wonder like do high school mascots have names are they just like the wildcat my friend cotter who i refer to as the

colonel sometimes he uh he actually didn't go to the university of arizona but he's from tucson and his family is big wildcat partisans his dad was wilbur the wildcat at the university of arizona

see i like that wilbur i like alliteration is nice um i'm not i think it's just called the

wildcat how generic is that anyway i'll figure i would be the worst mascot of all time because i don't i wouldn't be able to think of any tomfoolery even though no one knew i was in the costume i would feel deeply embarrassed about having to do antics having to like be silly to people and like i would be i would be the mascot that everybody thought was on like got onto some bad shit and was tripping because i would just be standing in the corner shyly meekly facing the corner how

creepy would that be during a pep rally if the mascot just sort of slowly and just removed himself from the situation and made his way to the corner and just faced the corner for a while that would be the type of stuff i would do i wouldn't have the job long but boy would they write about it in the saint ignatius student newspaper uh-oh danny the dragon is getting

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female Oh, man. It's not from a female.

All right. One quick thing, Andrew. That list that they put out, I don't know if it's to be believed or not, this mascot list, but Rocky at $625K is the highest paid, followed by Harry the Hawk, which is the Atlanta Hawks mascot. This must only be NBA, NBA's highest paid mascots. Again, according to this list, which I don't know if it can be believed or not. And then Benny the Bull at $400K, Go the Gorilla at the Phoenix Suns, which I have to say has kind of grown on me over the years because it's so bizarre. It's just like a guy in a not-great gorilla suit who's wearing a Phoenix Suns warm-up outfit, which I kind of enjoy it. I mean, what are you going to have, like Solar the Sun? I mean, I guess you just kind of have to go with something that's slightly abstract, but Go the Gorilla allegedly makes $200,000, and then rounding out the top five, Hugo the Hornet making $100,000 for the Charlotte Hornets.

Wait, why were you so dismissive? No joke. Why were you dismissive of something called solar that's like a sun? I just think that would be awesome.

Yeah, when I said it out loud, it actually wasn't the worst idea because you could just get some bizarro yellow blob, right?

Yeah, and I think that there's a strong tradition of good mascots in the Japanese baseball leagues. I think it's the Japanese leagues, right, that have really creative, inspired mascots that are sometimes concepts. Remember the one I was obsessed with a few years ago that was a fish that would jump out of its own fish body? or it was like a mollusk that left its shell behind or something along the lines of that where like they got really creative and I just feel like you're right and I think that you've been saying this for a long time and I believe you more and more I buy into it more and more that like there's this idea of like sort of like badassery in American sports that you have to live up to and like you see that with this Rocky I will say one thing about this Rocky mascot there's one picture of it going around where its shirt is off and it's just cut AF. And that's what I thought it always looked like. But it looks like usually it has a uniform on, but for some reason underneath that uniform shirt is just like six-pack or maybe 12-pack abs. I'm not sure how those beasts are built. And that's what I found really weird, like this super, super jacked up masculine mascot. Like, why not just be a sunshine, a ray of sunshine named Solar? Or just a Like a

Like a buff animal who's kind of let themselves go not not like the not the philly fanatic something that's you know completely ridiculous but i guess something more like the the kansas city chiefs a mascot who came up the other day and i was misremembering because it's like a wolf of some kind but it does have a pretty big belly like i would be interested in a in a mascot that decided to start eating carbs

again i want a mascot that vapes i want a mascot that has a white t-shirt that has cigarette burns in it. That's what I'm looking for in a mascot. A mascot that I can relate to, Andrew. Okay, I'm going to play a voicemail for you here, Luke. Now, I will say this. I meant to check the voicemail line this morning. I ran out of time. So, I see that we have a bunch of good stuff in there, I think. I'll be going through that for tomorrow's show. But in the meantime, I'm going to play a voicemail for you from last week. And I'm hesitating here, Luke, because I feel like you might be done with the found money stories. But they keep rolling in, and this is a good one. from Listener KJ.

Hey, guys. It's Listener KJ. I've had a found money story, if you're still taking those. Mine was when I was back in college, which was the mid-'90s. I was in New York State, and my boyfriend at the time and I were at a bar. Got a little bored of being at the bar, so we went back to his apartment, which was a house that was divided into two apartments, the upstairs and downstairs. So shared porch, two front doors. We hit the porch and spot a brown paper lunch bag that kind of looked like a skinny little brick, and my boyfriend was smart enough to just grab it, unlock the door, and we headed upstairs. And guess what was in there? 500 bucks. Five hundo. We were super psyched because we were in college, it was the mid-'90s, and we were broke. the downstairs neighbors were drug dealers so I'm pretty sure that's where it came from but they were kind of like the fun drug dealers for everybody that was in college there you know like the mascot of your high school

yeah exactly

fortunately I think we were quiet enough because they never found out that we had their cash I don't know if they ever knew they lost it we hatched a plan we decided to head back to the bar buy around for ourselves and our friends that were still hanging out at the bar and then we split the rest 50 50 it was pretty sweet um i don't quite remember what i did with most of the money probably paid some bills because again i'm broke uh and then the one thing i do remember is i went to pick up my my roommate at her job at the grocery store I bought a scratcher ticket for like $1 or $2, won $100. It was the best weekend ever. I took that $100 winning on the lottery and went to the thrift store, bought my roommate and I a bright green couch because we didn't have enough furniture. It was pretty sweet. We called it the lotto couch from then on, brought it home, tried to bring it up the stairs to our apartment. It did not fit. So same boyfriend that helped find his money came over and helped us haul this couch from the 1960s up the fire escape into our third floor apartment through the window. It was great. I don't know if that couch ever left that apartment. Or if it did, it probably didn't leave it in one piece. All right. Power out, guys.

Sounds like KJ is no longer with that boyfriend. And so my question would be, do you still have his number? because that's the person you need in your life. But my God, you find $500, you split it, and let's say after the round, let's just say you're walking away with $200 each. Then you go and you buy a lottery ticket or scratch them off or scratch them up or whatever I call them, and then you just win another hundo? My God. Just keep rolling. Also, KJ literally had a money green leather sofa, the Biggie song. No, I don't know if I know that song. Is that the name of his song or is that a lyric?

No, that's, he goes, that's, that's, I know the song, but I guess I don't know the name of it. It's the If You Don't Know Now You Know song. Yeah. And he's just, you know, he's just talking about his whole life changing. It was all a dream. Is that the name of the song or is that just the opening line? I'm trying to think if that's juicy or not. It was all a dream. I used to read Word Up magazine. Is that juicy? And he goes, and at one point he's talking about how great his life is going, and he talks about having a money green leather sofa. I don't know if KJ's sofa was leather, but having a money green sofa, that's, that's pretty dope. Also, I would just say, however nice the drug dealers were, what I've learned from the movies is you don't want to go to the bar down the street and immediately start to celebrate your financial good fortune in a public way when the people who do.

the drugs may be looking for their money

this is college so I assume this means that they're just selling like weed in the 90s so it's not like they didn't get involved with a cartel I'm guessing here

but who knows that would have been an exciting plot for a movie though it certainly would and the bad guys come into the bar and then like they see that you're about to hand a crisp hundred over to the bartender and then they chase you and you gotta run out of the back of the bar and it's a whole thing But that's a great story because that involves a couple of my favorite things, buying around at the bar and gambling. Yes. And one of my favorite things, finding money. Someday I shall do it again. You know, I found some money on Sunday, Andrew. How much? How you're bing the weed? It was inside someone's wallet, and it was at the airport, and I immediately handed the wallet over to security.

Oh, you know what? That's funny. I sort of found a wallet the other day, too, but I didn't really spend much time going through it. It was – and I didn't even really find it. Veeves and I on our road trip home from Bend stopped for what has become my favorite fast food to eat while driving, which is Subway. Somehow – not that it's better for you. Interesting. But the fact that it's kind of cold cuts and not like an actual cooked greasy burger. Like I know that there's grease in there, but like there's something about eating like hot greasy food like French fries and burgers that just kind of doesn't sit well with me for the rest of the trip. And so I like a Subway foot-long sandwich. Whoa, too much detail, Walsh. Anyway, we're in this, like, just rando subway along the side of a, I don't know, not a highway, but it's like a strode. Luke, let's go with the strode. Oh, a strode. Yeah. You know I've been telling people about strodes now. You put your evil inside me with that. Of course you are. Anybody who hears about strodes then tells others. It's like the ring. Anyway, somebody, some delivery guy came in to like, you know, like some sort of food delivery person who works for one of the third party apps came in to pick up some Subway to deliver and just said, hey, and he kind of tapped me on the shoulder. It's like you dropped your wallet right outside of your car door. And sure as heck, there was a wallet right outside of my car door on the pavement, but it was not mine. It was somebody else's. They had an ID in there that I pulled out. It was broken in half. That's all I remember. It was a guy, and the ID was broken in half, and I just gave it to the person at the subway before I could take my finder's fee out of it.

I was just walking through the terminal. I wasn't through security yet. I'd just gotten into Portland Airport to fly out here, and a big old leather wallet with money sticking out of it, and clearly this person's entire life was just sitting on the ground right in front of me. and i picked it up and i was like i there was a guy standing kind of nearby i was like is this yours and he said no and then it just so happened that two security folks were walking and i just said hey i just found this but i was like i wish i could somehow send a a mental signal to this person that they're not as effed as they think they are right now because can you i mean the airport yep would have to be the worst i mean i've had my wallet stolen at the airport by security which is an injustice that i will never ever forget but um but yeah to lose your wallet at the airport either you're trying to fly out of there or you just got there and you're i mean it's just bad news all around and i just wanted to say to the person it's going to be okay yeah i mean presuming that the security folks did the right thing with the wallet which i'm sure they

i'm sure they did yeah no i do you remember and we don't have to go into detail again but it's one of my prouder moments when i found a wallet on the ground in um los angeles i guess i was staying in Culver City at the time and it I feel like it was a Friday night I was staying in that weird Airbnb but like my roommate was out or whatever I remember standing at this um kitchen counter going through the wallet and like I finally got a hold of the person by calling they had a medical card and their doctor was listed on the medical card and then I think I looked up that doctor's number and then I got their calling service what do you call their answering service and then I yes through a doctor's answering service somehow got the message to this person who was like I don't know maybe staying on the same block or maybe even in the same apartment complex I was and it was it was this person's parents who were visiting from Hawaii I said I wasn't going to give the details and now I gave all the details but they were so so appreciative and they gave me macadamia nuts which I don't think I ate because I don't love macadamia nuts sorry Hawaiians oh I love macadamia

nuts uh and next time someone offers you them take them and then give them to me now what i would like to say is if you lost your big leather wallet full of money at pdx on sunday and it was returned to you you owe me some macadamia nuts because i was the good samaritan who i didn't rifle through the thing i didn't take the money out i didn't i just handed it right to the proper authorities so you're welcome yes yes no that feeling of and again it's not even like hey i I want to. be the hero here but because of that feeling that you described luke of just the total helplessness you feel for moments when you realize that your wallet is not where it should be and all of the things that are in that wallet and just that feeling yeah just knowing that you were able to like release that pressure off of somebody and that it was you who found it so therefore everything is intact in there you don't have to worry about it it didn't like right it wasn't rifled through and then you found it in a garbage can or something like that so yeah no it's worth it i mean i owe

So, first of all, just as a semi-decent human being, of course, we should always return anything like that that we find just to make someone's life better. But karmically, I really have to because of the situation where I left my wallet bursting with money with like $800 in it at a casino in a part of the casino where there were many people of various – it would appear various kind of financial straits. and somebody found my wallet full of money and returned it without taking a dime out of it and that was to me one of the more shocking things that could happen and some people have said well there were cameras in the casino maybe they were it's like I'm telling you I was shocked by that and greatly moved by it because there were a lot of folks that might have found that wallet that could have really used the 800 bucks yeah exactly somebody just took it right back

yeah and you said before can you think of a worse place to lose your wallet than the airport and actually I can i think that casino yeah a casino anywhere on aurora in my neighborhood like there are like i would actually i would take my chances with uh with an airport although nothing is ever

uh for certain obviously all right well uh you've got a show to post and i've got pants to put on oh come on man i'm just wearing shorts i'm wearing shorts okay it's not get your mind out of the gutter um but uh yeah um there's a big old baseball game happening later today so we should probably wrap this up but the good news is we will be back here tomorrow doing this again so please do join us for that until then have a great tuesday uh go mariners and lots of love to our listeners in houston um and our listeners in toronto who i'm you know are still stinging from things i'm sure but anyway go mariners uh take care of yourselves we'll see you tomorrow and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

what we're talking about is money real money amigo money no dough no show power out